1981 - Part III Dream--06/19/81
Tableau - Estebast to our right, "Beveth" above and directly before us. Their energies scatter and reform about us, as if giant fists were being brought together about our forms - I stagger. I slide to the left to give me an angle to Roderick, and I focus on shifting his personal Time flow - a burst of pain, Estebast again - but she can't counteract my spell. I feel almost a gloating sense of righteousness sweep thru me, savage. Roderick looks at me, picking up on my spell. "Uhh… what did you do?" and his voice changes into that of Aradi's. The demon takes one look at his surroundings and bathes the scene in green fire. With satisfaction, I drop into a pocket of Time while both Estebast and Beveth try to cope with Aradi. They'd been prepared for Roderick and myself. I laugh savagely at their plight; each of them winks away, gone again to recoup. Aradi is played out, I decide, and shift his timesense again to when Roderick is ascendant. He looks at me strangely. "What are you?" "I'm only beginning to know." My garb has changed - dressed in black with blue piping, a silver glove on one hand, with metallic inlays in the form of a falcon. Moodoom is in its sheath, a black punctuation point to this scene - and for the first time I can sense a beginning knowledge of the stakes involved here. Roderick: "If the Obijincia C'Milic rules their universe…" "They did not say that." He looks at me, perturbed. "Isn't it a reasonable assumption?" "I don't know - what is an Eternity Wheel?" He is perplexed, and begins to shift us back to Delalevida. As we enter the frame, Breane comes to us, then draws back from me. "You are different." I nod, then walk to Danielle. "You are being used - you have to choose soon." She is aloof. "How do you know this?" "From the woman who promised you what you what you want most - even if you don't know why." Roderick has shaded into Hurat. "He doesn't threaten you," I say. "He always threatens me," she responds. I turn away from her. "You have always lost reason, my mother," and I join the others as the dream ends.
Dream--06/20/81
Storms rage and lightnings flash about our forms - the elements themselves unbound, ripping at us on Delalevida. There is a backwardness to all this. Hurat is behind me, watching me watching a shifting stormscape. "What connection do you have with the C'Milic?" he asks suddenly. I do not know and tell him that. Kantley has been nearly healed, but is still but steps above delirium. The others await us. Where we are next bound is unclear. Roderick-Hurat wants to return to Adoraco-Lief, but I favor Aliana-Beveth. Breane, Jarane and Cymynal want to go to Amaka with Kantley. Anatana is with Roderick. Danielle - with our senses once more alerted to her path in this, has gone in search of Corolis. Both Roderick and I wanted her imprisoned, but saw no viable way to do so without losing a member of us. Jedric seeks nothing but will, I feel, abide with me. "Where are you going?" from Roderick. "You know the old saying, "I shot an arrow…" He nods. "Seeing this Beveth quickened something in me - an awareness of dark energies bound to her - and to Moodoom somehow." He nods again. "So?" "So whatever my past is, is shared with them - where were you before Europa?" He turns away. "Before Europa, there was time when I was on my own - Anatana was still trying to get her father to acquiesce to our being together. I explored many worlds, including one where the Sarinth had been before. I was mostly in my Ch'lari form." "Why?" "Because it was dashing and afforded me distance while not denying me information I needed." His words are a little embarrassed. "I was able to learn from mystics without becoming one, and learned worlds' lines and that jazz without treading on others' dreams." I laugh at this. "Your memory is so structured and seems to yearn for some randomness, while mine takes the opposite - perhaps there can yet be a meeting. I will come to Adoraco with you two - then we'll see..." as the dream ends.
