His heart nearly bursts. Another kind of love. This is—it must be—home.
He looks to Julia. She is searching the sky and the shores.
“I’m not seeing things, am I?” Julia questions. “This is the upper lake, right?”
Upper Priest Lake.
Imagined or not, Loche knows this place. Julia knows this place. Imagined or not, they feel for the first time they have an advantage over their pursuers.
But before Loche can puzzle out an answer to her question, he surveys their exact position. Directly across the lake is a nook he’s stared at for years. He traces a line back to his feet and stares down for a moment—the sheer cliff face—a drop of some fifty or more feet.
“This is where I fell,” he says almost inaudibly. He shudders. “This is the cliff I fell from, but something is—something is different.” His joy at being home darkens as he turns and looks back.
A massive, perfectly symmetrical pyramid rises from out of the hillside. The stones are a frosted white—a kind of quartz. They are standing on a kind of foot bridge from the pyramid center.
“Where are we?” Julia gasps, taking in the anomalous structure rooted beside an Idaho lake.
Loche feels his head crook to one side.
“Not where are we?” he says, “Maybe we should be asking, when are we?”
The Risen Past
November 11, this year
Upper Priest Lake, Idaho
2:07 pm PST
Yafarra’s eyes lock on Eastman. As Astrid counts the thud of heart beats in her ears, the Queen seems to grow in stature. Washes of pink have now risen to her cheeks. Vigor and strength ridge-line her biceps—her stance is balanced and poised to attack. Moment by moment, she regains vitality. Noble defiance defines her face. She glares across the bowed gathering to Coldwater’s head of security.
“I don’t think she’s going to lower her sword,” Astrid says still bowing, her voice calm and low. “Eastman, you must understand, force is not the answer here. Try to understand the difference between your job and paycheck versus the mindset of an undying, ruling monarch of armies that destroy gods.”
Eastman draws her pistol. “That was then, this is now. Last chance, Professor.”
Astrid, with as much humility as she can pack into the tone of her voice, “Lifoth tengnen.”
Yafarra remains poised and focused on Eastman.
In Astrid’s periphery, two security men come into view and move steadily toward Yafarra. One carries a police baton, the other produces a taser. Yafarra’s eyes snap to their approach, to their weapons, to Astrid, to Rearden and back to Eastman’s pistol. Astrid senses more security officers moving into positions behind her and Graham.
“Eastman,” Astrid pleads, “your men are in danger.”
“I don’t think so,” Eastman says. Again, her calm demeanor is infuriating. “Never bring a knife to a gun fi—”
Before Eastman finishes, before the officers behind Astrid find their positions, before the two nearest security men reach Yafarra, the man holding the taser is screaming. Still gripping the taser, his severed hands clop to the floor followed by a splash of blood. Yafarra’s sword, in a continuing whirl, flips around and gyres upward, slicing into the baton in the other officer’s hand. It dislodges and twirls into the air. The Queen takes a step and kicks the stunned man’s forward knee. There is a gruesome snap as he topples over, and the clatter of a pistol hitting the floor and skittering away. His scream joins the chorus. With one hand gripping both the sword hilt and the tenesh handle, she catches the baton with her other hand, spins to the left and hurls it at Eastman’s pistol. Eastman manages to discharge the weapon before it is knocked from her grip.
A bullet tears through Yafarra’s chest just above her right breast. A spray of crimson jettisons from her back and splatters the wall behind her. She falters but keeps her balance. Her free hand slaps to the wound and presses, the other grips the sword and the tenesh. Without a pause, her body vaults—blurs. Yafarra’s voice is heard calling “Astrid, avu! Avu!” as she disappears in the shadows between the bookshelves.
Pocket Diary Entry # 4
Unknown
(Loche Newirth’s pocket diary)
Here’s a first.
I do not know the time.
I do not know the date.
I do not know the time of day.
But strangely, I think I know where we are. Edwin, Julia and I-we are at Priest Lake. The ridge lines and my gut tell me. Even the scent of the air brings a memory of home. But knowing where we are does not help me to decide where to go.
