It was nowhere. It was everywhere.
This was at the end of the elongated sphere that was time. And it was beyond all time. The expansion of universes was behind them and the Great Contraction of all realms lay forgotten to memory. Eternity was a legend, after all. Imagine it, believe it, and it lived.
The music of the ages whispered through ethereal matter and weaved through sparkling energy constructions. It was beautiful beyond words and every emotion.
Ixion lifted a hand to Adagin’s cheek, and smiled. “At last, our eternity.”
Adagin rested long fingers upon Ixion’s chest. “The long wait is over.”
What a pair they made, if only an aware sentient could see them, and describe them with the limitations words placed upon something extraordinary.
Ixion would never be described as generic again, and Adagin would never be seen as infirm.
“Duty is over. Now we may be selfish,” Ixion said.
“How do we set aside anxiety, my companion? I do not like the feel of the new timedancer.”
Ixion leaned in to clasp Adagin to him. “We are beyond that now; it is time to be selfish. It is also time to forget the ages we no longer influence. Come. Let it go. Neolone and Tarlinn will keep those watch fires burning for a while, and gift our successors aid and advice.”
“Neolone is contradictory, too young …”
“Adagin.” Ixion stepped away. “Make your choice. Choose eternity or choose to watch over them. You cannot have both. Know that we part eternally in the next moment if you choose return to that reality.”
Cosmic dust swirled and stars swayed as the music soared and dipped.
Adagin, astonishing, bright, beautiful Adagin, stared into his Eternal Companion’s eyes, and smiled. “It is time to be selfish, yes.”
Ixion, glorious, flamboyant, shining Ixion, sighed his relief.
“At last.”
THE MASTER MECHANISM
Lore of Sanctum IV
PROLOGUE
GHOSTS CRANED OVER HIS shoulder, he was certain of it.
He felt the cold of dead breath upon the fine hairs in his neck; he heard the whispers of cloth against denuded bones, a sound much like chitinous scratching. On the edge of perception, he was aware of swaying shadows.
When he looked, there was nothing to see.
When he listened, utter silence pressed upon him.
When he held his breath, no mouldy sighs stirred the tiny antennae upon his skin.
Yet he was beyond certain ghosts watched him as he carefully created new words from old ink upon ancient parchment. He hoped the watchers were his ancestors. Benevolent witnesses to his task, perhaps present to aid him in finding the perfect verses.
The words needed to record not only events, but also the emotional state inherent in the timing. He stared into the distance beyond a candle flickering in the night breeze, to see other miniscule amber flames, some far, some near. It helped him not at all, serving merely to underscore how swiftly stanzas eluded him.
Gazing down, older words reached out to him, recorded by the many scribes of his bloodline before him, the verses calling to him, whispering insights, revealing to him an answer. Perhaps the ethereal watchers visited this night simply to draw his attention to the words he now viewed.
Maybe they were present to tell him it was not yet an auspicious time to add his thoughts as lyrical images to the expansive legend contained within parchment pages older than time itself.
Yes.
Something remained undone in the wideness of Time, and it needed doing before he would be permitted to complete his marks upon the ancient material.
He sensed his guests depart. A sense of satisfaction wafted around him, validating his insights.
Sighing and shifting in his scratchy homespun robe upon an unforgiving wooden bench, he gazed into distance once more, wondering when Torrullin Valla would act in such a manner as to finish what he started the moment he drew his first breath.
My Lord Torrullin, I await you. My words are for you.
Part I
MASTER MANIPULATOR
Chapter 1
Listen with ears and heart and then take the time to dissect the new information. Do this whether confronted by a family secret, a friend’s confidence, a stranger’s unwitting slip. Do this especially thoroughly when you are surrounded by your enemies. All has meaning; your task is to find the straight in the twist. Only then might you act in a manner to solve an issue.
~ Book of Sages ~
Somewhere
SEVEN CHILDREN PERCHED ON a mottled granite slab, cross-legged, hands relaxed on knees, entirely unmoving and expressionless.
As if formed from waxen rock. All wore scarlet, silken tunics that shivered, folded and snapped in the breeze, the only movement. Also the only sound.
Unnerving indeed.
Torrullin crouched before them, scrutinising each in turn. All were blonde and blue-eyed, all boys. Flawless skin. Angelic perfection.
Uncanny.
Where was this? Moments ago he sat on a log under a canopy of trees with Elianas and Teighlar, and now he was here. How? Why was he alone? Where was Elianas?
“You must activate them.”
Torrullin glanced up as the birdman stepped in beside him seemingly from the ether, and he frowned. How had Quilla suddenly appeared?
“Activate? I do not understand,” Torrullin murmured. “Where is this and why are you here?”
He noted how he and Quilla, like to the living statues, threw no shadows. A sun glared from on high, and thus there should be definitive marks on the ground … but he could not now deal with that strangeness as well.
He faced the children again.
“Deal with the matter at hand, Torrullin. Activate them.”
His heart thudded once. Fine. The matter at hand. This matter then. Elianas and Teighlar, perforce, needed to wait.
