Chapter 10: Song of the Spaces

Technically, FLATLAND is the 10th story/insert in Song of the Spaces, but as it's comprised of a number of parts it's too long to offer the whole here. Here, therefore, is the first part:

FLATLAND

 1

Day One: Discovery

2000 - 1800 years ago

A MATTER OF hours had elapsed between the horrifying destruction of Torrke and therefore their physical selves, and new wholeness, between the blankness of memory loss and total recall.

Who would have thought the two of them, Enchanter and Darak Or, arch enemies, would rely on each other, a temporary symbiosis. No black and white now, merely shades of grey.

Initially Margus whined, starting a list of complaints the moment they set foot to the road that would lead them to the nearest town, and Torrullin let him ramble on, for once finding comfort in the Darak Or’s voice, using the monologues to himself discover equilibrium.

The town, when they came upon it late afternoon, was pretty. It nestled comfortably into a valley showing the promise of coming spring glory.

They entered mindful of the warnings they had earlier, but there was no sign of the law, although neither knew what form the law took.

It was a village really, akin to others in other realms. A postal service, a butchery, a general dealer, the mainstays of most villages, and neat houses on either side of one road, with larger residences on the hillsides. There were a variety of large trees, some blossoming, others evergreen, and others sporting their winter guises. Quiet reigned.

A woman entered the post office clutching envelopes, and both butchery and dealer had a few patrons. Other than three old men strolling further along, there was no bustle. Birds twittered in song, one enterprising fellow calling boisterously from the centre of the road.

The two strangers for a brief instance believed themselves mistaken, and back on Valaris.

That changed when the woman left the post office, empty-handed, and caught sight of them.

“Brigands!” Her hysterical cry echoed through the settlement.

They expected to be swamped by crowds or law enforcers, but every figure vanished from view, including the distraught woman, retreating into the postal building. Businesses were boarded up from the inside in a blink, so swiftly done it had to be practised.

Obviously the brigands paid more visits than these folk cared for or deserved.

Margus laughed and Torrullin cuffed him. “Shut up, will you? We will find nobody prepared to talk to us if you scare them with typical marauder behaviour.”

“Did you see those three old men pumping stick legs? Funny!”

“How old are you, for god’s sake?” Torrullin hissed, and did not wait for a reply.

He did not see the dark flush that crept over his companion’s features and would not have cared - Margus’ age was a sore point, for Margus.

Torrullin strode through the town, ignoring boarded buildings, knowing no help would be forthcoming there, and headed towards the house the three old men stumbled into. He hoped they would be easier to convince into speech.

“Where are you going?” Margus asked, following.

“I aim to try those three. You will stay outside.” Torrullin halted before a cottage set back from the road amid a garden setting. “Keep an eye out for the authorities.”

“I do not have to listen to you.”

“Margus, we have no power here. Someone must keep watch.”

He considered that. “Fine.” Margus leaned against a trunk and theatrically began to look left, then right.

Wondering how long he could stomach such behaviour, Torrullin left him to it and ambled up the garden path. He held his arms away from his body, palms upward to signify his lack of weapons, and reached the front door unchallenged.

He knocked. “I am not here to hurt anyone; I am no brigand, my oath on it. I am a stranger and simply seek directions. Please open the door.”

Long minutes passed, but he waited patiently. He saw the twitch of a curtain from the corner of his eye, knew he was being scrutinised. Let them see a tired traveller, unarmed, waiting without rancour as if time was of no account.

His patience paid off.

A bolt slid back noisily, then another and another, and finally the door was pulled ajar, cautiously. As an old man’s head craned around, Torrullin gave an encouraging smile. It allayed the man’s fears, for he drew the door wide and called over his shoulder,

“I think he tells the truth!”

“Huh! You are too trusting!” someone yelled back, but two shadowy figures joined the first.

Torrullin suppressed a grin.

“What do you want, stranger?” the same yelling voice demanded from the gloomy interior.

“I need to find someone and I need directions.”

“Who are you looking for?” the third member of the trio asked.

This was the part that could have them clam up on him, but there was no other way. “I do not know her name, but I hear tell of a witch. I am looking for her.”

The door began to close, pushed by the two at the back, and before Torrullin could make a detaining gesture, the first old man shoved them back.

“Stop it! Give him a chance.”

