by Matthew Ward
Eidr said, “You’re right. I’ve never seen its face, and it did appear to fly. I didn’t understand how either were possible. It has to be the same people. Who are they?”
Conl said, “I don’t know much more, but we have to find out.”
Now everyone was standing. A feeling permeated the air. It had to do with simultaneously feeling like they were on the edge of a defining moment of history and already having accidentally stepped over that ledge without even realizing it was there.
Drystn asked Conl, “What sort of bad things happen?”
“There’s stories of meddling and mischief, but there is one story in particular that only exists orally among us Aithrs. I’m not sure I should tell you all, though. I don’t want to alarm you before we know more.”
Loegr lunged at Conl, “You have to tell us. How can we prepare for what might be happening with no context?”
Conl nodded calmly.
He said, “Okay. But it’s just a myth. No one really knows what caused the end of the First Age and the start of the Second Age.”
Loegr said, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yes. The story goes that a few of these black robes showed up and decimated the people of the First Age. They left a few people that agreed with them to start over, and that’s how the Second Age began.”
Ninml finally jumped in, “But why? Who are they? How would they even do that?”
“It’s just a story. Stories change when told many times.”
Ninml continued, “But that story now fits with everything we know. Oh, God. They’ve come back to destroy us. They tricked us into killing the bairsgn in order to kill us all off. Why would they do that?”
Conl said, “We need to get to Talamir Center. There may be people there who know more.”
Drystn said, “How would they know more? They didn’t even realize we were out there killing the bairsgn.”
Conl said, “You don’t know much about Talamir Center, do you? They have an entire library of books from the First Age. People are working on translating them. They might have found something that can help us.”
Loegr snorted. “Yeah, right. The people of the First Age couldn’t even save themselves. How could their knowledge save us?”
Conl said, “It’s worth a try. Maybe they communicated with these people more and wrote down who they are and where they came from.”
This seemed to satisfy Loegr. Within minutes, they moved as a group through the rings of Talamir toward Talamir Center in a futile attempt to save the people of Talamir.
Their first stop was the mianl building with the hole to the bairsgn. Conl had not yet seen the carnage the group had wrecked on the area. Eidr hung back, still ashamed of the harm he had caused. Someone died for a cause that only made everything worse. He watched Conl enter the room with the hole. A rustle of cloth came from the room.
Conl yelled, “What are you doing?”
A bolt of black cloth flew from the room. Drystn and Loegr dove onto the figure and tackled him to the ground. Eidr watched in shock. The person from the church had returned here? The guy seemed to have some superhuman abilities like flying, but this didn’t help him escape from the grip of the two.
Conl sprinted out after the man, a bit late. He addressed the group, “He seemed to be doing something to the bairsgn.” He glanced at the person, “What were you doing?”
He said, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Well. It looked like you might be trying to revive it.”
“It’s true. That’s what I was doing, but it’s futile. It will never come back now.”
Eidr gasped. What? The man’s words made it sound like he was sad about this fact, but everything came out in an emotionless monotone.
Eidr said, “But you went through all that effort to get us to destroy it. Why would you try to revive it now?”
“Like I said. You wouldn’t understand. I need it to get back.”
“Back where?”
The black robe said, “It doesn’t matter. Just let me go.”
“No. You’re coming with us.”
Drystn and Loegr struggled to pull the guy up. He begrudgingly flew between them as they slogged on with their slow human pace.
Eidr couldn’t resist any longer. He asked, “Are you actually flying?”
The man replied simply, “Yes.” He apparently didn’t think further explanation was necessary.
XXII
The Ruler stared at the group in silence. Maedc didn’t know what the Ruler found most shocking: the fact that the bairsgn had been killed without his knowledge; or that Maedc and Tumr managed to return to Talamir Center with real life people from the First Age; or that the bairsgn was actually serving an important and benevolent function.
The Ruler plopped back into the chair behind his giant stone desk, his robes fluttered outward from the force.
He said, “I don’t understand. You’re trying to tell me that the bairsgn acted as a giant manager for all the spior in Talamir?”
Maedc said, “Yes. It wasn’t trying to kill us. It redistributed spior to where it was needed. When things die, the spior that gets released doesn’t magically know where to go. So the bairsgn sent it to its proper place.”
The Ruler gave the group a look of disbelief.
“I don’t believe you. Everyone could see with their own eyes that it was pulling spior from living things. It’s getting bigger.”
“Yeah. Sometimes it takes a small amount from living things if it’s needed. Its size ebbs and flows. It has been growing since we started paying attention to it, but it would have started shrinking in the near future, if we didn’t kill it that is.”
The Ruler said to Maedc and Tumr, “Well, I have to congratulate you both for such a successful mission. You’ve managed to return with people from the First Age, and you know their language.”
Maedc snapped, “There’s no time for these formalities right now. We have to do something. How could someone have killed the bairsgn without you knowing? We have to reverse it.”
