“Alaris, whenever you like. I know you’re stunned, but you’ve got to help me.”
All right, the little sphere replied nervously.
The seraph flew over to the procession of spirits. Luchy stared at her engagement ring. The light kept blinking like a castaway star without having either lost brightness or gained strength. She looked up at Alaris anxiously as his light diminished to the point where it began to resemble that of the spirits. She put her hands to her mouth with tears in her eyes when she realized that one of the spheres was moving away from the procession to meet Alaris in mid-flight. Both seraphs fluttered, as butterflies do in spring. Perhaps that was their way of rejoicing when they recognized or saw each other.
The two spheres came to Luchy, flying calmly, so close to her face that the girl felt she could see inside them. What, until then, had been a dull light became a rosy one, the emanation she remembered of Teitú when he felt happy. She could not distinguish Alaris from the other seraph.
It’s Teitú! Alaris thought in her mind. Then she noticed that she was able to tell the seraphs apart from their thoughts.
Luchy! Luchy! It’s me, Teitú! I’m so happy to see you! Wait, just a moment… Where is Manchego?
Chapter XXXIII — Dimensions
Mérdmerén barely felt the powerful thrust Mégalath gave to hurl himself into the air, ascending in such steep a climb that it seemed physically impossible. They rose almost vertically and he did not seem to feel the opposing forces the planet must have been exerting on his body. The only conclusion he could come to was that there must have been a magic spell that allowed the dragon to manage such a feat.
He had enjoyed the looks the citizens had given him as he walked through the crowd to climb onto the dragon’s back. He remembered their good wishes and the hands touching his shoulders. They cheered him as the Dragonrider King.
Before leaving, he had thought of his daughter. He had not said a proper goodbye to her and if he failed to come back alive, he knew she would never forgive him. The grandson growing in his daughter’s womb would not know his grandfather if he did not come back. On the other hand, if he did not do this, if he did not summon Nordost, everything would be lost in any case.
When they had taken off, he saw the destruction caused by Mórgomiel’s surprise attack. The fires around the city were being put out through the combined efforts of both citizens and soldiers. Order was being restored. Many had died—too many. He had left specific instructions with Gáramond who was in charge of studying the winged creatures and their riders who had been part of the attack. Although the majority of those bodies had already been cut into pieces and handed out among the people.
I’m riding a dragon. I’m riding a dragon! Dragons exist! Mérdmerén’s mind was still reeling. To see dragons clash in a cosmic battle, to have ridden Mégalath and seen his transformation when the Dagger of Stern had been plunged into his flesh, had not been enough to convince him. But now that he had found solace and there was time to reflect, the reality of it all had sunk in. I need to calm down, he told himself. There’s too much to do and no time to think about it all.
“I need to know what’s going on, Mégalath,” Mérdmerén said in an even tone. “Please explain yourself.” Then he added in surprise, “How can we speak without the air getting in the way?”
When they passed through the highest clouds towards the atmosphere of the Meridian, Mérdmerén felt dumbfounded to think that he was outside the planet. He was in space, seeing the world he lived in as if it were an orb in the distance. He turned in a panic to look around in every direction, only to realize that up and down had lost their meaning and left and right depended on the perspective he was looking from. His mind was not ready for this and he felt so dizzy that he had to hold on as hard as he could to the dragon’s back where there was no saddle, only scales to try to keep hold of as best he could. He would have preferred to have a cinch to fasten himself to the dragon’s back, although he was kept in place through magic. A cinch would have helped him to stay calm, instead of thinking he would fall to his death at each turn the dragon took.
“I’ll let your small mind adjust to the wonders of the universe,” Mégalath warned him. “Don’t take too long adjusting to your new reality, because we have to plunge into the River of Time as soon as possible.”
The dizziness stopped and Mérdmerén managed to take a good look at his surroundings. Empty space was all around him. He had not known how cruel space could be or the lack of gravity. Fastened to Mégalath’s back with a spell, he had no way of knowing. He could breathe, speak, and could not feel the cold. The sovereign had no idea that without the magic, he would have been turned to ice and would have died of asphyxia.
He could see in every direction and wherever he looked, a luminous phenomenon returned his gaze. From the twinkling stars in the infinite distance to enormous clouds made up of thousands of dots, everything was fascinating. Most thrilling were the planets close to the Meridian and, of course, the gigantic sun around which it orbited. It occurred to him that more than anyone, Gáramond the Philosopher should have come here with Mégalath to study the stars and document their strange movements.
“There’s a magic cloak surrounding us, Mérdmerén,” the dragon explained. “It’s what allows us to speak at a normal level and prevents your body from asphyxiating or freezing in the void. Another spell keeps you sitting there without flying off at every beat of my wings.”
“Thanks! Finally, you’ve explained what I’d already suspected.”
“Oh, my brothers! How I regret not having assisted you during the Summoning! The mistake I made was grave, Mérdmerén. I let my brothers die, Fluenthal betrayed us. Mythlium and ArD’Buror succumbed to Mórgomiel’s temptation. I reacted too late.”
“Why?” Mérdmerén asked.
