A Single Candle Read online

  “What do you mean, ‘a way?’”

  “The Creator has, over the many eons, sent others to this Plane, not to dwell but to observe.”

  “The wizards,” Cerah said, not asking.

  “The wizards,” the girl confirmed. “Not many and not often. Only the greatest and the strongest, and only for a very brief time.”

  “I was brought into this realm by Parnasus,” Cerah said.

  “You were not.”

  “Of course I was. It was part of my training.”

  “The Cavern of Sighs is not truly part of the Under Plane. It is a place between, created by great wizards of the distant past. When one of that race reaches a very advanced level of knowledge of their craft, the First Elder of the wizards can bring them into the Cavern to speak with some who dwell here. You can see into the Under Plane, but you are not there.”

  Cerah had already realized the difference between the relative safety of the Cavern and this place, but she wondered why Parnasus had not explained the totality of the dissimilarity to her. As if hearing her thoughts, the girl said, “Perhaps your teacher felt you were not yet ready to know about the places between.”

  “You said ‘places.’ There are more?” she asked.

  “Many. Some are for learning, some are for hiding. Most go nowhere. All of them are connected but each is vastly different. All of them are known by the same name, simply ‘Between.’ If one knows the secret, it is possible pass from the Green Lands to Between, and then into this realm.”

  Cerah considered this, and an idea formed quickly in her mind. “Then, if one may enter, one may also…”

  “Exit,” the shade said, completing Cerah’s thought. “Yes. But only one not consigned to this Plane may leave.”

  “So then, there is a way for me? A way out?”

  “There is.”

  “And you know it? You know where it is?”

  “I do.”

  A thousand questions exploded into Cerah’s mind: why, how, who…

  However, she set them all aside. “Show me,” she said finally.

  “I cannot approach you.”

  Cerah pondered this for a moment. Parnasus had been very clear that it was dangerous to let a spirit draw too near to the living. He himself had restrained the ghosts they had encountered on that training day long ago. But there was something about this child that was different. In a snap decision that would have no doubt caused her mentor great distress she waved her hand, opening a small aperture in her away bubble. “Step closer,” she said to the girl.

  Hesitantly the sprite took a step, then another. Finally, she stood by Cerah’s side.

  “What were you called,” Cerah asked her.

  “I was Therra.”

  “Therra is a beautiful name,” she told the child.

  “So is Cerah. And they rhyme.” Cerah was caught off guard by the innocence of the statement. It was just the sort of thing a young girl would notice.

  ‘Well then, Therra, show me the passage.”

  The girl pointed in a direction perpendicular to the one Cerah had been headed. “It’s this way,” she said. They turned and began walking once more. As they did Cerah looked down at the girl, debating whether to ask her to tell her story. She had found the experience of hearing the life saga of a woman in the Cavern of Sighs had been quite disturbing, and she was not sure she wanted to relive the ordeal. Still, it seemed that some conversation was appropriate.

  “How did you learn about this passage?” Cerah asked at length.

  Without hesitation, the girl answered. “Dumb luck. It was long ago. A great wizard desired to experience the Under Plane, and he came through the passage while I was walking by. I knew at once he was not a fellow sufferer. I could taste the life in him.”

  Cerah found that statement a little disturbing, but let it go. “And you remember the place, even after all of this time?”

  “I have never wandered far from it. In case another came.”

  “Did you learn the wizard’s name?”

  “His name was Therrien.”

  Cerah almost stopped short, but decided quickly to conceal her surprise. Therrien was Cerah’s distant ancestor. It was through his bloodline that her ability to learn the wizard’s craft had come. She felt it best if she did not reveal this to the spirit. But she also noted the eerie similarity in his name to the little girl’s.

  “Therrien. Much like your name, Therra.”

  “Not surprising. He was my father.”

  This time Cerah could not conceal her reaction. “Your father! You are the daughter of the great wizard Therrien?”

  “I see you have heard of him.”

