Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome (31 page)

Still, their humor was just as gentle as they were themselves, never unbecoming, never cynical. Yarden began to believe that the Fieri did not have it in them to mock or jeer; cruelty of thought or word was as far beneath them as cruelty of action. There was joy and wisdom in their frivolity—a soaring lightheartedness that was an expression of genuine Fieri goodness. And it came through their humor as in everything they did.

Wherever two or more Fieri gathered for very long, there would be laughter, and Yarden found she could listen to the sound of it for hours, though at first she did not always understand the jokes—many of which depended on a clever observation of a world with which she was, in many ways, still unfamiliar. The stories, though, she understood well enough; and in the evenings, wrapped in starlight and the warmth of one another's company, the Fieri would cluster on deck to hear a tale.

Everyone told stories—the supply was apparently limitless. But the best Fieri stories were the province of certain designated storytellers—men and women who had gained reputations as skilled and inventive orators. Typically, the storyteller would have prepared a story for the evening, although tradition demanded that he be coaxed into telling it. The listeners would gather sometime after the evening meal and begin talking about how it was a beautiful night for a story (any night for the Fieri was a beautiful night for a story), and how they missed hearing the old stories, and how it had been such a long time since they had heard a really good tale (even though in all likelihood they had heard one just the night before), and how they longed for a storyteller like the storytellers of old ...

The call would go up for a story, and the call would quickly become a chant. Then, to a crescendo of cheers and applause, the storyteller would stump up in feigned bewilderment, usually saying that he didn't know if his stories would please or not, but with the audience's indulgence, he'd try. The audience would draw close—children right down in front, their parents and other adults pressing in behind. When everyone was settled, the storyteller would climb up on his stool; when all was quiet, he'd begin. Some stories had set beginnings, but ordinarily the teller would start by connecting his tale to some recent event or an observation he'd made that very day.

This preamble would stretch out as long as he could sustain it, building tension while inexorably working toward the place where he'd say something like: “which reminds me of the time that ...,” at which point the audible sigh of relief would go up from the audience and he'd be off on his tale.

Yarden enjoyed the stories as much as any Fieri child. The storytellers were as much actor and actress as tale-spinner, breathing life into their characters with vocal inflections, gestures, and facial expressions, especially at moments of high drama. The Fieri would sit and listen raptly, catching every nuance of the performance, savoring it, showing their approval with their ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’ in the appropriate places. Each Fieri knew the stories so well that it was something of a game to try to catch the teller in a slip or omission. The tellers, on the other hand, knew their audience was waiting for a bungle, and kept them vigilant by refusing to tell their stories in precisely the same way as before.

Thus the stories were always the same, yet always different, and the stories had a fresh familiarity about them that Yarden found appealing and comforting—though she had not been among them long enough to have heard all the stories once, let alone twice.

When at last the evening's tale came to an end to universal acclaim, the group would disperse reluctantly or, in typical Fieri fashion, finish a singular entertainment with a time of singing.

Fieri songs were rich, mellifluous creations with innumerable verses and haunting melody lines that wandered, lapsing and recurring almost at will, Yarden thought—although every Fieri knew exactly where the tune went. The songs were difficult to learn, but a joy to hear, and Yarden would sit amidst the singers, arms wrapped around legs, chin on knees, drifting in delicious rapture. Fieri singing was exalting, stirring, and somehow always poignant—as if the music bubbled up from a fountain at whose deep roots seeped a sadness that mingled the music with traces of pain.

This pain, Yarden suspected, stemmed from the Burning—the nuclear holocaust visited on their noble race by the monsters of Dome centuries ago. It was a scar the Fieri bore, a pain that would never heal.

As playful as the Fieri could be, Yarden often wondered whether the humor was not alloyed of feelings of profound grief. She asked Ianni about this one evening, and Ianni's answer surprised her. “You are very perceptive, Yarden. Perhaps our merrymaking does spring from the hurt of the past.”

“But wouldn't it be better to forget the past, to let it go so the wound can heal?”

