The Dragon in the Sword (14 page)

Not unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways

One timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days.

With solemn gaiety the stars danced far withdrawn on elfin heights:

The lilac breathed amid the shade of green and blue and citron lights
,

But yet the close enfolding night seemed on the phantom verge of things
,

For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their wanderings:

For beauty called to beauty, and there thronged at the enchanter’s will

The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still.

And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth to rout
,

And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and went out.

Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight air?

—‘A.E.’ (George Russell),
‘Aphrodite’

1

I
REMEMBER LITTLE
else of that voyage until dawn of the next day. Here the sun was rising, red, massive and insubstantial, wavering in watery haze and giving a kind of pink and scarlet glaze to the wide waves. There was a wind up, filling the white sail and the sun touched us also so that we were all of the same subtle colourings, blending with the ocean as we drove on towards the east.

Then, gradually, I made out something else ahead. It was as if the sea had thrown up a series of gigantic water-spouts. Then I realised this was not water, but light. Great columns of light plunging down from the sky and illuminating a vast area of water. Behind them were mist, foam and clouds. Within the area surrounded by the columns the water was calm.

Von Bek was in the prow, one hand on a taut rope, the other shielding his eyes. He was excited. There was fresh spray on his skin. He looked as if he had come alive again. I, too, was grateful for the salt water which had washed the oily grime from me.

“What a marvel of Nature!” von Bek exclaimed. “How do you think it’s formed, Daker?”

I shook my head. “My assumption is always that it is magic.” I began to laugh, realising the irony of my remark.

Shaking out her dark red hair, Alisaard came from below decks. “Ah,” she said seriously, “you have seen the Entrance.”

“Entrance?” said von Bek. “To what?”

“To Gheestenheem, of course.” She plainly found his naïveté charming. I felt an uncalled-for pang of jealousy. Why should this woman not favour whom she chose? She was not my Ermizhad. But it was hard to bear that in mind, the resemblance was so strong. She turned to me. “Did you sleep? Or did you weep all night, Prince Flamadin?” Her tone was one of amused sympathy. I found that I could not easily believe these women to be cruel slave-owners and cannibals. Nonetheless I felt I had to bear in mind my own experience, that often the most urbane, civilised and humane cultures have at least one aspect to them which, though ordinary in their eyes, may seem perfectly hideous to others. For all that, these women had the grace I associated with my own Eldren.

“Do you call yourselves ‘Ghost Women’?” I asked her, as much to have her attention as anything.

“No. But we’ve long since discovered that our best weapon of defence lies in turning the humans’ superstitions to our advantage. The armour has a number of practical functions, especially when we are in the vicinity of those smoky hulls, but it also maintains a kind of mystery, frightens those who would offer us all kinds of insult and aggression.”

“Then what do you call yourselves?” I asked, scarcely wanting to hear her answer.

“We are women of the Eldren race,” she said.

“And your people dwell in Gheestenheem?” My heart had begun to pound.

“The women,” she said. “They dwell in Gheestenheem.”

“Only the women? You have no men?”

“We have men, but we are separated from them. There was an exodus. The Eldren were driven from their original realm by human barbarians who called themselves the Mabden. We sought refuge elsewhere, but in seeking it we were parted. Thus we have perpetuated ourselves for many centuries by means of human males. We, however, may only bear girl children from such a union. It maintains our blood, but it is a distasteful process to us.”

“What becomes of the males when they’ve served your purpose?”

She laughed, flinging back her fine head so that the sun seemed to set her hair on fire. “You think we intend to fatten you for a feast, Prince Flamadin? You’ll have an answer to your question when we get to Gheestenheem!”

“Why did you risk so much in order to rescue us?”

“We had not intended to rescue you at all. We did not know you were in danger. We wanted to talk to you. Then, when we saw what was happening, we decided to help you.”

“So you came to capture me?”

“To talk. Would you rather we returned you to that smelly hull?”

I was quick to deny any desire to see the
Frowning Shield
ever again. “When do you intend to offer me an explanation?”

“When Gheestenheem is reached,” she said. “Look!”

The columns were high overhead now, though our ship had not yet reached them. The white ship was ablaze with reflected light. At first I had thought the columns white, too, like marble, but in fact they were alive with all the colours of the rainbow.

In the stern, the helmswomen leaned hard on their steering oars, moving the ship carefully between the columns.

“It’s dangerous to touch them,” Alisaard explained. “They could burn a ship like ours to ashes in seconds.”

Now I was half-blinded by the dazzling light. I received an impression of massive waves rising up around the base of the columns, of the ship being swept upwards, of us being hurled towards first one pillar of light and then another. But our crew were experienced. Suddenly we were through and bobbing gently on calm water in total silence. I looked upwards. It was as if I was in a massive tunnel which extended into infinity. I could see no end to it. There was an atmosphere of tranquility within it, however, which dispelled any terror I might have felt on entering it.

Von Bek was astounded. “It’s magnificent! Is this really magic?”

Alisaard said: “Are you as superstitious as those others, Count von Bek? I had assumed otherwise.”

