Category: Other Page 135 of 182

When Benda and Tob Gobble sat down in the grove so that Tob could tell his tale, Tob began by saying:

“To understand my story, you must first know the story of my people…”

Benda groaned inwardly, but did not let his knew friend know that he was tired of tales, and just wanted to finally be back home with his family. He put on a smile anyway, and Tob began.

[Editor’s note: the images which follow are copied from the ‘Codex Vegetalis,’ which is a book some scholars include in the Canticle of Barbaro (this designation is not universally agreed upon, it should be noted), and the only surviving copy of which resides in the archives of the Pantarctican Imperial Library. Re-used here with permission.]

Upon issuing forth from the cave mouth through which he had escaped the Black Water and Stone Sea below, Benda became immediately drowsy.

The sun shone down on him, and he blinked dumbly to see its rays again. It took several moments for his eyes to adjust to natural light again, and his limbs felt incredibly heavy. The cool breeze rose up from what he could now see was a large body of water not far off. He looked around. The cave opened onto a rocky ledge. And without climbing down, or otherwise exploring further his surroundings, he promptly returned to the cave mouth and dozed off for how long he did not know, half in the shade of the cave, half in the sun’s rays.

He slept the sleep of the dead, but he knew he was not dead, and despite being nearly (or even possibly) turned to stone, he had returned to the land of the living. Or at least one of those lands…

What roused him finally was not the smell of the sea nearby, the crashing of waves, or the cry of the sea birds. It was the strange sound of a flute, horribly out of tune, arythmic, almost broken sounding, which roused him out of slumber.

He stretched, and opened his eyes, rubbed his ears, and his face, his cheeks, and his forehead, blinked once hard, and then again.

“What a horrible racket!” he muttered to himself. Gathering himself, he got up to search for its origin. A thin rocky trail descended the rocky ledge from the cave mouth. As it wound downward, there was revealed a green but scrabbly field, and beyond it a sea which Benda did not recognize immediately.

Round the final bend of his descent, the broken horrid tune grew significantly louder, until stepping out onto the grass, Benda thought he spotted its source. He sensed there was someone behind a boulder of medium height, too tall to easily see over. He crept over to behind where the boulder lay, taking care to stay out of the line of sight of whoever — or whatever — might be on the other side.

Try as he might though, Benda could not surprise the strange but wise little fellow who had sat down there to sit in the shade and play his flute. As Benda approached, from the far side of the boulder the music — if you could really call it music — stopped abruptly, and there was silence. Benda, crouched there, suddenly felt a bit foolish for hiding and stood up.

“Hullo there,” he said over the rock, and strode out around it. But he did not realize, that from the other side, the little fellow had also gotten up to get a look at the visitor who was trying to creep up on him unawares. And so, when each reached the other side, they found it empty.

“Most peculiar,” said the little figure wearing a wide brimmed hat, top slumped to one side. Most peculiar indeed. He held in one of several hands (actually, technically, rootlets) his little reed flute, which he had carved himself from a special type of reed that only grew alongside the Great River. Over his shoulder was slung a simple pack. “Most peculiar indeed.”

“I say,” Benda began, circling back the way he had come. Likewise, the little brown lumpy figure did the same in the opposite direction on his thin stalks-for-legs. Once again, they each found an empty space the other had just vacated. “Hold still!”

The little figure did so, and finally revealed himself bodily to Benda, bowing low in a pretentious and awkward but nonetheless charming manner. Benda couldn’t help but smile ear to ear at this ridiculous creature.

“Tob the Gobble, at your service,” he said, removing his purple hat with a flourish, and using the butt end of his flute to simulate the cane of a gentleman.

“Benda, at yours,” he said.

Returning his cap to his brown lumpy head, Tob remarked, “Just Benda?”

Benda shook his head, “Just Benda.”

“Hmm! Then, Benda the Just we’ll call you! Everyone needs a second name, don’t you agree?”

