Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  Sometimes she read the things she had written in awe, finding it difficult to believe they had ever taken place, no matter how detailed her account. They faded from her memory even as they remained on the pages until Trevin charged out of his tower to fling another bastion around their sanctuary and win their way to Wynder once again.

  It was in Wynder that Trevin had discovered a history of Wyndernia that his grandfather Elwyn had inscribed on paper woven with fibers of Hala. Trevin and Neuvia took turns reading it aloud to their subjects. Elwyn had recorded significant events in the history of Wyndyrnes, who, though they lived forever, were prone to forget their own past with nothing permanent on which to record it.

  Elwyn began his history of the two worlds from before the dawn of man and his cousin, the Cirilen, when there existed only two Hala creatures capable of journeying to Wyndor—the Pearl Snakes and the Wintegs:

  Giant, shambling creatures with a simple society, the Wintegs wandered the southern ice floes as they hunted the white bears. They were like pale were-beasts with horned heads, jutting jaws and golden eyes. On Hala there remain only skeletons trapped in stone or frozen in glaciers to tell of the original creatures from whence the latter Wintegs would spring. For these beasts found a way to Wyndernia, somehow, and became lost there, ranging far and wreaking havoc. It is said that the Khalwairn are the issue of their savage congress with the Wyndernes.

  Eventually, the Wintegs went mad from the loss of Hala, filled as they were with a sleepless hunger for it. And at last, Ara, the only Wynder leader to ever be acknowledged as their leader, gathered the Pearl Snakes, of which there were thousands then, to hunt down the Wintegs. And so the Wintegs were destroyed. Except for two.

  Those two found a way through a vein of diamonds at the northern pole to Hala, and there they possessed a giant arctic bear pregnant with twins. The twin cubs tore their way out of the bear’s womb, transmogrified, and then devoured their adopted mother. And all Hala Wintegs are descended from these two siblings who are far more fearsome than their ancestors.

  The Khalwairn, offspring of both Wyndernes and Wintegs, soon learned to negotiate the trade between the Wynderne and Hala worlds themselves, owing no doubt to their own dual parentage. Soon they were crossing between the realms even as the Cirilen were learning how to pass from Hala into Wynder.

  Their conflict was inevitable. For even as the Cirilen brought miracles forth in Hala from Wynder, the Khalwairn found their world was enriched and solidified by Hala infusions. They began exploring Hala and left behind Wyndernia’s immaterial vagaries, even as the Cirilen explored Wynder and left behind their material concerns.

  The Khalwairn entered Hala like a storm, finding destruction that had real consequence intoxicating. At the Cirilen’s bidding, Queen Ara enlisted the Pearl Snakes to attack the Khalwairn, for only they had a poison that could kill them. But a new leader of the Khalwairn got knowledge of their attack beforehand, and a calamity followed as the Khalwairn led the loyal serpents into a trap, where they were incinerated in a conflagration conjured by all the Khalwairn at once.

  Only three of the serpents escaped, it is thought. Winding their way through the diamond shafts at the northern pole, they emerged thousands of miles apart in Hala. The three serpents continued to hunt Wintegs across that snowy wilderness for the next three centuries.

  Then the general of the Khalwairn, Drewgor, entered Hala and killed two of the last three Pearl Snakes, winning the Wintegs’ allegiance in a masterstroke.

  The last surviving Pearl Snake found its way to Ghenten and to me, whereupon it found me, and I presented it to my wife, to guard her, and whosoever shall succeed her.

  Neuvia transcribed Elwyn’s history in installments each time she returned from Wyndor, using the blank pages of one of Selwyn’s books before her memory faded:

  In history’s mist, Gaernathon settled the gigantic continent of Sentad during a time when most of the Cirilen led nomadic lives scattered across the Hala world. Then, the Khalwairn still ruled the Wynder World, having finally captured Queen Ara, whom they had changed into a three-headed monster and flung into Hala’s sea.

  During this dark time, the Cirilen who parted the veil between the worlds found lethal opposition from the Khalwairn and their unwitting armies of Wyndernes. The Cirilen, earthly in origin and thus more constant than the quixotic Khalwairn, battled their feckless foes with a righteousness that fascinated and finally won over the Wyndernes, who had never witnessed a moral urgency before seeing Hala mortals fight with such dire consequences.

