Chapter 23 – Truth and Myth

 

I didn’t scream when he fell. I didn’t say a word, and I didn’t even cry. I ran to his side and stood staring down at him, mute and numb. I saw him lying prostrate, stone still at first, his face cradled by the earth. I saw him blink rapidly and fiercely, saw his hands clutch vainly at the shapeless sand. I saw his chest rise and fall with deep, raking gasps, empty rattling breaths like air drawn through a torn bellows. And I just stood and stared.

Then something snapped, and I spun around desperately searching the empty sky.

“Help!” I cried once, then again, but my voice was swallowed in glum darkness.

I dropped to my knees beside him and tried to lift him off the sand. Finally I managed to drag him into a half-sitting position, but his eyes were closed now and his head sagged. I called out again, but when the darkness didn’t fade and no voice answered, I shut my eyes and made my plea silently in my heart. The darkness brooded over us. I clung to Yatol and bowed my head from the blindness.

Time froze.

“Take heart, child.”

A voice, gentle, scarce more than a whisper.

I opened my eyes, felt the breeze cold on my tear-stained cheeks. All around us the air shimmered with a rainbow of radiance. I lowered Yatol onto the sand and backed slowly away. They gathered around him – Mykyl and Akhmar, Stitista and many others whose names I didn’t know.

I thought I heard one of them say, “It is not yet your time.”

They formed a circle of light around him, and faint but pure in the bright stillness came a melancholy strain. I could hear each voice distinctly, yet they wove together in perfect harmony. Their forms blurred into a pool of color, dazzling my tear-brimmed eyes. The song rose until it felt as if the entire world sang, then suddenly it was gone. All of the Brethren were gone. Yatol alone remained, standing straight and still with his hands open at his sides and head bowed.

I stood frozen, bewildered. And Yatol seemed utterly oblivious to me, to himself. When I thought he would never move, he seemed to come into himself, or out of himself, and he lifted his head. I backed a step. His eyes were fire and his whole face shone, while some radiance surged from the palms of his hands. The fire seemed to consume him, and then it vanished and he collapsed onto one knee.

“Merelin.”

I uprooted myself and inched closer to him.

“Give me your hand.”

I held it out to him. He took it firmly, and I dropped to my knees in front of him.

“This was all my fault,” I whispered. “If I hadn’t been so stupid and crawled up the dune where they could see me, none of this would have happened.”

He lifted his head at that, his eyes calm and sad. “Oh Merelin, do you think it was you they sensed?”

“I don’t understand,” I said, frowning. “I don’t understand anything.”

That made him smile. “Can you understand this?”

He swept out his hand, and a flood of soft light erupted from his palm. It raced over the sand until, not twenty paces from us, it bathed the tall shrubs and strange trees of the Branhau. I ran toward the trees.

“Yatol!” I cried in relief. “We made it! How—”

I turned to wait for him – he was coming slowly, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of pain or exhaustion, or some kind of solemnity. Something had changed in him. I just couldn’t place what it was. But he carried himself straight, head high and eyes still filled with the light of stars. No. He wasn’t weak or in pain. Not now.

“We’ve made it this far,” he said. There was no smile in his eyes, but no uncertainty either. “But we’ve barely begun.”

Before, those words would have crushed me. But he spoke now with strength, and I steeled my nerves as I followed him into the trees. Here at last we found some break from the consuming darkness of the Perstaun, as the trees and flowers threw their best assault of light against the shadow. The soft luminance spilled from the tiny flower-cups in pools of gold, and whispered down from the swaying tree tendrils in opaline streams. It warmed some inner part of me that I suddenly realized had been cold. I was almost happy, in a bizarre sort of way. We’d gotten past the Ungulion. Nothing stood between us and K’hama.

Nothing but long emptiness.

And just like that, my sudden burst of energy fizzled. The forest stretched on and on. Blue-cascade trees surrounded us, towering over our path and spreading a net of web-like roots over the ground. As I nearly tripped in them the second time, I remembered the clinging grasses that had thwarted me my first day here. It seemed so long ago, almost a different life. I clenched my jaw and forged on.

I had to practically jog to keep up with Yatol. I didn’t have room to walk beside him, though I desperately wanted to talk to him. To be near him. I just tried to stay close behind and kept my silence. Hunger snapped emptily at my stomach, and I was so thirsty my blood felt like sludge. But I didn’t want to stop. I only wanted an end. Then I remembered Yatol’s words and echoed them bitterly to myself: We have barely begun. Fantastic.

After a while, the dusky blue luminance of the trees faded to a mere shimmer in the darkness, and a thin veil of cool fog drew up around us. It dampened my spirits as much as the light, and I bowed my head and jogged on doggedly.

