From this point on my experiences diverged from Rosédan’s. She spent most of the day within the college walls learning both the Alka’ales language and the fundamentals of Alka’ales magic at the same time, which I thought a remarkable feat, especially since I’ve become reliant on my Bird to deal with the difficulties created by the multiplicity of tongues. She and I were able to meet in the evenings, but she was always too tired to really talk, and so we generally just strolled around the town together without words.
As for me, I knew I could never hope to be a magician. For one thing, I lacked the desire. I admire Rosédan’s art immensely, but my Bird makes me nervous enough without having a hundred trinkets like it hanging on my fingers and wrists. For another, I understand from Rosédan that the mastery of magic is a long and arduous process involving absolute mental focus. I myself would have said that mental focus is one of my chief virtues, but Rosédan says that she thinks my mind works rather differently than that and wouldn’t be as well-suited to the study of magic as it is to other things.
“Like that chronicle you’ve been writing,” she said. “Though I don’t know how you’re going to gather together all the pieces you’ve left behind in our travels.”
“I’m confident I’ll think of something clever,” I told her in reply.
So I spent my days either climbing in the mountains or making friends in town. I was aware that my position was an irregular one as a guest of the dormitories who was not a student, so I made every effort to secure some other station for myself in A’ula Zölkhöh. Alas, the art of writing was not widespread in this land, being restricted to sacred religious purposes, and although the symbols used bore a striking resemblance to those I knew from Edazzo, there was no shortage of hieratic scribes to copy the scriptures.
There was one discovery I made, however, that delighted me. My readers are no doubt aware by now that I had found this part of the world to be ruled by a multitude of petty gods, with the shadow of the Beast behind it all, no doubt. I had picked up on hints here and there that this was not the case in Alka’ales, but had found myself strangely reluctant to pursue them. I was so accustomed, maybe, to keeping my religion private that it was difficult to begin to speak about it now. In any case, I had met a man named Ostalos Elsahi, a student in the college who spent a great deal of his time at the foot of the mountain. That’s where I first saw him, in fact, sitting under the overhang where the marmots came to nibble on patches of grass. He was sitting so still that at first I thought him to be another rock, the mingling of light and shadow creating the illusion of a human face, perhaps. But then he moved, waving to me with one hand.
We introduced ourselves, and then he fell silent again, studying me with his free hand rubbing his chin. In his other hand he was holding a curious object, a translucent crystal sphere with just a tinge of reddish color to it. “Yes,” he said at last. “And you would be Rosédan’s husband. Sawanin Lusahu and Thipērek Thüzranahü mentioned you. Yet you speak our language very well. Your name is a strange one, but you must have traveled among us before.”
“I admit I was worried about Rosédan, since she doesn’t know the language,” I said, cleverly changing the topic, “but she seems to be learning quickly.”
“Yes, and so she is. But we’re all very curious about her. There’s something about her that—but I don’t think it’s easy to explain to an outsider.”
“Something to do with magic?” I asked. Certainly I could think of a dozen curious and lovely things that made Rosédan stand out in my mind, but I had the advantage of being utterly in love with her.
“You could say that. But you put a curious emphasis on the word ‘magic.’ So I wonder just what you think magic is.” In a sudden motion he tossed the crystal sphere towards me, and I would have caught it if I hadn’t been taken by surprise. It struck me in the shoulder and I was reminded forcefully of those stones I had carried in the Ikkësa camp. I managed to recover it before it rolled too far, though I felt somewhat foolish as I returned to Ostalos Elsahi with the sphere cradled in my arms.
“Well,” I began, then paused as I realized that I was not sure at all what I thought magic was. In the fairy tales I’d heard as a child, there was always a mysterious figure who knew many secrets, made ominous prophecies, and handed out objects of great power, and he was called a magician. Rosédan fit the description in at least one way, with her rings and bracelets, but I had yet to hear her produce any ominous prophecies. “Magic,” I said at last, “is power.” I thought as soon as I did that I had made a mistake.
Ostalos Elsahi nodded and held out his hands to take the crystal from me. “Many have believed that throughout the years. And before the chalice perhaps most did. But what is power?”
I had the disconcerting feeling that I was being tested, and not only that, but I was failing the test badly, an incompetent student before a sympathetic but firm teacher. “Power,” I said, “is the ability to do something.” This seemed tautological, so I tried again. “Power is effecting a change in the world. When you threw that ball and it hit me, that was an exercise of your physical power. If I persuaded you not to throw at me, that would be an exercise of my rhetorical power.”
