Circles of Stone

by Ian Johnstone

  The valley was full of wonders, more stunning and majestic than she could possibly have imagined. And yet she had the strangest sense that she had already seen so much of it: that she had already walked through the giant redwoods; that she had seen dwellings in caves and dells, tree trunks and bowers; that she had seen all this lit by a thousand lamps in the dying rays of day. They were not memories, not even images in her mind, but fragments, like the elusive traces of a dream.

  “ The garden defies expectations, not by breaking its promise, but by keeping it. It has a beauty that breaks the bounds of dreaming.”

  SYLAS WADED THROUGH THE mist at the water’s edge, trying desperately to keep up with their guide while daydreaming about the wonders of the evening before. The enchanting sunset over the Valley of Outs and the lamp-lit forest seemed almost unreal, like a dream. Even now they warmed him on this chilly morning.

  Their guide moved swiftly despite the thick mist, his long ranging steps more than a match for the quick-footedness of his followers. He never looked back, seeming to know exactly where they were: slowing when they fell behind and striding out when they drew near. He paused a few times to relight his pipe, which seemed prone to going out, but always he stayed well ahead.

  Simia pulled at Sylas’s sleeve. “Get him to slow down! I’m exhausted!!”

  “Cat got your tongue?” whispered Sylas, adjusting the rucksack on his shoulder. “Why don’t you ask?”

  Simia eyed the young man leading them. She seemed unusually reluctant to speak up. “I think he knows that we’re tired –” she narrowed her eyes – “I’m just not sure he cares.”

  They both watched their guide as he mounted a boulder and dropped down on the other side amid a cloud of orange pipe smoke. He was not powerfully built, but had a sprightly, lithe figure and his long limbs swept with ease through the undergrowth. He had a perfectly bald head, which glistened a little from his exertions, lending new life to the ring of eyes tattooed into his scalp. They stared back unblinkingly, as though seeing their every move and thought. Sylas remembered the very same kind of tattoos on Bowe’s head, but he was interested to see that there were fewer and that two of them, on one side of his head, were wrinkled and warped. It was as though someone had tried to burn them from his head.

  “Stop fretting, we’re nearly there,” shouted the young Scryer, in a rich, accented voice. He did not slow or look around, but puffed out a cloud of orange smoke, which formed bright wisps in his wake.

  “Told you!” hissed Simia.

  They clambered up a small promontory that jutted into the lake, then skirted a towering cliff face. They became aware of a low rumble, which grew ever more noticeable, and when they looked out at the lake they saw that, although the morning fog was starting to clear, the surface was now clouded by great rolls and swirls of a new, finer mist.

  “The waterfall!” exclaimed Simia, looking relieved. “We’re at the end of the valley.”

  The young Scryer walked up to a great curtain of weeds and grasses hanging from the cliff face and turned to them. His gloomy features broke into a smile.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asked, tapping out his pipe and tucking it behind his ear.

  Sylas and Simia looked at each other.

  “Ready for … what?” asked Sylas apprehensively.

  Their guide pulled back the weeds and waved them into the darkness beyond. “For the Garden of Havens.”

  They peered warily into the cave and, to their surprise, saw a passageway sloping downwards to a bright opening, shrouded in more greenery. The walls of the tunnel had been worn smooth by the powerful currents of the river and, like so much in the Valley of Outs, seemed almost to have been crafted to suit its human residents, with a regular ceiling the height of a man and a gently inclined floor to allow an easy descent.

  This time their guide let them go first. With growing excitement Sylas made his way down the slope, running his hands over the damp rock to keep his balance, treading carefully on the sloping floor. His hand drifted over empty space on one side and he felt a chilly breeze drifting from an opening. He turned towards it, assuming this was the path, only to find himself grasped by the shoulders and pulled back.

  “Not that way!” growled the Scryer.

  “Why?” asked Simia, peering into the tunnel. “What’s down there?”

