What Lies Beyond, page 49
part #6 of The Cycle of Galand Series
"You run him through with your sword?" Blays said.
Dante shook his head. "You lose."
"Right. And I hate losing." Carvahal made an obscene gesture in the direction of the tower. "Once Taim started breaking the rules, there was no sense in me sticking to them, either."
"Then why make us infiltrate the tower and steal the spear? Couldn't you have done it much more easily?"
"And what, should I go kill your lich for you, too? You must earn the spear. That's the entire point. You prove yourself worthy. Or you prove that it's time for you to go home."
"And we proved our worth the moment we got the spear back in hand?"
"Not quite. In my eyes, your test was whether you could get the spear out of the city and down here on the ground. At that point, I was free to intervene."
"If I'd known we just needed to get it to the ground, I would have thrown it out the tower window as soon as we had it. So what was your second reason for stepping in?"
Carvahal tossed his head. "We'll get to that. Probably. But you've had an awfully long day, haven't you? Don't you think it's time for you to get some sleep?"
Dante didn't think so at all, and was about to say as much. But shadows rippled from Carvahal's hand, leaving Dante with no choice in the matter.
~
He woke slowly. It was morning and a mist was rising from the river; they were still barreling along, Carvahal standing tall in the prow, driving them forth at a speed on the water Dante had only seen matched by the Sword of the South at full sail. The mist was hugging the water and the sunlight was spearing cleanly through the trees overhanging the river, lighting up the insects dancing along the surface and the fish rising to meet them. It was a cold, clear, beautiful morning. Dante felt like he hadn't seen such a day in a very long time.
"No," Carvahal said without turning around.
"Huh?"
"It wasn't all just a dream. And no, no one is after us."
Dante frowned. "Did you just read my mind?"
"Once you have spent thousands of years dealing with humans, they become so predictable that anticipating how they're going to think becomes indistinguishable from reading their minds."
Gladdic was awake. Blays wasn't, but he stirred as Carvahal drove the boat aground on a gravelly beach to allow the three of them to do things Dante wasn't sure the gods needed to, like eat and relieve themselves. As soon as they were through, Carvahal shepherded them back onto the boat and carried on like he'd never need to rest.
"Where are we headed?" Dante asked.
"Home," Carvahal answered.
"Can Taim follow us along the river?"
"Not unless he wants the ramna to tear down Chronus stone by stone."
Dante lodged himself against a gunwale. "Last night, you said there were two reasons you helped us get away. What was the second?"
"I thought about it for a while and I decided not to tell you."
"What? But you—"
"Can break whatever promises I want," Carvahal said. "Which I had decided was more in my interests. But then I decided some things are too good to keep to myself. Though this might take so long to explain that you'll regret asking by the end.
"Let's begin with something that I gather has been on your minds a lot lately. The notion of cycles. Over time, everything that exists will change from the way it was when it first began to exist. Over a long enough time, everything that came to exist will cease to exist. Another way to put this is that everything is born, and will eventually die."
At that moment a gap opened in the trees on the eastern river bank, exposing the mountains beyond. Blays pointed to them. "I've found a problem with your theory. How can a mountain die?"
"Trust me, they die too. It just takes an extraordinarily long time. One way to think of it is that a mountain has an extraordinary amount of order within it. If you were to climb that peak today, and then return to it a hundred years later, it would more or less look exactly the same.
"This is not true of human societies. Particularly in your world, where the generations are always replacing one another. Compared to a mountain, a human society has a much lower degree of order and a much higher degree of chaos. But of course you don't want too much chaos, or else things turn into hell. At a certain point society ceases to exist altogether. So when it comes to mortals, there is a strong and unavoidable strain of chaos at work. This must be balanced by an equally strong strain of order. Wise rulership consists of understanding this and working to mold your laws and actions to it. By contrast, take this fellow who's giving you so much trouble."
"The Eiden Rane," Gladdic said.
"Right. Him. As I understand it, his vision is to subjugate all the world beneath his banner, yes? To kill all who now exist and convert them to his undead followers, from north to south and from sea to sea."
"Only at first," Dante said. "Eventually, he intends to create new living people to populate the world and worship him as one united society."
"Immensely stupid. His new order—for that's what it is, highly ordered, in its way—can't survive a world full of people. For one thing, they won't last as a single people for even a generation before they start splintering apart to pursue their own interests—and, more importantly, to pursue their own power. His order is doomed. Way too much chaos for it to last the way he thinks it will. The most stupid part about it is that he should know better. If we couldn't impose perfect order from above, how could he ever hope to?"
"That's what you tried to do when you made the Realm, isn't it? But it didn't work."
"Right. The ramna. The damned ramna. Although, for all the troubles they cause, there are those who nudge them every now and then into doing something extremely useful."
"Does anyone actually do that besides you?"
"Who, me? Taking advantage of unexpected chaos to alter the course of current events?"
"I apologize for making such an absurd accusation."
