The IX (38 page)

So where the hell are we? And what is this supposed to
—

An aged warrior stood atop an adjacent cairn on the other side of the arroyo. His finely muscled arms were folded across a barrel chest, and Ayria could see he was studying her closely.

Napioa!
She couldn’t help but wave as she clambered back down the outcrop, a gesture that only earned her a raised eyebrow in response.

Despite his age, the Father Creator stood tall and proud. The luxuriant flow of his waist-length raven hair enveloped him in such a way that it appeared to form a cape about his torso. He came to meet her and as he skipped lightly across the stones, the swirl of his mane added an air of power and majesty to his gait.

Stained-With-Blood had sensed the Old Man’s arrival too, and stood to meet him.

The three beings came silently together and waited.

Ayria was bursting with questions, but a warning glare from Stained-With-Blood helped curb the excitement building within her.

Napioa appeared to find her exuberance amusing. He grunted once, then turned and squatted on the ground, facing north. The wind intensified, but for some reason neglected to disturb the grit and dust saturating every nook and cranny of their environs.

More waiting?
Ayria glanced at her tutor for guidance. When Stained-With-Blood took a position next to Napioa in the sand, she quickly followed suit.

Ignoring them completely, the Creator lifted his head high and allowed his hair to unfurl behind him. He stared intently at the moon, his eyes becoming orbs of milk-white obscurity. Napioa appeared to be studying every facet of the lunar surface, and was obviously ruminating over something as he did so. More time passed. He started to rock back and forth. His mumbling grew into a soft chant, its cadence carried into the farthest reaches of the gorge on the wings of a multitude of eddies.

Just when Ayria thought she might go mad with impatience, the singing stopped. Napioa lifted an arm and waved his hand in a wide arc through the air. The moon wheeled away through the heavens, leaving the vault of the night sky in total darkness.

Ayria stared in alarm. It was pitch black; she could see nothing but the glow of the Creator’s eyes. A crystal tone chimed in the gloom above her. A star blinked into existence. Another note rang out, only to be answered by a different point of light. In moments, the sky became filled by music and a glittering array of diamonds.

The spell was as piercing as it was captivating. It wasn’t until Ayria felt a pain in her chest that she realized she was holding her breath. “That’s so beautiful,” she gasped.

Napioa snorted softly at her outburst. Other than that, he paid her no heed. Instead, he raised both fists above his head and squeezed his fingers tightly together. Greater illumination was restored by two dominant stars; one yellow, the other red.

Satisfied with his preparations, the ancient warrior gestured toward the smaller, yellow sun on his left. Its nimbus flared, and within moments a coronal ejection was speeding their way. The discharge intensified, morphing into a citrine-colored fireball of impressive stripe. It entered the atmosphere. Roaring like an augur of doom, it spat sizzling reminders of its potency. Flickering shadows careened wildly about the gulf as it rushed toward them. Ayria could feel the approaching pressure wave, and glanced at Stained-With-Blood for reassurance.

She needn’t have worried.

Napioa opened his left hand. A thrill of summoning rippled outward. Unable to resist, the meteoroid altered course and screamed into his grasp. It struck with the force of a hurricane and a mesh of thrumming power bloomed about them, encompassing the projectile and crushing it into a concentrated ball of coruscating urgency.

Neither Ayria nor Stained-With-Blood suffered from the encounter. In fact, they both leaned in to get a better view as Napioa brought his hands together. The muscles of the Creator’s arms and shoulders bunched and rippled as he compressed the fiery mass into a more malleable form. The remains cooled swiftly in his grasp, continuing to shrink until he was kneading a gray-black colored lump of metal. Napioa beat the block with his fists, lengthening it into a long knife, complete with handle. Lifting the weapon before him, he pinched along the edge of the blade, fashioning it until it was razor sharp.

Iron?
A kick of excitement shot through Ayria.
That looks like the real deal. In its unadulterated form, it’s extremely rare because of oxidization.
She glanced back up at the shimmering firmament above them.
Unless it falls to earth as a meteorite.