“I’ve had too many,” Benda admitted, still smiling at the peculiar little fellow. “Now I’m just me.”

“What’s one more for good measure?” the gobble said, twirling around merrily. “Hmm, that reminds me of a song,” he began, holding up his flute to what seemed to pass for a mouth on the little creature. He exhaled into the instrument with a strange sort of hooofting sound.

“Please, let’s just… talk for a while first,” Benda interrupted him, hoping to break off another long horrible peculiar little tune like that which had roused him from his sleep and brought him to this place.

Tob seemed to eye him from the many small root buds which speckled the surface of his hard-looking skin, and lowered his flute. “Music critic, eh? I see. What about jokes? Got any good ones? Don’t worry, I’ve got quite a few! Let’s see…”

“I’m sorry,” Benda said. “I’m sure they’re quite funny, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not really much in the mood for joking or music. I’ve lost my friends, and I don’t know where even really I am. I’m just trying to get home to see my family again.”

“Tough crowd,” Tob quipped. “Let’s see then, a tale! A tell all! Whoohoo!”

Benda groaned, he realized, audibly. But Tob didn’t seem to notice or care, and just went right on going.

“A tale it is then. It’s settled. It’s been a while. Let’s see… I’ll tell you a tale, not a tall tale, but not quite a small tale — let’s call it a little bit more than ‘little.’ A little bit (much) like me. In fact, it’s my tale, and I’ll give it to you, and then you, dear friend, can regale me with yours.”

“This sounds like it might take a while. Is there somewhere we might sit down?” Benda asked. “Somewhere out of the sun?” He looked up again at the sky, nervously beginning to remember the prying eyes from above, the eagle and shape-shifter Murta who had hunted him and his party like prey, driving them under-ground.

“Why, yes! I know just the place, Benda the Just, for just such a tale! Hooray! Follow me!” And off he went, playing his flute and dancing as they walked, stop only once briefly to interject, “A song for a walk, I always say! Hey, hey!”

Near the edge of the sea, where the rock ledge jutted out, they rounded a bend, and there was a grove of low trees. Benda sheltered down in it, out of the sun, and braced himself for what he suspected might be a rather long-winded tale from his peculiar, yet oddly charming new friend, Tob the Gobble.

“There once was a gobble named Tob,
who had started out life as a blob.

Then he sprouted some arms,
and learned him some charms,

And went through the lands as a stroller”

— Ancient Quatrian Poem: ‘The Legend of Tob’

They entered then the newly opened tunnel passage, which had been unlocked for them by a volumetric presence summoned by Benda’s strange experience in otherspace. The tunnel air was fresh, and the ominous yellow glow faded as they plunged deeper in.

At first glance, the tunnel was much like all the others they’d traversed through the ancient Lagom warren system, which extended below much of the Kremellian subcontinent — and perhaps beyond. Dema, the female golek, was the first to become agitated by a subtle difference. She chittered in their language, which Eradus translated.

“She says there are watchers in these walls.”

They went on, in the dim suffuse light which pervaded the passage. And they all soon became aware of it, as the watchers took solid form. Here and there, marked in the walls were petroglyphs of unknown age and uncertain origin. Strange faces, with empty eye sockets which seemed to watch them, and, Benda thought, mocked them in silent laughter.

“They are the blathmari,” Machef said to them. “There is nothing to fear. As the sylphs are to the currents and airs above, so are they to the veins of ore running deep below the surface. They look out from silent eyes that see not the passing even of our generations, let alone the footfalls of our trespass, for theirs is geologic time, and we to them are nothing.”

Benda marveled in silent wonder anew at these ancient, ageless faces. They passed on with a kind of reverence, their fears falling back down to baseline in this subterranean realm.

The tunnel began to slope gently downward, and before long, opened out into a dark cavern, into which no light penetrated. As they stepped out in it, and the last one passed the threshold, a torch on either side sprung to life. Together they cast a circular glow, outlining a small stone outcropping — a landing — and what appeared to be a vast black body of water. Upon that black water, floating docked at the landing was a small slender boat, of fine dark wood. As Benda approached it, two small lanterns — one each fore and aft — affixed to metal stanchions sprang also to life and light.

