The final Chapters of Thrice Advent

Chapter 33

THE LAST SOLUTION.

Aflarien released Rabranath and the UnAuthor raged faster than the fire burning all through the Forests of Soen. The UnAuthor came to the gated entrance of Thet, the deep cave city of the Shouels and with a gale of demented rage blasted open the sturdy gateway. He entered in.  His master had ordered that he should spare none and he obliged with a murderous gusto. The rage and fire within him was boundless and he felt himself become huge with death. Pitilessly he ripped heads and limbs from the defenseless young, he searched out those in the deepest tunnels none were able to withstand his onslaught, none escaped.  Those that stood against him he pulverized into the cave floor, or thrust them mindlessly into the cave walls like so much rotted fruit. He bit into the flesh of the Shouels, drank their green blood that gushed from them like an over flowing spring. In mere moments he killed more than the deadly flames In the forest.  When he was done the caves and ways of Thet ran free with blood, their flesh and viscera smeared by a perverse gravity upon the red stone walls.

The Shouels that escaped out onto the Hill of Soen looked about them and to them it seemed the world had died.  The forest that had clad the land for countless centuries was gone. The colour, the bright verdancy of a land beloved had been stripped of anything lovely and lay in a smoke filled monochrome.  Tree’s remnants burned like corpses on a stake, for them Shouels sent out  a keening, a weeping that the grey wind carried away as if grief itself had been stolen from them.  Those that remained, stock still awaited Rabranath rather that they be slain than endure to live another day and carry with them the sudden death of the final day of Thet.  When they were dead, half devoured, like a beaten whelp to his Master, the Unauthor returned to Aflarien.

‘It is accomplished, my Lord.’

‘No.’ Aflarien said. ‘More still remain scattered about these lands and you will hunt them down until no Shouels remains to haunt the Land of Man.’ he sneered at the repulsive face of the UnAuthor. Only I say when it is accomplished.  Once you bring me the heart of Dalrosse will I be, perhaps, satisfied.  My plans are great, and I will always have a need for you. Now go and wash the filth of Shouels from yourself in the Lake.  Then come to Helvearn and join us for dinner, my Lady and King Loor.  My wife is keen to meet with you.’

The UnAuthor had heard of the beauty of Shaneal and was likewise keen to meet with her. On the voyage from Esplomeoir he had been kept in the hold, but for some sailors that fed him he had been alone on Fine Misgivings , only the churning of the waves and the laughter and chatter of the fair folk his only companion. He scrubbed himself clean in the Lake, fouling the water.  He swam, floated on his back, his vile face staring upward, unblinking at the sun.  About him the water itself was revolted by his presence, yet could do nothing but bear him.  He laughed at the sun as if with a threat that he could devour its brightness and feel no remorse, with his mighty fist he could tear down the vaulting sky, he fist could strike out to smash star cradles, obliterating the phantasmagoria of cluttered nebula. He would feast upon the light and leave Menerth in darkness and ruin. And not care.

The sun slowly fell, the long shadows of Ashenmoire blackening the Lake.  Rabranath swam to Fine Misgivings and dressed in tight, ill fitting garments King Loor had brought from Demorol. On his way to Helvearn a weakness fell over him, torpor and slow-wittedness accompanied the feebleness in his body.  He felt he was trudging through a merciless desert, mirages too far away to be hoped for, as he climbed the step stair of Helvearn he thought his legs would buckle under him, but from somewhere he found the strength to force himself upward. The black rose oil’s potency was wearing away in his blood.  None of the power he experienced while exterminating the Shouels lingered within him as if his powerful spirit had taken from him and replaced by a feeble, crippled soul, his thoughts demented by his powerlessness. His rage now a hollow shade of the megalomania imprisoned in his mind. Some invisible chain of steel led him to Aflarien’s side and an unbreakable collar of hard dark metal that had fallen from the sun tightened about his neck. At last he reached the final step; he walked tentatively over the glittering stone of Aflarien’s apartment to his lord’s side.

Rabranath’s eyes tired from holding back his tears of pain hardly flickered from Aflarien’s boots. Yet they yearned for a moment to stare upon his wife, but he felt the dark metal of Aflarien’s grip bite into his neck and he did not dare.

‘Did you have a good swim, Rabranath?’ Aflarien asked, his voice underlain with a mocking laughter.

‘Yes,’ he stuttered. ‘I hope I am clean enough for such a grand audience.’

Aflarien sniffed, his lips scowling with distaste. ‘You smell still of Shouel muck, but let that be, yes, you reek still with their polluted blood.  And that is good for it is the smell of sudden death and I relish it for the stench of dead Shouel is far more satisfying than the smell of those that live. Don’t you think Loor? Do you like his cologne?’

‘Alas, Aflarien,’ the King said, his eyes barely looking up from a book. ‘Age has diminished my

senses and I barely notice that which you find so piquant.’  Aflarien laughed and sat beside Shaneal.

‘Come, Rabranath sit with us.  I’m sure King Loor will join us once he’s finished his chapter.’ For

a moment the king eyes rose from page his anger undisguised, he felt a curse at the back of his

throat. Yet he smiled and said.

‘I will join you now.’

He closed the book and sat at the long, low table, sinking into large embroidered cushion beside

the UnAuthor. He smiled at the simulacrum of Shaneal.  He recalled the night that she had

disappeared from Demorol, that is the real Shaneal.  He had lost his capital, his Tasen; he was

the King of nowhere, and that night he had lost his only hope of regaining Tasen. Then his

trusted Phytomonger, Graheal, voiced an idea  that was to prove to be Graheal’s masterpiece.

From some wisps of the girl’s fallen hair, left upon her pillow he grew a psybot. A psybot so

perfect that though barely a month old, had a lifetime of memories.  A lifetime waiting in the

high tower room of Demorol until she was given by the King into marriage.  That he was the

fabled Anti-Author she had read of in her Father’s books thrilled her.  She was to marry a prophesy made real.

