Were it not for the encouraging and consoling words of Hiliána, the grief gripping the hearts of Eldárien and Elmáriyë would have crushed them into incapacity. This does not mean that their hearts are not grievously sorrowful and filled with lament for the terrors that they have witnessed at the hands of the one who called himself the Lord of Mæres, Midrôchus, whose presence and power is now cast far away. But regardless of the anguish and consolation that now intersect and collide in their hearts, they intend to leave the great chasm behind and to set their faces to the northeast, following the base of the Teldren Mountains even as their hearts linger with their beloved Velási, with the most wise and loving people whom they have ever known, whose home now lies swallowed up in the depths of the earth.
But instead they find themselves as though bound here at the edge of the great chasm, at the brink of this immense scar in the earth; and here they give free expression to their grief, allowing to flow in upon them an immensity of sorrow and loss sprung from the rending of the world which they have witnessed, but extending beyond this to experience and to reverberate in contact with the very mystery of evil and death itself. In beholding the tearing of the earth, both siblings have become more vividly aware of a sense that has been growing in intensity, in breadth and in depth, ever since they absorbed the darkness of the dragon in Onylándun, and in particular since they departed from that city to seek out the heart of darkness. Put simply, though it is in fact a multifaceted and many-layered reality, it is that their hearts are being more and more harnessed with each passing day in absorbing and bearing the darkness of the world. They feel the texture of this darkness, its complexity and its innate absurdity, so different than the placid and simple light of goodness, invade their being and sink deeply within them. And what is darkness but evil? And what is evil but a betrayal of the benevolent intentions of the Fashioner of all things, a twisting of his gift through pride and through fear, which brings destruction and pain in its wake, and opens the abyss of death in which the very gift of life, so precious and yet so fragile, dissolves and passes away.
Before the immensity of such evil and the mysteriousness of such death, Eldárien and Elmáriyë feel small and weak, like tiny drops in an ocean of loss, in a seemingly boundless expanse of corruption.
Suddenly Eldárien speaks, asking in a quiet voice, “Why does the All-Father choose to work through such human frailty? The world is so marred, scarred as it were from head to foot, from height to depth, and from east to west and north to south. And we ourselves, the children of men, the chosen of his heart, can be so foolish and so blind! We can do such shameful things and can be so apathetic to the light that would draw our gaze, preferring instead the comfort and control offered by the darkness. And yet there lives in us also such mysterious beauty, such capacity for nobility, for sacrifice, for goodness, and for love. But the light draws so subtly, and his presence insinuates itself into our hearts and our lives so hiddenly, so secretly, that it often goes unnoticed, or it is seen only in its fruits or in the radiance that it casts upon all that surrounds it and all that it touches.” He pauses and presses his face into his hands for a long moment in pensiveness and in grief. “I know my own weakness and frailty, and the darkness that resides within me, the brokenness that scars not only my flesh but my heart. How can I be a king with scars such as this? How can I find the confidence to walk this path before us when I know myself to be but a speck of dust standing before a mountain, asked to confront this very mountain and to dispel it? How is this possible?”
Elmáriyë raises her eyes kindly and looks with profound yet tremulous love and hope upon her brother, and she says in reply, “Possible? I don’t know that it is possible. We were never asked to believe that it was possible. All that we may try to foretell, all that we may try to control, is but ashes in the wind. It is rather the enduring truth of being that should alone draw our eyes—the truth that light bathes all things without ceasing, the truth that this world is as it is—a world of beauty and meaning, of glory and majesty, of peace and love—and not a world of darkness, as our enemy would wish for it to be. Not in looking to our own strength do we find courage and hope, but in directing our gaze toward this great mystery that lies even beyond the shadows that enfold us, even beyond the darkness that suffocates us. For even if our land is cast into darkness, even if our hearts are burdened by despair, the light shines ever beyond, undimmed and free. In this alone is our true and enduring hope and our abiding joy.”