“The vessel knows its pilot,” Machef remarked.

Benda shook his head, looking from the sable golek over to Dema, Selef, and Eradus. “It’s too small for all of us. There must be another way.”

“Wayfinder,” Machef replied, “this is your way. The silver thread lead you to this place.”

“I won’t just abandon you all here. It’s out of the question. Let’s turn back.”

As Benda went to turn, Eradus blocked his way. He stood in the center of the passage, torches illuminated on either side, and the two goleks stood beside him.

“Benda Lost,” Eradus said. “I found you once before, with my brother on the beaches of Devera. I can find you once again, wherever you end up in this wide world, now that I know your voice. Of this, I have no doubt.” He smiled, and stretched his hand out to Benda’s shoulder, and they embraced.

“Take this with you,” Eradus said, rustling under the folds of his cloak. He produced the goblet of the old man in the Cloud Spire, Banarat. “You might need it.” Benda took it, and proceeded to scratch each of the two goleks under their chins. “I’ll see you soon. Take care of him!” he exclaimed. They chittered back loving goodbyes in their language.

“Go then,” Machef said. “Follow where you’re lead, but be always wary, and know who you follow. Before long, our paths will cross again.”

Benda bade the others one more farewell, and stepped into the boat, which rocked slightly accepting his weight. There was barely place to sit, and no bench, so Benda simply remained standing, with his cloak wrapped about him, and the harp on his back. The boat slipped from the landing, and he didn’t look back.

The boat went from darkness into darkness. The only lights visible were the lanterns of the boat and their dim sorrowful reflection, making their slow way across the vastness. Benda had no visible landmarks against which he could judge their speed or progress. And there was no sound, but for a slight rippling of the water as the prow cut quietly through its surface. He stood perfectly still, and as his eyes strained to penetrate into the darkness, he fell into a light trance.

Though fully conscious of his body, his awareness dropped deep, deep into the blackness below him. And somewhere in that blackness, he perceived great dark forms which swam far below in the silent depths. A fear arose in him that they would sense him too, and he awoke out of the trance with a start, and looked around. All was the same, but he could sense still the forward motion of the boat as it cut through the black water.

He fell into a lull, until suddenly, without warning, the motion ceased, the rippling sound died down. The two lanterns of the boat sputtered and died out. Benda stood in total darkness, on a sea of vast proportions, with unknown lurkers in the deeps below. He trembled.

Benda’s courage began to fail him. His spirit quailed. He stood motionless, not knowing what to do. He lost all track of how long he stood there in that state. A dark and nameless panic began to set in.

Before it reached its peak, however, the barest glimmer of a light seeped into the place, like mist crawling in from the ocean. As he waited there, stone-still, he watched the light increase. And instead of a vast black water, there was revealed a great stone sea, complete with petrified waves, and ripples extending out in all directions captured as a solid. And he realized then, his boat had changed from fine dark wood itself to stone, being lodged now indistinguishably in the stone waves around him.

He marveled at this as the light increased, and at long last, motion stirred in his limbs again. He mustered his energy, and stepped out of the boat onto the stone ocean. Furtive footsteps were emboldened as they found purchase upon the surface of the stone waves, and he followed the light to shore. From there, he discovered its source, an illuminated passage issuing forth back into the world of light, the world above, and he climbed up out of the Place Below.

A curvi-linear folded bow with a single barred sinister descender, the meaning of this ancient Quatrian religious symbol is still the subject of much debate by scholars today.

The tunnel was filled with phantasmagorical images. Other voyagers on other voyages seemed to pass them by with alarming regularity, but without apparent substance. Most frequent were white luminous bodies, quadrupeds, who would intangibly flit along the tunnel walls without seeming to heed the party. Like cells in some great underground vein bumping and jostling along in the great rush of being.