  Cerah attempted to recover her detachment. “All who are trained on Melsa learn of Therrien,” she lied. In truth, she had only learned of Therrien when Parnasus had taken her to the Hall of Whispering, where learned wizards came to speak to the spirits of their departed elders. Parnasus had anticipated introducing Cerah to the spirit of his teacher, Opatta. And while they did in fact meet, Cerah was also blessed to hear from the spirit of her own mother, who explained that she was the one through which Therrien’s line had passed to Cerah. Finally she heard from Therrien himself. Although Parnasus knew of Therrien, his spirit had never before come forward in the Hall of Whispering. None, as far as the First Elder knew, had ever heard him speak.

  And now she was walking beside his daughter, and as such another of Cerah’s ancestors. Again, her mind overflowed with questions. How did the child of one so enlightened end up in the realm of eternal separation? And how at such a tender age. As had happened earlier, the ghost seemed to anticipate her queries.

  “Now you wonder how a daughter of the great wizard came to dwell in the Under Plane. What could have been my unforgivable sin? Shall I tell you?”

  Cerah hesitated. Finally, she realized that she could not say no. “If you wish,” she replied, attempting to sound casual.

  “Therrien loved my mother deeply. She bore him many children, all of whom they doted upon. But while giving birth to their final child, Andrella lost her life. I was that child. My father was devastated by the loss of his beloved wife, and although he cared for me and remained with us until I was around eight years old, I grew up knowing that he held a certain resentment towards me. He never said it aloud, but I knew that he thought of me as his wife’s killer.”

  This part of her ancestor’s story was completely new to Cerah. Therra was implying that Therrien left his family when she was only eight. Opatta, when first telling Cerah the tale, stated that he had remained long enough to know his great-grandchildren. Of course, it was not impossible that one who dwelt in the Under Plane might lie, but Cerah did not sense that this was the case.

  “One day,” the girl continued, interrupting Cerah’s ponderings, “my father gathered his children together and informed us that he was returning to Melsa. He said his grief of living among us without his wife had become too great to bear. Seeing her eyes in us, he said, was crushing his soul. He looked directly at me as he spoke those words.

  “And so, he went. Of course, being left behind by our father was heartbreaking, but he had provided well for us, and we did not suffer greatly. My oldest siblings were by then adults, so it was not as though I’d been abandoned to fend for myself in the streets of Kamara. Our home was in the Jewel, and we never lived in need.

  “But I continued to carry the weight of guilt, knowing that by bringing me into the world, my mother had left it. I had grown up craving my father’s affection, and though he did not treat me unkindly, I always knew he did not love me. Then, when I was ten years old, I heard one of my brothers talking to another. ‘It is her fault that father left us,’ he said. I knew he spoke of me. I could bear the shame no longer. That very day I climbed Mount Arnon, and finding a high and rocky cliff, I cast myself over the side. By thus extinguishing my own spark, I earned my entry to this place.”

  Cerah was numb. So many parallels to her own life came through in the shadow
’s tale. Her mother had died far too soon as well, the day after her brother Laran was born. Her father, like Therrien, had never truly recovered from the loss. Therra had died on Mount Arnon. So too, nearly, had Cerah. Still, she looked straight ahead as they walked, trying with all her might not to let the little ghost see the effect her story was having on her.

  “So, did Therrien see you? Did he recognize you when he ventured into this Plane?”

  “He appeared. He looked directly at me. And he walked away. I saw the recognition in his eyes. For the briefest instant I thought that I was that which he had braved the passage into eternity to see. But he simply turned and walked away. I do not know what he sought in the Under Plane, but it was not me.”

  Cerah’s heart should have been broken by the child’s narrative. But sadness, as with all other emotion, was stricken from her when Ma’uzzi helped her drive out hate. Still, hearing her words was overwhelming. At this point Cerah wanted nothing more than to find the passage to the “Between” as Therra had called it, and be gone.

  In answer to that unspoken prayer, Therra pointed. “There,” she said, simply.

