“Ah, yes, the Mentalist is right!” the Senior agreed, visibly relieved. “You have been sent a vision, a false vision, to disturb you, to destabilise your power. It is an old trick of his. Don’t believe what you have seen. It is impossible.”
But she had been there. She had seen the floating feathers, felt the water, smelled the smoke and heard the clamorous sounds. She had read the anguish on Ethea’s beautiful face. Tabitha knew it was true.
The Mentalist rocked backward in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “What bothers me more is how has he managed to get a hold on the Lifesinger already? How does he know?”
The Spiritist looked angry. “The Warlock! He must have betrayed all of our secrets! May he rot in the lowest chamber of the Pillar.”
“You don’t know that!” spat the Cosmologer.
Tabitha shivered. The Pillar, in the lowlands, where Ethea was held.
“I have to go there!” she whispered.
“To Turmodin? Don’t be mad!” exclaimed the Mystery. “No, no, no, that would be the end of you.”
“None of us would survive being there, Lifesinger,” said the Senior. “The Chaos would tear your mind apart! No magic works there, only the kind of disruption that the Sorcerer employs. Anything you do there would be turned to serve him. You will not be able to think clearly, you will lose all sense of your self and your purpose. You will be ravaged by the nodes of Chaos. He has them amassed in Turmodin like a clutch of eggs, and he sits and broods upon them until they hatch another rotten and corrupt idea. He would take delight in reaving the talent from you and silencing the last note of your song. Do not even consider going to the Pillar. We would not venture there, not even protected as a full Gyre union. We would be devastated.”
“But I must! How else am I to help Ethea?”
“Why must I tell you again, Lifesinger!” exclaimed the Mentalist. “You have been fooled! Whatever you have seen is not real!”
“I spoke to the Goddess. I made a promise to her. She needs our help.”
“I am not going to argue against this-this-ignorance,” declared the Mentalist, pushing his chair back loudly. “Lorewarden, the Lifesinger clearly needs to be instructed in some of the basics of what is possible on the three axes. I have more important matters to pursue. A Goddess cannot be magicked into being, just as a mage cannot be magicked into a God. If that were possible, we’d have a new kind of chaos altogether.” With that, he departed, his spiky locks pulsing like an angry porcupine. Just after he had left the room, a bowl of stewed prunes vanished from the table.
The Senior cleared his throat. “Turmodin is an altered realm, Lifesinger. It is the eye of the Sorcerer’s storm, the crux from which his power spins. You cannot go there.”
“Don’t feel bad, Lifesinger, a sending is a common ploy,” added the Spiritist. “He tries to lure us to Turmodin all the time.”
“Why can’t we go there just to see if it’s true? We could transfer back to the Sanctuary at once, and be in no danger at all.”
“No, Lifesinger, you cannot wield Order so close to Chaos,” said the Senior. “You will have no command upon the essence. You cannot use a Transference spell. You cannot escape. The Pillar is the heart of Chaos, it is Chaos. If you went there you would not come back.”
“I’ll go there on my own if I have to. I will not rest until I know that the Goddess Ethea is safe.”
The Lorewarden gave her a pitying glance. “Do you even know where it is? Lifesinger, hear me now. You can only transfer to a place if you can visualise it perfectly, and to do that you must have been there in person. We have all walked Oldenworld far and wide to extend our range. You only know Eyri, and the narrow track of your first passage to the Six-sided Land of the Lûk. You could not use transference to reach Turmodin until after you had traversed the entire route on foot—northward first through the forests of the heartlands, to the fortress at Slipper, through the gap in the Winterblades, down into the Lowlands and all the way north and west to the coast. That would be an epic journey, considering the present dangers. In the older days of Order even western Orenland was unsafe to traverse. Nowadays, that land is a waking nightmare, filled with the worst of the chaos-spawn, those who have survived despite what has been done to them by the Sorcerer—the strongest, meanest, most lethal beasts. Nothing human remains. Those that appear human are not. Bloodbirds prey upon anything that moves, there are swamps that will grow around you as if they are conscious, there are freaks there we have no name for—ever-hungry, ever-mad. Even the lands of once-mighty Moral kingdom are given to ruin, teaming with bullgorgons, vandals and the roaming Scalard. Wildfire threads through the boiling clouds like a net of malice, lower and more deadly than anywhere else. You would not survive unless we were with you all the way, and we would not undertake such a foolish quest. There is nothing to find in the Lowlands but misery, there is nothing to find in Turmodin but your own end.”
