“Until you find a new land to conquer?” asked Dirk.
“Precisely.”
“Until the world is yours?”
Eadon grinned devilishly. “Until the world is mine.”
Dirk resisted his body’s urge to shudder at the thought. He looked down at his impossibly large army of monsters. His eyes drifted to what he knew to be one of the lost Gates of Arkron. Where in Agora its twin gate was located he did not know, but through it the army would pour. Through it the dark elf armies could travel from Drindellia to Agora in an instant, covering the land in darkness.
Dirk returned to the lavish room that he shared with Krentz and pondered the dark elf’s words. He took off his enchanted leather cloak, his boots, and his clothes and joined his tattooed lover in the silk sheets of the large bed. Outside their wall the world was dark, but upon the ceiling of their shard danced a million multicolored suns, the stars greatly illuminated by the smooth clear crystal wall with its dancing colors. They lost themselves to each other and found a place far from the death and destruction of the world, a place where they could know peace and be left alone, a place that did not exist but in their hearts. They danced in the ocean of empty space and sang the song of the stars. Only together did they know such peace; only together did they know such love.
When they came down they held each other forever and thought of nothing, simply savored the glow, she with her pointed ears resting upon his chest, he with his arms and a leg around her. They remained as one while they slept, and when either stirred they danced yet again, long until morning.
Chapter 4
Training Begins
Whill flew with Avriel from the city, and shortly they landed upon an outcropping of stone and grass and dirt. The island was surrounded by a rushing river. Upon it was nestled a small cottage, a garden, and a well-kept yard. It was seemingly undisturbed by the violence of the river around it, which fed the Thousand Falls.
Avriel landed and Whill dismounted. He looked the place over and gave her a questioning glance. She spoke to him in his mind.
The Watcher is…different. He knows things, things that others only guess at. He is the most enlightened of our elders, regarded by all but himself as the reincarnation of Mallekell, the father of the second age of enlightenment. He is a monk, and insists that he is a simple farmer. He does not preach, nor hold what you call sermons, yet he will speak freely with anyone.
Whill swallowed hard and looked at the cottage with dread.
“What will he tell me?” Whill asked.
Only what you ask of him.
“Does he have no questions?”
None.
Her white scaled head turned to the river and she licked her sharp teeth. I go to feed upon the river; his words shall be for you alone.
Avriel leapt twenty feet into the air and extended her long dragon wings. They caught the wind as the sunlight caught her thousand scales, and the sight blinded Whill. He closed his eyes and called upon his mind-sight. He sucked in a breath as he beheld Avriel in true form, her spirit as grand as a dragon and as bright as the god of light.
When she was beyond view, Whill reluctantly walked to the cottage. After a pause, he knocked on the door three times.
“Where I am from, knocking on a door thrice means the caller would like to dance naked under the moonlight” came the musical voice of an old elf.
Whill was taken aback by the statement. He was speechless. Suddenly the door opened inward and an ancient-looking elf, bent at the waist, cocked his head to look up at Whill from an odd angle.
“So you want to dance naked, eh, boy?” asked the Watcher.
“Uhh…,” Whill stuttered.
“Hahaha!” The ancient elf laughed until he coughed, and coughed until he hacked. Finally he spat a hairball onto the doorstep. “Hmm.” He hummed as he inspected it. “Silver trout does it every time.” He pulled Whill’s sleeve and pointed at the slimy hairball. “When in cat form, do yourself the favor of eating a silver trout.” He turned abruptly and shuffled into the cottage. “Well, then, shut the door. Someone needs to try my newest batch of wine, and it may as well be you!”
Whill, still speechless, closed the door and followed the odd elf into his home. The cottage was strangely familiar, and then Whill realized that he stood in the center room of his aunt Teera’s house, one he had lived in as a child. He marveled and went to the window to see beyond. There past the lawn the river raged, but not a sound found the room.
He turned to the Watcher. “How?”
“Why is the better question,” the elf countered.
Whill shook his head. “Why?”
“Why did I bring what, where, and when is the question, and you ask how. Hmm. Indeed, you are curious.”
Whill shook his head as if trying to clear it. He looked around and smiled as nostalgia washed through him in waves. His shoulders dropped and his muscles relaxed. And for the first time in a long while, he was at ease, he was at home. The fire crackled lazily, and above it a pot of venison stew sent delicious scents riding on the air. Even the throw rug was the same, a pattern of moon and stars, symbols and glyphs.
“Thank you,” said Whill.
The Watcher nodded and pointed to a chair opposite him. Whill sat as the elf poured two small glasses of wine.
“This wine is as old as you are, to the day,” he said as he swirled his glass. He put his long hooked nose into it, nearly dipping it, and took a long, slow sniff.
Whill raised his own glass. “As old as I, to the day? Why?” He immediately regretted his words, thinking the word game would begin anew. To his relief, it did not.
“Why?” the elf asked the ceiling. “Hmm, why indeed? I suppose I thought it would be ironic somehow. It is silly, I suppose.” He then lifted his glass in a toast. “Here is to your toe hairs: may they be curly and dry,” he proclaimed, and took a drink of the twenty-year-old wine. His bushy eyebrows shot up so high, they could have been mistaken for leaping mice. His eyelashes fluttered and a shiver ran through his body as he swallowed. “It seems the wine is dead on. Try it, try it.”
