The Pillars of Sand

by Mark T. Barnes

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Knowledge is nothing without the intellect and the imagination to use it, as well as the restraint to know when not to.”

  —From The Polemics, by Sedefke, inventor, explorer, and philosopher (264th Year of the Awakened Empire)

  Day ? of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  Indris lay amid a sea of stars. The pillars of knowledge rose about him, both canted and straight, a bizarre sculpture of intersecting lines of architecture and thought.

  “Do you have time to rest?” Danger-Is-Calling asked.

  Indris yawned. There was no sense of time for him, other than the visitations of hunger and fatigue. “I think I understand the concepts of Awakening well enough, though only because I’ve gone through it. It’s reasonably simple to map what I’ve learned here to what I’ve experienced.”

  “Then why do you wait?” Danger-Is-Calling leaned over Indris, blotting out the stars above. “Go to the House of Induction and test what you have learned! Awaken yourself.”

  Indris chuckled ruefully. That horse has already bolted, and I’m hanging on as best I can. “Not so fast. An Awakened scholar isn’t something to be taken lightly. I’m here to learn so that I can save the rahns—”

  “Awakened rahns are irrelevant,” the man said flatly. “Awakened scholars are relevant. The pathways of Awakening make a scholar significantly more powerful than they would otherwise be. More powerful than any rahn.”

  “You sound like somebody I know,” Indris mused. “The lives of people I care about, rahns who will at least try and do the right thing by Shrīan and the Avān, are relevant to me. Too many rahns have been lost, and more to follow unless I find the answer.” Indris sat up. He ran his fingers through his tangled hair, rubbed his face to fight lethargy. “What I can’t find here are the parts of the Esoteric Doctrines I need for myself.”

  “The Mah-Psésahen was abandoned,” the man said. “It is dangerous. Reckless. It opens gaping doors in the mind best left closed. All who practiced it Fell, without exception. It is the gateway to madness.”

  “Sedefke said that power is never evil, or wrong, in and of itself. It is our application and motivation that makes it so. There are many things I’ve learned here that are no longer taught by the Sēq. Formulae for translocation without using the Drear, the specifications on how to build Torque Spindles, and the theory behind Destiny Engines. Healing techniques we thought lost to all save the Nilvedic scholars. Combat wards, battle formulae, Ancestor’s teeth … There was a complete school of study on mapping and remapping the energy flows up the ternary stack. What happened for the Mah-Psésahen—for all of this knowledge—to be lost?”

  “Not all scholars have the capacity to learn all things, Amon-Indris.” Danger-Is-Calling leaned on his bent old branch. “Or to control them. For some it is a constant struggle, where every revelation is an epiphany. For others, it all comes too easily, the labor not recognized for what it is, respect for their powers in short supply. Those who grasped for the Mah-Psésahen were flawed, seeking only the power itself, without considering the consequences. Nature is a thing of balances, and nothing is given for free.”

  “But Sedefke—”

  “Ah, Sedefke!” Danger-Is-Calling’s voice was bitter. He throttled the staff in his hands, wood creaking. A frenzied expression overcame him. Memories of his other faces blurred over the one he wore. “The great and wise Sedefke, who unlocked all the secrets! He who had access to all the power in the world, yet never asked for anything in return. What kind of person does that? Has it not occurred to anybody to ask the simple questions about the man?”

  Indris rose to his feet, and ignited his Scholar’s Lantern. The stars faded around them in the harsh sphere of its radiance, the shadows of the pillars casting all beyond them into darkness. Danger-Is-Calling stared wide-eyed at Indris. The other man’s color was high, the whites around his irises vivid. Dipping into the ahmsah, Indris was blinded for a moment by the man’s Disentropic Stain. It was a chaotic mess of energy flares, spirals, and frenetic, bobbing geometric shapes like paper boats cast in rapids. There was power there, insane power: a pent up dam that should have burst its walls long ago. Indris saw the shimmering formulae as they confined the man’s stain, layer upon layer of binding. In that moment Indris saw the true faces the man had worn over the years, each face with a different name, anchored to the one mighty soul.

