The War of the Realms

by C Steven Meldrum

Answer: “He who knows the end of suffering.”

  From “The Writings of the God-King” We left Kyichu, laughing and joking with each other, the sounds of the laughter and music from the inn receding into the night. There was no wind, and the swiftly racing clouds that had dogged our trek on the way to Kyichu had gone leaving a cloudless sky and the azure brilliance from the full moon to light our way back. In my slightly intoxicated state I almost fancied I could see the mighty towers and spires that gave Lüun its cerulean brilliance.

  Before it had become the first homeworld of the mechs, who had covered every square mile of it with the towers and buildings and armouries and the manufactories particular to their kind, I read that it had been a pock-marked wasteland, without population or even an atmosphere. Surely the author was mistaken.I looked up, wagering that they didn’t have to worry about cold and snow and walling towns to protect the inhabitants from the dangers of the wilds. Lüun, whether one defined it as a moon-sized city or a space station, was the closest example we knew of a technologically advanced society but it was only one of many thousands. Irth had truly been forgotten about in the Great Scattering. I didn’t feel that we had somehow missed out on anything though. It was the home of humankind and although most of it was uninhabitable, it was my home.

  Snow crunched loudly beneath our booted feet as we headed away from the town. We all talked and laughed loudly with Lhapka earning most of our taunts as Rogel’s wanton tales of Lhapka’s dancing reached heroic proportions. He whacked Rogel playfully with his cudgel but I believe he enjoyed being the centre of attention. Yeshe smiled also and took credit for her coaching. Puk, conversely, was devoid of conversation, pensive and grim. He set a blistering pace away from the town barbican, the sentries waving us into the night. As we headed west along the road, I managed to catch up with him and asked him about his night. He mentioned again the hooded figure that sat in the corner of the inn, eyeing us as we sat in the booth.

  “I asked the bartender and the old woman serving trays of food but no - one knew who he was. I would bet a week’s cleaning duties that he was one the brothers sent to watch over us. How did the Masters find out?”

  “I don’t know. Bu t I find it unlikely that we would have been allowed to leave. If Master Trisong or Master Panuaru had found out they would have stopped us short before we had taken one step beyond the walls.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know which night we had planned to go. Do y ou think they would have sent one of the warrior-priests into town ahead of us with instructions to watch for five students who should wander in out of the cold?”

  Rogel and Yeshe had ceased hounding Lhapka and were listening intently to our conversation. “I’m inclined to agree with Tashi”, said Yeshe. “Why bother allowing us to leave?”

  “Maybe it was a stellaferae or simulgen, or maybe even one of the Pestasii or Sidus. The gatekeeper did mention a flyer. It seems the stellaferae come and go as they please”, said Rogel.

  We had almost without noticing it come across the trail that led down from the road and back to the river.

  “There’s the trail anyway,” said Yeshe. “The faster we get back the better.” In two more watches Surya the sun god would again launch himself into the eastern sky. She and Lhapka ran over the lip and plunged into the patchy darkness. Puk followed and then me. I turned to look back to Rogel who was close behind, a look of consternation on his face.

  “What is it,Rogel?” I looked back down the trail and tried to keep from slipping on the treacherous path. Rogel plunged down the path a few steps behind me.

  “I thought I saw … doesn’t matter – keep moving.”

  And then I heard it– low and guttural; a menacing growling coming from somewhere roughly parallel to us, amongst the undulating snow-covered boulders and shrubs.“Wolves!” yelled Puk ahead of me. We quickened our pace as much as we could on the hazardous and icy snow-covered path.

  After what seemed a watch or more of steep and slippery paths, we came upon level ground and plunged out of a thick copse of shrubs into the clearing before the frozen river. Almost as quickly, three met’y wolves – as tall as a man at the shoulders with that reflective chromium hide, luminous red eyes and massive teeth-filled jaws plunged out of the trees also. With the surer surface of the flat ground and no trees to navigate, there was nothing to protect us from them. We had our cudgels ready as we ran ahead of them but five apprentice monks against three massivemet’y wolves was sadly a one-sided affair.