I’d stopped paying attention to the forest when the ground pitched down abruptly. Everything had changed. The trees shot up straight and grey, unblossoming with rough sandpapery bark. My feet sank deep into the loamy soil as we picked our way down into the valley. And still the mist curled like noisome wraiths’ fingers around the tree trunks and my legs. The strangeness of it all finally brought me to a halt.

“Yatol…” I called through the eerie fog. He came back to me, his gaze straying over the forest. “We must be past Enhyla’s. It all looks so different here.”

“I’ve never been to these reaches of the Branhau, but I do know them.”

“How can you know them if you’ve never been here?” I asked sullenly.

“I have learned every path our people have forged this side of Alcalon,” he said. “And I know this too – we’re still a long way from the borders of the forest.”

I knew what he meant: stop wasting time. I hung my head and managed a nod, but he had already turned away. A sick pang tugged at my heart, but I forced myself into a run.

Just like track. Don’t think about it. Just run.

I was doing so well not thinking about it that I jumped in surprise when Yatol’s arm caught me around the shoulders. He had stopped and I hadn’t even noticed. My feet halted, but my mind kept wandering.

“Merelin. Wait here.”

He turned to leave, but then his words registered.

“What?” I cried.

“I’ll only be gone a few minutes. Rest, but stay alert. This place should be safe enough.”

He glanced around briefly, then vanished into the strange somber trees. I stared after him, too dumbfounded to move. The sound of his steps faded into the deep silence. No breeze gave life to the tree-tendrils, and there was a strange dead feel to the air. All of a sudden I realized how exhausted I was, and I collapsed onto the ground.

As soon as I sat down, I knew it was a mistake. I couldn’t stand up again. My legs ached too badly. The sandals clung to my feet, coated with soil and wet from sweat, even blood. I shuddered in horror as I loosened the straps. In the misty glimmer of light I could see blisters between my toes and on my heels, and I winced as I tore one open easing the sandal off. I stared at my feet apathetically for a few minutes, then flopped back onto the moss-shrouded ground.

My momentary feeling of peace dwindled in the span of about a minute. A faint wary alarm triggered in my mind – the vague feeling that someone was tracking us. All my senses sharpened in response. My eyes drifted carefully over the grey skeletal trunks leaning over me, gleaming strangely pale against the muddy sky. I listened so intently that I could even hear the soft click and scrape of insects creeping through the dirt.

Then, abruptly, the alarm vanished. Serene indifference filled my mind, and I closed my eyes contentedly. I could feel every swell and dip in the spongy moss. A warm, earthy smell hung in the air, like Mom’s garden in the spring, traced with just the faintest scent of flowers. Even the dank chill of the air felt strangely wonderful. I let my thoughts drift…

“I have food.”

I jumped, but couldn’t force myself upright.

“I can’t move,” I muttered, staring at him from my back.

“Your feet need to be treated.”

“Tell me something I didn’t know,” I groused. “Sorry. But I don’t know what to do for them.”

He just shot me a reproachful glance as he knelt down in front of me. From his haversack he retrieved a few items and a wad of clean cloth, then he placed my foot on his leg to treat. He worked quickly, and he certainly knew what he was doing. I barely felt him lance the blisters with a thin, sharp blade. Once he had drained the fluid, he opened a tiny leather case and scooped out a bit of pale green paste. It smelled strong and somewhat familiar. Camphor. Shan’s salve. It cooled and numbed the blisters, relieving the stinging pain. When Yatol finished he bound my feet with cloth and wiped his hands on the edge of his tunic.

“Akhmar will come. You can’t walk anymore just yet.”

I frowned at my feet, furious with them but strangely relieved that Akhmar would be coming. Maybe it was the grey gloaming of the forest pressing down on me, or some residual alarm creeping back over me, but I wanted nothing more than for Akhmar to be with us. Now.

“This should give you some energy,” Yatol said softly.

He was slicing a strange, gourd-like fruit in half, sawing through the squeaky thick rind. On the inside it looked like a pomegranate, with hardly any meat and only a small handful of bead-like seeds in its hollow center. Yatol handed me half of the fruit, and I watched him to see how to eat it. Like I thought, he scooped out the seeds and munched on them, but he didn’t spit out any fibery bits like I’m used to doing with pomegranates. I shrugged and followed suit. The yellow juicy flesh tasted like grapes, and the inner seeds just melted away. But even better than the sweet, tangy seeds was their thirst-quenching juice. When I’d finished the fruit, Yatol gave me a few pieces of crisp, airy bread. I didn’t notice if he ate any himself.

“I’m sorry there’s nothing else,” he said when I had finished.