  “It was the search for the truth of him that drove me mad, you know.” The words shot out of Danger-Is-Calling’s mouth. “The first of the Avān say they saw him when they awoke. But how, if they were the first? What came before the first? The last of something else? The reminder of a memory? A morality play in flesh?”

  “Wait, I—”

  “It was always Sedefke. The one who knew everything. The one who did everything, and led everybody. In the early years, we took for granted the wonders he led us to. Our minds opened like flowers and we drank knowledge like sunlight and rain. We loved him as much as we feared to lose him, to lose all he could show us. But to scratch the surface? Oh, to scratch the surface showed the cracks in the story. But by then we had traveled too far, and seen much, and heard the voices in our dreams and listened to their promises and—”

  “Who are you?” Indris breathed.

  “I am the danger that calls,” the other man whispered as his color faded. It left his skin as a bleached expanse of white under the glare of Indris’s lantern. “The danger that has always been and always will be. I am the error, the lesson, the warning, and the watcher. The captive and the gaoler. The ternary of disaster made manifest—”

  “Who are you?” Indris yelled. He stepped forward and thrust his lantern closer to the man’s face. Hundreds of faces flickered, cards in a deck being flung into the air. There was no order Indris could determine, only a procession of identities throughout history. He reached out to touch the man.

  Indris’s lantern went out. The stars above and below faded. The pillars of knowledge diminished, became black, then nothing as the last of the light died.

  Danger-Is-Calling’s voice, saner than it had been, echoed from everywhere. “We all of us wear masks, Amon-Indris. For some it is a thing of choice. For us, it is forced upon us by the will of others, for the world may not be ready to look beyond the swaddling of their prejudices to accept the hard truths.

  “With knowledge comes expectation, and with expectation comes action, and action must only come when it can provide the most appropriate and beneficial reaction. Are you certain the reaction to what you find here will be beneficial? How can you be certain all that has come to pass is as it was meant to? But most importantly, how can you be certain that you can learn what you want to learn, and still remain who you are?”

  “I do what I do because I must.”

  “You do what you do because it was how you were made.”

  Indris’s lantern flared back to life as the stars ignited in the sky. The Pillars of Sand shone with glowing, flowing wisdom. Yet of Danger-Is-Calling there was no sign.

  Indris worked to the end of his endurance. He absorbed knowledge like a sponge, discarded old ways of thinking for better, more effective ones. Stored scores of new formulae in his head, and wrote copious notes of what he had learned. Awakening was only the beginning, like the dawn that illuminated a world much larger than night gave it credit for. When exhaustion overcame him, he slept where he lay, unprepared to spend a moment longer than was necessary in Isenandar. Indris hoped he imagined the upswell of whispered voices around him. The barely seen tricks of light and shadow in the semblance of people. Were they the tragic recollections of those who had studied here? Or were they the manifestations of Danger-Is-Calling’s broken mind?

  Navigating the pillars had become easier, and with it the access to the knowledge he sought. Sedefke’s work on Awakening was written as a framework, the specifics submerged within other work. Indris surmised it was to ensure the person attempting the process understood the foundat
ions of the power they were going to access, as well as the options, price, and consequences of it. As soon as the framework had become apparent—based on theories on reality and substance, filled with further theories on how Īa existed in a physical, mental, and spiritual form—Indris found his understanding progressed rapidly. He had not misled Danger-Is-Calling when he admitted his learning came from having had the seeds of Awakening planted in him. Those routes between body, mind, and soul allowed Indris to map his learning of Awakening to his own experience: the elements of him that were the minerals of earth, the energy of fire, water as the conduit for vital resources, and the breath of life. The intellect sat around this construct, while the soul permeated everything and joined the one with the many.