Dream--10/13/81
The night swirls in dazzling array above me. I stand at the crest of a hilltop - a valley stretches beneath me as far as I can see. At its other end are three mountains. From this great height, this great distance, I can see symbols in their sides where vegetation was planted or allowed to grow in a specific form. In the center is an archetypical Dragon with a Unicron's horn stretching from its head. It is a curved horn with three colours in bands like a barber pole on it; they are green, white and gold. The horn is sticking through a silver crown. On the right hand mountain is the figure of a Phoenix - the vegetation is all reds, golds and whites, and the outline of the bird seems to be framed in fire. Its wings are outstretched, expecting to fly off at any second. On the left mountain is the outline of a Unicorn facing to my right, its horn of the same fiery colour as the Phoenix, its form all in bright green to contrast with surrounding barren land on the mountain. I turn back to my mount - it's the same bloodred stallion seen once in a vision long ago. And then, as if shifting on sand, Morodorom is there. She calls me her son, but my thoughts do not wholly place her. "How did you know of this place?" she asks me. "I came in through Aliana-Beveth." My voice is muffled - sound does not seem to travel well, like going through folds of fabric first. "Why?" I tire of being questioned, my mood quickens into, flares into, anger. "Why anything, woman?!" "Why deaths upon deaths for power's gain? Why delay and dishonor?" She puts a hand on my shoulder. "Why here?" I point to the three peaks in the distance. "On a moon of the Middlemasters long ago there was a conflagration - part of me died there, I fear, while part was reborn - it has set me on a path apart from those three mountains." She nods and settles to a cross-legged yogic position. "E'en valor has its price and peace is but two crossed swords." "RIDDLES!" I shout at her - she departs the frame. I kneel on one knee and pick up green blades of grass and shred them slowly. "I am no sorcerer," I murmur - and tears fall silently from my eyes. I depart this place and re-appear on red sands. Before me is Roderick in Aradi form. "You must tell me what has not been told before." I laugh - it is a hollow thing in my throat. "Would that I could, brother - but night claims part of my memories." I pause, then: "Why were you in Europa to rule?" His eyes hood, "I was sent there by a recurring dream wherein a Dragon, a two-legged Dragon, promised me the secret sceptre." My mind flashes on a black wand with hieroglyphs inscribed. "Anatana and I spent almost twenty years there; Jarane and Fleece (his voice pauses, is low) were born there." "You've never returned?" He laughs, a little nervously. "It's really strange, but I don't remember leaving - like, that part has been blocked?" his voice, querulous. He shifts more into Roderick in Ch'lari form. "Remember that jazz when the Sarinth first appeared? I had an impression then of some connection with that sceptre." "It seems we each have open pasts." I turn. "I'm returning to the planet of the Middlemasters - I suggest you seek your completion as well." He nods. I summon Blood and Bone from their place, and as I do so, Roderick is gone - and I am too. In mid-transfer I hear a voice, Danielle's, in my mind: "Seek well your Art," and her voice haunts as the dream ends.
Dream--10/14/81
On a cold satellite above the planet of the Middlemasters - my wolves howl to match the winds of space. I'm on the moon's darkside, my hands lit softly to see in buried sand and snow - déjà vu sweeps away with me. My cloak drawn about me, I walk this moon to peer at a giant sunlit planet beyond. Ketain had botched things with its inhabitants when he'd harmed Ceri long ago. Morgan - a member both of the C'Milic and the Middlemasters - Kazijilian a cosmic accident. My second sword is in my hand - its name, unbidden, comes to mind: Revenant, and I spot a silvery something protruding from a boulder - a rock wedged into a crevice. As I get close, I see that it is not a crevice, but a marking, a symbol and the word M'hiao beside it. The slight similarity to M'hais strikes me; Reyner had been here, I realize, training me here as he had probably trained Morgan before - have I killed my father? - the thought rumbles through me. "No" - the word is spoken softly - Morodorom is in blues, a hood concealing her dark hair. I had left her in anger. "No, Reyner did not gain your purchase into this life - he only tried to take it from you." "How were you imprisoned in the blade?" She laughs. "I am the blade." I don't want to ask her who my father is and shift the talk to her. "Then, what?" "Those there were in Time's dawn who mastered mythic tools - Moodoom, ONON Lens, Lantern, Lyre, Circle of Science, Sphere of Sorcery, Mirror - seven