Whill skipped the swirl and smell, the looking and listening, and just drank. Flavor exploded in his mouth, sweet at first but then slowly balancing out to a harmoniously delicious medley of flowers and meadows. Again the flavor shifted, now to one of such intense bitterness that Whill nearly spat it out. He swallowed the wine and his palate was left numb.
“As old as you to the day, I daresay the hour.”
“You know I was not…born, do you not? I was cut from my mother, I…”
“Yes, of course, but you are here all the same. Did you like the wine?” the Watcher asked.
Whill wondered for a moment and was about to say yes when a thought occurred to him. “Avriel told me that you asked no questions.”
“How odd. I suppose I have never asked her a question.” He took another drink.
Whill drank again. “It is bitter at the end.”
“Many things of this world begin sweet and end up bitter, and others the opposite,” said the elf.
Whill looked at him and then the wine. “I am like this wine,” he realized.
“And the wine is like you. But like the wine, you can and will change. But enough of that. You did not come here to speak of wine, did you?”
Whill looked around the cottage again. Warmth filled him and joined in the wine lifting his spirits. “I have come here for training. I seek enlightenment.”
“No, you do not. You wish for a way to stop feeling as you do. You wish for the nightmares to stop. You wish for your mind to stop torturing you. This I cannot help you with, for it is simply a choice.”
Whill did not speak but listened, waiting for the help he sought. But the Watcher spoke no more. He simply waited and drank his wine.
“Where do I begin?” asked Whill.
“You have already begun. You are here.”
“What next then?” Whill asked patiently.
“Next you must
let go. When you can do that, you will be free.”
“Let go of what?”
“Everything.”
Whill breathed a sigh of frustration. “How? Don’t you care about anything? How can your advice in this war be to let go?”
“The question is why,” said the Watcher with a smirk.
“Why, then?”
“Because that is the only way. If the people of Keye let go, there would be peace. I seek peace, therefore I let go, and I know peace. This war you speak of, I know it not. I am not at war, and no one is at war with me.”
“Eadon is at war with you,” Whill countered.
The Watcher suddenly cocked his head and listened. Whill listened and waited also, but heard nothing. After a time the Watcher spoke.
“Avriel has caught a silver trout.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “She is a good one for you; it is good that you have found one another.”
“Yes, she is…she is dear to me. When I had thought her dead…”
“There!” the Watcher shouted so abruptly that Whill jumped in his seat. “That is the source of your problem.”
“What is?”
“Your insistence on reliving old pains and worries. Do you like it?”
Whill shook his head, confused. “Do I like what?”
“Pain,” said the Watcher.
Whill thought about it and shook his head. “Of course not.”
The Watcher pointed to the pot. “If you would, the stew needs stirring and I am old.”
Whill got to his feet and complied. His mouth watered as he smelled the small pot of stew.
The Watcher went on. “If you did not like pain you would not relive it. Of course you do. You believe that your pain defines you, as do most, but it does not. Nothing defines you because you need not be defined. Giving things names does not make them real. All that you need to know about yourself is that you are. That is the only truth. All else is simply making sounds to recognize a thing.”
Whill thought about it for a moment. “I simply am.”
The Watcher nodded and smiled. “You simply are.”
“I am not Whill.”
“You are not Whill, you are you, that which is. You believe that you can only exist as Whill, and therefore the captain believes he is the ship. But you are not your body, nor your brain. You are nothing and everything, the darkness and the light. Which one you choose to express is up to you.”
Whill understood clearly, saw it all laid out before him, but quickly it was gone. He grasped at the glimpse as one would try and fall asleep to the same pleasant dream.
“I had it…but it left me.”
This time the Watcher shook his head. “It cannot leave you, it is you. You still think that you are your mind.”
Whill sat back heavily and slumped, resting his head in his hands. “I am insane,” he sighed.
The Watcher laughed. “Of course you are, the mind is insane. See the spirit that you are, and you shall find sanity.”
Whill lifted his head and the Watcher laid a strong hand upon it. Whill’s body convulsed and went rigid as waves of energy neither pleasant nor painful coursed through his body. He soon found himself floating in a sea of dancing light. Explosions of energy boomed here and there, and lightning rode weaving currents from one explosion to another. A humming permeated from all directions as the dancing light flew like shooting stars. The Watcher floated next to Whill. Oddly, he still held his wine.
“Where are we?” Whill asked.
“We are in the cottage, but we are experiencing the inner workings of your brain.”
“My brain!” Whill gasped.
“Yes. Quite busy, isn’t it? I wish to show you something.”
Back at the cottage, the Watcher pinched Whill hard on the tender underarm. A writhing ball of light shot up through the web of energy flow and lit a faraway part of the ocean of light.
“Ow!” Whill said aloud. Inwardly he was awed. “Do it again.” He laughed; again the pain manifested itself as dancing light.
“Drink your wine,” bade the Watcher and Whill complied, though he saw not the glass. Instead he watched as his sense of taste was manifested into a blazing light show.