“And if my father returned and told me not to do it?”
“That would be an exercise of his authority, which I suppose is a form of power.”
“So then power is a transfer from the inward to the outward,” said Ostalos Elsahi, which is where he lost me again. I shrugged, since he seemed to be waiting for a response. “And there is something to that argument. Yet there has to be more to magic than that. So do we merely gather up authority for ourselves to command the elements of the world? Is there no glimpse of something beyond?”
“I certainly couldn’t say,” I murmured.
“No, I’m sorry. But we’ve established that power takes multiple forms, and it’s similar with magic, I believe. That’s how Rosédan seems different to me: she lacks the kind of authority we cultivate. But she is only a novice. And she will learn.”
Being fairly lost at this point in the conversation, I decided to ask about the crystal. He looked down at it and chuckled softly.
“It’s only an aid to help me concentrate on the things that I need to concentrate on,” he said, which didn’t help my confusion. “So just like a priest concentrates on a physical fire in order to lift his thoughts to the Flame, I have my own symbols and my own ends in mind.”
“The Flame!” I said in delight. “You too are a follower of the Amber Books?”
“You sound surprised. But naturally I am. Though there are men who seek after the old gods or after foreign gods from the west, where should I turn except to the Flame that burns in all things? And wasn’t it the Flame that brought us the chalice?” His face was turned down towards the ground, and after a moment of awkward silence he said, “Perhaps so. But where is the chalice now? And where is the Flame? We’re alone here in the plain in the shadow of the mountains, and that is a frightening thought to many of us. And the priests complain about it too, asking where their devotees have all gone. But when the chalice has fled, even the temples of the priests seem duller than they once did. But you probably don’t notice, unless you were here when the chalice graced us.”
“No,” I said. “I have a sharp eye for things like that, and I noticed something was wrong, though I didn’t know what.”
“It was a beautiful dream of grace and light that we shared,” said Ostalos Elsahi, raising his face to the sky. “Yet the dream couldn’t last forever, not in this world, and so it didn’t. And so we’re awake in a morning that can only disappoint us compared to the dream.” He sighed, and his gaze fell back to the crystal in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Though you’re a guest among us, I’ve been rambling on and on, inflicting my tedious thoughts on you. But now you know what I do out here: I think and talk to myself for hours on end.”
“I can think of worse ways to spend one’s time,” I said.
“And I, but I can think of better ways too. And in fact it’s about time that I go back to town and do some of those things. But if you wish, I can show you the temple that I usually visit.”
I agreed to this, and so we parted at the entrance of a building that looked very little like the temples of the Flame that I was accustomed to (it was certainly no wonder that I hadn’t recognized it). It was in fact not much different from any of the other squarish buildings nearby, but there was above the sill of the door a character that I recognized, after a moment’s thought, as the ideogram for fire.
I went inside and found there a little antechamber whose walls were covered in writing, with no sign of any images or symbols of the Shimases. A little man sat on the ground in front of the far door. When he saw me he smiled and I was reminded somehow of a toad’s mouth. “Ah, hello, hello,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met, have we? My memory is very poor these days.”
“No, I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said. “I’m Kësil, a guest of the college of magic. I came here because it’s been far too long since I’ve had an opportunity to meditate on the Flame.”
His smile grew even wider, to such an extent that it hardly seemed human. “Then come in, come in. The Flame is always present.”
I followed him through the door into an inner room where a low brick wall surrounded a pit in the floor. It was not what I was accustomed to seeing, but the fire burned in the pit and that was all that mattered at the moment.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the little man give me a slight bow. “I can recite a passage from the Amber Books, if you like.”
“Thank you, but no,” I said. “I will need no external aid.”
I believe that I have mentioned the Shimases once or twice in these accounts of mine, and the devotion I have for them. But the Shimases are only messengers of the glory of the Flame that is beyond words. I am little more than an indifferent writer, I confess, even when it comes to mundane things, and at this point I am afraid what skill I have deserts me and I am afraid to write lest I profane what is sacred. I can write this little bit, at least. I had wondered from time to time, with a strange fear, whether I had not been separated from the Flame by my travels, a fear that, no matter how irrational, was made more unsettling by the absence of true religion in the lands I had thus far visited. But now I was at peace.
