by Welcome Cole
Prave stood back on a seat plank in the stern, his face shimmering eerily in a second lamp’s light as he propelled them lazily forward with a long pole. The sound of the pole delicately agitating the water was all that sullied the perfect silence of their journey. This was a never-ending dream, a story that plays over and over through a fitful night, never offering conclusion but only repetition and mind-numbing monotony. Beam felt like he’d been sitting there in the bow of that skiff in the same miserable position for his entire life.
However, the crowning jewel of his angst came from those pitiful souls watching them pass from the shadows along the bank of the canal on the skiff’s port side. Brother Dael, Ukee Oyt, Sawtooth Bill, Brilla, Sorry Jack Colder, Fen Voleer, Ke’dimae, Baw, Lipless Lew Smythe, Slim Fetterly, and too many nameless others stood over there in the darkness of those muddy banks, their hazy faces illuminated into ghostly detail as the anemic light of their boat lamps passed. Even Gerd was there, flashing his three and a half tooth grin and waving giddily before quickly fading back into shadowy haze.
There were dozens of them all told, maybe hundreds, a grim procession of his darkest deeds and greatest failings that had followed him relentlessly since his arrival in Prave’s timescape here in the caeylsphere. And just as he’d reach the end of that miserable succession of faces, the line would start all over again with Brother Dael back in the lead.
Those sorry eyes were the most unbearable of them all. The guilt Beam harbored for that humble monk burned in his belly like a good dinner gone bad. He hated himself for how poorly he’d treated Dael, and he hated the world more for tolerating men like him. He wished someone had had the foresight to drown him at birth, thus sparing the world his worthless existence.
Exhausted with it all, he buried his face in his hands and willed the images be gone, though he knew the effort for the foolish waste of energy it was.
“There’s no need to look away, Be’ahm,” Prave said from the boat’s stern, “They’re not here to judge you.”
Right on cue! It was exactly like the thousand other times they’d drifted down this same hopeless passage while traversing from one timescape to another. The mage seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his head.
Still, Beam refused to look up at him. He didn’t dare look up at him. Somewhere along the years since he’d been imprisoned in this miserable dream within the caeylsphere, Prave’s voice had changed into his own. Somewhere during this timeless imprisonment, Prave’s image had mutated into his. They were now identical, like dark twins. Prave wore his face and his long black hair, even his green leather overshirt and his worn, tawny britches. The only thing this doppelganger didn’t have was his Caeyllth Blade.
“They’re not here to judge you,” the Prave-Beam said again, “Nor to forgive you. Their only purpose here is to teach you.”
Beam pulled his hands from his eyes. The palms looking up from his knees were dry. Even under the fierce burden of his grief, there was no physical manifestation of it. Tears were an illusion here. Everything was an illusion here except the tedium. That was most real.
“They want you to forgive yourself, my dear boy. They say they can’t do anything for you until you do something for yourself. You are the keeper of your fate. They cannot help you.”
Beam looked over at the passing faces. Red “Two Knives” Galling slid by, scowling most sincerely at Beam. His neck was still wet with blood where Beam’s blade had outwitted both of Red’s knives.
He forced his eyes away from the memory. “I don’t deserve this,” he whispered, “Any harm I caused them came of innocent recklessness or self-defense, never malice. Damn me, I’ve never killed anyone out of meanness or greed. They should just go away and leave me alone.”
It was a complete lie and he hated himself just a bit more for having said it out loud.
“They won’t leave you alone until you come to terms with your conscience,” Prave said softly, “Neither of you will find peace until then. They cannot find peace until you do.”
“It’s not that simple,” Beam snapped back.
“It is exactly that simple, dear boy.”
Bullshit, Beam thought. Absolutely nothing here was that simple.
