As the Cerulean and Bishop waited silently, two other clergypeople, one man and one woman, entered through two other doors and took their places behind two of the other five tables. For the first time, Ärlig realized that there were five other doors into the chamber besides the one he had entered through. None of the doors were decorated on the inside, though, instead they blended very smoothly into the walls.
The clergywoman in front of Ärlig raised a silver bell from the table and paused, the other two observers with clergy behind them also raised identical bells. Then, all three rang them at once as if in response to some cue that Ärlig had missed. All three rose from their seats together but then broke synchronization.
Ärlig had to stifle a gasp when the clergywoman turned to faced them. In the middle of her forehead was a fully-formed third eye. The iris of this extra eye was sky blue, unlike the dark brown of this Princept’s own natural eyes. Ärlig had never seen an advanced Princept before, let alone one from the highest rank like the woman in front of him.
He couldn’t help but bow to this powerful example of what he hoped to become. The Princept gave a melodious chuckle from behind a small, graceful hand. “My young Father, decorum states that I should be the one bowing to you. I am just a priestess, not a bishop.”
Ärlig blushed furiously at the suggestion that he was above this woman who had been chosen and changed by the Prince of the Air Himself. He stammered as he tried figure out how to respond.
Cerulean Djorna saved Ärlig from further embarrassment by jumping in. “My strapping young charge is in awe of the blessed changes that Our Mighty Lord and Master has bestowed upon you, Priestess Liyu. Perhaps you could come by the College sometime and give us a guest lecture? But, we have business at hand, I believe. Could you please instruct my young bishop as to his responsibilities as an Observer of the Door.”
“My pleasure, Cerulean Djorna,” smiled the Princept, and all three eyes smiled together.
It didn’t happen on that first day, nor the second, but on the third day of Ärlig’s assignment as an Observer. He would always remember that first day of the month of Kalora when he saw the Door change. It had changed once while he wasn’t on duty, so it had looked different to start. The Door had been in an odd configuration, appearing as a wrought iron gatelike thing mounted to stone that quickly became the same silver frame that always surrounded whatever door was the Door at any moment. One of the Observers had recognized the pink marble of the door frame and the style of ornamentation as belonging to the Channelguard region where they had grown up. They also thought it was probably a slave entrance to the garden of a great house based on some of the images worked into the wrought iron. It would be quite a feat and answer many questions, if they could tie the Door to a real corresponding door somewhere in the world. But, they rarely got anything better than what they knew from this wrought-iron garden gate.
No one, not even the Prince himself, knew what the door was, or why it changed periodically from one form to another. It was always a very realistic-looking door that could often be traced or related to the architecture or building style of a particular region or group. Whether or not it was a copy of a real door or a portal to somewhere was still a matter of conjecture. The doors could be touched, and their material substance gave a slight tingling or buzzing feeling to whatever appendage was contacting it. Indeed, apart from this odd sensation, the doors always felt exactly like they should if they were made from the materials they appeared to be. The backsides of the doors looked different from the fronts as well. No one knew if their handles or knobs or latches functioned realistically though. That was because the only three beings to have been observed attempting to open the Door were each immediately struck dead. Technically, the Exile who had attempted it was slain and sent to the edge of Heaven to reform its physical being for approximately a hundred years. The two Airian clergy had just dropped dead as doornails.
No one had attempted to open the door in over ten aions, almost seven hundred years. Ärlig wasn’t about to break that streak, but he was still fascinated with this thing. He still struggled to believe the story of how it was discovered, floating in the air high above this particular mountain. During the last days of the War with the Numa, the mighty Stonewrights of the first few generations of the Sons of Enoch had already begun to construct the Pillar of Heaven. It was to be a monument to the Exiles’ and Sons of Enoch’s certain victory over the wretched winged race of heretics. The Prince had seen the potential value of the skyships he would have after the war against the Numa, and he laid out plans for towering skyship cities around the world. The first was the Pillar of Heaven, not just a static monument, but also as living, thriving, exalted reminder of their greatness for all to see for all eternity. As the powerful master stonewrights built Heavenward, they had found the Door, floating there, as if it was waiting for them.
Ärlig couldn’t imagine that this thing had just been floating in the middle of nowhere, up in the sky, until they happened to build a city up to it. That was ridiculous. Yet, here it was, right in front of him. And then, as he had that thought again for perhaps the thirtieth time since he had begun this assignment, it had happened.
Bells had just been struck at three of the stations, and new observers were coming on duty. All three pairs were actually in the process of switching, when the Door began to ripple and bend where it hung in the air. Ärlig was watching through the large crystal disk with a smokey-grey-colored crystal monocle in one eye. He had picked the monocle from a large array of variously colored possibilities at the table. He could actually see the rays of light from the other side of the room bend and shift through different shades of color, much like the hues of the other monocles, as the light passed through the twisting and swirling Door stuff. It looked like light going through a prism for a moment, but then the Door stuff quickly coalesced into a more solid shape that blocked the light. Something caught the bishop’s eye, as the form of the new Door solidified. He closed his bare eye to make sure, and he was certain that it was only the eye looking through both the smokey-grey monocle and the framed crystal that could see it.
