Chapter 22: Prince of Virikria

Crist Anakara was the forty-seventh Prince of Virikria. The forty-seventh ruler in an unbroken line of blood descent from Prince Virikria himself, one of the twelve princes King Joy had set in Grenwilde. The dwelling places of these peoples were the islands in the heart of the Great Western Sea. To these places, they had willingly exiled themselves, after the appearance of the Man from the East.

Within twenty days of the destruction of Cair Galinal, Prince Anakara had been fully informed of the deeds of the toad and of the advent of the vulgraths. It had been colourfully reported to him, by his friend and military commander, Admiral Carlangous, who had ended his report, with an impassioned plea:

"My Liege, the great sea, so long our protection against the excesses and wars of Grenwilde, will not shield us from these creatures. They have wings and rain fire from the skies. It is my opinion, dear Prince, that we must strike the Dark One, before he strikes us. Distasteful though it might seem, we must ally with West Grenwilde against the enemy of all mankind."

Prince Anakara had listened and had considered the matter carefully. But he did not believe that the admiral was correct. It had always been the policy of Virikria to isolate itself as much as possible from the sons of the men who had not remained true to the Runes.

The sons of Virikria were sticklers for truth; that is why their rulers were princes and not kings. The Runes declared that Grenwilde would not have a True King until the end of the world and, for a time, Prince Anakara had resisted the idea that the times at hand necessarily indicated that the end of the age was upon them. Two things had changed his mind: a dream and the destruction of Rama-gil.

And so it was, that fifty-seven days after the fall of Cair Galinal, seventeen days after Rama?gil was burned, on the second night following his dream, Prince Anakara prepared his army to set sail for Western Grenwilde.

They sailed not to the nearest port, Bonaira Vis, but made their way instead to the historic capital of Grenwilde, West Ganariel. There they landed in one hundred sailing vessels each carrying one hundred men at arms: ten thousand strong. The landing caused shock and dismay amongst the citizens of West Ganariel.

Prince Anakara assured the people he was come to aid the armies of Grenwilde in their struggle for survival. Whether or not the Mayor of West Ganariel, beside himself with amazement and wonder, believed the prince is debatable. But it is certain he was too afraid to do anything other than cooperate. Indeed, what else could he do?

The Virikrians discovered that the army of Grenwilde was believed to be dug in along the Western Hills. Upon hearing this, Prince Anakara began his journey straight away, leaving the city of West Ganariel sixty-five days after the fall of the Great Wall, on the very day when Jaomin fought the vulgraths.

~ ~ ~

In moments of great discouragement, our lives are passed back to us in tiny pieces. Each piece is ripped out of the fabric of the whole. As eyes without words are intolerable, similarly, taken alone, no memory is a friend. Isolated memory lies under a curse: every love coloured with suspicion; every acceptance a scheme to use us, every pleasant thing made ugly.

Taril did not know where he was, or even if he was. He was aware but unable to think. He could not act but was the passive recipient of events and words. Terrible things were handed to him. It was as if his entrails were being torn out and thrust into his shaking hands. Events met him like blows. Words struck him like darts.

Fragments of memory visited him again and again, in a sickening continuous circle. They were his memories but they were deformed. Like people we have not seen in years, they were changed - never for the better.

Like a stick in a slow black whirlpool of dark despair, his being was sucked endlessly down, away into the darkness.

~ ~ ~

Life itself is a good thing, but by itself it is not. Strip away the blessings from the body, the curiosities from the mind and the loves from the soul - take away the visitations of the holy from the spirit - and you are left with a thing that is not good but which clings to itself. So was the life of the Demiurge: a thirst for power over goodness that contained no goodness, a hunger stretched across a void.

Nihilos sat on his dark throne consoling his pain by revelling in his dark knowledge. His mind ached as though burned by fire. Logos had the most terrifying effect on his brain. But he had comfort. His enemies had pushed him to the very brink of the abyss, but his feet had held firm. He was now ready to turn and spring on them with a vengeance.

