As they stepped onto the lower road, Falmeard realised his feet were once more on yet another of those black and warm ways, with its cambered crown keeping the puddles to its kerb. Unlike those within Bazarral, this one was intact, un-cracked, smooth and as straight as a die. Straight and level, it cut a course across the flat roofs of whatever buildings lay beneath until, in the distance, it ran between two tall, thin structures.
Nephril had been surprised by how long Falmeard had kept quiet but it wasn’t to last. “Where are we going, Nephril?”
It was a simple enough question, and frankly one he should have expected. The only problem was he’d no real idea and wasn’t at all sure how to tell Falmeard. In the end he fell back on an age-old remedy. “Just wait and see, Falmeard, just wait and see.”
Like the paving before the Guardian’s Residence, where the scale had so surprised him, Falmeard found the two high structures, either side of the road ahead, to be a lot further away than he’d thought. Nephril seemed somehow set on reaching them. Falmeard tried to make out what they were made from but failed. Instead, he looked elsewhere for interest.
To their left, he managed to find some sense of scale for there were paths and roads cutting their way through the forest of towers and masts that reared above the chaotic sprawl. To their right was little more than empty space, only the odd beam of sunlight breaking through the lowering grey cloud to pick out shafts of showery light. The only significant feature in the distance that way was Galgaverre’s southern wall, far off, hazy and indistinct through the damp air.
They seemed to have walked a long way before starting to come between the two tall structures, but even then, supposedly near to, their rearing faces were blank and almost lightless. Dark grey, almost to black, and strangely glossy like polished ebony, they each mirrored the other’s stark outline in ever decreasing reflections. Where the regular paving had made him feel queasy, here between their incomprehensible scale and appearance, he felt distinctly dizzy and decidedly nervous. He felt more cowed and humbled as he felt more wretched, neither seeming to get the upper hand.
He’d seen nothing like them before, not that he was sure he was seeing them at all. Worse than that was not being able to see any real purpose to them. Why were they there at all? Of course, when faced with the incomprehensible, Falmeard always found recourse in the interrogatory. “Nephril?”
Nephril smiled. “A long time in coming, but yes?”
“What’re these buildings for, I mean, what’s done within them?”
Nephril stopped dead. His eyes had misted over and he’d begun to sway slightly. He seemed to take a hold of himself before turning to Falmeard and asking, almost incredulously, “Within them?”
“Yes. What do the Galgaverrans find to do within these two buildings?” Falmeard swept an arm out to encompass them, but when Nephril looked their way, he seemed startled, as though he’d only just noticed them.
In a strangely taut voice, Nephril finally answered, “There is no in in them. They do not contain spaces as buildings do, they are not skins delimiting voids.” The obscurity of what he’d said then struck him as odd, reflected, as it was, through a sudden empathy with Falmeard. He rolled the idea around in his mind, examined it from all angles, but it remained odd. Fortunately, Falmeard was used to his long pauses and so at first just bided his time patiently, against his own growing nausea.
Nephril felt odd himself. Very odd. He couldn’t quite put his finger on where his answer had come from, nor really what it meant, but he’d absolute certainty he was not only correct but accurately so. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t marry that certainty with any memory of its meaning. Not only that, but he couldn’t even see why he knew, with absolute certainty, they needed to be on that very road. He darted a look both ways along it, back from whence they’d come and on to … on to … on to what?
Falmeard was becoming a little concerned, not so much about his feelings of sickness but more about Nephril’s behaviour. Falmeard had waited, as he was wont to do when attending one of Nephril’s replies, but the time seemed to be dragging on inordinately. Nephril, however, continued to stare blankly at nothing in particular. Worst of all, he was staring more blankly than Falmeard had ever seen him blankly stare before.
“You alright, Nephril?”
To his great relief, one of Nephril’s eyes turned to look his way. “Aye, Falmeard.” Nephril affirmed, in a thin and unfamiliar voice, as his other eye followed the first. “Perhaps not all right, but enough of me not to matter.” He then, all of a sudden, strode out, as though they’d never broken stride, forcing Falmeard to run not only to catch up but simply to match pace.
