Black Brillion

by Matthew Hughes

  Now, though he had noticed no transition, Baro was no longer swimming through water, but gliding down through air so pellucid that he could see objects clearly that were great distances away.

  At last he floated to the ground, and found himself standing upright on a road of white stone with waist-high walls of gray rock to either side. “Remarkable,” he said.

  “Indeed,” said Guth Bandar. “The first time is always a wonderment.”

  Baro turned to see the historian beside him, although he was surprised to note that he could see through the man. The noönaut was a diaphanous outline of himself, presented in two dimensions only, so that when he turned edgewise he almost disappeared.

  “Where exactly are we?” Baro said.

  “Our bodies remain seated on the deck of the Orgulon,” said Bandar. “But your consciousness has found its way into parts of your own cerebral neighborhood where it has never visited before,” said Bandar.

  “All of this is inside my own skull?”

  “To all intents and purposes.”

  “Then my head is more capacious than I had thought,” the young man said. “And you are somehow here with me in my mind?”

  Bandar shook his head, an action which took it in and out of Baro’s sight. “No, I have passed into the depths of my own psyche, but like you I have come deep enough that I have entered the Commons. It is within all of us, where we all connect and share the infrastructure that makes up the psyche.”

  “You appear thin, almost transparent,” Baro said.

  “Wait,” said the historian. He reached and touched Baro’s arm, then sounded a sustained tone. Baro felt the man’s touch grow more substantial, and saw his form become solid.

  “There,” said Bandar. “We are now linked, for as long as we are in the Commons, that is. We are surrounded by thousands, perhaps even millions of other temporary visitors, almost all of whom have come through the portals of their dreams. We will not see them nor they us.”

  Baro looked about him and found that if he made himself aware of what he saw from the corners of his eyes he could sense flickers and movements in the air. “I believe I see some of them flittering in the edges of my vision, but if I look for them they are not there,” he said.

  Now it was Bandar’s turn to say, “Remarkable.”

  “I wish to explore,” Baro said.

  “A little, no more,” said the historian. “I am growing concerned about you.”

  “Why?” said Baro. “I am fine.”

  “Before we came,” said Bandar, “I thought that you were one of those uncommon persons who have an easy time entering the Commons because they are equipped with an unusually biddable memory.”

  “And now?” Baro said.

  Baro saw worried puzzlement on the historian’s face. “And now I do not know what to think. In some regards—your ability to find the way into the Commons without knowing the Precepts and Principles—you are like a natural.”

  “Which would make me insane,” said Baro. “But I am not.”

  “Then what are you?” said the noönaut. “How, without training, are you effortlessly able to detect the presence of others around us—the dreamers—when even I must strain to catch a glimmer of their passage?”

  “I do not know,” said Baro. “But I am not afraid. It feels, if you’ll pardon my use of your jargon, natural for me to be here.”

  “As if you were called here?” said Bandar.

  It hadn’t occurred to Baro to put it that way, but now that the historian had said it the words rang true in his mind. “Yes,” he said, “as if I were called.”

  Bandar’s worry deepened the lines in his face. “We should go back.”

  Baro said, “Are we in danger?”

  “I am not,” said Bandar. “You may well be in great peril.”

  “Because I can do in a few moments what it took you months to achieve? Can you be jealous?”

  “Years,” said Bandar. “And no, I am not jealous. I am concerned for you, as any professional should be for an amateur he has led into danger. Also, I do not wish to carry the guilt.”

  “What guilt? What danger?” Baro looked about him. The location was arcadian in its innocence: white road, green fields, some trees, and a stream not far off. “I see nothing that threatens. Why should we return?”

  “To see if you are able to do so,” Bandar said. “If you have been called, whatever has called you may not wish you to leave. There are powers in this place. I can withstand them because I have the tones. You do not.”

  “I sense no malevolence here,” Baro said. “Let us at least look about. I promise you, at the first sign of peril I will let you lead me back.”

