Fair Semblances: An Allegorical Fantasy (Chapter 29)

The sky was heavily overcast that night, so that any help the companions had hoped to glean from the light of the moon and stars proved to be ill-placed. The darkness was deep and impenetrable, and its illimitable depths mirrored the profound gloom in the hearts of the company. Every step closer to Dolos was taken in despondent drudgery; and Mishael thought again, as he had last night, that even though the ground was firm beneath their feet, it felt as if they were struggling through a sea of molasses. The air was thick and heavy, and it was a laborious exertion almost beyond his iron-steeled resolve to lift his foot to each further stride.

Partly because of the overcast skies and partly because the palpable despondency had dulled the company’s attentiveness, the dawn took them quite by surprise. Suddenly, as one man, they were all aware that it was much lighter than it had been before, although none of them had noticed that the sun had arisen. But somehow, it was up in the sky indeed, although inscrutably veiled behind the morning haze. Drawing up to a halt, Lebbaeus motioned the company to gather around him, and whispered,

“The night is already gone; we must find a hiding place at once!”

The companions began casting about for a suitable spot, when an irregularity on the western horizon caught Mishael’s eye. He scrutinized it for some time, the inescapable conclusion slowly dawning upon him that it was far too precise and right-angled to be just another knoll. It could be nothing but Dolos itself, the dreaded city of Vrak. A chill passed through his entire body, and turning to Lebbaeus, he whispered,

“We’re nearly to Dolos; I can see it up ahead.”

As he was speaking, some movement low in the sky near the eastern horizon captured his attention, and he scanned it carefully for some moments, a feeling of unspeakable terror growing in his soul the whole time. Finally, in a tense, breathless whisper, he spoke again, this time only a single word; but it was a word that conveyed vaster worlds of frustration and despair than could otherwise be uttered in volumes:

“Wyrms!”

Sure enough, the movement became nearer and more pronounced, and soon, not one, nor even two or three, but at least five, if not six or seven distinct outlines made themselves discernible. They were still far off, but closing in with a remarkable rapidity.

But Mishael would not have much time to examine them; for just behind him he heard another one-word whisper, this time coming from Azariah, but cast in the same tones of hopeless despair:

“Sanguinors!”

As he turned back to look the other direction again, it seemed as if the whole earth had become a vast, pulsing, living beast; but eventually, he realized that the movement was not the earth’s at all, but rather an innumerable host of sanguinors and soldiers, that stretched out of sight to the north and the south, and was advancing scarcely less quickly than the wyrms behind them.

“So this is it, then…”

The speaker was Ethan. And when Mishael turned to look at him, his shoulders were drooped, the tip of his drawn sword was resting on the dry earth, and his attitude conveyed utter defeatism, absolute resignation.

“But how could they have known?” he added, in a voice thick with anguish. “How could they have known?”

The little company did nothing because there was nothing to do. But very soon, a small embassy, mounted on horseback, came thundering up to them. In the middle was a young man with a fierce, triumphant, darkly exuberant visage; and as he approached, Mishael suddenly started, and cried out, “Javan! Ah, how you have fallen! If only you could see, if only you knew!” At that moment, he no longer felt dread, despair, the terror of his situation; his whole soul was moved to pity at the sight of this boy whom he had known since childhood, and whose countenance now reflected the ugly rage and debauched vindictiveness of Vrak himself.

“It’s been awhile, my old friend,” Javan responded, chuckling sadistically. “I guess you should have heeded old Shimei’s advice, and spared yourself some trouble. But it’s too late now, Vrak is highly interested in conducting, shall we say, a friendly little interview with you. And to whom has he entrusted the responsibility of conducting you to his throne room save his Grand Proprietor. I am the Grand Proprietor now, Mishael, did you know that? You could have been, but you have chosen very foolishly.”

The whole time he was speaking, he was virtually dancing in his saddle, rocking back and forth in a malicious, evil sort of ebullient triumph, and his words came tumbling out indecorously, coated with spittle and petty gleefulness. Mishael just glanced down toward the ground sadly, looked back up, and repeated, “Ah! how you have fallen”.