“Nothing? I’m famished. I thought you brought food from the camp.”

“It was all they could spare. And the food from the camp is for when there is nothing else.”

That didn’t comfort me, but I forced the thought away. “Where’d you go to get it, anyway?”

He nodded over his shoulder. “There’s an outpost nearby where scouts can get food and rest. But their supplies are nearly exhausted – there are far more scouts abroad these days than usual.” I frowned, so he said, as if it were obvious, “War.”

“Right. Yatol, if the Ungulion force is all gathered in the Perstaun, then where is the rest of your army?”

“You’ve seen all the army we have.”

“That was it?”

“What do the numbers matter?” he muttered. “You’ve seen the most damage we can do them.”

“Then why have an army at all?”

“To give our people some semblance of hope,” he said, his voice thin. “We’ve always had an army. For a long time it was merely ceremonial, before the Ungulion began to plague us. Then they came, and the people fled to the city and begged the army to defend them. So they marched. They went bravely enough until the city vanished beyond the horizon, then they took to dodging shadows and lying low, trying to keep the enemy at bay without doing battle. It worked for a while.” He shook his head. “The Ungulion are indestructible, as far as we can judge. And yet, we go to destroy them.”

Everything inside me went cold. I wished he hadn’t said it. I supposed I’d always known it, but I had never let myself think about it. I stared at my hands, clenched white-knuckled on my lap. I forced them to unlock. Forced myself to breathe slowly.

“We haven’t had much time to talk since you returned,” Yatol said. “What did you learn?”

I had gone back, hadn’t I? I’d almost forgotten. Gone back and failed.

“Not as much as I would have liked,” I said. “My father taught literature. Kurtis said his interest was mythology, and the work of a man named Tolkien.” I frowned, trying to think of how to explain it. “Tolkien wrote a book he called the ‘Epic History of the Elves,’ which had some retellings of real myths.”

“Elves?” said Yatol, his eyes glinting strangely. “Interesting. Immortal beings?”

“Yeah, something like that. Kurtis said my father thought Tolkien’s mythology was as real as the other myths.”

“As real?” He shot me a curious glance. “Or do you mean, as true?”

I thought about that a moment, then smiled. “Yes. As true.”

“Did you find the book?”

“Kurtis gave me a copy. I left it behind. But my father had marked a passage, something about an island being drowned and part of the world being torn away.”

Suddenly I remembered the sheaf of papers that had fallen out of the book. I hadn’t had a chance to look at them yet. Actually I’d completely forgotten about them, in the aftermath of our return to Arah Byen. I opened my pouch and pulled them out.

“I found these in the book,” I said, smoothing the paper on my leg. “The book was my father’s. Maybe these papers were his too.”

I squinted at them in the dim light, and Yatol shifted closer to look over my shoulder. I could make out a drawing, which looked like a map of the Mediterranean. Maybe. Geography had never been my strong suit. There were other markings on the page, too, like some strange script. I pointed at it.

“I can’t read that.”

Yatol slanted me a curious glance. “So you can speak the language, but can’t read the writing? Fascinating.”

“Well, children learn to speak before they learn to read,” I said glumly.

I shot him a furtive glance and saw him smiling. Teasing. I knew what that look said: You just called yourself a child. I shoved him.

“Shut up!”

He just grinned at me, then tugged the papers from my hands. “Do you mind?”

“Have a party.”

That got a skeptical look from him. I hoped the phrase didn’t mean something different in Arathi than it did in English. For a while he sat quietly, studying the papers.

“Let’s see,” he said after a while. “This talks about the ayshkahl, some of the old rune verses. Then here…”

He paused, then pointed to a set of markings. That I could read.

“Tolkien.”

“Ah. This talks about Tolkien’s work. There are a bunch of names, all pointing to each other.”

He held it in front of me so I could look on with him. I saw the names he was talking about, written in my kind of alphabet.

“That first one is Andor. I remember that from the book. And it points to Atlantis? Atlantis in myth was an island that was drowned,” I commented. “Then we have The West, pointing away to…”

I tapped a couple of foreign words, both connected by arrows to ‘The West.’

“Arah Byen. And n’Talanthis.”

“Oh, Yatol! Elekeo mentioned that name, n’Talanthis. He said they assaulted it.”

“Hm,” Yatol said. “Andor sounds remarkably like a name I recall from the lore masters’ books – Andenor. Not our ancient home, but the land of a rival king. We know nothing much besides the name, and that it was drowned. Where, when and why had all been lost. But the other name, n’Talanthis, was there in our books too. Your father believed it referred to the land we had left.”

“So, my father is saying that Andenor is the same as Atlantis? But why does Atlantis sound so similar to n’Talanthis, if Andenor was your enemy?”

