Never before had he seen that miracle as it was now, had never seen it so vibrant with potent energy, seen its laboured carrying of the sun’s harvested power. He’d never experienced it so tensed, straining under the effort, nor felt its immense presence so palpably close before. He felt weakened, drained of resolve, unable to move or even think, and his eyes swam about that void in near terror, until they drifted up and recoiled in horror.
Above him floated a boiling cloud of crimson that his mind simply couldn’t comprehend – would not comprehend. Like molten lava, and the smoke of many volcanoes, it seethed and tumbled, forever troubled and unceasing, billowing out in great spumes and cascading in bright showers, yet all the time coalescing unto and embracing itself above him.
As he wildly stared up at that nightmare he became dimly aware of its heat, felt the skin of his face tingle and burn and his eyes grow dry and sharp. Behind all that, though, he felt an urging, a hammering at the back of his mind. Its insistent shouts into his waxen ears spread alarm throughout his mind, but a fear that froze his body.
Had he been wrong? Had he badly misjudged? Was this to be his end, the impossible cessation of an age long life, the final contradiction of Leiyatel’s promise and her own denial? His mind was disjointed, thoughts coming in unconnected bursts, one of which suddenly and uniquely struck him hard, brought real doubt into his heart. It was, despite the heat, a freezing doubt. Where was the Certain Power? Where was its essence he’d so trusted to carry him through, to shield him from its own raw self? Why had she forsaken him so?
As his heart boiled over with regret and indignation alike, his legs, with a mind of their own, haltingly staggered him forward. A step at a time, he stumbled on towards her, towards Leiyatel – his rebutting lover. It was now pure thought that drove him on, pure love of she who had given him purpose, who’d given him form and filled it with hope. One more step and one more hope, another foot another dream, a step at a time…
How long he was locked there, in his nightmares and fears, he would never know. An age it seemed, and longer, far longer than his long life had already known, far longer yet than his love of Leiyatel that still couldn’t be broken, even by her very own might.
He stumbled on, and as he did so, the viscous air of the void, the gaseous syrup he strained through, began to feel that little bit thinner, less cloying. The further he went the easier it got until the weight fell aside and he stood, trembling and staring wide-eyed into the sweating blackness.
Despite his wet skin and sodden robes, he still felt hot and suffocated, but his mind had come together and once more owned its own thoughts. Panting, he looked about, standing suspended within the void upon its lonely walkway. He found he could now walk without colossal effort, certainly lift his arm to wipe sweat from his face.
Somehow he knew, with a certainty only the Certain Power could grant, that she once more bathed his very being, coursed through his blood and sinew and muscle. She once more sated an unquenchable thirst, but why, why had she returned, and why now? ‘Now?’ he wondered anew.
He looked back, back along the walkway, back to where all appeared as it had, but when he cast his eyes upwards, the crimson storm had passed, had left but a watery reflection of the peacefully suspended lake above. How could it be?
Cautiously, he edged his way back, inch by inch retracing his laborious path, but now with heightened senses. When he again began to feel that tingling heat, his skin once more beginning to burn, he looked up. The placid lake was now slightly ruffled, showing signs of renewed storms, and so he stopped, abruptly, and quickly drew back.
An idea slowly began to dawn, and with it he mouthed an answer. “Not now! Nay, not now at all! No, not now but here.” He thought back to when he’d stood up there, before the door, at the cloistered entrance to Baradcar, and remembered the oddness of the air. He remembered why he’d paused there before entering in with Penolith and Falmeard. It hadn’t been there either, the air hadn’t sung with its thin and chaotic twittering. No, there it had been ominously quiet and calm.
Time was still pressing, despite regained protection, and so he forged on. Although eager, his caution kept his pace slow, fearful of yet again stumbling into another here. Eventually, though, a tangle of pipes and tubes started to loom from the darkness ahead, towering up to the red lake above and down into the unseen depths below.