  “Again,” said Bandar, “if I am able.”

  “I will trust you.”

  “I should take you back and test you.”

  “I am not afraid of this place. I feel that I should be here.”

  “You have not yet seen some of the ‘heres’ they have here. We have taken only the first step behind the front door. It goes on forever and I mean that literally. There is no time here. Space is not what you may think it is. And though it is filled with wonders it is no less full of horrors.”

  “At the first rasp of a claw, the first glint of a nygrave’s fang, turn for home and I will scamper after you,” said Baro. “Until then, let us poke about.”

  “The noösphere is not to be taken lightly.”

  “I do not do so.”

  “Very well. Wait a moment,” Bandar said. Then in a moment he winked out of existence. Baro felt a sudden chill of fear, as if he were a child in a market crowd who turns around to find his parent gone from sight. He looked in every direction but saw no sign of the historian. He tried moving up and down the road, thinking that the man might become visible again if viewed from some other angle, but he was alone.

  As quickly as he had disappeared, the historian was back again. “Your companion grew alarmed at our long silence and stillness and began shaking and slapping us,” Bandar said. “He thought we might have suddenly fallen to the lassitude.”

  “Long silence?” said Baro. “It has been but a minute.”

  “I told you, there is no time here. Or at least it becomes elastic. Our time in the Commons seems short, but almost an hour has passed since we intoned the opening thran. And the last words your friend heard you speak aloud came before you dove into the tarn. Since then, our conversation has taken place at another level.”

  “I see,” said Baro, though he did not. “But my companion’s fears are allayed?”

  Bandar assured him that was the case. “Nonetheless,” said Bandar. “We should return soon.”

  “I have an urge to go down the road,” Baro said.

  Bandar looked apprehensive.

  “It’s only a slight urge,” the young man said.

  “Here, nothing is ‘only’ anything,” Bandar said.

  “What could happen?” Baro genuinely wanted to know. It was hard to imagine anything threatening in this tranquil place. Bandar replied that he could not name any particular menace because in this place naming was summoning.

  “So if you say ‘So-and-so,’ then this So-and-so will instantly appear and do what? Devour us?” Baro asked. “Use us for unspeakable purposes?”

  “It is not a laughing matter,” said Bandar. “For some—for a natural—it is much easier to find a way into the Commons than to discover the way out. Most never do.”

  “Could I not expect a trained adept like you to come and lead me home?”

  Bandar shook his head. “Those who become lost are almost always soon absorbed by a characteristic entity.”

  “What is a characteristic entity?”

  Bandar glanced from side to side and turned his head this way and that as if he expected something to appear. “We should really discuss this back in the waking world,” he said.

  “What is down the road?” Baro asked.

  Bandar said, “Think of the Commons as a sphere. We are in the
outermost layer. The next is the realm of the characteristic entities—the archetypes we encounter in dream and myth.”

  “Monsters and magicians?”

  “You must not mock,” the historian said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Monsters, yes, like the Destroyer with his necklace of skulls. But also the Mother and Father, the Wise Man, the Good Beast, the Virgin and the Crone, the Fool, the Hero and his Helper, the Wizard, and many more. In the second layer they are found in their pure form—that is to say, at their most dangerous.”

  Bandar was clearly apprehensive and Baro caught a frisson of fear from the noonaut’s trepidation. But the urge to travel down the road was growing stronger. He said as much to Bandar.

  “I admit to curiosity about you,” the small man said. “I will make this bargain: we will go together; you will heed my commands; and you will chant the following thran.” He sounded a series of notes that seemed oddly familiar to Baro.

  “Is that not a children’s song?” Baro asked.

  “Very similar,” said Bandar. “The one about an old man, a dog, and a bone. Now sing it.”

  Baro did so.

  “Louder.”

  The young man complied.

  Bandar still looked worried, but he linked his arm in Baro’s and they began to move down the road. “Keep singing and keep it loud,” he said. “It has to cover both of us.”