tools, seven beings known thru legend, e'en distorted by myriad realities. Reyner was ONON Lens - Lendorik was the Lyre - he was your father here." "Here? This moon?" my voice rises in pitch. "No - in this frame - this very real frame." She walks to the side, looking down on the great green planet. "Reyner was the last of the seven - original - Obijincia C'Milic. Each tool is a force, a universal that never dies. Control of those forces are handed down. Majka now controls the Lantern, Thule the Lyre, Adia - Circle, Cinemgra - Sphere, Morgan/Estebast - ONON Lens and Cerridu the Mirror." "And Moodoom?" "Ages before, I had wielded it. I wanted Lendorik and my son to have it when he came of age - that was you. But Lendorik left me for another, whose offspring was Ceycirie - but, the melding was tainted. Reyner imprisoned me in the bladeform and when Lendorik died - an event marked throughout existence, for it was he who brought music - masked your memory so as to refuse the honor of Moodoom. Your sister was broken, thus doomed." I try to piece aprts of pasts together. "But other machinations by otherlevel beings brought about repeated advances by you as a living ONON Lens, and thus focused the C'Milic's energies first in masking truth, more recently in destroying you." She turns - there are no tears in he eyes, but there's overwhelming sadness. "Ceycirie's souls were given protection by the Armour of Caliro - three lines of those souls intersected together, a composite of powers/energies. She met her love in the Confusion - he gave her order. Engl represents a realm as old, as honoured, as ours once was -" and now tears fall. "Cinemgra taught him once in Weir form, as she taught us all her sorcery; but he learned quickly and we, all of us, felt that his binding with Ceycirie's lower self would aid both." "Do all of the Objincia C'Milic have polar souls?" I ask. "No." She walks by my side, a rustle of silk as she moves. "You and Beveth, Morgan and Estebast - because both Time and war carry a duality to them, a dual soul has always controlled them - Lendorik's sister was named Gwidyon" - I start - "my brother was called Gunther; they both died long, long ago." She takes my hand. "I wish I could grant you memory of all the times before Reyner - and before Lendorik left me; I wish too many things…" Suddenly she is mist - and I stand alone on this moon uncharted as the dream ends.
Dream--10/19/81
Aliana-Beveth - dawn, and moons sink from sight in the light of day. The seas are silent and slowly the dark purple become red sands - renounce one heritage, announce another - I want to laugh at that absurdity. A shimmering and Breane is there. "My love." Her voice is brittle, about to break into shards of glass. She comes to me and I hold her. "Where is Morodorom?" I shake my head. "She is ether, she is gone - she is Moodoom, that I carry at my side in battle." I pause, pick up a glittering stone, cast it into the sea. "Moodoom is within me, too," and I draw forth the blade, now silver, with runes on its hilt; it sings as it comes free of its sheath, a high whistling note. "Is she dead?" "She was dead long ago - some sort of spell released her briefly, maybe it was me, I don't know." I strike a stance with the sword. "What occurs?" I ask her. "Roderick is beside himself - he demands your return, and - he says you are of the Obijincia C'Milic." "He is right." Her face, elfinstrong, mahogany hair pulled to one side in a bind, looks past me. "What did you learn, Shardow?" "That silence is always fraught with pitfalls - that my father fathered part of Anatana's soul - thus we are bound - thus her affinity for my blade." She stands and looks away. "What of us?" "We go on - there are forces at play here that are more than we know." I look up at the house I'd built along the cliff edge long ago, somewhere between memory and tomorrow. "Roderick wants to go to Adoraco Lief -" Breane starts. "I know, it is the sole place that is his - there lies his memories and his past, and now he seeks to make it his future." I shake my head, smiling - a falcon alights on my gauntlet; on its leg is a marker, rolled into a container. In it is a long letter from Anatana - it begins: "BETRAYER - when swords cross again, t'will not be quarter given - you seek my love's death." Breane reads it, shocked. "Wh - what is this?" "Perhaps Ceycirie did not wholly die," I state, "She is the other end of the sword's path, my dear friend, it explains her partial mastery of it." I tilt the point of Moodoom towards the house - and channel energy through it, Time energy, the energy I was given by Kenet. The house seems to implode on itself - it is no more. Breane: "Why?" "To cover one exit from this place - come!" I summon two greatwinged creatures from Time's dawning. "Where - where are we going?" "To right a wrong," I shout. "To Europa," as the dream ends.
