World, World

Cielle awoke with the distinct feeling that her world was being invaded.

Shivering underneath the thick, woolen blanket, she looked around the room. Her classmates, the other apprentices, were all fast asleep, but that meant nothing. The boys slept in a separate place; it might have been one of them. And yet why would any of them be awake at this hour?

She frowned. Nobody would be up at this hour – and yet, within her mind, the sense of invasion, of violation, continued, like a slow stain spreading on cloth.

Silently, soundlessly, she stood up and slipped on a robe. Pulling it about her to ward off the chill of the late night, she left the room and the sleeping apprentices.

In spite of the warmth of her robe, she shivered again. Her resistance to extreme temperatures had never been great, and the quiet sensation of invasion in her mind further disturbed her. The full moon shone through the tall windows of the halls, creating alternating stripes of light and shadow. With increasing urgency as she awoke more fully, she made her way down to the room that housed their worlds.

Here, they practiced the craft they would learn. Here, Arthan drilled them in principle and theory, practice and power, until they felt bruised by the sheer amount of knowledge. Arthan took apprentices only every five years. And now, after three years, their worlds were taking shape.

She did not bother with lights, though the room was dark. She could have made her way through the room blindfolded. The long days spent here could not be easily forgotten. And her world was always in her mind, clear and sharp. So much so that it awakened her at night, sometimes.

And now her world was being invaded. Something within her world was foreign, alien, something she had not put there and did not want nor did she intend. She could feel the tiniest amount of sickness corrupting the heart of what she had created.

One of the other students could have done it, a jealous attempt to sabotage her work. That building a world had come so naturally to her had been a great delight to Arthan; he had pointed it out to the others on many an occasion over the past three years. Perhaps one of her classmates was seeking to pull down her eminence.

She stood in front of her world and looked down.

The vile sensation continued within her mind, but physically, her world was unchanged. Pleasant rain, mountains, valleys, forests – all were as they should be. People thronged the surface in cities, in towns, in villages. All was at peace. Crops prospered. Children played.

And yet, something had changed. There was something new, and though she could feel its presence she could not see it clearly nor could she define it.

Reconsidering, she went back and began lighting torches so that she could see her world with her physical eyes. She winced against the sudden brightness as she placed fire in a torch, then set the torch in its socket.

Turning back, she saw Arthan.

Neither old nor young, her teacher stood among the growing worlds with his head down. Though clean-shaven, he had enough long, black hair to cover his face when his head was bowed. In his hands, he held the Staff of Ilsandor.

The Staff. Brave men of her home spoke of that staff in hushed tones, fearing to name it too loudly. The Staff of Ilsandor accepted few masters, and it made its displeasure known to those who dared to touch it without merit. Tales were still told of Syrion’s disintegration upon attempting the Staff. Arthan commanded authority simply by virtue of touching the wood. To say nothing of the forces he had unleashed with it in conflict with Althorin the Grey. Mountains had perished in that battle.

But that did not explain what he was doing awake at this hour in the room where creation was brought to pass.

Even as she opened her mouth to speak, he raised his head, met her gaze.

His eyes had the weight of worlds behind them. She had not, even after three years, been able to accustom herself to the sheer intensity of his expression. Though his hair failed to catch or reflect any light, his eyes made up for it with the fire that raged behind them.

“Cielle,” he said. He folded his arms as if it were the only way he could contain his power. “What brings you here at this time of night? This is a time for apprentices to sleep.”

“My world has been invaded,” she said. “I felt it, and came to look, but I do not know what is wrong. I think one of the other students might be trying to destroy my world; and I cannot–”

“I do not think one of the students could have managed to invade your world. Can you tell me the nature of the invasion?”

She shook her head. “There’s something . . . foreign in my world. But I cannot tell what, or where.”

Arthan shook his head disapprovingly. “You ought to be able to. You know your world well enough. You know to make worlds. If there is something there that you did not put there, then finding it ought to be a simple task.”

“I thought so, myself,” she replied. “But such is not the case.”

“Then perhaps you should return to your bed. If you lack the skill to understand that which invades your world, then you also lack the skill to ameliorate the condition.”