He drew in a breath. “Activate them, you say. Are you suggesting they are manufactured?”
“Manifestations.”
Torrullin rose and stretched. “I hesitate to ask, birdman.”
Quilla smiled. “And yet we shall not leave without solving this mystery.”
“Leave from where, Quilla?”
The birdman inclined his head. “Here.”
“Fine, my feathered friend, keep your secrets, but tell me this. Manifestations of what or who, and how is this perfection even possible?” Torrullin waved in the general direction of the statues. “I have never seen a real child this unflawed.”
“It is unnatural, isn’t it?”
“Quilla.”
A shrug shook the birdman’s tiny form. “I do not quite grasp the how, but as to what? For it is what.” Quilla looked up at Torrullin, squinting in the bright light. “These are voices trapped in form, unheard voices - more correctly, unheard messages.”
“Which implies thought, people …”
“People long passed on, having left behind messages so important they have manifested in the guise of youthful angels. Before you ask why the angelic state, because even a man dead to every feeling will pause before this perfection, and thus there is a chance he will stay long enough for these voices to be heard.”
Torrullin stepped closer to the children. Reaching out tentatively, he touched the hand of the central boy and, when nothing happened, rested his fingers there, closing his eyes.
“Faint resonance,” he murmured moments later, and removed his hand and opened his eyes. “Not alive, but not dead either. How do I activate them?”
“I assume Elixir needs to listen.”
A baleful stare speared the feathered being. “I hate it when you do that.”
“I know,” Quilla laughed.
“Listen,” Torrullin muttered, “and hear. Important messages? Damn it, Quilla, you know how paths alter when something untold is made tangible.”
“Yes. And yet here we are.”
“And we shall not leave without solving the mystery, as you say. C
uriosity gets us into trouble every time, and still we grab the cathron by that tail.”
Quilla quirked an eyebrow.
Torrullin swore under his breath and folded down to sit in a cross-legged manner to mirror the boys’. He did not say more and Quilla did not interrupt the process either.
Absolute silence descended, broken only by faint breath and sweat tracking lazily over cheeks.
Both were spooked when the seven angelic manifestations abruptly slapped palms against chests. Their hands froze in that lifted position.
“Oh, my,” Quilla breathed out. He cleared his throat. “They are activated.”
Torrullin stared at the central figure. “I have not done anything yet.”
Quilla closed in. “Perhaps it is proximity.”
“And perhaps it is dumb luck,” Torrullin countered. “Whatever it is …” He paused and the skin of his face pulled tight. “I hear something.” He stopped again, before glancing up at the birdman. “You are right. They whisper of words needing sharing, a set from each.” He laughed under his breath, a forced sound. “In order, left to right.”
“Then you need listen; I shall wait without interruption.”
Torrullin sent him a glare and faced forward.
MY NAME IS UNIMPORTANT, listener; I am a vessel placed and no more. Please do not speak; your task is to listen. We begin.
Before Time was measured there was chaos. All was random and nothing was known. Naught was fixed and the laws of science possessed no bearing. Or thus you of the present believe. Understand this; there is still chaos and all remains random, for such is the way of immensity. Science, in your age, proves the need for unpredictability. If all was measured and fixed and explainable, this realm and others would not long survive. This immensity of time, energy, matter and vacuum requires chaos to survive.
Do you understand? Chaos is the spark of life.
You seek a way to live with it and thus you measure and investigate and record and hope for solutions in unpredictability. It is not wrong. Your questions engender chaos and thus life is sparked. Challenge is a spark. Answers lead to more questions.
Always question, listener, but listen also to the silence. Many answers lie in silence. Silence, in all time and realms, is the one true beat of perfection. Tick, tick, time moves to the beat. To end Time, scream into silence.
I am done.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Torrullin thought as the boy on the far left slumped forward.
He understood about all existence needing chaos, but sensed also there was a larger message on offer.
MY NAME IS UNIMPORTANT, listener; I am a vessel placed and no more. Please do not speak; your task is to listen. We begin.
I am here to remind you of the singing stones. Because you hear me, you have heard also the tales stones are able to tell, their secrets and their prophecies. Have you listened well, man of time?
The true measure of sentience lies in the building blocks of mountains, in the smooth orbs in ancient watercourses, within the mighty boulders that defy all wind and water to remain ever steadfast upon the plains of worlds. Yet, in all that randomness, there is one stone that was, is and will be. It came first and it will be last.
Find it if you seek peace.
I am done.
GODS.
The second boy folded and Torrullin was unmoving. This was a morass of information; where were they leading him?
Was it for him or would any listener have sufficed?
MY NAME IS UNIMPORTANT, listener; I am a vessel placed and no more. Please do not speak; your task is to listen. We begin.
Long ages have we waited here in this space residing only in the sorcery of the true undead. You must be the product of a life undimmed eternally by death, or you would not hear us. There will be few of your kind and always you will be drawn together. Like to like, for immortality requires witnesses and only others of your kind have the ability to be there.
