The Silent Isle (30 page)

“That’s
beautiful,” Rawl said.

“But She is gone
now,” Elias said.  “And I do not think
She
will
return even in my dreams.”

“But the
creatures are afraid of Mirela,” Josie said, for she had told them all her true
name now.  “Paul says so and I think so, too.  That’s got to be worth
something.”

Everyone turned
to Mirela. 

“I do not know
if this is true,” she said.  “And even if it is, I cannot tell you why they
fear me.” 

People sighed
and shifted in their seats.  Some dropped their gaze. 

“But I can tell
you why I do not fear them.” 

Everyone turned
to her once more. 

“Because I commune with an Energy that is far greater than the one
that drives them.
  I am buried in a Love that is beyond their
ability to even guess at understanding.  I had hoped to wait till morning
for this, but I fear now morning will be too late.  If you will trust me,
I will take you to that of which I speak.”

“You’re going to
call up your god?” Dane said.

“No,” said
Mirela.  “She is already here.”

Behind him, Dane
sensed Elias shift in his chair.

“Spirit,” said
Mirela in a calm, clear voice, “Speak.”

Elias Wick found himself in a
clearing of sorts.  On all sides of him, trees rose thickly, forming a
circular wall of brown, green, gray, and black.  Their tips seemed to
reach to the very sky.  The sky itself was leaden and cold-looking. 
A little ways in front of him grew a tiny, leafless tree, hardly more than a
twig.  All about him flakes of ash, white, gray, and black, floated down
silently like snow.  That was when he noticed how utterly silent all
was.  The snow-like ash drifted around his feet and covered the ground
until only the tips of the grass-blades protruded. 

There was a
flutter of wings and a little bird alighted on the scrawny, bent tree before
him.  The creature tilted its head at him.  It opened its mouth and
made a noise and Elias realized it was speaking to him.  “Oh, She’s going
to destroy you,” it said in a sing-song voice.  Then it flew away with a
little titter.

Elias felt the
presence of someone, or something, behind him.  He turned around to see
the Woman from his dream standing there.  Her light was softer now, more
subdued.  Her face was full of feeling but Elias could not discern it;
She
wore neither a smile nor a frown.  As he studied
Her
face, Her brows knitted as though She was thinking hard
or wanted to ask a question.  “Shall I destroy you?” She said. 

Elias had given
his life to seek the gods.  It had never occurred to him they might seek
him.  He did not know what
Her
words meant or if
it would hurt, but he feared if he said ‘no’, or if he gave no answer, She
might never ask him another thing again. 

She repeated her
question. 

“Do what you
will,” he said.

The clearing was
transformed.  The falling flakes of ash turned white, then clear,
then
blazed with inner fire like so many diamonds.  The
wall of trees became as a giant mirror.  It was not like looking at the
sun.  It was like being inside it.  The Being before him blazed with
a radiance he could never describe.  He knew
She
could sweep Kran and Shammath aside with her mere smile, but he, Elias Wick,
doubter and blasphemer that he was, could stand before Her and feel Her fire
blaze about him. 
A fire that burned him without
consuming him.
  Or perhaps it consumed him without burning
him.  For the short hours that remained to his life he never could find a
way to fit it into words.  But soon there would be no need to describe it,
only to enjoy these fire-kisses of his Goddess for time without
dimension. 

“Lover,” the
burning Being said, and Her voice was like the trumpet that calls men to battle
and like the laughter of children and like the roar of a waterfall in spring,
when it is swollen with snowmelt. 

And he knew this
Woman had sought him in ways that made his yearning for the gods only a pale,
flaccid thing by comparison.  But somehow this did not make him feel
ashamed; it only filled him with a kind of joy he had never known.

***

Mirela stood
before the same Woman as Elias.  But
She
was not
the fire-being who wrapped Elias in flame.  She was in human form, in a
white dress with a golden girdle.  She was holding a ram’s horn filled
with amber liquid.  She was seated beside a waterfall which tumbled down
into a foaming pool.  She spoke softly, but Mirela had no trouble hearing
her words over the rush of the falls. 

“Come, Child,”
She said.  “Come and drink of the Cup of Mirth.” 

Mirela
drank.  The liquid was sharp and refreshing and, as it slid down her
throat, laughter bubbled forth.  The Woman laughed as well.  When
Mirela had drained the horn to the dregs, she handed it back to the
Woman. 

