The WorldMight

by Cyril L. C. Bussiere

  “His coming would change everything. For, you see, it is him who convinced Retens and Kytra to leave their lives of solitude and come teach their knowledge to the world. Reluctant at first, they eventually agreed to go to his village and speak to the shepherd’s people. And so, for another thirty years they taught of what they knew to whoever came to them. Their following grew from the few people who sat at their side by the small pond on the outskirt of the shepherd’s village to large crowds coming from every corners of the land. Some came and went, taking with them their teachings as stories, others stayed a while and learned of some of the techniques before returning to their homes, others yet became dedicated followers and together with the lovers formed a tightly knit community. It is by the end of that period that the first rift happened.

  “Over the course of those years the number of practitioners grew constantly. Customs naturally developed over time and when the community reached numbers in the thousands, the skeleton of a hierarchy was put in place. By that point, practitioners had wedded one another and their offspring had been raised in the light of the lovers’ teachings. This first generation was enlightened beyond what their parents had achieved and learned of the link much faster. That in turn enabled the community to reach ever deeper into the Other World. The paths to the Ground and Higher Layers and the extent to which the layers could be influenced were ever more clearly defined. It was then that the dangers of unformed minds dwelling too deeply in the Other World became apparent and that the potentially horrendous effects of the manipulations of the Higher Layer came to light.

  “One evening Retens and Kytra were resting after a long day of teaching and sitting. Their followers were going by their tasks and the children played joyfully around the central plaza of the village. But one child, the most gifted child of the community and, the stories say, the grandson of the shepherd who had first come across Retens and Kytra, was sitting by himself dwelling in the Higher Layer, something a child his age should not have been able to do. About what happened next, the reports differ, each more gruesome than the next. The child, most likely unintentionally, killed one of his playmates. What all the accounts agree upon is that this event triggered the realization that younglings lacked both the emotional and mental maturity to have access to such potentially destructive capabilities.

  “Retens and Kytra, in consult with the elders of the community, decided that the path to the Other World should not be taught to children, at least not until they were in their late teens. And so it was agreed and a timeline of what teachings to impart children as they grew up was outlined. On that, Retens and Kytra saw eye-to-eye. But as time went by Retens became increasingly persuaded that, given the potential horrors the manipulation of the Higher Layer could bring forth, those techniques should be forbidden. But Kytra disagreed. She thought that more careful measures should be taken to ensure that such incidents did not happen again, but that forbidding the techniques altogether would only impede the advancement of the practitioners. Retens and Kytra were growing old by then, and their love was strong enough to sustain their disagreeing, even on such a crucial subject. But however close their community of followers was, it would turn out that it did not have such a strong bond holding it together.

  “Some years later, Retens and Kytra died, on the same night, surrounded by their followers. They were buried at the foot of the old tree under which they had spent the first part of their life together.

  “From there on, it is a tale as old as the world; a tale of ego and fear. The community of practitioners slowly broke apart into groups. Some followed Retens in his decision to forbid manipulations of the Higher Layer while others followed Kytra and dwelled ever deeper in it. It did not take long before these first two groups further split. They branched out to the rhythm of self-advancement, hunger for power and fear of that which is different. Thankfully, because of the nature of the practice, its demanding discipline, the utter dedication needed for the smallest advancement on the path, and, more importantly, the strength of the pull, the abuses were limited and decreased dramatically over time. However, over the centuries following the death of Retens and Kytra, the teachings of the great masters were distorted. Remember that many more people had come, listened, and left than had become dedicated followers. Of those, many compiled what they had heard into story books devoid of actual practical meaning. And over time the great masters were turned into empty deities, their teachings turned into outlandish tales and rewritten or embellished at the whims of those in power or those aspiring to power. Centuries later still, when entire people had turned to those writings as holy texts, they were yet again changed to fit one or another’s selfish purpose, further gutted of their significance and truth in the interest of some and eventually turned into dogmas, doctrines, and rites; things so rigid it resembled in no aspect the masters’ original teachings.

  “And that is where your Book of Hethens comes from, my king. It is nothing but the pale shadow of the original teachings of the masters. That is the reason why I did not want to share my knowledge with you. But before you say a thing, I beg you to let me finish, for this is but the start of my story.

  “My people were direct descent of the followers of Retens, or Hethens in your mythos. Shortly after the original rift, my ancestors left the birthplace of the community. They probably intended to quickly find another area to settle in, but conflicts, drought and other factors prevented that. They moved from one place to the next until, probably before anyone truly realized it, they had become nomads. My ancestors wandered the large continents across the Empty Sea for a millennium, keeping the spirit of Retens and Kytra and their teachings alive. The techniques enabling manipulation of the Higher Layer were forbidden and, purposefully, were not passed on to the next generations. Within a few decades those potentially disastrous techniques were erased from the collective knowledge.

  “Eventually my ancestors crossed the Empty Sea and reached Ho-Orlan, or in my native tongue, Bryin-Lan, the Land of Dwellers, the land beyond the Great Barrier. There, they found a place to settle and prosper. Our newly established communities remained fairly small and simple. For you see, a satisfied people has no hungry ego to divert its energies into prideful accomplishments or meaningless competition. It has no taste for bettering itself in regard to its brothers or neighbors. On an individual level, one is his own measure and is indifferent to the achievements of others. Hence, my people lived simple and fulfilling lives.