Broad and massive, the tangle spread before him as he neared the walkway’s end, to where it vanished amidst the confusion of heaving arteries and veins. His way now passed through their knot, from the black void into a great column honeycombed and suffused with amber light. There, he fell to the floor and closed his eyes.
~o~
Falmeard sat at a table, munching one of the biscuits Penolith had thoughtfully brought with her. It was pleasant enough and quite sustaining, but couldn’t distract him from his concerns over Nephril, who’d now been gone more than an hour.
He could hear yet another squall lash against the walls and was thankful of their retreat but really wished he could look out upon Baradcar, to where he knew Nephril would be. He turned to Penolith and saw that she too sat on edge, idly chewing one of the biscuits. “Lady Penolith? Do you know if we can see Baradcar from here?”
She knew immediately what he was thinking and smiled. “Indeed you can, Falmeard,” she answered before pointing to one of the doors. “Just go through there and you’ll be in a room with a window. You can see Baradcar from there, although you can’t see down into Leiyatel, but I suspect that’ll be good enough for you.”
She smiled again as he got up, and then awaited his next question. Its nature, however, touched her more than she’d expected.
“Would you come with me, my Lady? Would you mind keeping me company?”
“I’m sorry, Falmeard, but I couldn’t bear it. You go along but I’ll wait here.” She took another bite from her biscuit, to hide her feelings, and he only nodded and then left the room.
The one he came to felt warmer, was bright and clear, more so than the grey sky without should have lent it. Its clarity soon diminished when he stood at its crystal-glazed window. ‘Nay!’ he thought. ‘Not crystal, more likely glass!’ and he touched it, with renewed wonder.
Its cold surface contrasted with the warmth of his ring, now dully glowing beneath its foil wrap. ‘How’re you faring, my old friend, eh? How goes it?’ He tried to imagine Nephril’s face but could only see those strange fingers, starkly set there in their circle upon the rim of Baradcar.
~o~
Above and below were arrayed myriad honeycombed cells, each suffused with their own golden light and each set about with a thin glistening film of red that smeared and quivered like living oil. When he turned his head, he could see the doorway to the void, the one he’d only just entered by, but its stark black form sat alien with the homely world about him. It was so alien in fact that it forced him to turn from it and drink in the golden glow about him.
“Must get on,” he said aloud and somewhat slurred, then heard his own words echo back, almost without end, as though ever-repeated by his own twin self. “Must get on,” they insisted, and so he acquiesced.
Drunkenly, he rose to his feet, his mind intoxicated with the pliant, ochre bosom about him, and staggered to the wall by the entrance. Averting his eyes from the sinister black void beyond, he soon found a ladder within a vertical cage, and groggily placed his foot on its lowest rung. He smiled, rather oddly, and laughed before pointing his face upwards.
Hand over hand, foot above foot, methodically and mechanically, he rose amongst the honeycombs, ever higher, with his diminishing image following on. He and his echoing form steadily climbed nearer and nearer an opening that framed the rather exotic sight of a mundane, grey afternoon sky.
When his head came above the opening, into chill air, he sobered and stared, blinking and surprised, at cold, grey clouds that sped by above. When he looked to his left and right, he saw, curving away, a metal pathway set on the inside of a blank
boundary wall. Although he faced the wall, he knew full well what lay behind him.
He denied the temptation to turn, resisting its magnetic pull, until he’d lifted himself well clear of the hatchway and was finally standing upright and steady, albeit on tired old legs. Slowly, but ever so slowly, he turned around.
He’d tried his best to prepare, even in those final few moments, but was still pathetically unguarded when his eyes finally came to rest on Leiyatel’s naked glory. He stood there, shaking, face to face with the Living Green Stone Tree.
His eyes welled with great tears as his heart rose and choked his throat. He began to wail, body tensing with spasms that nearly threw him to the ground. He felt his heart burst with love and joy, with regret and pain, with all the accreted emotions his thousands of years had tarnished him with.