Blue Zalthyrmian lights flitted too along the cave walls, which, Benda noted, passed now and again between smoothly carven stone, and a hard, almost fibrous substance. Though the lights seemed at times to form letters and scripts, their mysterious meaning was still inscrutable to Benda and the others. Though, he wondered whether Machef might not have rather more knowledge of that language than he lett on. No matter, it was Benda who had chosen the way. Where it lead, they would find out in due course.

After a time, the white phantasms — which Machef had confirmed to them were the spirits of Lagoms — ceased passing back and forth in both directions. Their lights went dark for a time in the passage, and then, all at once, they organized themselves in one direction — the way Benda and the others had come from. As the party progressed, the white lights seemed to be more and more furiously streaming toward, and then passed them.

“Should we… be concerned?” Eradus asked, to no one in particular.

“They flee a terror in another age,” Machef’s voice spoke inside them.

Just then, there was a low rumbling, deep, deep within the stone, and a dull yellow light appeared in the distance, accompanied by a smell of mustiness.

“A terror which we seem to flee towards,” added Benda.

Machef seemed to shrug as he kept on, “The way out is through.”

Eventually, the streaming figures in white slowed, and then halted completely. There was only the dull yellow presence, somewhere ahead of them, and the musty smell of air. And a feeling of dull directionless oppression. It made them tired, but afforded them no rest. The way out is through. Benda repeated it himself over and over as he lifted one foot after the other, endlessly heavy and dull, and thudded along.

Until, all at once, the tunnel opened up into another cavern, like the one they’d been in previously, but smaller. The walls here were adorned with murals too, but painted, not set in tile, and the paint was flaked and cracked, and crumbled away in places. Depicted were Lagom warriors in full regalia going to battle against… figures whose images had all crumbled and fallen into ruin long since. A foe without a face.

The yellow light here was suffuse and omni-present. The mustiness smothered the air, and Benda’s eyes searched the haze and rubble for their next passage onward. Tunnel entrance after tunnel entrance away from the main chamber were blocked in by rubble and stone. Nothing moved.

“Wayfinder,” Machef said. “Find the silver thread.”

“The silver thread?” Benda repeated to himself.

“The blue way leads not through here. Whatever it was the Lagoms fought near this place, the Zalthyrmians lingered and linger not still in this spot either.”

The silver thread. Benda did not know what that was, but he could feel the weight of its import beginning to grow in him. The goleks laid down to lick themselves, and one another. Eradus too sat down on the dusty ground, looking up at the murals of the armored warriors.

Benda went off a little away from the others, and faced the wall. He closed his eyes, crouched ever so slightly, bending his knees, balancing his weight into his hips and seat. His body swayed with his breath, and he was plunged into darkness. He let his hands come up from his sides, palms out and sensing, like two great ears that could touch the darkness. They tingled slightly, and Benda could sense the energy flowing through them.

As though pushed by an ocean wave, Benda’s hands rose up and came together in front of him, and where they passed, he felt a twinge. A something. A sensation of a sensation, very slight. His hands swam out in front of him, crossing and he felt it again, and again. It was a single point, then a thin stroke, a line of ephemeral filament. He tried to seize it, but his hands did not function in this subtle space as they normally ought. He had to orient, and retrain himself, as if from outside himself.

His two hands were his only being, and a third point, his heart. He thought then of Eril, the harp given him by the High Augur of Quatria. He imagined himself plucking its strings, and he knew then that this filament — this silver thread — was of the same underlying universal substance, if in another register, and on another instrument.

He felt then the silver thread extend outward from his heart into the darkness of this subtle space, where his two hands were the only embodied forms which existed. And the thread pointed off into a fourth place, the ray of the future. Benda finally managed to seize the thread in his two hands then, having inwardly tuned into its resonance. But he did not pluck it as he would the harp’s strings, for he knew that if he let it go to sound, he might not be able to seize it again. So he held tightly all the while with one hand, pulling, and alternating, pulling and alternating. The thread was very fine, and smooth, but seemed immeasurably strong. Benda was sure he could not break it, tug as he might on it. And tug he did.

