“You’ll have to remove the robe and be ready to move on my word. I’ll take you back to the main hall, but we have to maintain the appearance of innocence. Do not speak a word about where you have been. I’ll handle any conversations. No matter what I say, you need to trust me. Oh, and don’t come to the Arx looking for me once you’ve gone,” he added. “I won’t be here or anywhere else you would be able to find on your own.”
A surge of emotions filled Trielle as Anacrysis spoke, a strange mixture of fear about what might happen next and sadness at the possibility of never seeing him again. The reaction surprised her with its strength, and, by the sudden look of concern on Anacrysis’s face, she could tell he had noticed it.
“I know what you were going to ask back in the capsule,” he said gently. “Believe me, I would tell you if I thought it safe. Suffice to say that there are things in motion that affect many lives, things I can’t speak freely of here in the Arx. But if you keep following this path, Trielle, I promise that it will all become clear. And,” he added with a smile, “you will see me again. Now, its time to go.”
Trielle removed her robes as instructed and followed Anacrysis from the storage room. They walked swiftly down the hallway, and soon it opened up into the soaring cavernous space of the main library. Off to the right Trielle could see the entranceway, and for a brief moment her fear lifted. She was almost free. Then it came crashing back as she saw the Anvardian librarian at his post by the main ramp and realized that they would have to pass by him to leave. She glanced briefly at Anacrysis, but his face was stern and impassive. Still, he had asked her to trust him. Taking a deep breath, Trielle steeled herself for the encounter.
“I’m sorry that we could not find the specific Ardathan case studies that you were searching for within the constraints of your permit,” said Anacrysis in official tones as they approached the Anvardian. “I realize that your time with us is limited. Still, I hope that your visit has been of some use.”
“Yes it has,” said Trielle, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.
The Anvardian looked up from his podium, an irritated look on his face.
“We will need to see your infochryst before you leave,” he said sharply. “Protocol dictates that those with limited-access permits submit for inspection any information that is to be removed from the Arx Memoria. We must assure that it falls within the boundaries of the original access agreement.”
Trielle’s heart raced. She had not expected this. Momentarily forgetting the injunction to keep silent, she opened her mouth to protest, but was quickly silenced by Anacrysis before she could say a word.
“Please surrender your infochryst,” said Anacrysis, holding out his hand. “Don’t worry, we’ll return it as soon as the scan is complete.”
Trielle stared at Anacrysis, searching his face for some sign that this would turn out alright, but his features were as hard as granite. Wordlessly she reached for the infochryst and handed it to Anacrysis. The Anvardian grunted in approval and moved to take it.
“Don’t bother,” said Anacrysis, “I will scan it myself.” Before the Anvardian could object, Anacrysis brought out his own infochryst and held it next to hers. A brief volley of blue sparks coruscaded between the devices as the scan proceeded. Once complete, a holographic table of results appeared in the air above Anacrysis’s device. He peered at the results, his lips a thin line, then gave Trielle an appraising glance.
“Hmmm… You were somewhat far afield in your search, miss?”
“Donar,” she said. “Trielle Donar.”
“Yes. Trielle,” said Anacrysis. “Still, the bulk of these appear to be in order. I have removed all data from your infochryst that was not relevant to your initial query. You may go now.”
“Thank you, sir,” Trielle replied with a nod, then took the infochryst and walked swiftly through the main gate into the light of the dying suns. She did not risk even a single look back, but focused instead on maintaining a calm, casual appearance as she moved into the city. Only when the Arx Memoria was far behind her did she stop to examine her infochryst. As she had suspected, the scan had been a sham. Nothing had been removed.
Trielle put the infochryst away and hurried to the Kinetorium, a smile on her lips.