“Time will not heal it; nothing can. The hurt is too deep.”

Yarden didn't understand this, so pressed the question again. “But that doesn't make sense. You say the Infinite Father cares for you. Can't He do something?”

Ianni only smiled and shook her head. “You see, but do not see yet. Look around you, Yarden.” She lifted a palm upward. “All of life is pain. We are born to pain and death, and there is no escape from it. Every living thing must bear the pain of life.”

“That sounds very pessimistic,” snapped Yarden. “What's wrong with you? You're the one who's always telling me, Trust, believe, have faith. What good is any of that if there is no escape from pain and death?”

“Ah, but we do not attempt to escape from the pain.”

“No?”

“No. We know it for what it is; we embrace it. We take it to ourselves, and through the Infinite's love we transform it into something else. In the end we transcend it.”

“What is the suffering transformed into?”

“Love, compassion, kindness, joy—all the holy virtues. Don't you see? As long as one tries to escape, the pain will consume and destroy. But if it is accepted, it can be transformed.”

“I don't know if I want to accept it,” said Yarden. “You make it sound so ... so hopeless.”

“Never hopeless. Hope is born of grief, Yarden. Without the suffering, there can be no striving for something better. Hope is the yearning for a better place where pain can no longer hurt.”

“Is there such a place?”

“Only with the Infinite. He has promised us His presence in this life and the life to come. He helps us bear the pain of our creation—it is no less His pain, after all.”

They spoke of other things after that, but Yarden remembered and thought about this part of their conversation often. It had affected her deeply, although she didn't know it at the time. The idea of hope springing from the basic pain of life was foreign to her. Not that Yarden was naive—she knew that life was tough, that one was born to hardship, that strife was the nature of things. But she had always believed that only through struggle could one overcome the pain and hardship.

The notion that pain must be embraced was difficult for her to accept. But the more she saw of the Fieri, the more she began to understand. The Fieri professed that the creation of the cosmos had cost the Infinite Father something; He had paid a tremendous toll to bring His beloved universe into existence. He had labored, and suffered the pain of His laboring. In this suffering, love itself was born.

“What else is love,” Mathiax had asked her one day, “but taking the pain of another as your own—especially when you are not obliged to?” Thus, pain was woven into the very fabric of the universe—because there could be no love without it, and because the Infinite Father had set love as the cornerstone of His creation.

These were heady thoughts, but Yarden found herself returning to them again and again as she tried to understand the Fieri and their God, whom she wanted very much to accept as her own.

So the trip upriver to the Bay of Talking Fish became for Yarden an inner pilgrimage as she wrestled with these thoughts and felt the struggle changing her, slowly, gently as understanding grew.

Each day the sweeping line of barges drew nearer the vast wrinkled highlands of the Light Mountain range, and at night the passengers could see the faint glow in the sky above the peaks—each night a little clearer than the night before. But earlier in the day the nautical procession had passed beyond the green-wrapped foothills and into steep-sided, red-rock canyons. Ahead lay the bare, wind-whipped crags and peaks of the Light Mountains.

This night, Yarden sat with Ianni and others on the foredeck watching the sky give forth a splendid display as the Light Mountains lit the heavens with a shifting aura of colors—an earthborn borealis, known to the Fieri as a sunshower.

The light began at dusk when the sunstone began giving up its stored solar energy, glowing brightly as the sky darkened. The colors were soft, opalescent blues and greens and golds with wisps of red and violet, corresponding to the various types of sunstone—the same sunstone used to build Fierra. The shifting color was brought about by a combination of common atmospheric conditions: minute sunstone particles in the air, turbulence caused by layers of warmer surface air rolling against cooler upper air, reflection off high clouds.

The effect was stunning. It was like watching slow-motion fireworks, Yarden thought dreamily as she gazed up into the shimmering sky. The evanescent color formed softly spectral patterns—shifting ribbons of light, transparent streamers that lit up, swirling and blending, then vanishing, only to reappear again and again in continually changing shapes.