Because of the invasion in her mind, she did not return to her bed. Instead, she turned to her world once again. Time moved more swiftly in the world she had made than in the world in which she lived. If she did not find the problem soon, it would be irreparable.

She went through the mountains, through the cities and forests, past waterways and glaciers and could find nothing until she came down to a small village where a group of children were playing a game of balls and nets.

And there, one of the children was excelling. In every move, every act, he was fueled by a drive to win.

And an absolute assurance of his own excellence and ability.

She withdrew from her world as though slapped. “Where did he get that?” she asked, shuddering.

“What does he have?”

She shuddered. “That child – he thinks that he is better. He is certain that he is better. In his own mind, his competence is assured. Others are . . . lesser.

“I did not put that in my world.”

Arthan nodded. “Cielle, in the three years you have been here, you have shown astonishing facility at creating worlds. I have never taught anybody half so gifted.” He began walking purposefully across the room, the Staff striking the floor at steady intervals. “Have you studied the works of the other students?”

She shook her head, following him almost involuntarily. In her mind, the stain was growing.

He stopped before one world. “Arlan’s. The earth is broken in his world. The ground shakes and cracks regularly. Magma flies through the sky every month. There are no permanent landmarks, no stable places.” He gestured with the staff, and she found a portion of the world expanded to her view.

In a land of fire and death, a young man with eyes too heat-stricken for tears led the battered remnants of a people away from the eruption of a new volcano.

“He seeks to save his village. As things are, in ten years’ time he will find a way for a village to survive. The people will spread, and he will be a great hero, the first king and emperor. In time, they will revere him as a god.”

He moved on.

“Elsian’s world. She made the dragons much more powerful than the men and women of the world. Humans are kept like cattle, waiting to be slaughtered for the appetite of the world’s masters.” He gestured with the Staff, and another portion of the world expanded. “But here, a woman who yearns for freedom is hatching a daring plan to kill the dragon who will feed on her. It requires only self-sacrifice – she must be eaten to poison him.”

He walked on, and she followed.

“Hith’s. He created two men and two women to people his world.

“After six months, one of the men killed the other and took both women. But the one, before he was killed, had fathered a child born three months after his death. And his mother raised him to nurse a secret hatred, and he, when he became a man, killed his stepfather. Now there are two races, two families, two tribes, and there is intrigue and betrayal and murder and war. But there is heroism, and efforts at peace. There is forbidden love.” He turned to look at her.

“What has happened in your world?”

“There is food enough for everybody. They live together in peace under a gentle climate. They are content.”

He nodded. “And therefore I have changed it.”

“You what?” Only the knowledge of the Staff in his hands kept her from leaping at his throat. “I worked for three years to get it where it was, and then you stick your miserable, filthy fingers through the minds I placed there, and–”

He cut her off with a gesture. “Yes.” His voice was tight. “I have watched your world as you have. It is ideal in all respects. All are content.” He laced the word with such abhorrence as she had never heard from a being of feeling. “And what do they do? They do nothing. They do nothing beyond live out their lives, building or singing or working art, and even then they do no damage to the world because the world is not threatening to them; the animals leave them alone and so they have never learned to kill, living on the bounty of the land and learning what plants are good to eat. There are no thorns or thistles to make them tear things out of the ground; the trees bear their fruit in good season, and the water is clear and sweet to their mouths.”

She nodded.

“But don’t you see, there is no spring of renewal because there is no death! They do not rejoice in the rebirth because they have not seen the world die. When they leave the world, they go peacefully, suffering no decline of age. There is no illness, there is no sickness, there are none who harm or corrupt because the knowledge of corruption is absent from the very rocks and soil!” He struck the floor with the Staff, and the worlds shuddered.

Gripping the Staff tightly, he continued. “But there is no courage. None is needed. There are no heroes born. There are no tales there to move our hearts and bring us to tears. They know no joy because they do not know the sorrow that is its price. If Althorin the Grey had not been born in our world, I should never have fought him – would never have pressed myself to the limit to become more than I am. In your world, they are content. They do not change. And so I placed something in your world, something small and simple, and yet sufficient.

