Cheilin Saga ~ 10

 Cheilin Saga ~ 10 The New Broom

By Len Morgan 

   Aldor accompanied by a dozen experienced Tylywoch, could have travelled swiftly, unobserved, but that was not their current mission.  They moved freely from one habitation to another, gathering intelligence in the guise of carnival entertainers.   Each having acquired a multitude of skills in order to survive. They pay their way, bringing aid to struggling communities when needed while creating a carnival atmosphere.   While passing on rumours and news gathered on their journey, to the community and freely dispersing their own propaganda.   Aldor always found eager audiences at local inns, thirsting for news and stories told in his own inimitable style.   His stories were both educative, informative, and gauged to win over the hearts and minds of the populace.

.-...-.

   The journey from Sanctuary to the Eternal City took a month, but speed was not of the essence.   So from a high vantage point, on the crest of the Parmenian hills his eyes traversed the central highway from his feet down to the gates of the famed city, still twenty miles distant.   He gazed at the three green mushrooms sprouting from the center of the city and pinpointing the Emerald Palace.   He smiled recalling a tale told by the Emperor himself, on a prior visit, explaining how those domes gained their unique colour.  

The most striking features from outside the city are the domes, situated at the four corners of the building and the largest one central directly above the throne room.   For the first few years they shone with metallic lustre in the sunlight, then the lacquer began to peel off and what was promised and paid for as gold was revealed to be brass when the weather began oxidising the metal.  

Everyone then knew we had been cheated, but the architect had long since vanished without trace together with our gold. The domes have never been cleaned, maybe to remind the powers-that-be of an old folly, which was fortunate because in a short time, the bright emerald green made the palace look even more impressive than the gold domes ever had and it became known ever after, with pride, as the emerald palace.   The colour was so striking it eclipsed its former gold countenance.   

  The highway was thirty yards wide constructed from blocks of fused granite magma. It ran as straight as a lance for a hundred and fifty miles.   It was, he knew, a thousand times older than the city itself.   Yet constant use by wagons, coaches, and carts, over eons had failed to leave a single mark on its crystalline surface which looked as if newly laid.   Starting at the gates of the Emerald Palace, it stretched onward to end in a lake of turgid black fluid six miles in diameter.   He had been told that torches dipped in the lake burned slowly giving off thick black smoke.   The road was a testament to its builders, their ancestors, who had travelled to the stars in the dim distant past.

   These thoughts were buried deep inside him hidden from, the probing minds of Orden and those beyond this world, known collectively as the Universal Network (UN).

  Aldor knew men were short-lived creatures whose inventiveness and vitality were a direct result of their short lifespan.  He knew also that there were machines and computers, located throughout Abbalar, all created by their ancestors, attesting to the levels men had achieved in the distant past.   It would seem all that knowledge was now lost to mankind but, Aldor knew otherwise.   There is a secret sect known as the 'Revisionists' who tend the machines, keeping them in good working order.   Not only do they understand the technology of the past but, are involved in a training program to raise man to higher levels of ability.   

The city itself was constructed of large basalt blocks raised one on top of another, with a thin external veneer of carved pink marble, built to a scale that dwarfed men.   It was almost certain that the Karaxen had built the city, and it was their imminent return that made the elevation of man necessary.  They were potentially superior to the Karaxen but, because the latter would awake from their long sleep with full knowledge of their own technology, man would need to be prepared to take the offensive.   It was Aldor's responsibility to ensure that the Abalon's would be equipped to deal with them when the time came. But, he was aware that time was running out.

   The Tylywoch would separate and enter the city in ones and twos.  Aldor would proceed alone afoot.   He would be seen as just one more hopeful traveller, coming to the big city to seek his fortune.  This was how he wanted to appear yet he never ceased to marvel at the symmetry of the place.   Entering by the Triumphal Arch at the Eastern Gate, he climbed steep stone steps to the walkway along the outer wall.   Then, he crossed the fifty-yard killing zone between the outer and inner walls, climbing to the walkway around the inner wall, considerably higher than the first.  He stood above the Arch and gazed along the central highway towards the distant hills.   He appreciated its perfection, which was taken for granted by those who used it, day in day out.   He turned his back on the hills and gazed along the same highway passing below him terminating at the hub of the city, the Emerald Palace.  

Only from here could he view the city as, an enormous, three-dimensional map.   The city was in effect an enormous wheel laid flat on the ground, Avenues forming its spokes, 20 Roads joining them in ever decreasing circles as they closed in on the hub.  The final circle formed the outer perimeter of the palace grounds.   He viewed the populace, going about their business, like ants far below, busy and purposeful, totally oblivious to his presence.   The palace so completely dominated the scene it was hard to believe it was created over aeons by two disparate races.   Half turning, he looked down between the inner and outer walls a hundred feet below.   Filled now with market stalls and street performers and at the corner of his eye the coloured disks used for starting foot, horse, and chariot races during the sporting season.   