This unnatural dimension felt like remembered chaos, like a feverish dream that never ends. Since entering the caeylsphere just after the prode attack, he’d followed Prave across all of Calevia. Time warped most unfortunately here in this dimension, and though he had no yardstick by which to measure it, he knew he’d been imprisoned here with the mage for years now, maybe even decades. Over the endless stretch of his confinement, he’d seen nations rise and fall, city-states born and burned. He’d walked through the ruins of civilizations lost deep beneath fantastic seas. He’d crossed mountains and deserts and oceans. He’d visited strange lands, lands not even yet known to the peoples of his natural world. He’d seen volcanoes grow, erupt, and die. He’d experienced the lives and deaths of many great men and women, and of many others who weren’t. He’d seen the birth of Calina, seen the gods bless and curse the mortal world again and again. The memories delivered themselves relentlessly, one after the other, like storm waves crashing endlessly against a rocky shoal.
He slipped his hand over the caeyl resting atop the sword mounted in his scabbard, and savored the warm breath of its energy. The sensation radiated into his arm and up across shoulder like hot joy, pulsing deeper into his essence with every heartbeat. It was the only physical manifestation of the outer world left to him, and he held onto it like a lifeline.
“Are you ready, my boy?”
Beam looked back at the Prave-Beam. The man’s eyes were locked on the horizon beyond him. He twisted around and looked ahead into the thick, unyielding darkness of the canal. Nothing looked different. It was the same winding blackness followed by the same endlessly repeating line of his victims.
“Ready?” he said, turning back to Prave, “Ready for what? There’s nothing there.”
“Are you ready for the truth?”
“The truth?” Beam laughed at that. “After all I’ve seen? I doubt I’d recognize truth if it spit in my face.”
“Is that so?” his doppelganger said dryly, “Well, what say we put that theory to test?”
Before Beam could object, a pang of nausea seized him, and as it did, the boat, the river, and the relentless ghosts immediately washed away on a blur of shadows.
∞
It was night.
They stood on an empty hill surrounded only by the wind, the anemic moon, and more empty hills rolling away from them like a melancholy sea. A notably large white star burned directly ahead of them, hanging low in the night sky.
It struck Beam odd, being larger than any star he’d seen before. And after spending a few years at sea in his youth with the brothers Fark, he was fairly adept at identifying celestial objects. He wondered if perhaps this time they’d landed on another part of the planet.
He looked over at the Prave-Beam. “Where are we now?”
Prave didn’t respond. He only watched the strange star, while looking uncharacteristically preoccupied.
“Prave, I asked you a question. Where are we?”
“That is not the question you should be asking me.”
Beam winced at that. “All right, then. What exactly is the question I should be asking?”
“The more pertinent question,” Prave said as he studied the celestial event, “Would be when are we?”
Beam thought about that. He’d normally have brushed the statement off as another irritating riddle, but this time the words were delivered too morosely. This time the words came like whispers heard outside a tent, whispers of dire matters and grave importance, whispers that, once overheard, are soon regretted.
He pushed the thought away. It was just more of the man’s bullshit, nothing greater. He’d be a fool to make more of it than that.
“No more tests, Prave,” he said firmly, “I’m too damned tired. Where are… I mean, when are we
? I mean… why in the Nine have you brought me here? Not that I mind the fresh air, mind you. Those tunnels are—”
“Do you see that?”
Beam followed the Prave-Beam’s pointing finger out toward the star. To his surprise, it was even brighter than it had been just moments ago. In fact, it was brighter and much, much larger. He wondered if it was an illusion brought on by the atmosphere, like the moon swelling in girth as it settles over distant mountains.
“I asked you a question, Be’ahm.”
“I heard you. And yes, I see it. How could I not?”
Prave watched the star intently. It was now the size of the moon, and still growing.
“What the devil is it?” Beam asked as he studied the event.
“It is the beginning and the end.”
“The beginning and the end? And the end?”
“That is the God Caeyl. It is the mother of all the earthly caeyls. In a matter of minutes, it will give birth to your twin fates.”
“My twin fates.”
“Ay’a. Your beginning and your end.”