The others resting there in the cave witnessed nothing unusual, and took turns dozing, or nibbling on bits of bread. Dema and Selef were soon snoring.

Benda continued to pull on this invisible thread, in his parallel world of awareness. And as he did so, he began to feel almost as though he were again a simple fisherman, pulling on a very long line, and knowing that on the other end, he must have caught something very, very big.

He strained suddenly, and either his awareness in that other space broke, or the line he pulled snapped. And with a start, he found himself tumbled over onto the floor on his backside. Machef opened his eyes and focused on him.

There was then a sound, subliminal. A rumbling. A feeling. Growing. It widened into the sound of deep horns sounding. The yellow light for a moment dimmed, and in their awareness all shadow and light swapped places. The world inverted. A trembling, the sound of hoofs, a horn blast — and a tunnel entrance on the far side of the hall burst open in an eruption of rubble and dust. A huge form passed out of it. Not even a form, a volume, invisible, without definite shape, or discernible character. It swirled into the chamber, around them once, and then vanished down the way they had come.

Their world returned to normal. The yellow light resumed, though the smell of mustiness now seemed to fight to pierce the dust newly set alight. There was an in-bursting freshness of air from the tunnel which had newly opened.

“Wayfinder,” Machef said. “You have found the way.”

They slept in that cavity below the ground for how long none of them could say after. They awoke to a somewhat less than total blackness. A little ways off, Benda saw a soft blue light almost as if dancing. A silhouette of a golek passed in front of it, hiding the glowing forms. Machef.

His familiar voice filled their minds with warmth when they felt his words form in the hearing of their hearts. “This way,” he said.

At once, they were roused and scampering off behind him as a group. Benda’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, and could make out the grey hues of a tunnel. His hand touched the wall as they passed within. Earth, and rock, and root, lit on occasion with tiny dappled glimpses of maybe daylight, Benda mused, perhaps indirect and refracted issuing forth from possibly fissures on the surface through many blind passages here below. They must not yet be too deep — and Benda’s fear stirred a little. Did the sunlight carry the rays of the eyes of the Watcher Above?

“Fear not,” Machef’s voice assured them. “His eyes are keen, but his understanding does not penetrate the depths.”

They went on a while longer in silence. Not out of fear, but each lost in their own deep pondering.

After a time, Eradus broke the silence.

“I see, at times, or I think I see — perhaps I feel — some strange small lights of different colors. Sometimes blue, and sometimes white. Others yellow. They seem almost familiar. Pray tell, what lights and powers there be who flit about these halls and palaces of the Place Below?”

“Let’s go a little further,” Machef said. “And your sight and understanding will come together.”

They passed a while longer, countless, unnumbered minutes as the dimly lit tunnel sloped down, or curved to one direction, and then down another. At last the tunnel terminated at a wall of stone with a natural threshold, and a door of solid, ancient wood.

“Go ahead,” Machef said. “Knock.”

Eradus stepped up, and rapped on the door three times. They waited. The door swung silently open, and one by one they passed through. They saw no porter, guard, nor attendant. The door closed again behind them.

They looked around. They were in a luminous cavern, carved into a hall with columns and decorative arches. On the walls were murals set in tile, depicting lush gardens, fruits, leaves, and grasses of all manner in sweet marvelous abundance. Scattered here and there within the murals were birds flitting about happily, and on and above the ground, dancing, prancing figures with long bodies of white.

“Rabbits!” Eradus exclaimed. He pointed off to the many tunnel openings which were scattered around the walls. “We’re in a giant warren!”

“You are correct,” said Machef. “This is one of many such hubs built in ages past by the ancient Lagom peoples at the height of their civilization.”

“Which way leads home?” Benda said.