The Ruler boomed in as loud a voice his high-pitched squeaking could manage, “Don’t speak to me that way. I’m still the Ruler. If the bairsgn really is dead, then you just said we’re all dead anyway. There’s nothing we can do.”
“We need to find out who did it to see if they can reverse it.”
Tkz stood behind the group and looked perplexed by the conversation. Maedc tried to quickly catch him up in their language.
The Ruler said, “All right. I’ll announce that it’s dead and claim that we need to know who did it to give them an award.”
Tumr said, “Are you sure that will work? The person or people who did it don’t want it to be known for some reason. Maybe they knew it would destroy Talamir and did it to kill us all on purpose. I’m not sure they’ll volunteer to come forward.”
The Ruler jumped up and paced. He shook with anger, but his strange voice never let on. “What are we supposed to do then? We somehow have to find them.”
Tumr replied, “I have an idea. What if we go wait at the building? They only did it yesterday. It’s possible they’ll return to make sure it worked.”
Maedc said, “We have no idea how they did it, but I’m pretty sure that people strong enough to do it know they succeeded. They don’t have to go back to make sure.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
The Ruler said, “Gentlemen. I know everyone is really stressed out right now, but there is no need for the arguing. It’s not a bad idea. How about you all go do that, and I’ll try my plan here.”
The group departed and went to find the rooms they had been assigned. On the walk, they decided only Tkz and Maedc needed to scout the bairsgn house. They left Talamir Center, and Tumr stayed with the other First Age people to act as an emergency translator if needed.
Maedc and Tkz went to the building to wait. Maedc only had a vague sense of where it was located based on hearing about it. When they left th
e Third Ring and had traveled part way to the Fourth, the building appeared in the distance. There was no mistaking it. The large, isolated mianl structure beamed with spior. Why had someone pushed so much into it? That seemed a waste. It couldn’t have been for lighting.
A shaky feeling settled upon Maedc as they got closer. Dead grass surrounded the building in a huge circle. The only sound was Tkz’s breath and the crunch beneath their feet. The bairsgn must have struggled for all the spior it could find in its final moments. When they got to the door, Maedc hesitated before pushing it in. He wasn’t sure what they would find, and the unknown suddenly felt far more terrifying than it had in the past.
They were greeted by a building full of oddities. Planted shrubs, mianl shards, and boulders filled the room around a giant hole in the ground.
Tkz said, “The spior is strong here. All these things are filled to capacity with it.”
Maedc remained silent and moved toward the hole. He looked inside. All he saw was darkness. Then he realized it wasn’t darkness at all but a huge black figure at the bottom. He couldn’t believe he was going to sit in this creepy grave room, waiting for the killers to return. They must have unbelievable power.
Maedc’s breath shortened, and a cold sweat formed on his palms. What if the killers wanted to keep to themselves and would kill again if someone found out? He consoled himself with the thought that Tkz was probably stronger.
“Well. I guess we wait,” he said to Tkz.
Maedc moved to one side of the room and sat against the wall.
Tkz continued to look around. “This is remarkable. Whoever killed the bairsgn must have done it by pulling all of the spior out and into these objects.”
Maedc gave Tkz a skeptical look. “No one in Talamir even believes that spior can be moved other than the three focal points.”
“But look around. It has to be what happened.”
Maedc knew the answer but asked anyway.
“Do you think it can be reversed in anyway?”
“No. It is dead. It would be like a person dying from loss of blood and then trying to revive them by putting blood back into them.”
Tkz finally settled on one of the boulders.
Maedc asked, “So what’s going on now that it’s dead? I don’t feel like I’m losing spior.”
“Yes. It is true. This is nothing like I expected it to be. I can only speculate now. I have no idea what that means for our future.”
They remained silent while Maedc contemplated this. He had the sudden itch to get out of there and return to the library. There could be answers in there. An immense frustration welled up inside of him. He could be working on a solution, but instead, he was stuck here doing who knew what. This was all wrong. There had to be a way to fix it.
Tkz said, “I need to go relieve myself.”
He stood and walked out of the room then returned far too quickly. Maedc turned to ask what the matter was, but it wasn’t Tkz. A figure in an all-black robe stood in the door. His face was hidden in shadow, but the sudden stopping made it seem like Maedc had startled him.
This must be the bairsgn killer. He couldn’t believe it. The guy must have been waiting in the building then hid when he heard strangers approach. He must have heard Tkz leave and thought the room was empty.
Maedc jumped up. The figure turned and fled. Maedc ran after him and yelled, “Hey! Wait. We need to talk to you.”
When he had gotten outside, the man was so far away that there was no way to catch him. He fled with such unbelievable speed and grace that Maedc thought the thing must have been flying. But that didn’t make any sense.