“Why did I act too late? Well, I’d made a deal with Mórgomiel and his loathsome lizard Górgometh. They would leave me alone and I would simply not join the Summoning. I’d spent thousands of years at leisure, eating and doing whatever I wanted. Laziness took hold of me and that’s why the deal with Mórgomiel sounded like a fair one. And I have to confess, I was trying to hurt my now-deceased goddess, D’Santhes Nathor. Mórgomiel has killed her and her essence has passed on to become part of Wrath, his evil sword.
“That son of hell came looking for me after murdering my goddess, intending to kill me with Wrath the Godslayer and absorb my essence. That was when I knew that the ingrate had never intended to leave me in peace. His cunning plan had always been to keep me isolated, far from the conflict, so that he could do whatever he pleased. He always wanted all the power, wanted to conquer everything. I barely escaped alive. And that’s why I am here.
“I’ve come to face up to it and pay for the mistake I made. I know that on my own, I could never stop Mórgomiel and Górgometh. Today we were lucky, but that will never happen again. You don’t know Górgometh as I do; that creature is cruel without limit. The worst thing is his psychological tricks when he seduces you with his lies. No matter what you do, never look Górgometh in the eye for too long. When he puts a spell on you, he gets into your head and reduces your mind to shreds.”
“That sounds terrible,” the king agreed. By the end of the conversation, his mind was beginning to get used to how strange it was to be floating in space.
“We need Nordost,” Mégalath added. “Only a dragon can find another dragon. To find Nordost will be no easy feat. With the Dagger of Stern, you have infused part of his essence into me and I am now aware of his presence. Only I can reach him. Now, let us go. I’ve put things off for too long. Now we enter the River of Time. Prepare to be awed.”
Mérdmerén had many questions, but he decided to leave them for another time. In front of the dragon, there appeared a purple vortex and with a tremendous beat of its wings, the magnificent beast leaped into that screen of energy.
From one moment to the next, they appeared in another dimension. Before them was a long strip tha
t seemed to stretch toward the infinite, flowing like a river without water, banks, or a sea to flow into. Above and to either side there was nothing whatsoever. The river running below them contained thousands upon thousands of stars, solar systems, one passing phenomenon after another. The River of Time was something incomprehensible even for minds as skilled and ancient as Mégalath’s.
Mérdmerén started to feel dizzy again, except that this time it was a lot worse. He understood nothing and his mind was unprepared for these wonders. He longed to set foot on solid ground or perhaps drink wine until he lost consciousness to quell the dreadful feeling that was now dominating his existence. He felt tiny, shrunken, and insignificant, finding himself surrounded by supernatural miracles like these. He shut his eyes, which seemed to make everything worse since his sense of direction went wild and he could find no way of relaxing.
He pressed his face against the creature’s back and breathed, thinking of nothing. This seemed to help a little. In a reflex action, he reached for the Dagger of Stern at his chest and found that it was still in its place.
***
“Time does not pass in the River of Time,” Mégalath said when Mérdmerén woke. “Precisely nothing has happened since we entered, and yet we are still searching tirelessly for Nordost.”
Mérdmerén glanced from side to side. “How on earth do you know where you want to go?”
“A dragon knows by instinct.”
Mérdmerén felt a prisoner of the phenomenon of feeling that he had been immersed in the River of Time for days when no time had passed. He still had no sense of direction and the vortex had vanished completely.
“If we go to a place called the Border of Time,” Mérdmerén said, trying to find logic in the name of Nordost’s location. “Then it must be in the farthest reach of the River of Time,”
The dragon stared out at every side of the River of Time. “There is no end. It does not exist. The strip goes on to infinity and it is not a circle or a straight line. Nobody knows its shape or form.”
“Tempus Frontus,” Mérdmerén repeated, savoring the name. “The Border of Time. Although it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the border of the River of Time. Maybe it just means that somehow, it adjoins the River of Time not that it’s at the end. Just like two nations sharing a border, you don’t necessarily need to go to the edge of the sea, the limit of a nation’s reach, to enter the neighboring one.”
“That is a valid point,” the dragon said.
“Maybe all this time we’ve been flying just beside some part of Tempus Frontus—underneath it, over it, or even within it—without knowing,” Mérdmerén said. “Perhaps it’s a game of perspectives. Different dimensions.”
“Who are you?” the dragon asked. “What do you know about dimensions? Who are you to know truths like that?”
“You just have to use your imagination,” Mérdmerén said. “Let’s say reality is a cube and that at a given moment, you find yourself on one of its sides. If you don’t know the cube has more sides, you’d never think about them, and going to one of them would never be possible. So that means we’re on one of the six sides of the cube. The other five sides are the border with the sixth, am I right?”
“And now I begin to understand why humans were chosen,” Mégalath said. “If all of them are like you, Mérdmerén, you have a great imagination. Your notion of dimensions is correct. But it’s not like a cube. It is more like a cylinder with infinite sides that can equally be like a cube or a flat circle.”
This explanation of reality now became very complex for the human, who would have preferred it if the dimensions had been like a cube, a comprehensible figure with only six sides. But he knew that reality was certainly going to be more complicated and therefore incomprehensible to a mind like his which was not used to considering phenomena like this.