  “If you were to cross the peaks of the Great Barrier, you would encounter a land of valleys and hills, of rivers and lakes fed by majestic waterfalls rushing down the slopes of the monumental mountains surrounding it on all sides. A beautiful land, where the sun rises and sets in awe-inspiring displays of light and colors, where thin clouds envelop the mornings like the tender embrace of a loved one, where game abounds in lush forests and clear-water lakes, and where the bounty of the land is many and diverse. An isolated land now, but which used to open onto the Empty Sea to the east between two mighty mountains. There at the end of a wide road was a small fisherman village, or so did our elders report. For, long ago, many generations before my birth, the mountains shook and the sea rose like a mighty wall and clashed with them in a great tremor. The mountain peaks came crashing down and the only access to the outside world was forever closed to us. But that did not matter to my people, for they never had much interest in exploration of the outer world. The truth of the world lies within and it is only within that one can find true fulfillment. For, in a sense, that world is the only world. But, forgive me, my lord, I digress.

  “My people lived a peaceful existence. I myself was fourteen and had many dear friends, my fellow practitioners, my brothers, my revered masters, the elders of our community, wise beyond imagination, their minds vaster than the expanse of the sky, and my sweet Ladlia, my betrothed, the one I was to share a roof with. We were all closer than you could imagine; the link does that. But they’re all gone now. All because of the Sisterhood. How the
y managed to come into Bryin-Lan, or why, will forever be a mystery. We all felt their approaching. It was a very exciting thing in a sense. I remember it clearly. It was an early morning, and I was preparing food with some of the elders in the quietness of a brother’s home, as was my daily task. We sensed their coming at once. It was at first a subtle vibration in the Ground Layer which soon propagated to the Higher Layer. Eventually the vibration turned into a pulsation the beat of which grew in intensity and rhythm steadily. And then they were among us. They walked into our village before midday, as the last of the morning mist was lifting. It was a strange sight for sure; a group shy of a hundred, all females, young and middle aged women, teenagers and children, but no elderly. All female, that is why I named them the Sisterhood, so I had something to call them for myself.

  “To this day I do not know what their purpose was. They did not speak our tongue, and we not theirs. But something was amiss. They looked unbridled, savage even, not in the way travelers sometimes do when they have just finished a long journey; no, not disheveled, exhausted or muddied. No, it was something else entirely, a light in their eyes, even in the eyes of the little ones. Unbridled is the best way I can describe it, as if there was nothing in them that had ever been held back.

  “The elders were the first to understand what that meant. But it was already too late by then. We had brought them food, for they looked hungry, and water, for they looked thirsty. A few words had been exchanged that neither side understood and we were eating together, mostly in silence. Ironically, the event that precipitated the end of my people was not directed at us but was a meaningless squabble amongst them. Maybe if we had not tried to intervene things would have unfolded differently. I have spent numerous sleepless nights rehashing how things could have been different, but I have yet to find a thread that does not lead to the end of my people.

  “One of their younglings reached for the dried meat in one of the teenager’s bowl; a harmless act amongst my people. But the teenager reacted violently and smacked the little one across the face brutally. The group started quarrelling amongst themselves. The youngling was bleeding from her nose and looked furious, like a threatened beast does when cornered by hunters. She closed her eyes and one of our elders, terror in his voice, yelled for her to stop. But she could not have understood him, nor would she have listened had she been able to. I think the little one was going to use the Higher Layer to get at the teenager that hit her. Such a thing was forbidden amongst my people. The stories of the consequences of manipulating the Higher Layer were frequently told by the elders and fresh in everyone’s mind. He tried to stop her. He raised a wall in the Ground Layer against the will of the little one. I’m sure it had been nothing more than a reflex on his part. He tried to protect the teenager, nothing more. But the Sisterhood did not interpret his action as such and saw it as an overt attack against one of their own. What followed were carnage, utter chaos and destruction.

  “The visitors unleashed their will of death upon my people. They ripped through the Higher Layer at us with the ferocity of starving beasts. It was madness and we did not stand a chance. They came after our young, our elders, females or men, none of it made a difference to them. And all we could do was raise walls against their attacks. We could not manipulate the Higher Layer, but we could still access it and raise feeble protections from it. We tried to use the Ground Layer to stop them, but to no avail. For what can a thrown knife do when your opponent can rip through your very core with a thought? The youngest died first, for they did not have the means to protect themselves. I will spare you the descriptions of what my people endured; you saw what I did to a simple chair.

  “Children that we were we fled; five of us headed for the mountains, the screams of our families resounding behind us. The greatest shame of my life, that day was. The visions still haunt me. There was nothing else we could have done, and yet…

  “We climbed for what felt like days before we even dared to slow down. We were just boys and girls, lost, without food or water. The rest is a blur, a white, harsh, cold blur. I woke up alone in the hospice of the temple of Jarlong, a small town in the southeastern-most part of the Rodan province. I never was to know what happened to my brethren. More likely than not they gave their lives so that I could survive the Great Barrier and I am the last of my people.”

