Alium, page 16
“My dad’s—er, my father’s thread at least. Lately I have been enjoying our work here. There’s something sacred about it, in a way. But now… It is strange that you ask about my leaving.”
“Oh really?” Nubes peered over his goblet with eyes like little skies.
“Well…” Ogwold inflected uncomfortably. “This morning actually, just before we met—I’d decided to leave Epherem. Even so, as long as I can remember, I’ve thought that there are many wonderful places in the wide world. To go elsewhere, to see Novare in their great cities, to walk the golden slopes of the Mardes. But I am bound here, My Lord. All of us are. By the colour of our skin and eyes, the shapes of our bodies, and our stature.”
“You do strike a terrific figure,” said Nubes, industriously refilling his goblet.
“Why do you ask, My Lord?”
“I am Nubes!” All levity dissipated in an instant as the old man smote his cup upon the table; liquid sloshed onto the wood. “I’d sooner refer to you as Lord before I’ll hear it again. Are you not one of the Flosleao?” Ogwold gawked. Nubes who had become suddenly so grave and wrathful just as quickly lightened again, and a devilish grin passed his face. “It is in your face-bones enough.” He looked to the chest, his eyes for a moment glossing, then suddenly sharp once more. “But your mother is not a simple woman of the sea, Ogwold.”
“I’d… how do you know this? I’d only just learned of her.”
Nubes seemed to ignore this question. Swishing what fluid remained in his goblet, he stood and walked to one of the many portholes. He craned his neck, which was surprisingly long, looking out over the waves for a moment. “Your mother is a Daughter of Caelare.”
Ogwold, who had found his eyes moving to the chest during the silence, now stared at the old man with his blocky, stone jaw hanging wide open. “I… When I… this morning… I saw my mother in the sky, pointing to Zenidow. And I could not but think that she looked exactly as Caelare is always described in stories. She seemed to come from the sun itself, and her hair was like its fire.”
“Caelare is not easily mistaken,” Nubes said plainly.
Resounding as seemed the purpose of these words, Ogwold could only continue to sputter what he knew of legend. “Caelare… She rules the weather and conducts the spirits of the heavens. Why, she created Altum itself so my father tells me, and he is the loremaster of our village in my eyes…”
Nubes turned from the porthole, and Ogwold’s voice trailed off, for the wizard had become gravely serious. His bushy eyebrows formerly so disarming were now like ominous, white grubs inching together. “Ogwold, Son of Caelare,” he said, approaching the table, setting down his goblet. “You have been staring at the Great Mountain all morning. The occupant of this chest awoke at once in your presence, and certainly you feel its gaze even now. Videre and I have travelled many treacherous leagues to introduce you.”
Deftly Nubes slipped a small silver key into the lock of the chest, and unfastened the latch. The lid opened back without a noise, and he turned the box to reveal its contents. Resting on the dark red cushion inside was a lone silvery orb no bigger than an eye. Soft and grey-white, it looked a perfect sphere, and somewhere in it was a luminance flawlessly contained, for it shone but projected no light beyond its surface. Even as the lid was raised, a soft hum as in an invisible, vibrating string threaded the inmost eyelet of Ogwold’s mind ear to ear. It vibrated as though it always had, like the aural ideal from which all sound-forms leap—the voice of the sea, the rush of the wind, the chatter of wildlife, the drone of the heart of the world.
“What is it?” Ogwold breathed. He could not look away.
“To be completely honest, I have no idea. But if you listen, it speaks for itself. Videre and I came to Epherem looking for the one who would drop everything just to see the place of its origin. Ogwold, your eyes have been fixed on that very cradle ever I spied you this morning.”
“Its origin?”
“The heart of Zenidow, Ogwold. Tell me. Why do you look at that mountain with such longing? You are perhaps the most restless ogre in the world! Did you know: I’ve never seen one of your kind even look at the sky. And I’ve known plenty of Nogofod.”
Ogwold with great effort pulled his gaze from the white depths of the enthralling orb; Nubes and surrounding room materialized in shocking detail, as if long he had been away in another place entirely, where form was essence and naught had shape. “It was my mother. She told me never to return to the sea, to leave Epherem and seek Zenidow. I stopped going into the water. But every morning since I’ve relied on the norm to ease that loss and forestall her summons as it reminds itself in every crashing wave.”