“Anyway,” the sovereign said. “If the universe is a cylinder, I imagine the border would be either inside the cylinder or on the outside.” He was more interested than ever in finding the location of Tempus Frontus. Talking about the philosophy of dimensions had turned into a tortuous enigma.
“If your hypothesis is correct, human, we should find Tempus Frontus very soon. Although the word soon, you’ll find, has no meaning in a place where time does not pass.”
“True,” the king said. “It makes me rather uneasy to think that finding the place might be easy—I mean, without giving it too much thought. That would mean anybody, even Mórgomiel, could find the Border of Time without any problem.”
“The complexity of simplicity,” the dragon said.
“All right then. So if this were a cube, we could roll the sides and go to another dimension.”
With a thought, the dragon managed to transfer them to another dimension. From one moment to the next, they appeared in the Interim. Here, the previous dimension, the one they knew as reality, still operated but was colored green with spirits wandering freely.
“The spirits are growing in number,” Mégalath commented. “It’s a sign that the Goddess of Night is absent. This is not good.”
With another spell, they transferred themselves to another dimension and this time, they were exposed to a noxious atmosphere where several figures were moving in synchrony.
“I don’t know this place,” Mégalath said. “It’s interesting and it would be worth coming back to investigate. But Nordost isn’t here. When another dragon is near, you can feel it.”
Mérdmerén felt a sense of relief when they moved to another dimension. That darkness had given him an ominous feeling.
What seemed to be days were just a few minutes, since when they transferred themselves to those dimensions where time did travel, the seconds added up. The dimensions seemed endless and each one seemed to offer an altered vision of reality—or perhaps they were reality and he was living in one of the many true versions of it. The possibilities were too much for his mind and he decided to stop the thoughts that were becoming mentally oppressive.
Suddenly, they were back in the River of Time in what seemed to be the place where they had started.
“If reality were a cylinder, I’m sure Tempus Frontus wouldn’t be surrounding it. Therefore, it might be inside.”
“Why?”
“Imagine a cylinder. It has two sides if you admit that its length is infinite. One side is the external surface, rotating within dimensions. How about going to the inner surface of the cylinder? We might see the other side of the coin.”
“By all the sons of the great nation,” cried Mérdmerén. “You’re a genius!”
“Wait. We’ll transfer—now!”
They transferred to another dimension and appeared in a dark yet peaceful reality where three giant orbs spun around a central point. Each orb followed a perpendicular course to the others so that they danced in a synchronized pattern.
“What the hell is that?” Mérdmerén asked.
“The wonders of creation,” the dragon replied. “Great powers created this place, so strong that they cannot be dissolved or abolished. It has to be here.”
The dragon appeared to be floating in the middle of nothing and although there was no light, somehow he and his rider were perfectly visible.
When they were near the three orbs, they became aware that those powerful globes were majestic black suns, traveling around a point so black it seemed to suck everything like a funnel. The spectacle was unique. Great strands, like arms, extended from the suns and were sucked toward that gigantic black spot from which there seemed to be no escape.
“The Border of Time,” Mégalath said with a smile. “Where time begins and where it ends. The dimension adjoins all the other dimensions and is where events are recycled.”
Mérdmerén was left speechless, overwhelmed by the spectacle. As they approached those suns, it became clear they were moving at furious speeds, perceptible only thanks to the scale of their structure and the acceleration of their movement around that black speck that seemed to be sucking everything in
to it.
“The raw forces of nature are fierce. Here, the elements are reduced to their most basic state. Without my magic, both you and I would be turned to dust and sucked into that funnel so that our matter would be recycled. It’s not only the powerful forces of creation that rule. There’s a spell protecting what lies inside that hole.”
Mégalath wove between the three raging suns with a display of acrobatics to avoid colliding with them. The closer he came to the black hole, the faster he began to move toward it. Mérdmerén became aware that reality seemed to be stretching and multiplying until everything around him became an impossible, dizzying cylinder of stretched reality.
The Mandrakian felt the forces of the universe, primitive and powerful, stretching their thread-like fingers toward him, touching the matter he was formed of. It was as if these powers could separate and rejoin all the pieces that made up his physical state a thousand times in a single moment. Everything was suddenly paralyzed.
“Not everything that shines is gold. Not everything which wanders is lost.”
This was said once as if it came from the void. The echo of the last syllable remained for what seemed an eternity.
“Welcome to Tempus Frontus, Mérdmerén of the Kings.”
The voice sounded so close to him as if someone were whispering in his ear. He could not see, he could not think. He simply was. He felt like the wind, like time, like the leaves of a tree when they are illuminated by the sun’s brightness. The feeling was complete, unifying. Here, nothing was missing. It was perfection.
“Welcome Mégalath, Dragon of Night. You seek comfort and redemption. Here you will find exactly what you have been searching for.”
Reality now became a flat structure. Mérdmerén could not see beyond what was in his immediate field of vision and what little he could hear was a conversation carried on between two entities. He recognized Mégalath’s voice; the other was unknown.
Necromancer’s Sorrow: (Series Finale) Page 27
