Chapter 10
Traveling through rumepant is an eerie, unsettling experience, best done in silence, but if one must speak, it should be done beneath a dome of silence, lest the echoes drive all in one’s party mad, for the echoes of a single sentence can last for hours. . . .
from the Annals of Melbarth, First Series, Early Lectures of the Hierarchs
Guest Lecture by Headmaster Shigmar
Their eyes adjusted slowly, the bright white light of Kalamar’s orthek fading to gray mistiness. Blakstar felt that they were moving, standing on a round slab of obsidian bearing the same symbol as the one upon which they had stood outside of the white maghi’s tower, but no breath of air cooled his cheeks. He stood holding Wingfoot’s reins, his mount on his left and Thal to his right, who was holding Marble’s reins. The place they were in was not dark, but there was no single source of light, no way to establish direction, no sun, moon, or stars, only the stone under their feet. The air was neither warm nor cold, without scent or moisture; the stamp or snort of the horses echoed strangely, as if they were inside a hollow stone tube.
“Where are we?” Blakstar asked and heard himself ask several times before his echoes faded away in the distance.
“Do you understand the four dimensions?” Thal asked, and re-asked.
“Do you mean length, width, height, and time?” the kortexi asked, and re-asked.
“Maghem name this the fifth dimension,” Thal said, then waited for the echoes to fade. “Here, everyplace is the same distance from every other place.” Echoes fading into the distance, then Blakstar heard the echoing whisper of his first question beginning to return; the horses stamped and shifted, their ears rotating. “Shigmar to Karble to the Mountain to the tower: all the same.”
Wherearewe wherearewe wherearewe wherearewe wherearewe wherearewe. . . .
“How far?” Blakstar asked shortly and in a low whisper in an attempt to minimize the echoes, now hearing more of their conversation returning. The horses shook their heads, blowing and stamping, as if they were trying to shake off the sounds.
Doyouunderstandthefourdimensions doyouunderstandthefourdimensions. . . .
“About an hour,” Thal replied, frowning at the sounds of his own voice returning. Echoes repeated and faded, then other words returned, hissing whispers filling the mist around them; moments passed slowly.
Doyoumeanlengthwidthheightandtime doyoumeanlengthwidthheightandtime. . . .
Thal turned to Blakstar. “I never got to examine your sword,” he said, starting more echoes.
Maghemnamethisthefifthdimension maghemnamethisthefifthdimension. . . .
“Can’t you do something about the echoes?” Blakstar asked, covering his ears to stop the echoes now getting louder; both mounts shook with fright, their ears laid back.
Hereeveryplaceisthesamedistancefromeveryotherplace hereveryplaceisthesame. . . .
Thal smacked his forehead. “Of course!” he snapped. “I forgot. In the excitement of leaving . . . ,” he began, but stopped, as the sounds of their voices multiplied about them; Blakstar winced. Thal raised his rod, whispered, and a silver globe grew out of the rod’s tip, expanding to surround them; all sound of the hissing echoes ceased as the dome covered Blakstar. “I forgot the first rule of rumepant,” Thal said, and no echoes followed, “a ward to allow conversation.” The shimmering silver globe now covered both them and their mounts, the horses’ ears going back up, both heads moving to look around.
“Rumepant?” Blakstar said, eyebrows raising.
“That is the name of this place in between the normal reaches of space and time,” Thal explained. “Your sword’s power to open doorways to other places confirms the theory of a further dimension, in which all places exist in a single place and time, although the explanation for its existence seems to be too convoluted and complex for casual conversation. I think it more likely that your sword somehow punches a hole in reality, drawing your position and the place you want to get to next to each other, so that one can simply take a single step and cross large spaces.”
Blakstar shook his head, looking quite confused, and drew his sword, reversing it and offering it to Thal. “You wanted to examine this?”
Thal’s eyes came back to the kortexi and his sword. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I sometimes get distracted. . . .”
