A Place Beyond The Map

by Samuel Thews

  CHAPTER 29

  Cernon

  “You…you know me?” Phinnegan asked with some trepidation.

  “I have always known you. Even before you knew yourself, before your mother brought you into your world, I knew you. You are the Balance.”

  “Balance? Balance to what?”

  “So many questions,” Cernon chided, stepping surely over the roots at the base of the large, ancient tree. “All will be made clear to you in time. Come.”

  Phinnegan grasped the hand that was thrust down to him, pulling himself to his feet. Dusting himself off, his hand brushed against the small book in his pocket. He had nearly forgotten about it. He thought to pull it out, but while Cernon seemed to mean him no harm, he sensed an otherworldly power in the half-man that made him uneasy.

  “What is this place…the Grove? They called it the Circle.”

  “It goes by many names. But to be true, it is the Center,” Cernon replied cryptically.

  “Center? Center of what?” Phinnegan asked.

  “It is the Center,” Cernon replied. His eyes stayed steady on Phinnegan, who broke first and looked at his feet.

  “The things I saw…” Phinnegan began, but he was cut-off brusquely.

  “Visions.”

  “Visions, then…why did I see them? I couldn’t do anything. I tried, but they all vanished.”

  Cernon snorted, throwing his head back in something between anger and humor.

  “You were not supposed to do anything. You saw them because you were supposed to see them. There was no answer to what you saw, no response. You humans are always so concerned with the answer, with what you must do. But it is rare indeed that the answer is ever as important as the question, let alone more so. It is the struggle, the awareness of it, which is paramount. This too you will learn in time.” Cernon frowned, tilting his head so that he looked skyward into the fog.

  “But now, time is your enemy.”

  “My enemy? Why?”

  “You have a task. You must be the Balance.”

  “The Balance,” Phinnegan echoed. “You said that before. What do you mean, I am the Balance?”

  Cernon turned away from Phinnegan, striding a short distance from the great tree.

  “In nature, there is always a balance,” he began, his back still towards Phinnegan.

  “There is Fire!” he cried, whirling and throwing an arm towards Phinnegan. A white-hot flame shot past him, incinerating the tuft of moss at the base of the tree, further spreading a trail of fire into the surrounding moss.

  “And then, there is Water,” Cernon said more softly flicking a hand in the direction of the creek so that an arc of water flowed toward the fire, dousing it with a hiss.

  “There is Light,” Cernon cried again, his strong voice ringing in the grove. Around them the fog dissipated as a bright sun appeared high above, bathing the clearing in a brilliant light.

  “And there is Dark,” Cernon intoned. The sun vanished as quickly as it had come, the fog returning in a heavy rush, thicker than before. A blackness settled over them for several moments before returning them to the dimly-lit fog.

  “There is Order and Chaos,” he said, turning back to face Phinnegan. “Predator and Prey, Earth and Air, as well as many others. Each is deadly, and each is life-giving. There are two sides to every coin.”

  “I understand,” Phinnegan said. “But what does this have to do with me?”

  “Let us have an understanding,” the half-man said as he approached Phinnegan. Towering above, some seven feet tall, his brown-flecked green eyes stared down at Phinnegan.

  “I care not what happens to this world, or any other, in the end. Time will go on. But,” he said, pausing to raise a slender finger. “But, there must be Balance.”

  “I still don’t understand…” Phinnegan said quietly.

  “Can you think of no one in this world who seeks to destroy that Balance? Who seeks a power for himself that is beyond what any one mortal should wield?”

  “Vermillion,” Phinnegan whispered.

  “That is the one.”

  “But, what can he do? Destroy this world?”

  “Destroy the world? Bah! He is like the many waves of the ocean crashing against the shore. Try as he might, he will never succeed fully. He aims too high. However,” Cernon paused, his eyes narrowing, “just as a storm swells the power of the sea, rendering it capable of destruction normally beyond its means, there are things that he may attain that would swell his power to unfathomable levels.” Cernon stopped and arched an eyebrow.

  “I believe you know of such a source of power.”