“A pregnant star,” Beam said, squeezing the bridge of his nose, “Birthing my twin fates. Sure, that makes perfect sense. Why didn’t you just tell me that the moment we met back in the crystal cave? Would’ve saved you a few thousand years of teaching, and me the same length of irritation.”
Sighing, he dropped his hand to his side and looked up at the horizon. The star was nearly too bright to look at now. Its silvery light frosted the crests of the hills so they looked like an endless vista of snowdrifts rolling off into the night.
He shaded his eyes against the light. Somewhere in the last few moments, night had become day. The star was as big as the midsummer sun.
He realized he felt profoundly afraid, and a quick glance at Prave only made it worse. The man was fully himself again, with his oteuryns and flowing pale hair, and lavishly stitched silken blue tunic. And yet, he wasn’t the same at all. He looked tired, deeply tired. He seemed to hunch a bit, as if burdened with some great weight. His darkly rimmed eyes carried the resignation of a man standing at the executioner’s block. He looked like an old man.
The sight sent Beam’s heart sinking. He placed a hand on the mage’s shoulder and leaned closer. “Prave,” he whispered to him, “What is this? What’s happening to you?”
Prave said nothing, but only watched the star.
Beam continued holding the man’s shoulder, but was lost for anything to say. Perhaps this was the end of his journey. Perhaps this meant he was about to be set free. It should have been an exhilarating moment, yet the thought instilled in him a dour sense of melancholy instead. He prayed this trip wouldn’t end with him watching Prave die. He couldn’t bear that. He prayed to simply wake up back in the tunnel, or in a field, or in the pits of the seventh hell, anywhere else just so long as he didn’t have to finish it out by witnessing Prave’s death.
“What’s going on?” he pressed harder, again squeezing the man’s shoulder, “Talk to me, damn you. Why are you changing? What are we doing here? Why are you showing me this?”
“Quiet now, Be’ahm. Watch the star.”
Beam studied him a moment longer, but he understood perfectly the futility of pressing the man. He knew that look too well. This was a lesson, and they could both be strangling under a sea of snakes without Prave intervening before the lesson’s end. So he reluctantly released him and turned back to the night sky.
The now massive star quickly settled quickly against the horizon, drifting lower even as he watched. In a matter of heartbeats, it fully disappeared behind the outlines of the distant hills. Night swooped back in on its wake. For a time, nothing more happened. They simply stood there in the absolute darkness under a veil of silence as thick as guilt.
Then the skyline exploded.
An ungodly bubble of brilliant white flame erupted, swelling rapidly until it flooded the darkness out of the night sky. The half-sphere of light grew until it nearly consumed the horizon, until the heavens themselves were ablaze. An instant later, it collapsed back in on itself. As it did, a monstrous mushroom-shaped cloud of flame and smoke boiled up into the burning skyline.
The sight was terrifying and unholy. Beam realized he was backing away and willed himself to stop. This is just a grisly hallucination, he told himself, it’s not real. It’s a dream. It cannot hurt you.
Though it seemed forever, the event had actually run its course in a matter of minutes, leaving behind a blistering red sky and an angry, earthbound wall of smoke. The smoke was blacker than midnight and swelling rapidly across the distant hills. At first, he thought it was rising taller, but he quickly realized that was an illusion. In fact, it only appeared to be growing taller because it was rushing toward them, coming on faster than anything he’d ever seen in his life.
Panic seized him. He knew it was a dream, but still struggled against the primal urge to run. As the storm fell upon them, he wheeled away from it, throwing his face into his arm and bracing himself for the beating he was sure was coming.
The violence never arrived.
After several beats, he slipped his face from his arm. It was fully daylight now. The sky was cloudless and as blue as the finest topaz. The air felt cool and sharp.
He dropped his arms. They were still outside, but in a world as different from that grassy hilltop as night is from day. They stood on the rim of a perfectly round canyon a thousand feet above its base. The opposing rim rose up nearly a half-mile away from them. Deep ruts gouged the belly of the canyon floor below them, starting at the very center and radiating out toward the rim like spokes on a wheel. He wondered if this was a volcano. He’d seen similar sites before in the wilds of Northern Parhron, though none of them were anywhere near this size, nor nearly as fresh. The scent of burnt dirt was powerful.