He sobbed uncontrollably, and could only hold himself intact by throwing his arms out wide and bellowing, at the top of his frail voice, “LEIYFIANTEL! LEIYFIANTEL! OH, HOW I HAVE FORSAKEN THEE, LEIYFIANTEL.” He then fell to his knees, sobbing and crying, until he spat bile and phlegm. It seemed it would never end, even as he rolled into a ball like an unborn child it rent at his guts and tore viciously at his heart.
~o~
Falmeard had stared blankly through the glass for quite some time, oblivious of the rivulets now cascading down it from the squall it held without. His mind’s eye had been with Nephril, trying to imagine his journey, trying to send him his love and support, but it had only left a sense of hopelessness and unrest. He would have remained lost in that world had his finger not stung painfully sharp, had it not made him reel back into the room with his hand pressed firmly between his arm and chest.
~o~
Nephril’s despair didn’t seem to abate but his tolerance had obviously grown. His bearing of the pain and torment now filling him had somehow become firmer. Maybe it was just his feelings that had become more numbed. Either way, he at last found movement, could lift his cheek from the heat-draining metal, where it had lain amidst the sick, the tears and the bile. He even managed, after a while, to sit arched over his knees as he embraced them for their comfort and began to rock back and forth.
He couldn’t lift his eyes to the Tree, not yet, but instead stared feverishly at the strange surface now swilling before him. Beyond the walkway, it glittered from its many faceted faces as his perspective rocked to and fro.
With returning purpose, his eyes moved ever nearer the Tree, looked further into that strangely sparkling expanse at its feet until its glittering points swam together into a sea of dancing motes, slowly flowing past on their spiralling way.
His memories had begun to flood back, to fill his mind to bursting, their sharp detail just too exquisite. He saw, before him, his whole long life play out, unbidden and unbridled. Whilst he was sitting there in wonder, an immeasurably ancient self strode confidently into his being, reached down and took his pliant hand.
It gently pulled him to his feet, embraced his heart and there whispered into his ears the many truths he’d lost. Before him, his own face smiled, leant forward and then gently kissed him on the lips. There, through that simple act, limitless vigour passed into his heart, made him open his eyes to Leiyatel.
Her roots were planted firmly in the drifting diamond dirt of the endless ebony vortex, drawing to her the sustenance of the sun’s simple succour. She lifted that raw power, up through her mingling crystal providence of verdant girth to an infinitely branching crown that scattered as a fine haze upon the afternoon’s still air. In her every part there shimmered and coursed the channelled and contrived potency of latent elemental chance, directed upwards and outwards into the wider world.
Although her potent quenching draught at last allowed Nephril to feel becalmed and at peace, something nudged at his newfound certainty. There was a blemish, a fault in the impeccable vision, more felt than seen. Despite appearing as when last he’d seen her, there was something amiss, something he couldn’t quite place.
He knew of her diminishment of course, but there was definitely something more awry, a loss of purity or balance, or an essence now fled, a blemish on her intrinsic beauty that only the soul and not the eye could embrace. He scanned the Tree closely, peered minutely into her parts, but could see nothing untoward. There were no symptoms evident in her infinite parts, nothing at all to support a growing disquiet.
Finally, whatever it was, he decided it couldn’t be in her detail, in her never-ending parts, but must be something of her body entire. His closeness, however, played against him, for she filled his sight as she towered so immediately above him. He couldn’t stand back either for he was already against her boundary, and so had only the one choice left.
The walkway on which he now stood ran completely around her, and so he slowly started to walk towards her western side. Soon, he began to feel his skin tingling, burning as it had below, and so quite naturally stopped. When he raised his hand to his brow, and felt the scorching pain, all his fingers brought away was simple cold sweat.
He moved a step further but the scorching and pain increased. When he turned back, it just as slowly diminished. Once more at her south, he again felt both invigorated and calm. When the same thing happened to the east, he knew exactly what he had to do.
