Third Thunder
Orah The Deathless
Dancer
The Fall of Etan, Volume I
By MSI
(click book to view)
Part I
Gurion, The Claw of the Hawk
1. A Dancer of Etan
Orah stood alone on the high cliff as the
winds of dawn whirled his golden hair behind him in soft rhythms of glory.
As was customary among the Lords of Etan, he was wearing a sleeveless
argent robe; on his feet were molded wooden sandals laced halfway to the
knee.
The Etan Lord was strong: even standing
relaxed, his powerful body flowed in innocent rhythm, expanding and
contracting in divine harmony from nothing more than the throbbing of his
pulse.
The Etan Lord was
beautiful: if the unknown land below held observers, they might easily
mistake him for a god. Vestige of his pre-dawn climb, his slightly azure
skin glistened, accenting his perfect features in the same way as the
morning dew dances over a flawless copen hyacinth.
The Etan Lord was sad:
again today, expanding his awareness to the north had revealed nothing
new.
At last Orah sighed, gave
up trying to wrest impossible solutions from the virgin land below and
strode swiftly down the scree and shale, thinking, Two months northward
without a sign. How much further will Althea’s request propel me?
But even as he asked, he knew the answer was in the question: to fulfil a
desire of his sister, the Healer of Etan, he would travel to the end of
their world.
"Seven rivers,"
she had told him soon after the birth of the new year. "Find me this
lost land of seven rivers, Orah. There lies a treasure so precious no
price can do it justice, a secret warded by a power so heinous the future
of Etan itself is held in the balance."
"What force of this
world could challenge our father Swayam?" he had laughed back at her
words in utter disbelief.
But Althea had only
repeated, "Find me this land of seven rivers, brother. For there the
fate of the Etanai will be determined for all time."
And so, understanding
nothing, Orah had that day left his father Swayam and mother Shatarupa,
his wife Chavva and his many brothers and sisters and walked northward
from Etan across the ice and then the vast barren plains.
~ ~ ~
Seven rivers. The one
below running westward to the sea I shall count and name. For this much I
know: none has passed this way before.
Orah was saddened by this
long and so far pointless journey over the desolate plains, but his
sadness was tempered by gratitude that he was at last coming down from
Vadil’s continental plateau. Perhaps these lowlands might hold something
more interesting than rough heath and small scurrying rodents. Nothing of
the world outside of their paradise Etan seemed worth even a moment’s
passing glance. Treasure? Danger? What was she talking about? As Swayam
always told us, I have confirmed in these two months: save for Etan,
Martanda is dead.
~ ~ ~
The river passed near the
base of the cliff. It was broad, languid, yellow, green, oddly warm for
early spring. " ‘Haskel,’ I name you, first river,"
Orah said as he waded into the water. "For truly, I am in need of
wisdom."
Fording the river proved
easy — a short, effortless swim. Here the Etan saw the first animate
life in the lowlands — small, silver-gray fish, primitively scaled and
armored.
The jungle on the far
shore was dense; Orah followed the narrow beach eastward until he
discovered a small tributary heading due north. Here he discovered that
the water of Haskel had stained his robe a light ocher. A sudden wave of
dismay flowed through him, followed by mindless fear. Pushing his heart
away from the unfamiliar emotions, he reasoned that the two months of
solitude had started affecting him.
Orah did not at once
recognize how the malefic power of the land was responsible for altering
his mood. But marking his return to calmness, he discovered he no longer
felt alone! He felt two others closely watching him, studying his
progress. One, with a deep hope and fathomless love imperfectly cloaking a
profound despair; the other, with emotions never before encountered and
therefore not understood: contempt, hatred, a dark, brooding malice.
Orah searched the jungle
but found no source for the feelings of these two. Was his mind creating
them from loneliness? Fantasizing to compensate for his long solitude?
~ ~ ~
After leading Orah
northward through the jungle for an hour, the small stream bent westward.
The Etan continued along it for awhile as its banks steepened and its
current accelerated, but soon its path ended in a small pool and spring.
