by Paul Smith
*
To outsiders, their society looked like something out of the most lurid nightmares of Holi, or one of the other Insanatoria, whose musings on damnation and eternal punishment had been fodder for teenage campfire stories since back before the fall of the Summer Houses. Most people imagined life amongst the Nym to be a string of bloody, sexual depravities, mingled in with long periods of zoning out over the play of shadows across a flower.
In some sense they were right; the old saying about a grain of truth holding very much correct in this context. The difference lay in perspective. At least that was the opinion shared by most of the ruling cabal, both in Sha’Klairon and the grove at Carpassan. Being bound completely changed you, quite aside from the obvious physical alterations. It altered the way you experienced the world.
It was inevitable this would affect any society compromising such individuals.
Ikari could still remember his trepidation. The uncertainty he’d felt as he stood in the circle of light cast by the ring of torches thrust into the ground about him.
Seeking the approval of the shadowy figures stood at its edge.
Seeking a different kind of immortality, now that other road had been closed forever by his forebearers.
“Why do you seek the martyr’s way?”
The words had been softly spoken, belying nothing of the speaker’s intent or opinion in the warm darkness.
“I wish to go on,” he’d replied. Kye, as his sponsor, had warned him that subterfuge would work against him here; in the long run he would bare all regardless.
“He possesses the affinity.” Deliana, her tone rich as the scents of the rainforest canopy that stretched long arms about them, beyond the walls of the ruins.
“But he also brings animosity,” her antagonist replied. Ikari had never learnt who he was; an elder from the Carpassan grove who had returned to his own by the time the young man from Peshra recovered from synthesis.
“Because he does not know.” Deliana had cocked her head, hood shifting in the flickering illumination, a gesture he’d seen a hundred times since then during debates in the commons. “Let him see the light.”
There had been a long pause then, as he held his breath, the air suddenly pregnant in a way he would come to recognise and associate with increased proximity to the Garden.
“Very well.” He’d begun shivering with anticipation as the acceptance in those words sank in. “We are in accord.”
His heart had leapt into his throat as the figures had stepped forwards into the light, Kye pushing his hood back with skeletal fingers. Eyes shining, he moved forward to clasp hands with his protégé.
“Lie down, Ikari.”
Ikari had lowered himself to the ground, the stone floor of the ancient hall cool against his back and legs through the thin cotton vest and trousers he’d worn for the occasion.
The others gathered about, a ring of tall shadows in the swaying light. As he’d watched Kye lifted one arm, pulling the sleeve of his robe back to expose the slim muscles and tendons of his arm, knotted about with their twist of briar limb. Clasping one of the thorns, where it broke through his viridian tinged skin, Kye had snapped the protrusion off at the root with a deft twist of his wrist. He held it a moment between thumb and forefinger, an elegant triangle gummy with glistening sap, blood a dark crimson about its base. Then he leant forward and plunged it into the side of Ikari’s neck, the point digging sharply into the muscle there.
More sharp stabs of pain told him the others had done the same: at his fore arm and the curve of his ribs. The swell of his thigh and the cleft of his groin.
Shadows crept in round the edges of his vision, blurring the lines of his sight.
The Nym built their social circles on the precepts of inclusion and acceptance. Within their community everything was shared, by everyone. They stood together, a future echo of the forest of trees they would eventually become when they passed on into the Cathedral.
Yes, there were circles within the circles, but it was very difficult to keep secrets from others when a casual graze might spill your buried desires into the plain light of day.
Each community was ruled by an inner Cabal, but its members were largely a figurehead. They held no power of governance over the larger group, their responsibilities instead involving the administration of the Grove's interaction with outside forces. And in this they were expected to react with the good of the many in mind. To do otherwise would be to invite censure from their peers. Censure resulting at its most severe in expulsion from the Grove.