  There were a number of bloodlines that had been designed in the Torque Spindles to have a greater affinity with the ahm, and the consciousness of the world. Fifteen clans had been made before all others in the Torque Spindles of Avānis, on the isle of Castavān, a land where the Water of Life sprung from a small rock pool underground. Fifteen clans, not twelve as Indris had been taught. Sedefke spoke of the work to align each of the great clans with the totem spirits that were each a facet of Īa’s consciousness, and how he and his kin had guided the Seethe on how such a feat was done. Of them all, the greatest spirit was that of the phoenix, which comprised the concepts of renewal, time, resurrection, and immortality. The totem of the Näsarat.

  Danger-Is-Calling’s words about Sedefke were writ in sand: We watched the Wind Masters come, my kin and I, though there were few of us not in communion with the mind of the world in those days…

  Whoever Sedefke was, it was the leaders of the twelve most influential clans of the Avān he led to their Awakening. Trained mystics, their bodies were already fueled by the ahm. Drinking the Water of Life was a communion, not a catalyst. Were mystics never to drink the waters again, their Awakening would never fade, for the flow of the ahm would sustain them. It was not until after the fall of the Awakened Empire, and the subsequent Scholar Wars, that rahns were no longer mystic-trained: the era of the mahjirahns over. The Suret had the framework of Sedefke’s knowledge, but lacked the key pieces to fully understand it. Awakenings under their guidance were effective, yet disintegrated. They did not understand the way the energy coiled, causing the vortices to bloom in a specific order, strengthened by them, as they rose upward through the ternary stack. When the first rahns grew ill, doses of the Water of Life kept them alive. Indris supposed it had never occurred to the Suret that they did not completely understand the Awakening process, until it was too late. By then Sedefke was gone, Isenandar was gone, the great mahjirahns were gone, and the last Mahj was an uncommunicative spirit.

  “Can you save them?” Danger-Is-Calling asked. Indris swore, his hand going to Changeling’s hilt. He drew … to see once again the blade splintered to less than a hand length from the hilt. Danger-Is-Calling cocked his head at the dragon-headed sword hilt and said, “You have been past needing her for some time. Your soul is your weapon now.”

  Indris slid Changeling’s hilt back into his sash. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Here.”

  “Not helpful.”

  “Watching.”

  “Strange, and unsettling.”

  “You are the first to enter here since the witches and scholars both tried to batter their way in during the Scholar Wars.” Danger-Is-Calling cradled his staff in his folded arms. “It was on that day that I locked the ahm tides inside Isenandar, hid her from the sight of petty minds, and the Dead Flat came to be what it is. I swore that no scholar or witch would ever again be able to force their way into what I had built.

  “Though I have long awaited your coming, it was not until you bested the warrior of the Drear that I decided to allow you access. You have vast power, Amon-Indris, though your fear—”

  “Why do you call me that?” He saw my fight with the Emissary?

  “Because it is your name.”

  “My name is Indris.”

  “If you like.” The other man shrugged. “Though it is like Īa only admitting she is alive when her face is touched by the sun. You have immense power, but your fear of it gives me a hope that I need to confirm.”

  “Hope for what?”

  It felt like fingers were poking around Indris’s head as they moved facades aside to expose the truth behind. Indris slammed layers of mental shields down, yet the sensation persisted. The pain of the examination grew until it felt like his brain was being squeezed against his skull. Pressure built, the bubble of his metapsychic abilities out of his control. Indris dropped to his knees. Heat started to build behind his eye and he welcomed it, yet it was extinguished by Danger-Is-Calling as soon as it started. He vomited from the pain. Watched as long streamers of drool escaped his lips to become blurred trails of silver gray that stretched to the star-dusted floor.

  “Hope that you won’t destroy us all with it,” Danger-Is-Calling said. “Not like those who have come before. In the end your power will kill you before you allow it to harm the ones you love.”

  Indris groaned, rolling onto his side as the pain receded. He wiped the tears from his eyes, then washed his mouth out with water from his flask. “Was that necessary?”

  “I needed to know the truth.”

  “You could’ve asked.”

  “You could have lied.”

  “Surely you knew before now?” Indris asked. “Why else let me in here?”

  “I did not know. I allowed you entry out of curiosity, mostly.”