  Baro made a question with his face but kept up the chant.

  “The thran insulates us from the archetypes’ perceptions,” the noönaut said. “Cease chanting and they become aware of us. The entity whose nature is most dominant in your psyche is drawn to embrace you. Its embrace is a precursor to your absorption. You cease to exist.”

  Baro nodded his understanding and chanted louder. Bandar grimaced and said, “Here we go.”

  Baro did not understand how he had failed to see that the road crossed a stone bridge that spanned a river of dark water until they were almost upon it. The historian led him up and over the arch and as they descended the far side the young man saw that the road ended in a wide meadow in which several figures stood or sat or lay at ease.

  He recognized some of them from Bandar’s list of archetypes. The four-armed figure with a necklace of skulls was surely the Destroyer. The robed old man pacing with a staff, his long white hair and beard swinging in rhythm with his steps, was surely a representation of wisdom. A more distant threesome must be the Mother, Father, and Child.

  Near where the road ended a large man sat cross-legged on the grass. He wore a chain-mail tunic and leather-wrapped leggings of coarse weave. Long tangled hair descended from a conical iron helmet that had a bird’s wings springing from its sides. Over his shoulders he wore the shaggy pelt of a gray beast, its forepaws clasped over his broad chest by a brooch of worked yellow metal.

  The man was methodically sliding a dark stone along the length of a broadsword of gray iron. Baro could hear the hissing caress of stone against metal even over the sound of his own singing. Nearby a nondescript fellow in a hooded tunic and sagging hose squatted, rubbing at a piece of leather harness.

  As Baro and Bandar neared the end of the bridge the warrior ceased to hone his sword. His head came up as if he had caught an unexpected scent and he looked around. The man with him put down the piece of leather he had been working and also became alert.

  Both stood up. Both turned toward Baro and Bandar. The old man with the staff was also standing still and peering in their direction.

  “Louder,” said Bandar.

  Baro increased his volume.

  “This is wrong,” Bandar said. “I think they sense us.”

  The warrior had taken a step toward them, his companion following. The old man too was striding in their direction, his staff digging into the turf.

  Baro continued to intone the thran. Bandar was now tugging on his arm, trying to lead him back over the bridge. But the young man wanted to resist. More than that, he wanted to cease chanting the tones and go forward to meet the warrior.

  Bandar now added his voice to Baro’s, almost shouting the tones as he continued to drag them both away. The man with the sword and helmet stopped so abruptly that his companion bumped into his back. His head turned left and right again, as if listening. The old one with the staff also stood still, staring toward the end of the bridge and stroking his beard.

  As they reached the top of the arch, Baro resisted Bandar’s pull. He broke off the chant and said, “Wait!”

  Baro could not have told the historian just what it was he wanted to wait for. He did not want to make contact with the warrior or the old man; he was willing to take seriously Bandar’s warnings about being absorbed and lost.

  But he was possessed by a strong sense, almost a certainty, that there was something he had to do in this strange place. Or that this place had something to do with him. “Listen,” he said.

  Bandar did not listen. He chanted more loudly than ever, his voice creaking with strain, his eyes wide and fixed on the far end of the bridge. Baro turned to look and saw the warrior was coming toward them again.

  As the man set his buskined foot on the stones of the bridge the structure shook as if the ground had moved. It rang with a sound like a hammer striking a sheet of iron. The warrior stopped but only for a moment. He raised his foot to take the next step.

  Bandar shook Baro’s arm, spun him around. The young man turned to see stark terror on the historian’s face, his free hand desperately signaling in a gesture that said, What are you waiting for? while chanting as loudly as he could.

  Baro realized that the man’s horror was genuine and that Bandar knew far more of the Commons’s terrors than he did. He began to chant the tones again and saw the barbarian pause with his foot still raised.

