The Shibboleth and The Sword – Chapter 14

*Scene 01* 8:00 (Pull of The Stones)

In the inner storeroom, beneath the upper levels of the granary, Begglar and I continued our conversation in earnest.

His face was grave and his countenance sober and disturbed.  The dire implication of the moving Builder Stones was one I had not anticipated in coming back to The Mid-World.  When the factions formed between the Mid-World kingdoms, tensions were exacerbated when their Builder Stones locked down.

“How many of the twelve stones have been impacted?”

Begglar huffed, “We believe it affected all of them, though we cannot be sure about Capitalia.  It is too remote and on the far side of the Walls of Stone mountains.  Their stone could even now be cutting its way through the mountains, but we have no way of knowing that for sure.  It has been many years since the Capitalians have come on this side of their massive gates.  Agents could be riding quietly in these lands, but they would do so unannounced.  You know how the others feel about them.  But there is no reason to believe that their stone was not affected as well.”

“How do you know this?” I countered, my uneasiness causing my voice to quaver.

“We have our people.  They have seen some very mysterious things.  You know how the kingdom leaders are when it comes to the stones.  They suspect some kind of sorcery.  Accounts from one kingdom to the next vary, but all are consistent on the timing.  Best we can account, it started happening on the first day of Sukkot, a historic feast day of temporary shelters.  On that day, twenty-one years ago, all building ceased.  The stones once light as an ash pumice stone, suddenly fell from the hands of their bearers.  They seemed to gain the weight of all the quarried stones they had borne in the building of each of the stone cities.  Arms bearing them were wrenched out of their sockets.  Some had their feet crushed beyond repair.  All those unfortunate enough to be carrying the stone at the time suffered some injury or maiming.  Some were at rest in the citadel treasuries upon pedestals that were summarily crushed to powder, as the stones crashed to the ground unable to be raised by the might of men or any device which was contrived to try to lift them once more.  Rumors spread, and the talk in the holding kingdoms reached the outer lands, until the lords of each realm agreed to meet upon neutral ground near the Capitalian stone gates, near the Walls of Stone Mountain Range in the Kidron valley.  Each kingdom suspected the others.  It was a tense few days.  Armored men were cordoned off in encampments bristling with weaponry and raw nerves.”

“There is a narrowing channel through that one passable valley.  Military soldiers were forced to narrow their ranks columns as the envoys met in the grounds where the old annual festivals were once held in times past.  When each of their representatives realized that what was happening to the stone of one kingdom was happening to all, they were first suspicious that one kingdom, might be in league with The Pan and its bizarre kinds.  That some witchcraft had arisen out of his shadowy moon kingdom, for none of his kind had been invited to the counsel, for reasons that should be obvious.

But The Pan is a suspicious one.  He has his creature agents make note of any large gathering of mankind.  Especially when it involves rival kingdoms.  He knows one day man will again move against him.  He stands to rest easy when the kingdoms of men are divided.  One or two kingdoms moving against him are not enough to succeed and he knows it.  But when all gather, that is something else altogether and he is poised to rouse his dark ones against such.

