Everything was nothing, and nothing was anything.
Brantivien’s mangled, rusted gate might as well have been a portal into another
reality. Perhaps the enigma who called himself Gormfreith had cast some spell
upon Leara; perhaps the spell was a ruse played by her own mind upon itself.
There was indeed something about him, some sublime quality for which no tongue
among sapienkind had conjured a word. The way energy rippled about him like the
waves that radiate when a pebble is dropped into still water, energy that she
could feel surging through her more than that of any human’s Song, playing its
melody deep in her soul, a Song of such seductive dissonance, of the most
dulcet disharmony. Perhaps her eyes had deceived her, but for one ephemeral
moment, she saw that energy weaving about him in an ethereal waltz—the lastaí
bielthé, the flame of the spirits, the strings that bound all consciousness
together throughout the four worlds.
Yet his essence was sodden with tears, and that
melancholy had set upon Leara like a vernal rain.
Gormfreith stood between two pillars before the door to
the great hall, himself as forlorn, as much a relic as the bronze kings atop
their capitals, headless and swallowed by verdigris. There was a profound
elegance in his frailty. With every twist of his gaunt body, his long black
cloak would swirl about, hovering in the rank air, rustling pages and sending
them fluttering like dancing dryads, and with them, faint notes distorted as if
played upon a broken zither.
“Take my hand,” he beckoned, waving for Leara to join
him. “But hold tightly to me, lest you be lost forever in the Void.”
Warily, Leara inched forward, ever and anon halting as
her anxious mind did battle with her eager heart. What does he mean? The
thought lingered in her mind’s peripheries, kept at a distance by whatever
enchantment the stranger had woven about her, taking the place of fear.
“Do not be afraid.” His maladroit smile was strangely
reassuring. “I know what it is you seek.”
At last, she relented. Bony fingers encircled hers like
strangling vines, yet his embrace was tender. He pulled her close to him,
pressing his other hand to her forehead, sliding the palm over her eyes. At his
touch, energy rippled through her body, the energy that she summoned when she
ascended out of the material. She was aloft, though her eyes were blinded;
matter fell away beneath her feet, and she was moving, whither she knew not.
Then, all was still and silent. Her uncovered eyes gazed
across endless white mountains, punctuated only by the slash of a tower black
as moonless night in the distance. I have seen this place before. The
silvery lake lay behind her in ethereal stillness. The ebon door loomed before
her at the summit of the highest peak, beyond which lay only an abyss.
She turned to Gormfreith to tell him that the vanishing
man had already shown her this place. But when she beheld him, he was a man
remade: a youth of beauty unimaginable, sable hair flowing like silken banners,
lightning forking around his irises. Had wings grown from his back, she might
have mistaken him for one of Elven kind.
The angelic figure turned Leara’s chin to the door. As
before, she could see something in the emptiness within. But instead of the
skull and flower, she beheld a cube, transparent as if made from pure ice, and
within, a single seed.
In an instant, her spirit was reunited with her body.
“You know what you have seen,” Gormfreith said. He had
left his luminous form upon the mountainside, and he was wretched once more.
Perhaps even more so now , for the ascent seemed to have drained what little
vitality remained in him. “Glandmal,” Leara affirmed. “Does that mean the
legends are true?”
Gormfreith nodded.
“But there was only one seed.”
“There is only one. Only one is needed for the fruit of
transfiguration to blossom.”
Leara did not understand. “But how am I supposed to feed
my people with but a single seed?”
Gormfreith offered a glance that seemed to scold Leara
for her ignorance. But within his Song she heard only sympathy, tinged with a
note of despair. “The fruit you know as glandmal is meant to feed the spirit.
It is not to nurture the body but to overcome it. To destroy it.”
Leara stumbled backwards, gasping.
Gormfreith grimaced as he observed his withering hands.
“None of us was meant to wear this mortal shroud, this burial gown of flesh and
bone. We are all beings of Light and Song, just as the Fae, just as their
forebears, the gods who fashioned this world in their error, in their boredom
with perfection.” He glided to the image of the dragon and the emperor. “The
Darandingaí knew as much. They tried to recreate the Paradise that was denied
them when they were doomed to this living death.”
“Darandiné is a myth,” Leara said reluctantly, for that
was what learned men had taught her, citing the lack of any evidence beyond
songs and stories. Even the intricate documents she’d studied in Satranthia
were said by some to be little more than the fanciful scribblings of mystics
too deeply entranced in their leaf, florid façades to disguise realities of a
much more banal kind. But those documents, those stories had to have come from
somewhere. She wanted so badly to believe that a better realm had indeed once
existed, one that could come to pass once more.
“Nay,” Gormfreith affirmed. “They had fashioned a great
and puissant society, using their knowledge, their wisdom, and their tools.
They had nearly succeeded in their goal.” He uttered a defeated sigh. “Alas,
they were corrupted, as are all things in this world. They did not understand
the hideous truth that only our people now remember.”
“What truth is that?”
Gormfreith’s jaw clenched. “That this world was made by demons.”
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