“Where are we?” he asked Prave.
“We stand where the God Caeyl fell.”
“God Caeyl?” Beam turned and looked outside the rim. He thought about the massive star he’d just seen drop into the horizon. This was where it landed. This was a crater.
The earth surrounding the crater was a land of rough hills and rocky mesas. The distant hills were shaded in greens and browns where the forest covered it, but the land immediately surrounding this pit was scorched and black. There was no standing timber for miles out in every direction, only the charred remnants of fallen trees whose blackened, limbless trunks lay out from the crater like hair combed away from a boil. A light wind kicked up below them, raising a gust of colorful dirt in the ruins of the forest. The wind moved as if alive, its form defined by dust that glimmered and sparkled in a thousand colors. The blowing rainbow sifted through the fallen trees, dancing around the scattered rocks and boulders until the breeze simply died and the dust dissipated back into the dirt below.
“The God Caeyl did this?”
Prave didn’t respond.
Beam turned back to him. The man was even worse than before. He looked to be dying from the inside out. His lined face was gaunt and drawn, his skin papery, his long white hair thin and dirty. He wore the curved spine of a relic of a man. He looked to have aged a hundred years since the God Caeyl landed.
“It’s not me you need be concerned about, Be’ahm,” Prave said. He turned with some effort and waved a bony hand down the long hill toward the outer foot of the crater where the first and most blackened of the trees laid. “You would be better served to focus on them.”
Beam followed his gesture toward the empty, scorched earth separating the outer rim’s rocky feet from the first burned trees. At first, he didn’t see anything. Then he spied two tiny figures making their way through the fallen forest a quarter mile out from the base.
“Who are they?” he whispered to Prave.
“They’re the first mortals to arrive here.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Patience.”
Beam cursed his short temper. He felt a sense of urgency he hadn’t experienced
before during his incarceration. Something felt ominously different about this vision. It was more real, more personal than any of the others Prave had shown him. He had a sense this was a lesson that would touch him more deeply, more personally than any before it.
He watched Prave watching the tiny figures pick their way through the debris below. The man appeared seized by a fit of melancholy, or sorrow, or perhaps solemn regret. He bore an unnamed darkness that Beam had never seen in him.
“You recognize them,” he said as the truth found him, “They’re why you brought me here, isn’t it? You know them. Who are they?”
Prave turned his hollowed eyes up to Beam, but said nothing.
Beam endured another chill of fear he couldn’t explain, and that only served to fuel his anger. “Damn it, Prave. Tell me who the hell they are!”
“They’re your past,” Prave whispered.
“My past? Well, I’m pretty certain that’s bullshit. I’d surely remember something like that. Your past, more—”
Before he could finish his refusal, the world shifted.
He suffered that same startling sensation he always suffered when Prave pulled them through the timescape, a feeling like falling out of bed replete with a sharp twist of nausea just for laughs.
When the vertigo passed, he found himself standing on flat ground before a lofty monolith of dirt and rock rising up a hundred feet or more above them. He turned and scanned the curved walls rising up on all sides of them in a perfect circle, and he immediately knew where they were. They were in the middle of the crater.
The two men Prave had shown him outside the crater now milled about the odd obelisk. A brawny dark-haired man knelt on his hands and knees in the full sun twenty paces off to Beam’s left. He dug with a metal hand spade in the dirt. He worked a trough that ran in a straight line out from the obelisk. Occasionally, he would stop excavating and pull out oddly shaped stones colored like decorative glass, examining them carefully. Most he chucked away. Occasionally he dropped one into a large flax bag squatting next to his thigh.
The other man, a fair-haired man of leaner build, stood directly before the obelisk itself. He hammered at the cone with a crude hand sledge and chisel, likewise pulling out shards of glassy crystals and examining them.