Servants came and went with many courses of food.  Aflarien talked of his plans, talked of the

death of Gods, those careless unthinking Gods whom decreed Man live with beasts such as the

Shouels.

‘I hear the whimpering noise of those that remain, their profane tongue bickering in my

thoughts.  I will have done with them and make all things new.  They prick at my mind,’ He

laughed again. ‘Soon too to die.’

With a thought King Loor could make Shaneal stab her new groom with the nearest knife. But

he knew that Rabranath would protect his lord so he stayed the thought. For now. Aflarien ruled

Menerth from Lake Leme to the walls of Tasen, all that the king coveted.  Aflarien had told him

earlier that Marriamme had taken Nen-Resul and Kren into the labyrinth of the tidalverse. 

Tasen was leaderless. He had said they had become lost in the probabilities. That he had found

them camped not far from the Island, had almost tricked him, but it was just  echo of a choice

Nen-Resul might have made. Soon Tasen would fall to Aflarien. Then he would reach out over

the sea to the islands and southern lands.  He would have Esplomeoir and the Author’s seat.

With a simple thought Aflarien would be gone. But later, later he whispered to himself,

when I can have it all.

Chapter 34

The silence of Thet

Shrouded in silence and the long shadows of Thet Marriamme with Nen-Resul and Kren

emerged from the tidalverse. Here, there were no children singing, no brightly dressed female

Shouels calling out their wares to the workers on their way to burrow new routes through the

caves.  No there were no children singing, or tired arrow folk back from the forest telling tales of

their days away from home. Nor now as they walked the empty pathways of Thet, a lurid gleam

of blood green thickening on the mourning stone, corpse lined, no more than fodder for the creeping carrion, the air thick with the shadows of flies and the ghosts of sudden death, they did not hear the music of the Shouel’s hearts. The caves did not ring as once it did nor did the songs of a thousand years reach them in this deadpoint of time. All was hollow quiet that stole into their stomachs and lifted wearily into their souls.

Marriamme walked ahead of the other two, her eyes ever searching, piercing into the dark, and listening, listening for the merest breath, the most quiet cry of a Shouel that might still live.  Yet she seemed with each step to fall into a void of noise, as if the whole of Menerth was encompassed by silence, the world bereft of voice that choked on its own lost tears.

Nen-Resul who knew not of the long, beauteous lives of the Shouels, who had never heard there songs, or the tales of the first ones, those ancients deep as the meres in the mountains, Nen- Resul knew neither of a life that was simple, those lives gossamer webbed, like a cloth untarnished with stains power and politics or a greed of knowing. None of these things did he know as wandered through the dreadful silence.

Yet it seemed as he walked one of his hands trailing along the smooth stone of the caveway that the earth spoke of her haunted memories, and in its portion, in each pause of breath the long lifetimes of Thet unfolded through the stone to him.  In the rock of Thet the past resonated strong and vibrant with energy and the power of the past had sent tendrils of fire into the future. It seemed that the dreams of the stone solidified about him and he was ushered into a excited dance of the interlinking city that existed beyond the Unauthors cleansing.  About thronged the singing joy of the little ones, the booming of dreamtellers and poets, the taletellers echoing through the caveways, the laughter of the females, about the air was perfumed with the scent of the ararine flower that grew down in the deepest cave where a pool of blessing lapped against the happy stone. About him the revenants of the future grew with the telling of each moment, stitching through time to a fixed moment that led to innumerable futures.

Shouels came up to him, resonating with a blue fire of luminance, told him of the unsullied time beyond the bloodstains of Thet’s final day, of a past forgiven, and the future flooded with a delta of cleansing  fire, each possibility racing toward the ocean new nows.

 Nen-Resul found he was seated facing a bodiless blue fire the spread over him, touching hope against the walls of his heart. A Shouel sat beside him and spoke of the land that was redeemed by the warrior with no sword, the last hope that had no hope or himself, the heart that spread solace, and joy. Another Shouel clad in the blue fire like the skins of old gods told Nen-Resul Thet had always been, that Thet remained like the soul that tarries and dashes through lifetimes to lifetime. At last to rest as glory become reachable and the hearts of men are filled with the lore of the Shouels and healed by joy and by the promises of Drendunde. Knowledge that man and Shouel were strewn upon the lands by a single hand, knowing that together they would not just be brothers and sisters, but true friends as they were conceived to be, their hearts meshed in empathy.  All indifference and all things base by the blending of the blood new purpose would be loosed upon the world, and the arms that hold Menerth would draw to them forces and beings from beyond stars reach and gather them into the unity. This Nen-Resul learnt from whispering stone of Thet, a final voice stretching into his cast of blue fire said to him.

‘The empty handed one, the gift-giver and the slayer of the sleeping soul will awaken the Shouel and man. With a whisper and with his tears he took tyranny, took hate at last from the minds of all and smiled, as new birds sang. His smile lighted upon the world’s beauty, his smile joy, like the sunlight on a lover face. This joy sprang from the fountain that is Menerth and now will never diminish although it dances on and on.’

Marriamme led the two men to the gateway of Thet and wandered over the raped land beyond.  As she wandered she wished for blindness, for a loss of memory so profound that with these horrors so too would memories of happiness and contentment would be lost. She staggered like a drunk, and it seemed she would stumble and fall, fall and never rise again, but before she fell Kren took her arm, let her support herself upon him as he led her to a large outcrop of fire blackened rock.  He set her down and sat beside her.  All the birds and creatures of Soen had fled and it seemed the silence here at edge of the dead forests was deeper than that in the cave city.  Kren would have wiped the tears from Marriamme’s face had she shed any.