“You speak true, but I can see it no longer, Elmáriyë,” admits Eldárien, voicing to her in words the heaviness of his heart that he already shares with her in the unspoken communion of the spirit.
“Neither can I,” says Elmáriyë softly, and as she says so, her voice cracks. “Or rather, it slips away even as we speak. I realize that for a time it must be so, for our hearts are passing into the darkness. We step into a place of profound loss for the sake of all and on behalf of all. How then can we not taste this loss in our own hearts and in our own flesh? Our being must expand, must dilate, to be able to cross over this distance, the distance between the horrifying darkness of evil and the beatifying light of good. Such is the path before us.”
“But that space is too wide for any human heart,” says Eldárien.
“And yet it is asked of us nonetheless,” Elmáriyë says. “As you said, and as we both feel so keenly now: our world is fractured and dark, estranged from our Father’s original intentions, and yet it still the bears marks of his beauty and his plan more deeply still. For he is not defeated. So too every heart is broken and wounded, and yet he works in us and among us nonetheless. I believe indeed that he delights to work precisely in this way, because he still loves our world and our humanity even in their brokenness, and he does not despise drawing near to our littleness and working in its midst, making it a vessel of his love; and he works in this way also so that all may know that the salvation, the beauty, the life are his alone, freely given to us and at work within us as his gracious gift. What difference is there, then, between ‘greatness’ and ‘littleness,’ when the gift comes not from man, but from the Creator of man?”
After these words are spoken they both lapse into silence, and even as their hearts both experience a slight kindling of hope in response to what Elmáriyë has said—or rather in response to the truth of her words—even as they feel it, a chill wind of darkness and of evil blows over them and submerges this very hope from consciousness. They feel the pit of darkness opening before them, indeed falling upon them as an oppressive weight ordained to crush them until no life remains. They touch hands for a moment, looking into one another’s eyes with overwhelming sorrow and frail hope, and in this look they say what can no longer be said in words or grasped with the mind. And then they lie down to sleep for a while, the wilderness surrounding them and the path ahead of them calling.
† † †
Eldárien awakes just as the sun begins to shine over the horizon in the east, though this is evident to those upon the continent of Telmérion only through the slight lightening of the darkness where the glowing disc of Élda appears, fighting to pierce through a thick black veil. Before sitting up, he opens his eyes and sees the figure of Elmáriyë beside him. She is kneeling with her upper body bent prostrate over her knees so that her forehead touches the ground. Seeing this he is not surprised, for he has seen her in this posture many times, even daily, throughout their journey. So as not to disturb her, he does not move, though he joins his prayer with hers and unites his spirit with her spirit in opening to the presence and the love of Eldáru, and in the trusting surrender that is the very heartbeat of life, in the face of darkness and death and beyond it.
How much his heart has discovered and delved into the mystery of prayer since returning to the land of Telmérion! But even before this, his heart wounded by so much pain and loss, and yet also touched so deeply by the fragments of the one beauty that shines in and through all things, his heart has prayed. For prayer is the true, deep, and native life of every heart, and its discovery and full blossoming the true calling of every person. During the many nocturnal vigils in which he has sat at the edge of camp looking out into the darkness, he has prayed, or, even more deeply, he has felt something, someone, praying within him and stirring and lifting up his own prayer. So too in the many beautiful moments, in the moments of encounter, of heart-sharing with his newfound companions, of unexpected beneficence or undeserved mercy, he has felt something new and profound grow and begin to blossom within him. Even in confrontation with the darkness, with the suffocating and crushing lies of the forces of evil, part of him has been unsealed—unsealed in opposition, in the movement beyond darkness toward the hidden light—and has flowed into the current that has carried him ever more intensely with every passing day throughout the entirety of his life and the wholeness of his being.
All of this comes to him anew as if in a single glance, and Elmáriyë stirs beside him. Without the need for words they both know that in this moment their consciousnesses have again touched, brushing against one another and indeed interlacing. And he feels deep gratitude for her life and her spirit, her existence and her story; and she feels the same in regard to him, as if the life of each is becoming the life of the other, both unique and yet the two made indivisibly one.
