Were it not for the encouraging and consoling words of Hiliana, the grief may well have crushed Eldarien and Elmariyë into incapacity, but as it is they proceed on their journey after only a short rest. But this does not mean that their hearts are not grievously sorrowful and filled with lament for the terrors that they witnessed at the hands of the one who called himself the Lord of Mæres, Midrochus, whose presence and power is now cast far away. And so they leave the great chasm behind and set their faces to the northeast, following the base of the Teldren Mountains even as their hearts linger with their beloved Velasi, with the most wise and loving people whom they have ever known, whose village now lies swallowed up in the depths of the earth.
When they stop again to make camp, they give free expression to their grief. They feel flowing in upon them an immensity of sorrow and loss sprung indeed 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 become aware more vividly of a sense that has been growing in intensity, in breadth and in depth, ever since they absorbed the darkness of the dragon in Onylandun, 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. For 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 evil and the mysteriousness of death, Eldarien and Elmariyë feel small and weak, like tiny drops in an ocean of loss, in a seemingly boundless expanse of corruption.
Suddenly Eldarien 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 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 is seen only in its fruit or in the radiance that it casts upon all that surrounds it and all that it touches.” He pauses and runs a hand absentmindedly through his thick hair. “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 one 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?”
Elmariyë raises her eyes kindly and looks with profound love 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. No, it is rather the enduring truth of being that should 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 it to be. Not in looking to our own strength do we find courage and hope, but in looking 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 no longer see it, Elmariyë,” admits Eldarien, voicing to her in words the heaviness of his heart that he has already shared with her in the unspoken communion of the spirit.
“Neither can I,” says Elmariyë 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 the 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 Eldarien.
“And yet it is asked of us nonetheless,” Elmariyë says. “As you said, and as we both feel so keenly now: our world is so fractured and so dark, estranged from our Father’s original intentions and yet still bearing 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, both 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; but 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. 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 and of fervor in response to what Elmariyë 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 it 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.
† † †
Eldarien awakes just as the sun begins to shine over the horizon in the east, though this is evident to those upon the continent of Telmerion only through the slight lightening of the darkness where the glowing disc of Elda appears, fighting to pierce through a black veil. Before sitting up he opens his eyes, and he sees the figure of Elmariyë beside him. She is kneeling with her upper body bent over prostrate so that her forehead touches the ground. Seeing this he is not surprised, for he has seen her in this posture many times throughout their journey, even daily. 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 Eldaru, 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 Telmerion! But even before this, his heart wounded by so much pain and loss in his youth, 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 flowed 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 now anew as if in a single glance, and Elmariyë 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, each unique and yet the two indivisibly made one.
But then another element soon enters into this reality as well: they feel the anguish of Rorlain, calling upon the light entrusted to them while he fights desperately in a place of utter darkness, and the grief and anguish of Tilliana and Cirien with him. The words that Hiliana spoke to them but the day before also 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 Rorlain 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 so 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 any words, they embrace one another and hold each other, lamenting together at 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 know what Hiliana had meant in speaking of the deeper darkness. Thence 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 keep them from being returned 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 pack up their camp. Then they set their faces to the mountains and continue on their journey.
† † †
Eldarien and Elmariyë pass along the base of the Teldren Mountains and come shortly, within less than a day, 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 effect of the earthrend upon the people of Telmerion. 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 so they turn their faces away and skirt 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 soon greets them, and the trees of the thick forest that spans from mountain to mountain—and in which lies nestled the village of Falstead—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.
“And I find that I can summon the light no longer,” sighs Eldarien. “We have entrusted it now entirely into the hands of Rorlain, and we must walk ahead without relying upon its luminosity or its strength.”
“But it is like a maze in here,” Elmariyë replies. “We must navigate our way through the trees almost by feel alone. This shall greatly slow our progress.”
“It is but a day or two across the basin, and then we shall climb beyond the trees, though even then the path shall be difficult. Many ages has it been since the path into the mountains and to the ancient citadel of Sera Galaptes has been trod by human feet. We know not what we shall find, nor even if the trail is still amenable to passage.”
“I—,” Elmariyë 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 Velasi 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 Eldarien and Elmariyë their surroundings for a good ten feet in every direction.