“These tunnels have fallen into disuse,” said Machef. “And the way is bent, but not broken. But for I, and a few others of my people who remember still the passage ways down here, few from the world above now visit the Place Below. And even I do not know more than a few of these vast tunnels. But as the intuition of the King of the Forest rightly spotted, there are other powers now who dwell here down below.”

“The white lights still can be seen to scamper throughout these tunnels, and sometimes on starlit nights in fields of the world above. They are the rabbits in the murals, the Lagoms. The murals depict what we call in our language still Allfruits, or the Place of Dappled Summer Light.”

“And the blue lights?” asked Benda. “I saw them too when we first awoke in the cavity.”

Machef replied, “The Lagoms might have built these walls and arches, and painted these murals. But the tunnels are much, much older, going back to the dawn of time, or perhaps before. To the Zalthyrmians. Who themselves, legends say, only discovered them. And, of course, systematically explored them thenceforth.”

“The blue lights are their language. Their language is their heritage, which they bequeathed to the Place Below, though their domain crossed many, many realms. Their heritage is tangible and visible at times, as in that cavity, or flitting about the tunnel. The words describe the place, and are written in the place. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear and heart to understand, you can read and speak the language. The language gives us light in the dark places. As we speak the language, so can we pass through the places bodily, but we beings must bring our bodies along too, for that is our nature. The Zalthyrmians, when they left, according to their nature, passed into their language as light. This was only after they had explored completely all worlds, and encoded in each place their findings and the peculiar beauties they had there partaken of as witnesses.”

“They say the Zalthyrmian tunnels, at times, go along the veins of the Great Vine itself, from whence each ensuing world as fruit is born.”

“And the yellow?” asked Eradus.

“Gobs,” said Machef. “But we will see them soon enough, of that there is no doubt. Let us not speak of it til then. Now, Benda, is the time to find the way home.”

“How?”

“The Zalthyrmian language.”

“I do not know it.”

“Speak your destination aloud,” Machef said.

“Cannaxus,” asserted Benda firmly.

“Use your desire…” pushed Machef.

Benda closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

“Home,” he said aloud.

A faint blue light appeared before a tunnel off to the right, and Benda began walking toward it. Machef stopped him, directing silently his eyes to another tunnel, which now had a blue light hovering by it, and another, and another.

“What manner of trickery is this?” Eradus said. “I thought you said — ”

“Hush,” intoned the voice of Machef in their hearts. “Many roads lead to many homes. Focus on the best of what resides in yours to find your doorway thither.”

Benda’s silence lasted only a moment, turning to joy as his heart fixed on the last image he saw before leaving home for the ill-fated fishing trip which lead him through such long roads over sea and under tunnel: his wife holding their infant son in the arch of the door to their small house, waving goodbye.

“Luala,” he said sweetly aloud.

“Sol.”

At once the disparate soft blue lights converged onto a single tunnel opening, just right of center.

“Come,” Machef said, and they all followed after him, crossing the great hall beneath the murals to the tunnel opening. “You have found the way. Let us go.”

At darkfall, the sable golek named Machef brought the small band of wayfarers to a hidden place by the edge of the forest. The moon had not yet risen, and Benda’s eyes could make out nearly nothing beyond his nearby companions, who were all huddled close, peering out of the forest across the dark plain, in the direction of the mountains.

“When I give the signal,” Machef’s voice sounded in their minds, “Follow me, and make no sound.”

Eradus tugged on the sleeve of Benda, who had been intently peering into the gloom. He signaled to him to pull up his cloak and hood completely over himself, as he had done. They wore Cloaks of Becoming from the ancestral treasures of the Drynarean Forest. Though in full light of day, the eyes of an eagle or magician (no less the two combined in one person) might perceive, just so, the blurred edges of the cloak-bearer in motion, it drastically reduced their chance of discovery by dark of night. Benda pulled the hood up over his head, and arrayed the cloak around his shoulders and arms.