Should he turn again
northward here or retrace his steps to the bend? The jungle looked equally
impassable everywhere. But when he knelt to fill his pouch from the pool
(When might he find such clear water again?), Orah saw an odd little rock
shaped exactly like a hand, pointing directly northward. He pulled the
moss and lichens from it but could not learn if it were carved or natural.
How can I question its origin? he asked himself, surprising himself again
by the possibility of doubt. No one else has come here since father Swayam
and mother Shatarupa planted Etan. Of this much I am certain.
Grateful for the sign,
Orah shrugged off the mystery. Muttering, "North, always north,"
he adjusted his few belongings in his shoulder pouch, then clambered up
the hill and into the jungle.
~ ~ ~
The trees seemed tightly
woven from the stream, but they grew closer and thicker until the passage
was virtually impenetrable toward the true north. Whenever there were
openings, even crawling holes, they led westward. He fought his way until
twilight; a more or less dry and open place in the multiplying swamp was
too inviting to ignore.
He did not trust the
plants enough to taste them — he had seen nothing since the plains that
he knew. And the fundamentally disquieting feeling of the land was
increasing; Orah felt anything growing in such an emotionally distorted
space would have a questionable effect on his mind. But the Etan had
carefully portioned his waybread through his two months’ journey,
fasting often rather than partaking of it. As he felt the life from her
work restoring his mind and spirit, he was thankful again that his sister
Althea was an incomparable master of the subtle powers of life, of the
earthbreath.
Orah lay back on the
moss, contented with life, dreamily identifying his newly discovered
constellations, Archer, Bull, Ram, Lion... "Lion!" He leapt to
his feet, gaping at the firmament. "The eye! Where is the eye?"
The brightest star of the group was missing.
The Etan waited
impatiently for the cloud to pass as he quieted his heart, but no vapor
covered the heavens: the eye of the Lion was simply, irrevocably gone. An
eclipse! It must be eclipsed, he thought, but knew it was impossible.
Searching the sky feverishly, he found nothing else amiss.
Orah stared until the
Lion was hidden by the trees, but could wrest no further meaning from the
suddenly imperfect order of Narain’s Garden.
The remaining few hours
of night were not restful. But at dawn, Orah quieted the inner conflict,
telling himself there was always a logical explanation for
everything.
The jungle had remained
utterly still during the night. Apparently neither diurnal nor nocturnal
animals existed below the plains. "A land of questionable plants and
no beasts!" he cried, already learning much of contempt. "Hah!
That is too generous. ‘Nilfecund Swamp’ I name you, first river’s
land: you are riotous with deadly malodorous plants, devoid of animate
life."
~ ~ ~
The Etan came to a second
river by noon of the third day following. A few noxious insects had made
their appearance, still no mammals. He had therefore confirmed his
mistrust of the plants and moved warily, almost as if fearing they might
attack him for crossing their demesne.
Dry land was a memory; he
had constantly waded and swum for the past two days. The first warning he
was finally through the Nilfecund Swamp came when he pushed through two
interlaced trees and was pulled by a gentle current.
The new river was a
lighter green than Haskel, but not as wide. Golden light filtered through
the trees to sparkle and dance on its water; dappled fish leapt for the
iridescent lacewings and enormous variegated butterflies flitting
everywhere over its surface.
"‘Camlo.’
This is your name, river; you are lovely," he murmured as he swam
across. He felt the vibrant life of the many small creatures of the new
shore; he knew the plants here would not harm him.
He washed his robe, but
it was permanently altered: erratic gray and amber blotches competed
chaotically with dull umber stains, the unpleasant memories of the foul
waters and poisonous secretions of the hanging plants and grasping vines
of Nilfecund. Orah lacked the skill to cleanse it.
The trees grew less
closely together on this shore, as if they had abandoned the primitive
struggle of the far side, or had once even felt the touch of a civilized
hand. Yes, this land could be the remnant of a garden! badly deteriorated,
but intelligently planted and maintained in the not-too-distant past.
Finding what might have long ago been an orchard, he filled his nostrils
greedily with the blossoms’ sweet scent, wondering the improbable, How?
almost as much as the impossible, Who?