“Ah, yes, norm—that’s the name,” muttered Nubes, rummaging in his deep pocket.
“This morning, I went so long without it that the pain of the song reached its greatest purpose, but instead of destroying me it tapered and settled and became a kindness. When I looked out to sea, there she was riding her cloud, pointing to Zenidow.”
At the peak of the peakless find kinship
With godly things in plain sight incarnate.
As if it knew Ogwold’s every thought, the orb brightened, pulsed, rotated softly in its cushion, and rose straight into the air. It paused motionless above the chest, as if held in an invisible hand, and seemed to look up into Ogwold’s massive, astonished face, though it had no features with which to express its feeling. “It floats?”
Nubes raised the bulb of his staff, and a tail of smoke coiled from a shiny, black pipe clenched between his teeth. Its bowl was carved into three vertically stacked turtle heads of ascending awareness: the bottom stupefied, the middle bordering on consciousness, and the utmost soul-piercing. Looking away from the too-penetrating eyes of that highest turtle, Ogwold noticed the unmistakable pile of norm which had appeared on the table. Nubes spoke through the smoking pipe, ignoring Ogwold’s astonishment and exhaling a redolent cloud. “The sphere is an organism, like you and me. It belongs to Zenidow. There it will return.” Nubes looked sternly into Ogwold’s eyes, which wrestled rather with the sphere and the notion of its being alive. “Whether or not you seek the zenith of Altum, Son of Caelare, I release the sphere at this time. I am needed in Lucetal, and I’d never let those war-fiends sight such a Power. If you will follow it, you may ride with Videre. She awaits your summons.” His eyes raged bright, yet gently sparkled, and the doom of his countenance subtly melted into contentment. “Great gods, this grass is potent!”
“You know,” said Ogwold, still staring into the silvery sentience of the orb, “I wouldn’t recommend smoking that. Not only was it that very grass which blinded me to my mother. But I think that the norm was brought here expressly to subdue the Nogofod.”
“Oh most certainly, but what a marvellous thing, being subdued every once in a while. Sometimes the old ego can grow quite swollen my boy, and there’s nothing like a good slap in the face in that case. But yes, as with anything one must be moderate…” Nubes trailed off, blowing rings of blue smoke. “Unless you’re a wizard of course.”
Now Ogwold lifted his sight out of the sphere. “I suppose you’re right. The norm certainly makes everything less serious for a while. Maybe it did help me in a way. Anyhow, if you’ve been to Zenidow, perhaps you deserve the weight.”
“Quite.”
“My father says that no man has ever even passed beyond Fonslad. And Zenidow is countless leagues even—they say—beyond the peaks of ice themselves. I’ve heard that only Euphran live in that country, but they too will not go near the Great Mountain out of fear.”
“Your father knows well the stories of the Mardes.”
“Now it makes sense why he was always telling me about the mountains. He too once wanted to leave Epherem. He wants me to go—father, mother, Caelare, now you! A Wizard!” Ogwold shook his head and stared into the sphere.
They sat for some time longer, the orb floating motionless, perpetuated through some medium beyond the dimensionality of their world. The cries of gulls carried through the portholes with the rushing sea wind, and the gurgle and suck of deep water against the broad hull sounded as it did all mornings against the docks of Epherem. The omnipresent sounds of the ocean waxed of an entire life on the surf’s edge. How would it feel to leave that chorus behind? The smell of norm filling the room reminded Ogwold now viscerally of the pleasure of weight throughout the body. He tasted it like drugging sea water, and felt spectral smoke massage his massive lungs, wishing as from nowhere for Nubes to pass the wrap, for the sphere to vanish, for his mother to be a Nogofod. “But I will be slain if I set foot within Occultash,” he groaned.
The sphere drew close to Ogwold’s long nose as if it wished to understand, seeming to pause and wonder before suddenly it rounded his huge head, and burst from between two locks of hair, spinning impossibly fast, motionless in a breath. Its humming fluctuated, and a living trail of sound arced around him in its path. He felt the low harmony like a dull roar of flowing blood through his frame, a sweet drone in his consciousness. The memory of weight and contentment seemed as a cheap trick next to this mere nudge from the consciousness of the sphere. It spun almost hopefully as it occurred to Ogwold how much was contained in this thing so small, and in that spinning all his feelings were bound together, harmonized as by great empathy, composed into a single theme which was theirs together. He smiled. The orb brightened happily.