She spoke. ‘Now you see- how can hearts be bold, how can hearts feel love when such things as this can be accomplished. To fight such things would make the avenger full of greater hatred than those that did it; they would be unable to fight cruelty without greater cruelty. And there would be no end to it. At such a thing as this all would desire to retaliate, but we know all that it would mean was nothing less than man’s extermination in return. The Menerth would be soaked with blood of generations.  Cruelty and murder will revenge upon itself, and the world will become insane with death.

‘Such sorrows we bequeath to our children ripped from the peace too soon from their mother’s bellies. Our children ranged against each other destined for murder, lives silenced like a stifled song. So why? Better that we fall from the world and become finished. Why do our cheeks wait patiently for steel fists that mock our-aphasia- trampling its knowledge, casting catastrophes after catastrophes? So as we fall we fear the final fear of stamping boots transforming us into the makers of harshest brutality.  Would it better that we could Mindcall to all men, remind them of the unity we peoples shared? With what?  Feeble whispers of us remain behind the walls of war, this war justified by lies and on Menerth all will fight.   Would it not better that we were slain by our own hand? I will not fight them and barter hate with hate, just leave us here where we lie.  Fix our corpses in your roads and fine highways and when you march off to fight those new foes that take our place.  Listen to your God of undoing and be empowered by the fire of righteousness.

‘So now we surrender Menerth to Aflarien. We give him the Menerth and all the powers of the peoples of the far reaches, we  let him enslave the creatures of the lost ways of Menerth,  Surrender possession of hope and sacrifice and unconditional dawn light that they  have pondered upon since the forests of Menerth first grew.   So now do you see Aflarien has left us with no choice – we give everything to him, the world will be as he commands and all the powers and passions of the myriad lands of Menerth will be the AntiAuthor’s toys.  All Shouels shall perish and become lost in the long grass. The streams and lakes, the forest full of oak groves, sycamores riding on a high wind protecting Soen forgotten with our passing .We  fall into a sleep of flowers, while steel boots  stamp the divine beauty of the Shouels with a sickening  crunch and cracking bones. He covets all.  He would claim the world with all its beauty, with all its artistry and flooded with hate, a misshapen land beautiful and perfect under Aflarien’s gaze.

Now we have no reason to live in this world.  We would rather vanish from the walking earth.  We would have no reason to remain in this world where our crimes equaled his.  So you see now with our passing we fade, to the hopes  of good, green place, tarnished  and justified with our of self immolation.  We will fade and Men will own time without us there. Those heroes of men that carry on, who hold the power will in time fade and find forgetfulness. yet till then Man shall have the world and Aflarien-  The Rex Mundi –will set free his rage and look about the emptiness of the Meringal and see his ghostly face in all men’ miens. And Aflarien abomination and the accomplisher will be all that remains.’

Beside her Kren still stood up, turned his head to look for Nen-Resul but could not see him. A harsh wind ripped over the denuded hills fresh with the smoke of the fires slowly dying. Yet upon the wind Kren thought he heard a voice, a voice as green and fresh, vital and vibrant as the land about had once have been.  Perhaps it was Nen-Resul whom they hadn’t noticed going on ahead of them.  But- the voice seemed too far away.  He put a hand on Marriamme’s shoulder.

‘Do you hear that?’ he asked.

She looked up from the bare stone at her feet.

‘Listen,’ Kren said. Long moments passed. The Shouels eyes pieced into the long shadows of the approaching night, as if she could with her visual senses encode the slightest murmur, below the gusts of wind. ‘Listen,’ Kren repeated. ‘I think …I think I hear singing in this unhappy place. He was about to take a few strides forward but Marriamme’s small hand clutched onto his as if she could enhance her own senses with his.

And, yes she heard it, a bright piecing of sound above the keening grief of the wind. The song rose up, powerful enough to dispel the storm, unblacken the harsh clouds, and let the dying sunlight revel in the song. She stood and clutched tightly onto Kren’s hand.

‘Yes, I hear it.  I can almost make out the sound of the words; do you hear the words, Kren?’

He laughed for he seemed surrounded by joyousness, his laughter a duet to the song on the wind coming from deep of the damaged earth and echoing up from the gut rock below. The song issued up the hill where they stood in expectation, with each moment the song grew louder. And when the voice became so clear, the physical world transformed about them, seconds shifted as if to make way for the two moments, the crescendo of the song and the silent joy of the Princess, which yearned to meet there on the wounded hillside.

Marriamme let go of Kren’s hand, slowly at first she walked forward then she began to rush forward to the brow of the hill.

O, she almost sang to herself, it is him.

After their meal was finished King Loor returned to his book while Shaneal and Aflarien went to the balcony of the glass edge at the highest point of Helvearn.  She looked up at the star drenched night and down to the reflection of the moon upon the waters.  Rabranath wondered if he should return to Fine Misgivings, thought that if he went or stayed he imagined his presence one way or another would be unnoticed. He took food from the plates the others left behind, stuffing, guzzling down the flesh and fruit, and noisily slurping down wine. When the glass was empty he found a decanter of black wine. Aflarien’s wine-the only liquor he drank.

It was a special blend made from the grapes of Erafian Omelyns vineyards the AntiAuthor had found a number of the bottles in the lower levels of Helvearn. The Shouels had blended Omelyns wine with distillate of the Black Rose. At first Aflarien thought to destroy the bottles, as he had burnt the Lore Books of the Shouels. Aflarien though drank a glass of the ebony liquid down there in the forgotten cellar decorated in an age of cobwebs. Often he had imbibed the Black Rose oil, but the effect of the wine was completely different.  The oil he realised was limited and slow to control, whereas the wine, with the first taste, eviscerated the reality of the cellar, of Helvearn rising above him as if they were but paintings discolored with the dirt of time, denuded of magic. The oil had given him access to the tidalverse, but the wine made him the tidalverse. With that came such knowledge, great with power.  He knew where all the white holes and capillaries of the tidalverse  led to, but knew also of the shadow tidalverse that led to all unmade choices- to histories that had never been and of all the futures that might be, or might have been.  Yet much more he realised as he drained the first glass- he was the Master of Now. In a handful of half moments his being knew all thought, all deed, all the dreams that a single moment contained upon Menerth.