He stepped out of the doorway onto the patio. The door slammed shut behind him as his companions heaved against a counter balance no longer there. Loud curses sounded inside. The old man ignored the fracas.

“Come; those two will give you no hearing now.”

He led the way to a damp bench under bare trees, and sat. Torrullin lowered next to him, after checking if Margus was in place. The old man glanced at the fair man near the road, shrugged and looked to the stranger at his side. An inquisitive and intelligent blue gaze swept over him and Torrullin was amazed at the degree of trust, the risk he took, and said so.

“I fear two things, stranger. One is brigand scum and the other is enforcer filth. I do not know which is worse, but I do know you are neither and I have nothing against witches.”

Torrullin smiled. “Then I thank you for opening the door.”

The old man bobbed his head and smiled too. “My pleasure. Now, I take it you are wanting to find Madri. She is the witch in these parts, although that is an enforcer label, for she has no magic.”

It was not magic he sought, but information. A witch without power here was once a witch with power elsewhere; natural instincts did not die in death.

“Follow the road through town over the footbridge beyond; about a mile further is an old chestnut - it’s the only one, you can’t miss it. A path branches left into the hills. It’s a distance in, but you will find her cottage at the end of it.”

Torrullin rose. “Thank you.”

“May I ask why you seek her?” the old man asked, also rising.

“I prefer not to dump you into further trouble.”

“Pish! As if anyone would actually listen to me.”

“You have been of help, friend.”

“Madri is a difficult soul, stranger. She may not speak to you.”

Torrullin checked on Margus and said, “I … we search for a way out.” He needed to find the way back to Valaris and had to start the process now, and while he searched he would deal with Margus.

The old man was serious. “I assume you refer not to Bluebell County. You are searching for a way off the Plane.”

“Yes.” Torrullin’s heart thumped. “You know of this?”

“Do I know we inhabit the flatlands, that it’s an unnatural state? Yes, but I hail from a world worse than this, and I choose to remain here. If that means hiding from enforcer and brigand, so be it.”

“I met others who knew nothing of globes and stars.”

“Only those who come fresh to the Plane know and they quickly realise to speak of it brings enforcers. We are rare now. Most folk you encounter will be born of this place, and maybe that is not a bad thing, maybe the enforcers will relax their vigil with time.”

“Is Madri from beyond?”

“Round land born.”

“A witch once?”

“That is uncertain, for the enforcers brand folk with names in the call of their misguided duty. She won’t know how to exit, stranger, I can tell you now. She can tell you what to ask, who to ask it of, and where.”

Ah. “And you never asked?”

“I told you I prefer it here; that information is something I can do without.”

“And this Madri, she chooses to remain as well?”

The old man sighed. “It’s the time factor. Madri has been here eight years, but back home …”

“… between six and eight hundred thousand years. I understand.”

“I see that you do. Leave now before someone shouts for the authorities. Stay away from them if you can help it, know there are informers everywhere, and anything can bring an enforcer down on you.”

Torrullin was thoughtful. “Tell me, do the enforcers know the way off the Plane?”

The old man gave a grin. “Why else do they capture any who speak of the round lands? Ignorance aids them. If they can eradicate all knowledge of beyond …”

“… they would control everything. Tyrants, with a source of wealth beyond the Plane.”

“Thus it seems.”

“Thank you for your help,” Torrullin said, beginning to move away.

“Stranger, don’t hope too much. A few days at most, then resign yourself to this realm.”

“Never,” Torrullin replied, and the old man shook his head, watching him go.

 

 

TORRULLIN LED THE way to Madri’s cottage in silence Margus could not break. He tried, but a curt, “I am thinking,” caused him to hold his tongue.

The enforcers knew, Torrullin mused as they walked. Some had to be entrants, not Plane-born. Why keep it close? Was it as simple as a source of wealth to aid tyrants? Why choose to stay when they had the means to leave? A tyrant could be a tyrant anywhere, after all. What were these enforcers hiding or protecting?

Thoughts along those lines kept him closed-mouthed as they crossed a picturesque footbridge over a gurgling stream, its banks a wild display of tiny flowers in every imaginable hue.

The old man reminded him anew time was of the essence, and that aspect continually intruded upon his thoughts. This was the first day in the invisible realms, this curiously familiar flatland. No great and startling revelation, but by the time the sun rose on their second day tomorrow, two centuries fled by on Valaris.

