The Paradise War (51 page)

“We have reached the Heart of the Heart,” Tegid explained. “Here memory is extinguished.”

“Memory is extinguished in death,” I mused.

“That is so. But to die to one world is to be born into another. Therefore life, like all created things, though it ceases to flow in this world, continues its journey in the place beyond.”

The tingling I felt was the hair on the nape of my neck creeping.
In the place beyond . . . the Phantarch sleeps . . .

Standing in the icy water, listening to the roar of falling water, I felt again the terror of that night on the sacred mound. In the darkness I saw again the looming maw of the Cythrawl and felt Ollathir’s arm tight on my neck and his breath hot in my ear. And I heard again the strange words the Chief Bard had bequeathed me with his dying breath.

“Domhain Dorcha,” I said, turning to Tegid. “The place beyond.”

Tegid’s eyes flicked sharp and quick over my face. Interest sparked the bard’s voice. “Where did you hear those words?”

“Ollathir told me,” I answered and told him what I remembered. “I did not know what he was saying, but I know now. I remember it now. In the place beyond, the Phantarch sleeps. That is what Ollathir told me.” I pointed to the hole where the water cascaded out of sight. “And there is where we will find the Phantarch.”

“Are you willing?” asked Tegid quietly.

“I am,” I answered.

Trembling with awe and excitement, we moved to the hole and held our torches low in an effort to penetrate the darkness beneath our feet. We could see nothing below the rim of the hole, however. The water spilling over the edge splashed into the unseen depths below. We stood for a moment wondering how far the water fell.

Then Tegid dropped his torch into the hole. The firebrand spun end over end, and for the briefest of instants there flashed the glassy walls and floor of a lower chamber before the torch doused itself in a pool. He raised his head and our eyes met and held the glance. “Well? What say you, brother?”

“There is no other way down,” I said.

“And perhaps no other way back up,” he pointed out.

True. We had no rope, no tools of any kind. We must decide what to do without knowing the outcome of our actions. If we failed there would be no second chance, no delivery, no rescue, no salvation. We were to risk all, to trust the tortured, perhaps confused word of a dying bard.

“If Ollathir was here and told you to go down into that hole,” I asked, “would you do it?”

“Of course,” replied Tegid, without hesitation. His faith in his leader was simple and direct. Tegid’s assurance was good enough for me.

I gazed into the darkness dense as dirt and blacker than oblivion.

It might well be our deaths awaiting us below. “Will you go first, or shall I?”

“I will go first,” he said, eyeing the round black void before us. “And when I call to you, hold the torch over the hole and drop it. I will try to catch it.”

Then he simply stepped into the hole and plunged from sight. I heard the splash as he hit the water and, for a heart-catching instant, nothing . . . and then a coughing, sputtering gasp.

“Tegid! Are you hurt?” I threw myself onto my stomach and lowered the torch through the hole.

“It is cold!” he roared, his voice echoing away into the depths below. I heard him thrashing in the water and then, “Throw the torch. I am directly beneath you.”

I tilted the torch fire-end upright as far as I could manage without burning myself. “Here it comes,” I said, and let it drop.

I saw it flutter and flare for just a moment, and I was certain it would go out. But, just before it touched the water, I saw a hand swoop out and Tegid was waving the torch and shouting, “I have it! I have it!”

I could see his upturned face in the torchlight, grinning up at me as if from a well. “Now you,” he called.

He moved aside, and I sat down on the edge of the hole, letting my legs dangle into the void below. The darkness closed upon me like a physical force; I could feel its pressure on my eyeballs and lungs—a vast, soft, invisible hand, squeezing me, suffocating me. Blind, breathless, cold water flowing all around and over me, I placed my hands on the edge of the precipice and pushed myself off the rim. The sensation of plunging through space in absolute darkness was more unnerving than I had expected. It seemed as if I fell and fell and would go on falling and never stop; I was beginning to wonder if I would ever hit the bottom, when I smacked the surface of the water.

