The Bell Between Worlds (23 page)

“It might seem that way, but I didn’t. All I did was change the
connections
between things. The fish were in the stream already, I just made them aware of me. The wind was blowing, I simply changed how it played across the leaves. And the clouds were drifting across the sky all along – I just changed where they went. The most important thing about Essenfayle is that it works
with
Nature, it does not alter it. It cannot create clouds, or wind or fish, but it can change how they behave towards one another.” Sylas nodded slowly, beginning to understand.

“Is that how the Passing Bell works – connecting this world with the Other?”

She smiled broadly. “Good,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll make an excellent student of Essenfayle. Now if we look at Kimiyya, for example, it is an entirely different picture. Kimiyya changes the very essence of things, the make-up of them. It alters the way substances behave and combine, forming entirely new creations, some of them harmless enough – even useful – but many of them utterly monstrous and dangerous. The Ghor themselves are a product of Kimiyya, as are many of Thoth’s creatures. It is a powerful magic, but do you see how different it is from Essenfayle?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Sylas, horrified by the thought that the Ghor had somehow been planned and grown – farmed like some hellish kind of crop.

Filimaya turned, parted a curtain of willow leaves and walked into the green shades beyond. “Walk with me,” she called from beyond the canopy.

Sylas found his eyes drifting back to the stream. With a quick look both ways, he extended his hand towards it, then a little more. Nothing happened. He felt slightly foolish and his hand wavered in the air, but in that moment he thought of the fish leaping in the sunlight, of the bright, silvery arc of flapping tails and glittering scales. Suddenly two fish leapt from the dancing surface of the water, rising high into the air, seeming to reach towards his hand.

“Sylas?” called Filimaya.

He dropped his hand and, with another quick glance around him, pulled back the green veil and stepped under the willow tree. The riverside was still. The boats rolled quietly in the ebb and flow of the stream. For some moments all that could be heard was the chatter of birdsong, the gentle lapping of the water and the soft clunk of the jostling boats.

But then, almost imperceptibly, one of them seemed to drift a little away from the others, against the flow of the current. It stopped in its new position and for a few seconds it seemed as though it would drift back among the other boats, but then a long bluish-grey arm slid noiselessly out of the water and reached over the side. Three wart-ridden fingers closed round a stack of papers, snatched them into a fist and dragged them down into the murky waters.

The surface stirred, betraying a powerful movement below, and a dark shadow snaked away through the water. Its fish-like motion propelled it swiftly along the bank until it reached an overhanging willow, where it paused. Two bulbous eyes broke the surface first, then a snout that rose a little above the water and sucked in the air. It stayed there for some moments, turning its head to sniff in different directions, and finally it gave out a gurgle of satisfaction before once again it was on the move.

It swam quickly to another low, overhanging tree where it stopped again and lifted its entire grotesque head, the water dripping silently down its scaly neck. It reached forward with its long fingers and parted some leaves so that it could see into the garden. The protruding eyes searched for a moment, then it bared its rotten teeth in a grin. It made an odd clucking noise in its throat as it watched Sylas reach out towards the stream, but just then, as his sleeve fell away to reveal a glistening metallic band, the Slithen recoiled.

Its grin faded and it shuddered, hissing through its teeth.

A look of puzzlement came over the loose, scaly features and it turned away from the bank, looking out into the river as it considered what it had seen. Then, as it lowered itself back into the murk, it slid its pointed tongue across the pink curl of its lips and a sneer passed over its face.

“And now darkness gathers – a quiet, contagious darkness, rooted
in the history of our two worlds.”

S
YLAS STEPPED INTO THE
warm sunlight. They were on the grassy bank of another small stream, which flowed haphazardly between rocks on its way towards the river. Beyond it, another gushing rivulet emerged from between the lustrous leaves of a giant ivy plant, which lay like a cloak over rocks and stones and scaled the garden wall to its very top. Further ahead flowed another stream and then another, each carving its own unique path between bright mossy banks, green rocks and beautiful plants, bushes and trees. Occasionally two streams would meet and form a deep, slow-moving brook or a rippling pool, only to part again further down the slope and resume their playful journey through the garden. Between the leaves and trunks Sylas could just make out the river’s edge, frothing under the deluge of water.