That evening I mentioned Ostalos Elsahi to Rosédan as we walked. “Yes, I know him,” she said. “He’s a close friend of Sawanin Lusahu and Thipērek Thüzranahü, I think, but he doesn’t say much.”
“He certainly said a lot to me,” I remarked.
“Well, there is the difference in languages. You really are lucky. I remember how difficult it was for me to learn how to speak again in Edazzo, and now I have to learn a third language!”
I couldn’t help but laugh, which resulted in her giving me a terrifyingly stern look, and I saw that I would have to explain. “I was only thinking that for someone who’s mastered magic it couldn’t be too much harder to master a language.”
“Trust me, it can. You’re comparing the mountain to the ocean: it’s impressive but pointless.” By now her hand had found mine, and as I have no sisters myself, I’m not entirely sure that the way she was caressing it was a pure and sororal one. “Well,” she said, apparently reading something in my expression, “we have to keep up the fiction, don’t we?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
That was the previous day. I’ve described my encounter with Ostalos Elsahi in such close detail because of what happened today. Generally, as I mentioned before, I spent my time outside of the college walls, but early this morning Sawanin Lusahu rousted me out of my chilly slumber by tossing a pancake on my head. I call it a pancake because that is what it most reminded me of, but it was thicker and heavier than the cakes I’m accustomed to from my home. The pancake over my face was followed by something (an apple, I later discovered) that struck me in the midriff and almost knocked the breath out of me.
“Oh!” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Then what by the Flame did you mean to do?” I asked with, I hope pardonable, irritation.
“I was bringing you breakfast and I tripped. I’m terribly sorry.”
The pancake did smell good, so I sat up and peeled it off my face. “All right,” I said, squinting at Sawanin Lusahu, “why did you bring me breakfast?”
“Because today is the day when we remember the coming of the chalice.”
“And what does that have to do with breakfast?” I asked, taking a bite of the pancake and discovering that it tasted as good as it smelled.
“It’s traditional, for one thing. Besides, with all the dancing and singing it’s good to be well fed.”
I’d always heard that it was better to dance on an empty stomach, myself, but I didn’t want to offend Sawanin Lusahu, and besides, by that time I had already eaten a good third of the pancake. I took the apple with me as we went down through the dormitory, which indeed was largely empty. Sawanin Lusahu explained that most of the students had left already to prepare for the ceremonies.
“I’m surprised you weren’t wakened by all the noise,” he said. “But don’t worry that you’re late or anything like that. There are two parts to the celebration, and the sacred ceremonies themselves are only for the initiates of the college.”
“Rosédan’s there, isn’t she?” I asked.
He nodded, then seemed to be deep in thought for a while, a time that I spent contemplating the sky and the clouds that loomed over the western plain. It would be the dead of winter soon enough, which was not a welcome thought given the already unpleasant conditions of the room where I slept. “I don’t mean to pry,” said Sawanin Lusahu at last, “but it must be difficult for you being separated from your wife for so long. The two dormitories are meant for the unmarried, of course. I’m afraid my studies keep me terribly busy, but I have been looking into finding better accommodation for you two. Both my family and Thipērek Thüzranahü’s are elsewhere in Alka’ales, else I’m sure they could have helped. But for now, I do know of places where you can be alone, if you understand me.”
It was an awkward proposal. Both Rosédan and I have been blessed by Laras with a certain amount of self-control in these matters, but it wouldn’t help if Sawanin Lusahu began setting up assignations like this. “Don’t worry about it,” I said hurriedly. “We’re quite able of handling such things on our own.” I regret that my cheeks burned as I said this. And even if it wasn’t, strictly, a lie, my Bird made a small protest.
“Well!” he said with a forced cheerfulness, no doubt as eager as I to discuss another topic. “The ceremonies themselves will be almost over by now, and I’ll deliver you to Rosédan before the dances start!”
We passed under the archway into the college grounds, where I was surprised to see, for the first time in my experience, an actual crowd. The people filled the squares and even the alleys between buildings, most of them dressed in a solemn black, all raising their hands and chanting in words that it took me a while to understand. Alas, whatever poetry the original words possessed was erased by my Bird, as usual. I long to hear the songs of my home again, unmarred by translation, the breath of the poet still in them.