“Thank you, Nubes,” he said at last. “I know not what you’ve given me, or to what true end I’m led exactly, but you are right. Even months ago I knew that I could not stay here. Somehow, I am not afraid of the guards. And the magic of this thing,” the humming spiked, “is beyond words. It speaks to me. I hear its voice, and the meaning of its mind is somewhere in me. It wishes for my companionship.”
“It is as drawn to Zenidow as you.”
“Why then did you not leave it be?”
Nubes rumpled his eyebrows together and puffing more vigorously at the smoking turtle tower in a quickly growing cloud became again cryptically sober. “Long listen, Ogwold, to the voice now joined with your own, and you will understand. It has a task: bringing you to its fountainhead. So I led it here where you were prophesied to be. I cannot go with you, but know that my fate in Lucetal is very much bound up in yours, Ogwold, if you’ll have it.”
“I will,” said Ogwold almost before thinking that he would. But it felt in him the right use of his voice. A final barrier seemed to dissolve, and the sphere rested on his shoulder-dressing, softly spinning.
At once, the alien weed therein erupted through its binding, the shapeless lump bulging into a great rounded shoulder of green, the tightly wound tendril shooting powerfully out, helixing around itself like a great gleaming root seeking deep water to form the slender shape of an arm, equal in length and thickly structured as his other. Ogwold raised this new extremity without thinking, as one catches an object suddenly thrown their way, and rose in shock, nearly upending Nubes’ table, as there formed before his eyes through the sweet knitting of exquisite musculature the palm and dexterous fingers of a green hand so fine and real that it nearly brought tears to his eyes. The wizard stumbling back almost fell flat on his rear, but somehow retained the liquid in his goblet and the ridiculous pipe surprisingly sturdy between his pursed lips, chuckling at his success.
“This is impossible!” Ogwold boomed. He wiggled his new, tough fingers, and clenched them into a fist, felt raw strength welling in uncanny muscles.
“And so Zenidow sends a message, being accepted,” said Nubes. He sat once more, set his smouldering pipe gingerly upon the table, and in one motion drained his goblet with a flourish. His cheeks flushed, and his beard seemed to curl at its utmost wispy tips. “But you must understand the messenger on your own. Now, I will impart one last token of advice upon the both of you. And I shan’t say ‘the three of you,’ for it would be unreasonable: Ogwold, that arm of yours is not so much yours as you. Do not think of it as a foreign thing, a prosthetic, a tool. It is Ogwold now; and Ogwold, you are it. Those roots have reached into the pits of your bones and even now wreath your very brain and heart. There is no undoing magic such as that. And there is no using such magic until you recognize its truth in you. Drat, it seems I’ll be imparting two tokens then…”
Nubes laughed, then was grave and solemn in the same moment. “As you rise in the range, if it comes to pass that you are lost, which certainly must happen, know that the delvers are one with the mountains. The higher you climb, the less, but greater you’ll find. Listen to them, for though they are often misled, and their minds taken to abysses from which return is nigh impossible, they are wisest in the high places.” He took his staff up and twirled it against the floorboards. “Now, this ship departs shortly. Take your leave, Ogwold. When even the madmen of the mountains can no longer help you, may Zenidow be your ultimate guide.”
*
Ogwold left with the orb singing warmth in his massive ear, gliding beside him as he lumbered along the dock, and humming in place as he stood looking out at the mountains for some time, his eyes trained beyond them all, hiding his new arm inside his tunic. A great creaking and splashing signalled the Patientia’s raised anchor, and he turned, watching it take to sea. It was an immense craft, and slowly it plied the water, its great sails unfolding gradually and stretching as in tremendous lungs filling with slow contemplative breath. Still no crew seemed aboard.
He spied Nubes, hunched at the helm, one hand on the great red wheel, the other holding up his black staff. A gust of wind without precedent hurried over Ogwold’s shoulders and sought out the sails of the ship, filling them so that they caught and swelled quickly. A great groaning issued from the Patientia as in turning to the horizon it made for Lucetal, leagues away, that magical island of lights shrouded in legend.