  “Just the old mines,” he said, pushing them both onwards towards the light. “They’re forbidden now.”

  “Why?” asked Sylas, groping his way down the tunnel.

  The Scryer sighed. “Because they’re dangerous,” he said. “Because of the Black.”

  Sylas was about to ask what “the Black” was, but as they reached the end of the tunnel the thunder of the waterfall surged, resonating in the rock and his chest. The air too had changed, becoming fresher and sweeter, carrying the fragrance of river silt. He drew up to the veil of weeds, which swung limply in a breeze from the bright world beyond. He paused for a moment, then pushed it aside.

  The tunnel opened out into a cavernous bowl of rock, with the sky above and a sandy floor below. Its slick, curved sides rose ever more steeply until at the very top they slightly overhung, trailing grasses and vines into the vast space below. On one side could be seen the passing river as it flowed out into the lake, and beyond the ceaseless tumult of the waterfall.

  Sylas’s eyes took in the wonders of the bay before him. The walls were riddled with thousands of tiny rivulets and streams, waterfalls and springs which in places gushed playfully down to the river but in others splashed out over the rocky planes, forming a thin film over the stone. Between this endless motion was a garden of rich flowers and glorious ferns, livid lichens and lustrous bushes. This was a haven for Nature’s most delicate and beautiful gifts.

  But her finest creation of all was at the centre: a tree of gigantic proportions, whose ancient, crooked limbs had bowed almost to the ground under the weight of its giant leaves which even now, in winter, showed all the vitality of youth. There was only one sign of its age: dark veins running through its bark, which in places looked almost black, like the first tendrils of disease.

  As the sun emerged from behind a cloud Sylas’s eyes were drawn upwards to the myriad beams of sunlight which passed across the hollow a hundred times, rebounding from the smooth, wet surfaces. The light touched the upper reaches of the grand old tree so that it seemed to wear a halo of gold.

  “I’ve heard about this tree,” whispered Simia at his side, her eyes wide with wonder. “The Arbor Vital, they call it. The Living Tree. It just keeps going – no one knows how old it is.”

  “And yet it may not live much longer …” murmured the Scryer.

  “Why?”

  “The Black,” he said, pointing to the trunk. “You can already see it.”

  “The stuff in the mines?”

  He nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “Your guess is as good as ours,” he said, scowling in distaste. “Think of it as corruption and disease, because whatever it is, it is evil.”

  Suddenly there was a sharp hiss above their heads. They looked up and to their surprise, saw a woman sitting on a narrow ledge of the cliff face. Her finger was pressed to her lips.

  “Quiet!” mouthed the woman. “Please!”

  The Scryer gave a brief bow of apology.

  It was only then that Sylas and Simia became aware of the great gathering of people hidden in the folds of the gardens. Hundreds of silent figures were seated on mossy banks and ledges, perched on rocks and promontories in every part of the hollow, all of them looking down towards a figure standing near a boat at the water’s edge. She held her hands aloft, commanding their attention, speaking in a soft but resonant voice that Sylas recognised straight away.

  “So, my sisters and brothers, after all these years we have reached the fulfilment of Merisu’s prophecy,” said Filimaya, her voice echoing from the walls so that she could be heard easily. “It is a prophecy that most considered so far-fetched
that it passed into the realm of myth. But this is the time that the Glimmer Myth foretold, the time when the separation of our worlds is finally seen for what it is – a rift in our very souls!”

  The Garden of Havens rumbled with low mutters and loud complaints. Sylas noticed the perplexity on people’s faces; their worried frowns and troubled glances.

  One elderly man sitting near the front rose to his feet. “But, Filimaya, do you really believe that the myth is true? That we each have an identical twin? One of these Glimmers? That one day we might even be made one?” He laughed scornfully. “Surely this is the wildest of fancies! That’s why it’s called a myth!”

  There was a rumble of agreement from the crowd.