  As Cerah looked in the direction she indicated, the faintest of silver-colored shimmers was visible. She wanted to run to it at once, but felt she owed the girl the courtesy of a proper goodbye.

  “Therra, your story is very sad, and I wish with all my heart that you had not suffered so. Thank you for taking me to this portal. It is imperative that I go now. I wish I could take you with me.”

  The girl turned and Cerah felt compelled to meet her gaze. “Cerah, I know that you are my relative. You, too, are a child of the mighty Therrien.”

  Cerah said nothing for a moment, then nodded her head. “It’s true,” she said.

  “You were brought to this realm against your will, and it is not now, nor never will it be, your fate to remain. Every soul that dwells in this Plane knows who you are. You are Cerah of Quadar, the Chosen One. But I shall call you daughter and sister.”

  Emotions or not, the words sent a chill down Cerah’s spine. “Daughter and sister,” she thought. That is how Pilka is called in the histories.

  “Go quickly, now,” said Therra. “Step into the shimmering, and you will see the way out.”

  Cerah again waved her hand, and the bubble in which they had been walking dissipated. She stood for a beat, looking into the girl’s eyes. Then, without another word, she walked to the place where the air glistened. Passing into the shimmering she turned to look a Therra one last time.

  When she did, her blood ran cold, for standing behind the child shade was the goddess Pilka, her hands resting upon Therra’s shoulders. On her face was a wicked and enigmatic smile. But what shook Cerah even more deeply was that the smile was mirrored on the child’s face.

  A moment later she was no longer in the Under Plane. She had passed Between.

  Slurr had always loved riding Szalmi when Kern had allowed him to do so, before the destruction of Kamara and before Cerah, or anyone else, knew that he was more than a stupid boy. However, being on Tressida’s back was another experience altogether.

  Some things were the same. The wind still blew through his curly blond hair, (he had long since learned to remove his beloved green hat when riding, lest the drafts blow it away), and it whistled in his ears. There was the same chill. He had also learned when riding Szalmi that another layer of clothing was wise. This was less of an issue when wearing the armor made for him by Zayan the Riddue, which along with being unaccountably flexible while remaining essentially impenetrable, also provided insulation against the cold (and complete breathability in the heat). So, it was not a completely foreign experience.

  But Tressida was a queen dragon. Intellectually, Slurr knew this. However now, as he sat upon her broad back, (for she was much larger than Szalmi), he was acutely aware of her majesty. Slurr had often seen her be playful. Indeed, her long tail had poked him in the ribs more than once. But in flight she bore herself with astounding dignity. The other dragons deferred to her always, but when aloft this seemed to be even more pronounced. She allowed Szalmi and Dardaan to fly beside her when she bore Cerah aloft, as the wizards often conversed while in flight. But this late afternoon, as the vast flight of conjurers crossed the Mayduk Ocean from Sejira to Illyria in the east, even they flew behind, and slightly beneath her.

  It made Slurr a little self-conscious. He was not, after all, a wizard. And though he had sat on Szalmi’s back, as well as on Yarren’s match-mate Valosa, and even on occasion Tressida herself, he had never done so alone. Always a rider had been with him to guide the dragon. He had been a passenger. Today it was the pressure of his knees that indicated to Tressida that she should turn left or right, ascend or descend. And this he knew to be uncommon.

  It was, actually, almost unprecedented. Neither Kern nor Parnasus could recall another time when a human had ridden a dragon without its match-mate also there. Certainly no other queen, though in truth golden dragons were so rare that Kern had known only one other, a queen named Circe, who had always flown riderless and had sacrificed herself to save many others by flying headlong into an obvious trap set by the Stygians and Silestra, designed in hopes of snaring several dragons. Her effort had destroyed the trap, but her neck had been broken in the effort. Parnasus, whose memory stretched back far further, had encountered only one other. Her name had been Brala. She, too, had always flown riderless. She had fought bravely in the first Great War during which Surok was bound. Her fate was far more mysterious. When the war was won, she simply flew away one day, never to return.