  “Run!” yelled Rogel. We were all fairly athletic but Lhapka carried the most weight and Puk had the shortest legs so our speed was governed by them. To outpace any of the group would have bought the others time but would have meant instant death for the stragglers.

  The wolves gained on us easily and to add to our woes, I suddenly saw four more charging toward us from the opposite bank. They were smart creatures and had flushed us out onto the open plain of the valley with escape into the rocks on either bank cut off. I ran simply because to stop would have been to die. My feet dug deep into the snow. In my mind I flew as a high as a hawk above the mountains but with each laboured breath I could feel the wolves getting closer. Above the ragged sound of my breathing and pumping of my heart I heard Rogel yell, “Downstream – now!”

  There was a small islet mid-river which was no more than a collection of massive boulders that we would swim out to in the summer. In the warm weather we would climb it and leap from the massive boulder at the summit, which stood more than a rod above the water level.

  With the frozen river around its base it looked a lot shorter than I remembered it but our legs would not carry us much further and we needed a height advantage and a defendable place to make a stand.

  With my lungs burning to the point at which I thought I must soon vomit blood, I saw Rogel leap up the first boulder and then the second followed by Yeshe, myself, Lhapka five strides back and with the foremost wolf only a body length from Puk, he also made the leap, grasping Rogel’s outstretched hand in the process. The climb slowed them but they were equally if not more surefooted than us on the boulders. Puk fell heavily, tripped by the wolf as it flew toward him, only to be turned aside by a well-placed cudgel stroke from Rogel. I helped him up and we continued upwards. Yeshe and Lhapka had made it to the top and were busy fending off two that had circled around and climbed the other side.

  The higher position was to our advantage. The pack could not overwhelm us in force because the position at the large summit boulder, while big enough for us, would not allow more than two at a time to come within striking distance. Our position was dire however. Without energy weapons, or piercing and stabbing weapons capable of penetrating their metallic hides, we could do no more with our cudgels and fighting skills than turn them away. And we were growing tired. They had only to maintain their attack until one or two of us fell; then the rest would follow.

  The stand-off continued for a watch or more but it seemed like days to me. We yelled instructions to each other and watched for their forays up the rock face. They were fell creatures indeed– huge, tireless, unyielding, with maws that could take off a man’s head in one bite.

  And then what seemed inevitable happened. A wolf leaped high of Lhapka’s wild swing and bowled him from his perch. Rogel screamed and took the beast in the throat with a powerful toe-thrust that would have crushed the larynx of a wild bear. Instead it thrashed at him and he swung his cudgel with such ferocity that he pushed it off the boulder, snapping his staff in the process. The creature bounced on the rocks below and came to rest upon the frozen river-top. My attention went to Lhapka. He had fallen to a boulder above where the wolf now lay. He was not moving. Other wolves saw their chance and came for him. Yeshe screamed and leaped down into the fray. Puk and Rogel were both fighting off wolves of their own so I dropped down also to help Yeshe.

  At that moment the most unimaginable thing in the world happened. Panting hard and sweating with exhaustion in the brumal stillness and with nothing but grim
determination to fend off death at all costs and a steely resolve to maintain our resistance all through the night and for as long as it took of the following day to be rescued, the last thing any of us expected was to see somebody running across the ice toward us from upstream. Three of the wolves immediately left us and headed across the ice. That sigh of relief cost me dearly. In the fraction of an instant I was distracted, a huge weight crashed down upon me. Steel claws the length of my fingers raked my face and chest. Yeshe yelled something but the wind was knocked from me and all I could see was a great pair of jaws before my face. It bit at me but met my staff in its jaw. What happened next beggars explanation but in my dazed state all I can say is time seemed to stand still for a moment. I clearly saw the steel canines that would in an instant rend me limb from limb but then through my panic came a distinctive “pop” and, from between the legs of the beast that crushed me from above, saw the phosphorous tracer of some device as it headed for the three wolves out on the frozen expanse. The luminescent bullet reached its target and then exploded in a soundless and blinding light followed by a dull, ground-shaking roar. The shockwave hit us almost instantaneously and I was blinded in a storm of ice and snow.