The Cèlaver Priestess told him of the time warp and it suited his needs. If, by some terrible miscalculation, he let Margus slip through his fingers and Margus managed to return to Valaris, time would dim memory of him there and his terror would be less startling. Valaris and loved ones would have years of peace, and that was worth any price. Of course, he had no intention of failing, but it meant he would return in their future, and it suited him. They needed the perspective of time, for he was weary of his pedestal.

Yet he battled the inexorable clock and no doorway loomed on the horizon. And Margus had to be dealt with. He would give this misadventure ten days and if there was no answer by then, swore to break every rule, taboo, restriction and law to break out. Even if it meant a trail of destruction in his wake.

As they turned in to the little-travelled path indicated by the gnarled chestnut, Torrullin glanced sidelong at his companion. Margus kept pace, a healthy glow on his usually pale face, interestedly studying their new surroundings. While the natural world was not strange to either of them, it was the first time Margus had looked … and seen. Margus was given the gift of respite. As he believed himself under no immediate threat, he was not constantly on alert. Margus was happy, in a sense.

It was difficult to hate an innocent-looking man and it would be harder to kill him in a defenceless state, if only because of his sense of fair play, but Margus needed to die here.

I know you, Darak Or; I know what you are capable of behind that angelic mask. You killed my son and you are to pay for that.

Thank the gods the man had stopped whining.

“What dark thought plagues you, Enchanter?”

Torrullin smiled. “Guess.”

Margus laughed. “Not unless I get to you first.”

Torrullin merely quirked his eyebrows and looked ahead.

Margus would not get physical. They were evenly matched, as they discovered in a room in Galilan’s hospital, and thus a brawl would be long fought and patently useless. Margus might sink to underhanded means, like poison, or ratting him out to the enforcers, but Margus had to know that would only slow his enemy, not kill him. It would not happen yet, for Margus needed the Enchanter to find the way out; with his power absent, his self-confidence had taken a severe blow as well. This mutual reliance would hold for now.

“Where did Vannis go, do you think?” Margus asked.

“I do not wish to discuss Vannis with you.”

Margus snorted and continued walking.

This morning, Valaris realm, Vannis died with them in the destruction of Torrke. Vannis allowed his mortal choices to determine his afterworld realm. Gods, he hoped Vannis found the right place and the one person he wanted to be with on the other side - his beloved Raken. Anything else was too terrible to contemplate. Vannis, the man he revered and loved most in the entire universe. Vannis, eternally moved on.

He had to find a way to deal with that loss also.

The cottage came into view; a haphazard wooden affair without cohesion, as if extended as need arose. A huge waterfall saved it from utter ugliness, a broad expanse of foaming white falling into a deep pool behind the cottage, framing the white-washed house in frothy lace. The falls were a distance away, for the roaring tumble was muted, melodic and pleasant. Ferns grew in profusion about the cottage, thriving in the damp, misty enclave between hills and forest.

A woman waited for them. Large, ugly as sin, as the old saying went, with virtually no hair, her eyes and mouth lost in the jowls that was her face. She wore a tight red dress emphasizing every wobbling roll. Small dark eyes studied them patiently, resignedly, well acquainted with the first impression she made.

Margus, to his credit, remained expressionless and Torrullin approached with a smile. “Madri?” he asked, coming to a halt a few feet away.

“Yes,” she returned, her gaze flicking from one to the other. “What do you want here?”

Torrullin cleared his throat. A difficult soul. “We are hoping you may be of …”

“You are strangers to the Plane? And you seek the way off? Did someone tell you I could help you?”

“Yes.”

She wheezed a laugh. “Why, why, why? So dangerous and foolhardy! Why want to get off when you have just arrived, why, when you shouldn’t yet know enough to want to escape? Hmm, what secret lies here before me? Never mind, I’ll tell you what I know, but I warn you it isn’t much.”

She turned ponderously, like a softened dragon, and made her way to the front door of her cottage. As she reached it, she swung back. “Someone must’ve told you I don’t like to help people; I have never done so since the enforcers bound me to this place. Do you know why I help you?” Her bright gaze went from one to the other. “You two are the first, ever, not to flinch at the sight of this rotting body.”