“This goes beyond any training I had in science,” he told her with a smile. “What else could this be but magic?”

“We think of it as a perfectly natural phenomenon. It occurs whenever the dimensions of our realms intersect with another. A kind of vortex is formed. Through this, if one has sufficient reason or curiosity or courage, it is possible to reach the Realms of the Wheel. We have charts which tell us when and where such Entrances materialise, where they are likely to lead and so on. Since they are both regular and predictable, we would not define them as magical. Does the definition make sense to you?”

“Perfect sense, madam.” Von Bek raised his eyebrows. “Though whether I could convince even Albert Einstein of the existence of this tunnel, I am not sure.”

His references were meaningless to her, yet she smiled. There was no doubt that Alisaard found von Bek to her liking. With me she was much warier and I could not really understand why, unless she, too, believed the stories of my crimes and betrayals. Then it came to me! These women wanted Sharadim, my twin sister. Did they plan to offer me, a wanted outlaw, in return for her help? They were used, after all, to bartering males. Was I merely an item of currency?

But all these thoughts were driven from my mind as suddenly the ship began to whirl. We were flung back against the timbers as she spun round and round, never so rapidly as to fling us out, and then gradually began to lift into the air. It seemed that the tunnel was drawing us up, sucking us through into the next dimension! The ship tilted and I was convinced we would be hurled into the water, but somehow our gravity remained the same. Now we were sailing down the tunnel just as if we followed the swift current of a river. I half expected to see banks on either side, but there was nothing save the glittering rainbow colours. Again I found myself close to weeping, but this time for the beauty and the wonder of it.

“It is as if the rays of more than one sun have all been focused together,” said von Bek, coming to stand beside me. “I am curious to learn more of these Six Realms.”

“There are, as I understand it, dozens of differently constituted groupings in the multiverse,” I told him, “just as there are different kinds of stars and planets, obeying a variety of physical laws. To most of us on Earth these are not readily perceptible, that is all. Why that is so, I do not know. Sometimes I think our world is a kind of colony for an underdeveloped or crippled race, since so many others take the multiverse for granted.”

“I would happily live in a world where such sights as these are familiar,” said von Bek.

The ship continued to travel rapidly along the tunnel. I noticed, however, that the helmswomen remained alert. I wondered if there were some additional danger.

Then the ship began to turn again and to shift her position so that she seemed to be diving down into pitch darkness. The crew shouted back and forth to one another, preparing for something. Alisaard told us to hang on tightly to the sides. “And pray that we are come to Gheestenheem,” she said. “These tunnels are notorious for shifting their bearings and stranding travellers until the following revolution!”

The darkness was so complete I could see nothing of my companions. I felt a peculiar surging sensation, heard the timbers of the ship creak, and then, very slowly, light returned. We were bobbing on ordinary water again and were still surrounded by the bright columns, though these were fainter than when we had first seen them.

“Steer through! Steer through!” cried Alisaard.

The ship bucked and jerked forward, heading between the columns with the helmswomen throwing all their weight on the oars. Another wave and we were through, rushing on the crest, towards a distant shoreline which reminded me, for a vague reason I could not identify, of Dover’s chalky cliffs, topped with a lush and rolling green.

Here golden sunlight fell upon blue water. Little white clouds hung in a blue sky. I had almost forgotten the sheer pleasure of an ordinary summer landscape. It had been, I thought, several eternities since I had looked upon such sights. Not since my parting with Ermizhad, in fact.

“My God!” exclaimed von Bek. “It is England, surely? Or Ireland, perhaps?”

These words were without any meaning to Alisaard. She shook her head. “You are a compendium of alien names, Count von Bek. You must have travelled very widely, eh?”

At this he was forced to laugh. “Now you are the unwitting naïve one, good lady. I assure you my travels have been very tame compared to what you take for granted!”

“I suppose the unfamiliar always seems more exotic.” She was enjoying the breeze in her hair and had stripped off more of her ivory armour, as had the others, in order to feel the sun on her skin. “A gloomy world, the Maaschanheem. All that shallow water makes it so grey, I suppose.” She was looking ahead now. The cliffs were parted here and formed a great bay. Within the curve of the bay was a quay and behind that a town whose houses crowded upwards on three sides above the sea.

“There’s Barobanay!” Alisaard spoke in some relief. “We can be ourselves again. I hate these charades.” She rapped her knuckles on her ivory breastplate.

There were many other sailing ships of all types moored along Barobanay’s quaysides, but there was none like ours. I guessed that the white ships were part of the trappings which the “Ghost Women” used to keep other folk at a distance.

The ship tacked in, oars were shipped, ropes were swung out to young men and women who stood by to receive them and secure them to capstans. The women were clearly of Eldren blood while the men were equally obviously human. Neither sex seemed to possess the demeanour of slaves. I mentioned this to Alisaard.

“Save that they are not allowed certain specific rights,” she told me, “the men are happy enough.”

“You must have some who have wanted to escape, no matter how pleasant their lives?” said von Bek reasonably.