“We were told that they were studying the Other!”
“And in a way, they were.”
He shook his head incredulously. “But they created the Bringer-Laws, the celestial maps, the –” a look of realisation formed across his face – “the Passing Bell!”
Filimaya smiled. “And so now you see how significant it was that Sylas was summoned using the bell! Which brings me back to my point. Regardless of who believed the Glimmer Myth before, Sylas and Naeo prove that somehow, for some reason, it is true. They are the living myth. They bring us hope.”
“What hope?” shouted a fat man with red hair. “Forgive me, Filimaya, but what use is all this? How does it help us to know these things when we are here, hiding in the Valley of Outs, surrounded by our enemies? How does it stop the Undoing, or save our friends in the Dirgheon?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” shouted a young woman from high on the cliff face. “Sylas and Naeo have powers beyond our dreams – they managed to escape the Dirgheon and defeat Scarpia. There’s our hope!”
“So they’re here to save us? They’re a weapon?”
“Yes!” cried the woman to a murmur of excitement.
“No!” retorted Filimaya. “They’re nothing of the kind! They’re people, children, not weapons that we may use in our own defence. But they offer us the truth – the truth that we are more than we thought we were.”
“But what does all that mean for us?” appealed the woman, throwing her arms out in exasperation. “We need help, not truths.”
“We need both!” snapped Filimaya. She paused, controlling her rising temper.
Sylas shuffled nervously. This was not going well.
But then a familiar voice spoke up. “I agree with Filimaya. We’re all missing the point.” Ash strode out from beneath the branches of the tree. “We need to remember that before Sylas came, we were desperate. I mean, sure, we had the Meander Mill and some of us were managing to live openly by pretending we weren’t what we are. But what kind of life is that? We had no future. How could we have a future when we had lost all that made us strong – everything that made us who we are?”
“We’ve still lost all those things!” shouted the fat red-headed man.
Just then Sylas noticed something strange. As the debate had become heated, so the light in the hollow had begun to dim. When he looked up, he saw that sure enough the beams of light were weak and faltering, barely reaching the upper branches of the great tree.
Filimaya blinked irritably. “Yes, Glubitch, but that was the old world. That was the world in which Glimmers were a myth. That was the world in which Merisu had broken his promise – in which the Three Ways had defeated the Fourth. Sylas and Naeo have shown us a new world – a world in which anything might happen, where we must question the very fabric of our worlds, and where Thoth’s empire is built on sand.”
“Yes, that’s right!” shouted a stooped old man sitting near Sylas. There was a murmur of approval.
A very large man with a shock of black hair and gigantic sideburns rose from a rock near the river. “Ash and Filimaya are right, of course,” said the man in a deep booming voice. “But we are still left with a question: what do we do with our new-found hope? And how can Sylas and Naeo help us?”
“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.