The war did not matter to him. Peoples and nations were of no consequence. What did such things matter to one who had conquered death? All had been a ruse, a screen, to lure and trap the one thing he needed. The ingredient that would allow him to distort the essence of goodness - to make the Death Nygrath.

Like a dark rain, Nihilos poured the venom of his unholy being onto the petrified knight. How pleasant his twisted soul found it to shape the knight in the stone prison. For though he was frozen, he was still within the heart of the crystal and so could be manipulated. By means of the Speaking Crystal the Dark Lord could reinterpret Taril's life for him. A reinterpretation that made every joy despair, every victory defeat, every fresh thing stale and every sweet thing sour.

The crystal of Taril's final predicament brought Nihilos a particularly strong pleasure. We idly speak of moments that seem frozen. Moments where we have a peculiar sense of time, in which all things are suspended. How amusing, to the Prince of Night, to have one such moment established as an eternal prison for his foe. A moment locked in the crystal, in the sand from which we are made.

With reluctance, Lord Nihilos stood and replaced the knight upon the shelf. He was not ready to risk this prize just yet. When he did let Loridan look to its gates!

For the present, the young Prince of the Blood was sufficient for his needs - a very adequate fuel for the Death Nygrath.

Nihilos laughed thinking of the desigarg and humans fighting and killing each other. He cared nothing for any of their doings. For it was not power over others that he most desired, but power over goodness.

What goodness had he not taken out of context for himself? Had he not twisted all things to his own ends? Every goodness of body and mind he had corrupted, sucking out pure sweet desire and leaving a dry consuming itch. Every reward of goodness that attended the body - and that he knew of - he had taken captive as well: health, security and longevity.

What remained for him to attack? Only the nature of goodness itself.

It was not enough to merely corrupt good things. Nor was it enough to twist what creatures thought of as good things. In fact, these things never had been enough. He wanted to carry his attack higher, to twist the very nature of goodness: altering its essence, making it something other than itself.

He wanted a creature that used the powers of goodness to execute evil, which did wrong in the strength of true virtue. And, he believed he had learned how this might be done.

The experiment of the toad had shown him that a form could be made to house his thought patterns. A creature that could then learn to think independently, governed by a child crystal.

The success of the experiment had made him send the Hordes - under Gamarad's command - against the lands of Grenwilde to secure the one ingredient still missing, which the Prince of Night could not supply: a virtuous soul. And so the raids were carried out upon the humans to draw them into a willingness to trade. Then the crystals had sent out invisible tendrils into all the world to find a child of the King. And so the war was waged to cause the Saviour King to rise up, that he, Lord Nihilos, might entrap him.

He had not thought there would be seven such princes.

But it mattered little, for one alone would be sufficient to build the nygrath. And now not one, but two suitable souls were trapped in the stone prisons, subject to the shaping of his imagination. He could hold virtue in his hand. He could twist it to his will. And, in the Death Nygrath, he could use it.

Behind the Prince of Night, bathed in the pale beams of the Mother Crystal, see the Death Nygrath. Twenty feet in height it stood, with scales made strong by pride. Iron it would count as straw; the weapons of men it would laugh at. The power in its limbs was that of thirty men. Stone walls could not resist its blows, and the bones of men would splinter like rotten wood.

And, oh, Creator forgive that it should be so, but it was Telliam, the faithful and good: Telliam with all his life told over to him, reprinted after the pattern of the Dark Ones' thoughts.

What is that tragic weaving in his brows, not vicious but sad beyond bearing? For the sun has been made a black hole and joy a vortex of despair.

Beneath the schooling of the Prince of Night, his duty and desire had been brought into an unholy alliance, a living parody of the sacred union these two things are meant to find. It was his duty, his over-flowing passionate desire to destroy his brothers who had betrayed him and to rule.

His education was now finished; his shape was complete; his mind a pulsing, working pain; his crystal in place. And it was very nearly the moment for him to be awakened and unleashed.

~ ~ ~

To a child size is distance relative to an object. Hold a baby's hand in front of his face and it is larger than the greatest mountain on the horizon.