Instantly, the water closed over my head, and I was plunged into the wet, dark cold. I sank until I felt solid rock beneath me. I pushed against the bottom with my feet and shot up, floundering and spewing, icy water pouring down on me from overhead. I dashed water from my eyes and looked toward the light. Tegid stood at the pool’s edge holding the torch high so that I could see him. I swam to him; he knelt and grabbed my arm and pulled me from the pool.

I stood, conscious of a subtle change in our surroundings—as if we had indeed passed from one realm into another. Tegid made to turn away, and, at the movement of the torch, I glimpsed a fleeting glimmer of light on the wall, the flash of a spark. “What next?” I asked. My voice did not echo but fell hushed at my feet.

“Let us see what we have found,” Tegid replied, and we began exploring. The chamber was round, we discovered, and carved in the living rock of the mountain. Opposite the pool was a low tunneled passage. The walls of the tunnel, like the walls of the chamber, were shot through with veins of silver crystal which sparkled as we passed. We entered the tunnel and began a long descent to a deeper room. Twice along the way I stopped. “Wait!” I told Tegid. “Listen!”

We would stop and listen but would hear nothing. Still, I thought I could hear something—a low rhythmic humming, like a big cat purring or an animal snoring. It sounded alive, whatever it was that we could not quite hear. I imagined tumbling from the tunnel into the den of a sleeping cave bear.

The tunnel wound down and down, our dark, slow way lit by the momentary flashes and sparkles of torchlight in the crystalline walls. Once I grazed the tunnel wall with my fingertips and found it warm to the touch. I imagined that we were descending into the very heart of the mountain, so far down that we were approaching the molten core of the earth itself. And still we moved on.

Then, unexpectedly, the tunnel ended, and we stepped out into a dome-shaped chamber that appeared to have been hollowed from a single gargantuan crystal. The light from our single torch was reflected and magnified in a myriad of facets, blazing like a heaven full of flaming suns. After the darkness of the tunnel, such brightness hurt my eyes. And that is why I did not see the heap of stones lying in the center of the chamber—until Tegid directed my attention to it.

We stepped closer and saw what appeared to be a scrap of white cloth. Tegid held the torch near and we saw a human hand protruding from among the stones. The flesh on the hand was shriveled, the bones sharp through the pale, leathery skin.

“We have found the Phantarch,” Tegid said, his voice a choked whisper. I turned to where he pointed with the torch to the crude grave mound. “Cold as the stone that covers him. The Banfáith was right: the Phantarch is dead. And all hope with him. There is nothing for us here.”

34
D
OMHAIN
D
ORCHA

T
hey have murdered him,” said Tegid in a hollow voice. “The Song is silenced and cannot be recovered.” He sounded lost and tired and defeated. “There is nothing for us here.”

He turned to go, but I stood there stubbornly, staring at the lifeless hand reaching out from the heap of stone.

Tegid started into the tunnel once more to begin the long walk back to the upper chamber. I meant to follow him, but my feet remained firmly planted where I stood. We had found the Phantarch. Yes, but someone else had found him first. They had killed him and entombed him in Domhain Dorcha, the place beyond the Heart of the Heart. Yet, we had come so far . . . and the need was so great. I had to see the battered corpse with my own eyes before I would believe what Tegid knew to be true.

“Are you coming?” the bard asked.

“No—not until I have seen him. I want to see him with my own eyes before I believe he is dead.”

“It is over!” he roared. “This is the end. There is nothing for us here.”

“I will not leave until I have seen him,” I stubbornly insisted. “Go if you wish, but I am staying.”

“Fool!” he bellowed angrily. “This is your doing! We have come for nothing!”

I did not blame Tegid for this outburst. At my coaxing, he had allowed himself to hope, and now that last, precious hope had been snatched from him. In the end, we had only proven what he had maintained all along: the Phantarch was dead, and there was no escaping the doom that awaited us and all the rest of Albion.

“Tegid, please,” I said, “we have come so far.”

He pressed his mouth into a firm, straight line but did not deny me. I stepped into the mound, and, bending down, began to shift the stones one by one. Tegid watched me for a while, and when he saw that I meant to uncover the whole mound, he gave in and came to help me. Propping the torch between two rocks at the head of the mound, we began carefully pulling away the stones.