I am not sure why I am making an attempt at putting words down. Habit, likely. So much has happened I can’t seem to make sense of any of it. We’re healthy and alive.
The stars are bright—
EDWIN.
I cannot control what is happening. The pithy phrase, “Do not worry about what you cannot control,” comes to mind. Who was the first to tell me that? Rearden? Ironic? But knowing that our current state has come from my “story” —a story that I thought was in my control… and now I’m a character. What now?
Maybe it means that a character in a novel should attempt to control the story.
Isn’t that what should happen—to make a good story?
Trouble is, this is no fucking novel.
A Far Country
Date unknown
The Realm of Wyn Avuqua
The wash of the Milky Way cascades across the center of night. In spite of Loche’s fear of the ocean, the idea of mariners steering by the stars has always fascinated him—that patterns of glitter suspended in the dark could direct a lonely traveler’s course—that connect the dot gods pointed the way home, or to fortune, or to doom. Loche looks up from his pocket diary and wishes he had studied the sky more often. There is a calendar up there, for those who can read it. A compass. A trillion eyes. Infinite words. The stars have always told stories—pointed the way.
Beneath a sprawling cedar tree, Edwin sleeps in Loche’s lap. His breathing is abnormal. Julia attempts to cuddle next to the child, sharing the shiny chrome emergency blanket. She is fidgeting. “The Rathinalya is easier to handle when he sleeps.” she says. There has been no more communication from the god hiding behind Edwin’s face.
A small wood fire hisses and crackles at their feet. Loche holds a half eaten energy bar. Blueberry, by the smell of it. Edwin managed a few bites before his eyes fell shut again. He packs it back into his satchel. He feels the ringed spiral of the Red Notebook buried at the bottom.
He shivers. “Must be fall,” Loche says, his voice hushed. Every sound seems to disturb the deep quiet of the woods. “But I can’t say for sure what month—or year. Judging from what I know of this place, my guess is late October or November. There are still leaves clinging to branches.” His breath steams, “Winter is coming.”
“I’m not a fan, please don’t say that,” Julia says. She shivers and points. “I’ve only been on Upper Priest twice, and both times I imagined a pyramid could have stood there, long ago.” She points to the place where they arrived, now a half a mile south, across a shallow bay. The thing is set like a jewel. “But we’re in Idaho—a pyramid, here? Who would have thought of such a thing?”
“Well,” Loche replies, “I’ve thought such things. I’ve written such things.” He senses Julia turning her face to him. “I gave Upper Priest a fictional past. In the Journal I wrote of Wyn Avuqua—not in great detail, but I thought long and hard about the city. I saw it in my mind’s eye. I even sketched it a few times.” He nods to the surreal site across the bay, “My imagination put a pyramid there. And there is another one a little farther north. I’m glad to hear you thought that the hill had a pyramidal quality—glad I wasn’t the first to imagine such things.” He thinks a moment. “It is just as I envisioned you, Julia —I only conceived pieces and parts. You made up the whole—filled in the reality. It appears that my version of Wyn Avuqua and the culture therein has done the same thing
.
“I’m beginning to recall a lot of things that I couldn’t before. Elliqui, for example. I had much of the foundation for the language in some of my notebooks from years ago. The day I realized its rightful place was when I wrote the Journal. It made sense somehow. The ways of the Itonalya haunt me. I’m fascinated with the way they view the world. Life.”
Julia laughs lightly, “Your imagined culture with an imagined past that you created—and you were fascinated with them before they were real. And now it’s all…” She shakes her head, “I don’t think I have the right comeback for you.”
“I don’t think there is a proper comeback,” Loche sadly smiles.
“What made you want to create them?”
Loche feels a sudden dread. He answers, “Ultimately, I wrote the Journal to fool Marcus Rearden. I wrote it all to fool him into believing I was either crazy or enlightened. I wrote it to capture him. I used my old writings and imaginings as background. It appears that the power of well aimed delusion and fiction can fool and capture even the most brazen of intellectuals,” he laughs sadly. “Validation, I suppose, for any worthy, up and coming mythological prophet.