Dema made a slight nervous whuffing noise once, and was silent. They waited a breath or two longer, and Machef — whose ears had been forward listening flattened them back behind his head — thrust his neck out, and lunged forward without a sound. Dema and Selef followed immediately behind, and Benda followed after Eradus, whose form became all but invisible once he passed beyond arms length. Benda fixed his gaze on the edge of white underside of the tail of Dema, which hung low as they tiptoed silently out of the tree cover.

Several breathless minutes passed, and the gloom of night settling in for earnest gave way to stars bursting forth, and the sky lightening enough that Benda could easily make out the three goleks. The form of Eradus, though, was all but hidden from his view, except when his friend turned once and lifted slightly his hood at Benda and smiled, like a smile coming out of a crack in the darkness.

At once, Machef was leading them down a slight dip in the meadow, which seemed to deepen ever so slightly. They rounded a subtle bend, and Benda’s eyes could just make out a rocky cleft, which had been wholly invisible from the plain above, across which they had traveled.

They all froze suddenly when they heard a “hoo-hoo” from somewhere not far off in the night. An owl.

“Run!” Machef’s voice spoke urgently in their minds. “ Now!”

The goleks sprinted off ahead, being naturally faster and more suited to such terrain than the two men who trailed after them as best they could. But it was a short sprint, after all, ending by an earthen wall where they halted. Machef searched around, sniffing close to the ground, and within a moment, the three goleks were rapidly digging at a spot indicated by Machef. In another few seconds, there was a hole large enough for one to pass. Dema and Selef bolted in. Machef nodded to the two men, who he let follow after the goleks into the hole, himself bringing up the rear.

As they passed below, Benda’s searching hands in the darkness felt the edge of smooth cut stones. He traced upward along the edge, and realized what it must be.

“An arch!” he whispered.

No one replied. If any of the others reacted to him, he didn’t see it. They moved through the arch into a more spacious cavity within.

Benda heard the goleks shuffling back past him, and Machef said in their minds, “They will close the hole again from within. The eyes of the Watcher Above cannot see us here, but there may be others who can.”

“Here?” Benda whispered. “Where is here?”

Machef replied, “The Place Below.”

Benda and Eradus greeted the goleks with joy. Though it had only been a few days since they had parted, there on the Plain of Edeb, it seemed to Benda as though it had been lifetimes. In some sense, it had. Apart from a few lost moments of the storms-at-sea which brought him bodily into and out of that other land, his memory seemed almost fully recovered now. He could recall his full trip to Quatria, and his life before.

Dema and Selef nuzzled Benda and Eradus fondly, and spoke in their soft language, of which Benda had not yet developed comprehension.

“They say their kings have come back to them,” Eradus translated, laughing.

Benda looked at the wise face of the sable golek, Machef, and said to him — quite certain he could understand human speech — “The Old Man above sends his warmest regards.”

Machef bowed his head low, in recognition.

“Come,” a deep voice resounded in Benda’s mind. But no words had been spoken aloud by those present.

“Who?” Benda said. “Where?”

Machef turned his head, indicating the way back they had come. “There is little time,” the voice said.

“You!” said Benda. He looked at Eradus, who was smiling, and seemed unsurprised. Though Benda’s memory had returned, he had never encountered a mindspeaker before. Eradus, evidently, had.

“Let’s go,” Eradus said, mounting Selef. “He’s right. We can talk later.”

Benda, likewise, mounted Dema, and the three goleks set off at a run as the sun rose.

Far above, though they did not see it (Benda felt it, almost as though it were an itching in his mind), a lone eagle watched their progress across the plain, back toward the Arches of Passing. It was the only escape route from the island, and there was no question they would use it to pass back to the mainland of Kremel. From there, the eagle knew, the travelers would have to pass back through his country on their way south. And in that place, his power was greatest. Their capture was all but certain.