We worked without speaking, and in a short while I glimpsed a bit of dirty white cloth. I shifted a few more stones, and saw a gray crumpled hand. We continued removing the rocks until the corpse was completely exhumed—then stepped back to view our labor’s sorry yield.

The Phantarch appeared to be an old man, an ancient man of years beyond counting, dressed in robes of white with a corded belt of woven gold. He wore a wide, flat neck ring that covered the upper part of his chest. In his right hand he carried a ceremonial knife of glassy black stone; a rod of gold nestled in the crook of his right arm. His left hand was empty, and his feet were bare.

The flickering torchlight gave his face the appearance of life, but the sunken eyes and cheeks told a different tale. And though battered and broken terribly by the stones, that head still held a high nobility; white-haired, with a wide brow and hawklike nose, a strong chin and firm jaw covered by a low, flowing white beard—it was the visage of a prophet. Even in death the Phantarch retained his dignity and something of the reverence his presence must have inspired.

He had been dead some time, but the corpse showed little sign of decay or putrefaction. He seemed to be asleep—as if I might touch his cheek and he would awaken once more. But the flesh was woody and cold when I stooped to touch it. I withdrew my hand as if I had touched hot iron. Until that very moment, until I brushed that cold and waxen skin, I believe I had imagined that the Phantarch would yet live somehow. But I knew now that Tegid was right.

As for Tegid, he did not utter a sound—either of rebuke or scorn. He merely gazed at the broken body before him with mournful eyes. When he had looked his last upon the corpse, he turned and walked to the tunnel, taking the torch with him.

As the torchlight disappeared, I was overcome by a despair so black and hopeless that I fell to my knees before the grave mound. I felt stupid and cheated and abused. If only I had been quicker, I thought, and smarter. My cheeks burned with shame and anger at my sloth and stupidity. But no. The Phantarch was murdered long before I thought to look for him, before Nudd destroyed Sycharth. The night of the Cythrawl was the night the Phantarch died.

So we were doomed from the beginning; before we had even set foot on the trail to Findargad our destruction was sealed. Tegid was right—there was nothing for us here, and I was a fool. I could have screamed with the unfairness of it. We had never had a chance.

I wanted to kill Lord Nudd and the demon Coranyid, to crush them beneath my fury. I wanted to destroy them, to rid the land of their vile presence. I wanted to smash them into the filth and ooze from which they arose. I reached out, seized a crystalline stone in both hands, and lifted it above my head. With a mighty groan, I heaved the stone, smashing it down with all my might as I would have if the Dread Lord’s face had been before me at that moment.

I threw it so hard that the jagged rock shattered. Sparks flew from the fractured stone, and all at once the entire chamber exploded with a dazzling light. In that splintered instant, I heard the most incredible sound.

It had a musical quality—like that of a tuned harp struck by the bard’s skillful hand. As if an unseen hand had plucked a triumphant chord, the last strain of a joyous song that swelled the heart to hear it. The wondrous sound filled the chamber, rising and swirling and penetrating every crack and fissure, every crevice and corner of the underground caverns, reverberating in the very rocks themselves. The crystals in the walls of the chamber began to glow with a rich and steady light, as if kindled from the sparks of that fractured rock.

And all at once, with the sound of that struck chord filling my ears and the light dazzling my eyes, my mind was engulfed by a sudden flood of bright images. I saw as one drunk on golden mead—through a dizzy, dimly comprehending haze—a magnificent array of images, a sparkling vision of a fantastically rich and wonderful world: a world infinitely alive and full of beauty and grace; a blessed world clothed in green and blue—the matchless greens of grass and trees, hillsides and forests without compare; the radiant blues of fair skies and moving water; a world made for humankind and adorned with every good thing for food and comfort; a world made luminous with peace, wherein every virtue is proclaimed and extolled by the very substance of which it is made—from the smallest leaf to the largest mountain, all things declaring a great and powerful benison of glory, goodness, and right.