“Yes! Let’s ask them! Where are they?” shouted someone.
“Let’s see what they can do!” shouted another.
Again Sylas shifted anxiously. Naeo retreated beneath the tree.
“Listen! Everyone, listen!” said Filimaya, throwing her hands aloft. “It is up to us to decide—”
“How are we to decide anything without knowing what is possible?” objected the large man with black hair. He stepped forward and waved to the crowd. “We need to see them for ourselves – see all they are capable of – then we can decide a way forward.”
Sylas noticed that the hollow had dimmed even further, so that now the beams of light were hardly visible at all.
“NO!” shouted Filimaya. “Ash has told you what they are capable of, and in any case, Sylas and Naeo have told us that they do not wish to be brought together. The challenge for us now—”
“Surely no harm will come to them?” cried someone from among the crowd. “They’ve done it before, so let us see it now!”
Suddenly the young Scryer pushed past Sylas and stepped out into the gardens. “You don’t know what you’re asking!” he shouted. “If you saw the connection between them with Scryer’s eyes, you would not play with it like a party trick. It is a thing of colossal power – unknowable power!”
This gave everyone a moment of pause. The young man was clearly respected and his warning was taken seriously.
Kaspertak, the old man who had spoken earlier, rose slowly to his feet.
“Triste is of course right to be cautious, but I think on this occasion his Scryer’s eyes cloud his judgement. By all accounts Sylas and Naeo are in control of their power – they have shown that in the Dirgheon. So what have we to fear? I say that we should see them together. Let us question them, at least.” He looked directly at Filimaya. “I say it is so!”
“I say it is so!” shouted the large man with black hair.
“I say it is so!” cried Glubitch, followed by many others.
Suddenly the weight of opinion seemed to shift, and the voices of many uttered the all-important words: “I say it is so!”
For the first time Filimaya hesitated and Sylas’s heart fell. He could see from her expression that she was powerless.
He turned and caught sight of Naeo. She too had paled.
Filimaya shook her head. “I truly believe this to be a mistake!”
“The Say-So has spoken, Filimaya,” said Glubitch.
“Well, yes, I understand that!” muttered Filimaya, shooting him a fiery glance. She sighed. “So be it.” She looked first at Sylas and then at Naeo, her face full of apology. “Sylas, Naeo, could you step forward, please.”
Sylas drew a long breath and glanced at Simia.
“You’ll be OK,” she whispered. “You know what you’re doing.”
Sylas turned and raised his eyebrows. “Do I?”
He stepped out from the entrance to the tunnel and began walking across the floor of the hollow. People turned and moved out of his way, clearing a path to the boughs of the giant tree beneath which Filimaya was now standing. Naeo had already reached Filimaya’s side and stood gazing up at the gathering with a look of defiance.
As Sylas stepped under the branches of the tree, he felt the first pang of nausea, and in the same instant he winced as the pain in his wrist suddenly shot up his arm. He reached down and rubbed the bone around the Merisi Band. Naeo did the same.
He kept walking. As he reached the trunk of the tree, there was a cry from somewhere behind him, and then another to his side.
“Look!” shouted somebody. “Look at the light!”
Sylas glanced up and saw several amazed onlookers pointing at the beams of sunlight that criss-crossed above his head. They were bending and warping, as if distorted by some massive magnetic force, twisted from their natural path.
And then there came another cry, this time above him. A woman began to scramble down from her perch on the cliff face. “The water!” she screamed. “Look! The stream!”
Sure enough, the streams too were being mangled by some unseen force, curving and twisting, turning back on themselves, flowing against the pull of gravity, as if repelled by the two children. A clamour of frightened voices rose from around the hollow as people scrambled out of the path of crazed rivulets and wild waterfalls.
It was as though nature itself was being undone. Sylas felt his insides writhe and turn, his bones slide over each other, his thoughts begin to scramble. He looked down and saw that the Merisi Band was glowing like molten metal, shimmering as it burned into his wrist.
But then something changed. A new light fell on the Garden of Havens. The contorted beams of sunlight suddenly glowed and flared, burning with a new intensity. The shadows stretching across the gardens were dispelled, silencing the crowd. A fresh, white light illuminated the faces of the onlookers, the ancient tree was once again bathed in gold and green, as though it was flooding with new life.
“Stop this!” boomed a hard, male voice.
Standing at the cliff’s edge was a dark figure, silhouetted against the bright blue, arms held high overhead.
Sylas and Naeo hesitated, neither knowing what to do.
“Sylas, Naeo! Move apart!” yelled the stranger.
They happily did as they were bidden, walking quickly to opposite sides of the tree. Instantly the rays of light shifted until they once again formed a web of straight lines, and the streams and waterfalls returned to their natural paths down the gullies and crevices of the cliff.
Filimaya was transfixed by the dark figure. Her hand rose to her mouth, and then she extended the other. Obediently, a beam of light drifted up the cliff face, illuminating the rock like a searchlight, passing over ledge and plant and stream until finally, it lit up the silhouette of the lone figure, bathing it in sunlight.
His robes and hair were a faded black, but his pale, sallow face shone in the ethereal light, revealing striking, high cheekbones, a heavy brow and eyes bright beneath round spectacles.
Filimaya’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“Paiscion!” she whispered.
“What weird homunculus is this, born from the Dirgh’s dark potion? It is like the ancient gods, forged of both man and beast, and yet it looks more a thing of hell itself.”
THE GHOR GUARDS STIFFENED and craned their long canine necks, reaching for scythe-like blades. There was a movement at the end of the passageway. The figure was hard to discern in the half-light of flickering torches. One moment it seemed to be human and the next animal; one moment walking and the next prowling, cat-like, with smooth predatory ease, spidering along the floor, riding up the walls. Alarmed by the pace of its approach, the commander swiped its blade over the flagstones, sending a shower of sparks down the passage.
“Who goes there?” it barked. The figure slowed for a moment and then reared up to its full height, its dark face flashing a white smile of long, cruel teeth.
It made a strange sound, a gentle rasp something like a purr.