Prince Maesa, page 30
If the mountain accepted him, he would survive the ordeal. If, on the other hand, it found him unworthy…
‘We linger too long,’ Serath said from above.
Ferendir forced himself not to raise his eyes or meet Serath’s disapproving gaze. From behind him, Desriel answered.
‘Patience, Serath,’ his master said. ‘Our young supplicant was simply recomposing himself.’
Serath persisted. ‘Had he stepped carefully, noted all possible impediments to his passage and skilfully avoided them, he would not have slipped, or fallen, or lost his composure.’
He could hide no longer. Trudging on, never breaking stride, Ferendir raised his eyes to meet Serath’s, however difficult doing so might prove.
‘I beg pardons of both of you, my masters,’ the supplicant said. ‘Please, let us continue.’
He lowered his eyes to the path, set one foot before the other and said no more. He leaned into the steep slope and chose his footholds swiftly but carefully.
The terrain they moved through – deep in the Ymetrican mountains of the realm of Hysh – was sparsely wooded and dreary, slate-grey knobs of cold stone and dry, subalpine soil scattered with towering sentinel trees and blanketed here and there with cushions of moss and islands of sedge. Hand- and footholds were not hard to find – there always seemed to be some jutting stone, the gnarl of a tree root or a narrow shelf of tightly packed earth awaiting his employ. Ferendir concentrated on finding the best of these, determined not to slip again simply because he had failed to closely examine where he planted his feet. As he trudged onwards, he sometimes used his small, delicate hands to assist in his ascent. He could still hear the burbling rush of the last stream they had crossed before beginning their climb, far below them, because the wind-wracked forest around them was so deathly silent, so funereally still.
Ferendir stole a glance upwards at Serath, to see if his stoic mentor yet lingered above him. To his chagrin, Serath had not moved. His master stood, bedecked in his shining white plate armour chased in gold, leaning upon his long-handled stone mallet. One of Serath’s booted feet was braced upon a bleached-white tangle of deadfall wedged between two thin, sickly trees, and the stoic Stoneguard stared down at his long-time apprentice with his familiar reproachful glare. Ferendir could not tell if that expression – so subtle, so inscrutable – was a sign of complete disdain or simple pity. Serath held Ferendir’s upturned eyes for only an instant, then turned his back and began to climb again.
Behind him, Ferendir heard Desriel begin to hum quietly – a slow, melancholy tune. Ferendir recognised the sombre melody at once as one of the temple’s hymns, a wordless song taught to all the servants of the mountain. Its dolorous melody and slow, lilting cadence were designed to sharpen one’s senses, to suppress one’s conscious thoughts and widen one’s consciousness – a sort of musical state of meditation, useful when undertaking laborious physical tasks such as a slow climb up a steep, wind-scoured mountainside. Ferendir was tempted to join Desriel in humming the old hymn – he had always loved the sense of plaintive peace that it stirred within him – but a part of him was reticent.
It was Serath. Though Ferendir now bore down upon his master with his senses and struggled to listen closely, he could not hear Serath humming. Serath, apparently, was centred, focused and fully present without the benefit of the hymn’s quiet, hypnotic power. Therefore, Ferendir, determined to earn Serath’s respect if not his affection, would do as he did, and remain silent, no matter how much he wanted to join Desriel in his song.