  Tressida, Parnasus knew, was a greater beast than either of her predecessors, both in size, and in her unique abilities. Firstly, she had matched, selecting Cerah when the girl had presented herself to a brood of young dragons. Then of course there was her ability to communicate with the Chosen One. And while no one else could hear her speak into their minds as she did into Cerah’s, it was widely known that she understood the common tongue, and she could often be seen listening intently when wizards and even humans were speaking. Finally, there was the small matter of her ability to breathe fire. Only in the most distant legend was such a thing known, and most wizards had long believed it to be just that: legend.

  Although he could not hear her answer him, Slurr kept a running, albeit one-sided, conversation with her as they flew.

  “Certainly a lovely day to be aloft, don’t you think, Tress?” he asked her. She rewarded the question with a nod of her head, and Slurr rejoiced.

  “Hey! You answered. Ha! Wait till Cerah hears that you answered me directly!” As soon as he spoke the words he felt a slight shudder run through her body. He knew that the dragon ached at being separated from his wife, just as he did. “We will tell her together,” he said, patting her on the neck. He remained silent for a moment, then said. “She’ll be back, Tress. I don’t know how or when. I’m not a wizard, and cannot connect with my spark as deeply as they can. But Even before Parnasus told me that he did not feel her death when she vanished, I somehow knew it, though I initially let myself fear she was dead, in spite of what I felt within my heart.”

  The dragon listened to the young man, and wanted desperately to be able to tell him that she knew that since the day of their wedding Slurr and Cerah had been literally joined at the soul. Parnasus, when conducting their ceremony, had indicated that this was the case whenever two hearts came together, but in their case, it was even truer. For Cerah bore the Greater Spark, and Slurr’s human spark, (for Ma’uzzi placed a sliver of himself in everything he had created), was truly tied to hers. Tressida wanted to shout, “Of course she is alive, silly boy!” But instead she cooed gently, and he was comforted by the sound.

  Another difference Slurr recognized while riding the golden dragon, was that for her flight was essentially effortless. Her wingspan was greater by almost half than any other, and when she beat them, they seemed to push her through the sky as easily as a fish moved across a still pond. However, even though
flying was easy for her, she was pressing herself. She knew that Slurr desired to join the troops on Illyria as soon as she could get him there, and she meant to get him there fast. Behind her the other dragons gallantly kept pace, though it meant exerting far more energy that she did.

  Kern rose and drew alongside Tressida. “We will reach your homeland by the time the moons are high in the sky.”

  “That’s good, though I would have it be even sooner.”

  “Well no wizard, not even Cerah, has found the magic that can move you from one continent to another in the blink of an eye. I think only that would truly satisfy you today.”

  Slurr laughed. “I suppose. I’m grateful to Tressida for carrying me at all, let alone at such great speed. I know she will have us there as quickly as is possible.”

  “Where do you wish to go first?” Kern asked. “There are regiments in each of the nine great cities.”

  Slurr paused before answering. “As much as I know it is not your favorite place to visit, I will lead us to Stygia.”

  Kern let out a low whistle. “You’re right. I do not relish the thought of returning there.”

  “I understand. But it’s the biggest city on the west coast, and we have a good-sized regiment there. If Surok is sending his troops to Illyria from Sejira that would be a meaty target with which to start.”

  “It would, Slurr. I cannot argue. But the new king and leading families of Stygia have long memories. They may not remember that we wizards were among the force that beat them down when their king tried to conquer all of Illyria. Or they may, I do not know. But they do remember that they were beaten down, you can be sure of that. And they have allied with Silestra before. They are as close to an evil people as live in the Green Lands.”

  “I have received reports that our warriors there have not been welcomed graciously. In fact, we do not patrol Stygia as much as surround it. Our forces are camped outside of the city on three sides. As you know the northern border of the city touches Lake Areen, and there is no encampment there,” Slurr answered, adding further credence to Kern’s concerns. “More reason, in my mind, to go there. Should the Stygians entertain the notion that an accord with the forces of darkness might be the direction they wish to take, we will have our hands even more full.”