Simon Hawke - The Nomad

“You knew?”

“Yes, I knew,” the Sage replied. “Even though my path in life took me away from them, some bonds can never break. I felt it when she died.”

“She?” said Sorak.

“Your mother, Mira,” said the Sage. “She was daughter.”

“Father?” said the Guardian, emerging-true? Is it really you?”

“Yes, Mira,” said the Sage, shaking his head. “You were but an infant when I left. And I have changed much since that time. I did not think you would remember.”

Tears were flowing freely down Sorak’s cheeks now, but it was the Guardian who wept. They all wept. All of them together, the tribe, the Moon Runners, who had died, and yet lived on.

“I do not understand,” the Guardian said. “How can this be? We are a part of Sorak.”

“A part of you is part of Sorak,” said the Sage. “And a part of you is Mira, the spirit of my long lost daughter. And a part of you is Garda, my wife, Mira’s mother, and Alaron’s grandmother.

“The powerful psionic gifts that Alaron was born with, but had not yet evidenced, had forged a strong but subtle bond with you, and with others of the tribe, and he could not accept your deaths, so he would not let you die. He did not know what he was doing. He saw you dying, and he could not endure it, so some inner part of him held onto you with a strength that defied even that of death itself. His tormented little mind could not suffer the hardship, and so it broke apart, but in doing so, he sacrificed his own identity so that you could live. You, and Kether, and Kivara, and Eyron and Lyric and the others….”

“But... what of the Inner Child? And the Shade?”

“The Inner Child is the one who fled in terror from the horror it had seen, and cocooned itself deep in the farthest recesses of your common mind. The Shade is the primal force of your survival, the fury that you felt at death, the last defiant rebel against inevitable fate.”

“And Screech?” asked Sorak, returning to the fore. “What gave birth to Screech?”

“You did,” said the Sage. “He is the part of you that knew the path that you would walk even at the moment of your birth, the embodiment of your calling to choose the Path of Preserver, and your fate to embrace the Druid Wu. He was born at the moment Alaron had ceased to be, when in his last extremity he drew strength out of the werid itself, and manifested in your mind. Screech is that part of you that is Athas itself, and every Irving creature the planet has produced. You are the Crown of Eves, Sorak, born of a chieftain’s seventh son. The prophecy did not say that it would be an eken chieftain. Your father fell, when he came to the rescue of your mother, and then he rose again, when she tended to his wounds and saved him, and out of that a new fife was created-your life.”

“And the great, good ruler?” Sorak asked “Not a ruler, but one who hopes to guide,” the Sage replied. “The avangion, a being still in the process of its slow birth, through me. And now that you have come, and learned the truth about yourself and me, another cycle in the process has become complete. Or, perhaps I should say, may soon become complete, depending on what you decide.”

“What I decide?” said Sorak. “But... why should that decision rest with me?”

“Because it must be your choice,” the Sage replied. “Your willing choice. You are the Crown of Elves, and it is you who must empower the next stage of my metamorphosis, without which I cannot proceed. But it is a decision you must choose to make, of your own free will.”

“Why ... of course, Grandfather,” said Sorak. Tell me what I have to do.”

“Do not agree so quickly,” said the Sage. “The sacrifice mat you must make is great”

“Tell me,” Sorak said.

“You must empower me with the tribe,” the Sage replied.

“The tribe?”

“It is the only way,” the Sage said. “They shall not die, but they shall live on in me. Not in the same way they have lived in you. Our spirits shall unite and be as one, and that one shall be the natal avangion. Merely the beginning of a long process yet to come, but a necessary step.”

“Then... it was fated that all this should happen?” Sorak asked.

“Fate is merely a series of possibilities,” the Sage replied, “governed by volition. Yet, for most of your life, you have lived as what you are, a tribe of one. Before you agree, you must consider this: could you bear to live without them?”

“But... I would still be Sorak?”

“Yes. But only Sorak. You would no longer have the others. You would face that which almost destroyed you once before. You would be alone.”

Sorak glanced toward where Ryana slept, peacefully, with Kara sitting by her side, watching over her. “No,” he said. “I would not be alone. I am not afraid.”

“And what of the tribe?” the Sage asked.

“We understand,” the Guardian replied. “We would miss Sorak, but at least a part of us shall always be a part of him. And I would like to see him heal, as I would like to join my father, whom I never truly knew.”

“Then, come to me,” the Sage said, holding out his hands. “Let Galdra be the bridge between us. Draw your sword.”

Sorak stood and drew Galdra from its scabbard.

“Hold it out straight, toward me,” the Sage said.

Sorak did as he was told.

The old wizard put his hands upon the blade, grasping it tightly. “Hold on firmly,” he said. Sorak tightened his grip with both hands on the hilt.

“And now?” he said.

“And now, there shall be an ending,” said the Sage. “And a new beginning.”

And with that, he impaled himself upon the blade. “No!” shouted Sorak.

But it was done, and as the blade sank into the flesh of the old wizard, Sorak felt a powerful, tingling sensation and a rush of heat, and then his head began to spin. Galdra’s blade glowed with a blue light, and Sorak felt the tribe begin to drain away from him. He screamed as he sensed something being ripped loose inside his mind, and an ethereal, amorphous shape seemed to pass along the blade, from him into the Sage. It happened once again, and then again, each time coming faster and faster as the luminescent spirits of the entities that were the tribe passed along the blade, from him and into the old wizard.

And then it was done, and both Sorak and the Sage collapsed, the contact broken as the blade pulled free of the old wizard.

Kara got up and came to crouch beside Sorak, feeling for his pulse. Satisfied, she sighed and checked the Sage, who lay there groaning and breathing laboriously, blood flowing freely from his wound. She took the Breastplate of Argentum, as he had directed her while Sorak took his inner journey, and she fastened it around him. And as she watched, the talisman glowed brightly, and then he disappeared from view.

She waited, tensely, as the moments passed like hours, and then he reappeared, slowly fading into view. The wound made by the enchanted blade had closed, and there was now no sign of blood. The Breastplate of Argentum had disappeared, as well. She opened his robe and saw that it had melded into him, becoming part of his flesh, its silver links of faintly glowing chain mail now become silvery feathers on his chest, like the breast of a bird.

And then the Sage opened his eyes. They were completely blue, no whites, no pupils, just radiant blue orbs that seemed to glow. A long and heavy sigh escaped his lips.

“We are all together now,” he said. And then he smiled, faintly. “It has begun.”

“So my quest is finished,” Sorak said as he awoke and saw Kara looking down at him.

“Life is a quest,” Kara replied. “A quest for answers and for meaning. And yours is far from over.”