  Phinnegan swallowed, thinking back to his vision.

  “The Great Stone.”

  “Indeed. Such a thing would give Vermillion power to alter this world significantly. In the end, he will fail, as do all who seek such power. But for the inhabitants of this world…his failure may well come too late.”

  “The Faë?” Phinnegan asked. Cernon nodded.

  “I must admit, I am fond of their kind, particularly the Young. In the end, I will not save them, though it is within my power to do so - to so directly interfere is, regrettably…forbidden. But, I have brought them you.”

  “You are a very special person, Phinnegan Qwyk,” Cernon, said, the thin lips turning up in a smirk.

  “You’re not the first to tell me that,” Phinnegan said quietly. “But what can I do to help the Faë? How could I possibly stop him?”

  “My vision does not show me how, or if you even will. It is,” his lips curled in contempt, “limited. However, it does show me that you can.”

  “But-“

  “Do you not bear the Mark? Few humans enter this world,” Cernon said before leaning down suddenly, his face inches from Phinnegan’s.

  “Fewer still can do magic.”

  “Magic?!” Phinnegan exclaimed. “I can’t do magic.”

  “Can’t you?” Cernon said with a smirk. “The Mark says that you can. You could not bear it otherwise. That was a test.”

  Phinnegan’s eyes narrowed.

  “Test? What kind of test?”

  “When I learned of your passing into this world,” Cernon began, stooping down to allow a small, red snake to entwine itself around his arm, “I believed you to be the one who could be a Balance. The one who could find a way to stop him. But it is perilous for me to interfere as I sought, and now have, and so I had to be sure. It was a tricky thing. How to test you?” His lips curled into a smile as he raised himself to his full height.

  “But then Vermillion made his first mistake. When he cast the enchantment over his daughter, seeking to further broaden his power, he opened the door for me. A gholem is a creature of the earth, and I am the Keeper of this earth.”

  “You mean,” Phinnegan whispered, “Emerald?”

  “Yes, that one. He opened her to me. She resisted at first, but soon, she listened. Though in the guise of her father’s work, it is my bidding she does now.”

  “It was you, then,” Phinnegan said, anger creeping into his voice. “You had me brought to this castle - to him.”

  “I had you brought to me!” Cernon said sharply in correction.

  “When I learned of your escape from Féradoon, I sent her to follow you. Her father, too, learned of your value, but only after you had vanished. His orders coincided with mine, leaving him unaware of her new allegiance. She was there when the Faolchú attacked you; there to slip the Warber into your pocket in the courtyard of Heronhawk; there in the Winding Wood to see your Marking. She thought to take you then…but there was still one piece missing. A piece without which you could never hope to accomplish what you must.”

  “The book,” Phinnegan mumbled, his hand moving absently to rest on the leather-bound book in his pocket.

  “Yes, the book. You have it with you, yes? Show it to me.”

  Phinnegan moved to take the book from his pocket, but hesitated. This man, half-man, creature, had done him no harm, it was true. But the une
asiness Phinnegan felt in his presence remained.

  “Do you fear me, human?” Cernon said, barking a laugh. “As well you should, for I could destroy you in a moment. I have no need of that book. No, it is for you, and only you. Still, I am curious as to its properties. Show it to me.”

  Phinnegan pulled the book from his pocket, hesitating only briefly before passing it to Cernon. The half-man surveyed the cover for a moment before opening the book, flipping casually through its pages. With a grunt, he slammed the book shut and tossed it back to Phinnegan who only just saved it from splashing in the stream.

  “Do you know the purpose of this book?” Cernon asked with a wave of his hand, slender fingers twirling.

  “I think so,” Phinnegan replied, staring down at the symbol etched into the cover of the book. “It tells me what to do, like it told me to enter the Gate, but to enter alone. Emerald said it meant I must not let her father pass.”

  “Partly,” Cernon said, pacing slowly in front of the ancient tree. “One of its secrets is to show you a path, but not necessarily the only path. You always have a choice in whether to follow it. For there to truly be Balance, there must always be Free Will.”