  “Now you know why I won’t allow myself to become Awakened.” Indris got to his feet and swept his arms out to encompass the Pillars of Sand. “Knowledge. Grain upon grain of it. It can be shaped, but any shape it holds is fragile. Each grain will last forever, will be used to different ends, but it’s rare for exactly the same shape to be made twice.

  “This is what I hope for! I hope to see the Sēq remember they were formed to light the way, not be the way. That Shrīan’s leaders will see how delicate civilization truly is, and nurture it rather than destroy it. And I hope that the day never comes when I must choose to do a very great wrong for what was a very great right at a single moment in time. Because history tells us over and over that moments are fleeting, that change always comes, and that when all is said and done, our very great wrong is always a very great wrong.”

  “I know of wrong,” Danger-Is-Calling said. “Such wrongs that you would never sleep again for fear of the nightmares. Guilt is something we share. It is why we are here in this place, in this time.”

  “Yes. I am driven by it. And thus I cannot ignore the possible consequences of my actions.”

  “And while you are driven by it you will always second-guess yourself.”

  “Better than having one guess and getting it wrong.”

  Danger-Is-Calling laughed. It was hesitant at first; then, as the floodgates opened, it became a deeper, richer sound that rang around the pillars. Indris smiled to hear it, for in the moment he saw the madness desert the other man’s eyes, to be replaced by something if not peaceful, then closer than the alternative. The man walked to Indris and hugged him. “Thank you. It has been long and long since I have had reason to laugh. Or to hope.”

  “I think my time here is almost done.” Indris gazed at the stars around him, at the pillars of knowledge where he would otherwise while away a lifetime. Others are depending on me.

  “Yes,” the man said, sadly. Indris cocked an eyebrow, wondering if the man was answering his question, reading his mind, or both. “Indris, I am trained in the Mah-Psésahen. There are few places it was ever taught, and every place is now condemned to history. I beg of you, do not look further. I have seen what is unfolding in your mind. Rather than seek the wisdom of others in this, hold to your own counsel. If you must allow these gifts to grow in you, I know you will use them wisely—but seek not the wisdom of others. Forge your own path.

  “Perhaps then you will not make the same mistakes I did,
nor cause the kind of suffering I did, nor become the apostate I once was. Sedefke did well when he trusted you.”

  “I remember nothing of it,” Indris muttered. “My memories from the Spines were taken from me.”

  “I know not what the two of you shared, but I do recognize what he has done to your mind. The same techniques were taught to me to guard the worst of myself from myself—let alone others. But beware. The Sēq are playing a long game. They have known the agents of the Drear were coming for some time, and while they appear to lose some pieces along the way, they see the board clearly, and know what they want to achieve.”

  “I’m familiar, yes.”

  “Then know that you may have little choice in how much power you allow yourself,” Danger-Is-Calling said. “When all is said and done, your life—like mine—was planned without your consent.”

  Danger-Is-Calling walked away, his staff rapping on the stars at his feet. Indris called out to his retreating back, “Will we meet again?”

  “Before the end of everything.”

  Indris watched him vanish into shadows and distance. With a last fond glance at the greatest store of knowledge in the world, Indris gathered his meager belongings and walked in the direction of the gates of Isenandar. With each turn around a pillar, the library became less substantial. The stars in the floor and ceiling vanished first. Followed by the massive pillars, which shrank into the sand below. The hard floor became pliant, then sandy. Striding past a pair of canted stones, Indris stood on the windy expanse of the Dead Flat.

  He turned. The entrance to Isenandar was still there, visible to him now he knew where to look. An open invitation, should Indris ever need to return. He was not sure whether it boded well or ill.

  Indris stretched his thoughts to Femensetri, and found her in Amarqa along with Mari and their friends. Rather than risk traveling the Drear, Indris called up the ancient formulae he had recently learned, a cleaner way to cross the vast distances of Īa. Complex formulae unfolded in Indris’s mind, informing him of the force required to warp the distance between what he had always previously thought of as here and there. He flexed the ahm, and a corner in the fabric of the world opened as here and there became one.