  Mortal men, for their part, grew to hate the Khalwairn invaders, who seemed to revel in destroying Hala. For the Khalwairn had finally found a place where their mayhem made a lasting mark, and they exalted in seeing their power make any lasting effect at all. For even if all they could cause was destruction, it seemed like a mighty feat compared to their inability to effect any outcome at all in Wynder.

  The men and women of Sentad implored the Cirilen to defend them before that mightiest of kingdoms finally fell. The Khalwairn, meanwhile, conferred in Wynder as they plotted to storm Hala and destroy the Cirilen.

  The Khalwairn struck Wyndernolia Sentad secretly, at first, shrouding themselves from mortal men until they were ready. When they had their forces in place, they attacked the strongholds of Gaernathon’s great kingdom, fielding their armies of Wintegs and enslaving all they slew as soulless members of their army, an ever-swelling legion marching before them against the living. The Khalwairn themselves, in order to take physical form, chose corpses to possess until they wore out and then chose another. With an army like all the graveyards of the world they thus converged on the capital city of Gwylor and succeeded in slaying Gaernathon, Sentad’s wise and great king. And they made him their General, and his subjects wept to see him ride against them as the Khalwairns’ gruesome puppet.

  Only then, at last, did the Cirilen come together from across the world to defend Sentad in a last stand against their Wyndernal rivals. All 48 houses of Cirilen gathered in the First War against the Khalwairn.

  Relying on the loyalty of men instead of their thralldom, the Cirilen managed to turn the battle’s tide. They also earned favor in Wynder, for Wyndernes sought more eagerly to help the Cirilen win their earnest struggle than to assist the random destruction of the Khalwairn, which had become a stupefying bore by then to them. Wyndernes and Bondairtlen alike came to admire the Cirilen as heroes who inspired them with noble purpose.

  To most Wyndernes, the Hala World is a sacred place. Indeed, it is their only compass point in an endlessly shifting world. It is the starting point of all their deviations. They peer down at Hala through windows of water that sometimes pool in their heavenly sphere and rain when they are awed, terrified, inspired, repelled and seduced by its absolute forms and its mortal souls fighting fatal consequences below. Hala, indeed, is the hard seed from which all their infinite dreams flower…

  Neuvia had recorded this much of Elwyn’s book after returning from Hala before it left her recollection. From another trip she managed to capture the very last entry of Elwyn Gheldron, after the culmination of the Second War, which he had hastily penned at the end of his history:

  I died today in Hala. Having sheltered in a vast cave in Ghenten’s great southern canyon, I reversed his charm on the Winteg that he sent to stalk me. Then I waited, my mortal spell inscribed in my own blood upon a vellum scroll, my oath tied fast to my bloodline as long as it does persist. When Drewgor finally came for me, I wielded the scroll in one hand and the Cronus Star in the other. And as he walked to the mouth of the cave, the Winteg he had bewitched seized him in its dragon jaws, and I pronounced my last incantation: an ultimatum of lightning and thunder came from the heavens, enforcing my decree. And for this outcome I paid my life. And I did succeed, I see now, in opening the Great Veil before me, which I am not eager to see beyond.

  The Wyndernes have come to prepare my way into the Gairanor’s far circle. I only hope I have given Hala a small portio
n in return for what Hala gave so generously to me.

  Elwyn’s last passage planted fresh fears in Neuvia’s mind. For if Elwyn’s bloodline should run out, as it surely would if they continued on their present course, what cataclysm was waiting to descend upon the world? And what incentive did ancient enemies have to murder Trevin, thus breaking Elwyn’s curse?

  So far her only answer to these worries had been to inform Trevin when they met again in Wyndernia, but once there she had too easily forgotten the other world’s strife and postponed her concerns for another day.

