12th hour /
36th minute to 13th hour
LATER, alone with Chitty,
who stroked her neck, her hand trembling, Torrullin said, “Your society is
changing.”
“By the moment,” she
agreed.
“We have learned much
since arriving here, and thank our lucky stars we landed up with you and your
Circle, but we can no longer wait it out. We cannot stay here, Chitty.”
She did not respond.
“There is much that is
deceitful moving through this local ether in the present, and it will get worse
unless someone steps into that arena.”
“You intend to do so?”
Chitty questioned.
Scratching at his left
temple, Torrullin grimaced. “We are not permitted to interfere in another’s
society, and yet every part of my being wishes to right the wrongs here. Still,
who am I to judge? Perhaps there is much wrong in my society also, and I
cannot see it unless an outsider points it out. Will I welcome that? Probably
not. Yours won’t appreciate our interference either. It may lead to a civil
war, Chitty, and that is ever to be avoided.”
She leaned forward,
clasping her hands tightly together. “But, my friend, we are engaged in
civil war and have been for generations, and I’m not talking merely male versus
female. Every Nascent Season, clans war on each other. Men kill each other with
impunity. Have you not wondered why our population is somewhat low?”
Straightening, she added, “Someone needs to interfere.”
He sighed then. “I
guess the rules are different in Arianne.”
She sniffed. “And there
is the prickly subject you keep avoiding. Look around you. We are alone, and if
you prefer, we will remain alone while you tell me. Let them have their lunch
and then go on with daily tasks. After all, much has gone undone recently,
given most of us are spending our days in this dome.”
He smiled,
acknowledging that. “It would be better if someone with your wisdom decides how
much is proper to reveal to her charges. While it isn’t contentious, the tale
of Arianne is a fantastical one, and most will not believe it.” He stared at
her. “I will not be called a liar.”
She sighed. “Very well,
you and me, and no other will enter while we speak.”
“I need Elianas,” he
demurred.
“Why?”
“He needs to agree with
any action I put forth.”
“Which action has you concerned?”
“Heading south to stop
an army in its tracks,” he growled.
Smiling, she murmured,
“I believe Elianas will agree with such action.”
“He will, but it is the
how he will temper.”
“Ah, say no more. Shall
I send for him?”
“No need; he is on his
way.”
“He hears you?”
“He does.”
“Are you lovers as well
as rulers?”
Torrullin closed his
eyes. “Does it matter?”
“No, not to me, but you
are at pains to hide it.”
He reopened his eyes.
“Elianas prefers his privacy.”
“That I sensed within
the first hour of meeting you, yes, and it is as well that you say nothing. Men
on this world will string you up, or try to, given they need to hide their own
proclivities. Women, after all, are things and where is the pleasure in that?
While I am aware no one will be able to hang you, you need them to hear you.”
His eyes glittered, and
then he straightened, moments before the dark-haired man entered, and Chitty
understood then how very aware of each other they were.
“Welcome, Elianas,” she
smiled. “Torrullin refuses to talk unless you are present.”
“As well,” Elianas
murmured, “for the Valla can be impulsive.” He took a seat beside Torrullin and
nudged him. “What are we talking about?”
“Leaving the enclave to
stop that army, and Arianne.”
“Ah, the big stuff.”
Chitty, wisely, moved
them along. “How you deal with an army is not something I can have much say on,
but I have a feeling, this odd sensation, each time you mention Arianne. I wish
to know. Please.”
Elianas glanced towards
the entrance. “Will this remain private?”
Chitty nodded.
“Good. It will sound as
if we are spinning a story and if someone calls me a liar, I will call him or
her on it.”
Torrullin’s eyes
crinkled at their corners. “I said something similar.”
Completely opposite and
yet exactly the same, Chitty mused. They knew each other well. “Arianne, I
suspect, is the name of this space we swerve through,” she then prompted.
“You are Master of
Reaume, Torrullin. You tell it,” Elianas murmured.
“We are Masters
of Reaume, Elianas.”
“If you say so.”
Elianas did not look at him.
Pressing his lips
briefly together, Torrullin rose to pace. “Elianas is right in that this story
must begin with Reaume. Imagine, Chitty, a giant bubble.” He drew an imaginary
sphere in the air. “And another.” He drew one next to it. “They are separate. They
also overlap.” He moved his outstretched hands closer to each other as if
herding his imaginary bubbles together. “And they occupy precisely the same
space as well.” His hands imitated two spheres becoming one. “These three
states are continuous, and all three exist at the same time. They behave
differently, and are therefore separate. One can access the one from the other,
and that is where they overlap. And yet, one exists because of the other, and
vice versa. Therefore, they are one.”