“Well, well, let’s get on with it, shall we?” Javan continued, turning his gaze away from Mishael with a spiteful snort, and directing his attention to Tahath.

“You have done well, my friend. You are free to leave with me, before I destroy the rest of the company. Oh, but my old friend Mishael will be coming with us too. We have a little catching up to do.”

At this Tahath turned even paler than he had already been. He made an inarticulate cry, tried to speak but could not, gasped for breath, and finally managed to squeak out an intelligible phrase,

“But you said they could go!”

His voice sounded like the whine of a dog asking to be let out of the house. It was bestial, fawning, sycophantic.

The whole company stood stock still, as if frozen in time. The despair and anguish they had experienced upon the realization that they were surrounded paled in comparison with the anguish of heart that they all felt as one upon the realization that would have been unthinkable, had they not seen it with their own eyes, that they were betrayed by one of their own, by Tahath, who had stood with them resolutely in famine and fire, in flood and draught, in fierce toils and mighty battles, and had never wavered or let them down. It was a truth too impossible to exist, even in a world full of enigmas and paradoxes. And yet, it was Tahath indeed who was standing before them, and the ghastly pallor of his pekid countenance told the whole story, and was irrefutable in its eloquence.

“Tahath, my cousin, tell me it’s not true,” Ethan finally stammered out. And in that one line, his heart broke, and he was from that moment on as a dead man.

Ethan stumbled and dropped to his knees, as if he were drunk. He moaned and cried out inarticulately, rocked back and forth, heaved as if he would vomit, then grew still. But suddenly, he leapt up with a look of impassioned fury on his face that was terrible to behold, and cried out, “Fly, my friends, fly! To Lebben-Or! To the High King!” And wielding his mighty sword, he fell upon the little squadron of sanguinors, killed a couple of them with two or three strokes of his flashing brand, and set the rest to flight. Then, grabbing the reins of the mount of one of the dispatched sanguinors, he leapt into the saddle, turned the steed’s head to the west, and although but one solitary man, he was at the same time an army and more; and so he drove furiously into the thickest lines of the oncoming army, only shouting out one more time behind his back, “Fly!”.

Lebbaeus took up the word like a baton, and repeating to the rest of the company, “Fly at once!”, he seized his torch, lifted it high above him, uttered a phrase in the Ancient Tongue, and the light leapt out from before him, so bright and dazzling that even the company was taken aback. Then, laying hold of the remaining horse, he took off for the west, aiming his steed straight for the wyrms who were approaching from behind.

For a moment, the company’s eyes were fixed on their ancient leader, flying off into the thick of the battle like an impetuous young warrior. But then, they heard a gurgling moan, and turned back to look to the west, where Tahath had been standing. Now, he was almost kneeling, but his knees were not quite touching the ground, and his arms were dangling and flailing before him, the tips of his fingers just brushing the dust. There was nothing holding him up but his long, deadly sword. Its hilt was dug into the ground, and the tip of it was just beginning to protrude from between Tahath’s shoulder blades. He gave one more little groan, and his body slid the rest of the way down the blade, coming to rest on the dry desert plain.

The rest of the company scattered.

* * * * * * * *

In later years, that day would be remembered and honored as a day in which there occurred not just one, but two of the greatest feats ever performed by single men in the history of the Modern Age. Ethan tore into the mighty army with such a hot fury that they fell before him like grass to the sickle. With his steed charging ahead and his great sword laying waste all around him he managed to cut into the very heart of the army, leaving piles of corpses behind him in a trail of destruction that would later take weeks to clear up and bury. But then, the flanks of the innumerable host closed in from behind, much as the jaws of a Venus Flytrap close in on its hapless victim; and the overwhelming vastness of the troops proved too great an antagonist, even for Ethan. He fought bravely and nobly, and occupied the armies of Vrak for the better part of the morning. But in the end, his flesh marked with the wounds of a hundred ruthless swords, he stumbled, fell, and breathed no more. But his name did not die with him. Today, his great feat is immortalized in the Lay of the Mighty, and poets and bards all over the world sing his unending fame.