Chapter 12: The Coil and the Fire
Below him stretched the shining mountain of faceted crystal, its very form a reification of the Chromoclast’s brilliance. Its slopes coursed downward for miles until they vanished at last into the hazy cerulean mists far beneath. Raising his eyes, Garin saw in the distance the other crystalline mountains he had first observed from the domain of First-Of-The-Bound. Though he was no closer, from this vantage point it seemed almost as if he could reach out and touch them. Each was a different hue, a brilliant knife of color that, taken together, defined the spectrum of a strange, unearthly rainbow. Between the mountains, the nodes and bridges from whence he had came stretched outward like a delicate crystalline lattice, its substance gleaming with reflected light from the peaks.
Then Garin noticed that the mountains seemed somehow misaligned, as if each were tilted away from him, as well as from each other. Puzzled, he looked down, and saw that even the mists beneath did not form a flat plane, but gently curved away from him in all directions, like the atmosphere of a planet seen from orbit. Seized by a sudden intuition, Garin reached within his clothes and pulled out the oneirograph. Accessing the map, he enlarged the image of the second sphere and stared for a moment at its complex geometry before turning to face the Chromoclast with a smile on his lips.
You begin to see the full shape of the Great ‘hedron, Woven one, flashed the voice of the Chromoclast. Now, do you know who I am? Do you know what I am?
“I perceive, Great One,” began Garin, “that you are a manifestation of one of the great forces that hold my world, Phaneros, together.”
Manifestation indeed, flashed the Chromoclast. Like my brothers below, I am more than a manifestation! I am the reality of which the “force,” as you call it, it itself an image. Must you persist in misunderstanding? I am the third reverberating radiance of the worldlight, fourth ray to separate from the sixfold emanation after the Exofuge had coiled his being around the nascent cosmos. Force indeed!
The words of the Chromoclast danced through Garin’s field of vision, illuminated by a vibrating iridescence that seemed to suggest annoyance.
“I apologize, Great One,” began Garin deferentially, “I only meant to use what understanding I brought with me from my own world to hasten my comprehension of the symmetries. You yourself have advised haste, and…”
Indeed, flashed the Chromoclast, interrupting Garin’s speech. Then tell me, woven one, what have you learned?
“That you are, in all likelihood, the being or power behind what we call the weak nuclear force.”
Abruptly the whirling light contracted, as if subdued.
I have always hated that name…
For the first time since he had begun his journey, Garin laughed.
You think this a laughing matter, flared the Chromoclast indignantly.
“No, Great One,” assured Garin.
Well then, flashed the Chromoclast, you are in fact correct. But come, there is no time left. Even now the Exofuge comes and you have not the understanding to rise to his side.
Garin thought for a moment.
“In fact, Great One, I think I do. If you, the Lord of this peak, are the wea… I mean… if you are one of the nuclear forces, then the other mountains must each correspond to another fundamental force. On the map I recorded from my dream, this world was portrayed as a single great crystalline shape. The mountains are parts of that shape, and thus the symmetry I must comprehend is that which unites you with the other forces.”
You have spoken well, flashed the Chromoclast. Stand fast now, and I will show you this symmetry.
As the Chromoclast spoke a luminous darkness engulfed Garin; a vision of a multidimensional space, vast and empty, but pregnant with endl
ess possibility. Then, in a burst of blinding radiance, the space was flooded with light. The light was bright and pure, rippling and coruscading in great waves like a mighty empyrean ocean as it expanded to fill the emptiness. But as the light expanded it seemed to become stiffer, brittler, until finally with a crack that seemed to shatter Garin’s bones a vast colored shard split off from the light, taking some of its essential nature with it. Again the light shattered, this time into two essentially equal fragments that themselves split, one into two shards and one into three. Now the space was filled with a whirling clash of colors arising from the movements of these fragments. All sense of purity was gone, but in its place had been born complexity, movement, and relationship.
Garin pondered this for a moment.
“I see,” he said finally, “The symmetry that I must comprehend is the nature of this primal shattering.”
Indeed, flashed the Chromoclast. Now turn again and face the ‘hedron. Rise if you can. The Exofuge comes!
Garin turned and saw the same landscape, but this time through the eyes of the Chromoclast’s vision.
He saw a landscape of fractured light, each mountain a shard of a greater unity.