Yes, Aflarien coveted the black wine, the wine that put him in all places, made him part of all that never was and never will be. With the single glass Aflarien knew the dreams and the daydreams of all those that lived, he was the crux of every beings choice, he could dismantle past and future. As the mingled grape and rose blossom revealed to him all the many, many realities sprung from a single choice.

Rabranath, unseen, poured a glass of the dark liquid from the decanter.  Before he drank he looked surreptitiously to the couple of the balcony, they had no eyes for him and the Anti-Author the collar of sun steel and the invisible chain that controlled him seemed slack about his neck. He felt no resistance when he raised his head higher and stared through his discolored eyes at Shaneal, then he was incapable of lowering his gaze, his eyes feasted upon her, lingered along  the tender slight lines of her body of her body.  His fingers moved as if they were stroking her pale cheeks and spreading the hair from her brow. He gazed at her lips as she spoke with Aflarien and he felt their soft touch on his, the damp moisture of her tongue darting into his mouth.

He picked up the glass of black rose wine and tossed it down his throat.

Aflarien laughed at something Shaneal said and tentatively took her hand.  Rabranath scowled at him, saw that Aflarien was like a weak fawning puppy willing to fulfill her every desire, saw too that if she asked it of him he would gladly tip himself from the tower of Helvearn. The UnAuthor derided his own weakness.  He was the Unauthor and this little, jumped up despot should have power over him.

Araden, long ago had explained to Rabranath his purpose in the Story. ‘For our brother who lived but a few hours we make our story-I give him life and the entire worlds to create .I give him purpose and a place for his dreams. Jon is his friend and leads him through each adventure of life upon life. While you, dear Rabranath, counter all, you take his freedom and leave him useless.  You are there between his lives sowing conflict. you deceive him with power and are there to put despair into his thoughts, set futility in each of his actions, you are there to blind him to the love his creation has brought into existence.’

Araden concluded.’  He who is many-named needs what all three of us give to the story, give to him. Always he will be unaware is us, mapping or destroying his onward journey. There would be no journey, no need of creation if there was just me, or just you, there would be no point to the Story and his life a meaningless waiting.  Far better for him that he had been smothered in his cradle and forgotten. Yet we weaved together in the conflicts of his life offer his Story no ending, no end to striving, a life lived in the light hope, he struggles because he must, for he has seen hope and wishes it for all.

Rabranath poured himself another glass from the decanter, drank the ebony liquid slowly this time. He remembered how Aflarien had subdued him on Esplomeoir and compelled him to murder Lebin.  Aflarien had desecrated Esplomeoir where no such humble beings should dare traverse. In so doing he risked the Story and the existence of the brother’s lives. Aflarien sought to usurp the place of the brother of the Esierk, the only one. Aflarien sought to be Author and UnAuthor.

As Rabranath stood by the dining table pouring the last dregs of the decanter into his glass knew Aflarien for the first time, could see that his body was but a glamour disguising the woman, Krostic within, then like disguises striped from flesh he saw beyond Krostic the glamour’s that hid far within older beings, unknowable beings that Rabranath could not bear to witness. Yet in that moment wine dark on his tongue the UnAuthor knew that with all his malice Aflarien was but a bit part in the brother’s tale. He walked toward them; the Anti-author seemed lost in the dark while the pale beauty of Shaneal was lit by the constellations. He stood in the doorway looking out onto the balcony. Aflarien gave him a quizzical look. Shaneal stopped speaking mid sentence and turned to look at him,

‘Can I join you? Rabranath asked. His tongue tingling as the wine dried on his tongue.

Shaneal looked surprised and took a step almost daunted by his presence as if he infected the atmosphere of the grand balcony with his despair.  Thick clouds covered the Moon and stars and the lake like black ice below them. Anxiously she looked at her father reading, she thought, if this creature became his own rage there would be death this night.  Her Father or Aflarien wouldn’t be able to protect her. As she watched Rabranath she saw the look of contempt on his face when he stared at Aflarien. When she held his gaze she saw a look of slavering lust, she felt his eyes clamping on the swell of her breasts, felt the many hands of his mind crawling between her legs, scratching upward, invading her body. His stare filled her with nausea of dread.  She looked at Aflarien, a plea on her face.

Rabranath fell to his knees as if the weight of the sun had slammed down on him.  Shaneal saw Aflarien’s fist clench, his nails digging white welts into his hand. Rabranath whimpered, bereft of will or the imaginings of power. Even as Aflarien slackened his grip a tighter bond of fear held him on his knees. Rabranath relinquished desire and hope, he could not fight Aflarien.

‘No get out of here, you no longer amuse me.’

The UnAuthor slowly got to his feet, daring not a final look at Shaneal. Ungainly he took his leave, haphazardly down the stair spine of Helvearn. He emerged from the tower and was wracked with sobbing. Through eyes blistered by tears he stared up to the balcony.  Thought of Rabranath had skittered from Aflarien’s mind and for a moment he was rid of him and his dictates. Staring upward he imagined that he saw Shaneal looking down at him. If he had the stomach, a strength of self, all that the will of Aflarien had excised from him, he would have thrown him from the tower and taken her there, under the blanket of unquiet clouds which obscured the moonlight, he imagined tearing her garments from her, almost tasted the salt as his blunt tongue licked perspiration from arms, her back, her legs, and slavering spittle on her breasts and buttocks, Taking the bright light from her eye with each scream he forced from her. But, below, whimpering there and alone, huddled round his panting thoughts he knew he was too cowardly to realize such desires. He stumbled away from Helvearn; wet faced with weeping and went to the hold on Fine Misgivings, threw himself down and imprisoned himself in sleep and old dreams.