   Fortunes were gambled, won and lost, on those balmy spring and summer days.   As the season progressed the whole populace would line the race route in order to be part of the spectacle, committing it to memory, ready to retell for the asking.  Thus, a series would never be forgotten, living endlessly through the minds and tales of those who bore witness.   The only rule being you had to be there to tell it.   As the storytellers grow older, the stories become embellished and coloured with sentiment until the protagonists became nine feet tall spitting fire and brimstone.   Tellers of some past classic and infamous races were renowned for their fanciful versions, and much sought after.   The season was over now, but the bars and taverns would be awash with storytellers all eager to make a name for themselves.   Aldor could always command an audience anywhere, and raise funds for charity, with his seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of tales.   During the ten years, he had lived in Cheilin, he had listened to assimilated and retold hundreds of stories told and enjoyed by the peoples of this land.   He had also told and retold others of his own and those gleaned from passing travellers.   

He'd told stories in all the major cities of the empire and every town and hamlet.   He observed the cities were all built on a similar design based on the wheel motif.   The Empire itself was unique.   Laid out in a circle, like a clock, the Eternal City at its center and all the clan cities surrounding it like the numbers on a clock dial the 1^st Clan at one o'clock, and the others in numerical sequence around the hub of the Emerald City.   

 His mind returned to reality with a rush.   He’d briefly glanced at a female in the crowd, espied her carriage, her mannerism, and bearing  All of which brought Jazim to mind.   If she is here he thought she will be up to no good.

‘You don’t know if it’s her, Sprout.  Bedelacq has others, many of them, she is not by any means unique’  Orden’s voice warned.   'Follow her… at a distance and discover where she is lodging.’ 

He identified the woman, dressed distinctively in green and gold, a full-length voluminous free-flowing garment with a wrap over her head that partially masked her face, in the desert fashion.   He cast his mind out and down to where she stood holding a globe before a street vendor.   But, there were too many people about and the wider he spread his mind net the more babble he picked out from shoppers and sellers in the market place.   He had to get closer to her.   He took the stairs, two at a time, whilst attempting to refine his reception.   When he eventually reached the stall, he realised the man was a herbalist selling herbs and potions, but she had already moved on.  

“Where did that young woman go?” he asked the herbalist. 

He was answered by a blank uncomprehending stare.  "Which woman?"

 Though he had made his mind up not to intrude on the privacy of other's mind unless, in dire circumstances, he judged the situation indeed to be dire.   He entered the man’s mind, intending to be in and out before his presence was noticed.   All he wanted to know, after all, was the direction she had taken.   He acted without subtlety, even so, he saw immediately it had not been Jazim but somebody bearing a passing resemblance.   He felt guilty and tried to leave the man’s mind immediately, but found himself unable to do so, he realised with surprise, and some annoyance, he was caught in a mental cage.   He had been told of such oddities by Orden but had never expected to encounter one.   He had entered freely without hesitation and now he was trapped.

He watched through the man’s eyes as his mindless shell of a body was led away by the same young woman and ironically, not for the first time, he was ushered into the back of a covered wagon.  

‘Interesting, he thought, what say you Orden?’   But for the first time in an age his friend and mentor was silent.   It was then he realised he was totally alone.   His connection with the man’s senses had slowly and systematically been severed; until all that was left to him was darkness.   How long he remained in that state he had no idea.   He had been deprived of the means of gauging the passage of time.   He had become a passenger in the mind of an elderly man, not in the best of health, who cared more for money than for his country.   Bydrex was his chosen name.   Aldor cast around; finding nothing then cast his mind back to a time when he had entered the mind of his friend Skaa in order to rescue him from himself.   Skaa had constructed an elaborate reality, in his own mind, the world of his youth; a world that no longer existed if indeed it ever had.   It was a world where he had once been happy and felt secure.   Aldor’s own childhood had been more restrictive and regimented.   Security had been the key issue.  His training had always been focused on survival.

 His happiest times had been around the short period he had spent in the company of his friends Genna and Wizomi.   Then, perhaps his time with Orden, whose cave dwelling in the mountains had provided so many opportunities to learn new skills and develop as a person.   But all too soon it had ended in his conversion.   Through it all, he retained his personality and the natural abilities he had been born with.   He was a natural and enthusiastic storyteller.   During his rest periods at Orden’s cave, he had escaped, in dreams, into the 'UN' where he was able to visit others enhancing and augmenting the lessons they and Orden taught him.   He thought now of the people he had met and the things he had done out there amongst the stars.   He revisited lessons he had learned and discussions he'd had, and discoveries he'd made.  He knew there was yet more to be learned from his current situation.   The knowledge that seemed unimportant in the past now seemed to have a whole new meaning.  Realising, there was nothing in life that was unimportant or truly lacking in value.  If he could not see this, it simply meant he had failed to grasp its worth at the time.   The most trivial and mundane activity could have been adding a new meaning to his life, yet much of it had passed him by, because of his obsession with the big picture.  Aldor began reviewing his life, reappraising...

So from memory, he selected a small insubstantial flower, the forget-me-not, which embodied all of life’s mysteries, condensing them into a simple philosophy ‘the will to survive’, he took it to heart.   The tiny plant lived and thrived, changing its appearance when necessary, through time.   Unnoticed yet always displaying beauty; in spite of everything the world could throw at it always staying true to form.  This thought brought him finally to view his enforced imprisonment dispassionately...

(To be Continued)

Copyright Len Morgan