“I know the Riddler would have an answer when he comes back,” interrupted the Mystery, “but how can the Warlock be attempting such a quest for the young prince of Eyri. Is he mad?”
“Or totally ruthless,” said the Lorewarden.
“Maybe he’s trying to lure the Sorcerer out of his lair. Do you think that’s possible? Could the Warlock still be working on our side?”
“But there are eight of you in the Gyre!” objected Tabitha. “How can the Sorcerer be so much more powerful?”
The wizards looked at each other. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“There’s only one right answer to that, and it’s the long answer,” the Lorewarden said. “Let us finish the meal first. You’ll have much to consider in the library.”
_____
After the meal, the Lorewarden led Tabitha away. The Mystery joined them, following like an inquisitive cat, her green eyes watchful. They descended to a cool level deep in the Sanctuary building, and passed along a brown corridor. The Sanctuary was quiet, the patterned floor absorbing the sound of their footsteps.
Tabitha kept her thoughts to herself. She would listen to what the Lorewarden had to teach only because she wanted to be prepared for her journey to Turmodin. She did not believe the vision of the Goddess was false. The ‘sending’ had been too real, she was certain that Ethea was in danger. If the Gyre would not help her, she would learn whatever she could about the Sorcerer and his magic then she would try to go there herself. She knew it would be dangerous, but to allow the Goddess to die at the hands of the Sorcerer would be unforgiveable.
She knew little about the balding bearded Lorewarden, and even less about the Mystery at her back. Could they be trusted? She didn’t know if they could sense something of what she was planning.
“Don’t worry, you make us just as nervous,” the Mystery said suddenly from behind her. “Sometimes I wonder if you don’t make me more nervous than the Sorcerer himself.”
“You can’t mean that, Mystery!” The Lorewarden swung around.
“You don’t see what I see around her,” answered the Mystery. “So many futures cluster upon her like butterflies upon a bright flower, yet she is unaware of them. Don’t hear me wrong, Lifesinger, I believe your heart is good and you have a warmth and beauty in your manner that I wish I could match, but you are both powerful and ignorant, a dangerous combination. It’s what you don’t know that makes you dangerous to me, dangerous to the world. You might destroy things you don’t even know are there.”
Tabitha couldn’t defend herself—she could understand the Mystery’s concern. The Lifesong led her beyond herself, allowing her to wield a power she didn’t understand. She might well strike a wrong note some time, and cause something she hadn’t intended.
“That ignorance might be what allows her to act, where we have not had the courage,” commented the Lorewarden. “Maybe we have too much knowledge in there, Mystery.” He pointed ahead to an archway that led into darkness.
The Mystery laughed gently. “That is a bold statement for the keeper of th
e lore.”
“Well maybe so. Maybe that is the effect of the Lifesinger. I like her. She lets me see things in a new light.” He smiled at Tabitha. “She gives me hope.”
“And so your future is tied to hers,” the Mystery said wistfully. “I daresay mine is as well.”
“Come, Lifesinger,” said the Lorewarden, “You wanted to learn about the Sorcerer.” He led them through the archway into a gloomy room. He gestured to the low roof, and a strip of light split the darkness, running away to fill a grid of lines. The light shimmered and pulsed in a fluid current. Sprites, Tabitha realised. The Lorewarden had sparked them in an instant. “Behold, the collected wisdom of the ages, well, some of it, at least.”
Shelves and shelves of books fanned outward from where they stood, separated by narrow corridors. The near end of each shelf held a diagram with intricate patterns upon it, full of meaning but too complex to understand at a glance. Tabitha had never seen so many books in one place. The collection surpassed the Stormhaven Library a hundred-fold.
“Twardy Zarost said that you had lost most of the precious lores when your college was destroyed.”
