Entoverse

CHAPTER THIRTY

In the night, everything lay hidden beneath the blackness of a sky deserted by the gods. Even Pamur, the god whose lantern was the sun, was turning away, reducing Waroth’s days to twilight gloom, Snow blanketed the mountains and choked the passes. Herders and hill people were moving into the valleys as cold crept down across the land.

High in the midst of the Rinjussin wilderness, the Master, Shingen-Hu, and a select group of adepts from his school ascended a rocky peak for the ceremony of reconsecrating the Altar of Arising, from whence those who arose with the currents departed from the world. The currents had been running very weak of late, and they were too high to be drawn down. The purpose of the rite was to get Nieru’s blessing for better conditions.

The chanting and incantations were of particular significance to Thrax, for Shingen-Hu had chosen him as the next to ascend, when the signs and the currents became favorable. In his devotions he had already, on several occasions, captured the wisps of current that sometimes came low, bringing images into his mind. He recalled the images now, as he stood clad in heavy robes and a cowled cloak upon the peak, gazing at the scattering of remnant stars flickering wanly above, as if beckoning, somehow… Images that he had seen of Hyperia.

Of lawfulness reigning indefinitely through time and over unimaginably vast regions of space.

Of things that spun.

Of huge cities of permanent matter, sculpted into fantastic shapes that soared into the sky.

Of the strange beings that inhabited them, whose wondrous devices could operate themselves directly, without any intervention of mind.

It would be as one of those strange beings that he would emerge, Shingen-Hu had told him. Most of the abilities that he knew would be lost. But he would find, as he persevered and learned, that he didn’t need them. For the inhabitants of Hyperia knew none of the gods that held sway over Waroth. They didn’t need to bother with prayer, and the few gods that they did worship in their own mysterious ways were as nothing ever revealed to any Warothian. The Hyperians delegated their powers to complex magic objects, which they were able to fashion as effortlessly as a Master could project a firebolt; thus they freed themselves to devote their time to such higher things as amusement and bodily comforts, without the daily drudgery of cultivating mystical insights and developing powers of unaided thought.

But to begin with, he would feel lost and helpless when he emerged. He would search in vain for reassurance from things that were familiar, knowing that until he developed new powers of comprehension and came to terms with the revelations which those new insights would open up, there would be no way back. That would be when he should seek the security of his own kind among those bearing the emblem of the purple spiral.

But he had been thoroughly trained. He was ready. Others were not so fortunate, Shingen-Hu had said. In former times, when the currents had been abundant and strong, it often happened that new initiates, or even novices, would emerge into Hyperia ignorant and unprepared, without even having glimpsed what lay ahead. Usually they were solitary learners, unschooled and impatient.