They walked
in silence. It wasn’t a very long walk,
perhaps taking no more than two hours, through the woods that bordered the town
to the south, but it required several stops so that the Archon could find
secret ways and magically hidden paths. At some of these places John was fairly
sure that he had seen unidentifiable creatures of the forest, dressed in green
and brown but of uncertain size and shape, retreat before them. He couldn’t ask
the Archon what they were; he feared that if he said anything else then the
ancient, irascible, elf would simply leave him there, stuck in a labyrinth of
oaks. He plodded on, taking in as much of the surroundings as he could.
Eventually the path climbed up a hill and the trees became more
scattered. After that, the track opened up into an area of grassland, climbing some
distance above the forest. When they had left the Archon’s buildings the sun
had been shining strongly and during the walk through the forest the sunlight
had constantly dappled the floor where there were gaps in the canopy. Somehow,
however, the sun had disappeared by the time they had climbed into the open,
and it was several degrees cooler. John also noticed that the scattered trees
that were clinging to the slopes of the hill all had russet brown leaves upon
them, some of which were falling. It seemed that he had walked out of summer
into autumn.
The path levelled off and in front of him he could make out, in the
gloom, a massive rock structure on the centre of the hill. It was a trilithon – a three stone structure
made of two upright stones with a stone lying on its side balanced across them.
It was very big, but that wasn’t the most striking thing about it: in the
centre of the trilithon was an intense blue sphere. The sphere was visible from
far further away than the structure within which it sat, and it was a familiar
blue; it was the blue of the disc, the ray and the place from which he had
teleported. He broke into a sweat, although he had half-suspected that this
would be what he would have to travel through.
They walked on until the blue seemed to perfuse everything and the real
world became blurry and indistinct. The Archon stopped a hundred yards away
from the trilithon. He turned to look at John. They were both starkly outlined
in the blue light.
‘Welcome to the Helios Portal to the Folds’ said the Archon. He waited
to allow John to stare into the sphere. John remembered the endless vertigo of
the blue clouds with things swimming in it and shuddered. In response, the
Archon grinned broadly, his rheumy eyes almost twinkling.
‘A bit scary isn’t it?’ he said.
‘This is the only way through the Outer Void’ the Archon continued,
‘here is the weakness of the worlds, the one place where a way can be picked
through the chaos that sunders two of
the parts of the Triple World’
John said nothing. He had decided to wait as long as he could bear
before he spoke.
‘The way is reserved for the
Elves of the Twin Worlds, those of us that are permitted to live in both
realms. We are few and becoming fewer. Your Gods do not approve of us and they
aim to disrupt us at all times. But, nonetheless, we keep the link intact, we
make contact possible’
The Archon stopped and looked at John.
‘Do you understand, Human?’ he asked
John nodded emphatically but still said nothing.
‘The Folds are usually safe to pass through as long as the route is
certain. However, there have been strange shifts in the Void and now the way
has become unclear. The risks involved in such a journey are very large, I am
afraid.’
The Archon stared at John again, waiting for some reaction.
‘Do you have no questions, human?’ he asked, ‘you seemed excessively
full of them before’
John watched the pulsing blue of the gateway. He knew that he was
staring into another universe. His heart was filled with terror and wonder.
‘How will I find the path?’ he asked
The Archon smiled.
‘At last – you ask a good question; I will show you’
The Archon walked slowly towards the trilithon, and John followed. As
they got closer John could see that the portal entrance shifted and wavered, as
if at any one time there were a number of corridors to choose from, each one
like a tunnel in the fabric of space. He had no idea which one would be best to
choose.
‘Somewhere in your mind you know the way, like a swallow migrating back
to its winter home. You have to trust yourself. However, one error can trap you
in the Folds forever and eventually they will find you’
John looked up at the Archon, eyes wide with apprehension.
‘Who are ‘they’?’
‘The creatures of the Outer Void – they love the energies from our
dimension – they love to feed on the exotic plasma at the edge of their
existence – and they particularly love the psychic energies from sapient
beings’
John was now shivering from cold and fear.
The Archon began to walk away from him – he was clearly not intending to
give him the option to return to Helios with him.
After about ten steps the Archon turned to say a final word.
‘Stay on the path, Ismay of the Hybitor, and you will get home’ he said, ‘and keep your mouth shut more often –
you’re a lot easier to deal with when you’re not blabbering’
Despite this admonishment, John tried one more question.
‘What are the Triple Worlds?’
The Archon rolled his eyes.
‘You really don’t know do you!’ he sighed ‘It’s easily told – Helios,
Nux and Skiophos: daylight, night and twilight in your vulgar tongue. Now I must go, I have far more important
things to do than to educate barbarians’
The Archon turned around abruptly and then returned to his plodding
walk. He had soon made his way down the hill far enough to be beyond John’s
sight. John turned back to the Trilithon
and stared into the depths of the strange blue world.
***
John knew
that he could probably run and catch up with the Archon if he made his way back
soon. He knew, too, that the Archon would probably, even if reluctantly, take
him back to Hipparia too. But he imagined the walk back, each heavy step taking
him further away from his home. If he went back now he sensed that he would
never be able to return.
By the time John had had those thoughts, however, he knew that it was
too late anyway. The Archon would have climbed back into the secret ways of the
forest by now. He was trapped.
The gateway had a single path that lead into a matrix of shimmering
ways that appeared and reappeared in an unpredictable fashion. Each pathway was
different from every other, mostly distinguished by breadth and hue, but there
was no obvious way of choosing between them.
John stepped back from the entrance of the portal. He’d at least try
one thing before he resorted to instinct.
He sat on a rock and concentrated on a spell. He had in mind to cast a
simple orientation spell, which would normally allow him to find his way to a
particular destination. It was unlikely to work but still worth a try. He
picked up three twigs from the base of a nearby tree and formed an arrow with
them. He chanted ‘llwybr’ and the crude arrow rose in the air and
rotated until it pointed to the trilithon. John got up and walked in that
direction and the arrow floated in front of him, showing the way. He approached
to just in front of the entrance path and the arrow drifted into it. As it
entered the portal the arrow collapsed, the three twigs dropping to the floor.
To his horror the twigs began to move slowly outwards into the Folds, each twig
being channelled off into a different direction, like logs floating in a delta.
Presumably the same would happen to him if he didn’t keep moving. Ortia and Laurence were in deadly danger –
there was no way that he could give up now.
He racked his brains for a while, wondering what else he could do, but
at the back of his mind he knew that this was just procrastination. There was
no other way, he had to try and work out how to find a path through.
He stepped through the entrance way. This bit was easy. As he entered
The Folds he could feel a force pushing him on towards where the paths
multiplied. His body also seemed lighter than in the normal world and so the
force pushed him harder. He tried to walk backwards and found that he could
stay in one place, with some effort. Anyway, he didn’t intend to go back.
He allowed the force to push him towards the multiplicity of ways. The
alternative pathways flickered in front of his eyes. He left all thought behind
and made a choice. He stepped into the gap between the worlds.
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