Why was he wearing black? The robe color didn’t represent any official position in Talamir. And why did he run? This trip now opened many more questions than it answered. One thing was certain. He probably wasn’t coming back anytime soon, so they needed to leave.
Tkz circled around the building. He asked, “What was that about?”
“Someone was in the building the whole time. He ran away.”
“That’s impossible. No one could run so fast as to be out of sight by now.”
“I know. It was the strangest thing. He, oh, I don’t know the word for it. He didn’t appear to have feet.”
“He flew?” As an afterthought, Tkz added, “Like a bird?” He swung his arms.
“Yes. That’s right. That’s what it seemed like at least. We have to get back to Talamir Center. There are many books from the First Age that might give us some clues as to what is going on and how to fix it.”
Tkz gave him a sad look that said: There is no hope. It cannot be fixed.
~
Maedc took in the familiar scent of the library. It brought him much comfort to be back where he had spent most of his life. He loved this place and hadn’t realized how much he missed it until that moment.
He first reported the incident to the Ruler before descending into the stacks: a whole library of books he could now read. It made him both giddy with excitement and overwhelmed at the sheer size of it all. No one could read this many books if they had ten lifetimes. Looking for clues would be like looking for a pebble in a stack of grass.
He began with the obvious. He now knew the word the First Age used for the bairsgn. He hunted for titles containing it. Remarkably, after a half-hour hunt, he came up with nothing. How could they have written all these books and devoted none of them to the thing that had brought them here? Maybe the word had changed. A Brief History of Talamir contained many obscure and altered words as the language evolved over a thousand years. Still, the current word couldn’t be that different.
On a hunch, he then began looking for the word “black.” Maedc couldn’t quite figure out why he had this intuition. Just because the person who destroyed the bairsgn had donned a black robe now didn’t mean anything about people wearing black robes in the First Age.
The fact that kept him going on this search was that black had always been a taboo color. No one from the Second Age would ever wear a black robe, even if one existed. The bairsgn was black, and that person was in black. The clues kept pointing toward that color.
The books were arranged alphabetically by title, and Maedc scanned through everything that started with the first letter for black. Nothing. He rounded a few aisles until he came upon titles that began with “the.” He found it strange that the First Age decided to do things this way instead of the Second Age convention of ignoring such an insignificant word for ordering purposes.
The sheer magnitude of books beginning with this word astounded Maedc. He had noticed before that there were quite a few books starting with the word, but not until now did it finally dawn on him why this would be the case. He thought that maybe the word translated to “spior” or “water” or some other overwhelmingly pervasive and important resource. Now it made sense.
He began the long and arduous task of reading through every one of the titles. Over half a day later, just as he felt himself start to dose off, a title perked him back awake: The — of Black.
He needed to find Tkz again to ask what the word meant that he didn’t know. He scanned the first page for important clues as to what the book could be about. It was too difficult. His reading skills were not good enough for the difficulty of the text, so he flipped through the pages.
A drawing caught his eye, and he fingered the pages back to see it more clearly. Maedc dropped the book in shock. It snapped shut, and he sat on the ground in a moment of disbelief. His exhaustion must have finally brought him to the point of hallucination. He pulled the book into his lap and slowly flipped back to the page. There it was, perfectly clear, no hallucination: an exact reproduction of the person he had seen at the bairsgn site.
There was no way to know if it was the exact same person, of course, because no facial features were visible under the shadow of the hood in the picture as well as in real life. Maedc pinched himself for contemplating the absurdity.
It couldn’t be the same person. People couldn’t
live for two thousand years. Something truly disturbing was going on. He glanced down at the caption: flying black robe person. Maedc glanced back at the picture and noticed that the drawing gave no feet to the person. He merely hovered slightly above the ground.
So it was true somehow. The person had been flying. He stashed the book in his robe and ran off to find Tkz’s room. He needed help translating this immediately. This book would hold the key to understanding what had happened.
Maedc ran through the darkened halls of Talamir Center, book tucked under his arm. The rules about removing books that had frightened him so long ago had become the least of his worries. The trivial rules of Talamir Center lost all significance after what he had been through.
His robes flailed wildly behind him as he darted around the curved corridors and burst into Tkz’s room. Tkz bolted upright out of his sleep with a rage in his eyes that said he would fight whatever predator had entered to the death. A look of recognition replaced the rage, and his breathing calmed.
He asked, “What are you doing?”
Maedc held out the book.
Tkz said, “The — of black.”
“Yes. What is that word? I don’t know it.”
“Hmm. How to describe it. It is a group of people.”
“Team?”
“No. Not so much working together, but believing the same thing. They follow the same beliefs together.”
“Religion?”
“That’s close but still not quite it. There’s a person who leads them all, and they follow what he says no matter what.”
“Oh, I know what you mean now.” Maedc spoke in his own language, “A cult.”
“If that is what you call it, then yes. Why could this not wait until morning?”
Maedc opened the book to the page with the drawing.