“We may not be able to summon the light,” Elmariyë remarks, “but it is still here to guide us.”
Nodding to her but feeling in his heart the ever growing haste, Eldarien gestures for them to continue on their way without delay. And so they do.
For a day and a half they walk, speaking little and sleeping only three hours, until they come to the roots of the mountains upon whose rocky slopes, high above, the citadel resides. The trees begin to 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 progress becomes impossible until they find the entrance to the pass, as the overgrown slope rises before them, interspersed with rocky outcroppings, such that they can neither navigate nor climb. Yet finding the pass proves to be 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 flow shallow streams from high in the mountains. And they do not find it.
Their hearts cry out in unspoken prayer, fear and discouragement gripping them. At last Elmariyë stops and, sinking to the ground which is damp with hoarfrost, says, “I do not know why we cannot find it. But we cannot continue like this, not for lack of path alone, but because the darkness intensifies with every moment and soon shall break us. Regardless of the haste and the burden of responsibility that we feel, if we do not proceed in peace, we shall not be able to proceed at all…”
Eldarien 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, reaching out for some path forward when looking externally 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 Elmariyë’s hand flickers, wavers, and goes out. Now they sit in almost complete darkness, with only the dim light struggling through the black mist illumining the air around them.
But at long last Eldarien stirs himself and rises wearily to his feet. He walks to a nearby tree and breaks off one of its lower branches, and, using supplies from his backpack, he prepares it as a torch. The flames sputter to life and emit a faint glow on their surroundings, though even this light seems to be unnaturally dim, even more so than all light has been since the coming of the great darkness.
Walking back to where Elmariyë sits upon the ground, Eldarien extends his hand to her and 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, Eldarien,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. “I am deathly tired.”
“Yes. As am I. But to sink into inactivity will only make it worse.” Then he says again, “Come, let us go.”
Now she allows him to take her by the hand and to draw her up. Side by side, in the frail and flickering light of the torch as it combats the encroaching darkness, they continue their search. It is another half hour before they encounter that for which they search. 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. The trees and foliage have also grown to hide it, making it difficult to find even for one who would know its location, even the more so for those searching for it for the first time. But when they have found it, the path is unmistakable, for it climbs upward steeply with 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 they climb, and all the while the torch in Eldarien’s hand grows dimmer and dimmer, until it no longer emits any light even though the flame still flickers upon it. He casts it down in frustration upon the stone and stamps out the fire, then raises his eyes to look ahead.
“We have no choice now but to walk forward without any light to guide our way,” he says. “Be careful not to fall, for the going shall be rough.”
Elmariyë nods at his words without replying, occupied as she is with the conflict between another darkness and another light.
In another half-hour they begin to see before them the high parts of the mountain painted a darker black against 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 silhouette of towers and turrets jutting up in the midst of the blackness, harbingers of their approaching 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 as much as 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?” Elmariyë asks. “Surely whoever sent them knows that we cannot withstand such an assault.”
“I do not think that he is trying to prevent us,” Eldarien says, “but rather simply to fill us with fear and to weaken our resolve.”
“But what about the Lord of Mæres—Midrochus—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 believe that the Lord of Darkness awaits us…draws us… What Midrochus did was his act of rebellion against his ‘master,’ who wishes for himself alone the privilege of destroying us and bringing an end to our quest. I think that Midrochus was rather simply meant to bring us to him.”
“So all the destruction that he caused, that was simply a whim born of his own pride and malice?” she exclaims.
“I fear so…” Eldarien breathes. “Such a degree of apathy, of disrespect, is incredible. And as a chasm has been torn open in the heart of our land, so I feel as if 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.”
Elmariyë sighs sadly, and the exhaustion in her voice is tangible, “Let us not look overlong into those depths, Eldarien, even if our eyes can see nothing else. I know of what you speak, but, whatever awaits us, we are coming to the end of our quest. Let us simply keep moving. It is not much farther now.”
He chuckles softly, though it comes out strained and choked, and he says to her, “I encouraged you and now it is you who encourage me. Who shall encourage us when neither of us can find courage any longer?”
Elmariyë looks at her brother very seriously now, as if his words have contained far more than he explicitly intended to communicate. And for a long moment he reciprocates her gaze. And then they move on.