“This is Mr Zhi’s favourite part,” said Filimaya over the sound of rushing water.

Sylas looked at her in surprise. “He’s
been here
?”

“Oh yes, but many years ago, before the war,” she replied, starting to walk up the bank towards a piece of thick, mossy timber that bridged the first stream.

Sylas walked hurriedly behind her. “So was he a Bringer too?”

“He may be the most important of them all.”

“Why?”

She laughed. “Well, that’s difficult to say. I suppose when he looks at our two worlds he sees connections where others see barriers and differences. That’s a very marvellous thing, particularly in someone from the Other. No doubt it’s partly because he has spent so much time in both worlds, but it’s also more than that – it’s a special... vision that he has.”

Sylas frowned. “In what way?”

“Well, Mr Zhi would say that the connections between the worlds are all about you,” said Filimaya, sweeping her hand across the garden. “Look at these plants, these trees, these streams – aren’t they like those you know from the Other?”

Sylas looked around him. “Yes… but there is a difference. Everything’s brighter and – I don’t know – fresher.”

“Well, yes, certainly there are differences, but only the ones you’d expect. We don’t have machines or cars or factories and we never have – just imagine what a difference that has made to the living things in our world. What you see are simply your own plants, fish, trees – all natural things – allowed to grow as Nature intended.”

He looked again at the broad leaves and the thick, lush undergrowth. It was hard to believe that these bounteous plants were those that he knew from his own world, but they
were
all oddly familiar. Larger and greener, yes; but he knew their shapes and scents.

“OK, so the machines then – surely that’s a difference between the two worlds, not a connection?”

Filimaya stepped off the mossy log and started to walk towards a pool of water, beckoning to Sylas to follow her.

“Yes, they are a difference, but Mr Zhi would say that there is a connection at the heart of that difference. Where you have machines and technology, we have magic. Not the magic of your storybooks and fairy tales, but magic that is as important to us as your technology is to you: magic that warms us at night and brings in our crops; magic that raises buildings and powers towns; magic too that forges nations and then brings them down. Magic in our world, as technology in yours, is used by some to communicate, to educate and to heal, and by others to increase their power and to vanquish their enemies.”

Sylas had reached the edge of the pool and he stood staring into the crystal-clear water, trying to absorb what Filimaya was saying. A shoal of silvery fish entered from one of the streams and swam slowly round the bank, finally circling in the shallows at their feet, drawing as close to Filimaya as they could.

“Well, I can’t think of anything in my world that’s as wonderful as this garden, or the Aquium, or the light in the mill house.”

Filimaya raised an eyebrow. “That’s only because you are used to your kind of miracle, Sylas. To us, cars are carriages with invisible horses, light bulbs are lanterns without flames and aeroplanes, well, they are magic indeed. Don’t you think that your mother would call her science a thing of wonder, a kind of magic?”

Sylas thought for a moment. “Yes, she would.”

“And the two are more closely linked than you might think. Kimiyya is the foundation of alchemy, which in your world has been developed into chemistry – the science of substances and how they react to each other.”

He frowned. “But you made Kimiyya sound like such a bad thing – are you saying chemistry is bad?”

Filimaya smiled. “Well, it certainly can be bad. There, in the Other, science is used in ways that are good and useful, but also in ways that can be harmful and destructive. It’s the same here with the Three Ways, but they are perhaps not used with the same care. Too often, far too often, they are used for evil.”

Drawing her silver hair over her shoulder, she leaned a little over the pool and peered down at the fish, which swam excitedly beneath her gaze. Sylas leaned in too, watching the fish of many different kinds, all swimming together in a shoal.