  Filimaya nodded. “I understand your doubts, really I do. But let me say this clearly so that there can be no mistake.” She lifted her eyes to the gathering. “Yes, I do believe the myth. Among others, I have believed it to be true for many years.”

  “Which ‘others’ do you mean, exactly?” demanded the old man.

  “Well, you now know that Espasian believed, as did Paiscion, and Grayvel and …” She hesitated for a moment, seeming to consider whether or not to continue. “And Merimaat. Merimaat was quite certain that the myth was true.”

  Suddenly everyone cried out in astonishment. They turned to their neighbours in disbelief.

  “Merimaat believed in all this?” asked the old man, looking more sceptical than ever. “Surely if she did, she would have shared it with us?”

  “And so she did, Kaspertak,” said Filimaya. “With some, at least. The Otherly Guild and the Salsimaine Retreat were set up to study the Glimmer Myth.”

  The aged man’s mouth fell open. “But … they were going for decades – centuries!”

  Filimaya nodded.

  “We were told that they were studying the Other!”

  “And in a way, they were.”

  He shook his head incredulously. “But they created the Bringer-Laws, the celestial maps, the –” a look of realisation formed across his face – “the Passing Bell!”

  Filimaya smiled. “And so now you see how significant it was that Sylas was summoned using the bell! Which brings me back to my point. Regardless of who believed the Glimmer Myth before, Sylas and Naeo prove that somehow, for some reason, it is true. They are the living myth. They bring us hope.”

  “What hope?” shouted a fat man with red hair. “Forgive me, Filimaya, but what use is all this? How does it help us to know these things when we are here, hiding in the Valley of Outs, surrounded by our enemies? How does it stop the Undoing, or save our friends in the Dirgheon?”

  “Haven’t you been listening?” shouted a young woman from high on the cliff face. “Sylas and Naeo have powers beyond our dreams – they managed to escape the Dirgheon and defeat Scarpia. There’s our hope!”

  “So they’re here to save us? They’re a weapon?”

  “Yes!” cried the woman to a murmur of excitement.

  “No!” retorted Filimaya. “They’re nothing of the kind! They’re people, children, not weapons that we may use in our own defence. But they offer us the truth – the truth that we are more than we thought we were.”

  “But what does all that mean for us?” appealed the woman, throwing her arms out in exasperation. “We need help, not truths.”

  “We need both!” snapped Filimaya. She paused, controlling her rising temper.

  Sylas shuffled nervously. This was not going well.

  But then a familiar voice spoke up. “I agree with Filimaya. We’re all missing the point.” Ash strode out from beneath the branches of the tree. “We need to remember that before Sylas came, we were desperate. I mean, sure, we had the Meander Mill and some of us were managing to live openly by pretending we weren’t what we are. But what kind of life is that? We had no future. How could we have a future when we had lost all that made us strong – everything that made us who we are?”

  “We’ve still lost all those things!” shouted the fat red-headed man.

  Just then Sylas noticed something strange. As the debate had become heated, so the light in the hollow had begun to dim. When he looked up, he saw that sure enough the beams of light were weak and faltering, barely reaching the upper branches of the great tree.

  Filimaya blinked irritably. “Yes, Glubitch, but that was the old world. That was the world in which Glimmers were a myth. That was the world in which Merisu had broken his promise – in which the Three Ways had defeated the Fourth. Sylas and Naeo have shown us a new world – a world in which anything might happen, where we must question the very fabric of our worlds, and where Thoth’s empire is built on sand.”

  “Yes, that’s right!” shouted a stooped old man sitting near Sylas. There was a murmur of approval.

  A very large man with a shock of black hair and gigantic sideburns rose from a rock near the river. “Ash and Filimaya are right, of course,” said the man in a deep booming voice. “But we are still left with a question: what do we do with our new-found hope? And how can Sylas and Naeo help us?”

  “Yes! Let’s ask them! Where are they?” shouted someone.

  “Let’s see what they can do!” shouted another.