Long ages ago another undead understood the need for a witness. You have now become the witness for it that placed us as vessels in this space. There was nothing and no one in the time of the Original and now the words and ideas of that time are no longer lost.
The Original fashioned the first stone, became the beginning and therefore also the end. Do not mistake it for godhood. The Original was not God in any form of the faiths of past and present and can never claim to be Mother Universe. The Mother is omnipresent, was then and will be after breath has fled in all spaces. Yet, by virtue of measurement, the Original stands in Time akin to a god. To know it, to undo its presence, hark to the words of the companions here.
Be wary, however, of your point of origin; be certain of your expectations.
I am done.
IT IS MINE TO DO, then. A life undimmed eternally by death.
Torrullin did not blink as the third boy fell face first into the dust. He shifted his gaze to the central figure of perfection.
MY NAME IS UNIMPORTANT, listener; I am a vessel placed and no more. Please do not speak; your task is to listen. We begin.
A timedancer is one able to bridge the flows. A timedancer cannot die; he, she or it simply becomes something hard to hold and view … and hear. They will name our kind as Timekeepers in the fullness of the ages and perhaps the term describes us to a greater extent than dancer is able to.
Yet dancer is what we are. We shuffle on the boards and we pirouette on the points. We leap into space and return with a flourish to sweep into grace or stillness. We do this upon the beats of silence and we do so upon the thumps of cacophony, the music of realms. The first beat was silent; the second so thunderous worlds shuddered into being.
How, you ask, and I, Original, employing this mouthpiece of silent words, shall answer. I created the means to dance; I fashioned a clock. I commenced the measuring of chaos and thus forged the path for those who would come after. For you, listener.
Do you understand? At this point in your long ages others whisper you are akin to a timekeeper and you shake your head in denial.
You are such. The choice lies before you whether to take up the mantle. It is a lonely road, know that.
I am done.
TORRULLIN PINCHED THE BRIDGE of his nose.
The central boy flipped backwards.
MY NAME IS UNIMPORTANT, listener; I am a vessel placed and no more. Please do not speak; your task is to listen. We begin.
Blood flows sluggish when metabolism is curtailed and stones possess no metabolism. Place your ear against a rock, however, and if you know how to listen well, you hear blood race within the confines of atoms so dense it requires extremity to break it apart.
Have you seen a stone shatter, listener? It would be a remarkable lack on your part if your answer is negative. Assumption, therefore, informs you have viewed the phenomenon.
Have you, however, seen the stone’s life force bleed away swiftly? A river of death. Have you heard it scream as its blood vanishes into the dust of destruction? Assumption informs in this you may still be lacking.
Return to the stones of your birth, aspirant Timekeeper, and shatter the rock. Watch. Listen. And discover the miracle.
Discover also the horror of nightmare.
I am done.
TORRULLIN FROWNED. STONES OF birth? Valaris? Or Akhavar?
The fifth boy sat rigid, hands clenched into fists.
MY NAME IS UNIMPORTANT, listener; I am a vessel placed and no more. Please do not speak; your task is to listen. We begin.
When realms harked to the advantages in measurement, a means to instil order from chaos, others followed the Original and became known as Timekeepers. Always there is a Timekeeper. Every Timekeeper possesses a name unique to set the ages of that name’s mastery apart from others. It is rule, listener; true royalty. Perceived as both royal and godliness by those far lesser.
Some rulers are benign and gift peace and prosperity, and others are cruel and bring forth war and suffering. A Timekeeper is no different. Some are benign, others not. Un
derstand this - chaos requires both. Chaos permits all.
Yet order is there also, hand in hand with a good man and a bad one, a great ruler and a tyrant. Order resides in a name. Control resides in a name. When a Timekeeper freely divulges a name, control passes to the one it is gifted to, but when a Timekeeper forces his true name from another, control remains his.
Here is the codicil; control may remain with the Timekeeper, but freedom is yours.
I am done.
THIS BOY, SECOND FROM last, slumped forward as well.
One message left. Torrullin moved his head to Quilla to see the birdman studying the boys with a thoughtful expression.
He faced the final child.
MY NAME IS UNIMPORTANT, listener; I am a vessel placed and no more. Please do not speak; your task is to listen. We begin.
Mine is a message of hope. Mine is a message of despair. In hope there is despair, and in despair hope. A witness is imperative for the telling of events into future time and yet a witness can remove the ability to act freely. Your witness is your equal, is he not? Your witness curtails you, does he not?
True destiny lies only in separation, listener. True destiny is personal, without witnesses. The Original knows this. Can you state his destiny was the creation of a clock? That is not a secret, after all, for here you are, the witness. What, therefore, was his true destiny, the event no one anywhere across all time is aware of?
Friend, is it not perhaps your fate to find that same anonymity? Hope is attaining it; despair is leaving your witness behind. Hope is striding through time with your companion; despair is your failure to attain destiny. Choose well. I am … no, I am not done.
Lore of Sanctum Omnibus Page 187