Alium, page 19
“Sweeping along the side of the icy precipice on which the city sat, this winding trail of packed snow led ever downward, so extreme in its wide curving that I lost sight of the old man, having to keep my distance around the bend. The exposure was terrifying. Out to my left yawned a roaring white abyss, and the fog far below was such that I could not tell how many thousands of yards of empty space spanned the distance to the river valley at the foot of the mountain. High on my right was the wall of ice supporting Ardua, to which I plastered my hands and body and—when I could no longer look out into oblivion—my gaze, as I inched slowly along.
“When I could no longer hear the man’s shuffling feet, I silenced my own and slowly crept forth to find him standing upon a much more spacious shelf of ice. He held up his staff, and its bud began to glow, lighting up the mouth of a great mine shaft hewn into the cliff face that supported the city. Glinting in the sudden light, there were also two golden statues of my mother standing on either side of the entrance, polished and clean—but for a dusting of snow—as those only which I had seen in the palace. I had never heard of any mine beyond the city walls, though this seemed a very old place despite the newness of the statues, and the fresh path we had taken. But I had little time to wonder what secret tunnel this was, for the man stepped quickly into the dark such that I followed in a hurry.
“The reeking air that spilled out from the gaping maw of the place was somehow more stale, more cold and alien than even in the deepest, least-frequented passages of the mines I knew as a rebel. A thick primordial scent it was, of chthonian things long buried, which should remain in the dark. Yet down into that darkness the old man travelled as one strolls through town, holding out his luminous staff. So on I pressed, encouraging myself by his nonchalance, lurking as far behind as I could manage in the shadows.
“For three days I crept after that pale light, deep into the body of the mountain, and slept in total blackness near to his camp, the setting up of which was my only means of telling time. There he always sat late into the night, seeming—I hoped—to meditate just as I. Then at last, my hunger was too much. On the night of the third day, when I had summoned the courage to make my plea, I approached the old man by his campfire.
“‘Oho! So the pitter patter has a face,’ he said, turning to where I stood in shadow. ‘Come and sit where it is warm, and speak your purpose.’
“Cautiously I came out of the dark and sat hugging my scabbed knees at the edge of the flickering wash of flame. ‘You are a wizard,’ I said.
“‘I am called so. To describe my look is not difficult though.’
“‘That may be, but I have seen plenty who would think themselves wizards and dress the like, yet they are nothing to you.’ I bowed my head to show respect. ‘You do not seek power, yet to me this is the greatest power of all. I’ve followed you because I can see in your step and gaze that you do not suffer desire. I wish more than anything to achieve such peace.’
“‘Hm,’ the wizard said, tugging at his beard, narrowing his eyes. He inspected me as in an enchanting puzzle, the firelight flickering all through the wrinkles of his grave face, his eyes seeming to shift from joy to sorrow and back again in each leaping flame. “Tell me, Sylna of Ardua, why have you forsaken your place in line? The God-Queen lives well, no?’
“I could only stare, but my surprise must have been quite apparent.
“‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I too can read a step and gaze, as well as your posture and diction. You are no beggar, though I see you’ve willed that life. No, you cannot shake this dignity inscribed from birth; deep is your cultivation—but own it! If you wish to be a beggar, then so you are, but a dignified one. My question is why?’
“I could not but smile now at this old man who I had feared would be wrathful at finding he was followed. When I came closer to the fire, I saw at last that the deep well of anger in the man was utterly subordinate to his compassion. The severity of his features hardly masked his dancing eyes full of kindness and grace, which like warm pools guided me as I spoke. I told him of nauseous luxuries of my life when first I beheld the poorer folk of the city, how I went among them and begged and explored Ardua only to unearth its evils. Afraid that those fumes of rage would rekindle, I explained how I calmed my temper and surrendered to the world as it was. How I surrendered as well to my past, taking up my old bow. How I went to meditate beneath the great trees of the garden where I saw that there were no natural castes among Novare, how peasants were equal to princesses. Then I spoke again of my indefatigable anger and my horrid mother, and the rebellion. He frowned when I described my days of violence and the feelings that tainted my killer’s heart. But his countenance relaxed when I spoke of how those atrocious days showed me what it truly means for all life to be One, in vice as much as virtue.
“‘Why, you’re a natural,’ he said. ‘Only a mind so ambitiously capable of contradiction could hope to achieve true peace. I see now how you traced my spirit.’
“‘How do you mean?’
“‘Comfort disgusts you; disgust comforts you. Peace blooms. Then you hurl yourself into war! Please, I do not mean to offend,’ he laughed, seeing that a pall had taken my face. ‘What I mean is this: you would not have followed me into these caverns if not for the insights of courageous folly.’ He grinned, threw a berry high in the air, and caught it deftly between his teeth. Swallowing it he closed his eyes. ‘But your vision is narrow yet, young one.’ When he finally opened his eyes again he only gazed at me queerly through the flame and smoke. Again his look vacillated between silliness and sobriety, felicity and melancholy.