  While my strength failed and the wolf pressed closer to my face, another sound roused my consciousness. Puk, who had held his position at the summit, managed to yell, “Theriver!” and I looked up to see a torrent of white water rushing towards us. The wolf saw it too and leaped off me, fleeing towards the bank, nearly tearing my cudgel out of my hands as it went. I managed a glance at Yeshe and Rogel leaping up to the top of the cairn. I could have made it also but in my panic I thought of Lhapka who was lower down the island fortress than I was. I turned to where he had fallen but he wasn’t there. Lower down, my worst fears were realised. He lay like a rag doll in the jaws of the larger of the beasts. The pack leader made no move however – it was transfixed by the wall of white that rushed towards us.

  Without a second to think, I leaped down the rocks with screams of “No!” coming from above me. I grabbed Lhapka’s cudgel from the space between two rocks in one motion and screamed as I ran toward the beast. Yeshe told me later that they had never seen anything like it. Rogel knew that my moves did not come from Dorje’s instruction or from his own. With my robe torn and my face and chest black with my life’s blood I charged the pack leader. Both cudgel’s whirled and struck with such well-placed ferocity that the wolf fell back, and panicked by the impending doom cascading towards us, dropped Lhapka’s prone form and fled. I threw the cudgels back into the rocks and grabbed Lhapka, sure that he was dead, and heaved him over my shoulders.

  My first folly was to think that I could out-race the doom behind me. My second was to think that the solid, snow-laden river-top was going to stay that way. Whatever the energy weapon had done to frozen river, it was not frozen anymore.

  Such force as I have never known grabbed me and threw me forward. If I had been directly in front of the islet I would surely have been dashed to pieces against the boulders. As it was, the ice disintegrated below me and I was plunged into a frozen maelstrom, tossed like a twig among great blocks of jagged ice and then I went under the water, my last memory being Rogel, Yeshe, and, perched at the highest point screaming in helplessness Puk, watching forlornly as I went by and then under. I lost my grip on Lhapka in my helpless thrashing. There can be no describing such a gelid and bitter end. The air burst from my lungs and I felt the cold tide of my death in it.

  Then emptiness took me. The frozen valley and violence of the past night passed out of all knowledge and instead I flew high over far lands of mountains and green forests and on that far horizon glimpsed the land where there is no suffering, no woe, no pain and much was revealed to me. There is a peace and knowledge which comes with the ending of one life and the start of a new. I closed my eyes and prayed. It seemed I passed beyond time and space and all things dear. I was carried along in the soft swirling embrace of summer waters, the chiming sound of children’s laughter bringing a smile to me and knowledge that I was now in the world beyond, warmed by a brighter and more joyous sunshine than I could ever remember. But I was not alone.

  Lhapka stood, as though on the brightest and warmest of summer days, on the shore before me and with him one who I cannot describe, but who was known to me as my saviour. Uma– the Golden Goddess, clad in light and beauty and all the power of Heaven. Daughter of the Mountains, Mother of the Dark Season, guide to Yama in the land of Death.

  “’m idst the grim wastes were the hounds of Hell nourished. But does it not befit you, God-child, in the fashion of the wolves you vanquished, to strive, always?”

  I looked up at her, not understanding. “ I stand now upon the farthest shore, across the great divide between your world and the next. Look back across the river.”

  Still floating in the water, I did as she commanded and saw my friends and the stranger, still shrouded in the bitter darkness of night, running up and down the shattered ice searching and calling, the carcasses of some of the met’y wolves littered along the shoreline, the river now quietened after the violence that had taken me.

  I looked back at Lhapka, in light, warmth and health. He stood just behind the goddess with what seemed an expression of peace and acceptance.

  You fought well Tashi. Go back to them. Tell them that I go to the next life.

  “Lhapka! No!” I cried in a voice that wouldn’t come.

  “Lhapka yet has things to do, young godling. As do you. There are dark times to come and he will stand with me. Pity not, for I fear yours is the harder road. You have gifted me and thus I will give something to you: the Budhi Pallien shall be your guide. Remember!”