The similarity had just occurred to me, but now that I thought of it, it seemed obvious. Yatol leafed through the papers, scanning the notes my father had scrawled.

“Well, your father writes here that there was some kind of confusion in your world’s myths. He says that Andenor was a neighboring island.” He made a noise of surprise. “And n’Talanthis was apparently an island, too. I never knew. The doubters always claimed it was a region in the Perstaun that got ‘drowned’ by the sands…as if it hadn’t always been a desert. But your father believed it belonged to another world, and that the drowning wasn’t just an allegory.”

“Wait, wait. Let me get this straight. We’ve got two islands, Andenor and n’Talanthis, apparently at war. Then, you said that Andenor was drowned? And n’Talanthis seems to be the same as Arah Byen, or Tolkien’s West, which got torn away from Earth. And then people got confused and forgot about n’Talanthis – the real one – and called Andenor Atlantis by mistake?”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“But what was the war about? And what does Andenor have to do with us now, if it got drowned? Oh,” I gasped in realization. “The Ungulion? If they assaulted n’Talanthis, you don’t think they’re…”

“That’s what your father writes here,” Yatol said, drawing up one knee and leaning on it. “He says that the Andenori thought the n’Talanthi had some kind of immortality.”

“The life-gift! Elekeo mentioned that too.”

His eyes flickered at me briefly, then he went on, “He writes that the n’Talanthi were renowned throughout the world for virtue and excellence. Arts, sciences, military prowess. There’s mention of the Brethren walking openly among them. Apparently the Andenori got jealous, maybe thinking they could win immortality through combat. But the n’Talanthi king disregarded all the warnings as the Andenori fitted a fleet of ships and set sail to seize the island. But then the…”

His voice died, and for a while he read quietly. I watched him surreptitiously, noticing that his face paled two or three shades as his gaze flitted over the pages. But his expression never changed. He glanced at me and saw me studying him, so he jabbed a finger against the paper.

“Your father says here that a great flood rose up, swallowing the fleet and the whole island of Andenor. But n’Talanthis was preserved, and somehow was removed from your world and reestablished here. But the Andenori had made a vow to an evil being – what is this, some god or spirit, maybe? – that they would never stop until they had destroyed every last n’Talanthi. And that spirit held them to their oath, giving them a mockery of immortality so that they could continue their hunt.”

“Ungulion.”

He nodded. “What’s this say here? Looks like a drawing of Pyelthan. It has the rune verse written out that Enhyla mentioned, ‘The Circle of Judgment / in the Judgment Seat.’ And here’s a name, King Silon, and I believe that’s an angelic symbol. Nothing else but some isolated words. Here’s Mekaema. Then, let’s see, death, judgment, hell.”

“That’s helpful,” I commented dryly. “So Pyelthan is the Circle of Judgment, whatever that means. And the Ungulion are trying to finish what they started, long ago.”

For some reason, my words fell like a dead weight on the air. Then Yatol laughed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“The foolishness of it all is that they drew this punishment on themselves seeking something they could never have. And they still seek it! And would destroy us all for the sake of it.” He sighed, folding up the papers and handing them back to me. “Well, did you learn anything else from the book?”

I shrugged. “Just something about a road that still goes into the West, that the elves could travel, only nobody could make the voyage alone. Yatol, it’s the portal, isn’t it? And that’s why the Brethren have to bear us over it. But how exactly does it work?”

“How does it work?” Yatol echoed blankly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why is it only sometimes open? And how do the Ungulion cross it if the Brethren have to carry us? Is it because they’re not…alive?”

“No,” he said, grim. “When your father discovered the portal, they sensed its presence. I don’t believe any of them can actually call it open, but they can force passage on it if one of us does. Which is why…”

“…there’s a portal guardian,” I finished. “To make sure none get through.”

“Right. We aren’t always able to prevent them, if there are too many or we are too weak.”

“But how do they travel it?”

“The Forsworn of the Brethren could bear the Ungulion over that path, if they could be persuaded to.”

“You mean demons?” I shuddered with horror. “Kurtis told me there was a professor who wanted to steal Pyelthan from my father. Dr. Balson. I met him before we left. Somehow he reminded me of an Ungulion, but he looked like a normal person. Do you think he might be one of them?”

“Yes. Your father warned me about him. He appeared in our lands before my time as portal guardian.” He hesitated, plucking a leaf and smoothing its curling edges with fierce attention. “A brave man guarded the portal then. But this Ungulion was too powerful. No one expected it. We mourned a great hero that day. Some of us still mourn him.”

I watched his face in the dim light for a while, then lay down in silence.