  The temple runner stopped talking. He was staring straight ahead, as he had during the entire narration of his people’s tale. His face was a somber mask of shadows and his gaze was vacant, lost in the now not-so-distant slopes of the Great Barrier and memories too fresh, feelings too raw despite the decades that had passed. Prince Hedgard had followed the tale as it unfolded over Master Baccus’s features; at times light, almost joyful, at others plainly painful, and then growing increasingly dark as it approached its inevitable conclusion. Now he could feel the sadness weighing on Master Baccus’s shoulders as if it were pressing heavily on his own. Thunder roared above them and lightning went crashing to their right some ways away behind the tree line. Master Baccus’s face tightened into a stony mask and his eyes shone dark and empty.

  “My king, the Sisterhood has most likely come to Alymphia,” he said between clenched teeth.

  As if punctuating the temple runner’s words the sky above them broke open in a barrage of rain drops that came slamming hard against them. The path sloped up now, the earth turning into mud. Without breaking stride the column of horsemen rushed into the storm.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The prince was running through the rooms of the Monastery of the Lost Voices. The Father of fathers, who, it was said had such an all-encompassing knowledge that he held all the words in the world, was here. The prince was sure of it now. The self-proclaimed carekeeper, the old man Silvius had hinted at such. Although he had been deceived before and he knew that it meant little. But then the boy had pointed the way and called for a father. And he had seen his love too. He did not understand how it happened but he definitely saw her, even if it had only been for a fleeting fraction of a breath. That vision energized him like little had in many years. He would find the Father of fathers and then save his love from her scaly prison. The mythical man had to be here, why else would his love appear to him? He could still see her tender features; the soft contour of her mouth, the naturally elegant slant of her jaw, the playful light of her eyes, and so much more, all he loved, all he adored.

  “I’ll find the Father of fathers today,” he swore to himself.

  He had waited long enough, years for that matter, and underwent numerous trials to find the Monastery of the Lost Voices. If the Father of fathers was hiding in that lost fortress of a monastery, he would find him now; never mind protocol and courtesy, he would not wait any longer.

  He had dropped his pack on the floor and left it behind with the boy, in the serving room. And the child’s mad screams still hammering at his eardrums, he had flown through the dining room where the carekeeper served them soup amongst the silent monks and lightly jumped onto the dais at the far end of the room. Instinctively he had dashed through the opening on the left, the figure of the dark-hooded monks clear in his head. Now he rushed down narrow corridors with low ceilings that seemed to twist endlessly onto themselves. He crossed austere antechambers that led to hallways and sparsely furnished parlors with too many entries. He peaked through open doors as he went only to find monks in their brown robes frozen in lecture or prayer. None reacted to his slamming doors or his rushing through the spaces they occupied. Not one spared him a look. He ran from room to room, from hallways to corridors to more parlors. In their bareness every rooms and hallways looked the same and the prince started feeling disoriented. Had he not already passed that nook with the small candle or that door with the crack along its length? He rushed blindly through the monastery, the shrill cry of the boy dringe him forward, in what he sensed was the right direction.

  Eventually, he reached a low, long, gloomy room. Rows of bookshelves packed the room form wall to wall and quic
kly disappeared into shadows. Only a few candles, placed on a handful of desks interspersed between the shelves, shone their frail lights over the parchments and the dusty volumes. He rushed down the rows of shelves, keeping an eye out for an improbable black robe. He passed the last lit desk and was forced to slow down. He ventured into thickening darkness, the blade at his waist bumping against the side of shelves despite his trying to stay squarely in the middle of the central aisle. After a while his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness and when the room ended he was able to discern the outline of a wooden door boxed in by the last set of shelves on the far wall. He fumbled for the door handle, depressed it and shouldered the door open onto an even deeper darkness. The first steps he took into the lightless room told him that it was vast. The sound of his boots on the stone floor stretched nebulously around him before lazily bouncing back his way. By the sound of it, the ceiling must have been quite a ways up. And similarly, he wagered that the walls were at least fifty feet away on either side of him and that the back wall across the darkness-shrouded space was two hundred feet away if not more. The prince waited a few seconds for his eyes to get used to the absence of light. When they did not, he slowly ventured forward. He cautiously tip-toed his way into the large room and did not encounter any obstacle in his path. He was beginning to wonder if it was completely empty when the stone at his neck started shining a dull, dark-green light that seeped gloomily through the linen cloth of his shirt. At first the prince thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him, that the complete darkness surrounding him was forcing nonexistent shapes onto his retinas. But a few steps later the light became too bright for him to impart it to a trick of his vision. He stopped and pulled the stone from under his shirt. It glowed weakly in his hand. At its center a single point emitted a faint, emerald light which spread to its round, polished surface and diffused mutedly out of it, flowing in lazy waves rather than shining like one would expect. He turned the stone in his fingers, twisting the chain as he did. It was secured in a metal clasp that left much of its backside showing. From the back, the point of light could be seen but the light itself did not radiate out. He studied it for a while, looking at it from different angles, trying to understand what he was observing.