There now flowed from Nephril a veritable torrent of speech, as though boiled from him by the heat of his stride. “Not buildings … no! … Not with rooms or halls … no! Nor stairs or corridors … no! No! No! Not there at all, really, not to touch or smell, no, not in place nor time … anyway. Eight there are in all, eight pairs making sixteen, but, but one … but one below. Eight pairs in a ring … a ring of fingers … a digital ring! Eight pairs upon a circle … upon a ring … round and round they go, binary, fixed below … eight pairs and sixteen fingers, but all one serving the word. Sixteen bits to the one word … one sixteenth … one sixteenth of the whole … the whole being … the whole being but at the point … the point being the centre, yes, the centre. The Centre? … The Centre!”
As Nephril had chanted, in time to his stride, Falmeard had been inexorably drawn to his face. From his lips he’d almost seen words fly out as form, wrapping about them like dense, digital smoke. Then, as Nephril’s words came to a sudden halt, along with his legs, Falmeard’s ring burned warm within its foil sheath. He didn’t notice for he’d become so enthralled by Nephril’s wide-eyed stare, a stare he had to follow.
That stare reached out across the vast and open expanse of a crater, set deep within the very body of Galgaverre, a gaping hollow that had opened out before them, at the very end of the road. Around its unfathomably large rim, eight pairs of black lustrous fingers pointed to the heavens, each sliced apart by a shiny black radial road. Those roads fanned out from the crater’s centre, far below, one that held an island within its round, crimson lake.
Nephril raised his arms high and wide, as his exultant voice proclaimed across the void, “Behold, Baradcar! Behold, the eye! Baradcar, I do know thee now.” His eyes were lit from within but his gaze narrowed down, down, down unto the island’s charge, and his voice now thundered, “Eyn Galgaverre bweyn Baradcar, der blod af hit ege bweyn Bludreudh Mere, en floten thet mere bweyn Leiyfiantel, hwaereyn dwellan der Lifian Grunstaan Treow.”
18 Time and Tide
Imagine being blind from birth and awakening, one fresh spring morning, with the sun slanting through the mist filled trees. Imagine beholding that world in wonder. The immediacy, the confusing bliss held in its every moment. What subtleties would come in its wake, from that stark, exquisite and tangible vision. The glittering flow of stream and brook, the wave and bow of grass and fern, the slanting pillared depth of trunks, veining branches bearing their filigree of twigs and rippling leaf patterns.
Penolith’s awakening had brought her a sweet, sweet taste of life beyond her wildest dreams. It was her own deep yearning, an innate but hidden trait, that had really made her grasp its proffered freedom, against a tutored urge to cringe back. It had carried her through the initial shock and excitement, and planted her feet quickly on firm ground once more. The library’s revealing texts, Storbanther had so cunningly placed in her way, had certainly helped, had prepared the way, but it was Pettar’s willing support that had smoothed it.
Although far less of a shock, Pettar’s own full awakening, prepared for so many years before, had still been disorienting, as the final veils fell aside. It was fortunate they’d forged such a renewed bond, together gaining ground that alone they would have stumbled over. As brother and sister they’d anchored themselves and both quickly found their feet.
For Penolith it had brought fresh meaning to much she’d previously read but hardly understood. It was only natural to feel an insistent urge to revisit those texts and so, towards late afternoon, she’d found herself within her library, pulling tomes from this shelf and that.
Pettar, however, had taken an aimless walk about Galgaverre. His only need had been solitude, space and time in which to let his mind roam free. Of all places, Galgaverre, with its largely empty ways, was almost ideal.
Quite by chance, he’d wandered the same way as Nephril and Falmeard, along the same black stretch of road. At one point, as he’d absently lifted his eyes to the east, he’d seen two robed figures running hastily towards him. Even at their distance, he couldn’t mistake who they were nor the urgency that drove them.
Alarmed, he ran to meet them and heard Falmeard calling, “Pettar! Pettar! Quick, come help.” He found Nephril quite distraught. More worryingly, though, was how upset and exhausted Falmeard had become trying to help him along.