The Last lovesong of Jon Esierk

chapter 34

Jon Esierk sun burnt and made tall by an inner energy, crushed Marriamme in his embrace. ‘Ah, my Love,’ he said. ‘I thought I would never see you again.’ Marriamme surrenders to his embrace, the strong arms about her lifted her above the awful despair  of the earth, that until Jon came she would have willingly sunk down to the blacked, raped hills and let them pull her down into a silent world where there was no grieving and where weeping was unheard.  She kissed his neck, tasted his skin still fresh with the pure air of The Unwritten Lands.

Slowly, so slowly as slow as the movement of the moon across the night’s sky he released her.  She spoke, but the words seemed to choke in her mouth. Breathlessly Marriamme coughed out the words.

‘Our Son?  Do you know if he is safe?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

Not dead, she thought, please not him too.

‘I do not know,’ Jon said. He looked about the smoldering wastes of the hills as if he had not yet noticed the desolation. ‘Dalrosse takes a hidden path and I think even Aflarien cannot find him.’

Her eyes tense with unshed tears relaxed.  A smile tried to lift up her lips, but failed. Even now with Jon here where so much had been lost she knew this was not a place for smiles. Yes, she thought, Jon here with me at last, far too many years had passed since they been together she was keen to speak to him, but not here. Words too had no place here where thousands of her people had been murdered.

‘Jon, my Love.  I cannot stay here. Please. Let’s just go. Let us leave this place to the wind and time.  It is no place now for the living.’

On his balcony a moment paused and Aflarien sensed something on the hot wind over the water. Shaneal like a statue stilled in an animated midsentence. Aflarien moved to the balcony rail.  His nose and eyes sensed keenly into the night and over the dark waters. Yes, he thought, I can almost smell it on the air.

He snapped the moment back into time.  His wife chatted on amiably. Orders raged from him to where Rabranath skulked on the ship.  He whimpered as Aflarien gripped the invisible chain taut, the collar biting blood from his throat.

Aflariens words clanged into his mind.

‘I want its heart,’ the Anti-Author said. ‘Bring it to me.’

Rabranath knew innately whose heart and where it would be, his mind made ready for action by the clamor like an untuned orchestra filled with the orders of the lord of Ashenmoire.

Nen-Resul watched the couple walking hand in hand towards him where he stood near the riven entryway into Thet. About them like an old saint’s halo the air seemed redolent with love’s power. But a hard wind stole over the land from the lake, a silent wind that tried to suck lithe Marriamme and Jon from the ground.

As Nen-Resul watched- he could do nothing else but watch as if he were dressed in a stone cloak of immobility. He saw Rabranath’s corpse pale face illuminated upon the dark hill by the moon’s feeble light. It seemed a hand clutched at the Chamberlain’s throat so that he could not cry out a warning. He could not fight the iron grip of immobility that had fallen over him; all he could do was watch.  Eerily the figure of Rabranath advanced upon the couple.  Nen-Resul’s scream leapt from his eyes as the UnAuthor grabbed Marriamme by her hair and snapped her neck.

Her hand was still held by her husband as she slipped to the ashy earth. Not until grief wept tears of rage from the storyteller’s mouth did Jon see his brother.

With the death of the Shouel, of the Princess of Thet, Marriamme’s control of the stream of the tidalverse that she manipulated, no long held it in place. Kren, Nen-Resul saw could not resist the iron pull of the stream.  Neither could he. A brief second only passed, as life was released and she lay like a broken manikin, before the tidalverse took the two men of Tasen back through the possibilities of new and old chances and choices, along shadow streams to the camp in Meringal, or briefly as the fixed moments of their lives flashed back to The Legein House where the two had argued about the best way to deal with Aflarien after his failed attack on Tasen. There the tidalverse and its shadow passages, twisted and tumbling like two snakes in an epic battle and through these the two where nudged onward, on, on to the true probability that hinged on freewill and the truth of their hearts. The streams danced them until finally the tidalverse set them free.

Nen-Resul found himself upon a horse, Kren by his side looking over the water of Lake Leme to Ashenmoire skirted by morning mist. At ease, awaiting orders behind the one hundred Legein men gazed as the sun slipped above the Island, the Lonely Isle that last day when The Gardener came.

Marriamme, in all things now, looked up from through warming water, out from atoms of light; her gaze flitted through earth and the sand on the beach.  She saw the Legein on the beach about Delgdreth. She knew her long sorrowful plan had brought them here and she was glad for she had found herself reunited with Jon. Despite losing him she knew she had made the right choice and was content.

Jon held her body in his arms spilling his tears of loss upon her face. ‘Why? Why?’ The words like curses he could not utter. Yet as he held her, the limp body grew lighter as if a Soulsearcher was taking her home. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t go. I need you.’  But Marriamme didn’t answer, or his ears were not keen enough to hear her answer that curled about a soft wind.

‘Go on, my joy. Do not remain in this place. Go on.’ She left the dreary hilltop and the caves darkened with death and went to join the clamoring of the Shouels slaughtered in Thet who had waited for her. As the last light of joy faded from Jon’s eyes, so too did the Shouels fade and pass through the door that would lead to the High Road.  Silently the door closed behind them and the sky itself was hushed and reverent at their passing.

Rabranath and his elder brother were now alone outside the broken gateway of Thet.  Jon laid her body to the ground, stood and looked at the UnAuthor whose mind was filled with the caterwauling screams of Aflarien that demanded he kill his brother.

Rabranath slick with strength advanced toward him the clubs of his fists ready to smash the spindly bones and tear the flesh from the storyteller. Jon was too numb now to weep, with slumped shoulders and a lowered head he waited for the gift of death.

                                                                              Chapter 36

Angel

He remembered they’d dragged from his cell, cleaned him up and made him dress. After that he did not remember. After-images remained, clues that might make him recall whatever happened next, but he could find no meaning in these fleeting images.  He would always find himself lost in the darkness, then the door was banged open, heat and light harsh as the desert sun left him half blind as he was dragged along the cold, cold stones of the dungeon.