“The sky is cast above our heads / the earth is hard below us, When / we cried and wept and saw no light / and clouds of gloom upon us, then / O glory glory glory came / the chalice full of life and flame.”
Or something to that effect. Once I heard this much I started paying more attention to the faces in the crowd, hoping to see Rosédan. Sawanin Lusahu seemed to know where he was going, however, leading me through narrow, mostly empty alleys to a two-storied building, and up the stairs that wrapped around it. I saw before we reached the roof that there were two women standing there, leaning against the parapet, and I was delighted but not surprised to recognized Rosédan and Thipērek Thüzranahü.
After the appropriate embraces, I asked Rosédan about the ceremonies. “I didn’t understand most of them,” she admitted. “It seemed to me like they were re-enacting something, but I couldn’t tell what. But maybe now you can explain why our friends were so eager to bring you here.”
“Well, there was some discussion of dancing.”
“Good,” she said. I briefly considered telling her about Sawanin Lusahu’s remarks regarding our supposed marriage, but thought better of it. “Oh, Kësil, it’s wonderful to get away from all the lectures I can barely understand and all the arguments I definitely can’t understand. It seems like every day it gets harder and harder. I wish you could give me your useful little friend.”
I wished so too. But at this point the Bird seemed to be inextricable from my scalp, which unsettled me whenever I thought about it, so I generally didn’t. “Well,” I said after a short silence, “let’s see what Sawanin Lusahu and Thipērek Thüzranahü have planned for us.”
There was dancing that day, and enough of it that I was grateful for the breakfast Sawanin Lusahu had brought me. Normally I would expect such a festival to be accompanied by great quantities of food, but nowhere did I see any restaurants or vendors, or indeed anyone eating at all. I asked Sawanin Lusahu about this and he explained that it was a mark of the asceticism that had been commonly practiced in the days before the chalice. “Our fathers believed that in order to make ourselves worthy, we had to separate ourselves from the material world through such self-denial. The chalice changed everything, of course, but we still remember and honor those who came before it.”
“Ostalos Elsahi!” called Thipērek Thüzranahü suddenly, waving her arms. I looked and saw the man I knew by that name leaning against a wall and staring up to the sky. Thipērek Thüzranahü shouted again and he jumped, then came loping over to us, an expression on his face that I couldn’t entirely interpret. Was he pleased to see us or irritated? Or was he simply exhausted from hunger?
“Now I’m pleased to see you,” he said, but that doesn’t prove much by itself, being the sort of polite thing one says when one is not pleased to see someone. Of course, it is also the sort of polite thing one says when one is pleased to see someone, so I’m not sure why he bothered to say it at all. A more useful Bird would have clarified this, I think. “Though I’ve been looking for Enikkhe Konahu, I haven’t seen him or Phērīs Tipelahi anywhere.”
Thipērek Thüzranahü made a pouting face. “She told me they wouldn’t be able to make it.”
“I wish they’d told me,” said Ostalos Elsahi, and now he was definitely irritated. “And I had some questions I wanted to ask both of them.”
“Today?” asked Sawanin Lusahu in exaggerated shock.
“Today. For time is short.”
“What do you mean, time is short? Is there something happening I don’t know about?”
“Many things are happening in the world that you don’t know about, and many things are happening in the world that I don’t know about. But I’m not surprised if you don’t know about the door that is opening. Though I’d hoped to use that door in my work, I needed Enikkhe Konahu’s advice.”
“I’m surprised to hear you ask for help.”
Ostalos Elsahi sighed heavily and turned to Thipērek Thüzranahü. “And tell your fiancé that your work is so similar to mine I don’t need to take inspiration from it. When there are aspects of the work that I can’t see clearly, it’s best to look at it from a different perspective altogether.”
“Enikkhe Konahu’s perspective certainly is different,” said Thipērek Thüzranahü with a laugh.
“But the door will open again, and I can be patient. Ah, Kësil, I see they dragged you along too.” Again he sighed, and it occurred to me that the mood of the group had taken a definite turn downward upon his arrival. “And it’s a fine piece of hypocrisy. Most of those you see dancing and singing don’t care about the chalice at all. Though they feel its absence in their hearts, the last thing they really want is for it to descend again to them.”
“What do they want, then?” I asked. Throughout this conversation I did my best to translate the gist for my poor Rosédan, but I’m afraid she must have missed a great deal of what we were saying,
“A hundred different things. And anything and everything except the chalice.”