Pettar immediately grasped Nephril, securing his frail but flailing arms in his own strong grasp. Unburdened now, Falmeard fell back, bent at the waist, and wheezed horribly. In stark contrast, Nephril seemed in rude health, but for his wild behaviour, intent on pushing past and forging ahead, unaided. It was clear his strength had sapped and his old limbs become spent, but that he knew it.
Pettar would have counselled rest had it not been for Nephril’s strange behaviour. He continually called, “Leiyatel, oh Leiyatel, thou doth fill mine eyes … I see thee now, see thee before me, mine Leiyatel.” He turned his head, held Pettar with an ice-cold stare and cried, with utmost umbrage, “Sir! Do not bar me mine way. Desist! I have haste to learn the truth. Unhand me.”
Pettar gripped him like a bear, moved his face very close to his and growled, “Nephril? Nephril? Listen. Listen closely to what I say.” In desperation, as he struggled the more, Pettar shouted, “HEAR ME!”
That immediately stilled him, with a lost and forlorn look gathering about his face. Pettar seized the moment. “Nephril? See me, see who I am. I am Pettar … your old and faithful friend. See me and hear me.” Nephril only started to squirm again, as Pettar relaxed his hold, and so Pettar clamped him again, but more firmly. “I am Pettar. Trust me. Do not fight for I can help you, Nephril.”
Nephril noticeably calmed, his eyes hunting between Pettar’s as recognition slowly began to sink in. Suddenly, his head swung towards Falmeard’s frightened face. He stared hard and levelly, but only for a moment, before his eyes rolled up into his head and he passed out, a limp doll in Pettar’s surprised grip.
With almost no effort, Pettar lifted him into his arms. His head rested loosely against Pettar’s shoulder, his scrawny legs dangling, arms swinging limply and breathing low, as his body’s feather-light burden was borne along.
On the way, Pettar drew salient facts from Falmeard who, between coughs, splutters and the occasional spitting, gave account of their journey to the crater. Pettar was amazed they’d got that far, all the way to the rim of Baradcar. He would have expected them to have been stopped well before, but when Falmeard described their meeting with the guard, Pettar smiled. ‘So,’ he thought, ‘Nephril had remembered, not only remembered but put it to some use. To good or bad, though? Now, that was the question.’
They weren’t long in returning to the Guardian’s Residence where Nephril was carefully laid on one of the beds, below where Penolith even now sat deep in her studies. The noise and concerned voices drifting up to her snapped her from her engrossed reading and made her cock an ear, as she marked her place in her book. She was soon hurrying downstairs.
There, she found Nephril supine with Falmeard and Pettar bending over him. “Pettar? What on earth’s wrong with Nephril? Tell me it’s not serious, please, Pettar? What’s wrong with him?” Pettar only shot his sister a reassuring look before bending to feel Nephril’s pulse, check on his breathing and then, finally, to listen carefully to his chest.
In those stark few moments, she looked pleadingly at Falmeard, but he too was intent only on Nephril. It wasn’t long, though, before Pettar finally answered. “I believe he’s well enough, not in any great danger.” They all breathed a sigh of relief and then Penolith knelt at Nephril’s side, where she stroked his brow and asked what had happened.
Pettar repeated what he’d been told by Falmeard, but then added, “I think he’s only exhausted. It’s probably just exertion and excitement, sitting so at ill with his great age. It’s made him swoon. I’m sure he’ll come round soon enough.” Penolith pointed to a small cupboard and asked him to bring her something from it. When Pettar looked inside, he found shelves filled with bottles and jars, one of which she then asked for.
It was a small dark brown, glass phial with a damp and crystal-stained cork in its tiny neck. This she deftly removed, at arm’s length, before drawing the bottle swiftly under Nephril’s nose. With a suddenness that almost caused her to drop it, Nephril sputtered, coughed and shook his head before jerking his eyes open and swearing, profusely. “Are thee trying to poison me? What, in all that be pure, was that foul stench?”
She quickly reinserted the cork. “It’s a clarion call to the sleeping mind, Nephril, a call that can’t be ignored.”