They had set off in the early hours of the morning, when the dim Hyshian twilight that constituted night was yet upon them and most of the temple Stoneguard and acolytes yet slept. His masters were each fully armoured and carried their personal weapons – an elegant diamondpick hammer for Desriel, a massive, long-hafted stone mallet for Serath – while Ferendir himself, facing a trial, wore a supplicant’s tunic and had only been permitted to bring along his well-worn yew staff and a small dagger. Their path led them north-west, along one of the many narrow hiking trails that criss-crossed the rolling ridgelines and deep valleys of the mountain, taking them far from the lovely, well-hidden, tree-packed dell in which their temple resided towards the thick, shadowy forests that blanketed the mountain’s western slopes. After hours of following the hill-hugging trail, they finally came to a rocky stream tumbling down out of the woods. At the stream, they left the path and followed the wending waters deeper and deeper into the shady hollows and rough-hewn gullies that formed the uneven geography of the mountain. Just as the full light of day began to bleed back into the world – Ulgu’s darkness waning at last before the imminent glow of the Perimeter Inimical – they finally came to the lower edge of the thinning subalpine forest that marked the beginning of the end of the mountain’s life-sustaining lower slopes. Whereas before the rolling, climbing landscape had been thick with intertwined, leafy decidua and tall, needly dreampines shading banks of shaggy verdibrush and beds of sprouting toadstools, the world above the stream suddenly exhibited signs of weariness and surrender. The spaces between the trees widened. Green turf and fronded ferns were replaced by dry soil, bald stone and isolated beds of spongy moss or obdurate sedge.
Hour by hour they climbed, the light invading the thinning woodlands growing brighter and brighter, even as the gusts blowing down from the mountain’s heights grew colder and more insistent. The world stirred little, only a few lonely birds offering sad songs while from the last clinging shadows beneath the thinning trees they heard the rattle of tiny claws on stone and the soughing, subtle passage of small, fleet bodies. The moribund forest, the steepening mountainside, the air above and around them – everything, no matter how austere and faded it appeared, showed signs that it was alive, awake, hungry. This was one of the most basic lessons imparted to young supplicants of the mountain temple – or any temple, for that matter.
There is life in everything, desire in everything, will in everything. One forgets that fact at great personal peril.
Around them, the pines fell away. The only trees remaining upon the mountainside as they climbed, higher and higher, were stunted, pale and permanently bent by the hitching winds that raced down in gusting squalls from above. Those trees – spread far and wide, no hope of creating anything like a true canopy – hunched and curled against the slope, leafless and ragged as sun-bleached banners frozen forever in a wind-whipped frenzy.
Here, even that which grew slowly and stood impassively against the elements was bent into submission, subject to the implacable will of the mountain and its cold, furious winds. Seeing before him the evidence of just how merciless and unrelenting the mountain’s will could prove to be, Ferendir was suddenly filled with a mingling of both awe and dread at what he was about to undergo.
Seeking the desires of the mountain, testing the will of the mountain that he called his aelemental master, was the sole aim of Ferendir’s trial that day. Per the immutable laws of holy Teclis and the aelementiri principles held sacred by his temple, Ferendir would, like hundreds before him, be taken by his masters to a place of solitude and reflection – a place close to the heart of the mountain, in the direct path of the rushing, invisible pathways of deep and ancient energy that its sublime soul radiated. There, he would dig what was, essentially, his own grave. In that deep burrow, his masters would bury him alive. And there, beneath cold, arid soil and rock, slowly, inexorably crushed by the physical presence of the mountain’s will and desire, Ferendir would dare asphyxiation and a slow, panic-stricken, forsaken death in the close darkness, in order to earn the mountain’s approval for his lifelong service. If he was found worthy, the mountain would not allow his expiration. It would, instead, feed him the air required to survive, so that he could rise again transformed and sanctified – no longer an eager supplicant but a hallowed and holy acolyte, warranted, transformed, devoted evermore to the mountain’s service and maintenance.
If it found any part of his mind, body or spirit unworthy, however, he would die.
No amount of preparation, no words from his mentors or the high priests and Stoneguard he served at the temple, could penetrate the mystery of what the mountain had in store for him. The trial, he had been assured, was his only path to enlightenment, and, likewise, the only means of proving his potential worth. To become what he hoped to become, he must dare the nullification of his very existence. Only courting death in so direct and terrifying a fashion would galvanise his spirit, assure his worthiness and empower him to carry on – to begin to lead the life of usefulness and service that he had always hoped to lead.
Behind him, Desriel spoke.
‘Do you see the end of the shoulder above us?’ his master asked.