Going back into the tutum grove, Ogwold sat down beside Nubes’ animal companion where she waited in the dappled shade. “Videre,” he said, at first unsure about being so near to the beast. “Your master has gone.” But she looked at him over folded paws with inky, deep eyes, and he knew that this was right with her. They would go together to Occultash at the feet of the mountains, up and away from the coast, out over the desert.
Chapter XI
A Witch’s Way
The waving red sprites of sun-filled leaves patterned Sylna’s dark lids. Through a green shock her opening eyes followed one golden shaft of light, unhindered in diagonal purity from canopy to forest floor, where it sliced open a pool of clear standing water. Beside that dazzling cut sat a blue mottled rancus, bow-legged in the grass, cocking its head curiously to the side as she stirred. Out snapped its sinewy tongue with natural suddenness, distinguishing a buzzing thing from the swirling motes of dust.
“Good morning.” Sylna yawned, sitting up cross-legged.
“It’s quite noon,” croaked the little amphibian expressionlessly, and in one neat hop it was gone.
She chuckled, cinching her boots. As she stood, dry leaves spilled from her clothes in a swirling skirt. The sheets of her waveless almond hair pivoted against pointy shoulders as she twisted her hat snugly on. Drawing her cloak more closely to warm her sleeping blood, she looked drowsily about. The great stillness of the wood peered out from around the trees, under the toadstools, in the soft eye of a stoic bird, the thoughtful meandering of an orange worm, and in the bottomless gulfs of shadow—in the interstices between boulders, the dark overlay of boughs, among the changeful foliage—where loomed a dimension inaccessible to the large.
Compelled by all this quiet beauty, she began her morning practice; Pivwood silently abided. With movements slow and sure she performed and held the fundamental poses learned early in her time with Nubes. Blood cheered through her system, inspiring bones, saturating muscles, illuminating neurons. When body and mind were equilimber, she took up her bow and drew back the silver string. Focusing solely upon the form of her aim, she stood poised, lightly sweating from her exercises, as thoughts and memories surrounded and probed her concentration, of achiness in her legs, of Occultash peppered with impotent rains, of Wanuev’s silly face, of tormented Primexcitum crucified in the pit of flames, of Nubes dancing in the sun.
One by one she neither held dearly nor banished frustratedly each of these impulses, allowing them simply to pass like clouds against the changeless, eternal sky which was her unwavering archery. Fewer were the clouds rolling in, until the perfect stillness of her bow was a pure blue vault. Now she imagined that her spirit was an arrow set to the gleaming line, aiming for the very essence of that endless firmament against which all clouds, all thoughts are transient. There was no need to let fly this arrow; already she became one with her target. For a timeless moment Sylna was but a fold in the Fabric blessed with awareness.
Like lungs expiring of a nature unbeknownst to the breather, she began lowering the bow. As gradually as she loosened the string were her senses returned to Pivwood. The uncanny presence of sight, smell, sound, touch and taste fed and animated the ego which had dissolved into its source. Laughing, she slung the white wood along her back, and came striding out of the leafy hideaway.
*
As there had been no path leading to this part of the forest, there were no sensible walkways among the living places of the Piv. So Sylna walked in what direction seemed salient. She passed a feathery blue fern bustling with hungry caterpillars, and here a small pebbly creek giggled; she’d heard it the night before. Damp twigs split beneath her boots. Tall grasses swished wetly against her legs. A group of rowdy chimfrees swung by cheeping and smacking their lips, so noisy all at once in their frenzied troupe, replaced now by immortal silence and the sough of wind in the high canopy.
She rounded the shoulder of a very old and dark-trunked tree. Here, four saplings bowed together and enshrined with their long, hanging leaves a noble hall leading onward. Alone in this cathedral of slender beams was a tall toadstool washed with the trickling sun. Upon its face lay Muewa, bathing as in photosynthesis, though at first she was invisible. Only as Sylna wandered by did she sense an awareness uncommon to your average mushroom, and looking down behold! There was the queenly Piv outfitted in fresh leaves, berries in her hair.