A silvery white spot of light was shining from the middle of the door and was growing bigger all the time. As it grew brighter and bigger, Ärlig realized it wasn’t just a spot of light shining on the surface of the door. It was as if a glowing sphere of light was passing through the material of the door, like something rising up out of the water. It was becoming brighter all the time, as more and more of the sphere emerged. When it was about two feet across, it stopped growing larger, but kept getting a little brighter for a bit. Then it suddenly disappeared, like when the only candle in a twilit room was snuffed. Everything was thrown half into shadow as the Bishop’s eye that had been seeing the light tried to adjust to its sudden absence. Ärlig did his best to memorize every detail of what he had seen. The light of the silver thing had reflected off of the simple iron knob on the thick wooden beam that was barring the door. That piece of iron was polished by repeated use, but the other metal pieces on the door were shown to be rusty or covered in verdigris in the bright silver light of the sphere. The light had cast shadows in his vision through the two crystals, but not in his other eye looking through just the larger mounted crystal on the table. He noticed that other side of the room had never been illuminated by any new silvery white light. Whatever it was had not come from the other side of the door. It had come out of the Door.
Ärlig was a split second from grabbing his quill and ink to record his observations as he had been trained to do. But so suddenly that he jumped, his monocled eye was blinded by a burst of brilliant light from the Door. He dropped the quill and dissonantly had a fleeting worry about how embarrassing silly he had probably just looked. His conscious mind clamped back down. As his eye adjusted, he could see two different spheres of light now. One was the same silver sphere as before, the other was a smaller golden one that was just below and to the right of the silver sphere. Both appeared to be movi
ng into the door and were becoming dimmer all the time. Again, Ärlig noted that the other side of the room didn’t appear to be getting any more light as the spheres moved through the Door. He couldn’t shake the image that the spheres were diving into the Door, not passing through it. As he watched, first the silver sphere and then the smaller golden one began to shrink. The spheres continued to shrink in size and brightness until one moment the silver sphere was just a pinpoint beside a slightly larger golden circle of light, the next moment the silver light was gone, and there was only a quickly disappearing golden circle. Finally, both were completely gone.
Ärlig had no idea what he had just witnessed. He had never read of anything like this with the Door, but he also knew that secrets grew thick around the subject. Scooping up his quill in his quivering hand, he began to write. He shut himself away in his own mind, ignoring any other sounds or movements around him. He wrote and wrote, giving estimated dimensions and brightnesses, describing everything he could remember about his own equipment and what he could and couldn’t see. He knew he was probably repeating himself, but Father Djorna and Priestess Liyu were both adamant that an Observer was to write down everything they could remember. Repetitions were not nearly annoying enough to risk omissions.
By the time he was done, Ärlig had scrawled eight pages of descriptions, notes, and sketches for an event that had lasted less than two minutes. As he picked up the last page and turned to the corner of the table where he had been laying out the pages to dry before stacking them, he felt an almost physical shock. The three Observers who had just gone off duty were gathered around the corner of Ärlig’s table, reading his descriptions. He actually physically gulped in the back of his throat and forced himself to ask, “Are they… are my observations acceptable?”
One of the observers, an advanced Princept like Priestess Liyu with an actual not symbolic third eye, was smiling a gentle, almost proud grandmotherly smile. Another one, who had the triangle-inscribed eye symbol of the Esotericists on his forehead, was glaring darkly. The Esotericists spent so much time in the Libraries of Thoth that this look could not possibly be a good sign. The third observer was a Cerulean, and she had a quizzical or perhaps puzzled look on her face.
The Esotericist was the first to speak. “If you think to make a name for yourself by making up fantastical observations while in this post, you should think again. The responsibility of collecting knowledge for the Church and world—”
But he was interrupted by the Princept. In a gentle grandmotherly voice to match her smile, the Princept interjected, “Inquirer Rijold, don’t be too hasty. There are mysteries too great and too sensitive to be stored in Thoth’s collections.”
“What do you mean?” replied the Esotericist.
It was the Cerulean that answered, “What the good Princept means, my dear Inquirer, is that I need to prepare our faithful young Bishop here to meet with the Prince to discuss these observations. Could you go and arrange for someone to take the rest of his shift?”
Inquirer Rijold’s mouth opened and snapped shut two or three times as he looked back and forth between the two clergy women. “How is it,” he managed finally, “That two orders not dedicated to knowledge and mystery know so much more about this than the Esotericists?”
The Princept just shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows, though her third eye had a mischievous twinkle in it. “Would you rather that I fetch our Bishop’s replacement, Inquirer?”
His only answer was to spin on his heels and stalk across the room and out the door behind his station. He returned less than half an hour later with a younger Esotericist in tow. Even with the intervening time, which had been spent only on discussing protocol for meeting the Prince and absolutely not talking about his observations, Ärlig was still quaking when he stood up to turn over the station to the new Esotericist.