He screwed his eyes up, coughed again and then wiped them with his sleeve. “A clarion call, eh? Damned near deafened me it did, and fair flailed flesh from mine nose. Pray thou dost ne’er again use it upon me.”
“Let’s hope you don’t ever again give cause.”
Nephril just smiled, awkwardly.
In a remarkably short space of time, Nephril was almost his old self again, although he did look tired and drained. He was even well enough to take some wine and it quickly brought more colour to his face. Strangely, he was now perfectly calm, his derangement seemingly lost to fast dimming memories. In fact, he was hard pressed to remember much of the day at all, even when prompted by Falmeard. All it seemed to have left him with was a certainty about where his interests now lay.
He placed a hand on Penolith’s arm and asked, in a quiet and measured way, “Dear Guardian? Dear friend Penolith? I have a request of thee, a request that will try thy newfound freedom. Wilt thou let me ask?” She gave her permission willingly and with unspoken trust, which surprised him.
As he lay his request before her he reached out his hand to her arm and there read her reactions twitching within its muscles. “Mine memory be decrepit. A result of mine overly long life, a forfeit due its persistence of Leiyatel’s largess. Even the most memorable of memories are beyond mine grasp, all solitary in their imprisonment, abandoned within the deep cells of mine mind. Their voices are but muted, faint through the imprisoning walls, but, mine dear, most distressing of all, I cannot see them. I cannot look into their lithic lairs and see mine past.”
Penolith’s muscles had remained still, unresponsive, until her suspicions were aroused. Then, her sinews twitched. Nephril noted it, gauged it, and let it light his way. “Penolith? It will likely feel a great imposition, one thou may very well baulk at, for it will demand of thee thine faith and trust in me. It wilt also test thy vestige of slave adherence to procedure and statute.”
He felt for the right moment. “I now know where mine path must lie. That much I have brought back from Baradcar. It doth lead me to thine library, good Lady, and to a humble request. Would thou favour me with thine dispensation, grant me permission to look upon the words held therein? Mine dear Penolith, I ask this for the benefit and good of Dica, and of Galgaverre, not just mine own. Wilt thou see fit to grant me mine wish?”
Her muscles had danced a merry dance, an erratic reel that not only confessed anxiety but also promised some hope, much to his surprise. They’d said he’d stepped a step too far, but that his lead had at least been followed. He was relieved, yes, but also surprised when, with a half-smile, she softly answered, “My Lord Nephril, Master of Ceremonies to the Kings of Dica, superior and guide, you have no need of request for you have right
and authority already.”
She paused, her muscles still echoing to an instinctive denial, but then she relaxed and let a heartfelt smile flower across her face. “I’m grateful for your position, Lord Nephril, for it releases me from a quandary. I know you well understand those of Galgaverre, know them intimately and from long familiarity, and therefore will see how your request would otherwise have pained me.”
Nephril was pleased but also somewhat distressed. Pleased that an expected conflict had been so painlessly avoided, but distressed by the glaring hole it revealed in his own memories. Yes, of course, he remembered now, remembered what Pettar had told him, of Storbanther’s warning, but he had since forgotten it.
He sighed, which surprised and troubled Penolith for she couldn’t possibly see the worry now growing in Nephril’s mind. He’d known the Certain Power was waning, had long known it, had felt its diminishing glow in his weft and weave. What he hadn’t known, not until then, was just how far Leiyatel had ebbed. That knowing brought two certainties; that his future lay hidden somewhere in Penolith’s vast library, but far more worryingly, that time was fast running out.
19 Of Myths
The smell was musty and dry, not at all unpleasant and so familiar to Nephril he didn’t even notice it. For Penolith, though, it was different, still strange, still novel and, in the light of her recent awakening, boding an intoxicating mixture of excitement and trepidation. It wasn’t a smell she associated with reading, not from her usual fare of cold text in procedure, legislature and method.
Although well-preserved, her alien trove brought with it tales of its own past, spoke of much handling and indifferent care. It could never have been fodder for a Galgaverran. Even when the first trickle of defunct libraries had pressed in, no curiosity or interest had been forged in their crafted blood.
Leiyatel's Embrace (Dica Series Book 1) Page 17