Crown of Silence

by Constantine, Storm

  As they walked towards the village, Merlan said, ‘Who, of these people, will be the physical guardian of this site? Do you think they have some kind of leader we could approach?’

  ‘It need not be so obvious a person,’ Taropat said. He glanced at Shan. ‘Shan, the first words that come into your head. A person. Who?’

  ‘Bird woman,’ blurted Shan, before he could stop himself.

  ‘Bird woman?’ said Merlan.

  ‘That’s what we must look out for, then,’ said Taropat.

  They ventured into the village, where the smell of baking bread and cooking fish hung tantalisingly on the air. Shan’s stomach growled. In the centre of the village was a small square, dominated by the rough carving of a woman with wings. ‘There she is!’ Shan said, pointing.

  ‘An angel?’ Merlan said.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Taropat said. ‘It will be some kind of local spirit or goddess.’

  ‘If that’s the physical guardian, we’ll have trouble communicating,’ Tayven remarked.

  Taropat laughed and strode forward, the others following. On the far side of the monument, an old woman was hunched on the ground. Her back was weighed down by an astounding cargo: an immense wicker basket that towered over her head. It was filled with twittering, fluttering birds. Strange metallic instruments hung from the basket. Some of them appeared to be only scraps of rubbish, while others looked like astronomical tools or instruments of measurement. A tangle of nets hung from the woman’s skirts.

  ‘Here is our bird woman,’ Taropat said.

  The old woman peered up at them, one eye screwed tightly shut. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you looking at me?’

  ‘We were admiring your merchandise,’ Taropat said.

  ‘Well why didn’t you say so?’ the woman retorted. ‘Do you want a birdie? They’re good and cheap. Put one in a cage for your lady love, or roast it on a spit.’

  ‘I’ll pay for a bird or two,’ said Taropat, opening his purse.

  ‘Wise man indeed,’ said the bird-woman. ‘One for spitting, one for singing. That will be ten sickins.’

  ‘We are scholars,’ Taropat said, counting out the coins, ‘studying all the ancient myths of the lakes and their alchemy. I expect you know many stories about Oolarn. Can you tell us the greatest legend of the lake?’

  The old woman uttered an outraged snort. ‘Stories? Stories? Do you think I’m a fire-sitter, then, with nothing better to do? I’ve been up since yesterday netting flitters. Stories indeed.’

  ‘So you know none?’ said Taropat.

  ‘I know everything there is to know about this place,’ said the old woman. ‘The people are numbskulls, too superstitious. They won’t go out after dark for fear of the Pecker. Afraid he’ll get them, see? Peck through their eyes. I don’t pay attention to rubbish like that. I’ve walked the shores of Oolarn and scrabbled through her mountains all my life. I’ve stayed on the cliffs at night. I watch everything, know everything. Never seen a Pecker.’

  ‘The pecker,’ said Taropat, ‘is that a bird spirit?’

  ‘Of course he isn’t! He’s a rat or a dog, isn’t he? Fool! What d’you think?’

  Shan could see that Taropat was having difficulty restraining his amusement, although it was tinged with impatience. ‘Where is he reputed to roam, madam? Is there any particular area which is his domain?’

  ‘Have you no eyes to see?’ snapped the bird-woman, shaking an arm in the direction of the cliffs behind her. The birds in her cage began to cheep and flutter in agitation. ‘See that big tree up there? That’s where they say he lives. It’s a white tree. They say it’s sacred. It used to be black but the woodpecker pecked it white. That’s what they say. His name is Grotbeak.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Taropat, ‘you’ve been most helpful.’ He began to walk away, but the old woman screeched after him.

  ‘You’ve not taken your birds, mister. Are you so crazed as to throw your money away?’

  ‘Keep the birds,’ Taropat said. ‘Sell them again.’

  ‘Mooncalf!’ spat the woman. ‘You want to visit old Grotbeak without a gift? Are you mad?’ With astonishingly quick and contorted movements, she reached up behind her head with both hands, opened a small gate in the cage and plucked out a pair of birds with soft grey plumage and orange eyes. These she deftly packed into one of her nets and handed them to Taropat.