“Into your world came the idea that one man could be better than another – that somehow he is more fitting, more worthy, more capable than others. And it will be sufficient. It will begin with him, but sooner or later, in his competence, he will begin to exercise his will on others, begin to order things in a way that has not come naturally. He will never be content – and in so doing will cause others to respond to him. Because should he turn tyrant, one will arise to stop him. And a tale of a hero and enemy will be born, and all those who hear it will be moved by it to thoughts of great deeds, to the building of that which can withstand the test of time. There will be bitterness to revolt us and greatness to rend our hearts, redemptions and violations of such as we can only dream!” He leaned forward on the Staff of Ilsandor. “Don’t you see, the strength of the world is its flaws, not its perfections!”

His gaze should have terrified her, but cold anger gave her strength to withstand him. She looked at him steadily and said, “You had no right.” Her own intensity took her by surprise, but she did not cease to speak as the words rose from deep within her. “That world was mine. I created it under your tutelage, but I created all the same. Into it I poured my thoughts and love. Did you think I was unaware that there would be none of that which you call ‘greatness’ and ‘depth of feeling?’ I did not want that to be in my world! I need merely to step outside to experience that. Here I wanted to create something new, of peace, of contentment. And it was mine to do with as I please, not yours! The strength of your heroes and the depths of your feelings are no stronger than peace merely because the sentiments are more extreme. Peace flowed through that world. Peace. There was no such joy as to bring tears because tears were unknown!”

She whirled to face her world, and tears streamed down her face as she saw the formation of kings and powers along the paths which formerly had continued in tranquility.

“And you can–”

She could not believe that he was unmoved. “I know,” she interrupted savagely. “I can do nothing, because if I take the life of him whom you corrupted, it shall introduce a kind of death in the world that is also unknown.” She turned away to walk back to her bed.

His voice rose behind her. “It is for the best.”

With that, she whirled. “For the best! The best? Your petty conception of ‘the best’ is to corrupt a world and torment it? There is better than that!”

Moving quickly, she bent over her world and placed her hands upon sending her thought to its center, where the bright core performed its warming task.

“Stop!” Arthan commanded, seeing what was happening.

She ignored him. She no longer had any use for his kind of teaching. She took the pain of violation and used it to sunder the core of her world. But she did not stop there. As lives and seas fell equally into ruin, she spread her mind among all the flawed worlds, all the worlds where great evils and great good waged an interminable struggle.

On Arlan’s world, a great conflagration spent all the erupting energy, leaving in its place merely a cold lump. On Elsian’s world, the crystal mountains where the dragons lived began to shatter under a force that could not be comprehended, sending shards and fragments among all that lived until nothing moved again. On Hith’s world, two tribes gathered all the forces for a final, massed conflict that nobody lived to record the end of.

Fires erupted, mountains shook. Across all the worlds of their universe, life and being spent themselves in final destruction, in powerful death.

And within the room, the spheres encasing the worlds crumbled and the remains grew dull and lifeless.

“You have become a destroyer of worlds,” Arthan said angrily, brandishing the Staff.

She faced him, still too angry to be afraid. “No. I only finished that which you began. You have received the fruit of your desires. I wish you well of them, but I believe I no longer need your instruction. I will go make my worlds in a place you cannot come because you do not understand.”

Cielle turned away and heard Arthan raising the Staff of Ilsandor high. She turned and saw it gathering deep blue energy along its length.

“I am the master of this place,” Arthan roared, “and the disposition of worlds is mine – as is the discipline of apprentices!”

Before he could act, she thrust out her hand and grabbed the Staff. She felt within it Arthan’s intensity, all the anger and passion that had led him to violate her world and to stand against Althorin the Grey.

She felt it – and let it alone, instead letting the peace of the world she had once had flow into the Staff.

The power turned azure, then white.

Then it ceased.

She took the Staff of Ilsandor from his suddenly nerveless fingers. “I believe I have moved beyond your mastery,” she said. Then she walked away, the walls parting for her. The Staff made no sound as she used it to help her walk away.