The WorldMight

by Cyril L. C. Bussiere

  The man eyed his impromptu visitor for a moment. Before Cassien had a chance to say a thing, he invited him in with a slow and measured gesture of a hand that bore both gentleness and subdued strength. The monk stepped back inside and Cassien followed him in.

  The warmth of the dwellings at first intensified the coldness that enwrapped Cassien and more painful shivers spread over his skin. He closed the door silently behind him and found himself before a large room, sunken a foot into the ground. A simple bed of stacked sheets of various colors was against the wall furthest from the door. A low table with scrolls on it stood in the middle of the room and a small fire burnt in the corner to Cassien’s left. There were wooden shelves against the walls with few random items on them. The place oozed peacefulness. It felt of the meditation chamber back in the Great Temple in Syndjya. Despite its bareness, or maybe because of it, it had a warmth and coziness that invited to introspection. Cassien was immediately drawn to the floor, an instinctual reaction to the atmosphere of the dwellings only heightened by the pull of the void at his center. He glanced at the monk.

  “Sit. Must.” he said.

  The monk showed no reaction to the words but his eyes flashed understanding and without a word he went to the fire and sat in front of it. Cassien hurriedly dropped his pack with his blade still attached to it on the floor. He stepped into the room and sat as well, by the small table. He closed his eyes and at once was drawn to the space beyond his eyelids where the words of his master filled his mind almost despite him. He sat in silence and, trusting the unfathomable origin at his center, he lost himself to the flow of repetition.

  Some time later, he drifted back to the world and the void was gone. For a while he basked in the warm and quiet state he once more found himself in. His breathing was measured and his pulse slow. The fire popped gently in its corner.

  He opened his eyes and looked around. The monk sat on his bed, to Cassien’s left. His thin fingers were entrenched in his long, silky beard. His eyes, bright and deep like a summer sky, rested impassively on his impromptu guest.

  Cassien returned his stare for a bit. Then, not knowing what to do, he nodded to him. That was when, through the glow that surrounded him, Aria came calling for him. He could not tell whether he actually heard her voice or if it came to him from a partially remembered dream. But all the same, he was instantaneously filled with the knowledge of her presence. His head snapped in the direction of the call, beyond the walls of the monk’s dwelling, toward the peak of the mountain. The monk imperceptibly moved his head in the same direction as Cassien’s and when he returned his gaze to him the light in his eyes had changed. He quietly pronounced words that Cassien did not understand. It sounded like Cahifuan, but the words made little sense to him. The corners of the monk’s mouth curved slightly upward and he repeated what he had said more slowly.

  “Ca-ho. Nit.” he said.

  The first word, Ca-ho, Cassien knew to mean several different things, amongst which were ‘world’, and ‘what is’, and ‘all’. More than once during his crossing of Cahifu he had seen one of his fellow travelers utter that word while throwing his or her arms open in an all-encompassing gesture. The other word, Nit, he had heard before as well, although he never fully grasped its meaning. It was a more abstract concept. He wagered that at times it meant ‘want’ but could also mean ‘can’, or ‘fate’.

  “Ca-ho. Nit.” the monk repeated.

  Cassien shook his head slightly to signify that he did not understand. The monk pointed in the direction Cassien had looked and repeated the words once more.

  When Cassien did not look like he was closer to understanding him the monk stood up. He gestured for him to come and went to the door. Cassien followed him into the cold and as he stepped out, Aria’s calling became stronger. She was near; Cassien knew it as clearly as he could see the sky above him. The monk walked slowly to the middle of the plaza formed by the handful of buildings. He wore leather sandals and his bare feet sank deep into the snow with every step. If he were uncomfortable wearing only a robe and sandals in such cold weather it did not show. Once they reached the center of the plaza, the monk let out a short, strident noise reminiscent of a bird’s cry. It tore through the quiet space before dissipating into a series of weak chimes.