Ferendir raised his eyes. He saw a place, fifty yards ahead and above them, where the sparse, bent trees simply disappeared, leaving only broad, bald rock pocked with sickly, sere moss and even more stunted furrows of sedge. Though the sun shone brightly upon that vast, empty expanse, he knew it would be cold there, for the gales blown down from the mountain were strong, and there, upon the tundra, there was no shelter, not even so much as a clump of low scrub to break the wind’s cold, crashing force.
‘I see it, Master Desriel.’
‘We are almost at our destination,’ his master said easily. ‘The place of your trial lies just beyond the lower barrens, over that shelf and deep into a box canyon cut into the mountainside. You can almost see the cleft from here, though the colours of the stone hide it well.’
Ferendir stared as he climbed. He thought, squinting and half imagining what the colours visible on the far side of the treeline suggested, that he could see what his master described, but he could not be certain.
‘Must he be entertained?’ Serath called from above. He had pulled far ahead, now almost to the rocky shoulder. ‘The boy is a supplicant, Desriel. Let him make his own discoveries and draw his own conclusions.’
‘There is nothing indulgent in being informative,’ Desriel called back amiably. ‘Ferendir can draw his own conclusions – I was merely imparting information.’
Serath gave a short, swift glance backwards, but never broke stride. ‘You coddle him.’ It was spoken flatly, baldly – a simple fact. It sounded neither like an indictment nor a recrimination.
‘Perhaps,’ Desriel said, so quietly that it might have been only to himself. Again, there was no feeling in the statement – no indicator of shame or embarrassment – only quiet, assured agreement. Perhaps he did… or did not.
Ferendir kept climbing.
Part of him wanted to look back at Desriel, to see his sharp-featured face, his kind brown eyes, the vague ghost of a smile haunting his usually implacable expression. But he would not. If Serath saw him looking to Desriel for comfort, for encouragement, he might take that as a sign of weakness, an indicator – however subtle – of Ferendir’s unworthiness to undertake the final trial.
I need nothing, Ferendir told himself. I desire nothing. I expect nothing. I go to meet my trial willingly, fearlessly, begging only that the mountain will know my heart and find me worthy of being taken into its service and confidence.
Those were the words he told himself, inwardly, silently, ever eager to settle the emotions that stirred and seethed deep, deep in the darkest centres of his consciousness.
Desriel was as encouraging as Serath was dismissive, as supportive as Serath was challenging. Though Ferendir had always drawn a great deal of his strength and confidence from Desriel’s serene, unwavering support, some impulse inside him always strove to impress Serath, to earn his respect and admiration, to draw even a single word of praise from him, however subdued such praise might be. Ferendir knew it was foolish to feel such things, but some dim, deeply buried part of him always seemed to regard his desire for one master’s praise or support as a subtle betrayal of the other, even though their particular temple made it clear that every supplicant had two masters for a very pointed purpose.
This is Hysh, the High Stonemage had said all those years before, when Ferendir was just a young aelf, presented to the temple for training as a supplicant. This realm – the realm that gave birth to our kind – is a place of balance… a place of harmony… a place of reconciled opposites. Just as our twin gods, Tyrion and Teclis, embody warring impulses yoked to the same divine ends, just as the two halves of the Great Mandala express those warring and reconciled opposites, so your masters will push and pull each of you to the very extremes of your own, still-under-formation natures. They will be the warring forces that help each of you to reconcile the war inside yourselves.
Thus, from the start, Ferendir knew precisely why his two masters were so different, and how their differences should have helped him to reconcile the conflicting halves of his own nature. What he had not anticipated was the strange sense of impatience and jealousy that often gripped him when under their tutelage – how he maintained his will to go on, his desire to try just one more time, because of Desriel’s subtle, artful teachings, yet how he craved – all but demanded – even the smallest acknowledgement of his excellence from Serath. One gave a great deal, yet Ferendir felt he’d had enough and required no more from him, while the other gave him nothing, made him scratch and claw and struggle and humiliate himself for even the smallest, most underwhelming compliment – and still, from that master, the one who withheld, Ferendir wanted more. He strove to be like Serath, to be worthy of Serath, even to someday best Serath, yet he constantly found himself circling back to Desriel for some sense of his worth, his potential, his true value.