“I said, ‘Contradiction is certainly important to me. The oppressive condition of Ardua contradicts the God-Queen’s divine duty to her people. Anger and knowledge gave me new life. But I discovered a second contradiction in fighting, for I became no better than my mother. Now I see that contradiction is natural. Wherever I can recognize it, I am able to let go and surrender to things as they are. But this is not complacency! I assure you. This acceptance allows me to see even more clearly what is just and unjust in the world, and to react from a place of deeper understanding. If only I had felt this way before listening to the rhetoric of Rawn. But like you said, if it were not for his vengeance and the rebellion, and the blood on my hands, I’d not have grown.’
“‘You are wise, Sylna,’ Nubes said. He did not smile or frown, but it seemed that there was admiration in the muscles of his face. ‘Illuminate me. How is it that you meditate?’
“‘This bow is not only a reminder of my past; it has also been my greatest teacher.’ I took out my instrument and pulled back the string, aiming out into the darkness. ‘As I aim, I think how delicate is the balance between the bowstring and my drawing it, how tension and resolution contend to compel the arrow of my spirit with the ideals of accuracy and precision. When I surrender to the natural opposition of these forces, there are times when my form falls into a place of its own accord, and the contradictory two become one. There is neither tension nor resolution. Then I hit my target.’
“The wizard nodded solemnly. ‘And what is your target?’
“‘It’s hard to explain,’ I mumbled. ‘But, I suppose… it is whatever contradicts the self. When I strike the target, I feel as though… as though my soul itself becomes one with some other greater consciousness, and this feels like a grand return to whence it came in the first place.’
“‘But why return?’
“‘Because it feels true.’
“The emphasis on my last word gave the wizard pause. He looked into the crackling fire and sighed. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘A worthy goal.’ Now he really smiled and I felt that his eyes invited me into a secret knowledge. ‘Sylna, I am going through these mines to a place where few have been. My goal is Zenidow the Great; it lies on the other side of this mountain. No mortal, I think, has known its full presence, but it is my fate to learn its secret. It will be a dangerous journey full of uncertainty, and it is very much possible that horrible demise awaits, but I will have you along most happily and teach you what I know of truth, if that is your wish.’
“‘I do wish it, sir wizard.’
“‘Call me Nubes!’ He stood and bowed with a flourish.”
Chapter XII
Castle in the Day Star
“I rose as well and bowed much to his subdued delight, asking, ‘How long have you known that I followed you?’
“‘Since you first spied upon me in the city. A wizard’s eye,’ he said, ‘sees many things,’ and looking into the cobalt iris whose bony socket he now tapped whimsically, I thought that a wizard’s eye saw much more than runaway princesses in crowded markets and sneaking things in the dark, for I swore he looked right into my heart and soul, and suspected that he had sensed my presence long before I his.
“‘These tunnels,’ I said, feeling too well understood. ‘I’ve not heard of anything like them.’
“‘They are little known even among the nobles of Ardua,’ he said sitting down again, ‘and only recently discovered. A subterranean network untouched by the hands of Novare. Yet, they will come, and soon. There are veins of ore here that confound the imagination. But hard work is required, work like none before. All of the delvers royal and common will join forces at last to plumb this place. I can only hope that they heed my warning. There are dark things below us.’ As he spoke, Nubes cocked his hairy ear, and falling silent listened intently. I became suddenly more aware of the hollow eking of the stale, moist air, the occasional clattering in the distant dark, the fluttering of leathery wings in the high arching roofs of the tunnels.
“‘Come,’ he said suddenly, and we went away from the fire in the light of his staff. Nubes followed his ear through the cold, dank dark, until at last I too heard the sound of trickling water, ever so softly, then building as rain against dry earth. Around a slimy bend there glittered a spill of crystal liquid merrily burbling as through a pleasant meadow in the garden. Nubes produced from the lit end of his staff a second bubble of light, which floated out over the subterranean stream and hovered there so as to give us vision and warmth. Beneath it, the radiant ribbon of water was uncommonly clear and beautiful.
“He seated himself beside the flow. ‘You spoke of surrender, of a return to greater consciousness. Once, I too espoused such philosophies. But one day, as I was ferried across a great river, in the moving water I perceived the true form of this greater consciousness. Perhaps you will hear what I heard that day,’ he indicated the stream. ‘Listen, and tell me: what is the self?’
“If you know Nubes, you will not be surprised by our sitting beside that stream for nearly two hours, neither of us speaking a word. I took up my bow and drew back the string to clear my mind and ears, but I heard only running water. Still, this was a deeply beautiful sound, so that as I contemplated its gurgling I found myself at peace with this simple act of listening, and the first hour passed. But during the second hour, I was again lost and my mind touched with frustration. Now I recognized the beauty of the stream only through resolve, and my bowstring became unbalanced by degrees. Even this crude determination began to wane, and I set the instrument aside, simply watching.
