“And was it? Was it the End?” said the taqavor, his eyes glittering with excitement.
“I am afraid not, my Lord. We gathered supplies, and made our way slowly into the cold rising lands, where there was almost nothing growing in the earth, and only bare freezing rock—
a horrible dying place. At several times, terrifying white storms caught us, and we hid in caves or behind outcroppings of stone. The whiteness called snow is frozen cold water. We learned this eventually, and we learned to drink this snow when there was no other liquid.
“At this point, some of us died. This was truly the dark time. And there were many mornings that resembled night—the world was so opaque and obscured with snow that I could not see the place where the sun rose, so we had to wait out days.
“I don’t know how long it was, the ice agony, but eventually the land started to descend again, and somehow we had come out of the mountains into sparse flatland, and, yes, there was once again a source of food.”
The soldier sighed, then continued, “And thus, my Lord, we went on and on, and there was no End. Nothing that would resemble an endless abyss or a burning uncrossable inferno. Eventually, we came into warmer lands again, and then, suddenly, after many moons waxed and waned, we were before another desert. And here we found some human towns and settlements. The people here had paler yellowish skin and oddly slanted narrow eyes. At one of the settlements, although we could not speak their tongue, and I do not particularly remember conquering them in your campaigns—there have been too many peoples who have fallen before your armies to recall their distinctions—we managed to obtain pack beasts in exchange for our animal skins, and then embarked upon a trip through the sands.
“As we moved, this time burning under the fire of the sun, I continued to watch its pattern, to make sure that we always followed the direction of its rising. We found a number of places that were oases, and then suddenly we encountered one familiar city, the one they call ‘NoSleep.’ For, surely, there could be only one place where the puny kings are madmen, and magic changes the fabric of the city every night.”
“I remember passing it in our campaign,” said the taqavor. “Indeed, I did not choose to stop within its insane walls, for I wanted nothing to do with such madness, and so I let the city be. This is possibly the only place in my empirastan which I do not care to claim. I let it be, an island. But—go on.”
“Well, my Lord, we passed this place and kept going, onward and onward. The desert seemed to become more familiar with each breath, even the wind was that of home. I knew something was not quite right. And then, my Lord . . . we came upon your great city.”
“What?” said the taqavor. “That cannot be! Surely you had strayed off course and were lost, and wandered back the way you came!”
The old soldier Jimor lowered his gaze. “I know not, my Lord . . .” he whispered. “But we came from the road that leads in the other direction, on the opposite side of your city from the one along which we started our journey. I know not. I did what you told me, and followed the rising sun. . . .”
The taqavor got up from his high seat, and came down the steps to stand before the old soldier. There was cold fury in his expression, and he took the old man by the shoulders, his fingers biting in like claws. “Then where is the End of the World, Jimor?” he said. “If you did like I told you, you would be there now. Tell me! Either you lie, coward, or you have gone mad from the journey! Tell me!”
But the soldier remained standing like a weather-beaten cliff, immobile, and his gaze was lowered before his sovereign.
“I don’t know, my Lord . . .” he continued to say quietly. And then, like a proud felled tree, he came down on his knees before the taqavor, and put his forehead to the cold marble floor, and whispered hoarsely, “I have failed, somehow, I do not know how.”
“Yes . . . you have failed me indeed, old soldier,” said the taqavor, staring down at the man on the ground before him. “With your failure, you are no longer one of my favored. I take away your honors and your family lands, and I strip you of the memories of our campaigns together. From now on, you are no one to me—go! And may I never see you again, else my reaction will be your death!”
And then the taqavor turned his back on the unfortunate.
Jimor, now a man without old honor and thus without anything, continued to lie on the floor in silence, for several long moments. And then slowly he got up and walked out of the hall, past frozen courtiers and into eternal silence.
Prince Lirheas turned to his father, and parted his lips to speak, but remained wordless. The taqavor stood like a being of stone himself, looking out before him. Then he gathered himself and said, “I will now have my refreshment brought to me.”
Lirheas stood in the garden before a small shallow pool carved in a rectangular shape out of pale stone. He watched the woman with the knowing eyes stand at the other side and float lily blossoms upon the clear mirror surface of the waters.
“See what natural balance resides in these petals.” She pointed with the long fingers of one strong, work-roughened hand.
She took pieces of several varieties of carved wood, all of different star-shapes, and set them too afloat on the water’s surface. “And now, watch how the wood also balances, although it is much heavier than the delicate flowers.”
“What makes the wood float, but not a stone?” he asked, watching instead her face, its features relaxed and yet focused at the same time in an intellectual contemplation of the items upon the water. “How does a ship made of wooden timbers, carrying on it such immense weight, manage to stay afloat?”
“Air, for one thing,” she said, with a light smile.
“What?”
“My Lord Prince, things that have pores, or tiny little pockets to contain air, can float. For air is lighter than water, and it makes things that try to contain its freedom light as well, as it hides within. Air transfers its light nature even to the walls of its natural prison.”