The Watcher released him and they returned to the room. Whill blinked repeatedly and looked around, panting. “That was amazing!”
“Indeed. More amazing still is that, like the pain in your arm, your mental pain is nothing more than dancing light. If it dances enough along the same webs, trails are created. Then it can more easily travel again down the same path. This is why certain thoughts inevitably lead to the same conclusion, be they memories, beliefs, or thoughts. You must break the cycles within your mind if you wish to obtain the enlightenment you seek. For enlightenment is not a state of mind, it is the absence of mind.”
Whill nodded in understanding. “I must give up my identity.”
“You must embrace your identity. You simply are.”
Whill understood. But he could not commit, could not let go. “Then I should forget that I alone may be able to stop Eadon? Is that what you are telling me? I just, what, grow a garden and daydream all day?”
The Watcher refilled both of their glasses and drank. “You do need food,” he said matter-of-factly.
Whill was not amused. The Watcher chuckled. “You have been told by everyone that you are the Whill of Agora, the savior, the chosen one. Let me ask you. Do you feel like the legend you are supposed to be?”
“No!”
“Do you want the great power you possess?”
“No!”
The Watcher smiled. “Perhaps that is why you have it.”
For the first time, the Watcher looked at the sword Adromida at Whill’s hip, and his eyes went wide for a moment. His voice dropped and slowed. “The greatest power ever given…the greatest gift of all. And its twin, the greatest power taken, the greatest curse of all. They are the essence of existence, you know. Created to ensure that none could attain both, lest they become like a god.”
Whill was startled. “You know of the legend?”
“I have heard it whispered in the rivers of time, yes.”
“Kellallea said that Eadon’s true goal is to attain both blades, and to ascend to the heavens.”
“Indeed.” The elf nodded.
“And you would do nothing to stop him?”
“It is not my place,” said the Watcher.
“No.” Whill nodded. “It seems that it is mine.”
Whill drank down the last of his wine and stared at the mantel of his childhood. A pang of sadness threatened to rob him of breath as he thought of Teera and the girls. He had not seen the woman who raised him in too many years. How he longed for this all to be real, for his beloved aunt to come through the threshold, busy as a bee as always. She had taught Whill everything he knew about nonmagical healing. He imagined what it would be like to be there with her now, to show her how he had learned to heal.
He watched the fire lazily and daydreamed of roaming the countryside, curing disease and saving the dying. He could give people a second chance at life. Among the many powers he had discovered, healing was the most intriguing. He found no thrill in dealing out pain and death, though neither did he feel any remorse when killing the draggard, dark elves, or even the opposing gladiators. He thought of the rage that burned within him during battle, anger born of his torture. His mind was broken, he realized, and no amount of well-wishing was going to fix it.
“I see many things,” said The Watcher suddenly with a flourish of the hands. “I see the past, solid, unchanging, always warning. I see the present, what is as it is in the moment. And I see the future, an eternal river of endless possibilities. I watch decisions alter the future, I see that which could have been, that which would have been, and that which can be. Eternal possibility lies before you, Whill. There are a thousand futures in which you fail, and as many in which you succeed.”
“Well, then tell me what I did right in the futures where I succeeded,” Wh
ill blurted with frustration.
“If I began to meddle in the flow of time, a million new futures would play out before my mind. I would be likely to miss dinner to such a bother.”
To that Whill sighed. The Watcher patted his leg with a strong hand. “There is no one way, no easy answer. Your life is for you to dictate, not I or the elders, nor a prophecy or a dark lord. You alone must choose your path. I only offer a way to not suffer while you travel upon your chosen path. I offer peace.”
Whill smiled at the elf. “Thank you.” He stood and fetched two bowls from where he knew them to be and two spoons as well. He scooped up helpings for himself and the Watcher. They drank and they supped, and the Watcher offered up what he thought to be the secret to happiness.
Chapter 5
A Dark Road
The dwarven search parties came back with the same report as before: they’d found no sign of any gate or portal or hidden tunnels that may have been used. It did something to silence Roakore’s growing dread. Still, it was with foreboding that he packed the last of his things and prepared to leave his kingdom once again. Nah’Zed did nothing to quell her king’s guilt; instead, she had quite the contrary effect. She reminded him that the world was at war, and his place was with his people. Roakore knew her to be right, and told her as much.
“But I be a creature o’ action, Nah’Zed,” he said. “I feel the call o’ the road.” He stood at Silverwind’s side, packing the last of his provisions. In his hands he clutched the book of Ky’Dren. He remembered Azzeal’s words and the elf’s tale of a mountain within Drindellia, the dwarven kingdom lost to time. An idea had sparked in his mind when he heard the tale, a grand idea of such epic proportions that if he accomplished it, he would be given a seat among the gods. He dreamt of travelling to that most ancient of Dwarven Mountains and reclaiming it for the dwarves, if it existed. The possibility drove him to leave Ro’Sar, to abandon his throne for the beaten path, and to find the answers that would prove true revelations to the dwarven culture. He was going to retrace the path of Ky’Dren.
Whill of Agora: Book 03 - A Song of Swords Page 4