  Bandar signaled him to sing louder and Baro did as he was bid, letting the historian pull him back to the road that marked the first level of the noösphere. Here Bandar broke off his part of the chant and instead sounded a complex series of tones. A hole appeared in the air next to them and he pulled Baro toward it. The young man stepped …

  … and fell with a jolt into his body, which sat cross-legged on the deck of the Orgulon, the sound of the landship’s windvanes rustling in his ears and Guth Bandar peering into his eyes, desperate worry on the historian’s face. “Are you back?” Bandar said. “Say your name.”

  The paralysis created by Imbry’s use of the slapper was wearing off. Baro felt a tingling in his mouth, a sensation that grew stronger and increasingly unpleasant and drove all thought of his assumed identity from his mind. When Bandar asked for his name, he said “Baro,” although it was more a mumble than a clear utterance.

  “What?” Bandar said. “What did you say?” He knelt before the young man, chafing his hands and wrists.

  “Wasselthorpe,” said Luff Imbry, somewhere out of Baro’s line of sight. “Phlevas Wasselthorpe, can you hear me?”

  The maddening vibration was fading. “Yes, I can hear you,” Baro said.

  “Who are you?” Bandar said.

  “Phlevas Wasselthorpe.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On the Orgulon.”

  The historian let out a gust of breath and took his own seat. “I believe he is all right.”

  “He has regained the power of speech, too,” said a cool, feminine contralto. Baro saw Raina Haj looking down at him.

  “He is in the early stages of the lassitude,” Imbry said. “It comes and goes.”

  “Uh huh.” The security officer squatted and looked into the young man’s face. “What happened?” she said.

  “I saw …” Baro began, but then had to search for words to convey the sense of what he had experienced. He did not find them and lapsed into silence, his eyes unfocused.

  “We encountered an archetype,” said Bandar. “More significant, it encountered us despite the insulating thran.”

  “A man with a sword. His helmet had wings,” said Baro.

  “Ah,” said Bandar. “Interesting
. That’s one of its earliest forms. Myself, I saw it as a janissary of the Arham Legion, one of those who died defying the Morabic Hegemony’s attempt to enslave the world back in the Tenth Eon. The white and gold uniform was unmistakable.”

  “No,” said Baro, “it wore a shirt made of iron rings connected together. And an animal’s skin.” He lapsed into silence, staring at the image his memory offered him.

  “Explain,” said Haj, fixing the historian with a hard glare. “What have you done to him?”

  “Nothing,” said Bandar. “We quite unexpectedly had a near encounter with a characteristic entity—the Hero, to be precise. He’s fine.”

  “He does not appear to be fine,” she said, regarding Baro with some concern.

  “He will be,” said Bandar. “He was not touched by the entity. I was worried for a while because we did not seem to be hidden from its perception by the thran. But I opened a gate and we came back.”

  “I hear the words,” she said, “and I even know the individual meanings of most. Yet somehow they fail to constitute an explanation.”

  Bandar rubbed his forehead. “I am sorry,” he said. “I will try to sketch a satisfactory answer, but a proper explanation would take all day. But let me begin with the characteristic entities.”

  “I know about the Commons,” Haj said. “At least I thought I did. Dreams, myths, and forgotten tales no one cares to recall.”

  Baro wondered if he was the only one who didn’t know about the Commons. Bandar launched into a defense of his life’s work against the security officer’s dismissal. But Baro kept finding it hard to concentrate on what the historian was saying. His mind wanted to pull him back to the image of the barbarian at the end of the bridge. Even in memory the Hero exerted a powerful pull upon him: he wanted to go back and meet him even though just thinking about such an encounter raised hairs on the back of his neck. He tore his mind away from his thoughts and willed himself to focus on the historian’s voice.

  “We did not quite cross to the second level,” Bandar was saying. “My intent was to remain on the bridge to show Wasselthorpe the characteristic entities, the ones that form the basic infrastructure of the psyche—what we noönauts call ‘the usual suspects.’”