Fair Semblances: An Allegorical Fantasy (Chapter 25)

As it turned out, the wyrms were a little precipitate in their triumphant return to Dolos. The whole company was, in fact, alive, although perhaps not in the most optimum of circumstances. The fissure that appeared underneath them to swallow them up was then immediately covered over by a great slab of ice, which became wedged in the crevice at an acute angle, and so provided a triangular cross-section of free space at its bottom. Hence, when the avalanche overtook them a few seconds later, the brunt of it was deflected by this slab of ice. And then, the vast portion of the ridge that caved off into the deep ravine did not quite reach as far as this space at the bottom of the crevasse, in which the company found shelter – although it did break away the entire hillside before it, so that, in at least one corner of their little cubbyhole, they were faced with a gap that looked out into the open air above the ravine, the wall of which dropped headlong beneath them some two or three hundred feet.

“Is everyone all right?”, Gilead called out, when the deafening roar of the avalanche had subsided.

One by one, each of the companions answered in the affirmative. For the few seconds following, everyone was scrambling around in the cramped space, trying to regain some solid footing and more or less upright positions from all the various attitudes in which they had struck the bottom of the crevasse. In the process, and quite encouragingly, they discovered that they all retained the unimpaired functionality of each of their limbs.

But what they discovered of their position after having gotten to their feet was not so encouraging: they were wedged together in a narrow, icy pocket in the side of a towering cliff, that ended below them, after a sheer drop of some hundreds of feet, on a rubble pile composed of ice and rock that just a few minutes before had been frozen in place high above them. It seemed quite impossible to make any safe progress whatsoever out of their little crack. The slab of ice which saved their life would doubtless acquire the corollary function of marking their grave as an eternally frozen tombstone.

For lack of any better activity in which to be engaged, Ethan spent a few minutes widening the narrow aperture in the corner of the ice, through which the deep gorge was visible. While he was engaged in the process, he inadvertently managed to dislodge another slab of ice, just to his left, which bordered upon the orifice he was working at widening. With a shrill, drawn-out scraping sound, this chunk of ice slid to the edge of the cliff, plunged into the vast expanse of air below, and after a breathless silence a few seconds in duration, ended its descent on the rubble pile beneath with a faint crash.

Unfortunately, Ethan had been leaning against this slab of ice, and when it slid away from him, he found himself falling into the vacancy left behind, which was pitched quite steeply toward the edge of the cliff, and just a couple feet away from the lip. He had almost followed the ice in its sudden descent when, with a prodigious effort, he grabbed ahold of a projection on the sloping floor from which he was falling, and swung his feet up further to the left, taking advantage of the inertia created by the sudden impetus of his body in that same direction. Fortunately, he managed to catch the lip of another crack in the cliff face with his foot, and still holding onto the sloping floor of the crack with his hand, he rolled back into the narrow void he had discovered, and which was just capacious enough for his body.

The sight was a little inexplicable to the companions, who had first seen their comrade plunge off the cliff, just grabbing onto some handhold with one hand; but then, his body disappeared from their view, as if he had fallen – but his hand alone still remained. They all looked quizzically at Ethan’s hand, which they could still see grasping the floor of the crevasse; but they could only see as far as the wrist, at which point the crack narrowed to a few inches in depth, certainly much too narrow to accommodate his body. Then, they peered over the lip of the cliff from which the ice had fallen, still didn’t see a body, and turned back to look at each other, with befuddlement written in every line of their faces. The crack Ethan had fallen from narrowed to a few inches, then disappeared; and Ethan himself was nowhere to be found.

Finally, Tahath called out, “Cousin, where are you?”

And a couple seconds later, a very shaken but healthy enough sounding Ethan cried back to him, “I’ve found another crack, and it widens out quite a bit below me, and leads down as far as I can see. Hold on a minute!”

Then, the hand disappeared from the companions view, and they heard the muffled sound of hands and knees scrambling across the sandstone floor.

A few minutes later, the company heard the same muffled scrambling sounds, and just after that, Ethan’s deep voice booming out to them from the narrow crack on the left hand side of their cave, “The crack leads down quite a ways, possibly to the bottom of the cliff; and it’s easy enough to negotiate as far as I went. If you could get over here somehow, I think we could get down to the ground”.

