On top of the ziggurat, right in the center of the plane, another arch stood with its own set of silver steps leading up to it. The arch was larger than the first and made of the same silver material, yet atop this arch was a large orb like a miniature moon that shined with the gross pale glow of weak moonlight. Under the top arch was a throne made up of two slabs of brutal black stone, rugged and blocky. It stood there in its brutality and grotesqueness as if to challenge those in front of it to say one negative word, so that the one sitting there might have excuse to execute its attendees.
“This is my house, the house of the little light, the great dark,” Sin said.
“Yet it was not there when we left it. Why have me walk in the wrong direction?” I said.
“Why this direction is no more wrong than right. It led us to the end, did it not?”
“Not the end, but merely an end.” I did not like the god’s fluidity and avoidance of the firm and foundational. The untruth of him was palpable. His breasts were proof enough of that.
“Come. We will speak in finality once I am seated upon my throne.” He smiled and jumped high, his wings flexing and riding the airless air, flapping until he fluttered down into his chair.
I leapt after him with surprising ease, bounding as if I too had wings. With two loping jumps I leapt over the strange stairs that shimmered as if of silver liquid, staring down at them as I soared over. I landed in a crouch right in front of Sin, my fist scraping the dusty stone. Sin sat there waiting on his throne, watching me with an odd smirk. His disgusting breasts rested on his lap and I had to look away to reorient myself. What was this god?
“It is well and good you leapt over my stairs. Wise to follow my flight. You see, those stairs look almost like they are of water, some strange silver stream solidified yet not, no? When water flows so smoothly, it is as if it is frozen. Think of this regarding time.”
I stood up and bent over to dust my midnight pants off. Of course, it was unneeded as they somehow remained pristine, their charmed exterior as pure as ever. Unfortunately, my armor was still dented and damaged, and blood still slickened my skin, though it had started to dry on me like rust over a faucet.
“What does that even mean? And why have useless steps?” I said.
“But were they not used to describe time?”
“Riddles, riddles. I’ll riddle you with my light, you dark jester. You could use being skewered and made cheese of.” I shook my head and stared into his soulless eyes. “As if it is frozen... it either is or isn’t. As ifs only abstract. A distraction. You dance your notional jig in an ocean of air, your boat nothing but a solid rock sinking with the weight of reality as you sing that nothingness keeps you afloat.”
“Rhetorical flourish, very fine indeed. Good fun from one who claims to be of the sun. Can you face my night? No matter, for the matter at hand is liquid, which in a strange way is a moving matter, or at least it appears as such. To be moving is to be not still, not of matter, perhaps? Regardless, my riddling has its purpose, purposeless as I may be.” He chuckled, his wings cushioning his body as he leaned back with his right arm stroking his knee and his left firmly fisted under his chin. “Time as liquid that appears frozen because it flows so smoothly. What might that imply? Eternity. Forever flowing, yet frozen in a moment.”
“I agree,” I said, shaking my head, surprised that the lunar god spoke so wisely on the issue. Perhaps his as ifs were not so empty. I’d come to a similar conclusion before. “Then what is this time, right now? Are you willing to admit the eternal moment, or will you circle back and hide through your already riddled wings? I see through your holey logic.”
“You joke and insult, but you are not wrong to doubt. No, this is no eternity, this is the great nothing. What is this house called but the one of little light and great dark? When the dark is so great, it consumes the little light.”
“You are wrong. Light pierces any dark, no matter how small.”
“But the dark remains.”
“Not where the light shines.”
“This here is the great nothing because whatever light shines here, becomes dark. It is filtered through shadow, and the scratch of my cold fingers leaves an itch that can only be cured by drinking deep from my well. And now that you are here and you itch as you do—will you drink my cup? It is one that will pollute, and in this corruption, you will be made powerful.”
“What relies on broken light is merely a shadow of real power. You merchant, you broker! I don’t need your wares, even if the whole earth gladly ogles and desires them. You twist the light! You claim what isn’t yours and say it is your own.” I unlatched my axe, holding it up with my teeth bared like a tiger. “Without the sun’s light you are a useless hunk of dark rock. Without the eternal light you are merely a hunk of meat. You husk! You insect!”