“Do you know
what the best part of this place is?” She asked.  She held the cup under
the roar of the falls and the clear water of the stream turned golden-amber in
the horn.  She handed the brimming horn back to Mirela and smiled. 
“You never get cut off.” 

Mirela drank and
laughed and the more she laughed the more she drank and the more she drank the
more she laughed until she was leaning forward with her hands on her knees and
then rolling on the ground and then she had rolled clean into the pool and she
was swimming in liquid joy, every pore drinking it in, and she felt so light
and free she was sure she could swim straight up the stream of the falls.

***

At first, Bailus
Conley thought he was seeing the future.  In truth, at the very first, he
had no idea what he was seeing.  Colossal forms of glass and steel jutted
beneath him, shining in the sunlight like so many swords.  At their bases,
tiny figures moved in long files like marching ants.  As his eyes grew
adjusted to this strange vision, he realized the moving dots were people and
these things which reared and sparkled above them like upside-down icicles were
their homes.  Or if not their homes, buildings they inhabited.  There
were other wonders.  Screaming terrors that streaked by like huge,
metallic birds
who
never needed to beat their
wings. 

Bailus had never
seen such tributes to the strength and purpose of Men, but he sensed all was
not well in this brilliant utopia.  He heard distant noises like an army
of woodpeckers working over a forest and he knew somehow this sound was a
herald of death.  Without warning, there blossomed over this city of gods
a tree of flame, and their glass and steel melted away before it.  On the
far side of the city, which stretched nearly beyond his vision, another such
tree arose, far taller than the tallest buildings, its flame-form constantly
morphing so that sinister shapes could be guessed in its flickering black and
red.  More of these sprang up, pillars of smoke and fire that reared
skyward until they mingled with the clouds of heaven and their branches of
flame spread until they filled his vision and covered all below them in shadow.

The earth was
laid in embers, the seas swelled and rose, and the face of the world was
forever changed.

But not all the
humans had perished.  Small bands of men and women gathered under the
banners of their ruined kingdoms, and there, amidst the smoldering slagheaps of
their cities and in the wastes between, they waged war with one another,
killing each other with cruder weapons than Bailus had seen even among the
Tirans.  Until, at last, the survivors were so few they spread out in
limping tribes, strung out through a vast wilderness – swearing a peace kept by
distance and bitter necessity.

It was then the
shriken
came, birthed out of cracks in the ground.  From high above, as though he
were looking at a brilliantly detailed and colored map, Bailus saw the
campfires of these human bands spread out before him.  And one by one, as
the
shriken
advanced, the fires were extinguished, like stars in a dying
galaxy.

They advanced
until it seemed they outnumbered the humans and that Earth would have a new
master.  But humanity did not go willingly.  The remaining tribes
united under a woman who Bailus thought did not look unlike Mirela.  They
made a circle, standing shoulder to shoulder and back to back, and they stood
against the darkness.  Not just humans, but dogs and horses fought in
their army; for Man, repenting in the dust and ashes of his former self, had
begun to remember the land and its creatures and once more to make his peace
with them.  They fought in a field of golden grass that rose higher than
the knees of the combatants.  They fought until the grass was all trampled
by their feet and matted with their blood.  When it was over, the human
leader lay dying, but the surviving
shriken
were fleeing far away with
their pursuers on their heels.

And then Bailus
saw in living color what he had studied countless times in ink and
parchment.  He knew at once he was seeing Haven, not an image, but the
island itself from above, the way a bird would see it.  The image vanished
and a being stood before him.  The figure was like the silhouette of a
man, but a silhouette of light instead of darkness.  It had wings like an
eagle’s, or perhaps what seemed like wings was really a wreath of flames which
burned around it.  Though it carried no weapon he could see, Bailus knew
it was a warrior.  It spoke to him with the voice of a man but more than a
man:  “This is now, and you are it.”

***

Dane was seated
around a campfire at sunrise with three others.  Two were men, the other a
boy.  The boy seemed vaguely familiar.  One of the men laid out four
loaves of bread to toast on the stones by the fire.  He turned them over
once, then handed one each to the other man and the boy.  They talked
amongst themselves but ignored Dane.  When they had finished their loaves,
the first man tossed the fourth loaf to the boy and winked at him.  Dane
was offended until the second man, rising from the fire and crossing to
retrieve his pack, stepped right through him.  He flinched as the man’s
knee swung towards his head, but the blow never came.  He turned to see
the man shoulder his pack and nod to the others. 