Dream--11/06/81
Invert the sky and punctuate it with mountains that soar beyond sight - some of them float, upside-down, others attached hourglass style to mountains below by connections of land - peasants flail horsebeasts drawing carts forward, full of nectar in jars of earthenware. One stops, looks where we were when we entered this sphere, before I sheathed us, invisible. "Where are we?" say Breane - she is frightened - she is whole tho. "On the other side of Time," I say. "Roderick's home - his birthland - his night." "Why?" "Because Morodorom said that Cinemgra taught him once - and because he has need of a black sceptre - and because he knows of this land subconsciously." We descend the hourglass mountains. Other travelers are all marked with a surly cast to their eyes - this is a grim land, I note. We had barely made it, the wingbeasts barely surviving against the onslaught of limbo winds. We swam against the sea of Time, and it contracted with our passing; we caught a wave and rode it to the proper window and departed. "How can you know to do this?" "Kenet flowed his awareness into mine when he died - I couldn't bear it then; I saw it only to use in the now, not realizing that he was a symbol, the intelligent usage of Time, only - and not Time's essence." She touches my arm. "You're hurt." I smile. "I can feel you inside," and her voice tinges with alarm. I turn her face to mine, my eyes now wholly filled with O'Silimilon's awareness. "We saw Time's essence, we saw what it did to Bartholomew and to Reyner - and saw nothing!" I spit the word. "It is why Estebast is so damning to me - she lives within that essence and I try only to control it - and it is why we are purest enemies." I tell her of my visit to the moon of the Middlemasters, of my heritage with the C'Milic; of the odd juxtaposition of my mother's brother Gunther with Roderick's remembrances of a former self, Duncan - and of the many unanswered quests that began here, where Jowennes first sought my life and I first pledged allegiance to Anatana and Roderick. It's funny - even without memory, without clues - the dream my earthsoul saw pierced many veils of illusion - and was then discarded because of the quests that the C'Milic, in trying to retain their own power, sent us on." I tell Breane of Cinemgra's teaching of Roderick in Ch'lari form and of Morgan's connection with the Sarinth. "My god, they didn't have to manipulate us - they took existing circumstance and let us weave our own complications with Kraft and Kerlan and the Middlemasters, and finally Kazijilian - and even Roderick had to suspect when he recognized three of the C'Milic as names of great spells." We are down the mountain. "What are we after, Shardow?" "We are here to prevent a death." "Whose?" "Watch." I swirl Time ahead of us and before us stands Roderick's Keep. Lightnings and thunder crackle about us as the dream ends.
Dream--11/16/81
Roderick's Keep, massive and sprawling - a city within a fortress. A bright green flag-pennant ripples in the wind. On it, a Dragon, walking upright, coloured gold, and on the pennant's border, printing in an unknown tongue. Breane and I are in a grove beyond the river running beside the Keep. We are dressed in deerskins; I carry a crossbow, my swords a moment's switch out of Time. Breane is carrying only a dagger, but I know this illusion of hers. The dagger is a cross between a sword and fire and channels those elements. Alive with fires kindled long ago, I am waiting. The drawbridge drops and a white beast, almost a Unicorn, but with three horns and six legs, comes out. Anatana's beast, I recognize. She is on it and a little girl sits on her lap while she cuddles a smaller bundle. Her laugh trills the air and she waves goodbye to the guardians. Midday horns sound - a hoot-a-hoooo - and a great roar goes up in applause. She rides towards us, or towards our grove. I motion Breane back into shadows, then stand out. The great beast stops and paws the ground, rearing slightly. The woman calls out, "You've stopped us sir, for purpose?" "A warning." "A threat?" her voice is clipped and eager to gain knowledge. "No - you ride to a path untraveled, a fate ill-crossed in visions." "Hah - sir - you sound as a soothsayer - or a jester, I'll wager." Her laughter courses again. "I come to save a soul undamned," and produce in the air a hologram of Cymynal fully grown - her features replicate Anatana's - her shock. "Where did you get this?" I shrug and begin to walk away, murmuring, "the