Fewer and larger grew the
trees as the ground rose and became rockier: willow and cottonwood gave
way gradually to spruce and maple, then hemlock and cedar. The Etan saw a
bare hill to the northwest and decided to climb above the forest and
finish recovering from the swamp in the warm afternoon sun.
~ ~ ~
The hill was strange —
smooth, spherical, a polished dome of fused ebony metal. He examined it
carefully but could discover no reason for its existence.
"Yehokhanan-Ishtar could perhaps explain it," he said, thinking
fondly of his brother, the Architect of Etan.
The hill responded to his
emotion, coloring the metal slightly lighter. His surprise one of delight,
he played with different feelings: friendliness, love, happiness. With
each impulse, the hill brightened; by the end of an hour, it was a
brilliant scarlet.
Orah laughed and,
abandoning all caution, danced a movement of unrestricted joy on the
sentient hill, wedding his graceful talent to the flowing color beneath
his flying feet. Faster and faster he leaped and spun; the metal returned
his perceptions in graceful moving patterns, dancing lightning in harmony
with his soaring spirit.
But as his expression
rose closer and closer to the supreme catharsis of universal ecstasy, a
doubt erupted in his mind, Who created this hill? At once the metal
changed to an angry carmine, spotted by a rapidly returning ebony. Orah at
once started down, thinking with fear, It could be a beacon...
Perhaps the Etan might
truly have gone on then; the fate of the Lion Lords of Gurion would have
been vastly different. But as he was about to step into the forest, a
message from Althea flew to him, bearing the form of a golden dove. The
bird landed gracefully on his hand, folded her aureate wings with the
deftness of a master, then sang in Althea’s voice, "Pass the
night on my thought-hill Ezera, brother; your dreams will be of truth,
they will direct you well into the unknown north."
The bird ruffled her
feathers, cooed once softly, then disintegrated with a gentle cascading of
sound and light — like a thousand tiny golden bells dulcetly ringing,
then collapsing into rainbow prisms. Ezera responded with a flash of
purest silver and then with a kaleidoscopic display centered around the
dual themes of aureate and argent. Its gradually slowing rhythms lasted
well past sunset.
When the hill at last
ended its changes in a gentle saffron, the Etan found a depression near
the summit and lay down to watch the stars appear. A low haze had hung
over the swamp every night after the first; he had not yet confirmed the
strange damage to the heavens. But now the sky was crystal clear, there
could be no doubt: the Lion’s eye was as gone as if it had never been.
With this discovery, he heard distinctly what he had subtly felt since
descending from the continental plateau: a distant, persistent sobbing and
an answering, dark laughter of hideous malice, of conscious desecration,
of purest hate. Hearing these perversely related voices was at once a
challenge and an abomination far beyond the range of previous experience.
Orah stared toward the missing star and let the sounds carry him, sure his
imagination must be creating such odd violations of the silence.
As Orah drifted to sleep,
the keening of sorrow and the echoing scorn gradually transformed to
become the background music in a large hall filled with strangers, men and
women with black and white and yellow and red skin, men and women not of
Etan.
Orah had never before
known anyone other than his immediate family: they were the only
inhabitants of their city Etan; as far as anyone knew, the only people on
Martanda. And this was his first journey, the first of any Etan toward the
north.
His father Swayam had not
forbidden his odd desire, but the absence of approval was still a heavy
burden. But Althea had constantly nourished the sapling of his intention,
until it had grown to become a mighty oak of unwavering desire.
Dancing was no longer
Orah’s great passion in his dream. Now his life’s duty was simply to
hold a torch. At first he felt it a unique honor, but then saw that
everyone in the hall held similar torches or gems alive with radiant fire.
They are all
expressions of the One, he thought; the walls vanished as the Oblation
Bearers floated away in every direction. No one moved with effort, yet all
retreated from him alone. With a flash of intuition, he realized they all
shared the experience. Like the suns of the expanding universe, he
thought, wondering how to become a star.