  A moment went by when nothing happened. Then three red doors opened onto three monks, robed in yellow, all with long white beards and sharp, liquid blue eyes. They slowly walked toward them, their leather sandals slinging handfuls of snow around their ankles with every step. They settled in the center of the plaza with the same impassible expression on their face, the blue of their eyes unsettling in its stillness. The monk who had led Cassien there addressed the others. His speech was fast, his accent more fluid than what Cassien had heard so far in Cahifu. He only caught a word or two, here and there, not enough to make sense of what was being said. The mysterious ‘Ca-ho Nit’ was mentioned several times. The other monks listened and when he was done they slowly nodded in approval and turned to Cassien.

  “Ca-ho. Nit. Sleep,” one of the monks said slowly.

  He smiled to Cassien who looked confused.

  “Sacred. Respect,” said another, slowly as well.

  “I. Need.” Cassien said, pointing in the direction of the mountain.

  “Ca-ho. Nit. Sleep,” the fourth monk repeated.

  “What? Ca-ho. Nit.” Cassien asked.

  The monks slightly angled their chins in a question. The three that had been called upon looked at the one at Cassien’s side. He, in turn, closed his eyes in acquiescence.

  “Come.” he simply said and the four of them started toward the building with the long spike reaching for the sky on its roof.

  They walked in a line, the monk who had opened his dwelling to Cassien, the charitable monk as Cassien thought of him, first and Cassien last. They passed the larger building which front façade faced east, away from the rest of the buildings. It was painted white and harbored a large, red double-door with gold markings on it. On each side of the door were imposing, wooden beasts with long, snake-like bodies of golden scales that shot skyward from the icy ground and culminated above the door panels into nightmarish faces. They had long muzzles with square jaws and scaly lips turned-up over long teeth. Two pairs of limbs adorned with threatening claws protruded from their mid-sections. Their monstrous heads looked down wolfishly from above the door and seemed intent on devouring those approaching the building. Above their mouths were deep-set, beady eyes which lacked pupils and gave the sculptures a ghostly presence that reminded Cassien of the statue of Hethens in the meditation chamber of the Great Temple in Syndjya.

  The beasts felt familiar and terrifying at the same time and at their sight a shiver ran down Cassien’s spine. The monks stopped in front of the building and bowed to the beasts before resuming their walk. They passed another wall with an entryway of gold-and-red columns and continued on a path framed by knee-high stone tablets that sprouted from the snow like flat, gray bushes every few yards.

  The path hedged left along the mountainside for a while then forked, sloping down to their right, presumably toward the plains far below, and inching up to their left toward the twin peaks. Cassien followed the monks on the path leading upward.

  Quickly the path narrowed dangerously. The mountainside turned into a dizzying drop to their right and stretched almost vertically into a wall to their left. Cassien’s boots slipped on the frozen snow that covered the steep path wile the monks did not seem bothered in the least by the condition of the terrain. They moved steadily forward, their feet not once betraying their advance.

  The path kept narrowing until Cassien could barely fit on the slender ledge and he had to flatten himself against the mountainside and move sideways to keep advancing. And all the while, Aria’s call grew stronger.

  Eventually, they reached a flat projecting ridge which faced the mouth of a cave. The monks lined up in front of the large opening and bowed to it as one while Cassien stood behind them. D
espite the bright sun shining behind him he could see flames flickering in the dark mouth of the cave. After bowing, the monks entered the cave.

  Cassien did not follow them immediately. He looked around. His surroundings were mostly sky now, blue and deep and infinite. The sun was a cold, yellow spot slightly above eye level. He felt its rays but only in a remote way. He could feel his heart pumping blood in a slow rhythmic thump that shuffled warmth in his face. His breathing was slow too, despite the climb, and the puffs of vapor escaping his mouth felt foreign. He was so close to Aria and yet he hesitated. How could she be here, alive and well, when he himself had barely made it?

  All that had happened since Aria was taken suddenly weighed on him. All he went through, the enormity of it all, the surreal nature of much of it, seemed to finally catch up with him. It was as if a partition that had been raised in his mind to shelter him from what he had to go through finally broke.

  His heart sped up in his ears and his vision blurred with tears. He knew Aria was here and yet, at the last moment, he was paralyzed with doubts. How could she be here? And what if she was not, what would he do then? He would be alone, utterly alone. His throat tightened and his breath shortened as panic seeped into him and under his frozen coat his muscles stiffened.