“However, the Itonalya were inspired mostly by talking with a client of mine, William Greenhame. At the time, before my near drowning incident, William was mentally ill. I had diagnosed him with several disorders—I worried about him—but most of all, I enjoyed listening to him. Despite his wild claims of immortality and what I believed to be a made up British background, much of his philosophy made sense.”
“How so?”
“Not to sound naive or reductive, but William would say things like, ‘Take love, dear Doctor. Imagine love that lasted not a mere lifetime, but for an age of the earth. Imagine if we loved without the fear of death.’ He believes that eventually the world would spread love to all. It is proper evolution, he would say. By removing death and fear, the world would learn that love is all. Then he had this little rhyme, ‘Love each other, love the land, the sky and the sea, love the differences we have.’”
“That doesn’t sound crazy,” Julia says. “It sounds like a John Lennon song.”
Loche laughs again. “William told me he knew John Lennon.”
“Really?” Julia says.
“Really.” Loche smiles again. “I didn’t believe him then, of course.” He adds, “William said that Lennon’s story is better than Lennon himself. I suppose that’s not an unusual thing.
A few seconds of silence pass.
“Albion knows Jimmy page,” Julia says.
“Really?” Loche asks absently.
“Yes.”
“Cool.”
The fire snaps. With his free hand, Loche throws more dead branches on the blaze.
“William’s claim of immortality was outlandish to me—And though idealistic, his logic seemed plausible. That is, if we did not die, and our bodies carried us through the centuries physically healthy, it raises the questions: would we carry on with the way things are now if we could escape old age—death? Would money still be the great motivator? Would we make war? Would we allow some parts of the world to starve while allowing others to destroy ecosystems? Eventually, as William emphasized, ‘Love is real—everything else is a dream.’”
“But isn’t that Albion Ravistelle’s utopian vision?”
Loche nods mournfully. “Well, it’s the vision I gave him. In the Journal, Albion was simply a misguided villain. But then, I began to agree with him—his desire to heal the world. He promised me my own impossible dream.”
“What is that?”
“To heal the condition of being human. To end suffering. In the Journal I even made a sort of blood brother pact with him. It wasn’t until I realized that Albion’s role was that of a catalyst, a psychically violent one, that I stopped what I had begun.”
Julia shivers. “Maybe you were the catalyst.”
Could it be? Loche wonders. His fiction has changed everything. It wasn’t Albion, William, Nicolas Cythe or Julia, or his characters that brought him to this moment. He was the prime mover. He wrote the story.
“I suppose I was,” Loche agrees. “But now I feel like I’m a character.”
Julia shivers and nuzzles closer to Loche. “Me, too,” she says. Her fingers squeeze the dangling key around her neck.
They fall silent. Julia sleeps. Woodsmoke dangles in the splayed hands of the cedar. Far off a squirrel cries. The flames are warm on Loche’s face. Eyelids are heavy. They droop shut. Orange blurs to black and back again. He sleeps.
The drowse is thick and weighs on his every limb. He dreams of vibrating coils of light like silk ribbons in the wind, tracing across a vast expanse of green woodland. Above him is Julia’s constellation, the single star blinking—watching. Basil waits beside a high stone. He is afraid.
A slight chill brings him back. A quick peek. The fire is low. Slender flames struggle to dance in the chill. Pale morning perches in the trees. A pair of high leather boots are planted just inside the circle of the firelight.
A moment later, the anomaly registers and Loche snaps awake.
Standing before him is an extraordinary looking man. His coat of ringed mail glints brighter than the fading flames. A long coat of orange cloth is draped over his shoulders and belted at the waist. A black, metal cross on a cord hangs flat upon his chest. Under his arm is a leather satchel and a sheathed broadsword. His face, bearded and framed in draping dark hair, is turned to the three figures huddled at the base of the tree.