They could not
see him. 

This realization
came with a strong feeling he was seeing something that had already
happened.  They broke camp and began walking uphill.  The first man
ruffled the boy’s hair as he passed him.  This man carried a shovel and a
coil of rope over his shoulder.  The other carried a pick and the ends of
several torches protruded from his pack.  The boy carried his own small
pack with his bedroll tied to the top of it.

There was an
ease in their stride that suggested they took pleasure in the walking itself
and that they were not moving towards anywhere in particular.  Dane
settled into the passivity of his role.  The men seemed to be looking for
something.  Now and again, they would come upon caves.  The men would
stop, enter them, find them to be only shallow openings, and continue their
climb.  At one point they stopped on a bare, sloping stretch of rock and
turned to look behind them.  The view took Dane’s breath away.  The
land sloped steeply down on either side of them to the sea.  Far in front
of him and far below, Dane spotted a familiar U-shaped harbor.  With a
sinking feeling, he realized they were on Haven.

The three
continued to amble uphill, sometimes talking, sometimes walking in silence and
listening to the birdsong.  But a sense of dread slowly spread over
Dane.  He wanted some way to urge the men back down to the lowland. 

The walkers came
upon a cave entrance which was different than any they had yet seen.  It
had three large rectangular openings standing side by side.  They were
doors opening onto eternal night – pitch black hung in their mouths.  The
men looked at each other and then the boy, they all nodded.  The first man
pulled out one of the torches and his tinder box.  When the torch was lit,
he led them through the center door.  The air had a strange, cramped feel
to it.  Too warm and too close for the size of cave it seemed.  The
boy drew close to the man in front.  Dane reached out a hand to draw him
back but, of course, the hand passed right through him.  The first man
turned back towards the second and crinkled his nose, scenting the air. 
Dane sniffed and found his sense of smell was connected to the vision.
 The air held a faint smell of burning.  The dread began to solidify
into a weight in the pit of Dane’s stomach which made it hard to walk. 

“Go back,” he
said. 
“Back.”

The cave
narrowed so that the men were forced to go in single file.  The path
continued downhill.  The first man paused and ran the torchlight along the
wall to his right.  A rune was scratched there that he did not seem to
understand; Dane recognized it only too well. 

“Go.  Get
out of here,” he shouted. 

The men made no
notice of him.  The feeling of impotence did not cause him to quiet down;
it only made him scream louder. 

The first man
continued to lead them down into the depths of the cavern.  Dane redoubled
his efforts to get their attention.  Suddenly, the ceiling jumped out of
the reach of their torch.  The lead man paused.  Dane sensed they had
come into an open space.  The man lifted his torch and Dane saw
them. 
Too many to count.
 
Clinging to the roof of the cave upside-down like so many bats.
 
Their beaked heads were nestled against their chests.  They seemed to be
sleeping.  The first man stumbled back in surprise and dropped his
torch.  It sputtered and flickered as it struck the stony floor but did
not go out.  Dane wanted to scream but found there was no breath in his
lungs with which to do so.  The man retrieved his torch and held it
tentatively towards the roof once more.  A subtle change had occurred in
the time it took him to pick up the torch.  The creatures still hung from
the ceiling, but their heads were turned now and their eyes were open. 
And every eye was fixed on the intruders.

There came a
shrill, piercing scream and Dane was never sure whether it came from the
creatures or the boy or the men or from him. 

Then he woke up.

***

The first thing
everyone noticed on coming out of their respective experiences was that Pratt
was crying.  He was not sobbing, but sniffling, and tears ran down both
cheeks.

“What is it,
Pratt?” Leech asked.  “Is it your arm?”

Pratt could only
nod.

“I’m sorry,”
Leech said, “But all we’ve got for pain is whiskey.”

“It’s not the
pain,” Pratt said shakily, “It’s not the pain.”  He began to struggle with
his sling.

Leech rose to
his feet.  “Pratt, what’s wrong?”

“Get this off
me,” he said.  “Get it off me.”

Leech untied the
knot at the back of Pratt’s neck which held the sling.  He slipped it
gently down and off his arm.