Wind From the Abyss

by Janet Morris

  With real calm, that which attends me only upon such embarking, I promised to heed him. Upon the spiral, I felt only joy that the waiting was over. We were about it. That which had been long coming to be would stand revealed. It is never as torturous to do a thing as await it, I thought.

  Then I cleared my mind. His fingers between mine became a grid of light over my closed lids, hot and great. Up the veins in my arm went the poisoning of power, a voracious drug in search of my present. There was a thinning of flesh as the network of our sensory systems meshed. I felt us rising like my nerves as they slid glowing out upon my skin, dissolving it for leverage. And the bone within glows golden at such times, when sensing flashes red and seeks its macrokin spread all inconceivable across the fabric of creation. Warp and woof, we became. Fully distended, I heard us: whining wind we made over that place where an instant’s stop is overlong. Then came out to greet us the beacon we had sought. Within that realm are creatures from whose function Khys modeled the concept “sort.” And what do true sorters (all widespread panicles of self-conscious community undulating multispectrum resonance) sort? Pregnant time from stillborn, entropy in its thousand variations, natural laws and travelers thereupon do they thrum and shunt from one alternity to another. Upon another manifestation: silver droplets heated molten, ever running; mercury asplatter upon an eye’s pupil. Third to the left, high in their ranks, an eye the size of the Opirian Sea determined our destination. A hand better suited for rerouting cataclysm and pruning stars came to enfold us. We lay a time in what was chasm and palm, creased. I looked up at it. It looked down at me. The touch of Khys’s being grew tenuous. I fought to retain it. The circuited tide received us from that dipping hand. Tumbling, he grasped me. Eyes are never lost. Ours met. The father’s fire of his determination licked around me, and we ceased falling.

  We did not bounce or roll. We were underpinned once more by world. Moist turf, beneath. Stones strewn beneath my buttocks. His hand had solid substance; fingers fleshed and of the shape and form associated with such digits. I looked long at them, enfolding mine. The sky was not Mi’ysten sky.

  It was not a land inhabited by such as Khys and myself. I did not need to search the sky, comb the grass. My sensing gave me sign. A young world it was. Or a very old one. There was no worm burrowing this earth, nor bird to eat it. There was the rustling of leaves, the hiss and growl of wind. But no insect clicked mandibles together. Then I sat up. Far across the great rolling grassed plain was a ring of trees, perfect and of a dark lush green. I saw not one weed or flower or fruit. The laws here, I surmised, must be greatly different. One thinks of life systems interwoven. Here the chain was either broken or the links not all yet forged.

  Khys’s hand was restless in mine. I thought to withdraw. He did not allow it.

  “This world is untenanted but for us.” So did he break a virgin silence.

  I nodded, hesitant still to violate the peace. But it was upon me. “And what we do here sets precedents.” I thus completed the first interchange upon that world. Sequential time as man knows it might now begin, I thought, looking at that unseen sky, so vast and mighty. It had about it a blue tinge, chilled still further by a cool sun’s light.

  “Do you think interchange is a precursor to evolutionary life?” I asked him.

  “It doubtless was the precursor, upon a more potent scale. I do not know. You think they would attempt to bind us with such responsibility?”

  He actually asked me. The less-seeking light made him young, uncertain.

  “I hope not,” I said, unwilling to deal with my suspicions. Khys looked around him. He got to his feet and scanned the great encircling stand of trees.

  “That,” he said, “is north.”

  “If it is your will,” I said, dutifully fixing that which I had conceived as north as True Declared North. “You have directions,” I postulated. Directions would have necessitated our declaring ourselves; we had determined to traverse ground and make observational decisions to get there?

  “Estrazi,” I said, “is canny. Must we traverse ground and make observational decisions to get there? Can you not mind-seek them?”

  “Seek yourself. They are not yet present, nor do I expect them until we have gained the appointed ground.”

  “You know where this might lead,” I warned.

  A breeze came up and blew his hair, dull copper in the alien light, over his eyes. He raised a hand to brush it away. Here upon this world his skin had only the most modest glow upon it. Mine, I saw as I examined my outstretched arm, hosted none at all. I was further disquieted.