  Before I could speak, I lay in frigid darkness on the snow, shivering uncontrollably and wet from head to toe, too numb to feel the incredible pain that wracked my body. I heard faint yelling.

  “Over there!”

  “Where?”

  “Did you not see it! Something burst through a rent in the ice and landed

  over there.”

  “Was it one of them?”

  In my dazed state I heard the crunching of the snow as several people ran

  up to me. I leaned on my elbow and vomited great gouts of water – coughing uncontrollably. Someone bent over me. “It’s Tashi! He’s still alive! By the gods, what happened? I’ve never seen anything like it!” That was Yeshe.

  Rogel yelled off intothe distance, “We’ve got Tashi! Puk, any sign of Lhapka?” I heard more crunching of snow as he ran off in Puk’s direction.

  “Come on Tashi. Don’t fail on us now.” I felt my sodden cloak and jerkin being removed and was suddenly wrapped in a warm, dry cloak. Yeshe heaved me up and gave me my cudgel to cling to– a large curved metallic canine firmly embedded in the oak.

  “I … I … s-ssaw himmm.”

  “Lhapka?”

  “W-www … ith the Goddess-ss.”

  “We’ve got to get you back!”

  “Hhh…eee’ss g-gone, nnnhhhh.”

  “So Lhapka is dead then.” Abbot Tomas’s assertion snapped me out of my pained remembrance. I looked up at him, tears running down my face. Master Panuaru moved round from the doorway to face me. He had an almost indescribable expression of incredulity and awe on his face.

  “You actually spoke to the Golden Goddess?” Much of my memory had already faded. Fever-induced spectres haunted me still – but parts remained indelibly etched upon my mind. Master Panuaru and Abbot Tomas seemed to be having a kind of guarded debate while I sat in reverie.

  “ … even without any of these extraordinary tales plus mmmmm, other equally bizarre events of late.”

  Master Panuaru turned to me. “Do you know what took place in the infirmary yesterday?”

  Yesterday? I remembered waking and feeling like I’d misplaced something. I was weak, had a chesty cough from gulping what seemed gallons of icy water and myface felt numb where the met’y wolf had raked me. But I had also felt hungry which Master Trisong as
sured me was a good sign that I must be shaking off the fever. I looked from Master Panuaru to Abbott Tomas and shook my head.

  “Have your friends talked to you since you’ve come out of your fever?” Master Panuaru asked. I had talked to Dorje and to a few others briefly but had not begun yet to wonder why Puk or Rogel or even Yeshe had not come to visit me. I said this to Master Panuaru.

  “And do you not have any recollection of the last week?”

  Lama Tomas stood so still it was if he had expired on the spot and time had frozen him in a posture of stoic bitterness. His gaze remained fixed on an area of the ceiling where the plaster had peeled.

  “Look at me Tashigang.” Master Panuaru had bent to look at me eye-toeye. “You don’t remember the visitation– the light, the … Lady of Light?”

  “Sorry Master, I remember very little. I recall evil dreams of everything and nothing, where a king of men became a giant serpent and the mother goddess bowed to me from the throne room of a mighty palace under the sea.”

  “You’re positive these were not just fever-inspired dreams?” Lama Tomas spoke, but not to me.

  “I know what I saw.” Master Panuaru spoke with a grim conviction, as though he too were on trial here and the weight with which he described his own experience with Tara the White would either save or condemn me. “And more importantly, what I felt. It was as if all the suffering and woe in all the universe had ended and were I to take a step forward, I would have walked a new path, in the warmth and sunshine of the fairest of lands for all time, in bliss eternal.”

  Abbot Tomas seemed not even to hear him, so deep was he in his own musings. The suddenly he spoke.

  “Mid the wreck of ‘is’ and‘was’,

  Things incomplete and purposes betrayed

  Make sadder transits o'er thought's optic glass Than noblest objects utterly decayed."

  Master Panuaru and I simply stared at him askance. He stood as still as a pillar, the only movement being a gladiatorial sword-play of his thumbs above the arena created by his interlaced fingers. Just as I began to feel that we would be there for another watch, the Abbot turned toward us, as if he had come to face a truth that would not be denied.