Again and again he felt the blessed release of the water that cleansed him, of the darkness and the crust in his eyes. At times he would wonder, so many times, maybe this time he would be set free, free to walk the forest tracks, free to think his quiet thoughts. Not the same day repeated: the dark, the heat, white blindness and the desperate need for the cold water  his feet following once more the dream of the woods those familiar pathways shadowed by the dance of the forest canopy. Each new path would surprise him as if he was following new ways that no feet but his had wandered. Yet each time he forced on overlarge clothes and he let them lead him out of the dungeon. But to where? Never the forest for which he yearned, not to that place of rest, the green unity that guided his boot steps to the undiscovered fields of clairvarics.  He could remember the forest and its ways, but where they took him filled Aflarien with terror. His fear had erased that place, up out of the dungeon, that place beyond memory was cut from his mind.

Once, while he waited for his cell door to open and the guards to drag him out, he begged the darkness to tell him why he had been so abandoned, locked here in the dark away from all the joy in the world. His dull eyes searched out the black as if that would answer him. He imagined pin-prinks of light, like a crowd of faces, luring him and urging, faces he felt he should know, the dark itself slowly seemed pattered with dim rainbows and waterfalls of dank red and green. Aflarien’s hands grasped at the turgid rivers of light, but they spilled away, splashing back into darkness, to re-emerge elsewhere, tricking and teasing him.

One day, as he was being pulled from his cell, Aflarien found himself staring down upon a stooping, half naked creature being roughly dragged from the dark stench of the cell. He was surprised to hear his own voice whimpering and calling for help. He felt he was perched upon an edge of darkness, one with hallucinatory half lights in air. As the cell door closed he realised that he was formless and weightless, as his body slanted off into the mockery of its existence, he remained, here, without pain, thirst or hunger.

The next day the same thing occurred. Alone upon the swells and colours of the thought, he found that he could escape the confines of the cell, without effort, desire for the arching sight of the dawn, and the spread of the hills beyond R’thera, took him from his cell. Joy arrowed through his thought as the first day he lifted into the blue haze of morning, amazed at the sun’s amber glow as if he were seeing it for the first time. Below in his cell he could never have imagined such a world, where the slants of sunlight began to dress the world anew. In sleep his dreams were filled by the colours of the day, dreams uplifted by the tentative shadows of joy, though about him the oppressive confines of his body lay, and the darkness and the dank odour pervasive as a twisted soul.

Yet each day he could explore further from the walls of his imprisonment. He escaped on the wind. The thought, or being without carnate form drifted or darted across the soft undulations of the farms of Meringal. Swift as a soaring arrow through the bending gullies of the salmon rivers Aflarien tested his abilities. In mere moments he could be at the edge of the Nelhdar desert than back, fast as a whiplash hugging the old stones of the Keep.

On the wind one day, formless as the breeze he heard his name being called. The voice was cracked with fear and urgency; the air itself seemed to demand that he find the source of the bitter voice, its anguish pulling him towards the crying of his name.  Edges of the wind carried him and he tore through the walls of time, leaving it meaningless, to a clearing in a vast forest where a pristine white cottage lay.

He tried to approach the cottage, but there seemed some kind of forbidding about it, like a memory of nausea haunting the land about that halted him.  He hesitated on the wind looking downward at the cottage, more dreadful than voice that pleaded for his help was the silence without it. He tried again, yet futility to get nearer to cottage. He felt impotent, like a single falling leaf, held in hesitation, then a new voice called on the slow air, chiming musically through veils of time like an echo from the dawn of Menerth. He followed the sound of the voice, a voice imbued with goodness that led him over trees and earth devastated with miasmic floods, then on to a stark white city upon the edge of a landward sea. The air seemed crowded with gulls, their calls disorientating him, he felt lured by waters as if the enticement of the voice had been replaced by a need for the free purity of the light lashed sea.

Energised by the sights in streets and marketplaces of Paternor he heard a booming call. He focused upon the sound deep beneath the noise of a thousand calling seagulls. Then uncontrollably he plummeted down to the city afraid that he would fall crashing on Paternor’s white walls and break upon the iron of the earth. Yet it seemed a wisp of a hand held him and guided him down to a domed sacred house of learning and led him to a chamber like a soft couch. The chamber was illuminated by what seemed a thousand candles. Not only gold light flamed but purple flames, reds and yellows, green flames sputtered from the wicks of the candles higher like a straight backed man. It seemed Aflarien was asleep being watched over by a figure coloured by the candlelight.  In his sleep his voice mumbled and with a cracked, hesitant voice he asked for the name of his companion.

‘Schriven. I called you here to offer you safety for you seemed so lost, led her by a deep need  I could not comprehend.’

Though somnolent in the flickering, mixing colours and the pungent smoke they issued he said:

‘I was imprisoned in a cell far from here yet I heard voices calling me to come this way. I saw a white cottage where I felt so much pain as if it were not my own. I heard I a voice in a song that I remembered before the Dark. There were tears in the song imploring me to go down to the white cottage. I tried but a barrier was set about it in the air all around.’

Schriven said. ‘The only cottage near here is the Caretaker’s before the Muem Marsh. he covets his privacy and is an issuer of evil. Perhaps he imprisons those whom you search for.’

 The Necroman as Aflarien fell into a deeper sleep, so deep as if the world had ended. Two days passed before he awoke.  For a dreadful moment he thought he was back in his black prison In the red stoned keep, but new candles had been lit and the air was adorned with a vibrancy of scents. As if smiling he told himself he had found finally a place of peace.  Schriven was beside him as if he not left Aflarien’s side that whole two days.

