Fair Semblances: An Allegorical Fantasy (Chapter 19)

The ride to Lebben-Or was altogether delightful. Although Mishael had been longing to see the Beautiful City, he had also been dreading the day of his arrival, and of his reacquaintance with the company, because of all the troubles he had caused them through his foolish choices. He felt ashamed and embarrassed, and as ardently as he yearned to see them all, he almost wished he could hide himself away forever, and doubted that he would ever have the strength to look any of them in the eye again. But strange to say, the closer he got to the City of the High King, the more those fears seemed utterly to dissipate away, until only the excitement and joyful longing remained. The very atmosphere seemed hopeful and forgiving, and his thoughts all came with an unwonted clarity and truthfulness, such as he had not experienced since his time with them in the camp, before his desperate journey through the Desert of Salt. The thought struck him, and seemed especially significant and true, that the atmosphere of the Bountiful Plains surrounding Lebben-Or was the exact opposite of the atmosphere in the Impenetrable Thicket surrounding Fair Semblances, which had only filled him with confusion and evil, despairing thoughts.

Noticing his ever-improving frame of mind, Demetrius began to speak to him as they rode along, never about anything too profound, but simply pointing out the different farms and orchards along the way, and apprising him of the names and brief histories of their owners, whom he all seemed to know and be on friendly terms with. The country everywhere was lush and beautiful, with farmlands, vineyards, orchards, and green pastures broken up by hedges and giving way here and there to small forests, open meadows, meandering streams, and rolling hills bedecked with wildflowers.

After a few hours, the little cart entered a forest of tall deciduous trees with smooth, white bark, which had no branches for the first twenty or thirty feet of their trunks, and looked like nothing so much as pillars supporting a vast roof of green and gold, which softly filtered the sunlight above, casting a charming viridescent hue upon the mossy forest floor beneath. The rustling of the leaves overhead combined with the chirrups of the forest’s airy inhabitants and the gurgling of a nearby stream to create a relaxing symphony, which Mishael drank in with pleasure. Soon, the trail began to climb up a fairly steep hill, and Demetrius turned toward Mishael with the words he been awaiting impatiently:

“We’re almost there. Winsome Forest ends up ahead, just where this hill gives way to a plateau a few hundred feet higher than all the meadowlands we have been passing through. As soon as we reach that plateau, we’ll be within sight of the Beautiful City, which sits on a high hill in the center of it.”

It was just a few minutes later when the cart reached the summit of the hill they were climbing, and burst through the western boundary of Winsome Forest at quite the same time. Mishael’s eyes were immediately drawn to the dominant feature of the prospect before him, a massive city set on a hill, which was at once the most beautiful and the most imposing sight he had ever encountered. The city gleamed a radiant, dazzling white everywhere above; but beneath, at its foundations, it was a deep, glowing crimson, which seemed to shine of its own native strength. The most prominent features of the city were its high towers, of which Mishael could count four from the side they were approaching. These towers were each some five or six hundred feet in height, and arose in seven tiers, each one narrower than the one beneath. They were all square, and the bottom level of each must have been at least five hundred feet on each side, with the uppermost tier being no more than fifty feet square. The towers were all positioned so that one corner extended out directly from the wall to the outside, with the opposite corner jutting into the city, and the wall continuing on from either of the two interposing corners. Although the towers were square, or rather seemed to be diamond-shaped because of their orientation within the wall, the city itself, with its surrounding wall, appeared perfectly circular. The wall, some two hundred feet high and better than fifty feet wide, was everywhere smooth and unbroken; but in the base of each tower was a massive gate, apparently constructed of pure gold, which admitted entrance into the city. A road as white as the wall itself passed through each of these gates, and every one of them made its way in a different direction along the surface of the high plateau. Mishael and Demetrius were now on one of these white roads, in fact, which ended just behind them at the edge of the plateau.

Other than the wall with its splendid towers and gates, and the white roads leading out from the city, the most striking spectacle ahead was a tower rising high above the level of the wall, from the very midst of the Beautiful City. This tower was considerably taller than the others, and must have reached to at least a thousand feet from its base; but it seemed even taller than that, as it was constructed on the summit of the hill around which Lebben-Or was built. This central tower seemed to have a base design of two squares set within each other at ninety degrees, so as to form an eight-pointed star; but other than that it was the same as the other four, and likewise glowed a brilliant white.