Blakstar shrugged. “What can you tell me about my sword, which is the first key?”
Thal accepted the sword, holding it up. “It is marvelously light,” he said, “belying its large size. I’d expect it to be much heavier; its lightness is likely an effect of its teka.” Thal was silent for a time; he closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. “It is odd, however, that it only has a slight dweomer of teka; I’d expect a much stronger aura, considering its power to open doorways to other places.”
“The keeper told me that my armor would grow in power as I grew in experience,” Blakstar said, “do you suppose that includes my sword?”
Thal nodded. “Very probably.” He moved the hilt closer to his eyes, noticing symbols on the cross guard between the gemstones embedded in it, one for each of the elements. “There is something written here,” he began, then flicked the fingers of his free hand and a globe of light blossomed above his head. “That’s better; I can make them out now: eli-kerdu-ghebi, which is also your second name. The first part, ‘eli’ is the ancient word for the One, ‘kerdu’ is ‘heart,’ and ‘ghebi’ is ‘giver,’ so the name of this key must be heart-giver of the One.”
“That does not make sense, heart-giver? What does that mean?” Blakstar asked, feeling very confused by Thal’s interpretation.
“It is a metaphor,” Thal replied, “the sword is the preferred weapon of the kortexi, so a sword that is a ‘heart-giver’ must be a giver of courage, in this case, the sword literally gives you heart–courage–or the will to fight.” Thal tapped his chin with one finger, thinking. He stood after a moment and held up the sword with both hands in defensive position. “Stand and fight!” he shouted.
Blakstar stood, confused, then laughed. “What? Are you kidding?”
“Don’t I frighten you?” Thal asked, crestfallen.
“No, not really,” Blakstar replied, “your stance and grip are not quite right.”
“What? Oh, sorry,” Thal said, “you can tell I’m not really a swordsman.” He clumsily turned the sword around and pushed it toward the kortexi. “Here,” he said, “you try it.”
Blakstar took the sword. “Huh?”
“Assume the stance that you would if you meant to attack me,” Thal replied.
Blakstar raised a single eyebrow. “Why?” he asked.
“Just testing a theory,” Thal answered.
Blakstar still felt confused, but shrugged. The sword came up, held in his right hand, point toward Thal’s throat; both the blade and the gemstone on the pommel glowed suddenly with golden light.
Thal’s eyes widened; he stepped back into Marble, covering his face with his arms. “Put it down, please!” he implored.
The kortexi complied, letting the flat of the blade rest on his right shoulder; the light surrounding the blade winked out, but there was still a glimmer of golden light from the yellow stone set into the pommel. “And?” he asked, wondering at Thal’s behavior.
Thal breathed a sigh of relief, not speaking for several moments. “A sword has the literal ability to ‘take the heart’ from another, by killing the opponent. Your sword has, not only the literal ability to take someone’s heart, but also drains his courage, his will to fight. When you aimed the point at my throat and the blade lit up, I suddenly felt fear, even though I knew you did not mean to attack me. Your sword, the heart-giver of the One, apparently has the power to cause fear, or at least drain courage from your opponent.” He thought for a moment, again tapping his chin with one finger. “I think it might be better translated as will-giver of the One,” he mused, “yes, that makes more sense to me.”
“Are you telling me that when I face so
meone in battle,” Blakstar began, frowning with the effort, “my sword will make them fear me?” he finished, feeling mildly shocked.
“I won’t know for sure until you actually fight someone with it,” Thal replied, “but yes, I think that is what it does.”
The kortexi’s brow wrinkled. “Well, that hardly seems fair,” he noted, “I draw the sword to fight and my opponent is suddenly afraid of me.”
Thal barked a laugh, then coughed. “You are facing say, three ponkolum,” Thal posited, “do you still think it unfair that they are frightened by you and your sword?”