With the question, his
dream changed: he was back in Etan with his family. But now he alone held
a torch. Perhaps because of it, the old familiar understandings no longer
applied to him, no longer bound him to their implicit demands. It was not
that he loved Chavva or the others any less, but now his mind appreciated
a more complete truth. Althea alone empathized fully; the others
considered him with a peculiar admixture of amusement and curiosity, but
did not, could not, understand. "How can it matter? All limited pain
leads to universal good," said Yehokhanan-Ishtar. And Bhishaj, Althea’s
husband, said, "It is beautiful, but what of your dancing? Is not
Father’s gift enough?"
The answer was on Orah’s
lips, "Dancing is my all!" but his dream changed again: now he
was once more fording the river he had named Haskel. He crossed as before,
but the sculpted stone hand on the tributary was now living but ulcerous
flesh, grotesquely beckoning him northward. The Nilfecund Swamp was rife
with quicksand and poisonous serpents; the Camlo River no longer deserved
its name — it was moiling with crocodiles and small deadly water snakes.
Ezera was the decaying skull of a dead giant, Orah a small black ant
picking at the rotting flesh.
The dove Althea sent to
him was pursued by a blood-red hawk, screaming in his father’s voice, "The
desire to possess opens the gateway to hell!"
Althea’s message also
changed, "Run Orah! Flee northward! Etan dissolves!" The
dove disintegrated with a shriek of agony into a flood of gray and
sanguine teardrops.
A dark emptiness, a
nothingness, was pushing into Orah’s mind, struggling to gain form. It
swallowed Etan, then the world, then devoured entire suns from its
insatiable need. Orah tried to run from its terrible hunger but found it
surrounding him everywhere. It choked him, attacked his soul, inexorably
forced his spirit to mimic its vile nothingness.
Orah awoke with heart
palpitating. But he was thinking calmly, A satellite in a synchronous
orbit could block a star’s light. But why would it not reflect the sun?
He sat up. At first the hill seemed covered by pustules, cankerworms and
carbuncles, but then, as he rubbed his eyes, he remembered where he was
and saw the Red Moon Rohini rising through the quiet beauty of the starlit
night. Orah laughed, remembering dancing under Martanda’s seven moons
with Chavva. Ezera responded by transmuting into a crystal sphere of
lambent sparkles and reflections.
The depression in the
rock which at first had felt perfectly molded to his body now seemed two
sizes too small. He reversed his position so that his head was toward the
south, then let his mind explore the heavens. He sent a triple fiber of
earthbreath toward the Lion’s eye, but something blocked his power so he
could learn nothing.
The effort led him gently
back to sleep; his energy trine carried him in dream to a silver castle
hidden in the mountains of the distant north. This vision transformed into
a beautiful woman, golden haired with a pale sky-blue hue to her skin, yet
unfamiliar, not of his family.
"I am Leor,"
she said in a gentle, wise voice. "I have waited for you throughout
time." In spite of (or perhaps, because of) the lovely melody of her
voice, the distant hopeless sobbing and scorning laughter returned.
"Who are you?"
Orah asked, trying to ignore the increasing cacophony of despair and
contempt.
"Your youngest
sister," she answered, her sweet tone not masking the fact that she
also heard.
"I could not have
failed to see your birth." It was the habit of the Etanai to attend
every nativity.
The laughter had become
so obtrusive he feared Leor might not understand him. But she replied,
"You did not fail, yet did not know me. Althea carried me here. I am
the hidden and forgotten fourth child. To him that can discover and
release me I shall reveal all knowledge. Behold!"
Leor raised her hand in a
commanding gesture; the wailing and the dark laughter at once stilled.
Then she expanded toward him, around him, became more and more refulgent
until sunlight seemed like shade. Orah was alone in the light, became the
light, lost everything of himself other than the infinite, unchanging,
perfectly still yet vibrantly alive light.
~ ~ ~
Etan’s farsighted
Healer saw her brother’s dreams reflect in her thought-hill Ezera,
gaining much of hope and grief in the experience: she alone of her kindred
knew of the ill decaying the firmament.
But the further
unexpected and unfortunate fact was that the Lady Althea of Etan was not
alone in viewing Ezera’s answers to Orah’s first dance in Riversland.
And far away, a saprophagous mocking laugh fed itself on purest
malevolence, fed itself and grew stronger.
If you'd
like to know the rest of the story, you can order Third Thunder
here.
|