parlor trick of a jester shouldn't alarm you." "Hold!" her voice holds taut command. I turn, smiling. "Ride with me a bit, stranger?" I 'path to Breane and she assents. I swing astride the great beast - she asks my name. "M'hais, milady." "I am Anatana, these," motioning to two now asleep, "are Fleece and Jarane." We ride, small talk only, until we are out of the grove. Breane stays alert telepathically - we come to a path through mountains. From the corner of my eye, I see Breane scrambling up the boulders as we pass through - Needle's Eye, the name comes to me. And with that awareness, danger. I pull the brim of my headcovering tight to my face as four riders emerge from the path in front of me - one of them is me! And though there are distinctions, this man is all but my twin - a sick thought twists in front of me. I vault to the ground and hear arrows th-thunking into the wood by my head. My crossbow is nocked; I fire and catch one of them in the neck. A dagger bright in the sunlight whips over my head - Breane in the crevice - it strikes down another. I chase myself up the mountain - we struggle. This "me" is without memory, but no easy mark. I shift Time, constrict his breathing til unconsciousness results. The fourth man fled. Anatana had been struck by a stone from a sling, and she is groggy. I motion to Breane and we drag "myself" into view. While Breane stands guard, I link with this "me" in my arms - and give him very sketchy details of his fate, his destiny. Breane and I then blend back into the timestream slowly. We watch this Shardow awaken, betrayed without memory, and we see him bend to Anatana and ease her head under his knapsack as a pillow. We move back towards Roderick's Keep. "What good does this do?" Breane's voice. "It binds Roderick and Anatana to Shardow for his aid here - and prevents his death." "How?" "By the renegade who got away - Jowennes." We move toward the Keep again - it is nearly dark. The guards allow us entry to the city and there is an opening to the river underground, and Breane and I sleep on the docks as the dream ends.
Dream-- 11/18/81
Breane's touch awakens me - it is mid-night and there is a bristling on the docks. The Keep is much larger than I had thought - minarets into the sky, while in the distance lights shone on the hourglass mountain nearest us. I sit up. Breane says, "I'll go get us some nourishment." I nod and walk out to the end of the pier. The water is inky-black and the stars in the sky reflect like diamonds on dark velvet. I can see where the harbor goes now, into an underground passage that emerges back outside the Keep. I massage my arm where it was bruised in battle. I have switched to blue-black clothing, a mystic circle on my necklace - and draw forth Moodoom from its otherwheres sheath. It should take "Shardow" and Anatana until the morning to return. I turn back and suddenly she is there - Danielle. "How?" "No prison long holds me - I am still there in the physical, tho." She is all in blues, hair streaming, blown by the nightwind. "Why?" "Terse, are you? To ask if you are certain of this path, when others have led you falsely - to see if the change in you is as marked as others note." "Is it?" "It is -" and in her voice is the recognition of equality never before heard, or at least, acknowledged. "And this path?" "Roderick needs to have knowledge of his past, how he was trained and by whom - and to do that, I have to know when Obijincia C'Milic first contacted him." She is at the edge of the pier, Breane beginning to return at the other end. "That part, you'll find easy - they will contact him this very night!" "What?" I ask. Breane reaches us. "My love, in the marketplace I saw Cinemgra…" I don't let her finish; I turn back to Danielle - and she is suddenly composed of stars hazing, then vanishing and gone. Breane looks at me quizzically - she shifts into limbo and back, dressed now in battle regalia. We walk to the entrance to Roderick's Keep - oddly, it reminds me of the Sanctuary Hellmann had on the Delta in New Orleans. Over the doorway is a crest, a hooded bird standing on a branch with the inscription Vox HURAT Ceirus beneath. I stop a guard, "The slogan - what is it?" "Sirra, t'is of his lord's past 'n refers to his yow'ens - literally "between lord and mirror" and his offspring were formed in limbo." I am quiet at that. We enter; though it is well towards dawn, revelry abounds - players, pipers and jesters about a dais. Seated in its center is Roderick, an ebon robe