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t believe in the Pecker,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I don’t,’ said the woman, ‘but I respect him. Only a fool wouldn’t. You have a beautiful face, mister. I’d hate to think of it pecked away.’

  Taropat bowed. ‘You flatter me with your concern, madam.’

  The old woman fixed the group with a beady stare. ‘Don’t let your precious birds fly away before the job is done,’ she said. ‘Fear will lend them wings, you know. Soothe them as you use them, eh?’

  ‘We shall bear your advice in mind,’ Taropat said and gestured for the others to follow him from the square.

  Once they reached the sacred tree, they found it was indeed white, as if at some time its bark had been peeled away. Its leaves were leathery and greyish green. Taropat bade everyone sit around it. ‘No blood here,’ he said, ‘we have the gift already.’ He opened the net and shook out the birds so that they swooped drunkenly up into the branches of the tree, uttering high-pitched screams. ‘Accept our gift, Grotbeak,’ he said. ‘Grant us the knowledge of Oolarn.’

  As before, the group sat and meditated for ten minutes or so, then Taropat called them back to normal consciousness. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Who has anything to report?’

  ‘I saw him,’ said Merlan. ‘A strange creature, a bird man with a human face except for a huge yellow beak. He had no hair on his head but a woodpecker’s crest.’

  ‘I saw that too!’ Shan interrupted. ‘Well, very similar, sort of.’ He neglected to mention the harem of bare-breasted bird women who had accompanied his vision of Grotbeak. ‘I had the same sensation as before too; a sort of tingling, as if something entered me. The lesson isn’t so direct and clear as at Anterity, but it’s certain Oolarn’s lesson is to do with knowledge, the path of learning.’

  ‘When I saw Grotbeak,’ Tayven said, ‘he looked similar to how Merlan and Shan described him, but I picked up a sort of amphibious aspect to him too. He had a quiver over his shoulder, but it didn’t contain arrows that could wound. I sensed that if he should shoot me, I would receive wisdom. Once he saw I understood this, he fired an arrow, which hit me between the eyes. Then I knew that there is no end to knowledge, and to believe you can know all is folly.’

  ‘What about you, Taropat?’ Shan asked.

  Taropat shrugged. ‘Grotbeak attempted to attack me, peck out my eyes. Fortunately, I remembered the Eye of the Dragon and held it out to him. It pacified him and he filled me with an orange light.’ He glanced at Merlan. ‘I think you have more to say. What is it?’

  Merlan seemed uncomfortable. ‘Nothing really. Nothing useful, I’m sure. I just got the feeling that academic knowledge amounts to nothing. It hasn’t done the world any good, or brought understanding where it is direly needed.’ He sighed. ‘The feelings this inspired in me weren’t positive. I felt like a selfish ascetic whose deluded wisdom has served only to expand my ego and self-satisfaction.’

  There was a silence, then Taropat said briskly, ‘You were faced with the pure form of your own soul, which resonates strongly with the orange ray. Your esteem has taken a knock, that’s all.’

  These words didn’t appear to comfort Merlan. Shan couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Tayven said. ‘The lesson of Oolarn is to accept it is better to learn than to know. Essentially, we are in ignorance. In my vision, I realised how proud I was to believe I had great knowledge, but in effect I know nothing, I am nothing. We can only go forward from this point.’

  Taropat nodded. ‘For me, the lesson of Oolarn was the experience of the passion of the red
ray tempered by the wisdom of yellow. Now, we must move to the next lake quickly. We should attempt to fit in four sites today. Do you think that’s possible, Tayven?’

  ‘Possible,’ Tayven said. ‘I feel our grip on reality will be somewhat tenuous by tonight, though.’