“The towers you can see in the wall are four of the seven surrounding towers of Lebben-Or; the other three are in the wall on the side of the city opposite here,” Demetrius began explaining to Mishael. “The wall and towers, including the eighth tower in the center of the city, are constructed of pure emmethine crystal, taken from the walls of the Chasm of Wrath, above which the Beautiful City is constructed. But their foundations, which you can see there glowing a fiery crimson, are composed entirely of vermillion hilastrion, which the High King took from the very depths of the blazing Chasm when he destroyed the heart of Wyrmwood, that had created such destruction and misery upon the earth. It is said that the only place entirely free from the effects of Wyrmwood’s heart is the place where it now lies; which is Lebben-Or, of course, the city that the High King built above the Fiery Chasm, where he finally destroyed it forevermore. Those gates,” he continued, motioning with his right arm as he held onto the reins of the draft horses with his left hand, “are not just pure gold, they are pure adamantine gold. Adamantine gold is prepared by a special process of refining and hardening known only to the smiths of Lebben-Or; and when they are finished with it, it is the hardest substance on the earth, harder than diamonds, or even than the emmethine crystal of the walls. So the city of Lebben-Or is not just the most beautiful on earth, it is also utterly impregnable; and not just because of its marvelous construction, but primarily because it is there that the High King resides, who destroyed Wyrmwood and ensured the final destruction of all his seed.”

As Demetrius was speaking, his eyes shone with an awestruck wonder of love, and his characteristic gruffness was entirely overwhelmed. But suddenly coming to himself, he grunted a concluding “ahem!”, and muttered with a trace of the old, familiar brusqueness, “But I guess you’ll find out all about that for yourself”. Mishael was so captivated by the unadulterated beauty of the city that he could hardly contain himself, and wanted nothing but to enter its gates and gaze upon its walls and towers from within. Soon, he would finally have his chance.

* * * * * * * *

Within a few minutes, the little cart with its two occupants was passing through the great golden gate in the base of one of the seven surrounding towers of Lebben-Or. If the city appeared beautiful from the outside, it was vastly more so from the inside: Mishael could not begin to take in all the vast, soaring beauty of dazzling, translucent whiteness shaped in the quintessence of architectural splendor; even to attempt to do so had a dizzying effect on him, and as he gazed before and behind, above and below, to the left and to the right, on all the pinnacles and high walls, flawless buildings and perfect streets, meticulously placed parks and gorgeously groomed courtyards, the normal three dimensions seemed too small, somehow, to accommodate all the beautiful intricacy that confronted him. It was as if every smallest feature of the city were a harmonious part of a multi-dimensional whole that could not be fathomed with just the five senses; and he found himself, after awhile, uncertain if he were traveling straight up or down, directly ahead or sideways, rightside-up or upside-down. None of the regular laws of physics seemed to apply anymore; and every corner and facet of the city’s marvelous inner construction seemed to house a world of new and inexhaustible delights.

Eventually, the two made their way to the great tower in the city center, and began to circumnavigate its eight-cornered base. When they got to the side opposite the direction from which they had entered the city, that is, the side of the tower facing due west, they found themselves in a vast garden, with a crystal river flowing through the center of it, and trees bearing a variety of exotic fruits all around. The river appeared to proceed from within the tower itself; and as they turned to go into the tower, which was open all along the western side to the top of the first tier, that is, to a height of nearly two hundred feet, they descried a hall of immense proportions, comprising the entire bottom level of the tower. Within this palatial room, in its very center, was a massive throne of ivory and gold; and it was from somewhere beneath this throne in particular that the river seemed to arise. The translucence of the crystal tower, the opaqueness of the ivory throne, and the reflective transparency of the limpid stream combined to create a threefold whiteness of astonishing beauty and complementary harmony; and the golden highlights of the throne formed a perfect contrast to this manifold whiteness all around. There were no pillars or supportive structures within this hall, but the outer wall alone, which was in the shape of an eight-sided star, as Mishael had already observed from the other direction, and which was cut away on the entire western side so as to contain on the bottom level only five of the eight vertices that the six higher tiers incorporated, seemed to support the entire tower above, by some impossible architectural enigma. As soon as Mishael had but glimpsed this throne room beneath the tower, he understood at once that all the beautiful and impressive sights he had seen before, whether in the ruins of Zoar or the opulent city of Lusk, were only tainted and imperfect reflections of this one paragon of true and inimitable beauty.

As it turned out, Mishael would not have much time to drink in the ineffable wonders of this place of perfect beauty; for his attention was soon arrested by the sound of his name, borne along through the pure serene on a familiar feminine voice; and turning toward the direction from which the sound was coming, he saw Ariel, already running toward the cart, with Mishael and Ethan jumping up to follow from an ivory bench upon which she had just been sitting with them. The beauty of Lebben-Or seemed to glow in her already lovely features, and her whole countenance was lit up with a smile of such unaffected pleasure at his arrival that for a minute he did not know what to do with himself. After a moment’s hesitation, he leapt out of the cart and began to run to his long-lost friends, as he had wanted to do for so long, and had imagined to himself a thousand times; but then, gradually, he slowed to a hesitant walk, and finally stopped altogether. His face betrayed confusion and uncertainty, and he held his arms out in front of him in a defensive, uninviting attitude.