  “But…what if I had let him enter behind me? Would he have found…found the power you said he seeks?”

  “Possibly,” Cernon said. “But the peculiar thing about a labyrinth is that you never truly know what you might find in the end. It is a journey to the Center, to your center. The visions you see tell you much about yourself, your loyalties, your fears. With a wretch like Vermillion, the visions may have driven him to madness - or worse. I trust the book said as much.”

  Phinnegan thought back to the book’s warning to him. It had spoken of purging the unworthy.

  “So…if he had followed me…he may have found the power he seeks, or he may have gone mad?”

  “More or less,” Cernon said with a sideways tilt of his head. “The book showed you a path, the path with the least risk for the wrong person to enter the labyrinth.”

  “Emerald said the book always gave that message…”

  “And she is likely right. Any person who had yet to understand the book’s full power would not know the dangers of one such as Vermillion being allowed to enter this labyrinth. Four millennia it has been sealed, and for good reason.”

  Phinnegan sat in silence for a moment, turning the book over in his hands. At length he spoke, opening the book to stare at its blank pages as he did.

  “You said someone who had to understand the book’s full power. What else can it do?”

  “The uses and secrets of this book are many, but perhaps most pertinent to you,” Cernon paused, arcing his hand above his head, creating a slight disturbance in the air, just visible to the eye, “it will show you how to use your powers.”

  “My powers?” Phinnegan said with a small laugh. “What can I do?”

  “Tell me,” Cernon began, locking his eyes on Phinnegan. “How did you stop Vermillion from following you through the Gate? It is old, yes, and I imagine nearly rusted shut. Still, he would have opened it eventually. What did you do?”

  Phinnegan thought back to the moment in front of the Gate, the moment when the inexplicable happened.

  “I closed the Gate.”

  “And how did you accomplish such a task? How could you, a mere weakling of a human boy, stop the might of the most dangerous creature ever to tread upon the soil of this world?” Cernon’s eyes bored into Phinnegan. “How did you close the Gate?”

  Phinnegan broke his eyes away from the brown-flecked green of Cernon, instead casting them upon the book.

  “I…I told it to.”

  “You told it to,” Cernon echoed softly. “Do you not think this is power? When Vermillion and a hundred Aged sought to open the Gate,” Cernon’s voice thundered, before he continued in a whisper. “You closed it with a word. A single word.”

  “But…but I’ve never been able to do anything like that before. How did I do it?”

  “You are too young to feel the magic within you. It has only begun to awaken since you came to this world. But here, in the Grove, your powers are stronger. Though you cannot feel them, they come to you in your moment of need, just as they did at the Gate.”

  “But how did I do it?”

  The great half-man shrugged.

  “Magic is different for all races of mortals, particularly for one of the Chosen.”

  “Chosen…I’ve heard that word before,” Phinnegan whispered, recalling the word as spoken by Mariella.

  “This book is meant only for your kind, only for the Chosen.”

  “What does it mean, Chosen?”

  “The book will show you,” Cernon said, nodding in the direction of the book in Phinnegan’s hands. “It can show you many things…how to harness your gifts outside the Gate…what you need to know to be the Balance.”

  Phinnegan flipped quietly through the book’s pages.

  “How? The book is completely blank.”

  “Is it?” Cernon asked, an edge of surprise perceivable in his tone.

  “Yes,” Phinnegan said, closing the book. “Completely.”

  “Ah, I did not foresee this,” Cernon mumbled to himself. “Of course, the wretch has pushed events…they move too quickly…there is not much time…”

  Suddenly, Cernon leapt forward, startling Phinnegan when the half-man’s bulk landed just in front of him.

  “Vermillion has pushed events ahead of their natural course. But the book cannot be persuaded. It will not reveal itself to you until you are ready.”

  “But you said-“

  “I know what I said,” Cernon snapped. “I also said that you are too young. But what is, is. The book is of no help to you, yet, and Vermillion closes in on his goal too quickly.” Cernon paused, tilting his head back, gazing into the sky. When he turned his eyes back to Phinnegan, they smoldered in a green fire.