  Again Sylas shifted anxiously. Naeo retreated beneath the tree.

  “Listen! Everyone, listen!” said Filimaya, throwing her hands aloft. “It is up to us to decide—”

  “How are we to decide anything without knowing what is possible?” objected the large man with black hair. He stepped forward and waved to the crowd. “We need to see them for ourselves – see all they are capable of – then we can decide a way forward.”

  Sylas noticed that the hollow had dimmed even further, so that now the beams of light were hardly visible at all.

  “NO!” shouted Filimaya. “Ash has told you what they are capable of, and in any case, Sylas and Naeo have told us that they do not wish to be brought together. The challenge for us now—”

  “Surely no harm will come to them?” cried someone from among the crowd. “They’ve done it before, so let us see it now!”

  Suddenly the young Scryer pushed past Sylas and stepped out into the gardens. “You don’t know what you’re asking!” he shouted. “If you saw the connection between them with Scryer’s eyes, you would not play with it like a party trick. It is a thing of colossal power – unknowable power!”

  This gave everyone a moment of pause. The young man was clearly respected and his warning was taken seriously.

  Kaspertak, the old man who had spoken earlier, rose slowly to his feet.

  “Triste is of course right to be cautious, but I think on this occasion his Scryer’s eyes cloud his judgement. By all accounts Sylas and Naeo are in control of their power – they have shown that in the Dirgheon. So what have we to fear? I say that we should see them together. Let us question them, at least.” He looked directly at Filimaya. “I say it is so!”

  “I say it is so!” shouted the large man with black hair.

  “I say it is so!” cried Glubitch, followed by many others.

  Suddenly the weight of opinion seemed to shift, and the voices of many uttered the all-important words: “I say it is so!”

  For the first time Filimaya hesitated and Sylas’s heart fell. He could see from her expression that she was powerless.

  He turned and caught sight of Naeo. She too had paled.

  Filimaya shook her head. “I truly believe this to be a mistake!”

  “The Say-So has spoken, Filimaya,” said Glubitch.

  “Well, yes, I understand that!” muttered Filimaya, shooting him a fiery glance. She sighed. “So be it.” She looked first at Sylas and then at Naeo, her face full of apology. “Sylas, Naeo, could you step forward, please.”

  Sylas drew a long breath and glanced at Simia.

  “You’ll be OK,” she whispered. “You know what you’re doing.”

  Sylas turned and raised his eyebrows. “Do I?”

  He stepped out from the entrance to the tunnel and began walking
across the floor of the hollow. People turned and moved out of his way, clearing a path to the boughs of the giant tree beneath which Filimaya was now standing. Naeo had already reached Filimaya’s side and stood gazing up at the gathering with a look of defiance.

  As Sylas stepped under the branches of the tree, he felt the first pang of nausea, and in the same instant he winced as the pain in his wrist suddenly shot up his arm. He reached down and rubbed the bone around the Merisi Band. Naeo did the same.

  He kept walking. As he reached the trunk of the tree, there was a cry from somewhere behind him, and then another to his side.

  “Look!” shouted somebody. “Look at the light!”

  Sylas glanced up and saw several amazed onlookers pointing at the beams of sunlight that criss-crossed above his head. They were bending and warping, as if distorted by some massive magnetic force, twisted from their natural path.

  And then there came another cry, this time above him. A woman began to scramble down from her perch on the cliff face. “The water!” she screamed. “Look! The stream!”

  Sure enough, the streams too were being mangled by some unseen force, curving and twisting, turning back on themselves, flowing against the pull of gravity, as if repelled by the two children. A clamour of frightened voices rose from around the hollow as people scrambled out of the path of crazed rivulets and wild waterfalls.

  It was as though nature itself was being undone. Sylas felt his insides writhe and turn, his bones slide over each other, his thoughts begin to scramble. He looked down and saw that the Merisi Band was glowing like molten metal, shimmering as it burned into his wrist.