So, in the land of the dead, Hector had been a giant, for death to him was a thing very, very far away. He could walk its dark corridors without fear, and did so singing his quaint song about finding Taril.

To Meda and Jaffar, who had frequently fought death, it was a much larger thing. They were immortal, every bit as much as Hector, but the thought of willingly leaping back into the High Portal was very unsettling.

Meda stood wrapped in thought. The whole matter was difficult and unpleasant. Would one entering this portal be back in the fields of white fog? Meda didn't think so, for Hector hadn't appeared in that place, he had been outside of it somehow. She turned to the angel, "Noma, you spend more time with Hector than just about anybody else does. He told us we were in a 'tone. What does he mean when he says, 'tone'?"

"Stone," said Noma without hesitating. "Hector and I often throw stones into the Sea of Peace." In his memory Noma could hear Hector's little voice telling him to 'tro 'tones farder!' A pang went through his heart; somehow his little charge must be freed. "Dear knights, can you rescue the child? My heart breaks for him to be free."

"I don't know, Noma. I hope we can," said Meda. She turned to her brother, "Hector said that we were in a stone, Jaffar. What could that possibly mean?"

"He asked us if we were a stone, actually," Jaffar corrected. "He's a very intelligent little fellow, but he is a child, Meda."

Noma snorted, "A child who goes places I can't!" The angel was dealing with an emotion they couldn't comprehend, for the charge given to an angel is wound round his very heart.

"Noma," Meda said, "don't blame yourself. An angel can't enter death, and I'm sure that's where Hector is. Now put that aside and help me piece this out. If Hector thought we were inside a stone, and a few minutes later he - somehow - rescued us. Doesn't it seem that we must in fact have been where he thought we were? How else could he have rescued us?"

"I have never heard of such a thing, Meda," Noma said solemnly, "but it seems so. At least, your imprisonment must have been linked to the stone."

"How's that?" Jaffar asked.

"Well, I don't think anything could move and live in a stone."

Meda thought for a moment and then gasped.

"What is it, Meda?" Jaffar asked.

"Crystals," Meda said faintly. "They can be used as Oracle Stones, ways to foresee Majesty's intentions."

Jaffar looked at her frowning.

"It is a forbidden art in all fallen worlds, Jaffar. It leads people to manipulate others and to depend on their own insights instead of the Creator. But, it is possible for one who is skilled to use World Crystals to foresee events."

"That doesn't explain how we could have been inside a crystal, Meda."

"But it does, Jaffar!" exclaimed Noma, "Of course, I see what Meda's thinking of. The World Crystals are weavings within the depths of each world's fabric. An angel could - if he was a fallen angel - bend the power of the relationship between that weaving and the unfolding of events to fit his purposes."

"How?" Jaffar asked.

"You know, of course, that the events within a world are written within the substance of the world, like a flower is inside its seed. No one who loved Joy would tamper with that writing, but the Fallen Star would. And, Jaffar, he does know how."

"And if the writing of that world's pattern has been altered," Meda interjected, "I think its clear what part of the alteration involves: we got into that stone by trying to enter Grenwilde through the Light Portal. The enemy has linked the portals to the World Crystals. In other words, the portals have become a trap."

"And Taril didn't come back through the High Portal," Jaffar looked at Meda and Noma, as if trying to read answers on their faces. "Do you think that Taril is trapped in a crystal too?"

"It would make sense," Meda said. "I don't think the enemy could touch the portals directly. Somehow he's trapped Taril and is using him - I have no idea how - to seal up the path to the low worlds."

From where they stood the knights and the angel could see the lower portals, each blackened. Clearly the corruption of the portals would affect any attempt to use them.

After a moment Noma said, "But Hector went into the High Portal of the Rune Stone. Does that mean he's in this foul trap too?"

All three looked at the portal. "I don't think so," Meda said, "but we certainly know that he hasn't come out..."

"...and I'm going in." Jaffar said completing the thought.

Meda smiled, "Not alone you're not, Jaffar."