But then another element soon enters into this reality: they feel the anguish of Rórlain, calling upon the light entrusted to them while he fights desperately in a place of utter darkness, and the grief and anguish of Tilliána and Cirien with him. The words that Hiliána spoke echo in them anew: “You shall soon walk into a darkness deeper than you have ever known…but the light shall never depart from you.” It shall never depart, yes, but it shall penetrate into the very heart of the darkness and bear the darkness within itself as if it were its own, for only in this way can the darkness be broken and overcome. And feeling the desperate plea in the hearts of their companions tugging upon the light within them, the light that holds them, they let it go, releasing it to flow fully into those who need it, fully into Rórlain who is the chosen vessel to channel the light into the armies of righteousness. And in the same moment as this light streams forth to confront the powers of darkness, it carries them with it, as if bringing them to the heart of the confrontation as well. They are held by the light even as the light, so pure and transparent and deep in the very heart of darkness, slips away from their grasp and their feeling; and in its place they feel the inrush of incredible evil, horrifying guilt, and suffocating darkness.
They both stir now and sit up from where they lie, sharing a look of profound reciprocal sadness and mutual understanding. Then, without words, they embrace and hold one another, lamenting together the darkness that they bear, letting their breath and their tears be their voice and their song. Like this they remain, hardly aware of the passage of time, until the sun has risen high in the sky and its disc can be discerned almost directly overhead. Only then do they release one another and take notice of their surroundings, though the experience is as though being wrenched apart at the very sinews of being, like a cloth torn or ligaments rent or bones snapped asunder. And the darkness lingers. They begin to know what Hiliána had meant in speaking of the deeper darkness. To such a place and such a state they go, to confront this darkness in its very abode, to face the great thief who has stolen the memories and the guilt of men to prevent them from returning to their Maker, and instead turning them into tools of wickedness perpetuating evil in the world by the evil that has once occurred.
No more! their hearts cry. No more! Moved by this anguished sense and by this ardent longing, they rise now to their feet and silently gather their few belongings. Then they set their faces to the north and the east and continue on their journey.
† † †
Eldárien and Elmáriyë pass along the base of the Teldren Mountains and come eventually to the village of Criseä. Even at a distance, in the light of many torches that have been lit within the village itself, they see that many of the houses lie slanted, broken, or even entirely in ruins due to the violent earthquakes that accompanied the rending of the earth. Seeing hurting people milling about the city tending to their wounded and trying to repair what little damage they can of what their village has suffered, both siblings feel a pang of sadness at their first direct witness of the effects of the earthrend upon the people of Telmérion. And though they would wish to stop in the town both to offer aid and to rest from their journey, their hearts urge them on with a pressing insistence, summoning them to haste. And nothing in truth would greet them there but sorrow and grief and the ruins of a village reduced to wreckage both outside and within. And so they turn their faces away and pass the village by a wide margin, following the foothills of the mountains as they begin to ripple upward to the north and to the west.
Thus begins the last stretch of their journey—in a deep solitude and loss in which the darkness steadily increases as the light seems to fade away, and they can only cling with desperate hearts both to one another and to the One whose accompaniment is true even if intangible. Galas Basin at last greets them, and the trees of the thick forest that spans from mountain to mountain—and in which lies nestled the village of Fálstead—reach out and enfold them, as if welcoming them into their embrace. But this embrace only serves to cast them into yet further darkness, as what little light has still filtered from the thickly veiled sky is now almost entirely eliminated by the thick canopy of trees.
“I find that I can summon the light no longer,” sighs Eldárien. “We have entrusted it now entirely into the hands of Rórlain, and we must walk ahead without relying upon its luminosity or its strength.”
“But it is like a maze in here,” Elmáriyë replies. “We must navigate our way through the trees almost by feel alone. This shall greatly slow our progress.”