“Only then, I had one simple thought: the stream was one, and it was many. Composed as it was of numberless drops of water, even if every drop had precisely the same structure, each had its own unique perspective of the whole. In this infinitely transforming flow of limitless contexts, there was no slice of time in which the stream was ever as it had been the moment before. Yet always the stream was one entity, one perspective, one stream. Now I imagined that it ran into and joined through subterranean systems with other bodies of water in the open air, where through the cycle of evaporation, transpiration and precipitation these filtered their moisture into the distant sea and the lakes and rivers of Altum. Singular as was its nature over time, as in the stream, the water in this cycle was always renewing.
“To Nubes, I said, ‘This stream shows us how all selves are connected and naturally surrender to a greater whole, but also how each self is a unique, independent idea, like one drop of water flowing down through the stream, out into the world, cast onto a dry bank, evaporated into the clouds, and sent falling back to Altum as a raindrop. Looking at the cycle from without, I am unable to distinguish the boundaries between the drops of water and their different contexts. But, if I removed some water from the stream,’ and I did so with one finger, holding it up flashing in the light. ‘There is no more stream. There is just the drop, separated. That, I think, is the self. And for a moment,’ I dipped my finger into the stream again, ‘it can surrender to Oneness.’
“‘Mm,’ he mumbled. ‘Yes, like all things in the world, if you look closely enough, you’ll find that we are emergent properties of a greater being. But you have already learned to surrender. Why should I show you another bowstring?’
“‘As a test?’ I shrugged.
“Nubes smiled wryly. ‘You passed any test I could dream up when you followed me into this godforsaken labyrinth.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You perceive the stream and your bowstring as powerful metaphors of becoming, but you continue to separate things into one and the other. Did you learn nothing from your so-called wedding of tension and resolution? Now you divide the drop and the stream. Tell me. What is one without the other?”
“Looking into those eyes of melted ice, now the metamorphosing body and bodies of the stream, I began to speak as with words I’d not yet prepared. ‘In a sense, because the individual drops move indistinguishably as one, the stream is itself one great drop of water in the cycle. But this means that one drop taken from the stream is of the same nature, only smaller. I suppose the contradiction here is to say that a single drop is not made by the stream, but contains within itself already the existence of the stream as much as the stream contains the existence of the drop. Perhaps the proposition of the stream is even in the rain cloud or the condensation of dew on a blade of grass. Its potential is everywhere in the cycle. You mean to show me that you and I, ourselves, are not produced by a greater self, but that we are of that greater self. There is really no separation. The self never leaves or returns. It is already in a state of Oneness.’
“‘Hrm! So you discover the self,’ he said. ‘But do not think that true Oneness is in this simple unity of opposites.’ Now Nubes smirked deviously in the half-light, as if he’d hatched a scheme. ‘For this, another teacher.’ He reached about and brought forth a stone from the ground. This he handed to me with a most perplexing look. ‘Listen again, and tell me now, what is Oneness?’
“Trying to conceal my frustration with the old man, I held the rock up to my ear. When that sense yielded nothing I squeezed it, and I felt its texture, smelled it, rapped on it, licked it, rolled it against the floor of the cave, sat staring at it, and Nubes the whole while had not moved a muscle at all or even his gaze from the rock, looking almost trepidatious, as if the thing might spontaneously transform into a horrifying Euphran. When I looked over as for a hint, he only smiled in that infuriating way, at once kind and condescending, which I would come to know so well. I scrutinized the rock anew, trying to see it as some extension of stream-logic.
“The rough surface did not move like the stream, but it was certainly composed of smaller elements. As I felt the shedding grains of dirt and flecks of stone piling in my palm, and as I watched them spill through my fingers, fall upon and blend with the cave floor, I considered that the grander structure around us was made of the same material. The rock had arisen from the mountain just as a drop from the stream. I saw the passage of time then from a broader perspective, for though things moved quickly in the stream, and a multitude of drops were instantly created in every splashing meander, individuality developed far more gradually in the ground. This rock was not always a rock, but one day formed, and will not always be a rock, will one day dissolve and become part of the mountain again. Just like the stream, the mountain around us was always the same mountain, yet always changing in its composition. The rock, really, was just like the drop of water, only taking much longer to actualize, and granted more durable selfhood. But as I revelled in the immensity and patience of time, I realized that for Nubes I would only have a new metaphor for the self.
“The wizard seemed to recognize the turmoil in me, but I could not discern whether he grimaced or smiled through his cloudy beard. ‘Once more you knock upon Truth’s door,’ he said, ‘but still you are not admitted. You saw in the stream that the self and its fountainhead are the same. I show you this rock because you have been stumped by one last contradiction. You speak of Oneness as if it exists in multiple forms. Intellectually, you have deduced it as a state of consciousness, but you have not lived it insofar as it describes the world.’ He took the rock from me and brandished it as if his point was self-evident. ‘You and I… are rocks.’
“‘You mean metaphorically,’ I said, completely stumped again. ‘As the mountain is the source of the rock, the self has its own greater source. But both dualities are illusions. The rock really is the mountain, only separated by our limited perception of time and space.’
“No, I mean you and I are rocks.’
“‘But we are nothing like rocks! I can see that the rock and mountain share a medium, but,’ I continued, seeing that he was not at all satisfied, ‘we share nothing with rocks! We’re living beings!’