As if pulling the
imaginary bubbles apart, Torrullin’s moved his hands in opposite directions. He
then pointed at the one on his left. “This is Reaume, a mighty space filled
with a multitude of worlds.” He pointed to his right. “This is Arianne, as
great a space but not as populated. Both are real because of each other.
Avaelyn and Lykandir are part of Arianne. We call this the realm of lonely
worlds, for planets are spread far apart and rarely interact with each other.
Mostly the isolation is not due to distance, however; it is because the worlds
are too different from each other to allow for visitation. Yes, I see the
question. Avaelyn is similar to Lykandir, and we move ever closer to each
other, which negates what I just said. Avaelyn, however, was not conceived in
Arianne; she was born in Reaume, and we, Elianas and I, brought her into
Arianne deliberately.”
Chitty could only stare
at him.
Chuckling, Torrullin
resumed his seat. “While fantastical, I believe you are able to accept
everything I said with due thought, suspending what you know about science to
rely on the supernatural instead. It means, yes, that Elianas and I have great
power, far greater than all your High Mages put together since time began here.
We can, for example, remove Avaelyn from the approaching alignment, but that
means returning her to Reaume.”
“We are not ready to
return to Reaume,” Elianas muttered.
Chitty blinked. “Tell
me about Reaume.”
Torrullin relaxed,
perhaps realising she was not in a state of disbelief, rather one of astonishment.
“There are isolated
worlds in Reaume also, but often that is a factor of either distance or choice.
For the most part, worlds, and there are many worlds, interact with each other
all the time. Some of that is achieved via magical transport, but most of it is
due to space travel, the flying ships we spoke of before, and those vessels
travel at speeds one cannot put numbers to. They cross the dark space between
galaxies as if it is of no matter, and yet those distances are truly vast.
Reaume is busy.”
“We chose isolation
from such busyness,” Elianas said.
“Why?” Chitty asked. “I
would imagine that living on a world there is much the same as living on a
world here. Daily life is daily life … surely?”
“Not all societies are
pastoral, but those that are, yes, life there is as life here, perhaps with the
odd spaceship overflying added in. The city-worlds, however, are something
else. The entire planet is one city, buildings pressing against each other with
nary an open space between. Hundreds of billions live on those worlds. To see
it even once is enough to know what not to do on one’s homeworld.”
“Hundreds of billions,”
Chitty echoed.
“Reaume is home to many,
Chitty, and they all wanted something from me and Elianas. We have power, and
today someone needs us to reverse an avalanche, tomorrow someone implores us to
save them from an evil autocrat, while last month we world hopped chasing
marauders, and next week we may be called upon to return a Warlock to the
netherworld. It was too much; we had to leave.”
Elianas, head bowed,
stared at his hands, and remained silent.
“You were exhausted,”
Chitty whispered.
Torrullin nodded. “To
the point we became something to fear.”
“Because you started
pushing back, hoping they would leave you alone?”
“That was part of it,
yes, but one becomes what one chases also. For the sake of our souls, we bowed
out.” Torrullin glanced at Elianas’ lowered head. “For the sake of the love I
bear Elianas, I needed to find my light again.”
Elianas’ head had
jerked up. “You dare?”
“I dare,” Torrullin
murmured.
Closing his eyes,
Elianas dropped his head, and said, “For the sake of the love I bear you, I
will let that pass.”
Chitty murmured, “I
think the two of you must have some epic … battles.”
Neither man said a
word, but both smiled, one with lowered head, the other directly.
Rubbing her hands
together, Chitty stated, “There is something you are not telling me about
Reaume and Arianne.”
“The rulers of the
realms,” Elianas took over, straightening to look at Chitty, his dark eyes
unreadable. “There is no Mother Goddess; she is merely the concept ‘life’ to
us. There are no gods, other than those who style themselves such and trade on
the feelings of the desperate and needy. There is no Lykan, Chitty, but most
need someone greater to look up to, to invoke, to talk to when lonely, for the
act of believing in something more inspires people to be more. What happens, in
fact, is that we inspire ourselves. The belief fostered is merely the means,
and there is nothing wrong with that. If it works, fine.”
Chitty held a hand up.
“This is what happened to you in Reaume. You were seen as gods.”
“Something like that,”
Elianas nodded.
“Flawed gods,”
Torrullin muttered.
“Don’t interrupt.”
Elianas sent him a look. “There are beings, however, far beyond godhood that
few know of. One needs to be regarded as a god,” and he grunted before going
on, “to see these beings. Every world, here, there, inhabited and deserted, has
a resident sentience. The world guardian. Few know that and yet, if known, one
could say the guardian should be the true god of a world. It, however, would
not function if revered, for it is neutral, cares for the very earth, not the
souls walking upon that earth.”
She was now sure
astonishment would add a thousand wrinkles to her visage, for her face
contorted oddly at every new piece of information. “Lykandir has a guardian?”