“It is a day or two across the basin if one moves at a good speed. It shall take us longer. But if we can make it to such a place, then we shall climb beyond the trees. Many ages has it been, however, since the path into the mountains and to the ancient citadel of Séra Galáptes has been trod by human feet. We know not what we shall find, nor even if the trail is still amenable to passage.”
“I—,” Elmáriyë begins, but she is interrupted by an unexpected occurrence. From within her pack a dim light begins to make itself known, shining in bluish rays through the fabric. Swinging her pack off her shoulder and rummaging through it, she pulls out the lantern that was given to her in the Velási Forest. Within its depths flickers a pure blue flame, and, amplified through the multifaceted crystal that surrounds it, it shines out and gives enough illumination to show Eldárien and Elmáriyë their surroundings for five or ten feet in every direction.
Feeling in his heart the ever growing haste, Eldárien gestures for them to continue on their way without delay. And so they do. As they progress, however, something mysterious in the atmosphere around them changes, at first subtle and almost unnoticeable and then tangible to the point of overwhelming them. Not only does the temperature drop drastically until the snow around them turns hard as stone and the air bites through their layers of fur and clothing almost as if they were nothing, but the veil of darkness summoned by the Lord of Death also intensifies or rather changes in nature. Now when they stop to build a fire that they might chase away some of this painful and life-threatening cold, they realize that it is impossible to do. No matter how much the attempt it, no spark can be ignited and no wood set to heat or flame. The cold light of the lantern of Elmáriyë alone in all the world brings light to them now, and it does not fight off the cold nor prevent what they soon realize could be the death of both of them: the freezing of their bodies in the depths of the wilderness of the Telméric mountains, high above the surrounding land with no sun nor sky nor daylight to warm them.
For a day and a half they walk, speaking little and refusing to pause or to sleep for fear that they shall be unable to begin again. Elmáriyë cannot conceal from Eldárien, though she does not speak of it, that her fingers and toes have now become useless, blackened within her boots and her gloves, and that they shall never feel warmth or touch or life again. Seeing this, Eldárien silently begins to assist her even to walk, allowing her to lean heavily on him as they progress through the darkness. Even so, they come near to the roots of the mountains upon whose rocky slopes, high above, the citadel resides. The trees grow sparse and eventually recede into the distance behind them, though stragglers remain, worn and weathered after centuries of growth, their massive trunks and broad spans casting ghostly shadows behind them whenever the travelers bearing the light of the lantern pass.
Soon the steep cliff-face of the mountain arises so starkly before them that no further progress is possible until they find the entrance to the pass. Yet finding the pass proves immensely difficult in the darkness, and they spend many frustrating and fruitless hours scouring this way and that, looking high and low, in groves of trees and in narrow ravines in which weave streams from high in the mountains, all turned to ice now except for their deepest depths. And even as another day passes, they do not find it.
Their hearts cry out in unspoken prayer, fear and discouragement gripping them. At last Elmáriyë stops and, sinking to the ground, says, “It seems impossible to find, as if over the ages separating us from the citadel’s former glory, it has faded away and become lost in the shifting of time and earth. And yet even if the path was clear before us, I fear that we cannot continue like this. For the darkness intensifies with every moment and shall soon break us. My heart already splits in two from its weight. Regardless of the haste and the burden of responsibility that we feel, if we cannot find some hint again of the light we have lost, we shall not be able to proceed at all…”
Eldárien silently kneels beside her and places a hand upon her shoulder, bowing his head and closing his eyes. He sighs deeply as if expressing sorrow that is far beyond words, but also as if reaching out beyond it for some path forward when the external search has proved fruitless. Yet no light comes, but only an intensification of the darkness and the weight, like a poison gradually spreading through the body and making it sick, spreading through the heart and destroying in it all that is good, beautiful, or true. They are both filled with the feeling that there is no other choice but to remain here, crushed to the earth, and to accept the inevitable fate that now comes upon them, as sad as it may be. And even as they experience this, the lantern held loosely in Elmáriyë’s hand flickers, wavers, and goes out. Now they sit in almost complete darkness, blacker now in truth that the deepest and darkest night that the world has ever known.