  “We are natural to this particular conception,” I said to him. He had been rubbing his eyes. He lowered his hand. His face was very grave.

  “Whoever created this was familiar with us. Our arrival here was understood before the rock beneath us cooled.” We agreed. The certainty within me grew. His eyes sparked. That, at least, was unchanged.

  His left eyebrow rose. His nostrils flared. “I had not considered this,” he admitted.

  “I myself am only suspicioned. Let us wait, lest we bring it upon ourselves.”

  He reached down to me. I took his hand and by it gained my feet. I was light-headed, sluggish. The pull of the earth lay heavy upon me. Concerned, he noted it. His hands sought the sides of my throat, and I was much strengthened.

  “You should not have,” I objected, when I found myself with enough wit returned to realize what he had done.

  “I brought you here. I should have foreseen this. Let us get done and away. Third rock, south of east. Can you walk?”

  “Yes.” The clouds were white with sienna tingeing. The sky was bluer than M’ksakkan eyes. I walked with him. It had been the journey that had weakened me, I told myself, that I might perhaps make it so. If what Khys thought it ...

  I found no further sucking away of my substance, upon the walk to third rock south of east. The sun seemed to parallel our course. Not once did it move from above our heads. He squinted at it on several occasions. Once he glowered up at it a long time.

  The quiet of such an untenanted world pressed in upon us. I looked around me at bounteous beauty and wondered why the catalysts of life had not finished their labors. I knew, of course, the answer.

  “There is no respite from one’s own creations,” he reminded me.

  “Of myself, I might say the same to you,” I rejoined.

  “There.” He pointed.

  “What?” I saw rolling ground only.

  “The first rock south of east,” he declared it.

  “If it is your will,” I said softly, trying to smile.

  A rivulet of sweat ran down the trough of my backbone.

  We walked. The ground was rich and resilient, the grass so perfect that my feet thought it the most elegant silken tapestry. Khys watched me as narrowly as the ground we covered.

  Nightfall was a thing of iths. There was hardly a sun’s set; a moment, a brief flame touch, and it weak and cool; then a blackness sliced asunder by a gleaming sword of stars. Steel in mid-strike with the light sparking off it was no denser than that swath of stars halving the night.

  There was no moon.

  “Think you there might be a moon another night?” I asked him hopefully, after the first shock of dusk had passed.

  “No,” he said, calm, implacable. “There is no moon. Upon this night or any other. Would you have fire?” His hand sought the back of my neck. His fingers tightened there. I found I welcomed it.

  “Yes, we have come too far for it to matter.”

  I heard his laugh as I knelt down in the grass. All was monochrome, noncommittal. Above me, he was denser shadow, limned in pearly fog. He knelt, half-turned, to his firing. The Shaper’s seal upon the cloak’s back flickered.

  I closed my eyes and sent fervent plea to my father. I did not know what was right. I asked only rightness. I might better have chosen.

  Khys had his fire, hovering above a shallow pit he had caused to be in the sward. It burned there upo
n invisible fuel. Hest and sort were unencumbered. None held limiting conception here. None but us. What we could conceive, in this place, could come to be without the bending and stretching of natural law required to do such upon Silistra. Khys, as he hested fire, further invested the time with stricture. Before he and I there had been only the possibilities unrestricted. Less than an enth (which also had never been before we came to walk the earth) we had been here. In us, we carried the world we knew. And upon a barely completed nature, we set a presupposed lawfulness. Wider, perhaps, than some others’ might have been, but limiting.

  The fire crackled merrily upon its invisible logs, all consuming, yet unconsummated. He sat cross-legged, palms up in the firelight.

  “How far are we from the third rock south of east?” I asked.

  “About a man’s length,” he informed me, gesturing to the left of the fire. I squinted, but saw only fire-deepened dark. I lay back upon the grass, watched the afterimage flames lick the sword of stars that cut the night.

  “It is a world of great beauty.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It is tempting in the extreme.”