  While they were safeguarded in their Wyndernal sanctuary, Trevin and Neuvia learned from Elwyn’s writings that ultimately, if Trevin worked enough magic, they would wake in Wynder each night that they slept in Hala. They would only rest when they slept in Wyndor, provided that they did not dream—for if they did, they would enter Hala as ghosts. And during this dream state, Trevin and Neuvia each traveled far and wide throughout the Hala World, exploring their kingdom from Ameulis to Ghenten and all the islands in between, and what they found was disquieting.

  When Trevin dreamed in Wyndernia, he walked the starlit streets of Hala Ameulis, wrapped in whatever rags he could find to hide his cobalt radiance. He ventured down country roads in wild places, past coasts and wharves at midnight, past hamlets and foothills, mountains and farms, deserts and moors, smelling the sweet grasses, the ripe sea, the musky woods and the spiced heathers. And to his distress, during these nocturnal journeys he found his forsaken kingdom increasingly troubled.

  As Trevin strode the roads one night in his vagrant’s disguise during their fifth wyndering, he noted the decline throughout the land and the aftermath of ill deeds committed by roving rogues with shaven heads who called themselves disciples of a prophet whose name was vaguely familiar: Blox. While soaring over the countryside, Trevin spied a gathering around a bonfire in a meadow near the Forest of Lind.

  He flew down behind the crowd, his beggar’s clothes cloaking his Wyndery luminescence. A wailing young man and woman were being bound to pine logs by a mob of people dressed in rough burlap who were preparing to cast them onto the roaring pyre. Trevin moved among the raucous crowd and whispered in one woman’s ear: “Why, Granny, do they punish this boy and girl?”

  “Because they bear the mark of evil,” the woman snarled, paying no regard to the stranger who asked. She jeered with all the others, and Trevin’s heart sank.

  “What is the mark of evil, old woman?”

  At Trevin’s question, she turned, incredulous. “Beauty!”

  “Eh?”

  “People point to them as proof that Nekkros’s Word is false! They tempt us to love Hala instead of Wyndorni.” The woman froze as she looked in Trevin’s eyes. “Who might you be, stranger? Your eyes pierce me like icicles.”

  Trevin let his robe fall as he shone before her. “Well they should!”

  The others on the field turned and shrank away as he rose in the air. “What you do is wrought of evil counsel not higher than this world but jealous of it!” With a motion of his arm Trevin extinguished the pyre. “These children shall be free!”

  Trevin rose higher as he cast his voice down on the scowling mob recoiling below him as their shadows lengthened over the field. “This madness is not righteous! Nor is this world’s treasure evil. If you hate it, find you another world instead of scarring this one’s beauty with your stupid wrath!”

  Drawn together by their superstitions, the gathering was scattered by them as they fled in different directions over the moonlit plain before the terrible ghost, casting off their burlap robes.

  And after Trevin freed the fair youths, he soared into the sky before they could ask his name.

  Trevin woke alongside Neuvia, and this time he woke her up to tell her what he had seen in Hala. And she consoled him, stroking his head, though she, too, feared what had come to pass in Hala during their long exile.

  In Hala, meanwhile, they remained separate and alone, always. Trevin still had no idea that she lived on the Dimrok with him, and Toy continued to discourage her from telling him. Trevin was blinded to her by the Scepter’s glare and Neuvia’s charm, and Neuvia was always forewarned of his presence by her loyal guardians.

  Though years passed since their coronation and wedding, they had not seemed to age a week. They appeared more timeless, perhaps, than youthful now, however, a few shades fainter under Hala’s sun.

  She had spied on him four times from the cliff as he selected his next guardian from the sea. He had taken a starfish, an anglerfish, a strand of seaweed, and a jar of water with nothing in it that she could see.

  Around the horizon to the west, north and east crouched the gnarled islands Trevin had torn from the Dimrok. To the south spread coral reefs that glowed and twinkled like flowering fields, deadly barriers to any ships approaching from that direction. For a wily gambler there was only one open roadstead left to reach the Dimrok now: due west of the island a narrow passage still led straight to the Dimrok’s harbor. Three ships had made for the island through that passageway four years ago, but two of Trevin’s guardians, the Microsia and the Gyre, had dispatched them without mercy before they reached the bay.