But at long last Eldárien stirs himself and rises wearily to his feet. Extending his hand to Elmáriyë, he says softly, “Come, sister, let us go. Though we have not yet found the path, we know that it exists. If we seek without tiring, we are sure to find.”
“But I am tired, Eldárien,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. “I am deathly tired. And I can no longer walk alone.”
“You have never walked alone, and even now I shall hold you up and support you. And if I must carry you upon my back, that too I shall do.”
“You are too weak for that,” she whispers. But nonetheless she allows him to take her by the hand and to draw her up. Side by side, they continue their search with hardly more than the senses of touch and hearing. And, beyond all hope and expectation, they find it. The path is indeed ancient and untouched, with two standing stones on either side of its entrance, etched with runes that have now been all but effaced by the passage of time and the hardships of weather. Eldárien feels them under his fingers and recognizes them for what they are, though he cannot clearly make out what they say. Beyond the trees and foliage that have grown to hide the path, they find a hard trail moving upward in an open space. And this trail soon turns to massive stone stairs that seem to have been cut from the living stone of the mountain itself and shaped with a master craftsman’s hand.
They climb, therefore, up the steep slope that the steps greatly ease but which, in their current state, proves to be a task almost beyond their strength. For an hour and a half they climb, and the darkness within them grows and intensifies until it feels that they walk through a fog of suffocating death. But eventually they begin to see before them the high parts of the mountain painted a darker black against the blackness of the sky beyond it. Seeing this, they become aware that they come now to the summit, or at least to the crest on which lies the ancient citadel. For in the midst of the broad shape of the mountain they also see the silhouettes of towers and turrets jutting up in the midst of the gloom, harbingers of their destination.
But even as they look on, other shapes become visible, emerging from the castle and becoming blurs of movement in the sky above, circling and circling overhead. But despite their speed and the difficulty of seeing them in the dark, it is obvious what they are: they feel it more than they they see it, black wings etched against the sky, and terror in the earth. They are dragons, perhaps ten in number, swirling like vultures waiting for their meal.
“Why do they not attack?” Elmáriyë asks quietly, hardly able to speak. “Surely whoever sent them knows that we cannot withstand such an assault. Why do they not…just finish us now?”
“Perhaps he does not know of our presence, or perhaps he does not seek to prevent us, but rather to fill us with fear and to weaken our resolve.”
“But what of the words of the Lord of Mæres, of Midrôchus? Did he not say that the Lord of Darkness sent him to destroy us?”
“Aye, he did say that. But I suspect it was a lie.”
“Why?”
“I feel that perhaps the Lord of Darkness awaits us…even draws us… Midrôchus actions were his way of rebelling against his ‘master,’ who wishes for himself alone the privilege of destroying us and bringing an end to our quest. I suspect that Midrôchus was rather meant simply to bring us to him.”
“So all the destruction that he caused was simply a whim born of his own pride and malice?” she exclaims.
Eldárien does not respond for a long time, but then at last he gives voice to his feelings in words, “Such a degree of apathy, indeed of hatred for all living things, is incredible. And as a chasm has been torn open in the heart of our land, so I feel it has opened in my heart as well, tearing through its very center. And I fear that I am going to fall into it and lose myself in its depths forever.”
Elmáriyë sighs sadly, and the exhaustion in her voice is tangible, “Let us not look overlong into those depths, Eldárien, even if our eyes can see nothing else. Perhaps seeing alone cannot guide us now, unless it be the sight beyond sight of the inner heart hidden even from ourselves. Whatever awaits us, we are coming to the end of our quest. Let us simply keep moving. It cannot be much farther now.”
He chuckles softly, though it comes out strained and choked. And he says to her, “I tried to encourage you and now it is you who encourage me. Who shall encourage us when neither of us can find courage any longer?”
Elmáriyë looks at her brother gravely now, as if his words have contained far more than he intended to communicate. And for a long moment he reciprocates her gaze. And then they move on.