DUALITY: The World of Lies (38 page)

He was fully hydrated. He felt at the ground,
and there was the same silky smoothness to it, but it shifted as he
bore own upon it. Sand. He found a wall of the same cloth and ran
his hand along it until it touched a vertical rod of thin solid
material at a corner. He ran his hand along it and realized it was
part of a frame. He followed the frame until he painfully stubbed
his toe against a large hard object on the floor. Kneeling to
tactilely investigate it, he determined it was wooden and
rectangular with a seam offset below the top. A chest! He located
the mechanism, opened it, and dove his hands into to ascertain its
contents. He received a most unexpected surprise and withdrew his
hands at once from the frigidly cold liquid he had plunged them
into. He sniffed at his fingers. Water. Again he went in and found
not just water, but a large block of what felt like ice, amid
numerous soft wrapped packagings. The packagings were tied and
wrapped in what felt like waxed paper. He tore one open and sniffed
at it. Food! It was... a sandwich?! To the delight of his palette
he bit in. Bread, sliced beef, cheese, fresh onion, lettuce, and
dill yogurt dressing. How could this be? Famished as he was he
delayed his wondering and scarfed it down in seconds. Moving along
the walls of what he could only surmise was a tent, he came to an
area of flaps covering a vertical zipper. He had used a zipper
before, in uncle's workshop, a large clunky device prone to
all manner of malfunction but not without practical application.
This one was much different, much smaller with fine precision teeth
and an equally well-crafted tiny metal puller at its base. He
pulled up on the zipper and was met with... light, white glaring
light. Gahre recoiled from it and covered his eyes until they
could adjust.

Beyond the opening and spread in all
directions was the same unforgiving Sea of Sand he knew so
intimately. Moreover, this was the same location where he had
fallen. The outer surface of the tent shimmered in the
way he imaged a mirage would, coated by bright, reflective
mirrored silver that completely reflected Cearulei's rays. There
was his tarp covering a mound in the sand, and beneath that were
water skins, all filled, and all the dry rations he could carry
with them. What angel had performed this miraculous
intervention?

There were tracks, boot marks in three sets
with precise and intricate treading all about the
campsite, yet none leading to it or away. There also were track
marks of a carriage or a sleigh with the sand blown radially about
them. They led nowhere, just appeared at that point. Was this a
“flying ship” the like of which carried Dhrussius to the redmoon
Oberion and his father to Rubeli? It surely was! He could conceive
of no other explanation.

But what did not add up was firstly how
whoever these men were could have found him, and secondly why they
would assist him in this manner and be off on their way rather than
simply arrest him? He shook his head in confusion supposing he
ought just be grateful to be alive. Regardless of all the mystery
the situation presented, there were still immediate concerns to
attend to, alone as he still was in the middle of a vast
desert.

He ate the rest of the fresh food and drank of
the chest’s icewater to his bodily limit. The tent had been
exceptionally engineered so that it broke down easily and weighed
no more than two kilograms. The sleeping bag as well compressed to
a tiny volume and added only a negligible weight. He would tote
this fine gear with him for sure. He reckoned the new provisions
and water would carry him through another eight to ten days of
traverse, which would not be enough to return him to the second
oasis alive. There was only one direction to take: the same one as
always, onward and eastward.

The tent proved superior and far less labor to
erect than the ground shelters had been to excavate. This
conservation of bodily energy allowed him to travel further
distances night by night, until he saw the first sign of green,
ragged patches of grass and cacti in the outcroppings that a day
later began to appear in greater abundance on low areas
of ground. He could taste the hint of moisture in the air that told
him the other side drew near. A shimmering horizon coalesced into a
glistening lake with greenery beyond it. The lake itself was
saline, as he discovered after being repulsed at his first and only
taste of its waters, but beyond the far shore of it, the world grew
ever more fertile. He kissed the green land as he came upon it and
followed it to further stretches of growing humidity, until he was
absorbed into the heart of a hilly jungle. The Far
Forest!

It was a land of extremes, huge old growth
forests, raging rivers, and enormous fauna. Great herds of roaming
elephants shook the terra as they trumpeted their approach. Fierce
and cunning predators, like the white tiger, who stalked him at
every turn. Gahre resumed a day schedule and took to sleeping in
the high branches with the smaller though no less intrusive canopy
dwellers. Fire was his ally, and he wielded a flaming torch at all
times, fending off gangs of angry monkeys and repelling dense and
hostile swarms of insects. There was no sign of man at all, present
or past. Not a humble rock piling or abandoned fire pit. It was a
purely virgin realm, undespoiled by the mark of man, filled with
diverse and fascinating species. Gahre had not recorded this
journey, but if he had a notebook and half an aptitude for
sketching, he thought he would like to make a studious record of
this place, for surely no one would believe the telling of it
otherwise.

A raging southbearing river barred his passage
to the west. He followed it south into a lowland where he
came upon a sight of natural wonder his eyes could scarcely
believe. The river dropped low and a gorge rose up about it,
rendering the path untraversable, so he moved west inland and then
traced a southern path until the land rose once more. Then he
went east again until he again came upon a river, this
one flowing north! He had only bypassed about a twenty kilometer
span south of the southflowing river. How could this be, two
rivers at such proximity on the same line of longitude, one
flowing south and another north into it? The banks of the northern
flowing river were traversable, and he followed it back north to a
gorge where this riddle of nature unveiled its fantastic
answer. It was a magnificent gorge, kilometers round with
vertical rocky cliffs dropping into a subterranean abyss, a gaping
terrestrial maw both rivers mightily cascaded into from both sides.
This terrestrial drain was by far the wildest thing he'd seen
in all his travels, and he imagined there must be an entire
underground network of lakes and seas or a hollow void within the
world immense enough to contain this continual volume of water
without overflowing.