half on, half off his shoulders. Beside him a flagon of beverage is empty and up-turned. "Shardow" Breane whispers, "Look," her voice wide with wonder. Where her dagger had been, there is now a black Sceptre. As we move through the room, it suddenly begins to pulse and hum. "Shardow…" her voice is frantic - too hot now to hold, it leaps into the air and Roderick notices. He reaches for it and like a magnet draws it to him. As it reaches him, there is a slowdown effect in the room save for Breane and myself - and we can see the Sceptre manifesting through Roderick. Then there is a burst of light and Roderick is gone and Naome Kazijilian is before us. "Thank you, Roderick." His voice is sarcasm. He turns then and sees us - one arm of his robe shows no hand at its end - he rages. "You - demon and whore!" and he sends massive energies at us. But I'd prepared as he turned and they pass harmlessly out of Time. "You cannot best me," he says, and with the Sceptre in hand, says, "Tho it be his, your brother shall not possess this pow'r." I box him in, but he draws on the Sceptre itself and they vanish. Roderick blinks back in, somewhat out of it. Breane and I blend into the background as his voice "Where is it - where is the Sceptre?" cuts through the stillness. The first sun is rising and Breane breaks my reverie with "She returns with you - we must depart." We step into a niche in the hallway. I embrace Breane and she holds me close as I shift us back to Aliana-Beveth. We stand and gaze at each other. "What connection?" she asks. "Somehow that Sceptre is attuned to Roderick - and we can reasonably guess that the C'Milic is aware of it." "And Kazijilian?" I snort "It's a good bet that his power was affected, strengthened, when he took it - and correspondingly, that Roderick's power was lessened." "So?" "So - let's relax for a time - for now we must face Roderick with this information," and we lie on red sands, letting waves touch bare feet as the dream ends.
Dream--12/11/81
The ruins of Adoraco Lief are still as Breane and I phase in. Roderick sits atop a stone column - he is in Engl Hurat form. Behind him, Anatana is weaving a fabric of sorts. Her hair is bound with a silver device back on her head. Jedric and Jarane are asleep to the other end of the hall. Roderick peers at us. "What have you learned?" "That your mastery of your art is less that it could be." He stands, quizzically. "Where were you?" Breane walks to Anatana and they leave the hallway. "We were in Europa." He raises his eyebrows, then looks hard at me. "You've changed." "Danielle showed up there." "And?" "She went to Corolis." "I figured as much. I still don't know what their game is…" I catch his arm. "Kazijilian appeared - he stole the black Sceptre that should enhance your powers." "Why were you in Europa?" "To rectify memory - to stabilize certain things - I even battled myself." The riddles contained within this statement finally tax even Roderick's patience - angrily, he demands details. I elaborate on the matters Breane and I pursued there; when I am thru, he is rubbing his jaw with his hand. I ask him how he learned I was of the Obijincia C'Milic. "I had a dream about it - that you stood with the enemy." "The discrepancy is that I am born of the C'Milic," and explain about Moodoom and Lendorik and Corolis. "That is what Breane is telling Anatana now." "Then who am I, if I'm a sorcerer?" I shrug - and walk to the arch remains. "Somehow your past interweaves with my own. It is why we were "born" to Danielle and Berella, and probably why our Earth conscious selves came together. We, I, anyway, am sworn against the C'Milic but yet I wield one of its forces." I turn back to him. "I think the missing Sceptre holds the secret of your powers as well as identity." Jedric comes awake - in this dream, he has taken on the appearance of Tim Graham. "We must be careful," he says. My dreamself says that Cymynal is the hold on our actions - her life is forfeit if we are unsure of our path." He raises his arms and his crystalline image begins to re-emerge. Breane and Anatana come back in - "Roderick, look out here!" Anatana's voice is strident. We walk to the crumbling edge of a veranda - there is a blue fog descending over everything. As we stand there, a crimson blade comes out of the fog and imbeds itself in Jarane's chest - asleep, he had no defense - and booming and recognizable laughter comes from Naome Kazijilian as he appears in the fog, riding a nightmare serpent as the dream ends.