"Apology accepted. This time." Carvahal stopped propelling them forward with the pole and gazed up at the clear sky. "Let me clarify how balance works in practice. Think of it like this: a kingdom is ruled by a king. But he doesn't oversee every last detail of his realm. Instead he oversees the major issues, such as war and taxes, and also rules over his nobles, who in turn rule over their own portions of the realm, including the people within those portions, who in turn might rule over individual farms and plots, or live as laborers on the lords' land. This creates multiple layers of order to ameliorate the chaos you're going to find within any large human organization.
"But it is a big mistake to assume a structure like this always functions as intended. For instance, the kingdom might find itself ruled by a bad king, in which case the ostensible force of order actually becomes an agent of disorder. Then we reach an ironic state where proper order can only be restored through the judicious application of chaos. Like an assassination. Or a great big bloody civil war. In this way you bring things back to where they ought to be—or more realistically, somewhat closer to where they ought to be."
Blays stretched out on his bench. "When you put it like that, it seems like you could avoid the 'bad king' problem and cut out a lot of the middlemen by just letting the people rule themselves."
Carvahal got a good laugh out of that. "Do you really think people have never tried whipping up a mob, beheading the king, and ruling themselves? It always ends in tears."
"Are we still talking about why you came to Chronus?" Dante said.
"I'm getting there. You might be mortal, but you're not so short-lived that you don't have time to listen to a proper explanation." Carvahal resumed pushing them downriver. "So. When we designed your world, it was intended to function much differently than the one we created here. For one thing, there wouldn't be any gods directly ruling it who could prevent it from falling into misalignment.
"Thus we built your world to be layered in ways that would naturally maintain balance. One step was to make you mortal. The next was to make your world much bigger than this one. This was meant to make it impossible for any one person to take over the whole thing. Plenty of people would be able to create kingdoms, sure. Every now and then when someone was both extremely ambitious and incredibly competent, they might be able to seize a whole continent.
"But the world? No. Before such a ruler could get anywhere close to that, his mortal lifespan would run short. Then his heirs would struggle for power over his conquests, both with each other and with local nobles seeking to restore their own sovereignty, and eventually it would break apart, back into individual kingdoms, duchies, city-states, and so forth, each returning to its own layers, cycles, and epicycles of order and chaos—or, to put a new thought into your heads, of ether and nether.
"Such a system was intended to be self-perpetuating. Even though the people who lived within it would come and go, live and die, the world they lived within would be permanent. Except, well, we were wrong."
"For the Eiden Rane is the death of that system," Gladdic said.
"Not just him. Anything like him. Though yes, he is the most recent example of our miscalculation. It turns out your world isn't so balanced as it was meant to be. An overabundance of order or chaos can still destroy it after all. Hence why you're here. Now, a minute ago, I mentioned you could also think of order and chaos in terms of ether and nether. This should suggest one more way to think of it."
Dante cocked his head. "As Taim and Arawn."
Carvahal grinned. "Right. With the understanding that within any structure of order, there is also chaos: and within any structure of chaos, there is also order. Thus neither element should be thought of as perfectly pure nor as exact opposites of each other. Just elements that represent a wider trend toward one side or another.
"Got that? Good. What we're seeing in your world, then, is that the Eiden Rane is threatening all life with an overabundance of order. Therefore he's acting in the service of Taim. What, then, is the natural champion needed to oppose him?"
"Arawn," Dante said slowly. "Chaos."
"Correct. Though in this case it is that ironic form of chaos that exists to fix an order gone wrong, like in the earlier case of our bad king."
"Just to make things perfectly clear, that means we are the champions of Arawn?"
"Don't get ahead of me. Although even if you were Arawn's champions, note how even within your group there is a layer of order—that would be you, Gladdic—to balance the whole." Carvahal glanced back, looking amused and thoughtful. "Or does Gladdic represent proper order to be deployed against the lich, and it's you that's balancing his order with a layer of nethereal chaos? You see, when you start looking closely enough at any given detail, it's hard to be certain what's order and what's chaos. A clever fellow can usually find a way to argue either case."
"I'm not sure I—"
Carvahal waved a hand. "It doesn't matter. Not for our present purposes. Let us switch focus. Taim—the real Taim, not just the forces that are in general alignment with him—wishes for the White Lich to serve as a tool to usher in a new cycle. One that will allow him to replace the Mists, which no longer function as he intended them to, having fallen into a form of chaos, or at least a form of order he doesn't like. At the same time, since your world has reached a precipice as well, he's content to let it run its course and begin something new. This wouldn't be the first time."
"But you personally want to maintain balance between order and chaos. Like there was meant to be."
Carvahal laughed merrily. "Immensely wrong. I want to see what happens. For this time, the crisis is different than the others."
"How so? You just said it wasn't the first time. And I know you're right, because we've seen one of these crises—these cycles—ourselves, when demons overran our world and killed nearly every living soul. All civilization came to an end. It didn't return for a long, long time."
"Don't you see? There are forces of Taim at work here, embodied by the lich. And there are forces of Arawn as well, embodied by yourself."
"Hang on." Dante gripped tight to the gunwale. "The last time we fought him, the lich claimed he was the avatar of Taim. Before that, I unknowingly fulfilled a prophecy that supposedly marked me as the avatar of Arawn. Are you telling me the prophecy was true?"