  All the pain he underwent, all he had pushed himself through suddenly came crashing onto him and he almost collapsed under the shock. His jaws clenched against it all and tears poured from his eyes and froze on their way down his face. He dropped to his knees, his chest so tight he could barely withstand it, and he buried his face in the snow. Its cold bite offered no respite from the pressure that unfolded in him. Sobbing, he punched the ground in frustration and tried to contain the swirls that shook him, but to no avail.

  He was about to scream when a hand came to rest on his head. When he looked up the charitable monk was squatting by his side. His blue eyes shone inscrutably on him and somehow conveyed to Cassien that he knew about what he was going through. The monk did not smile, not exactly. But there was a faint creasing of the skin at the corner of his eyes which shone warmer than a thousand smiles.And its warmth somehow steadied Cassien.

  “Come.” the monk said softly.

  There was strength and authority in his voice, born of speech true to the dimensions of the man who spoke it.

  Cassien took a couple of deep breaths and clumsily wiped the tears from his face. The frozen beads fell off his cheeks and made tiny holes in the snow at his feet. He forced himself up, ashamed to have been seen in such a state, and when he glanced up, the monk was already heading back toward the cave. He let out a constricted sigh and followed in the monk’s footsteps.

  The cave was a damp tunnel, five men wide, and twice as tall as Cassien. Its soot-covered walls radiated an oily frigidness. The small flames Cassien had seen from outside shone atop small stone columns lined up against the walls of the cave. The tunnel went on straight toward the center of the mountain for forty yards before making a sharp turn right.

  Cassien caught up with the monks past the bend in the tunnel. They were waiting in front of a large, blood red double door. In the dim light of the flames, gold representation of the beasts he had seen on the façade of the temple shone faintly. Aria was behind those doors. Her presence was an unmistakable tug on Cassien’s senses. Flittingly, he thought of Master Baccus.

  “You’ll know the way,” he had said; and of that he had been most right.

  The cold smell of burnt oil floated like a thick fog in the tunnel. It mixed with the apprehension in Cassien’s chest and left an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

  The charitable monk said something Cassien did not understand and two of the monks grabbed onto handles carved into the wood of the panels and pulled them open. The panels creaked loudly on their hinges and shrieked against the stone floor. The flames stopped at the door and beyond it the tunnel quickly disappeared into darkness. The charitable monk gestured with a hand and the other monks retreated, snuffing out the flames as they went. Soon Cassien and the charitable monk were in near complete darkness, if not for a faint glow coming from behind them.

  “Come.” the charitable monk said once their vision had somewhat adapted to the ambient penumbra.

  The cave was a gray blur but Cassien could see the outline of the monk and, more importantly, he could hear the soft sound of his sandals against the stone floor of the cave.

  He followed him slowly and as they advanced, the tension in his chest grew so tight he had to mindfully stop himself from calling out Aria’s name and running toward where he knew her to be. Every thread of his being was telling him that she was near but still, in the back of his mind, a part of him could not accept that she could be in such a remote and dark place, waiting for him.

  They walked in silence for a bit. The grayness of the cave soon turned into complete darkness and Cassien had to rely on the monk’s footsteps to orient himself. The ground sloped down for a while and then their footsteps started echoing more freely and roundly. Instants later, the charitable stopped walking and Cassien stood still in the dark. The humming in his chest was an unrestrained vibration now and it made his breathing jagged and his eyes water slightly. Aria was here, mere yards away and yet only silence surrounded him.

  There was a spark and then a flame was burning from another one of the small columns. The monk proceeded to light a semi-circle of columns and in their light Cassien’s eyes darted back and forth over a spacious chamber, trying to distinguish what was before him and find a shape that resembled that of Aria’s. But he could not see anything besides dull rock surfaces of earthy, gray-brown tones.

  Except… maybe beyond the arc of light, in the mostly shadowy far end of the chamber. Wasn’t there something that shimmered weakly? His heart jumped in his chest. There was a shape, a rounded edge to the shadows which stood apart from the dull background. He strained to see more clearly, but the shape seemed to flicker out of view, recess into the background. His throat was a painful pinch of anticipation and anguish.