“Mr Zhi used to say that we were quite wrong to refer to your world as the ‘Other’,” continued Filimaya. “He said we should think of it more as a reflection of our own world. Like your face staring back on the surface of this pool – you know it’s yours, but you also accept that it’s different from the one you can touch. Have you ever noticed that things in Nature often fall into two complete opposites? Light and dark; hot and cold; life and death?”

Sylas thought for a moment. “No, I hadn’t, but it seems kind of obvious.”

“It’s obvious because it’s natural to us – it’s the way the world works: good and evil, male and female, fire and water. Essenfayle teaches us about the connections between all things, and even these things – these opposites – are no exception. Just as winter cannot exist without summer, and there can be no death without life, there’s something that connects all opposites. Indeed the connections between these things may be the most important of all. When your world is asleep under the moon, ours is awake under the sun; when your world is in the full bloom of summer, ours is paling in its winter.”

Sylas blinked. “So it’s night-time in my world
right now
?”

Filimaya nodded.

“And when the bell brought me here… I didn’t sleep until morning – but it was
already
morning?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “That’s why you were so tired last night.”

He puffed out a lungful of air. “That’s... weird.”

Filimaya laughed. “Weird, yes, but wonderful too,” she said. “The discovery of the Other led to an age of wonder, a time when the true nature of the world seemed to be within our grasp. There was not one way into the Other, but hundreds. There were not only Bringers, but travellers from our world too. It was a time when your world learned much of what it knows about magic, and our world – or at least our part of it – learned so many things about yours.”

Sylas shook his head as he tried to imagine what he was hearing. “But if there were loads of people going this way and that, surely we’d know about it? I mean, not everyone’s going to keep quiet.”

“I’m not sure that everyone
did
keep quiet in those early years. Certainly some of our magic was seen by people who shouldn’t have seen it. A number of unscrupulous displays of magic passed into your myths and legends and, in some cases, they led to entire schools of magical study in your world. I’ve already mentioned your world’s alchemy, which developed from Kimiyya and later became your chemistry; and what you call telepathy and necromancy are probably a corruption of Druindil, the way of communing. But those indiscretions soon died out when the Merisi appeared.”

She stood up and gestured for him to follow her to the edge of the clearing. They emerged on to a gravel pathway that led towards a small wooden building in the dimmest, most shaded corner of the garden.

“What did the Merisi do?”

“They were wise, and restrained, and careful. They followed a great Eastern philosopher named Merisu, who first taught of the two worlds. While our ancestors were excited by their discoveries in the Other, from the very beginning the Merisi were cautious, warning of the dangers of too much haste. At the heart of their beliefs was a conviction that it was up to them to ensure that the way between the worlds was used wisely. They shared their texts with us and offered us their teachings, and in return they asked that we strictly control our explorations of the Other. Indeed soon it was ruled that no one from your world – no one other than a member of the Merisi – was to be brought into ours. It was left to them to choose those best suited to make the journey, to ensure that they were properly prepared and to make sure that their findings were properly recorded. And so the first true Bringers came to us. From that point on they were to be summoned every ten years on the summer solstice.”

A flooded woodland meadow lay in their path and Filimaya stepped on to a raised walkway, that passed over the glistening surface. She moved lightly, as though the grass and earth beneath her feet and the wind playing about her robes were aiding her every motion, easing her passage through the garden. At that moment, with all that she had told him flooding his mind, revealing things of mystery and possibility beyond anything he had dreamed about, Sylas thought that she looked truly magical. He followed closely behind, keen not to miss a word.

“And what did the Bringers do when they were here?” he asked.

“They were brilliant researchers for your world and teachers to ours. Bringers were honoured members of our society, lecturing in our schools, speaking to our communities, giving counsel to our leaders. And while they did all this they learned from us, studying our beliefs, our customs, our magic; noting their most important findings in their book of learning...”