She noted the faraway look in Stained-With-Blood’s eyes, as if he too had recognized something about the process that was giving him pause.

Of course!
He’s had this type of vision before. Didn’t he say his last quest contained a dream image just like this, where Napioa formed a dagger out of blood metal and then . . . Oh my God!

“I see you’re both beginning to understand,” Napioa crooned, as he considered them at last. “That is just as well. Now, attend.”

The Creator made a flourish in the air, and a muslin sack appeared from within a splinter of time. Taking the knife, he slashed a hole in the side of the bag. A multitude of seeds spilled out onto the parched ground. Sorting through them, he picked out two that seemed to satisfy him. Holding them carefully, he blew gently, and the kernels went spinning off to land on opposite sides of the riverbed.

The world reeled, and both suns moved closer, taking up new positions above the adjacent rocky outcrops. No sooner had the orbs settled into their respective places than Napioa took the blade and made repeated chopping motions, left and right. The distant cliffs split asunder, and a tumult of waters cascaded from the fresh clefts.

The Old Man took a deep breath. As he inhaled, the ground where they stood trembled, and then heaved upward. Within the space of a few heartbeats, they found themselves sitting upon a hillock in the middle of the gully.

The exhalation of a growing sigh drew near. A trickling advance wormed its way along the creek, like the diseased feelers of a disfigured jellyfish. The trickle turned into a rush and the rush swelled into a torrent. Soon, they were surrounded by the powerful current of a stately river.

Napioa jutted his chin toward both sides. “Observe,” he cried.

Ayria was surprised by what she saw on each embankment. To her left, the yellow sun shone down on a fully-grown aspen. The tree swayed gently under the influence of an unknown breeze, its blue-green leaves glistening in the spray of the surging waters. To her right, a majestic pine stood tall in the light of a crimson star. Cone-filled, its bristly profile hinted at resilience and antiquity.

It wasn’t until Ayria looked closer that she realized each specimen had cracked the earth beneath its boughs. Extensive root networks extended down into the watercourse, where the best of the life-sustaining nutrients could be found.

But what does it mean?

As if hearing her thoughts, Napioa turned, gazed deeply into her eyes, and lifted the dagger before him once more. A residual nugget of the asteroid, left over from the making, still lay between his knees.

Stabbing down, he shattered the rock. Taking the fragments, he scattered copious amounts of pure iron ore over both shorelines. An amazing transformation manifested.

While the aspen bloomed under its altered circumstance, putting forth an abundance of buds and fresh growth, the pine fared badly. A shower of cones and needles fell to the floor, carpeting the rocks in foul-smelling mucus, and leaving its spindly branches bare. Great chunks of bark split away from the trunk. In moments, a single, withered seed dropped to the ground, where it lay dying.

Napioa intervened. Scooping up the produce of both specimens in one hand, he took his blade and punctured the air right in front of him. A void was rent in the very fabric of spacetime, through which strands of arcane energy flowed. The helix had a distinctive matrix, the mere sight of it tugging at a memory in Ayria’s mind.

Still intent on his work, the Creator cupped his palm within the matter stream and allowed the eldritch essence of the cosmos to transmute the kernels.

Napioa clenched his fist and drove hard into the soil, burying his new creation deep in the earth. Rainbow whorls of power thrummed through the hummock and radiated into the atmosphere. The yellow star receded, and as it did so, thick, luxuriant grass sprouted beneath their feet, covering the mound in a vibrant carpet of life. The red sun began to dominate, shaking the valley from end to end as its gravitational mastery took hold. Loose rocks, dislodged from their perches along the banks, shuddered into the fast-flowing current. A different rumbling sound gradually intruded.

In the exact place where the Old Man had punched his hand into the loam, a remarkable sapling thrust its way out of the ground.

Haloed in a silver nimbus, the young sprout stretched its way into the heavens, forcing everyone to stand back. Its monumental growth spurt continued unabated. Less than a minute passed before a mighty root system delved its way into the riverbed on both sides of the islet, and the extensive canopy of a fully mature birch tree spread its majesty over them.