“So the more porous wood will float better?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “And yet you did not ask the complete question. For what is it that makes all things float, not just on water but on other substances of different thickness? It is the nature of the two things—that which is the liquid that supports, and that which attempts to float. The overall amount of matter of the thing that floats on top must be less than the liquid underlying it. Otherwise, that which is on top, sinks.”
“I am not sure I understand . . .” said Lirheas. “I thought it was the will of the gods that had decided for us that some things will float and others will not?”
“The will of the gods,” she said, “is exemplified by the natural laws of the world. For the gods set the original universal pattern, while the specific things in the universe comply with the design. Thus most varieties of wood happen to be the kind of thing that, according to the original design, is less dense in its physical nature than water. Of course the gods intended it thus. The only difference here is in the way you explain it, and the way I explain it—that is all. Both of us express the same seed of truth.”
Before Lirheas could retort—for he was getting inflamed with curiosity of thought, and had actually forgotten to look at her in the usual way but was paying heed only to the actual meaning of her words—a servant messenger came running from the Palace.
Apparently another of the three remaining expeditions had returned, and there was genuine news of the End of the World.
Inside the Palace, the taqavor was hearing out Rihaad, one of the four men who had taken the journey to the right hand of the rising sun, toward the depth of the desert.
“The first thing I ask, before you waste my time with a rambling tale of delirious nonsense, is whether you found what you were sent to find,” said the taqavor. “Well, what do you answer, soldier?”
Rihaad bowed deeply, his face and skin as weathered as had been the complexion of Jimor, and said calmly, “Yes, my Lord, we have found the End of the World
. It was the most wondrous sight, and let me describe to you how it came to pass.”
“Good, then proceed.”
Rihaad went on to tell his tale. In the initial telling, his travels resembled very much those of the first expedition. However, after this expedition had come to the end of the desert, and was faced with the greatest mountains the world had ever seen, his story took on a different flavor.
“We paused at the foundation of the mountain range, my Lord,” spoke the soldier. “And then, after readying our stores of food supplies for the most deadly part of the journey that lay ahead, and after equipping our pack animals with hooves of iron, we ventured forward. Ahead of us was an interminable climb. The mountains themselves seemed to lead to heaven, for when we looked up we could see only clouds and no sky, only the whiteness of craggy peaks, eternally far away.
“By day, with the sun riding our left shoulders, we continued in the direction you sent us, and by nights we rested, trying to conserve our diminishing strength. Winds struck at us, winds of such force that we could hardly keep upright, and our pack beasts struggled to move a step at a time. And higher and higher we climbed.
“At some point, my Lord, it became oddly difficult to breathe—as though the air itself had grown thin—and we began to gasp at every step, and had to abandon our pack-beasts due to the steepness of the climb.
“We continued forward. Upon reaching the highest pinnacle we were indeed above the clouds, which floated in stately, divine flocks at our feet. And at that point the man walking in the front stopped dead in his climb, and shuddered in awe at the sight that lay before him.”
“Was it the End of the World?” whispered the taqavor. “Tell me!”
Rihaad smiled, then nodded tiredly. “Indeed, it was, my Lord. For ahead of us lay a precipice. And, as we looked down into it, there was . . . nothing. Not even clouds. . . . Only pallor as white as milk, for surely here was the End of the World, and things were blurring into whiteness, losing their mortal shape at last.”
“Ah, go on! What did you do next?”
“Well, we waited, my Lord. We wanted to make perfectly certain that this abyss of nothing before us was indeed what we thought it to be.
“And thus we sat on the edge of the precipice, and we squinted with our eyes and stared for three long days into the whiteness. The wind continued to blow at our backs, and froze us into solid stone, and yet we would not move from our honorable posts.”
“Did you attempt to cast stones into this abyss, to see what would befall them?” said the taqavor, his gaze dancing with excitement.
“I was the first man to throw a rock as far as my arm could manage,” said Rihaad, nodding.
“The rock disappeared into the whiteness in perfect silence, and there were not even echoes of it striking bottom. Thus, after the three days of waiting, we were sure. Not even a spot of cloud ever marred the monotony of that deathly white, neither a bird flew, nor a beast made sounds in the abyss. We heard nothing over the hiss of the ice wind.”
The more Rihaad spoke, the more the taqavor was beginning to smile. Finally, he got up from his seat with barely repressed manic energy, saying, “Enough! I believe you have indeed found it, my faithful soldier! The End of the World is a pale abyss of gods’ milk!”
“And yet I am afraid your faithful man has made a mistake,” suddenly interjected a strong female voice.
Everyone turned to look at the woman with the knowing eyes as she moved away from the edge of the hall and walked forward to stand before the taqavor.
“What? Why do you say this, woman?”
“I am very sorry to dispel this fair notion, but it is a rather simple thing. If you recall, my Lord, our conversation on the nature of the wind rose. The wind is everywhere. It blows to all the ends of your empirastan. Consequently, since according to your man the winds continued to blow into the white abyss, to blow strongly at their backs even as they held their vigil, there was something else beyond this abyss, on the other side.”