  “Doubtless it was meant to be.” Even my building of it had been part of Estrazi’s conception. Thus far, I had been careful. I had not hested, nor had I shaped; it was my intention that this remain so. I had no desire to further entwine myself in the destiny of that world. I had promised once that I would return to it. I had not meant to keep that vow.

  I saw two stars detach themselves from the sky, spewing long tails behind them as they sped downward.

  “They approach,” I said to him. He only nodded, his countenance adance with firelight.

  Upon my left there was a breeze. It caressed my cheek, and I turned my head toward it. He sat there, in that most elegant male-form he wears, dark-cloaked.

  Beside him was Kystrai, most beneficent of the fathers: Khys’s own sire. Fathers sit not in darkness. I had forgotten them. Perhaps mortal mind cannot hold such images without scaling down. The fathers’ fire made jest of the flame before us.

  “Estrazi,” I acknowledged him. His presence examined me. That compassionate mouth tightened. Those eyes touched my flesh, and I was strengthened.

  “Son of my brother, I am not pleased,” said Estrazi across me. Khys sat unmoving. He seemed not awed. “Have you become so indrawn and eclectric that you feel the need to alter even my conception of flesh as it clothes spirit?” He raised his hand, only. The fire died.

  Khys made a sound. I strained to see him. I saw first a spiral, scintillant, part-obscured. It was the size of my palm. Around it from the dark coalesced Khys’s bared chest, his hand upon the altered flesh. I dug my fingers into the turf. Harsh breathing filled my ears. I could not take my eyes from the dharen, so still with that wild fear in his eyes. As he had marked me, so had Estrazi emblazoned his flesh.

  “One must be willing to bear judgment as one metes it out,” said Estrazi. He lowered his hand into his lap. I watched the bronze glow wash his skin, the currents of life clear in their flow. Truly, I had not remembered him well enough.

  Kystrai, beside him, looked wordlessly upon his own-spawned one. His concern was obvious. That magnificent head thrust forward, he gazed steadily upon his light-skinned offspring, as if by glare alone he could cleanse him free of flaw.

  “You may speak,” said father to son.

  “You have something of mine. How may I regain it?” said Khys most softly. His palm still lay upon his breast. Through part-spread fingers, the Shaper’s device glittered. Khys’s eyes closed a moment. I saw him, striker, struck with his own blow. It showed like a saw-edged claw in the air, whirling around and spinning back. He threw himself flat, rolling.

  And then he sat again cross-legged upon my right as if he had never moved. His chest heaved, and his pulse fought for exit at the base of his throat.

  “Do not be absurd,” said Estrazi, his amusement only touched with annoyance, “Shall I show you what might be decided here? You come before me with false assumptions. It is my pleasure to take my inheritor and school him. I may also extend that courtesy to his father.”

  “Calm yourself, Khys,” advised Kystrai. It was he for whom I felt compassion, he whose spawn had come so far to stand upon the edge of the abyss. Their eyes met. “Why did you never seek me?” spoke Kystrai in a voice like embers fading.

  “I might ask the same of you,” said Khys bitterly.

  “Is it not past time,” broke in Estrazi, “that you put away these repetitious exercises of children and address yourself to the affairs of adults?”

  Khys looked from his father, to mine, to me. And to Estrazi again did his gaze return like some hypnotized yit.

  “This,” said Estrazi, “could be yours.” The first among the Shapers raised his hand, and the world around showed midday, and that midday teemed with life. And we sat overlooking a sea. “And this ...” I saw what swam in that sea. “And this,” he said, dissolving from beneath us the world upon which our flesh had taken rest.

  We depended, all four, from nothing, at the center of a sphere defined by pinpricked turbulence, all colored. Through it the stars processed, leaving great trails of wake. Out from a common center, streaming life, they rushed and bore us with them.

  “Here,” said Estrazi, “did we begin. Here will we never return, but by proxy.” I could not make sense of my brain’s imaging. I closed my eyes, blocked out that madness. It could be I saw chaos there. I saw what I could not see. “The child in question might, with the proper training, return word home.”