Ayria was awestruck. She had never seen such a magnificent paradigm in all her life. Her gaze roved across the grandeur of its foliage, drank in the vitality of the thickness of its trunk. It appeared to her as if steel hawsers had been fashioned into the bough of a living entity, which would never wither and die. The entire edifice radiated strength and might on a scale that dwarfed her.

She glanced across at her companions, and could see Stained-With-Blood was similarly impressed. Napioa, however, stood proudly with his hands on his hips. He studied his new creation and nodded in satisfaction.

Turning to face them, he said, “Think deeply on what you have seen. Every facet of your quest carries import, vital to the success of what is to come. You have it within you to succeed.” He gestured toward the tree behind him. “Take a leap of faith into the unknown.
Become
the birch.”

Without warning, Napioa disappeared. Ayria just had time to take one last look at the fey leviathan before them before it too receded from sight.

No! Not now. Let me
—

It was too late.

Then Ayria was flowing backward along a tunnel of light. Her senses diminished, and thickened in some way, as if her mind were wading through treacle. She began to solidify, became more corporeal
with every passing moment. She finally felt her heart beating within her chest again. Opening her eyes, she tried to get her bearings.

What? Oh, I’m on the bed. Is . . . ?

Sure enough, Stained-With-Blood was there, wide awake but still in his cross-legged position on the floor. She perceived he was troubled, and was clearly battling to come to terms with something that displeased him.

“What’s the matter?” Ayria asked, concerned that he might not have found the whole experience as exhilarating as she had. “Wasn’t that the most awesome thing ever? Napioa actually spoke with us.”

Stained-With-Blood didn’t immediately reply. Engrossed as he was, the turmoil within him became more and more evident. Ayria noticed he kept glancing down to one side of his body. Eventually, he heaved a huge sigh of resignation.

“It would appear I have erred,” he said, “become complacent in my abilities. By teaching you, I failed to remember that I too am a mere infant in the Creator’s eyes, requiring further instruction and reminders as the years go by. That was the second time the Old Man has revealed the path forward to me, by using a blade fashioned from star metal. I failed to note the relevance of it on the first occasion.”

“Star metal? Do you mean blood metal? Iron?”

“Yes. And Napioa wielded it to create something that confuses me.”

“In what way?”

“That the peoples of Earth and Arden are to unite is obvious. It has been all along. And yet, now I see a facet of the coming transformation that disturbs me deeply. One that I fear will prove difficult for the majority to even contemplate.”

“Disturbs you?” Ayria echoed. “How? He’s the Creator. Doesn’t he have our best interests in mind?”

“Oh, I have no doubt about that.” He shrugged. “But I see now why he stressed we need to take a leap of faith.”

“What do you mean?”

Stained-With-Blood stared long and hard at her. “That I was directed to search you out across space and time is clear. Having done so, I must now prepare you to bridge a gap that may prove . . . difficult.”

Ayria frowned. “In what way?”

“Would you agree that Napioa used the star metal to create a great work?”

“Yes, I would. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve never seen anything so . . . so wonderful in all my life.”

“And yet, in what way did he manage to fashion such a marvel?”

“Do you mean by the blending of the two trees? The aspen was obviously representative of the people of Earth. The pine, Arden. Their race has withered and almost died, after all.”

“But how,
exactly
, did he unite the two races? Think.”

Ayria pondered on what she had witnessed. Then intuition kicked in. “He cut a void in the air using the knife. And he manipulated the energies that cascaded out of it to transform the seeds of the already existing trees.”

“Precisely.” Leaning forward, Stained-With-Blood lowered his voice. “And tell me, Wind of the Sun, where else have you seen such a doorway recently? One that emits a terrible and unfathomable power?”

A chill ran through Ayria’s core as she made the connection. Her jaw worked, but no sound came out.

“Do you understand my reticence now?” Stained-With-Blood continued. “And why it will be necessary to thoroughly prepare ourselves for the next stage of our journey? Faith is not possessed by everyone. Yet faith is exactly what it will take to enact the salvation of both . . . or should I say
all
, our races.”

“You can’t be serious?”