  “ARIA!” his mind bellowed.

  And suddenly he was running toward her, through the arc of light and past the charitable monk who had just finished lighting the columns. There was no more coldness in his limbs, no more heaviness in his shoulders, no doubts holding him back. Only the undiluted exaltation of finally seeing her remained, like the fiercest of fires pushing him to her, fuelled by more than a year of yearning and struggles.

  He ran like a child would, unabated by the presence of the monk. He reached the end of the cave breathless, his heart ready to burst in abandon. He was finally here, with her; and yet he could not see her. He stumbled left then right, he pushed on his eyes, for they were betraying him. She was here, he could feel her presence as surely as one feels a gentle wind and yet he could not see her. He probed the darkness with his hands and… felt her? That was what a part of him yelled, yet it was steel he felt against his skin. He slammed his fists against the hard, jagged rock formation before him.

  “ARIA! I’m here!” he yelled. “I came, Aria, I came for you!”

  He punched the steely stone surface before him, as if by breaking the rocks he would free her. He hammered at it until his fists started bleeding from dozens of small cuts.

  “I came!” he shouted, twisted lumps in his throat breaking his voice.

  The charitable monk called him but Cassien did not hear him. He kept on screaming, spit flying from his mouth, his bloody fists desperately pounding on the rock. Eventually he fell to his knees like a rag doll, his head against the cold, rough stone.

  “I came, Aria, I came,” he pleaded, his voice little more than a confused croak.

  She was here, infinitely close to him. He could feel her against his forehead, and yet she was not. It made no sense to him and the contradiction was tearing him apart.

  Again the monk called in his fluid tongue but Cassien could not hear him. He was dazed, emotionally shredded, hollowed by the pain of what he could not comprehend. He sat on the floor
of the cave, incapable of holding back the sobs that shook him.

  After a while, the charitable monk came to him. He stood by his side, holding a small, metal oil lamp. In its frail flame the monk’s blue eyes shone quietly of compassion and understanding. He ran his fingers through his silky beard and pointed at the rock Cassien was resting against.

  “Ca-ho. Nit.” he said.

  Cassien looked through tears and blood at the stone before him, then back at the monk.

  “Ca-ho. Nit.” the monk repeated.

  Pain and confusion fluttered over Cassien’s features.

  “Aria.” he cried. “Love. Mine.”

  He rested his head against the rock and ran a bloodied hand over its rough surface.

  “Here. No. Here.” he pleaded. “Here. No. Here.”

  The monk cocked his neck in a question.

  “Here. No. Here. Mine. All.” Cassien bellowed.

  The monk’s features rippled as if for the briefest of moments a thought had unsettled him. He looked back and forth from Cassien to the large rock. Then, slowly, almost reverently, he set the oil lamp on the ground. He walked away and came back with three more lamps that he lit carefully and placed in a semi-circle around Cassien. When he was done he once more pointed at the rock and said:

  “Ca-ho. Nit. Ca-ho.”

  Cassien looked at the large formation on which he had bruised himself, the stone which, against all that made sense to him, he knew held his love. Its surface was a collection of dark gray, almost black, palm-sized flakes which, in the light of the oil lamps, had a dull, bluish shine that was more metallic than earthy.

  “What in Hethens,” Cassien whispered.

  He scrambled to the monk’s side. What he had thought to be just another part of the cave, a simple rock formation, was in fact a scaly assemblage in the shape of the one of the beasts that adorned the temple’s facade. It had a long snout with fist-sized nostrils that had condensed greenish moisture at their edges. Above those, were two long whisker-like, segmented filaments and where the snout met the actual skull, deep-set into the monstrous face, were what Cassien now recognized as scaly eyelids. Here and there he could see handfuls of thick, black hairs sprouting between the scales. The beast’s head was almost as tall as Cassien and its body wound back into the cave through an opening it filled completely. Cassien could not believe his eyes; the hairs, the moisture on the thing’s snout… it was alive, a monstrous, sleeping snake-wolf hybrid of a beast.