The Pan has never been one to share power or bind itself to a treaty.  Emissaries have tried in the past, but it wasn’t until the emergence of trolls coming from among the kingdoms of men, that The Pan has ever agreed to hold counsel with an envoy, without them being beaten, pursued or eaten.  The Pan has always hated mankind.  It is an unreasonable and unnatural hatred.  The sight of a human seems to enrage it.  When The Pan finally encountered a troll among a troop of men, it was the first time it and its hybrid minions allowed that company to live.  He was intrigued by the changes in the unfortunate being.  For some reason he calls them human frogs.  Seems quite pleased with these recent mockeries of humankind.  So much so that he agreed to grant counsel to mankind, only if it was conducted through emissaries of the troll kind.  That is why Xarmni has gathered to itself a community of their loathsome kind.  They are cultivated as spies and brokers between the kingdom of The Half-Men and the Xarmnian monarch.  The Xarmnians hope to be the first to secure an understanding with The Pan and his creatures.  To secretly understand what conjuring power The Pan might be using to arrest the kingdom stones.  Xarmni seems to be the only realm with a subcommunity of trolls within their midst, so the other kingdoms have grudgingly agreed to let Xarmni lead in this discovery.  But they suspect the Son of Xarm may not be as forthcoming with whatever he finds out through his troll envoys.  Other kingdoms have tries to follow the trolls on their missions into the moon kingdom, but The Pan seems to know that others not of troll kind are following, and these have all been taken captive and killed.  Only troll kind are allowed passage into and out of the realms of The Pan, and only those men or women a troll vouches for, will live to tell the tale.  It wasn’t until a few months ago that the stones of each kingdom began to move of their own accord.  Xarmni has not reported much to the other kingdoms.  Each is growing impatient.  They suspected The Pan had found a way to wield The Cordis Stone he took from you and Caleb to cause the effect in their stones, but now that their stones are on the move, they suspect that The Son of Xarm has not been straight with them about all he knows.  They are gearing up for battle.  Each kingdom is preparing to annihilate and enslave one another.  The truce has broken.  They are each following the movements of their stones.  Their anger grows with each mile their stones gain day by day.”

“What have they seen?”

“Every city is different, but they are essentially the same when it comes to those stones.  When not in use, they all kept them locked up and heavily guarded as a matter of sacred ritual.  The Xarmnians kept their stone in the Citadel vault, on the stone pedestal.  You knew they had even begun worshipping it.”

*Scene 02* 8:00 (Anchored in Awareness)

I shook my head in amazement, “How have you and Nell endured this paganism and the constant shadow of threat all this time?  The Xarmnians have been hunting you for piracy, yet you live out here under their noses, still operating as a pirate of sorts.  Why did you choose to remain here when you could have gone back to the Surface World at any time?”

“What do you mean, and leave my Nell here?  Alone? With them?” Begglar grunted.

I winced, “I know, I know there’s that.  But we are of that other world, and I am not sure it was wise to make ties here when we belong there.”

“That is not entirely true.  A part of us belongs here and you know it.  But staying away as long as you did, perhaps that has taken an awareness from you.  Be that as it may, something made you return.  A part of you knew we have unfinished business here.  In fact, if we don’t keep an awareness of here, and especially of Excavatia, then we are entirely useless living back there in the Surface World.  In whatever world you chose to remain the most in, there you are most vulnerable to what seeks your destruction.  Danger exists in both worlds since they are the most in the parallel nexis.  The Surface World is the place where your true sense of self lives in the most fog.  While there is danger here, there is more clarity than back in the Surface World.  Living here I do not lose the awareness but sharpen it, and I can still catch a glimpse of the shoreline of the home we all seek to be part of.”

“Yes, but the dangers here are real too,” I countered. “The Xarmnians will most certainly torture and kill your family, your wife, and son, and it would then only be a mercy if they kill you too.  Death guilt is not an easy burden to bear.  It crushes you and steals purpose away from you.  It overshadows everything you hope to accomplish hereafter.  Afterward, you are merely a shell, a dead man walking.”

“Then don’t carry it,” Begglar grunted.

“That’s easy enough for you to say now, while you still have Nell and Dominic under your care,” I groused.

“O’Brian, this is why, if given me own choice in the matter, you would’ve been the last one I would choose to lead this renewal of the Stone Quests.”

“I don’t follow,” I said looking away around the storeroom.

“And that is my point.  You cannot lead if you don’t follow.  The lives of others are not your burden to bear.  It is too much for any man.  It is a burden that can only be borne by The One.  You once knew that.  Jeremiah did too, but you’ve both forgotten it.  Life and death are not in your hands.  The safest place in the world is in following that Voice that seeks you…” he said tapping my chest with two fingers, “…in here.”

I met his hard gaze and faltered a bit.

“You ask me how I remain here, and knowing what I once was, you know I must answer you in seaman’s terms because it is the same way I knew my ship would be where I left it when we set ashore.  We set our anchor.”

“Your anchor?”