Sin sat there and smiled, clapping his two hands together as if I were a jester entertaining him in court. “Go ahead. Cleave your axe into me! It’s the only way!” He lowered his head, grinning like a child about to open a gift, and he spread his arms wide and his four wings too.
I stopped myself from cutting the fiend’s head from his shoulders and tried to think. He spoke of his light being a corrupting source. Did I feel his itch? I surely wasn’t immune, considering I walked his lands. But no, I did not. For he had not touched me with wit, will or force. I had remained myself, despite the danger of coming so close to such a corrupt source. But what would chopping him down do? It would pollute me with his weakness, his inversion. He’d brought me here to bring about this. Why else would he be so willing?
“You will not carry my solar soul into the shadow of the sun.”
“But if you let me live, think of all the souls I might still claim.”
“And if I cut you down, you will claim my own and more. I am no fool. To burn you with the light of my axe would only reflect your dark in a broken, distorted form. Your shadow lingers in the light, and I will not let you linger in mine. I am my own man and I am finished here. This quilted black has been burned through. And above you, I stand for the sun.”
“Burn with the rest of your kind!” Sin screeched, his head lurching forward while he remained seated.
Then I felt heat arising in me, burning away that ever-present cold that the moon had brought to my bones. My armor broke away, flaking off into ash as my body was covered in a golden-white flame. My pants of healing fabric at last met their match, and the flame burned them away. The fire lifted me, and I could see nothing but the all-consuming golden light. The fire scalded my soul, yet soothed my being. Solisinanis was still in my hand and it drank my golden flame with eternal thirst—it felt as though it was a part of me, its heat my heat, its light my own. And in a burst of sunlight, my soul a solar ray, I shot back to earth and into a land of white snow and ice. The cold could no longer touch me and I stood as I was born and as I would die, my body my home, unblemished by unnatural decoration.
***
“You saw the sky. There was the sign. He goes to Hyperborea at last,” Apollo said with a nod, his gold eyes squinted in an intense and seemingly angry focus.
A glorious golden orb had torn through our already golden sky and made it brighter. The streak of light had vanished at the horizon, but its path of firey gold light still hung in the sky like a rainbow. I knew at once that it was my dear brother Rangabes. How I hoped Apollo would remain true. I watched him closer than ever now. Cerberus watched and sniffed, all three of his black noses twitching in Apollo’s direction. Lugh was unreadable. Of course, he hadn’t heard Apollo’s strange explanation of everything. The same went for Arawn. The two of them still seemed a bit out of it.
“And how can you be sure? How can we know it is Rangabes, and that he is headed there?” I asked. Of course, I knew it was him, but I wanted to goad Apollo into sharing more of his plans.
“It is he and you know it.” He shook his head at me and his jaw tightened and jutted. “Hesiod, what is it that you think I plan to do? Do you really
question my wisdom when that is what I am lord over?”
“I think you plan something that the rest of us do not know.” I crossed my arms, my red talon rubbing against my robe.
“You told me I was to watch over Rangabes and be his steed to carry him forward, yet I’ve barely had the chance to be near him,” Cerberus said, his snakes hissing and his voice whispering into our minds while he neither barked nor made any sound other than his serpents and their writhing about.
“They make interesting points,” Arawn said, leaning against the wall, off by himself.
Lugh stood beside Apollo. “We go to Hyperborea. I’ve been stepping with you from the beginning, I see the end is near. Once he completes this cycle, he can at last be born anew. And then his promised land and new people can be birthed.”
Apollo slowly nodded. “Yes. It is as I have said. He is to be the one to carry Hyperborea forward and not let its true light die in darkness. Hesiod, I do not understand why you continue to doubt this. And Cerberus, your true journey with Rangabes will begin once he is born anew. He needs your guidance in those savage lands that wait to be tamed.”
I said, “And yet that question lingers that you did not answer before. Why have Rangabes go through all these trials, that you yourself refused to complete? And why did you fear his drinking of the cup? I saw your face. Your doubt. That cup is what allowed him to ascend.”