Lebbaeus, in the meanwhile, performed another unimaginable feat, holding off by his own strength and with the mighty light of his torch, not one or two, but no less than six mighty wyrms. He battled fiercely all morning, keeping all six of them utterly occupied, and he even managed to kill two of them, who ventured a little too close. But eventually, their combined power grew too much, and the light of his torch began to flicker and wane. His story is still sung today too, but its end was a little less bitter; for just when defeat seemed certain, out of nowhere, a brilliant phosphor caught him up, and dancing before the raging wyrms as a leaf driven into the heavens by an approaching storm, he whisked him away unharmed, and fled to the east, where the friendly plains of Lebben-Or still awaited the company’s arrival. But of that happy place, we cannot now speak, for our friends are still scattered in the dark and luckless plains of Dolos, where their doom seems more certain than ever.

By mid-afternoon, Mishael and Gilead, who had fled together in quite the opposite direction from that in which Azariah and his old, stalwart father had sought their escape, found themselves far to the north of the morning’s battle site, in the midst of a daunting array of flaming red boulders and deep, stark canyons, cut through the midst of the high, barren plateaus of which Mariah had spoken. Silently, and as rapidly as their faltering legs could sustain, they trotted and walked by turns, passing through the canyons ever further to the north. Finally, early in the evening, they came to their first major obstacle, a narrow, rapid river which stretched out before them, cutting its way through the deepest canyon they had encountered yet, the walls of which soared up to the high plateau above some eight hundred or a thousand feet at least. Here (because they had no other option), they drew up to a halt for the first time since they had fled the morning’s tragic scene.

“Well,” Gilead began in between panting gasps of breath, after a moment’s pause, “I doubt we can get across; the river is too swift, and we would be swept away and crushed against some rock or made to plunge over some waterfall somewhere down current. I suppose we have two options: we can either backtrack, and look for another canyon which heads further north; eventually, when we’ve gotten out of these plateaus, we may be able to find a pass over the Draconian Mountains somewhere in the north, although we’ll have to be sure we do not get too close to Fair Semblances. Otherwise, our only option is to turn east right here, and try to follow this river back to its origin in the mountains. We could walk along on the edge where the water is not too deep; and who knows? We might be able to work our way all the way back to the mountains, and make it back to Lebben-Or in short order. But what do you think?”

Mishael was a bit hesitant to say what he thought. He stared into the swirling, foaming waters of the river prancing by before him for quite some time; and when he finally spoke, he surprised Gilead by not addressing the question at all:

“Sometimes, the High King says something that you don’t take notice of at the time, but later on it comes back to you, and it’s like he’s speaking to you right then, standing there and giving advice for the current situation, which you never could have imagined when he actually did speak. Do you know what I mean? Does that ever happen to you?”

“Yes to both,” Gilead answered softly. “And what is he telling you?”

“When I first met the High King, he told me of a difficult task I would have to accomplish, and he said to me then, ‘Just when your strength fails you, then you will find you are strong indeed, and victory will be within grasp’; I keep thinking of that. How could my strength ever fail more utterly than it has now? How could victory seem further off or more impossible? Ethan and Lebbaeus are dead, not to mention Tahath, and who knows what’s become of Azariah and Elkanah; and yet, there’s a voice within me that I cannot shake, which whispers, ‘Victory is certain, if your strength fail not’. And how can I ignore that voice and return now to Lebben-Or, when Tobiah is still somewhere behind us, and who knows what we might accomplish if we refuse to give up?”

This time, it was Gilead who stood without speaking for quite a few minutes. But finally, he turned about, looked Mishael full in the face, and said, “Your heart has guided you truly, my friend. Where you go, I will follow: if victory is to be had, I will share it with you; and if chains and failure await us, at least we may encounter them together.”

Without another word, the two of them turned to the west, and following the raging river in the narrow canyon they set their faces toward Vrak’s domain, where they knew not what awaited them.

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