He became aware of a pulsating quality to the light, each mountain’s brilliance beating like a heart, its rhythm a perfect counterpoint to its neighbors. From below, the cerulean mists thinned, parting in places as great shafts of white effulgence streamed upward from the living unity that he now knew must lie beneath. Then a great sound like the rush of a thousand winds roared above him, and Garin looked up to see a vast serpent, black as midnight, gliding through the heavens. Its head was a forest of spikes, its tail long enough to wrap around all of Materia.
He is come, flashed the Chromoclast impatiently. Go to him if you can!
With a cry Garin flung himself from the peak, grabbing onto one of the great shafts of light that rose from the mists with the pure force of his understanding. The light caught hold and he soared into the vermilion sky. Another moment of flight and he found himself atop the Exofuge, nestled between the crystalline spikes upon its head.
From his position on its back, the Exofuge seemed endless in length, a near-infinite river of darkness as deep as the space between the stars. Its surface was at once solid and fluid: as hard as obsidian crystal to the touch, yet able to flow and bend as the great being glided and coiled through the skies of Materia. It was like no other substance he had ever encountered.
Garin stepped to the edge and hazarded a brief glance downward. Already the Peak of the Third Glory had receded beneath him, and he could see a sizable portion of the curved jewel that is the Great ‘hedron, the world of Materia. Then he realized that, despite their obvious speed, he felt no movement. It was as if the Exofuge itself defined its own frame of reference apart from the external world. In wonder, he turned back to the Exofuge and spoke.
“You seem to encompass the ‘hedron, and yet not be a clear part of it. At least, not in the way the others below are.”
At first, silence; a silence so long that Garin began to doubt the Exofuge was capable of response. But then the memory surfaced of an answer, a resolute “yes” that Garin could recall with clarity, yet never seemed to have been spoken.
Is the Exofuge altering the past?
A few moments later and he remembered an affirmative response to this unspoken question, followed by a memory that counseled patience. In response Garin wandered forward between the crystalline spikes until he could clearly see their path, and then sat down to wait.
The sky ahead pulsed with hues of crimson and muted green, the same pattern that Garin had seen when he first arrived in this world. But soon the pattern began to shift. Garin watched as the hues began to separate, the reds gathering together and sinking downward, the greens brightening and rising to fill the sky above. As the Exofuge ascended, the greenness above them continued to brighten until at last it resolved into a shimmering membrane that stretched overhead like the surface of an ocean seen from beneath. Abruptly the Exofuge’s movement hastened, and they surged upward through the membrane in a shower of red light, like a whale breaching the waves. Then the Exofuge came to rest.
“Is this the Xaocosmic Border?” asked Garin. A few moments later he remembered hearing that this was the case. Garin rose and strode toward the edge of the Exofuge’s bulk. Below him lay a gently curving sea of vermillion effulgence within which swum a bright jewel. The heart of the jewel was still covered in mist, but its essential shape was now clearly visible. Above him stretched an endless expanse of green light that faded to a deep grey at the far edges of vision. Then Garin became aware of an indistinct human figure walking toward him across the surface of the red sea. A few moments later Garin’s eyes lit up with recognition.
“Kyr!”
“Indeed,” Kyr said softly. “I see that you were able to master the symmetries below.”
“Yes,” said Garin, “though I did receive assistance.”
“It is well that you did,” said Kyr with a smile, “for I instructed the denizens of this place to assist you. I would have been disappointed if they had not.” Then Kyr’s smile vanished as a thin bloodless shriek sounded above them.
“Step back young one,” he said grimly. “There are things that you must see here, things that you must know. But understand… it is not safe. I have asked the Exofuge to protect you, but his strength is not as great as it once was.”
His heart pounding, Garin backed up several steps. Then the shriek sounded again, followed by a rain of brilliant orbs that pulsed and seethed with poisonous green flame. Several fell into the red sea, consuming the water like acid before themselves being extinguished. Two were flying directly toward him.