  We sat again before the hollow that Khys had made for his fire, and that was there also, its light yellow and puny with the fathers so near. “You could not have survived there longer.” It was to me Estrazi spoke. I judged him saddened. He touched my arm. “Still seek you freedom from my work?” he inquired.

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes averted. “I need a time for reflection.” My mind told him what else my heart craved, before I could silence it. He kissed me atop the head.

  “I can give you little respite,” he said. “And you may find it to be heavier upon you than my service. If you find yourself insufficiently bound, apprise me. I will set you to work.

  Kystrai stood now before Khys. He raised up his son. Khys rose but shrugged the hand away. I watched, unbelieving, as Kystrai heard from Khys all manner of abrading without word or gesture. When the son had run dry of words, the father again touched his shoulder. Khys turned away. His face, full revealed, was awful to look upon.

  “I will still contest with you, if you so wish it, for the flesh child,” said Estrazi to him, stepping from my side. The bronze light flowed languorous after him as he moved. “I hate to waste you, after such lengthy preparation, but I will give you that choice once again. Let me point out, before you answer, that upon your own world you have imposed on others the like judgment. We are better qualified than you to attend the instruction of such a child.”

  With rage-contorted countenance did Khys regard Estrazi. For a moment I thought he would seek his dissolution. He did not. His face took its normal semblance. With only the flaring of nostrils and his narrowed eyes did he signal his wrath.

  “I seek not your instruction. I seek it not for myself, nor for my son. If I had sought, I would have come here, long since. You set us into the time, disassociate us from the rest of creation, uncaring. Purpose notwithstanding, who has right to suspend heritage and withhold knowledge? Must we make the climb, to prove a point? Because it is postulated by you that once such occurred, must we mimic your trials?”

  “You are not even close, abrasive adolescent, with those assumptions. We were not so lacking for company that we sought to create ourselves anew in space and time. What you interpret as whim is the learning process upon all levels.” Estrazi looked at Khys inquiringly. That one made no answer.

  “The creator,” said Estrazi patiently, “can never experience his own creation from within. If he is potent, he may retain the experience
of creation ongoing. But life, as flesh, may not be experienced from without. We sought, from the creatures of time and space, what they may yet become: a more potent creator species capable of multiplicities of awareness.” Still Khys made no reply.

  “It is beautiful in your sight, is it not?” Estrazi’s hand drew the world within its circle. Khys only nodded. “I cannot know it. I am without. I may take flesh, but still I know far too much of the workings of reality to become immersed in it. My daughter, here, sent to me a plea for rightness.” He turned upon me.

  “At that moment, you declared yourself a creature of space and time. Committed you are, as never before, to its laws. I had thought perhaps to take you from such lands, for you seemed not well integrated. But you have become so.”

  I stared at the ground, tearful for the chance lost. But it was not chastisement he spoke to me then. Only in my conception was it interpreted as such.

  “You make no such plea to me.” He spoke to Khys. That one did not hesitate upon the chance nor fail to heed the warning.

  “I make no such plea to you,” said Khys clearly.

  Between them a whorl of ominous proportions took form.

  Kystrai stepped there. Within the counterstalking powers he came to stand, straight and severe, where nothing of flesh or sinew could ever have stood.

  “Khys,” said he from the obscuring roils of battle, “I would not see this. Long you have labored in the worlds of creation. Purpose did it serve, great and worthy if one might use your own scales to weigh it upon. But here there are no such divisions in fitness. All is fit, within one context or another. Only that which buildeth not change has censure here. The destroyer and the creator are one. The catalyst both disintegrates and recreates. By your efforts Silistra saw much change. You have brought to be all the change your conception holds. You have reached a most untenable position. One can do anything but perpetuate stasis. There is no holding that world to your conception. Upon what you gave them they have built. They are in need of a new creator, one who has as his foundations that which you in your lengthy lifetime built. Upon your works, that one will build that which you cannot yet conceive. Cede Silistra, if you love her. You stand obstacle in her path. All masters pass. The time is due for them to stand alone. And for you to seek a broadening of your conception. And for a father to share the fruits of his days with a son fit to be his inheritor.” As he spoke those last words, the roil of contention dispersed.