Schriven as he sat and waited though had left his body; rose up from his form twisted out up through the domed ceiling and left behind the houses and squares of Paternor. He gusted over desolate marshes, over the woods that lined the Forgotten Way.  Then he was stopped and unable to force his way through an iron fast barrier around the white cottage. Schriven could almost taste the fetid air emanating from the caretaker’s cottage that seemed to vomit out into the day a name.

Dalrosse.

Was this the name that had called Aflarien? Dalrosse. Dalrosse. Who was he? Once more he tried to force his way through the barriers of nausea about the cottage. Although the necroman’s strength was great he was not powerful enough to break through.  so defeated by the forbidding  he retreated back to Paternor, roused his body and sat beside the beautiful soul smiling as if all his days of dark and hate of the world he’d known now for so long was cured by the vigil of Schriven.

He slept and had his first Godsleep and the new soul half-wakening joined him there.  together they wandered the old citadels of the Ailves, those beings lost to the world more, much more than  a millennium ago walked through the insubstantial dreams of Schriven and Aflarien and with each passing through they drew energies circling about the Godsleep. Schriven laughed and led Aflarien to a purple gold temple and they lay down under the vast high dome.

Then the Godsleep ceased and they woke vibrant with the ancient power of the Ailves.

‘You must go to them now.’ Schriven told Aflarien. And Aflarien soared to the Cottage of the White Rose through the barrier of malignant nausea about it. He watched over him, his brother the Shouel, his Dalrosse from that moment on. Instead of Dalrosse looking for Aflarien and Shaneal they had found him in the end and the Angel Aflarien never left him until that day he died.

                                                                   Chapter35
                                                                THE RESOLVER

Aflarien leaves Shaneal on the balcony and goes to get a glass of the black oil wine.  He sees the empty bottle on the table. A scream in his head cymbal crashed him into a state of immobility. Something or someone ordered that he sit. He sits. He stares ahead of him self – to a point of space that fluctuated with incredible speed.  His hand reaches out to it.  There she is holding his hand, his Shaneal. Between them was a glimmer of a shadow walking, its shoulders happily hunched with tired contentedness.

Aflarien, King of the World was released and Shaneal took him into her arms. She felt the coldness of a tear upon her breast. He laughed.

‘I was thinking of somebody else, someone I knew so long before.’ Again he laughed ‘I get to distracted.’ He wrenched his gaze round as his head lay upon her shoulder and saw King Loor.  He was content as usual, reading, reading, and always reading as if he were gobbling up the words from the page.

Loor told himself. A moment more. Be still.  Rabranath was at the empty cave of Thet and Aflarien was unprotected, but I enjoy so watching them together. Loor noticed Shaneal guide her lips to his: her tongue like a panicking bird between his lips, easing open her husband’s mouth.

Now, thought Loor.

-a needle pierced through the skin at the tip of her tongue, but before it could prick Aflarien he snapped the psybots neck.

Loor did not move, for a moment. He thought he should at least show some surprise. Then Aflarien’s bellow roared across the dark waters of Lake Leme to Thet.

‘Rabranath. What have you done? The Shouel bitch.  I want its heart. Forget your brother. Its heart.’ the desperation in the Anti-Author’s howl of desolation seemed to suck into it the cacophony of noise of the whole of Menerth. The hills about Thet shuddered at the sound, yet upon the hill Rabranath whipped from his lips a single word. No.

Aflarien trembled.

Before he could kill Jon Esierk the UnAuthor tore Marriamme’s heart from her chest. He let Jon watch as he feasted upon her green heart.  With the taste of the flesh he had a memory of that, a  that that too briskly passed through his mind seeing  in fleeting the psybot Shaneal as she fell broken from Aflarien’ lips. Again he cried. No.  The surface of the lake became vaporous with steam, the tower of Helvearn rocked on root stones of the foundations of the world. Aflarien went sprawling to his knees while the book fell disjointedly from Loor’s hands

The UnAuthor left Jon alone and raced over the lake. Every atom of the air that his presence flooded through was imbued with the savor of the Black Rose. Tears of joy fell from his face as he imagined that at last he could devour the long roots of the Black Rose. With the Shouel Queen’s blood on his face like a slap of envy he was at once at his lord’s side.

‘Aflarien lick her blood from my face if you desire it so greedily.’ However he was not looking at Aflarien, he was not aware of the King; all he saw was the surprised look on Shaneal’s face as if she were caught in a portrait.

‘Just this,’ he mumbled. ‘Why could I at least have this? Her, just her?’ That it was a fool’s dream that they could have returned together to Esplomeoir. Let Kings and men have their fill of the flesh of the world. Loudly he ordered Aflarien. ‘Give her to me.’ Yet, he felt the tug of the sunsteel collar about his neck. ‘Still? Still. You go on with this. I said no. I no longer submit to your whims.  Murder the Menerth on your own. I want …nothing; there is no longer anything I want from you.’

He picked up the psybot, dormant, useless, so soft, and smelling of waspwillow leaves in the rain.

A song fell upon the thick air, heavy with particles of endless night, a song that drifted like a balm of the waters. ‘Shhh,’ the song told them. ‘Listen. I have a story…’ All three at the tip of Helvearn listened. The voice rang out clearly and slowly drifted nearer and nearer towards them.

‘I was told once that the universe is a safe place if you believe it to be so, that I was to remember it always and such safety would be. Yet I know that too will pass for fear and lies have disguised and distorted all hope and such safety now is fitted with a cloak of deceit. And we laughed. Don’t you remember, Rab, don’t you remember when we laughed together before the story unfolded. It wasn’t much then just a thing we did, a project we fitted in between rewriting equations for moving a bloodstar a fraction out of orbit.  It was game. Like any other game until it robbed us of our sleep and our lives. We loved it and it was dear to us. Those that followed the fate of the Esierk they too too completely lost themselves, stitching in the tale a tapestry of time. Our gift to our brother. You remember Rab it began with our laughter, yet we became snow-blind as our gift with its tragedies and woes we made him suffer.  What right had we, we designers, we giftgivers to give him the responsibility of a world to save?  Wasn’t our gift for him a place for him to do what he wished?  We butted in, pleated in parts of our heartsongs for ourselves not for our brother. If I were offered such a gift this moment I would refuse it.’