“I am anchored in the awareness of the Almighty.  I keep that awareness here,” he tapped his own breast with the same two fingers he had used to tap me, “…always.  The Xarmnians expect to find a seaman.  Instead, they see a baker.  An Innkeeper. The Xarmnians expect to find a brawny man.  Instead, they see a man who has sampled more of his baked goods, than he ought to ‘ave.  The Xarmnians expect to find a man hiding and on the run.  Instead, they see a man running a prominent small business in a town on the far end of the high country.  They expect to see a man of the waters, not a man of the fields.  It is all these expectations that blind them to what we’ve been right in front of them.  Their expectations cloud their vision because they are too proud to really see outside of their own perspectives.  This is the problem of all mankind.  Hubris.  We are too wedded to our own perspectives that we fail to see what is true, even if it stands before us.”

Begglar’s words were deep waters, and I knew if I waded too far into them, they would be over my head, but they could not be ignored either.

 At last, I said, “Anchored in the Almighty, huh?

“Aye,” Begglar nodded, “Tis madness to set to the seaport in any other harbor.”

Tentatively, I touched the shoreline of Begglar’s argument.

“How can I lead, if I don’t take responsibility for those who follow my leadership?”

“O’Brian, this is not about avoiding responsibility, but about assessing how best that responsibility may be carried so that you can have the freedom to move forward into the leadership for which you were called.  The One’s purposes are not achieved by following the course of a man’s reasoning.  In fact, that is the very thing that will most ensure the leader will fail in anything The One calls them to.  It is not about your capability, but about His.”

The illusion of shallow waters was dispelled, as the realization affirmed what I felt the Inner Voice had been telling me in gentle whispers all along.  My own fears and failings kept the soil of my heart in a gravel mix of stone and earth.  Now the tendrils of the roots in Begglar’s words began to penetrate deeper and curl into the dark earth beneath.

“You must drop your anchor, O’Brian.  Else you will drift about and find yourself in the breaker rocks.  It may sound counter to what one expects, but The One’s ways are higher than ours.  To move forward into your purpose, you must lower your anchor into His moving.  It is an undercurrent that does not register in the surface waters, but when you find His flow, then you will find yourself secure and those who follow you in that will also be secure because of it.  Your ability to lead depends greatly on your choice to follow.  This places the responsibility in His flow, and not in the set of your own sails.”

Quietly, I whispered, “What if I miss His guidance?”

“Courage is not the absence of fear but doing what is right in the face of it.  Fear will always be a headwind.  Whether it influences you or not, depends on the set of your sails and where you cast your anchor.  The anchor will tow you along following The One’s undercurrent, and you handle the captain’s wheel loosely, allowing your vessel to roll and pitch in the tow, letting the headwinds slip through the slack in your sails.  If you catch the headwind in a gathering sail, the ship will yaw and tilt and may swamp you.  Let the headwinds slip past the sail, but do not gather it, because it will resist the towing of your anchor.”

Fear.  He was talking about fear as wind.  The seaman’s images were not lost on me.  Instead, they affirmed me and showed me the truth of what was holding me back.

I sighed, knowing that I needed to embrace all that Begglar was saying, but still feeling some struggle to do so.  Knowing the truth is one thing, embracing it by setting your hands and feet to move into it was something else.

“So, what are we doing down here?  Why did you bring us here?”

Begglar reached down and placed his hands on the top of a wooden iron bounded barrel.

“Help me move this, will ya?”

“What’er we doing?”

“Just help me and you’ll soon find out.”

The barrel was short but thick, and it was very heavy and seemed to be filled with rocks or something that caused it to be of great weight.  We rocked it to a canted tilt and then I helped him roll it upon its staves until it was three to four feet further into the corner of the small storage room.

The walls were made of joined timber, shaved down for uniformity until they could be joined together in an even seam along the way.  Because this storage area and the subsequence rooms were cut into the ground beneath the threshing floor, the walls were thick and packed against the ground in which they provided the substructures.  As the weight of the mounds and piles of grain pressed down on the floor above, the crushed earth filled in and pressed against the substructure timbers and sealed the area off against the seasonal weather keeping these vaults dry and cool for perennial storage.  The air in the vaults, though a little stale from being sealed, was neither musty nor wet, which made it perfect for its use as storage for perishables.