At the mention of ponkolum, Blakstar’s face drained of color, recalling his dreams; he carefully slipped his sword back into its scabbard, then sank to the stone. Inside, he heard the laughter of the ponkolam, saw the blind but hungry eyes of the pura whose face blurred into the face of Marta, felt the burning flame of desire, the flaming pain across chest and loins where the mark of Gar had been somehow inscribed; unconsciously, he reached up to cover his chest, and he saw the face and form of his mate-to-be, heard her anguished cry to see, felt again the pain across his chest and loins; harsh ponkolam laughter, eyes hungry with desire, guilty flames burning low in his belly, flaming pain over his front, leather thongs digging into his wrists and ankles, sharp pain at the base of his skull, anguished cry, “Let me see him! Let me see him! Let me see. . . .”
His eyes snapped back into focus on the form shaking him by his shoulders, the long face, filled with concern and framed by wild, red hair; Blakstar was panting and scratching at the pain in his chest.
“Blakstar, what’s wrong?” Thal asked, face wrinkled with concern.
“When you mentioned . . . , when you said . . . , I . . . ,” he stammered, “I recalled the dreams I had last night, filled with images I did not understand and a feeling of overwhelming guilt suddenly filled me, but I do not know its source.” He jerked to his feet and turned away, grabbing Wingfoot’s neck and pushing his face against it to stifle the sobs trying to escape from his mouth. Moments passed before his breathing returned to normal, and he felt himself regain some control. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned, his face a stony mask.
“Has something happened?” Thal asked.
Blakstar shrugged once. “I don’t know,” he replied, “but the dreams and recalling them, makes me feel as if I had done something wrong–very wrong–enough to cause me to lose my place in the order . . . I am tormented by sudden guilt that I don’t understand.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” the maghi asked, sounding concerned.
The kortexi shook his head and looked away. “They’re just dreams,” he shrugged.
Blakstar felt Thal stand, Thal’s hand still gripping his shoulder. “Blakstar,” Thal said, then paused a moment as if considering what to say. “Perhaps if I tell you a little about myself, it might distract you from these troubling dreams and feelings.”
Blakstar sighed, then shrugged.
“I’m not actually the son of Kalamar and Nelle,” he said.
Blakstar looked up suddenly, surprised by this declaration. “What do you mean?”
“I’m the son of a kara who died when I was very young,” Thal continued. “I joined the urchins of the street, begging and stealing enough to survive. The people of the village put up with us, feeling partially responsible for our wretched state; I think they actually left food out for us. When I was nearly six, a couple of years after my mother died and left me alone, I noticed a wetha who came to the village regularly, trading her farm goods for other useful items. I learned that she was a white maghi, living with her husband near our village. One day, I felt quite bold and asked her to show me some teka. She smiled at my request, snapped her fingers, and a delicious looking apple appeared out of thin air, I thought. This went on for more than a week: I would ask for teka and she would snap her fingers and give me some piece of fruit. In the evenings, I would brag to my fellow thieves that I was learning to become a great maghi, who would soon not need to steal food, as I would be able to conjure it out of nothing. After having had their fill of my bragging, one of the thieves asked the obvious question: ‘If you are learning to be a maghi, why are you still here with us?’ The others laughed and joined her in teasing me, made worse as I knew she was right. The next time I saw the maghi, my companions’ teasing prodded me to ask her to take me home with her and train me as a maghi. My request startled her, but she took me by the shoulders and stared into my eyes for a time. I felt embarrassed by it, feeling that she was looking inside of me. She let go, said, ‘Oh my,’ and then left. Later that day, she returned with her husband. He took me aside and placed one hand on my forehead. I was watching his face, so I saw his eyes widen in surprise, then he smiled at me. He told me later that when he saw my potential, the One whispered in his mind that I was the apprentice he had been seeking. They went to the village council and adopted me on the spot as their son and heir. What a strange turn of events this was in the life of a would-be thief!”