  Shan was surprised that Taropat didn’t seem more concerned about his brother. It was clear to Shan that Merlan had been affected greatly by the feelings he’d experienced. Surely they should discuss what had happened more deeply before they continued? But Taropat was already on his feet, arranging his backpack on his shoulders. Shan was also concerned that Taropat had related his own experiences of Oolarn in such a matter of fact way. Shan suspected it hadn’t affected him that deeply, which seemed strange. Surely Taropat possessed a stronger orange ray aspect than any of the others? Shan thought that he might have used the Eye to prevent the guardian, and thus the knowledge, from penetrating his own heart. Perhaps he placed no importance on the lessons of the lake at all, especially with regard to himself. Shan was again assailed by waves of suspicious paranoia. It was almost as if Taropat was herding them around to go through the motions. He didn’t want self-knowledge from the quest, but in that case, what did he want? Shan longed to air these thoughts to Tayven and Merlan, but how could he get them alone? Uneasiness coursed through him like a fever. He felt torn. Something was wrong and it should be addressed, but what if he was mistaken? Perhaps his doubt was part of the lesson of the quest, and he should cast it away, fix his sights on the goal. The crown would not be won by a faint heart.

  As Shan stood up, he felt slightly dizzy. He also noticed that Merlan had to lean against the tree for some moments. ‘These meditations seem so simple,’ Shan said, ‘yet I feel they have more impact upon us than we know.’

  ‘We are tapping into the energy of these sites,’ Taropat said. ‘It flows right into us. The task should not be easy, for then it would be worthless. There must be a cost for the knowledge you gain.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tayven lightly, yet acidly, ‘but who is setting the price?’ He went to help Shan, ignoring Merlan who was in more serious need.

  Shan had to steel himself not to shake Tayven off. There were too many tensions and undercurrents. No harmony. If he spoke to anyone about his doubts, it would be Merlan, not Tayven.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Lions and Wyrd Charmers

  The third lake was called Ninatala, which Taropat said represented the yellow ray of wisdom.

  As they tramped the steep narrow path towards it, Tayven said, ‘Almorante saw the third lake as fire. It might seem odd because most people associate fire with the colour red, but in Almorante’s system, Ninatala symbolises the fire of the sun, the yellow, life-giving fire.’

  ‘Red fire and white fire have always been regarded as the magical flames invoked by magi,’ Taropat said. ‘Orange fire is that of the hearth, the stove. Yellow fire is life itself.’

  Shan was feeling light-headed and uncertain on his feet and he sensed Merlan felt the same, although both shrank from complaining out loud. The air seemed thin, which perhaps contributed to the feeling of weakness. Shan knew he was no feeble, pampered creature. He had survived for weeks in the Forest of the Night, yet after only a few hours of deprivation, he was dizzy and tired. He could only assume the meditations themselves were having a subtle effect upon him. Tayven and Taropat seemed unaffected. If anything, as the journey progressed, they appeared to become stronger, more alert.

  The group squeezed between a narrow opening in the rock and found themselves on a wide flat plain with the placid expanse of Ninatala before them. Ahead, beyond the lake, green, forested hills rose gently upwards, and beyond them the smoky smudges of higher mountains could be seen. Shan turned round and shaded his eyes to survey the scene below, which they’d left behind. The panorama of forests and green hills seemed strangely symmetrical, as if it was some kind of landscaped royal parkland. Sunlight fanned down in broad rays through silver clouds, like the arms of a god, reaching benevolently to bless the earth.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Taropat said, coming to stand beside his apprentice. ‘What you’re looking at is the landscape of the sun king, the golden lion of the yellow ray. I already sense the sacred beast of this site, and doubt we’ll discover anything to contradict that.’

  ‘It feels royal,’ Shan said. ‘It looks as if someone designed it, yet at the same time it’s so wild and untamed.’

  Taropat laughed. ‘Many great thinkers have meditated upon that. Adragore the Lame said that because we can observe this wondrous order in the natural world, it proves the existence of gods, divine presences who created such order. He was contradicted by Countess Katarina of Molt, who rather stuffily suggested that if order could be observed in the natural world, it was purely the result of nature’s random tendencies. She said that only a deluded fool would take this as proof of the existence of divine beings. She accused Adragore of anthropomorphising the gods.’

  ‘You sound like Sinaclara,’ Shan said. ‘But in what way do we make gods like men?’