“That is true, but we have gathered what little remains.”
There were thousands of books.
“The Lorewarden forgets to mention that his pen has been busy too,” added the Mystery. “The three shelves on the right have been entirely rewritten from first principles.”
“Writing helps one to understand,” he explained. “It helps to bring order to one’s thoughts. So I write that I might better understand that which I write about.”
The weight of the accumulated knowledge pressed down upon Tabitha.
“Who reads all these books?”
The Lorewarden regarded her with a serious gaze. “Why, you do, of course.”
Tabitha looked at him with wide eyes. It would take hundreds of years to turn all the pages, let alone absorb the knowledge upon them. She tried to imagine what books she would want to read, if all the knowledge was laid out before her. Where would she begin?
“Did you ever write about Eyri?”
“Most of the study of your realm has been completed by the Riddler. He dropped his books off from time to time and I read them with great interest. All of us read them.”
“I don’t understand why the Gyre made the Shield around Eyri. If you had all this knowledge at your disposal, why didn’t you train someone here, in the Sanctuary?”
“The arrival of the wildfire cut off our chances to recruit new apprentices. It is very difficult to find someone who is willing to learn a profession when they know that their first successful work outside of the Sanctuary is likely to result in being struck down by flux. No, to even begin on the path to finding another wizard, we needed to find a place where the people cared not at all about the Sorcerer. That is Eyri. We had hoped that the Shield would encourage a new strain of magic to develop, one untainted by Chaos, one that had grown out of pure Order. After the Shield was erected, the memory of Chaos faded, and the people of Eyri grew pure and strong. If any of us had visited Eyri after the Shield was up, our presence would have influenced the developing mages. Even so, your Lightgifters and Shadowcasters were far from unique, basic lumen-mages. We’d given up hope, until you.”
“But what about Twardy Zarost? He was there since the beginning, wasn’t he?”
“The Riddler is skilled at hiding his talents. It is far easier to copy what someone has demonstrated than to invent something new. He took an oath of abstinence. His role was to be the guide for the Seeker. It seems he has done well, very well indeed.”
“How did you know you would find a wizard in Eyri?”
“We didn’t know it would be you, and we certainly didn’t expect the lore to be the Lifesong, but something of the sort was inevitable, given a long enough time. What do you know of your ring? How much did the Riddler explain to you?”
“Twardy? Explain? He never explained anything. He always forced me to solve things.”
“Yes, yes, he would, wouldn’t he? Maybe for once he took his role as the Riddler too seriously. Without knowing anything of its origins, you have nothing to piece together. See here, the rings were forged in the height of our ascendancy, in the time of Order. They were designed to accelerate the development of second sight. A ring will bring out your capacity for magic, and draw the challenges upon you to test the new skills. It is partly a trial, partly a tool. We all bear them, they aid us, they link us and they store our experiences. The older the ring gets, the more knowledge it holds in its layers, knowledge that the bearer can draw upon. When it is being used well, it is warm and tight on the hand that bears it, but whenever the bearer ceases to add new knowledge to it, it grows cold and eventually becomes unbearable. In that way it will move to a candidate with potential. This process helped us to eliminate the unfit apprentices from our college. Even now, after all these years, we Gyre members must continue to learn if we want to retain our rings. They are the mark of our class, and we bear them proudly. To be wizards, we must be wise, and to be wise we must always be learning. We must always gather new knowledge.”
“Have you read all of these books?” she asked, half expecting him to laugh.
“But of course. We all have.”
How did he hold all that information in his head?
“Remember, thought is beyond the physical plane,” said the Mystery. “It has no dimensions, it occupies no space. It has no limitations. It need not take time to be completed.”
“Is there anything written about music?” Tabitha asked.
“Now there’s the pity,” replied the Lorewarden. “The one lore we have so little of is music. It has never been considered much of a carrier for essence. You have opened our eyes, young Lifesinger, you have shown us all! We knew of the Lifesong, to be sure, but the lore was lost in the myths, it was too old to have survived in any texts. Without a true living bard we have had no one to draw our knowledge from. I hope you shall be adding many books of your own to our collective.”