It also barred further eastern passage from
any nearby latitudes. He judged the southern northflowing river to
be the more the passive of the two and made his way south along it
until it widened and shallowed. Bamboo was in ample supply here,
and he spent a day gathering the widest seasoned poles of it along
with reeds for the strappings of a raft. From the far south of the
widening he was able to cross diagonally, across and down with the
current to a landing point on the other shore
just before it narrowed back again into raging
waters.

Here the land became flatter and tamer, with
more open fields and gentler creatures that grazed upon them. It
was in one of these large open spaces he made a peculiar discovery.
The flora on the far end of the field was completely different than
where he entered it, which was odd since there was nothing to keep
any species of plant from seeding their way across it. He noticed a
strange wave come over him in the middle of it. Sounds suddenly
became clearer. He could hear the songs of distant birds as though
they were near. The air smelled different, and there was a
discordant energy about the place, nervous and vibrating in his
head. Then it swept away, and his senses regained their normal
states, only for the strange air to return and wash back over him
again in a couple of hours. He remained at this location and made
camp for the night, observing how this incongruity ebbed
and flowed over him in two hour cycles. As he passed beyond the far
edge of the plain, the discordant state became more and more the
norm. It was almost like a buzzing or a light burning
in his brain. It was an irritation he was not readily
able to adapt to, and so just resigned himself to bear.

Only a few hours into the day’s trek he
noticed a thin gray line appear on the horizon and grow thicker as
he approached. Gahre scouted out the highest scalable tree and
climbed to the highest branch of it that would support his weight
to scout out a better view of the distance. There it was, running
north to south, horizon to horizon, gray, tall, and ominous: a
wall. The Wall! Gahre's heart raced as he carelessly slid down from
the heights of the tree, gathered his gear, and burst toward it in
a full run. He ran and jumped over root, stump, and stream. With
thorny brush tearing at his robes and gear clanging on his back, he
sprinted over the last leg of this transformative
journey.

He emerged on it where the wood line cleared.
Heaving still for breath he raised his eyes up and up and up at the
immensity of the wall til Cearulei's
glare partially obscured its monumental heights towering
some 150 meters above him in a wall of stones stacked to vertical
exactitude. The stones, he noted, were cut at right angles but
not were blocks. They varied in shape and size and were fit
together like a jigsaw puzzle, and so precisely he could
not slide a sheet of fine parchment between them.

The height of this grand partition was
daunting, greater than he had dared to imagine. He dropped his gear
and stripped down to the bare minimum. The climbing gear that had
burdened him across an entire continent would at last see
its full utility. One thing for certain, he did not have
enough anchors, not nearly enough, which called for a tedious
strategy of small incremental climbs that recycled the anchors.
Fatigue would be a major issue to contend with. He would have to
set his harness comfortably enough to rest frequently during the
ascent, an ascent that would by all practical measure be regarded
as a non-starter by even the most experienced climber with a full
range of gear. It was almost as suicidal a prospect as crossing the
desert had been. But he had not allowed that momentous obstacle to
stop him, nor would he let this one final barrier. He tapped in the
first anchor, then the second, and got the straining tedious ascent
strategy he had determined underway. Once he got off fully off the
ground everything became extraordinarily difficult:
removing the anchoring, angling himself, his skin chaffing in the
harness and against the stone facing. Not ten meters up,
his large powerful arm muscles reached their failing point from
fatigue, so he precariously hung there and rested for ten minutes.
Not long after he resumed the ascent, he felt his arms giving out
again. This cycle worsened by each iteration as he
ascended inch by hard won inch -as did the delirium, dizziness, and
burning pain as he struggled on hour after hour until he reached
100 meters.

At 100 meters, he could now see beyond those
dueling rivers he had crossed in the west. Then something terrible
happened. He didn't realize the terror, but watched it placidly as
if in a dream. The wrist-strap of his pickhammer broke, and then
the instrument itself slipped away entirely from his bleeding
fingers. In slow motion he watched it falling, spinning, down to
the base and heard it land with an almost imperceptible thud,
before the realization of it struck. With no pickhammer he could
neither recover nor place the battered anchors. There was only one
option now, and that was to loose himself from the harness and drop
to certain death.

What a cruel predicament! He sighed, gazing
out upon the domains he'd conquered, rewinding through his entire
journey. In the jungles of the Great Oak, he had been poisoned and
on the verge of death, but was at least able to move forward. In
the Sea of Sand, it was the same. And he had had no control over
the time. But here and now, he was just stuck in place to linger
between life and death until he made the determination to end it.
Whatever guardian angel had been looking for out him must surely
have grown weary of saving him by now. These were not, after all,
terrible events thrust upon him by fate; they were entirely caused
by his own will and actions. He had come face to face with
mortality enough times by now that he could shrug his shoulders at
it and just enjoy the magnificent view in a state of mind that
transcended time itself.

There was a fluttering above him, like
flapping wings. He cocked his head upward and saw a line of
whiteness unravelling its way toward him from above and stopping
beside him with a marked thwap. It was a rope ladder! He blinked
his eyes several times and took stock of his mind for a moment to
be certain this was not another hallucination, but there it
persistently remained. What else was there to do, but grab hold of
it and climb? Once he had secured his frame to the fine ropes of
the ladder, it began to move on its own, up and up, as though
pulled by a winch. It stopped before he could round the crest of
the parapet. A large familiar hand reached down to him, and as he
grasped it, he looked up to see the even more familiar face it
belonged to: Indulu.

“Up with you, boy. Come on, together...!” With
a final cooperative strain they hauled his hulking mass up and over
and then onto the mercifully horizontal stone pavings atop the
wall.