Carvahal went silent. With how loquacious he'd been up to that moment, his hesitation was unnerving.
"That isn't something you need to know," he said at last. "Again, I have to maintain some mystery." A large fly buzzed around Carvahal's head. He gave it a dour look and pointed at it, annihilating it. "Two forces. Ether and nether. Taim and Arawn. That's been the way of every past cycle. But this time? This time, there is a third force at play."
"Carvahal," Blays said.
Carvahal shot a glance back at him, grinning in a way some might have called wicked. "You continue to not disappoint me."
"Do you ever thank whoever you gods pray to for how lucky you are?"
"I've always made my own luck. But perhaps I'll start."
They both laughed. A moment later, Gladdic snorted.
Dante waited until he couldn't stand it. "I'm about to pray to the god of sense to make you two start making any of it."
"The third force is Carvahal," Gladdic said. "And Blays, it seems, is his champion."
"A wrinkle we've never seen before," Carvahal confirmed. "Call me egotistical, if you like—and then find a way to escape the lightning I'll cast down on you for doing so—but I'd really like to see how this shakes out. Who knows, maybe Taim is right, and we are on the verge of a new cycle—but not the one he thought was coming. Instead, it will be something we've never seen before."
Dante did his best to take this in. "Well, that's a horrifying possibility. Now if Taim is order, and Arawn is chaos, what does this third force represent?"
"Beauty? Charm? Grace in the face of disaster? The yearning of that which is to bend itself to the charisma of what might be? Perhaps it's the shoe thrown into the works that spoils the plans of the machine. It could be the moment of inspiration when all hope is lost. Would you buy that? Not yet? Then maybe it's the turn of the last card that was needed to win the pot—or the pebble in the lane that makes the lead runner trip when it seemed the race was already decided."
Carvahal slashed at the water with his pole, driving them even faster. Perhaps it was the wind of their speed stinging Dante's eyes, but the trees and the river abruptly gleamed silver.
"Then again, maybe none of these things captures the full truth," Carvahal said, much more even in tone than a moment before. "Maybe it's something beyond the sterility of order or the mindlessness of chaos. Maybe it's a power that knows it's far more fragile than the mountain, yet is driven by a will that makes the mountain look like a molehill."
He shifted moods again, now mocking. "Or perhaps I flatter myself—and my reflection. We do that, you know. Gods and mortals alike."
At last he grew sober. "But that's more than enough of this. Even if I had the answer, giving it to you would spoil the question."
The three humans were silent for some time. Blays lounged on his bench, contented. Gladdic sat straight, stoic. Dante held his tongue for as long as he could, then cursed, though not out loud.
"Well, we own the spear," he said. "Does that mean we can defeat the White Lich?"
Carvahal gave another of his laughs. "How the hell should I know? Say that once upon a time, myself and my eleven peers were able to see the future with perfect clarity. Think how awful that would be. We'd be no more than puppets on a string! Why, if we'd ever had such an ability, we would have stripped it from ourselves long ago, if only to stop us from contemplating the horror of what it meant. So I barely know more than you do. Is it possible for you to find victory? Yes. Is it destined? No. Not at all."
"But when others before us have earned the spear, they've been able to—"
"Oh, do you ever get tired of hearing yourself speak? Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you, because that would alter the future. Again, it's possible. But it's much later in the game than you should have ever allowed it to reach. That means you're counting on the turn of the only card that can save you from ruin. And even if fortune saves your hides from the lich? Well, your troubles with Taim are just beginning."
"What are you saying? That even if we stop the lich from destroying our world, Taim might do so anyway?"
Carvahal whirled, water whipping from his pole, his eyes alight with the divine. "I have said enough. More than enough, drunk on teasing those whose minds can't see as far into the possibilities as mine can. You have your weapon. From here, your fate is your own to make."
The river narrowed, squeezing the current faster, though the boat was already traveling fast enough that it hardly made any difference. The banks rose on each side. They were still primarily traveling south, but judging by the sun, the river had diverted some degrees to the east. The shores were crowded with trees, blocking out any glimpse of their surroundings. Maybe the rush of the river was drowning them out, but Dante rarely heard any birds calling to each other.
The river bent back to the south and a cliff appeared dead ahead. At first blush it looked like the current would smash them against the face of the rock, but an archway opened at the base, and they shot through it into a large tunnel of natural stone. The ceiling was riddled with gaps, about half of which were overgrown with trees. The open ones sent pillars of light shooting down onto the river.
Something broke the surface to their right. It sank back into the depths before Dante got a good look at it, but he saw enough to know that it was very large. "What is this place?"
"Aldax," Carvahal answered.
"Aldax? One of the portals back to the Mists?"
"We'll be to it in less than an hour."
"We're leaving? Right now?"
Carvahal glanced back, amused. "Have you grown so fond of us you can't bear to leave us?"
Dante had the instinct that they couldn't leave yet: they needed to say goodbye to General Lars and thank Gashen, and also to find Dasya, if they could, and try to patch things up with him. The sentimentality of this urge wasn't like him at all, and he knew at once what it really was: the fear of what they would face once they were back in their own world.