Steeling himself, he purposefully strode west along the arc of the path until, in great pain, he was due west of her. There, he quickly and carefully noted her appearance, despite his distress, before hurrying on. As he drew to her north he soon felt the pain ease, and in its place once more, a wonderful elation flooded in. He rested awhile, to recover, but then gritted his teeth before pushing on eastwards, only to repeat the trial once more.
In all his orbit of the Living Green Stone Tree, its form had altered not a jot, but what had changed, he’d seen with alarm, was its solidity. West and east alike, he’d seen the same thinness of presence, the same lessened density, the same misty ethereal stand. Yet, at north and here, where he now stood, the Tree appeared quite solid and real. In fact, she almost appeared more tangible now than when last he’d seen her, so long ago.
He pondered it for a long while, dredging through his newly restored wealth of memories, but only very slowly began to see an answer. He was stiff from sitting so still for so long, enough that when he looked up at Leiyatel the movement made him wince. His eyes, though, had narrowed and looked northwards as he rose.
With heartfelt thanks he bowed low to Leiyatel, but as he slowly straightened, his mind already saw more. He stood before her and stared, with eyes fast widening, before casting her one last fond glance, bidding her a final farewell, rushing back to the hatchway and slipping quickly down into its honeycombed embrace.
27 A Brief Return
The door flew open and Penolith rushed in. Before her on the floor, Falmeard lay nursing his hand, quiet oaths slipping from a rigid jaw, as she rushed and knelt at his side. “Falmeard? Falmeard? Whatever’s the matter, what’s wrong?” He stopped writhing, and uttering curses, opened his eyes wide and stared guiltily up at her.
“Oh. Err. Nothing, Lady Penolith, I assure you, nothing.” He then cast his eyes about the room, as though looking for an excuse. “Err. My own fault really, my Lady, nothing more … err … I just hurt my hand and … err … well, it gave me quite some pain … at first, but it’s nothing, not now, I assure you.” He scrambled to his feet and hid his hand in his robes as he avoided her eyes.
She looked unconvinced and was about to ask to see the injury when he pre-empted her. “I think I caught a nerve for I’ve no cut. There’s no blood … err … only a twinge now. It’ll be alright.” He noticed the look in her eyes. “Honest,” and then looked away before quickly returning to the window, where he pressed his forehead against the cooling glass.
She stood there and stared at his back for a moment before curving her lips in disbelief. She let the matter drop. “I see the rain’s stopped. I wonder how Lord Nephril’s doing,” and then quietly left the room, closing the door behind her as sh
e muttered, “Strange fish, such a very strange fish.”
Once the door had closed, Falmeard snatched his hand from its hiding, stared nervously at his finger and sighed with relief. His eyes once more drifted back to the glass, out towards Leiyatel, as his mind again sought Nephril. “This waiting’s the greater pain, my old friend.” He suddenly understood Lady Penolith’s reticence, her unwillingness to look out upon Nephril’s plight, and so put the window behind him and returned to keep her company.
She was back at the table, although her biscuits were all gone. She still looked as concerned as she had at Nephril’s departure, but she smiled at Falmeard as he came and sat across from her. Time, though, then continued to tick by, ever so slowly, and it wasn’t long before Falmeard found himself drifting. The chair’s warm comfort seemed to conspire with the silence to bring him to sleep’s enfolding embrace.
~o~
Penolith’s voice startled him, even before he’d realised his shoulders were being shaken. “Falmeard? Falmeard? Hurry! Wake up! I think I heard Nephril.” In an instant, he was wide awake and on his feet, although he reeled a little. He cast about the room in some confusion until seeing Penolith now crouching over the hole in the floor.
He joined her there and together they peered into the dark blue depths. She whispered, “I’m sure I heard something. Sounded like feet on a ladder of some sort, you know, a metal one, but I wasn’t sure, not until now. There! Did you hear that?” He’d also heard it but it worried him for it wasn’t regular, seeming almost to be stumbling.
Leiyatel's Embrace (Dica Series Book 1) Page 24