Ikari had heard whispers over years of a further, far harsher punishment: exile from the Garden itself. Such a sentence would at best render the afflicted insane, though death was the far more likely (and preferable) outcome. A few judicious bouts of digging never found any solid evidence supporting the rumours, beyond a few very oblique references. And he didn't have the guts to ask outright, afraid at some deeper level of what he might find. Nevertheless, it was a concept his mind had never quite been able to relinquish.
They’d paused on the cusp of another steep incline. Ikari needed a break from being in the saddle, and the llama had become difficult as the sun approached the highest point in the sky overhead. He couldn’t remember enough of the animal husbandry his parents had forced on him in his youth to know if there might be a specific reason for this, but a handful of sugar cane and a chance to nibble at the sparse grass which littered the escarpment seemed to be doing the trick. He was keeping a firm hold on the reins, however, not trusting the wayward creature to stay nearby without his grip reminding it who was in charge.
Below him, the land stretched down towards a distant smudge of blue that might have been the sea, though he suspected not. The green in between kept doing strange things to his eyes whenever he tried to focus on it.
At his back, the slope disappeared up into the sky, before vanishing behind the last lip they’d navigated their way over. Below him a switchback trail carried on down through scrub that turned to meadowland as it reached the valley, where an enterprising soul had set up an inn. It huddled in the lee of the surrounding hills, surrounded by a brace of stables and the first copse of trees he’d seen since leaving the caldera three days ago.
At the headlands to each side of the valley, the stubby pillars of twin obelisks stood guard over the scene, their dark silhouettes like twin eggs partially settled into the ground. Ikari knew without being able to see that they would have two faces carved in relief above their vestigial bodies, one greeting the sun, eyes wide and laughing, the other facing back towards him, features peaceful in slumber. He’d encountered two already on his long trek, and expected to find another four somewhere between here and the sea. No one was entirely sure whether these huge, oval statues were road markers, or if the original inhabitants of Sha’Klairon had erected them for some other, less easily discernible purpose. It was one of their favourite subjects of debate, amongst those gathered in the commons of an evening.
“Maybe they’re meant to keep the glaciers at bay,” Deliana had suggested one night. “Feigning sleep, so the ice will think it's dull and not bother pushing down from the highlands.” She’d gazed round woozily at the faces around her, skin flushed in the candlelight. “What? If the arctic storms and ice flows thought they were bored enough to be asleep, they might give up trying to take the land, and leave the southern shore alone...”
“But they’d already taken the shores of Nianen,” Ikari remembered protesting, “and the we know the Ice Lakes covered most of the Arc itself.” He waved one hand in a gesture meant to indicate the sweeping influence of those ancient glaciers and their accompanying storm systems, but which probably looked more like he was trying to fan his neighbour amidst the nest of cushions.
“True,” Deliana allowed, “but the glaciers never actually made it far over the top of the island; the Ramparts stopped them.” She grinned mischievously, for a moment eradicating any traces of lingering anguish from her face, r
endering its lines in the beauty it had been destined to hold. “Perhaps they had a little help…?”
Having seen the Ramparts (the cliffs that fronted Faeron’s northern face, looking out across the ocean) Ikari sincerely doubted they needed any help, even against a glacier. Still, the idea had never quite left him, and every encounter he shared with the False Sleepers now left him feeling a little unsettled. Almost as if he could sense their geological gaze peering out from behind those lidded, sleep-scrunched eyes.
The Great Leap, like most Inns across the breadth of the Arc Sea, was a low stone affair, sprawling across its grounds like a tired old man. The main building, at three storeys, paid testament to the size of traffic it usually saw. The caravans that made the run between Junon Town and the coast were extensive, Family owned affairs that might run to hundreds of members depending on the type of goods they carried.
Then, too, there were the private travellers who made the journey up to the lakes for whatever reason: seeing relations, trade, or in some cases simply to travel. With ancestries as restless as the Children of the Bridge, the Congregate was full of people who liked a broad horizon. Travel was actively encouraged amongst the young. It was considered part and parcel of a good education, forming the ground work for