Loche’s hand moves to his umbrella and grasps the hilt. Julia, feeling him move, flinches awake and sits up.
A flurry of words is hurled at them. The man’s expression and tone are incredulous, and the language is difficult to catch. Old English? Anglo Saxon perhaps? Loche is astonished that he remembers the sound of the words—sounds he’s not heard since boarding school in Canterbury.
“Aér gé fyr heonan, léasscéaweras, on land Itonalya.”
Loche does not draw his sword. Instead, he shakes his head and raises his hands, indicating he does not understand.
“Ne seah ic wídan feorh under heofones hwealf, sceaðona ic nát hwylc.” A confused glare surveys Loche from head to toe. “Sé moncynnes.” He cocks his head and scrutinizes Julia. His tone darkens, “Godes andsacan þé þú hér tó lócast. Godes féond, Orathom Wis!”
The anger in the man’s voice is threatening. Loche can sense Julia bristling. “Let’s move,” she whispers. “I can’t stand the chills—”
He then bows slightly and his words gentle. “Á mæg god wyrcan wunder æfter wundre. Weoroda raéswan, Géata léode, umborwesende, winedrihten.” He stares at Edwin. His gaze is both adoring and fearful.
“We do not understand you,” Loche says. “We are from far away.” He feels Julia grip his arm.
“Ah,” the man replies after a few seconds. With incredible speed he unsheathes his broadsword. It flashes in the morning air. He raises the blade and points it to the stars above the pyramid. “Sægde sé þe cúþe, frumsceaft Gode, swutol sang scopes feorran reccan.”
Loche and Julia turn to each other. The two then lower their faces to Edwin. The little boy is now sitting up. He climbs out of the chrome emergency blanket. His sneakers crackle on the pine needles as he stands. He looks into Loche’s eyes.
When Edwin begins to speak, Loche cannot believe what he hears. Stranger still, he cannot fathom how he translates the boy’s words to meaning. From his son’s mouth comes Anglo Saxon, carefully articulated. His tiny voice is gentle. As he speaks, Loche discerns—hears —somehow understands what is said.
Edwin says, “You know me, do you not?”
The man’s face pales with sudden acknowledgement. With pained reverence he lowers himself to one knee. He answers. Loche hears his words. They, too, are Anglo Saxon, and Loche understands their meaning.
“I do, Lord,” The man says, “you are Thi. You are the Creator of all. You are my Maker. I am your servant, Etheldred—Our Summoner’s High Captain.�
��
Edwin’s child voice replies in a calm, wholesome timbre as he turns away from his father to the stranger.
“Yes, I am Thi.” He raises his arm and gestures to Loche now rising behind him. “Behold, for this is my father. My Maker.”
Assembly
November 11, this year
Upper Priest Lake, Idaho
2:15pm PST
“Holy shit!” the medic cries out as he enters the room. Her mouth drops open at the sight of the severed hands clutching the blinking taser casing. “Holy shit!” The room is moaning in pain. The three injured security officers are being attended to by their comrades. Rearden is kneeling beside the man with the broken leg and cradling his head. The medic says, “What the hell happened?”
What the hell happened? What the hell is happening? Astrid feels vertigo as her mind seeks reason. She rises from her knees along with the rest of the gathering. She feels Graham’s hand on her arm assisting her. She is lightheaded.
Lynn Eastman stoops and finds her pistol. Raising it, she aims at the library entrance. Her other hand taps a transmitter in her ear. “I need two teams in Citadel Tomb. Now! Code Red, I repeat, Code Red. We have a Foamer.” She calls out for Davis and four of the other security officers and orders them to gear up. To the rest of the group she says, “All of you should exit the chamber and proceed to the briefing tent. Coldwater teams will secure the area.”
“Eastman,” Graham says, “you should not corner her. Let us see what communication can do.”
“I have every intention of communicating with her,” Eastman says, “You and the professor will assist us in the search.” She says to Astrid, “She called your name, Professor—followed by avu. Avu… Avu means eye, correct?”
“Correct.”
The Shape of Rain Page 15