“You feared the cup of truth and the Stoor Worm’s sacrifice?” Arawn said, pushing himself off the wall and walking over to Apollo.
“Only because it was unplanned, unforeseen,” Apollo said, his mouth a pale, tight line. “It might have made him... unclean. We do not know its effects on him.”
“Unclean. You blaspheme a pure sacrifice that not even Manannán mac Lir could ruin. That cup was salvation. You make me wonder what, or better yet who, he needs saving from.” Blue veins tensed against the pale and arched throat of Arawn. His temples throbbed and his eyes burned a bright green—a forest consumed in emerald flame.
“Arawn, please my brother, do not step where you do not know the truth,” Lugh said, standing between Apollo and him. “I brought you and the Morrígan into the fold, because I knew you desired light. But do not forget the dark you emerged from. Fates have spoken; allies and enemies have been made on all sides.” Lugh stared stony faced at Arawn who looked even more ready to burst. “We knew he had to drink the cup to move to the fourth circle. We spoke with the Fates. We spoke to Wyrd, though she remained uncouth. Neither mentioned the Stoor Worm sacrificing itself. That brought the strange battle into the heavens. The circle was supposed to be in the twisted realm that glorious Valhalla had been so profanely thrust into. He didn’t just complete the circle, he pierced right through.”
Arawn shook his fist. “You dare to explain to me the meaning of the sacrifice? I tore the darkness that had stained my soul and colored my skin, right from my corrupted flesh. It was so I could speak the truth, even as swine! To drink the cup alone, without sacrifice, would have sent him into impossibility—a task that dissolves into an infinite minimizing. Forever trapped there. Is that what you two wanted for him? I do not understand. The sacrifice of the worm allowed him to finish the games by rising not merely above them, but by bursting through them like a comet shot forth not from the stars, but the planet—the finite returned to its infinity.”
“I did not know of this Arawn. How did you? I saw only the fourth circle as another inversion. But he bested the other three. There had to have been a way to finish it,” Lugh said.
“Maybe, and thankfully we’ll never have to find out. Manannán removed my mouth for a reason. I was the true king of the dead, he a mere pretender. Whatever he planned, whatever he knew, how could I not know as well? I know of legends and murmurs, whispers of dead souls and monsters you could never imagine. I know much and he feared my knowledge, rightly so. I did not anticipate it either.” Arawn breathed deeply and relaxed his body, loping back to rest on the wall as if he hadn’t moved aggressively forward in the first place.
I was not satisfied but I would wait. I looked up at Cerberus and met his eyes. The great hound looked graven, frozen with a dread that drooped his ears and slumped his snakes.
Cerberus whispered only to me, “He feared the cup because it brought Rangabes into the infinite, into the truth. Apollo will no longer be facing a mortal, a mere vessel he can empty. I do not know if Lugh is aware. Be ready for anything in Hyperborea.” Cerberus’s thoughts proved my own fears and suspicions true. I nodded with my eyes.
“We go to Hyperborea. I’ve waited for Rangabes to find the path there for so long, and now it is at last his own. It had to be his own. Let me now open the door to the kingdom that has for so long remained closed. We will watch and wait, and hope that Rangabes is made pure in the light,” Apollo said.
He walked several steps away from us all and lifted up his hands. Gold fell from the shining heavens, waterfalling down in a sparkling shower of light that formed into two streams, leaving the sky a clear blue. The light we’d used to cleanse the sky with drained into this fall and collected itself in growing orbs that hovered above both of Apollo’s raised hands. The one above his left hand was icy-blue, and the one above his right was fiery red. The waterfall was a torrent of golden effulgence that was being swallowed whole by the ballooning orbs of light.
The sky at last was cleared, drained back to its natural blue. Apollo raised his hands even higher, a straight angle above his head as if he were the pillar of a temple. He spread his arms like wings, the orbs following his hands’ motion, and in a sudden burst he clapped his hands together and the orbs exploded. Their explosion of light funneled directly before Apollo in a swirling vortex, and there where the light dispersed, a door of ruby appeared. Its handle was made of blue sapphire in the shape of a scowling demon— horned and clawed, its tongue sticking out like a scythe.