A season of exploration and discussion followed; but as the opening separating the company’s hole in the wall from Ethan’s newly discovered crack was much too narrow to admit any progress at all, and bounded by far too solid a wall of rock, it was finally determined that the only way to get from one side to the other was the way Ethan had gotten over there – a prospect that no one found particularly cheery.

But, in lieu of any other options, Ethan finally wedged himself in at the top of the crack, as high up as he could manage to go, and held his hands out toward the companions, who could just take hold of them by lying face-down in the left-hand side of their cave, and reaching below. Then, one by one, they swung themselves down into the yawning expanse high above the canyon floor and cut an arc through the open air, at the fulcrum of which they were tethered to the cliff face by the adamant grasp of Ethan’s brawny arms, who swung them up into the wide crack behind him as if they had been woven of the airiest cashmere. The only mishap, if one could call it such, came when old Elkanah’s cloak snagged on an irregularity in the cliff face, and left a broad strip of cloth waving in the breeze, just out of the companions’ reach. But soon, in spite of this minor mischance, the company was all safe and sound in the wide crack in the canyon wall, leading down to the canyon floor.

* * * * * * * *

The crack that Ethan had discovered did indeed lead all the way to the canyon floor; and although there were a few rough places in the journey, the company made it down quite easily, all things considered. When they got to the bottom of the canyon, it was mid-morning. After holding a brief consultation, they decided that they would try to get a little sleep, as it was too dangerous to be moving about in the daylight; and besides, they were all quite exhausted after the ordeals of the previous night, and the sleeplessness that most of them had been forced to endure. In spite of the lack of any soft mattresses or plush pillows, or even their humble bedrolls, for that matter, they slept soundly. (The bedrolls, of course, they had lost in the avalanche, together with yet another portion of their rapidly dwindling supplies, some of which they had salvaged from the cordilleras and strapped to their backs the night before.) By the time they were beginning to stir again, it was already early evening, and the canyon floor was covered in deep shade.

When everyone had awoken, Lebbaeus called the company together, and asked no one in particular,

“Where does this ravine lead, and what is the nearest point at which we could climb up out of it?”

Gilead, who with the possible exception of Azariah was the most skilled guide in the company, at least with Tobiah out of the picture that is, immediately spoke up:

“To the east, it ends in a vast cirque surrounded by the highest peaks in all the Draconian range; there is no known way out of that cirque on any side, and chances are, there is nowhere between here and there that we could climb out of the canyon. To the west, the canyon narrows and becomes less deep; we should be able to climb out of it within a few miles, I should think, at about where the two passes come together.”

“Then Mishael’s plan should work after all,” Lebbaeus responded, with a trace of an admonishing smile just barely visible on his lips. “If we leave at dusk, we can make it to the southern pass and begin our way back east tonight. We should make good progress, and within a couple more nights we might be back into safer territory, near to the plains of Lebben-Or.”

The company all nodded in agreement, Azariah looking just a little abashed.

“Then we’ll leave in a couple hours,” Lebbaeus concluded. “But for now, let’s see what we still have about us to eat.”

The company took an inventory of their supplies, and discovered that between them all they had at least a week’s worth of food, which is actually much more than any of them had expected, and would likely be enough to get them well within the territory of the High King, where they should be able to find plenty of settlers willing to feed and house them as they returned to the Beautiful City. And so, in higher spirits than they had known for quite some time, but still with the overhanging cloud of sorrow for their failure and anxiety about the unknown condition of their dear friend Tobiah, they sat down to eat their cold but nourishing victuals (they could certainly not take the risk of building a fire).

Mishael, however, was in lower spirits than he had been before, strange to say. For one thing, the failure of the quest hung perhaps more heavily on him than anyone else, as it had been for his sake that Tobiah had taken the risk of venturing so close to Fair Semblances, and had thus been captured. But also, he had an unexplainable but irrepressible feeling that the quest should not be abandoned so easily, and that, as ill as it might fare with them if they pressed on, it would be all the worse if they turned back now. Of course, as they had virtually no supplies, inadequate clothing to survive the cold of winter, and no mounts or beasts of burden, he had absolutely no case to make for the continuance of the mission, and did not dare even to mention the thought. And then, at every step, he felt a deep and sorrowful distrust of Tahath; but he did not dare to mention that to anyone either.