By this time Ariel was drawing up to a walk, having gotten within a few feet of him. Her eyes were dancing with a pleasant look of surprise, and her smile seemed uncontainable. “However did you make it here?”, Mishael heard her asking, as if it were a dream. “We’ve been planning all sorts of daring rescue attempts, but we never even paused to consider that you might just show up on our doorstep if we left you alone long enough. I can’t even tell you – but what’s the matter? You look miserable.”

“I don’t know,” Mishael said slowly, looking as if he were just waking up from a very bad dream. “I can’t believe I’m actually here, and it’s so good to see you again, but…but I know I don’t deserve to see you again at all. I didn’t get captured, and I wasn’t held against my will, I left by my own choice, and I stayed because I wanted to. It’s all my fault that I was lost, and now I see what trouble I’ve caused everyone, and I hate it. I hate what I’ve become and I hate what I’ve done to you. You should’ve forgotten about me long ago, and found a better friend than I’ve ever been.”

When Ariel responded, her voice was utterly serious and her eyes had lost their lighthearted glimmer, but the warm affection in her tone and demeanor was even more pronounced and unmistakable. “I know it’s your fault and that it was by your own choice that you ended up in Lusk,” she began; “so if that’s why you’re afraid to see me again, you have nothing to worry about. No one can truly be imprisoned except by his own choice; but far from making freedom less joyous, when it is found, it makes it all the more a cause to celebrate. If it is a joy to escape from fetters of iron when your soul is already free, how much more is it a joy to be freed from the crueler fetters of evil desires that bind your very spirit? You say you don’t deserve to be here, and you’re right about that; but what you don’t seem to realize is that I don’t deserve to be here either, or Gilead, or Ethan, or anyone else. But we have been freed from our own bonds of evil choices and wrong desires, and brought to Lebben-Or where we shouldn’t be at all; and so it is now our nature to be glad whenever anyone else is freed. We rejoice when one is freed from physical prisons, yes, but much more so when one becomes free from the evil of his own heart. Soon you will learn that; for you must go before the High King, and then you will know for yourself how we can rejoice in your freedom not because you deserve it, but rather just because it is so undeserved.”

“My sister is right,” Gilead added at once, before Mishael had a chance to respond; “and if you don’t understand that now, you will before long. No one may stay in Lebben-Or more than one night without meeting in private with the High King himself. So tomorrow, at the latest, you must go before him; and when you do, you will understand fully, for once you have seen him, you will be one of us, and the things that we love, you will love too. But for now, let me take you to my room; you look like you could use a shower and a change of clothes. And really, we can’t tell you how glad we are, not just to see you again, but to see you in Lebben-Or, the Beautiful City itself.”

“And thanks for bringing him up, Demetrius,” Gilead cried out to the old farmer, who was still sitting up on the cart, observing the whole scene.

“Hmm, yes, well I had some produce I had been intending to bring up anyway,” Demetrius responded, a little gruffly; but in the light of the setting sun, his eyes seemed a little moister than usual.

“You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on in Fair Semblances, old fellow,” Ethan boomed out in a hearty voice, unable to restrain himself any longer. “We have some choice work cut out for us, and our task is not yet done by a long shot. But go on, go on, we’ll have to talk about that later; I already have some ideas simmering on the old back burner; and as soon as you’ve finished your audience with the High King tomorrow, we’ll have a lot to talk about. But go on,” he roared again impatiently, as if Mishael, and not himself, were the one prolonging the conversation. “Now’s not the time, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” As he left off speaking, his eyes gleaming with an irrepressible urge to be out battling the forces of Vrak and his hand unconsciously fingering the well-worn hilt of his familiar sword, he directed a fierce, commanding gaze at Mishael, as though he were appalled at his simply standing there, and not “going on” with Gilead, so that he might meet with the High King sooner, and be sooner ready to discuss the future.

Mishael turned and looked at everyone individually, and then scarcely above a whisper, he murmured, “Thank you, thank you all,” in a soft, heartfelt tone. Soon he was walking along the beautiful streets of the city of the High King with Gilead and Ariel at his side, overwhelmed with amazement at all that had transpired already, and overcome with solemn curiosity about what it would be like to meet with the High King in person. Very soon, he would find out.

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