  “You are young, and weak. But perhaps…”

  “What? What?” Phinnegan insisted when the half-man’s voice trailed off.

  “Perhaps you can serve as a conduit for one spell. You will not understand it, but I can embed it within you. When the time is right, you can release it outside the labyrinth to stop him.”

  “Embed?” Phinnegan recoiled in horror. “How? Will it…hurt?”

  Cernon shrugged impatiently, a scowl darkening his face.

  “Time runs short. Even now your friends are being brought to him. Yes, those two,” Cernon said with a nod, his lips upturning into a snarl. “Captured and bringing the very object that he seeks right into his waiting hands.”

  “Then the vision I saw was true,” Phinnegan whispered, his eyes widening.

  If one vision was true…

  “Wait,” Phinnegan blurted. “Can you send me home?”

  “Home?” Cernon said with surprise. “Impossible! You have been brought here for a purpose. You cannot leave until you have served that purpose.”

  “How do you know what purpose-“ Phinnegan began defiantly, but he was cut off by the half-man’s thundering voice.

  “Because it is I who have brought you here! Do NOT presume to lecture me, human.”

  Phinnegan’s shoulders sagged and he thought for a moment before speaking up quietly.

  “What about Emerald? Can you reverse what has been done to her? Can you stop it?”

  “Stop it? Why would I want to stop it? The closer she comes to being fully a creature of the earth, the better for us all. Then she would be completely under my control.”

  “But…can you?”

  Cernon’s eyes narrowed and he regarded Phinnegan warily.

  “Yes…I could stop what is being done.”

  “So you can make her fully Faë again? Make her eyes only green and no longer gray?”

  “I said I can stop it, but not reverse it. What’s done is done. I cannot change what has happened, but yes, I could stop the transformation. But I won’t.”

  Phinnegan shuffled his feet nervousl
y before peering up at the giant half-man.

  “What if I asked you to?”

  Cernon threw his head back, guffawing a great laugh.

  “If you asked? Do you take me for some genie of the lamp that your race has concocted as a slave to the wishes of their human masters? Some carnival magician to do your bidding for a penny?”

  “You said I had a choice,” Phinnegan mumbled, sheepishly.

  “What did you say, boy?”

  “I said,” Phinnegan began weakly, but cleared his throat before continuing more strongly, “you said everything is about balance. Balance and free will, choices.” Phinnegan raised his head, his brown eyes steady.

  “I choose to help her.”

  “You do not have the knowledge to make such a choice,” Cernon growled, his hooves scuffing the ground in anger.

  “Who are you to say?” Phinnegan retorted, growing bolder.

  “Who am I?” Cernon sputtered, his eyes ablaze with an angry green flame. “He challenges me!” Cernon cried, throwing his arms wide, as if speaking to a throng of listeners. “He challenges me! Here!”

  “He challenges me,” he finished, his voice falling to a whisper.

  “I am not challenging you. But if you will not let me go home and say that I am here for a purpose, let me choose.”

  “Your choice is a mistake,” Cernon said sharply, his eyes smoldering. “You are the only one who can stop him from gaining the power that he seeks.”

  “How do you know that what I want to do is wrong? That I cannot stop him some other way?”

  “What other way? You have no idea how to use your powers. He will turn you to dust.”

  “Cernon,” Phinnegan said curiously. “Why do you care so much? You said you didn’t care what happened to this world, yet you want me to destroy Vermillion to save it, even when I choose to do something else.”

  The half-man’s face twisted in a suppressed rage. Phinnegan sensed some deep division within this creature. The slender fingers of Cernon’s hands curled into a tight fist that shook by his sides.

  “Fah!” he barked, casting a hand towards the ancient tree that had served as his perch when he first appeared. Before Phinnegan’s eyes, a roughly hewn wooden cup began to form on the side of the tree, growing directly from the trunk like an oddly formed branch. When the cup was finished, Cernon pointed at its coarse form and spoke in a commanding voice.