“Yes,” Torrullin
murmured.
“Have you met a world
guardian?”
“We have,” Elianas
said, and went on. “These guardians are connected in Reaume, as they are
connected in Arianne, because of the true rulers of these realms. These are not
men or a council of beings sitting in a mighty palace keeping the realms
functioning according to their whim. These are beings much like the world
guardians, in that their focus is on the great space, every atom of matter and
every current of energy within it, and not on the behaviour of the souls daring
to claim territory.”
“They do know, though,”
Torrullin said.
“In Reaume, yes, but
not so much in Arianne. We call the rulers of Reaume the Syllvan, and they are
tree-like beings exceptionally wise and strong. Arianne’s are known as the
Dryad, vine-like creatures, but they are not as wise.”
“Certainly strong,”
Torrullin put in.
“The Dryad are the
offspring of the Syllvan, see, and explains how the two realms are indivisible,
and Arianne is Dryad training ground until they mature from vine into tree.
This is why, we believe, Arianne is the realm of lonely worlds. It curtails them
to some extent. Children, after all, like to play pranks.”
Chitty merely gaped,
not caring about wrinkles. Then, “Gobsmacked, I am.”
Torrullin rolled his
shoulders. “Arianne can thus have contrary rules and modes of behaving, such as
green air for a world out there, such as motionless seas here, such as those
unmoving waters inexplicably shifting into motion. It isn’t sorcery, or not of
the kind we deal in; it is the magical result of a vine perhaps chasing a vine
in this region.”
She glared at him. “I
can’t tell them that. They will think I am the liar, that I lost my
pebbles in the heather somewhere!”
Elianas spluttered into
laughter.
Grinning, Torrullin
murmured, “Now you understand why we say little.”
“I do. Tell me, both of
you, is what you have shared here your belief in a great tale or is it
the truth? Be honest, please.”
Torrullin and Elianas
looked at each other, and Elianas said, “Isn’t it wonderful to be questioned
again? They don’t just accept it as they did in Reaume.”
“Can be tiresome,”
Torrullin laughed, and faced Chitty. “We regard the Syllvan as our friends,
having dealt with them many times. In fact, to save them at one time, Elianas
and I fought Dryad on their behalf, but that’s another story. Chitty, we know
with every certainty that this is real.”
Shaking her head, she muttered, “I think I need a drink.”
At the end of the Lore Series, Torrullin
Valla and Elianas Danae vanish into the mists with their homeworld Avaelyn, but
the story doesn’t end there. What happens to Tristan Skyler Valla, for example,
about to embark on a Timekeeper journey with Alusin Algheri? Where is Karydor
Danae, the reincarnate father Torrullin has yet to meet?
In EURUE: The Forgotten World, a
century later, we find out about Tristan and Alusin’s future as they pit their
talents against a man half-dead, half-alive lying in a hidden casket somewhere
on Eurue. Gabryl embarks on a campaign to rouse the realms to Eurue’s forgotten
status, using the strange spinning orbs known as daetal to further his
ambitions.
In FAROCHIN: The Terraformed World,
we meet Karydor as he wakes up to memory loss on Farochin ages before Torrullin
has ever stepped forward as the power he will become. Karydor and Echayn Valla,
his brother-in-law, soon find themselves racing to save Farochin from Felix of
the Murs, who seeks to undo the terraform in order to become a god. Karydor
seeks to atone before he meets his son.
In LYKANDIR: The Measured World, two
kings look up to see a world on approach. King Androdin in the south and King
Drakan in the north understand that it will lead to chaos, utter change. As
clansmen, watchmakers and wer-men scramble for solutions, the kings find
themselves face to face with the men from that world, led by Torrullin Valla
and Elianas Danae. It seems Lykandir and Avaelyn seek to occupy the same space
in the realm Avaelyn vanished into.
In AVAELYN: The Enshrouded World,
the timelines align once more. A thousand years have passed, and Avaelyn
returns to her designated place. However, many wish to keep Torrullin and
Elianas at bay, and thus is their world wrapped in a shroud that blinds all to
their presence. Meanwhile, the children of Reaume suffer to keep it that way,
and that is simply unacceptable.
In AVIOR: The Mythical World, the
true enemy is revealed, an Ancient Valla who seems hellbent on creating a seat
of tyrannical power. To the world Avior, which most regard as a myth, all
forces are summoned. The entire Valla family strides into battle, for
only the Vallas can stop this Valla. What they discover below the surface is heart-breaking.
From the realms of time to the reality of lost
souls, through hope and cruelty, we reconnect with familiar characters, and
meet a host of new ones. An old sword with an agenda reappears, while a new
talisman is forged from desperation … and so much more. An epic adventure,
indeed!
ANCIENT TERRA
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