Yarden found herself mesmerized by the brilliant aerial performance, transported beyond herself and into a realm of pure light and color. She looked at her surroundings as if gazing down upon the world from the rarefied heights of a region absolutely alive with peace and beauty and joy. All this she saw mirrored on the upturned faces of the Fieri gathered around her.

After a while one of the Fieri—a Mentor named Elson—got up and addressed the rapt watchers. Speaking softly, he said, “We are now following the way of our ancestors. In the Wandering our fathers found Taleraan and sailed long ships up the deep water into the Light Mountains. Perhaps they too lifted their eyes to the sky one night to see the first sunshower and discovered the secret of the shining stone.

“We do not know their thoughts, but we can imagine what they must have felt at that time of great discovery when, looking into the darkness, they saw the very rock of the mountains begin to glow with unaccustomed radiance.

“When the time of wandering came to an end, they built the bright cities with this same shining stone and named it sunstone. They lived in splendor both day and night ...”

Although the recitation went on, Yarden's thoughts drifted in another direction. She remembered the Preceptor's words the night Treet had declared the growing danger from Dome. “On that day, our bright homeland became the Blighted Lands, a desert where no living thing could ever survive ... All that we knew passed away; all that we loved died. The treasures of our great civilization fell into dust ...”

All at once, Yarden felt the ache of that loss as she remembered those words and that night. She had just been reunited with Treet, and then he'd gone and made his ridiculous pronouncement: “The horror is starting again!”

And that had put an end to their burgeoning relationship. Rather,
she
had put an end to it by refusing to follow him back to Dome. For the first time since that night, the tiniest barb of doubt pricked her conscience: What if he was right?

There was nothing to
do but weather the storm and hope to repair the damage later. The three members of the Supreme Director's inner circle stood stoically and took the full brunt of their superior's fury. Jamrog was livid. Since the night of the raid, information had been trickling in, and now he could assess the full extent of the debacle. Which was not, as first thought, one failure only, but a whole series of disasters—apparently all linked together.

The ceremonial bhuj swung in short, swift, murderous arcs as he paced, his teeth grinding between clipped words. “So! The Fieri has escaped again—taken right out of your hands, Mrukk. And with the help of one of your physicians, Diltz. Meanwhile, checkpoints are overrun by force and guards carried off, never to be seen again.” He stopped to glare at his silent audience. The Invisibles behind him kept their eyes riveted on the ceiling, not daring to witness the dire proceedings. “Does anyone have an explanation?” Jamrog challenged. He thrust the bhuj at Osmas.

The Saecaraz Subdirector swallowed hard and said, “The Dhogs are becoming more brazen, Supreme Director. They—”

“Dhogs! Yes, surely, blame the Dhogs. But doesn't it seem strange to you that Tvrdy and Cejka disappeared—and Piipo, too, for all we know—and suddenly the Dhogs become more
brazen?”

Osmas winced at the bite of Jamrog's sarcasm.

“They were well organized,” offered Mrukk. “The raid was well planned and perfectly staged. There is little doubt it was Tvrdy's doing.”

“Thank you, Mrukk,” Jamrog said sweetly. “I'm so glad for your keen evaluation. You who had your captive stolen from you by an old mother and failed to lift a finger to prevent it. None of your men were killed? No? In fact, no one suffered so much as a scratch, I believe.

“What about it, Diltz?” The bhuj swung toward the emaciated Director. “She was one of your physicians.”

“Yes,” he replied, his tone even more sepulchral than usual. “She was a Nilokerus.”

“That's all you have to say? She was a Nilokerus?”

Diltz remained silent.

Jamrog spun away angrily and continued pacing. “And this morning Hyrgo priests tell me there is grain missing from the stores. It seems they were reluctant to say anything about it before, but in light of the general disarray we find ourselves in these last days, they thought better to mention the incident in case something could be done about it.”

“Supreme Director, how much grain is missing?” asked Mrukk.

“Oh, enough. Enough to feed a whole Hage for several weeks!”

“They had to have help,” observed Osmas.