The words reached Aflarien’s ears, all he could hear was a grating jabbering. The UnAuthor was listening intently. Unnoticed Aflarien took to his lips the bottle of black rose wine and the last few droplets touched his tongue. He became as tall as the night, more expansive than the water’s of the Hidden Ocean on the far side of Menerth.  All that energy condensed in a brief moment and with it Aflarien stabbed into Rabranath’s mind.

Deftly he sliced parts of the UnAuthor’s brain leaving him lobotomized, crushing all anger and violence, and love, finally leaving him in peace. Rabranath’s urine like a releasing of his crimes gushed from him, the waters staining his garments of the psybot still in his arms like an unthought-of deed, Aflarien looked about him.  King Loor was nowhere to be seen. Alone, Aflarien stood and waited until Jon reached the top of Helvearn.

‘Stop prattling. Take this thing back with you to Esplomeoir. I…’ but Jon’s words carried on rising above Aflarien’s voice, his voice not directed at the lord of Ashenmoire but to his brother. ‘Do you not remember how we used to laugh? Do you Rab?’ Spittle drooled from the UnAuthor’s slack mouth.

‘I said,’ Aflarien’s hands snaked about Jon’s neck.

 ‘To be silent.’ Disgusted with the old tale teller he released him. ‘There,’ he pushed Rabranath towards him. ‘Take him. Tell him your stories and of the gift that has taken your lifetimes to give.’

Jon though began to sing a song long lain upon a flame. Of the passing of all things. The notes and the timbre of Jon’s voice knitted a healing in Rabranath’s mind.

‘We go now to Esplomeoir.’

Now, but for Aflarien, Helvearn was empty. Ashenmoire, his Ashenmoire all about him. On the edge of hearing there were the sounds of the men of Tasen upon the lake sailing to the island. He lifted up a bright flag, the flag of the five Roses and draped it over the rail of the balcony.  Almost at once a brisk wind ripped the flag from its place and Aflarien had to watch it drift away until it became indistinguishable in the night. He laughed a laugh that sounded like a profanity, as if he were  bereft of joy, as if he had always within himself a rainbow of tears since that first in the garden with Countess Krostic who had made him monster. He descended the stairways of Helvearn and walked the cluttered path up to the Hollow where the air was thin. Sitting on a flat ledge of rock was Dalrosse he was gazing as if amazed at the rose, as if before he had been blind. Dalrosse saw new colours sneaking between each particle of earth and green as the morning came.

Aflarien kicked over the pile of rocks Dalrosse had collected. Patiently, for time itself seemed to be waiting on him, he gathered together the rocks and when the Shouel seemed satisfied Aflarien kicked them apart again. Once more Dalrosse gathered them. Then the sun rose over the horizon and seemed to laugh with expectancy. For the first time Dalrosse lifted his head and met the gaze of his brother.

So silent up above as if waiting either for the end of the world or the fresh flower of new one the female blackbird circled, unseen.

‘Brother,’ Dalrosse said as he walked toward Aflarien, he repeated the word so softly that it was a voice speaking the slang of the soul. ‘It is enough,’ he said. The Angel of Aflarien fleets down like a dancing wind into his body. Dalrosse stood beside his brother within arm’s reach, then Dalrosse the Shouel took Aflarien in his arms, holds him tight, hugs him as a child would do. As joy would do.

The blackbird circles down swiftly as if gravity in the moment had strengthened.  As she fell her wings slowly transformed into arms, her bill and sharp feet revolved and resurrected into the face of Aflarien’s sister and Dalrosse’s best and final friend.  Her sharp feet and tiny claws stretched into pale, freckled skin and bone.  She falls, yet not too harshly and is softened into the embraces of Aflarien and Dalrosse, the kingfisher flying like a rainbow watching over her.

Within Aflarien the wretched shrieking of Krostic, that being who had possessed him, raged on and on. ‘You will love none be me,’ but the words were obsolete in their embrace and the embrace of the Angel within him. The music that had been Aflarien rose from a whisper and he began singing of the woods and old, old pathways through the trees, he sang of the surprises of wild flowers,  stutteringly, then finding his true voice. Dalrosse heard the song and held him tighter. And with them holding him and the Angel singing made Krostic, stabbing inside his brother’s soul, a statue, crumbling and blackened by time like those old gods in the gardens of R’thera, her desperate screams diminished from time and life as the song flew, freeward into joy. Now she had no grip upon the child of the forestways, the mushroom dreamer and the flower in the long grass.

‘Am I free? Really, is she gone? ‘He smiled and in a whisper and the earth shook in affirmation. He remembered what he had done to the forest, those forests he had burnt. There in the Hollow of Armoroth where the black rose grew imbued with the power of the five roses, away from Ashenmoire over the Water of the Leme he sent his song to Soen. New trees grew, thrusting up from the fire eaten hills, in moments mighty, a green tsunami flowing over the land, the wind in their branches played to the sun. Then he was silent and in the arms of his brother, The Shouel, his sister, his wife. Aflarien died, as he should have died so long ago upon the green mound at R’thera, but here he did not perish alone or unloved. His last sight was of their smiles. Shriven the kingfisher alighted upon his shoulder, singing. They lay his body in the hollow and built a mound for him under the shadow of rose.

The Black Rose finally bloomed, its flowers were of many colours like the sunset and sunrise on the waters of the lake. Menerth had finally found hope and Shaneal and Dalrosse danced at the edge of the water, as children would, as they danced they laughed remembering the manic, stamping dance of Aflarien in big clunky boots and how free he was then and now.

The second part of

Thrice Advent,

The History of the Psybots

continues this tale.