“But surely,” exclaimed Rihaad, “the winds were simply being swallowed up just a few steps ahead of us, where the whiteness began!”
The woman turned to him and shook her head. “You cannot be sure in saying this. For how can you claim it unless you yourself had been there, riding those gale winds unto their final moment before oblivion?”
“But I stood at the edge of the precipice!”
“And yet you never ventured beyond it. Thus you can never say that you have final proof.”
“What? Do you expect us to have cast ourselves into the abyss to test its nature?” Rihaad threw angry, frightened glances from the woman to the taqavor, and tried again. “Whoever you are, insolent woman,” he sputtered, “you have no reason to dispute my truthful story!”
“There was no need to cast yourself into sure death. But there is always the need for ultimate proof before you make your final great claim.”
“She is right,” said the taqavor grimly. “And you, Rihaad, are a pompous fool. I see now what has come to pass. You allowed a mountain to stop you, superficialities to obscure your judgment. You did not do as I directed you, for I told you to try to overcome all obstacles in your way. And because you did not try, you failed. Even now, I see you do not lie in your tale, but merely assume the easy answer. And for that I banish you and yours eternally from my side! I have enough narrow-minded idiots around me as it is.”
And saying that the taqavor turned his back on the expedition that had followed the right hand of the rising sun.
“What is this? What are you doing?” said Prince Lirheas to the woman whose every daily task he now came to faithfully observe.
They were standing in the small workshop of a blacksmith craftsman who worked with various metals and who had given the woman access to the tools of his trade. On the flat table surface before them were several natural iron ores, samples mined from the depths of the earth. She was leaning forward, studying them attentively. She picked out one, with an exclamation. “This is the one!” she said. “This is called a lodestone.”
“And what is a lodestone?” he asked, looking at the chunk of very dark rock. It had a faint reddish and ocherous tint.
The woman smiled lightly, saying, “This particular type of iron ore that is quarried in some places has in it the very forces of the earth. The gods have locked within it the strange ability to locate always the one direction which lies somewhere to the left hand of the rising sun. The people of my land have relied on it for as long as we can remember. For we also come from the left hand of the rising sun—the colder land, as you call it.”
Lirheas listened with great interest, for this was the first time he had heard her talking about a personal thing, something that was not related to the work before her.
“How did you come to be here, serving my father?” he asked quietly, suddenly unable to look at her and instead watching the piece of rock before him. “Who are you, that you know so much wisdom and the truth of the world?”
“How did any of us come here?” she countered. “The whole world is now the taqavor’s boundless empirastan. To serve him well, one must indeed learn as much of truth as it is possible for us mortals.”
“Why?” said the prince.
“Because in the end only truth will save us,” she said softly, with a strange intonation, a mood that he could not quite pinpoint. And then she returned to examining the iron rock before them, talking of its properties.
But Lirheas no longer listened. She frightened him, suddenly. Or maybe it was not so much she as what her words implied. For there were suddenly half-formed things, new, remote and dark, on the edges of his consciousness, things of mystery, of an abyssal unknown, just waiting for him, for them, for everyone, at the next turn of awareness. . . . And thus his mind—as it had done so often before with others before this one woman came into their life—his mind drifted away gently, into its own remote place, so that he was removed from this reality, removed to a safe, gentle condition, and h
e did not have to think, or consider, or fear, or wonder.
Another span of several moons, a subtle change in the nature of the warmth of the days, and the third expedition of the four returned to the great city of the taqavor. Mareid was the one who had been told to follow the face of the setting sun, and so he and his men had gone in the direction opposite that of the first expedition.
“To measure the exact direction of our daily movement, my Lord,” spoke Mareid—a thin tall soldier, weathered and already dark before he had set out, for his was a race with skin the color of dates, soft rounded features and wiry night-black hair—“one of us would be watching for the first glimmer of the rising sun at dawn, and would thus stand facing it directly. Meanwhile, a second man would stand lined up exactly against his back. Back-to-back we stood, and the one who was facing away from the rising sun would point with his hand. That was the direction we took.”
The taqavor reclined in his high seat and watched the tall soldier with a merciless cold gaze.
“And have you found the End of the World, man? Or have you found only illusion? By all the sacred gods, do not even begin to lie to me, nor try to excuse yourself. I must have the truth.”
“I do not know what to call it, my Lord,” replied Mareid. “But we found a strange thing—
the End of the World recedes as we approach it, for what is on the horizon is always different from what it is when we arrive there.”
“Is that so? And does the horizon run from you in particular, or just from your luckless expedition?”
Mareid bowed deeply, placing his right hand over his heart. “My Lord, I beg you to forgive me for not having the right words to describe this, and hear me out, even if it appears laughable. There is one other interesting thing we have noticed, particularly on our travels over two great oceans—for indeed, if one follows the setting sun there is mostly water, and very little dry land past this desert. We noticed that when there is a deadly calm, without winds over the ocean, and our ship sits for days without sails while we row with as much strength as we can, there are creatures swimming alongside us in the ocean that have a purpose and a destination.