Seven Sorcerers(100)

“None? What of Alua?”

“She is gone,” he says. “Like my brother and my father.”

His eyes turn again toward the deep forest. If he chooses to go there, he will not return to the living world.

“No,” I tell him. “Alua is alive. I have brought her to Uurz.”

He leaps off the pillar, eyes burning. “She lives?”

“She is of the Old Breed. She cannot truly die. Even now she awaits your return. Let me show you how to heal yourself, and you will be with her once again.”

“What of Maelthyn?” he asks.

My hand touches his shoulder, spreading warmth to his soul-form. “Maelthyn was never your daughter. Only a ruse. A lie and an unforgivable crime. A creation of the Claw to house her disembodied essence.”

“Yes,” he says. The bright thrill of Alua’s return is dimmed by a fresh current of sadness. “In my heart I knew this already.”

“Here is another reason to return,” I say. “To make Ianthe pay for what she has done. She sails with Zyung now. If you choose to live, your rewards will be love and vengeance.”

“No!” he rages at me. Again I see the child in his face. “I have had enough of vengeance. I will not make that mistake again.”

His words make me smile. “You are wise, Vireon. Udurum needs a wise King. Are you ready to learn the depth of your father’s legacy?”

“What if I say no? I could wander those woods until I reach the lands of the dead. My father, my brother, they wait for me there.”

“Yet Alua waits for you in the world above, along with your sister Sharadza. And there is Dahrima, who carried your torn body all the way to Uurz.”

His eyes flicker. He blinks at me.

“She, too, loves you.”

He says nothing.

“Both Giants and Men will suffer if you choose death. Udurum will surely fall.”

Vireon turns away from me and stares into the mirror of the lake. Slowly his hands rise to place the iron crown upon his head. He returns to me the Flame of Intellect on its silver chain. I set it once more on my own chest and slide down from the pillar.

The Son of Vod has made his choice.

As I once did with his clever sister, I instruct Vireon in the Knowledge Supreme.

With Sharadza I had taken the role of the Crone, guiding her through physical metamorphosis, opening her mind and her senses to the forces that lay beneath the shapes and forms of the living world.

Patterns.

Yet there is no need for such transformations in the case of Vireon, for we do not inhabit the physical plane. These lessons grow from the core of his immortal essence to permeate his spirit and the stubborn flesh that houses it. In this place ideas grow into being instantly and without distraction. In the earthly world these concepts and revelations would require wholly different interpretations. Here at the center of Vireon’s awareness, I need only plant the seeds of understanding and bid them to grow.

Sharadza learned much in a period of several weeks, locked into a timeless fugue. Yet her tutelage was limited by the material separation of Master from Pupil. As the wine decanter pours its contents into the goblet, so I poured knowledge into Sharadza’s mind. Yet Vireon and I are motes of light glinting on the surface of that wine, and it is a glimmering sea that spreads into infinity beneath us. Where his sister was showered with drops of wisdom, Vireon is immersed in the boundless source of that wisdom. I show him how to dive deep and seek out the truths that lie in its depths.

There is no time or space in the realm of pure consciousness. The mastery of all powers lies in Vireon’s blood already. He need only call them forth, as he did in the belly of the beast. The spark of his legacy has been kindled, yet was nearly snuffed out by Zyung’s blade. I revive that flickering spark and stoke it to a blazing inferno. Vireon will burn in this crucible of transcendence, reforging himself.

We begin with the Lesson of Patterns, followed by the Lessons of Unity, Action, and Elements. Each of these blossoms as a new tree about the lake. Vireon plucks and devours their ripe fruits as a reader devours words, the juices of cognition saturating his thoughts. His skin seethes with fresh colors, and his eyes blaze like the Flame of Intellect.

Lessons that would take days, months, or years in the waking world he learns in an instant. More epiphanies follow, one after the other, a deluge of enlightenments.

He imbibes the Lessons of the Worlds. First the Living, then the Dead, the twin illusions that comprise reality. This knowledge falls upon him as droplets of silvery understanding. He drinks deep of the singular truth beyond duality, and it changes him further.

“Now you see that Vod’s power has slumbered within you all this time,” I tell him. “You have called upon it often, without even realizing it. Your moods have conjured storms and cleared the skies. These were only the surface traits of your deepest nature. You have learned to be both Man and Giant, which makes you more than either.”