  ‘Katarina meant that if we attribute the obvious order we perceive in the world to the actions of a god, what we are really doing is attributing our own mental processes and reasoning to that god. She argued that gods, if they existed at all, could not possess any human attributes, otherwise they’d hardly be divine.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘I think her argument was ridiculous,’ Taropat said. ‘Any priest or sage will tell you that. However, I do believe that the gods cannot exist without us. It is a symbiotic relationship.’

  Shan was flooded with a warm feeling of tranquillity, which extended towards Taropat. He was himself again. This was how it should be, the close relationship between apprentice and master. The learning, the wonder of it.

  ‘This place represents wisdom, but also the yellow ray of divine kingship,’ Taropat said. ‘It is something we must be aware of if we are to succeed here.’

  Tayven muscled in between them. ‘Why is that?’ he said. ‘Surely the Crown itself is more important than the king?’

  Taropat moved away a short distance. ‘This site represents the ideal of when the Crown is manifest in the world. It can be regarded as the divine made physical. If we are to pull the Crown from the etheric realms into reality, then it is vital we succeed here above all other sites.’

  Tayven made a scornful sound. ‘That may be so for you, but I can’t help thinking that the concept of divine kingship has been the scourge and misery of every empire that’s existed. We should be moving away from that, surely?’

  Taropat’s face became a pinched mask. ‘If you knew anything of worth, you would realise that the divine kings who have failed to fulfil their potential have not undergone a quest of the soul such as this.’

  Tayven nodded slowly. ‘Ah, so it becomes clear. You see yourself in that role, don’t you? You remember what Almorante once said to you about Caradore, how he’d give it to you. You want to be king, to be emperor! And for this, the rest of us are being dragged behind, starving and exhausted.’

  Taropat stared at Tayven with an expression that bordered on the purest hatred. He said nothing.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Tayven,’ Merlan said. ‘My brother has no desire to be king. Like the rest of us, he merely wants an end to Magravandian oppression.’

  ‘There’s quite a lot of oppression around here at the moment,’ Tayven snapped.

  Taropat took a step towards him, and Tayven backed away. ‘If you remember, dear Tayven, it was not my idea to come on this quest at all. Cast your mind back. Recall. You came looking for me. You needed me.’

  Tayven snorted in contempt, even though Taropat was right. ‘That may be so, but it doesn’t mean I have to condone the way you’re conducting this show. You haven’t let any of us have a say. If it doesn’t come from your balls, you don’t want to know, do you? You have to be in control. It’s that old fear, Khaster. Remember it. You’d never let me fuck you, would you? You can’t even le
t go of control in love.’

  There was a stunned silence. Shan thought he would die of embarrassment. Tayven had gone too far. Taropat’s face was a red mask of indignation. Surely, Merlan would go for him? Merlan lifted an arm, but Taropat acted first. He leapt forward and seized Tayven by the hair. Shan was sure he could hear Tayven’s roots ripping as Taropat lifted him from the ground with inhuman strength. Tayven kicked out, uttering a cry of surprise and pain. Taropat thrust his face so close to Tayven’s, Shan thought he was going to take a bite out of it. ‘You grubby little whore!’ Taropat roared. ‘You think to question me? Your kind has done nothing but breed corruption in royalty. I should have let Bayard have his way with you that night in The Soak. We might all be better off now!’

  ‘Stop this,’ Shan yelled. ‘Stop it!’ He tried to wrench Taropat’s grip from Tayven’s hair. Taropat turned on him and snarled, no longer the wise and thoughtful mentor of a few moments before. Merlan stood uselessly to the side, as if dazed, his hand still half-raised.

  ‘Taropat, no,’ Shan managed to say calmly, although he was afraid of the inhuman rage before him. ‘This is not the way. Think of our quest. Please.’

  Taropat stared at him for a few moments, then dropped Tayven to the ground. He walked away from them, his hands wound with long pale strands of hair.

  Shan stood awkwardly over Tayven, who sat loose-limbed at his feet, his face in his hands. ‘Tayven,’ he said, glancing to Merlan for support and finding nothing but confusion. ‘He didn’t mean it. This is getting out of hand.’