The Unnamed Blade (Book Two of The Horns of Elfland)

Chapter Thirteen

Farinka woke to find the chamber filled with the soft glow of blue werelights and the gentle murmur of breathing from sleeping Children. She sat up, feeling a weight on the foot end of her bearskin, and found herself looking into a pair of intensely blue eyes.

The cat was beautiful by any standards, his coat was long, silky, with marbled brown tabby markings, and he was the size of a leopard; but the beauty of the mind behind the eyes eclipsed the magnificence of his simple physical presence, and the force of his charisma diffused with hypnotic effect into the Awareness that she extended towards him.

– Farinka, welcome, he said, standing up and stretching; first the front legs, then the hindlegs, and finishing with a yawn. He walked up the bearskin towards her, then lay down at her side and washed one of his front paws thoroughly, all without losing that near-hypnotic eye contact for a moment.

– Ierreth.

The love in his Awareness washed over her like sunshine and expanded to fill an enormous gap in her mind that she hadn't even known existed – and stayed there like a safe and permanent haven; that link with Ierreth, forged once and forever in a brief moment, becoming an enduring part of her own identity which the word 'bonding' could not adequately describe.

A sudden question rose in Farinka's mind. – Ierreth, where were you at the close of the First Dawn?

– We were called into the Mists, Farinka. The dragons Hlammaeth, Ymbolc, Sorrwen, and Belteyinn; the Great Worms Dinithu and Shethuin, and myself.

– How long were you in the Mists?

– There is no Time but never and forever in the Mists. What was, is, and will be, are. Everything else is not. Therefore it is not possible for me to say, in years, how long we were there, said Ierreth.

– How accurate are the records of the end of the First Dawn, Ierreth?

– Allowing for the perception of the individuals concerned, very.

– Can you tell me any more?

– I may not, Farinka. It is not permitted, he answered.

– Can you tell me whether the other world – my old world – had a First Dawn which ended like that?

– No. I know nothing of any world but this. But if it did, there would undoubtedly be records, somewhere, however obscure, which would tell of it. Records have a way of surviving. Though the full account might be split between any number of records, in widely separated places – again, allowing for the different perceptions of different recorders. It may take twenty people to record twenty details of the same story, and those twenty people may be in twenty different corners of the earth, each with their own perception of the events as noted in those twenty different corners of the earth; but when all the details are recorded, in as many records as it takes, and in however many places those different perceptions end up, then the combination of those records will give as full a picture as you are permitted to know. And perceptions differ. For example, if I were to ask you what colour is this Wall, how would you answer?

– I'd say it was blue, she said, looking at it sidelong.

– And you are seeing it lit with a blue light. What if you see it lit with a white light?

– I'd probably say it was white.

– Why? he asked.

– Because if it were not lit with a blue light, there's a good chance that it would not appear blue.