While Ostalos Elsahi was speaking, Sawanin Lusahu had been making various motions and noises, the picture of a man who was fighting an urge to interrupt. Finally he was given his opportunity when Ostalos Elashi paused, and he said in a rush, “We constantly look back to the chalice rather than ahead. We would go to our graves following a phantom of the chalice if one appeared to us.”
“But a phantom is better than nothing. And it’s better to have a dream than nothing at all.”
“No, no it isn’t! A dream is a snare, a temptation to do nothing beyond it, to be swaddled in a comforting illusion.”
Ostalos Elsahi’s lips curved slowly into a smile. “But it’s not a snare to seek something higher wherever it can be found, even in a dream. Now is there something you offer as an alternative?”
“Yes,” said Sawanin Lusahu, and in an instant his tone changed. His back was straighter and his voice louder than I had seen or heard from him before. “I’ve been working on it with Thipērek Thüzranahü for a while, and I think I have something to show you now.”
At this point I’m afraid I had entirely given up on translating for Rosédan. No doubt the matter of their conversation would have made more sense if I had more context, but as it was I was lost. What happened next was even more baffling.
Sawanin Lusahu raised one hand and said, in a voice that had the timbre, even if not the volume, of the rolling thunder, “Let the dew begin to fall!” An odd thing to say, since it was a little past noon, I thought.
They started to appear then, or at any rate I started to see them. We were a little way off from the other groups that were talking or even singing near us, but now as I looked, I saw that there were among them those with an emerald hue to their skin. In some it was brighter, as if they were carved from a precious stone; in others it was richer, like a carpet of moss. I found myself thinking of the green man I had seen in the House of Reeds in Dūrī, but most of these were women, and not only that, but extraordinarily beautiful women.
I stared at them and wondered if the others were seeing the same thing I was. With difficulty I looked aside to Rosédan. Her face had paled and her eyes were wide, so I took her hand. It seemed like the thing a husband would do for a wife in the circumstances.
The green women were, I noticed, beginning to come towards us, slipping away from their own shadows and walking steadily our way, enigmatic smiles on their faces. I’ve written that their smiles were enigmatic, as if everything about them weren’t an enigma, but their smiles were especially so. I turned my eyes on Sawanin Lusahu and was unnerved to see that his expression wasn’t enigmatic at all. He was terrified. Thipērek Thüzranahü clung to his side, trembling. Only Ostalos Elsahi seemed calm.
“There is a light of glory around you,” said one of the green women, the nearest to us. I glanced around, looking for the glimmer of such a light, but saw nothing.
Ostalos Elsahi took a few steps forward and gave Thipērek Thüzranahü a slight nod, saying quietly, “I’m sorry.” Then he raised his own hand and said, “Rest.” A breeze touched the back of my neck and tossed the pebbles in the street, and just like that, the green women were gone.
Sawanin Lusahu shuddered and his face tightened, then he turned to Ostalos Elsahi and touched two of his fingers to his own forehead. “That was well done,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. I summoned something that I didn’t understand.”
Ostalos Elsahi touched his fingers to his head in response. He seemed to be just as embarrassed as Sawanin Lusahu. “Then was that what you were looking for?” he asked.
“No!” Thipērek Thüzranahü cried. “That was something else, something wild and dangerous. We didn’t ask for it.”
Sawanin Lusahu shook his head slowly and said, “That is exactly what I asked for. Something else, something different, something to waken us from our memory-drunken slumber.”
“Even if it’s a nightmare that wakens you?”
“Even then.”
Ostalos Elsahi stared at Sawanin Lusahu for a long tense moment. I looked to see how Thipērek Thüzranahü was taking the argument, but was distracted when Rosédan tugged on my arm and asked me to tell her what was going on.
“Well,” she said after I gave a hurried summary, “I understand less than I did before.”
Then Sawanin Lusahu laughed and held out his hand for Ostalos Elsahi to take. The two men embraced, Thipērek Thüzranahü dashed tears from her eyes, and everything seemed to be settled.
I discussed these happenings with Rosédan shortly before I began to write this account, telling her also about what I’d seen in the House of Reeds. She seemed troubled, but in the end we agreed that it would be best for her to remain here and continue her studies. “After all,” she rightly said, “there isn’t much we can do if we remain ignorant.”