No matter how hard he tried to be independent and unshakeable like the one, he could not help but seek support and encouragement from the other.
And so, now he would not look back. Nor would he look up again to see if Serath watched him. He would simply climb. He would make that shelf above the treeline. He would follow his masters into that box canyon where his destiny awaited, and there, sheltered from the world and at the mercy of the mountain, he would face his final trial.
And he would not, under any circumstances, let Serath know how truly, deeply frightened he was of what that trial might reveal.
Foolish, he knew, to let his emotions assail him. He was reasonably sure that outwardly he revealed nothing. Nonetheless, the storm raging within him was impossible to deny. He’d come a very long way since his early years as a young supplicant, told time and again that his feelings – and his failure to control them – would be his undoing. He had struggled all through childhood and adolescence, always winning praise and high marks for his understanding, his spellcraft and his physical capabilities, yet also always falling short in the realm of suppressing his emotions and robbing them of their latent power to manipulate and sway him. Now, he found himself on the cusp of maturity, the threshold of adulthood, the very precipice of his initiation to become a committed and invested Stoneguard of the Alarith temple. And yet, for all the prowess and confidence and insight that his many years of study, toil and struggle had given him, there was still a small, isolated part of Ferendir – a part buried deep within him, yet still burning bright with some stirring, combustible force – that constantly assailed his sense of self-worth.
All the Lumineth of Hysh were trained, by the means most useful to their various tribes, to suppress their emotions, to always seek solutions that were, first and foremost, best for the realm itself and all the people who inhabited it – never to put their own desires, their own fears, their own petty preferences ahead of necessity and the maintenance of life and balance.
Emotions, they were taught, were anathema to rational thought, the bane of right and beneficial action.
They were taught to suppress their emotions, to ignore them or to redirect them… but they could not be entirely free of them, could they? That, it seemed, was Ferendir’s eternal struggle – to suppress the powerful, contradictory, wholly unconscious forces that roiled and raged inside him, so that he could do his duty and be of service.
Emotions such as his fear of failure, and dying within the mountain.
Emotions such as his abiding desire to please Serath and earn his respect, while simultaneously hating and resenting him for never granting even a modicum of that respect or praise he so desperately sought.
It was as if no matter how many times he proved himself equal to a task, worthy of a responsibility, he was still, inexorably, assailed by the sense that he was an imposter – a place-holder for some unnamed champion who had yet to arrive upon the scene, to take the place that he’d kept warm and ready for him.
Why should he feel that way, he wondered during his meditations, or in his loneliest hours, alone and unable to sleep. Why, after so many accomplishments, should he still suspect – however subtly, however quietly – that he was unworthy of trust, unequal to challenge?
Was it because he did not trust Desriel’s confidence in him? No. That was foolish. Desriel was the most trustworthy, the most dependable person that Ferendir had ever known. He would not be such a well-respected Stoneguard if his skills and character were not of the utmost strength and purity.
Was it, perhaps, because Serath always seemed so disappointed in him? So dismissive of his achievements and doubtful of his successes yet to come? Perhaps… but that still seemed unequal to birthing and cultivating his many, ever-swirling doubts and their adamant hold upon him. Ferendir’s fears and misgivings were far more intrinsic than anything the actions of any person – even his masters – could inflict upon him, buried so deep inside him, so far beneath his seemingly calm exterior that he could barely imagine Serath’s outward attitudes having anything to do with their creation and sustenance.
Eliminating those two possibilities left a third one, far more disturbing – Ferendir, despite all of his strengths and capabilities, lacked the great, final component that would elevate and distinguish him, that special alchemy of character that made the difference between being merely a talented supplicant, and truly earning his place as a fully fledged, wholly empowered Stoneguard.