As he walked out of the room, following the Princept and Cerulean, Ärlig looked back over his shoulder at the new Door. It was no longer anything like a garden gate. It looked to be made out of narrow worn wooden planks, cobbled together with nails, with a thick beam resting in two iron brackets. The beam had an iron knob sticking out of one end. Tied to the knob and running up to a little hole near the top of the door was a leather strap. The strap went through the hole, and Ärlig assumed came out on the other side. Though given what he’d seen with the lights, maybe that wasn’t a safe assumption.
Ärlig was taken up numerous flights of stairs and down a few short passages and one long one. The Princept and Cerulean lead him into a very tall-ceilinged but otherwise simple room. There was a hearth on one side, with two chairs facing both towards the hearth and each other. One was a normal if luxurious high-backed, dark leather chair with rich wood accents. The other was exactly the same, except it was twice the size. The far side of the room had a huge, twice-the-normal-size door in it as well.
The golden knob on the door turned, and Ärlig did as he had been instructed. He kneeled down, then leaned forward and touched his nose to the floor. It was essential not to touch their foreheads to the floor, that spot on an Airian clergymember’s body was too holy to touch the floor. Ärlig knew that the Cerulean and Princept were both assuming the same position as well.
A melodious, warm, welcoming voice said, “Arise my faithful servants, your Lord is with you, your Lord is pleased with you.”
Ärlig lifted up his face slowly, the warm white glow of the new source of light was what he noticed first, before he had even taken his eyes off the floor. As he let his eyes move slowly up, he fought as hard as he could not to gasp. The Cerulean and Princept had both been emphatic about the Prince disliking that response from his servants. But it was hard to supress the most natural response.
The Prince of the Air was beautiful to look upon. His clothing was actually simple, silken robes, though huge to match his size. Even though the Prince of the Air was twice the height of a tall man, it was his countenance that was truly overwhelming. His fair skin, raven-black curly hair, and perfectly-proportioned features were just the start. Ärlig was taken captive by the Prince’s eyes. All at once, they were knowing, powerful, and kind and welcoming. Those eyes invited, encouraged, commanded, and corrected all in a glance. In the middle of his regal, perfect forehead was the Argesdoxa, the Bright Stone of Glory, the Jewel of the Morning Star. This gem radiated a brilliant white light that warmed the room, and it was what the stone high above atop the Temple was mimicking, as it lit the city at night.
“Princept Hilda Gronston, Cerulean Mukimba Fokolo, would you be so kind as to allow me the chance to examine all of you separately? I trust that you remembered the protocol for this situation, and the observations have not been discussed?”
“Yes, Lord,” they both replied in unison, and then abruptly turned and left through the door they had come in.
Ärlig should have been absolutely terrified, but something about the Prince of the Air kept him from feeling fear. It must have been his Lord’s eyes. They were so reassuring.
“Bishop Ärlig Ullwitt, please take a seat by the hearth and tell me all that you saw. Do not worry about repeating yourself. An omission is much worse than the minor annoyance of a repetition.” The Prince of the Air glided over to the giant chair and gracefully sat down on it. He leaned forward in an interested and friendly posture. Despite his looming size, this made Ärlig feel more at ease.
Referring to his notes for help now and again, Ärlig recounted everything he could about what he saw to the Prince of the Air. He also described the reactions of the first three Observers who read his descriptions. He did not include this because he thought the reactions were important, only because they were part of what happened, and it came right after seeing what he had described.
The Prince of the Air leaned back into his leather chair and steepled his fingers in front of his achingly beautiful face for a moment. “Why do you think the Esotericist doubted your observations, young Bishop?”
“To be quite honest, Lord, I doubt
ed them myself, even as I was seeing them. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I could only see it through the eye with the monocle, I wouldn’t have decided they were real. I’ve never read about anything like that being observed at the Door,” Ärlig bowed his head, awed beyond imagining that he was speaking with the greatest being in the world, and that being was asking Ärlig questions.
“Are you certain now that what you saw was real?” asked the Prince.
“I know that I saw what I described. What kind of real it was might be beyond me to tell, oh Mightiest of Lords. But, Princept Gronston and Cerulean Fokolo were much more encouraging and accepting of what I had observed. As if it matched something that had been seen before, but that Inquirer Rijold did not know about.”
Ärlig was struggling to keep up the conversation. His Lord was so beautiful, so powerful, so worthy of being worshipped and praised, how could he not be breaking into song? But, he had to stay on topic, the two clergywomen had been insistent about that, just like the gasping.
“And what, Bishop Ullwitt, might an Inquirer not know about? Are they not the master scholars of my servitor Thoth’s libraries? Is my servitor failing in his calling to collect all knowledge?” The Prince casually spun out this trio of questions with the beginning of a smile creeping onto his statuesque lips.
Ärlig suddenly felt his mouth go dry, and he tried to lick his lips. “Wisest of Lords, only you may judge the actions of your servitors among all the Exiles. Certainly, the Esotericists are masters of the libraries, but you as Lord over Thoth may certainly command him not to keep certain works within his collections. To speak of a base and foolish example, the so called ‘Scriptures’ of the Sojourner sect are banned from the libraries and in every civilized place in the world for that matter.”
Blessings and Trials (Exiles and Sojourners Book 1) Page 19