Mishael’s gloomy temper did not escape the notice of the perceptive Keeper of the Light; and so, after the company had all finished their humble repast, he called him aside in private for a moment.

“Am I right that you are not in favor of our decision to return to Lebben-Or?”, Lebbaeus asked Mishael abruptly, without any of the informal light conversation that society generally demands before one broaches such a difficult subject. “Or else, what is it that bothers you so much?”.

Mishael hesitated for a few minutes before responding; but finally he nodded in affirmation, saying only, “Yes, I am ill-disposed to give up our quest so soon, when Tobiah risked so much for me.”

Lebbaeus scrutinized him for some moments longer, not quite convinced that he was hearing the whole story. But then, without further question, he responded, “It is not just you and your willingness to risk your life on so slight a chance that I have to consider; I have been entrusted with the guidance of a whole company, and to risk everyone’s life with so little likelihood of success would be unjust to everyone else in the company, it would be an unwise stewardship of the resources of the High King, and it would be an affront to Tobiah himself, who under the circumstances would be the first one to dissuade us from such a foolhardy choice. You may think that your giving up will dishonor Tobiah, but it would dishonor him more to squander the lives of those he gave himself up to save. Do you understand this?”

Mishael was still silent, but he nodded affirmatively. After a moment’s pause, Lebbaeus continued, “Tobiah’s end is not yet come, and there will be another time and another chance to rescue him. If you remain as eager then as you are now, who knows what success may be granted us.”

After one last, penetrating gaze, the Keeper of the Light turned to go. But Mishael grabbed his arm as he was turning around, and with a pale countenance confessed, “There is something else, as well.”

“Yes, I suspected there was,” Lebbaeus replied.

Stumbling over a couple of his words at first, and not quite certain how to explain things, Mishael began,

“I was..uh…”, then changing his tack, he said, “How do you know if you’re using your gift from the High King correctly?”

“If your heart is pure, and if you are not using it to your own advantage or for your own advancement, or to win an argument or make a point, but you are using it sacrificially, for the good of others, then you may be certain it is well used.”

“Last night,” Mishael began, then paused a moment before continuing, “Last night I looked in my mirror, and I saw a swarm of fiery bats overwhelming Tahath and flying into him. He became dark and evil, and belched out a great black bat that swooped down upon the whole company, to swallow it up. Since then I feel…uncertain, darkly mistrustful, frightened even, whenever I see him.”

Even Lebbaeus seemed a little taken aback at this, but looking very earnestly and seriously at Mishael, he asked of him,

“Are you sure your heart is pure in your thoughts of Tahath? He spoke sharply and foolishly to you last night; are you harboring up a grudge, or bitter in your spirit against him?”

“I don’t know,” Mishael confessed candidly. “Who is wise enough to know the inner workings of his own heart? And yet…the feeling I get is not anger or vindictiveness, it’s fear, for the company, for Tobiah, but also for him.”

“Do not speak to anyone else of this for now,” Lebbaeus counseled Mishael, after another pause to deliberate. “Some prophecies are self-fulfilling, and the seed sown in voiced suspicion may bear the bitter fruit of actual occurrence. Maybe your heart has been embittered in some way, even unbeknownst to you; for Tahath has long been a loyal and devoted part of this company. But even if not, the mirror sometimes gives glimpses of what might be, not as certain prophecies, but as contingencies against which we must strive, and hope for success. The mirror may be warning you of the danger that Tahath is in; and so you must strive the more ardently to pluck him out of it, lest the end that you saw come upon him, in part through your own negligence to help him when you noticed his need.”

“Remember,” the ancient leader of the company concluded, “the gift is given to you for the good of others, and not for yourself. Use it for Tahath’s good, and you will not be using it amiss. Perhaps it has shown you this glimpse so that you might forgive his attack on you, which was brought on not by your own fault, but his anguish at the plight of Tobiah; and so that in forgiving and extending true mercy, he might be saved who was close to being destroyed by his vast anger at this deep calamity.”

Slowly, the two of them turned around and made their way back to the camp, where the preparations for departure were nearing completion. Mishael felt better, to be sure; but the lingering doubts and fearfulness for (and of) Tahath never completely subsided.

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