~ ~ ~

"Abba, I'm certain it was real! It was Jaomin, suffering in pain and I saw it." Caylene stood in front of Jessef, twisting her cloth kerchief into a tight ball. She had called him 'Abba' without even thinking about it, and from that moment on she did so more and more frequently. Regine, with Chion in her arms, stood beside the young girl, lending her moral support.

Jessef frowned and considered; it all seemed so fantastic. But then, the stones were a mystery to begin with - why should they work at all? A week ago, he would have been entirely sceptical of tales involving a flying horse. The times were peculiar, and strange powers seemed to be unleashed on the world. He nodded his head, "I think what you've seen is true, Caylene."

Relief was plainly visible on the girl's face. She had desperately wanted the others to believe, because she was certain that Jaomin was in dire trouble and needed their immediate help. "Oh, thank you, sir."

"What can we do, Abba?" Regine said quietly.

"I don't know," Jessef didn't like his own answer, but felt at an utter loss. If Jaomin was in trouble what could he do? They did not know his whereabouts or how to find him. What could they possibly do?

~ ~ ~

The white mists rolled around Nalitha as she crested the top of the hill. She was not in Grenwilde or Iystra; she was not in Loridan. Where was she? She paused, looking around her.

Was she anywhere?

Nalitha had never been any place so remarkably like no place at all: no water, no wind, no sound. The hill on which she stood was the only feature she was aware of. The light? It was dull and smudged, seeming to be in the fog itself and serving to light nothing but itself.

Like Meda and Jaffar before her, Nalitha was wandering in the crystal of Taril's imprisonment. The pathways of life and death leading out of Grenwilde and into Loridan where sealed in his fate. For the lives of the Knights of the Portal are bound up in the portals; they are living doors. The door was frozen, and thus far only the faith of a child had found a way through.

From the crest of the hill, Nalitha could see nothing. Indeed she was only aware of its being a crest because she had felt the land beginning to fall away as she took a few more steps. It was difficult to be certain of anything.

It is a testimony to her faith that Nalitha was unafraid. She remembered one of the Runes that said, "The rooms Joy leads you through, he has trod before." Also, she utterly relied on the Laws of Immortality; she could not have been harmed by the vulgrath or his dark master. Joy's promises were faithful. If he called her to walk in this land of mists for a hundred years, she would not despair, for his promise walked with her.

As she stood there, an impression began to grow on her. It seemed to Nalitha that there was something odd about this hill, but she wasn't quite sure what it was. It reminded her somehow of Loridan. But the thought was absurd for no place in Loridan could be remotely like this dreary, empty waste. Every place around the hill had been utterly flat, and she had walked along the plain for...well, she didn't really know how long. It had seemed a great length of time but she wasn't certain.

In sudden decision, she sat down. For the present, why walk? She seemed to be nowhere at all, but at least she was on a hill in nowhere. That was something. She would pray. It was the best way to redeem time, and if - as she somehow felt - there was no time here, it was the best way to redeem whatever was existing in time's place!

She poured out her soul, earnestly bringing her children and her dear husband before Joy. She remembered each of their faces fondly, for this she needed no Mirror of Visions. They were long since emblazoned on her mind's eye. Like an opening flower the prayer grew. She stood before King Joy in the Spirit calling his protection upon all the children, men and women of Grenwilde. Slowly her prayer widened - she prayed for Tylar, Virikria and Osi Chi. The prayer rose like a fragrant odour to the throne of the Creator. And in the recess of eternity he leaned his ear towards his handmaiden. When she had prayed for everyone and everything she could think of, she then prayed that the Creator would also deliver her - in His appointed time.

It was just after she finished praying that she heard the first screams.

~ ~ ~

Storms were frequent in the Shad Mountains; they weren't storms that brought benefit, for it was a land that could not be blessed and they were storms that carried no blessing. The soil had long since disappeared, and the storms were only lightning and thunder with no rain.

Beneath the storm, beyond the arch of Lord Nihilos' lair, the tragic figure of the Death Nygrath stood. How much like this storm was his soul: bearing in its character the promise of a blessing but in his actions the fulfilment of a curse.