“Why is it that you have all this lore, yet you cannot beat the Sorcerer? Does he know more magic than all this?” Tabitha swept her hand around the Library.
“Ah yes, the Sorcerer. You cannot compare our arts so easily. Our magic is far more advanced than his, more sophisticated. The Sorcerer knows very little. He spurns all knowledge, burning any book he comes upon, but his Chaos is like a thunderstorm unleashed—he reaches a level the equal of all of us combined. By that I mean the magnitude, the power within the spell, the level-count. A singular wizard has a maximum reach of one level from the origin—that is where essence is at rest. Two wizards working in a perfect union would attain a fully realised second level spell. We have found no way to surpass our individual limits, yet the last spell the Sorcerer cast was a mid-eighth level. That was the Writhe, and it almost killed us. We are being stretched too far, and now, with the Warlock missing, we are reduced to a weak seventh-level defence, assuming we were all present and unified in our purpose, including the Riddler. Eighth-level, counting you, but I do not know if we can safely include your lore in our constructions yet. None of us understand it.”
“You have come to us in a desperate time, Lifesinger,” said the Mystery. “If we wait for the next attack, we might be overwhelmed, and yet we dare not seek him out with our own spells, because we might not be the equal of his counter-strike. We need to build our own strength before we can be effective.”
“Have you never hurt the Sorcerer? Is there no way to weaken him?”
“Oh we have wounded him many times. We have blasted his Pillar to pieces and we have tamed some strands of the wildfire. But the wildfire swells with a new season of growth, a taller Pillar arises from the ruins of the old, and the Sorcerer himself becomes stronger. He seems to gain a level with each survival, as if the ordeal has forced him to reach deeper into the source of his power.”
“And so he gets worse,” continued the Mystery. “He cannot be reasoned with. He is irra
tional, often insane. He has a terribly strong imagination, and he devises the most convoluted and savage spell-patterns ever seen in Oldenworld. He never repeats a spell. We think he actually forgets it the moment it is cast. That is what makes him so difficult to predict. We never know what curse the Pillar will spit out next, and every time we must study it intensely before we can devise a counter-spell. We cannot even discuss a treaty or compromise with him, because he does not value the stability of peace as we do, and he is too fanatical to be convinced that some order in Oldenworld is useful to us both.”
“But if he is so ignorant, how does he wield magic?”
“He is a Sorcerer, not a wizard,” answered the Lorewarden. “He draws his inspiration from a hidden source.”
An uneasy feeling passed over Tabitha. “Is that the same as the way that I draw my inspiration and power from the Goddess Ethea?”
The Lorewarden frowned. “I suppose…in a way…yes.”
“Oh dear,” said the Mystery. “Could there be a link between them?”
“No, Mystery, I know what you are thinking, but we have seen her spells. They are not clustered anywhere near the Chaos pole.”
“And yet we are not certain where the root of her magic is. There may be similarities between them that we cannot apprehend.”
“Does it matter, Mystery? Whatever they achieve with essence shall be constrained by the immutable laws of the three axes. So long as the Lifesinger uses her power against Chaos, she must be a channel of Order.”
“Please, what are the three axes?” Tabitha asked.
“You do not know? How on earth do you balance them so well, without knowing? That is remarkable! Remarkable indeed.” He observed her for a while, his head tilted to one side. Then he smiled. “Let me explain. The three axes form the structure in which all magic can be placed. It has to do with the orientation of the essence. You are familiar with the Light and the Dark?”
Tabitha nodded.
“Well that is lumen, the first axis,” he said. “Dark is the one pole, Light is the other. In the centre, at their balance point, the essence is at rest, it is clear. We call that place the origin. The second axis, animatus, runs through the same origin, but at right angles to the first axis, one could say it runs forward and backward instead of to the left and the right. The violet essence of Matter is the one pole of the second axis, the red essence of Energy the other. Finally, the third axis, struct, intersects the others at right angles through the origin; you could say it runs upward and downward relative to the others. We have dedicated our entire lives to spreading the golden flax of Order, because there is altogether too much flux in the world—that silvered essence of Chaos.”
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 53