His eyes closed, Garin put up his arms as if to ward off the inevitable, only to find that the promised destruction never came. Garin opened his eyes and saw that the forest of obsidian spikes atop the Exofuge’s head had bent inward and woven together, forming a shield around him. Several of the spikes had cracked under the onslaught, and a few were being slowly dissolved by the sputtering bilious flames. A few moments later a powerful memory assailed Garin, a memory of crushing pain and vast loss. Under the weight of that memory, Garin felt small, alone, and vulnerable.
Faster and faster fell the orbs, now accompanied by strokes of brilliant lighting. The red sea below roiled with each blast, thrashing and churning as if it was being torn apart. From beneath, the Exofuge shuddered as if in agony. Then the green light above them visibly brightened, and Garin looked up to see an amoeboid mass of viridian flame approaching through the void.
Its surface writhed and convulsed as if woven of serpents. A corona of poisonous light surrounded it like the halo of a diseased angel. The shriek sounded a third time, this time clearly emanating from the thing. It was a sound of inexpressible rage mingled with notes of fear. Garin watched as the mass vomited forth another volley of putrid fire. Yet this time the Exofuge was not the target. Instead, the flames converged on the unprotected form of Kyr. Garin cringed in anticipation, but Kyr simply gathered the surging flames into his hand, squeezing them out of existence between his fingetips. Kyr lifted his eyes to face the thing, and Garin could see tears trickling down his craggy face.
“You forget yourself,” whispered Kyr, his voice muted with grief. “Do you not remember the days of your youth, when we played together within the first light?”
What good are memories of light? answered the mass, its words sounding like cracks opening in the very fabric of space. The end comes and all you can speak of is this? Now I ask you, why have you brought one of them here? If there are any who deserve blame it is he!
The strength of the words struck Garin like bludgeons, and he fell upon his knees.
One of them? Does he mean… me?
As if in response to his unspoken question the mass unleashed another torrent of flame directly toward Garin. From beneath the Exofuge roared, and ribbons of black force surged upward from its surface toward the flames
. The point where the fire and blackness met flared like the last convulsions of a dying star, a holocaust of power fierce enough to melt a planet. For a moment the green flames were arrested, but then the power of the Exofuge failed and Garin stood in the midst of a shower of green light. All around him the light burned away the smooth blackness of the Exofuge, burrowing beneath its skin like incandescent worms. The vast bulk beneath him heaved in untold pain. Only Garin was spared, still protected by the cage of black spikes.
“Stop this at once,” cried Kyr, his voice ringing with sudden power. But the mass above only laughed with a sound like grinding stones.
Do you truly think I can? Do you truly believe that he and all the diseased vermin in Phaneros beneath have truly left that open to me. Once I played with the children of the ‘hedron, and our dance was bright and good, and the power of our tension gave life to the worlds below. But now the ‘hedron is weak, and I have become bloated with strength. Once the Exofuge was my brother…
As the mass’s words trained off, his voice softened, losing its hard edge, and for a moment Garin was sure he heard the thing sobbing.
“Garin is not like the others,” whispered Kyr. “He has come to seek the symmetries, to rise above the shadow. I did not bring him here to torment you. I brought him so that he might understand. It is through his understanding that you can be set free.”
Abruptly the fires died down.
Free…
At once Garin felt the intense attention of the thing as all its faculties turned upon him. For a moment his body seemed like a swirl of ink pained on a canvas that could at any moment be torn asunder. Then the terrible regard of the thing abated, and it spoke.
Creature of the under-of-things, understand that my hatred for your kind has in no way diminished. Understand also that at present I have little control over the assault that I will soon renew on the ‘hedron. It pains me to do it, but it pains me worse to cease, so bloated I have become. Hear, then, my words. From before all things was I in tension with my brother the Exofuge and in that tension between us was the space of the worldlight, for it is in the nature of the Exofuge to coil and constrict, and it is in my nature to expand without end. In this tension there was joy, and that joy became the complexity that you call Phaneros. But now, through the works of your fellow creatures, that which was once in balance is now disrupted, and the dance between me and my brother is disordered, and destructive.
The Sovereign Road Page 12