  Neuvia had watched through the golden spyglass as two of the ships were destroyed by a crystalline monster that rippled across the sea propelling itself with glassen oars. With ten claws on ten tall arms it snipped one ship’s rigging and plucked men from the decks. Twenty minutes later, she watched as the Gyre, its orange limbs milling and kicking through the sea, caught the second ship. And Neuvia wept as the starfish dragged it under with all hands on board only a thousand yards from the Dimrok’s beach. It was a sight only constant reassurances from Toy could persuade her was not reason to abandon the island and Trevin forever.

  Toy reminded her that Trevin had restricted his guardians to attack only those who did not heed his fair warning.

  But the ghosts of the men who had defied his decree deepened the red miasma surrounding Trevin’s soul, too, for he had also witnessed their deaths from atop the Lightstone Tower through his silver spyglass.

  Selwyn’s book of prophecies gave her no more guidance for years now, which Toy interpreted as a signal to continue on the path she had taken, though Neuvia wondered if Selwyn’s vision had simply reached no farther.

  One bittersweet day, Trevin had wandered to the brook within plain sight of her treehouse, and he had sat on the pink clover to bathe his feet in the stream right across from her. Blind to her eyes staring down from the treehouse at him, he did not even notice the panicking animals calling out warnings all around her. Watching him from her room atop the white tree, she could hardly bear to see his soul so lost and was about to call out to him when Toy slid down her shirt and coiled around her breast, the cold feather of his tongue quelling any word forming on her lips. She watched silently as Trevin finally walked off through the forest, followed by 19 sealskins of water that floated behind him in the air. Toy slipped back up her chest to weave around her neck as she sighed in hopeless frustration. But Toy assured her that the moment to act would finally come.

  When would that moment come and what should she do, Neuvia asked and asked, for surely Trevin was only falling deeper into danger, with less chance of rescue, with each passing year.

  The answer from Toy was always the same: “The Queen is brave. The King is young. The Enemy is great.”

  Today, she woke to a blustery summer morning on their seventh anniversary.

  She descended the treehouse’s ladder at dawn and found the owl’s head on the bank of the brook, presented to her like an evil gift.

  The loyal bird’s long-lashed eyelids drooped over lifeless yellow eyes.

  Devastated, she raked her eyes like deadly weapons across her surroundings, should the perpetrator of this deed be observing the audience’s reaction to his crime. She wondered who could be so wicked in her forest as to kill this friend; and a fierce rage matched her fear of it. She remembered the weird gifts the mad beaver, Ka
icim, had left for her when she was a child, and it chilled her breast. She wondered if the beaver could have done this terrible thing. Or had it been the Orange Man?

  She buried the owl’s remains, looking around her angrily to see if anything dared watch her private ceremony. She pressed a smooth topaz pebble from Trevin’s rock collection into the soil over the noble bird’s grave. Then she climbed the ladder to her room to look in Selwyn’s Book of Prophecies, finding nothing, once again, to her exasperation.

  Toy whispered in her ear, “He’s taken her to sea!”

  “To sea? In Stargazer?”

  “Yes.”

  It was a blazing summer day, but Neuvia saw a dark cloud spreading in the east and smelled the coming rain. She went downstairs to make herself some tea and calm her nerves. She took a hot kettle up to her room, closing the shutters of three of the windows.

  Lighting a fat candle, she pulled off her long boots and set them under the sill. Then she sat in a chair by the open window overlooking the stream as Toy listened to far-away things and whispered news of Trevin’s whereabouts as he traveled north in Stargazer. After her tea, as the sky dimmed and the air grew chill, she curled up under a Dimrok wool blanket on her bed. Clouds rolled over the sky and showered the forest. Then lightning and thunder such as she had never seen or heard shattered the world outside as she hid under a blanket and pillow.

  The rain lifted then, and the clouds revealed a slat of orange light over the new islands Trevin had raised to fill their wall to the east.

  Toy trembled on her throat. “The King has cast a spell. The gate to Wynder is open.”

  “Where is he? Is he safe?”

  “He is in Stargazer at sea and safe. He is asleep. He is in Wundyrne, my lady.”

  “I demand to meet him, Toy!”

  “No. Not here!”

  “Yes, here! Now! Do not defy me!”