“Through the door, the ruins of Hyperborea hide. They lie unseen, unknowable, but Rangabes’s burning will reignite their ashes. We must watch. Come now,” Apollo said, stepping to the door and grasping the gargoyle’s tongue.
Before he could turn it, Arawn said, “I will stay here. Hyperborea might guide me but it is not truly my home. The Celtic grass calls me and I long for deep forests. I want to push out of this in-between world and return to the true. My time as king of the dead here fell as I arose in this new emerald armor. I am happy to carry the pure breath of crisp dewed air—to float in salty sea. I will defend my home here. In nature I rest. I become it. I think that is what all of us are meant to be.”
His eyes flashed green and before anyone could say another word, he rode the invisible wind like a stallion, galloping through the air with speed so swift he vanished over the horizon in mere seconds. The breeze lingered, but he was gone. Maybe it was the way all his kind had been meant to go, back into nature, into earth. I winced as Apollo flung open the door, his tightened face annoyed at the god’s refusal to pay privy to his plan. Beyond the door was an expanse of white that bled into our fresh green with greedy ferocity. Apollo stepped through without glancing back. I lowered my head and plunged in after him. The white light was cold; beyond it, it was colder.
Book 6
Farther North
This white expanse was one of desolation. Snow, ice, and nothing but. Yet I remained untouched by the cold. I looked down at my naked body and flexed my now healed arms. I’d been washed and made new in the flames above. An eternal fire burned in my soul and this cold could not touch my pure blaze. I stretched my body and pressed my feet into the snow. It melted under my soles and I grinned. I no longer needed my old armor. The flame had been too powerful for its enchanted steel. But my soul had been burnished. I was too powerful for any flame to burn me to ash. I was that flame now. Yet despite my own renewal, everything around me was still dead.
Why had I arrived here? Was this supposed to mean something? This was not the sun. Was it Hyperborea, or at least where it once stood—in the land of the north where th
e sun never set?
“You came here like an arrow of flame, have you struck true?” Someone called out behind me.
I turned around without fear, the power of my pyro plummet still pumping my heart, my mind infused with infinity. A man of average stature stood in a cloak of soft purple that had the look of a snowy landscape reflecting a cloudy sunset. His hood was drawn over his eyes and he had a youthful smile and smooth white skin like the untouched snow surrounding us—though his flesh held a slight yellow warmth.
“Who might you be? And is this all that is here?” I said.
“They called me Abaris the Hyperborean. I fled this once noble land because it was plagued with death. A plague not merely physical, but a sickness of spirit. When the sun sets on the land always drenched in daylight, it is no natural phenomena, but a will of weakness.” His voice warmed the arctic air like a slow stream of gentle flame, bathing the cold in a calm burn. He walked towards me now, his gait unhurried and his hood still drawn. His smile tightened into a thin ridge as he remembered his home—our home. “When a people forget what it is that they are, were, and should be, they cease to live as more. They collapse into the sameness of beastly, lowly living. Instinct is well and good, but instinct severed from glory is best left to the mongrels. The plague clouded our judgement, and nature’s freeze yanked away the sun, plunging us into half a year of darkness. People died. I had to go.”
“So, you left your people and home to die, so that you might live? Is that not what mongrels do when they leave for strange bedfellows?”
“You came as an arrow yet you fly like a penguin. Even with your renewed flesh, your mind cannot comprehend. My arrow was given to me by Apollo. He sent me forth and I healed nations who would have me. I did mighty deeds.”
“But not here.”
“How else would the world know of Hyperborean greatness, when its very pillars cracked beneath the terrible weight of its ancestors? As long as a people remain, the land is not lost. When desolation came and the Hyperboreans fled, wept, or were indifferent, I healed as many as I could. But my gifts were not meant to thaw a stone soul. They took on their now glacial surroundings and, when frozen in despair, the best way to burn is to prepare the way for the next. So, I did with Apollo’s blessing. But it seems as though his blessing is more of a curse.”
Cerberus Slept Page 28