Thal glanced at Blakstar before going on. “I spent the next six years being educated: learning to read and write, grammar, history, philosophy, theology, astronomy, everything but teka. I learned to milk cows and gather eggs, weed the garden, clean out the stable, and so on, but did not learn a single orthek. During the time, I was upset by this fact, and pestered my adopted parents constantly about teka. Their answer was always the same: we’ll teach you teka when we decide you are ready, which to a young boy meant, never.”
At this, Blakstar laughed. “That sounds familiar,” he noted amidst his laughter, “the same is true of a kortexi. Only difference is we did more manual labor and constant exercising, and running: oh, how I hated those daily, five league runs!”
Thal nodded and smiled, glad to see his companion laugh. “Of course, I now realize that what they taught me through those early years provided a foundation for learning teka, just as all that running made you strong enough to wear armor and wield a sword. I spent the last ten years learning teka, and the frightening part is that I’ve barely scratched the surface; I might be able to light someone’s boots on fire, if they weren’t wet, or raise a shield that would deflect an arrow, uh, fired at long range, that is,” Thal paused, then he added, “by a nearly blind archer.”
Blakstar looked at Thal, saw him smiling, and burst out laughing. For nearly five minutes, he continued to laugh, unable to stop, not because Thal’s joke was really very funny, but for the release of tension that had been building within in him since he started riding toward the Mountain.
Thal looked surprised. “The joke wasn’t that good; in point of fact, it was quite awful.”
Blakstar wiped the tears from his face. “It was the last twig that broke the donkey’s back,” he whispered hoarsely, borrowing a popular phrase. “The last week, or so, has been quite tense,” he added, “to laugh that hard helps relieve some of the tension.”
“That is good,” Thal said, “you were beginning to look quite somber; I was afraid for a moment that you might actually turn to stone, which, I suppose, could have certain advantages for a kortexi,” he went on, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, “very difficult to stab.”
“Please, no more bad jokes,” Blakstar said, laughing again, “I might not be able to stop; how would it look if we arrived in Shigmar, both doubled over with laughter?”
“They’d be quite impressed with you,” Thal laughed, “Sir Karble come back as the laughing kortexi: he attacks his foes with his fear-instilling sword, then tells them bad jokes until they laugh so hard, that they die of a cardiac arrest.”
More time passed to recover this time, both of them laughing and ignoring the patronizing looks both mounts gave them when both leaned on their horses for support.
Thal wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe. “Feeling better?”
Blakstar pulled a square of cloth out and wiped his face and nodded. “A little.”
Thal stood silent for a moment, while Blakstar tucked the
cloth away. “I wonder if we can deduce something about the other keys from what we know about your sword and its name,” Thal suggested.
Blakstar’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. “What do you mean?”
“Well, from the sword’s name,” Thal said, “the will to fight, to have courage, or to have heart given from the One, seems to me to be a principle attribute of your order, along with strength and stamina. In my case, the case of a maghi, the principle attribute could be teka–the power to wield elemental forces, maghu, in the ancient language, or maybe knowledge, which is gnumu, or menu, which means ‘thought.’ So the Rod of Melbarth could be eli-maghu-ghebi, ‘teka giver of the One,’ eli-gnumu-ghebi, ‘knowledge giver of the One,’ or eli-menu-ghebi, ‘the One’s giver of thought.’” Thal tapped his chin thoughtfully. “There is a Rod of Melbarth in the tower’s atrium–the tower of the maghi school in Melbarth,” he added, “but it lies in a display case protected by many powerful ortheks . . . ,” he trailed off, still tapping his chin.
Blakstar laughed. “But which is it? and does it really matter?”
Blakstar saw Thal jerk when the kortexi laughed, bringing him back to the present. “I don’t have enough information to decide which it is, and the differences between them would change the rod’s inherent powers, so, yes, it does matter. I can only speak for my own order, but the symbols and their corresponding words from the ancient language are symbols of power. With them, a maghi can weave together ortheks that perform particular teka: change one of the symbols, or its position in the incantation, and the final result is completely different.”
The Redemption, Volume 1 Page 16