When they arrived at the Arch, Machef turned his gaze skyward, but said nothing. Benda sensed the presence, but did not speak either. Eradus and Selef passed back through the Arch first, and Benda with Dema followed close behind. Machef brought up the rear.

When they landed, all of a sudden, there was a flash of great wings which seemed for an instant to cover up the sun. They startled, and Eradus made to draw his sword. But instead of great talons unfurled to strike, they saw the curved neck, stilt legs, and wide wings of a great heron, which landed silently on the water’s edge down below the platform of the Arch. They watched it for a moment, transfixed, as it waded there. It’s head struck down into the water suddenly, and up with it came a tiny fish, which it gobbled without comment.

Machef said, his voice booming softly in their minds, “Any other creature but she would be killed in the Electric River. She alone, with her purity, can wade in it. Let us be off.”

And with a leap, the sable golek left the platform and bounded ahead of the others, taking the lead. Dema bearing Benda followed, with Eradus and Selef in the rear. They ran for many long hours. Not toward the Castle of Edebia, and the Fourth King (who had sent them on the errand to the Cloud Spire in the first place), but into the wooded hills west of there. They traveled, where they could, under the shadow of the trees, trusting that the eyes of the eagle would have a harder time penetrating into that foliage, to track their progress. Where the foliage thinned out, they made hard runs, using trees as relays, and kept always a jagged, unpredictable course.

And still the eagle tracked them silently over-head. When it would lose them in thick growth, its great height and vantage point would again eventually find them. It knew it was only a matter of time.

Goleks, especially when they know that they are being hunted, do not relish being out in the open. Countless generations of domestication have enabled them to overcome — for the most part — their innate fear of being without cover (or their utility to their human partners would be limited). But in the deepest, wildest part of their minds, when true fear or terror struck them, they would always seek out the nearest burrow or cover they could find. Machef, however, was different. On the Isle of Edeb, where his people lived for centuries or perhaps millenia before it collided with the Kremellian peninsula, there were no natural predators. As a result (and partly on account of their size, which significantly exceeded that of their mainland cousins), the sable goleks were remarkably courageous, and Machef — a warrior — especially so.

Throughout their flight, though Dema and Selef grew tired, and at times, the natural edge of their fear crept in close to them, Machef called out to them in the soft language of the goleks, which they all shared, despite their geographically diverse roots. He spoke as if in song, and Benda could sense that when they heard him thus, they were able to put away their fear for a while longer, and pass through their fatigue to run a while longer. Benda knew this, for he too felt the same on hearing it.

Otherwise though, they did not make conversation among themselves. Eradus, who had seemingly fully recovered by now from his excesses of the night before, rode with expertise on the back of Selef. Benda, however, did his best to remain astride, due to his much more limited experience riding goleks. Dema was understanding and gentle though, and never let him fall, always adjusting herself carefully if he were coming close to a tumble. Benda thanked her for this repeatedly, patting and stroking her neck as they flew through the woods and brushlands, and ever deeper into the hills.

It was late in the afternoon before Machef brought them to a halt in a deep, dark copse in the heart of a maze of trees and alleys. They had not seen the sun, or much of the sky for close to an hour, Benda reckoned. Machef inclined his head for them to dismount, and they did so.

Everyone was exhausted, except for perhaps Machef, whom Benda noted, appeared to show no signs of fatigue.

“Machef,” Benda asked. Machef gave him a sharp look, as if to hush him. And Benda continued only in a much lower whisper, “Why?” he said. “Why do you help us so?”

“Raisla,” whispered Eradus, coming close.

Machef nodded, silently.

“To Dema and Selef, we are raisla. As is Machef to them.”

“One family,” spoke Machef, in his deep silent voice, which they heard not with their ears, but in their minds or hearts.

“It is so,” he said. “Now rest. At dark, we go to the Place Below.” And so they ate and drank a little, and napped fitfully under the dark boughs of the trees, and the eagle could not see them, and knew not their precise location, but was certain he would catch them, no matter where they came out into view again, on their way over the mountains and into Holmat.