For in his soul the light had become darkness, and the darkness was very great. He would seek them out. All of them. In his hand he had the instrument of their punishment; a punishment that would adequately pay back the betrayal of truth.

He lumbered towards the Plains of Desolation and then turned towards the west and the Great Wall.

~ ~ ~

Jaomin limped to a place along the brow of the Western Hills where he could be alone. He leaned against an ancient oak tree and stared out at the fields beyond. He felt depressed. The recent weeks seemed like a fantastic dream. So much had happened, so fast.

He leaned against the tree and slid down to a seated position. It hurt to do that, Jaomin realized. While his arm pained him a fair amount his leg caused him agony. Seated, he looked up at the sky. What a mess. He didn't want to be a hero. He didn't want to be here. He only wanted to go home.

He closed his eyes and again saw the vulgraths screaming across the skies towards him. He could almost feel their flaming breath around him. How is it, Jaomin wondered, I was not burned? He realized that it wasn't the first time he'd been unaffected by fire. He hadn't been burned the night he rescued Nina from the flaming barn either. That could have been luck; this couldn't. He thought of the prophecy he had read. So many parts seemed to fit. Right now, Jaomin protested, I don't want to be the fulfilment of a prophecy; I want to be me!

He was suddenly startled by a blast of warm, grass?smelling breath, on his upturned face.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the nostrils of Sky?rider. Jaomin smiled feebly. "Hello, winged?nuisance."

He had wanted to be alone, but there was no running away from Sky?rider. The horse acted like his nurse. He couldn't bring himself to tie the horse up; it would be like tying up a person.

"Well, if you must be here at least give me a hand up, please."

Jaomin laid hold of the horse's bridle with his left hand and - with considerable difficulty and pain - managed to struggle into a standing position. It was exhausting.

He didn _

't really want to walk back to camp. Jaomin wondered if it would hurt very much to ride. He stood thinking about it for a moment, but couldn't figure out a way to get up. If anyone else with both a broken leg and a broken arm has tried to mount a horse that person will undoubtedly understand why Jaomin decided to give up on the idea.

Yet Sky didn't give up. As if the horse had read his mind, Sky knelt down - seeming to invite him to ride. This is a strange offer, thought Jaomin.

Gingerly, Jaomin leaned forward, grasping the saddle with his good hand and lying face down along the horse's back, and then - very cautiously - he sat up. As soon as he was seated, Sky gently and smoothly stood. Maybe Sky really would make a good nurse, Jaomin thought. What a marvel this horse was! This raging warrior stallion could be as delicate as a cool evening wind.

Very slowly and with a remarkably even stride Sky walked back towards the encampment of the army of Grenwilde. Jaomin felt pain, but nothing compared to what he was certain he would have felt riding Nina under similar circumstances.

Suddenly, he felt ashamed of himself. He had been complaining and feeling sorry for himself. How did he dare do so? God had been good to him in a way wildly beyond anything he could have expected, hoped for or ever have deserved. It came upon him like a flood. The realizations of the Creator's provisions.

He thought of his family, the sword, Sky, his victory, the rescue at the farm, the catamin and on and on. So what if he had a broken leg, he was alive, wasn't he? So what if he didn't want to be the answer to a prophecy. Who would? Yet someone had to be. It might as well be him.

Maybe it was because he didn't want it that this whole matter had been thrust on him. There are frames of mind and attitudes of soul that bring humility; covetousness is not one of them. Once the reluctant soul gets beyond complaining, it feels only gratitude not pride in being of use to God.

Then and there he gave thanks for deliverance, just as he had the day he had slain the catamin. With some shame, he also asked forgiveness for ingratitude.

Just then he came out of the stand of trees on its eastern fringe. There he froze. He reined Sky in and sat as upright as his injuries would allow. Approaching from the west was a vast army of knights on horseback. Coming from this unexpected direction they would certainly take the king's army by surprise. He must get back to the camp immediately. Urging Sky to a canter, Jaomin bit his lip to keep from crying out and headed as rapidly as he could towards the encampment.