Begglar had crawled down on the floor and with a small, metal instrument was prying loose one of the floorboards.  I bent down and helped him, and we set it aside.  He reached into the dark oblong cavity and tugged at a rope in the darkness until some hidden catch was released.  Then he carefully set the displaced floorboard back into its groove and thumb-pressed a wooden dowel pin back into place to secure it.  He stood up.  Brushed himself off and commenced to drag rolling the barrel back over the spot in which we had displaced it only moments ago.  I assisted him until got it done.  I followed him out of the storeroom and he pulled the planked door and leather latch shut over the set pin closing the room once more.

“Now to the weapons,” he said.

“The weapons are here?”

“Above us.  In the grain pits.  I had to release the locking pin mechanism first.  But we’ve a little weeding out to do, before we uncover them.”

“What do you mean?”

“The monster,” he said, turning.  “We’ve got to root out the monster in our midst with the Shibboleth test and, living here all these years waiting for your return, and seeing the Honor Sword show up in that dried streambed out there, I’ve learned just the way to do it.”

“How?”

Begglar looked hard at me, and then grumbled, “What makes you think I will not have to put you through the test as well?  You’ll find out when the others do.  Gather them together and lead them down the streambed to the sword.  I will address each of you privately there.  One by one.  You will be last.”

“And afterwards…?  To the weapons cache?”

“We will see what happens.”

*Scene 03* 10:40 (Edge of The Escarpment)

On the upper edge of the plateau where Begglar’s wagon and team of horses rested just beyond the edge of the escarpment and the slanted taper onto the descending roadway, the group of Surface World travelers milled about stretching their legs and looking to the west where the lands descended into a chain of hanging valleys and stepped plains. A golden grain field edged the base of the winding cut-row carved into the longer side of the plateau.

It stood to reason that over time the spilled grain seed being separated and milled would be caught and carried by the drafts passing through the hill cleft of the granary and might inadvertently reseed the plain to the leeward side of the hill. The happenstance of this reseeding process appeared useful to the Xarmnian land managers, and they ordered the locals to use their teams of oxen to plow and harrow the rolling plain beneath the escarpment for convenience. Colluvial chutes were carved and chiseled down the rockface of the cliffside. In the areas where the descending roadways impeded these channeled colluvial chutes, the road was cut away and short bridges were built to allow the emptied wagons to cross the bridge while the flowing granules passed under the bridgeways on their descent to the floor of the grain field.

Some of the seeding, not picked up by the winds were shoveled into the lower grain bins that were carved into the catcher pits at the base of the escarpment. These pits and caves were the covered and sealed by large thick ironbound wooden doors, that rests on rollers and were opened and closed by a winch and drum rig located within a hidden grotto stable. The stable was also carved out along base below a shelf of the escarpment to allow rested, fed, and readied horse stock the proximity to assist in the effort to capture the mounds of spillage and draw the grain back into the storage caves and bins.

The winding road angling down the length of the long-edge of the plateau with four switchbacks passes ending down near the open gates of the cave stables. Only the emptied wagons used this switchback descent. Loaded wagons of grain approached the granary hillock from its eastern side and made their way up the longer and more gradual lower-grade slope, while the emptied wagons then were driven down the winding cut-road to assist in the field harvesting and the transport of cut sheafs for the Xarmnian grain fields below. The leeward side of the granary hill was pale and, by sight alone, did not appear to be the same form of dark granite that made up the rest of the hill.

Five of the travelers stood with Dominick, looking down the long-edge of the hill to the winding roadside and the wind rippling grain fields at the base approximately one-thousand feet below.

A young woman asked, “Why is this side of the hill white? And those fields. Such an amazing transition from white to distant green. Why is that?”

“Grain dust,” Dominick, answered, “The granary operation does it. The winds catch the ground chaff, but it also catches the flour that comes from the crushing and separation. It forms clouds of powder, and the downside of the hill is dusted with it. When the winds get particularly high, some of the grain kernels are caught too. Much of the kernels fall down the colluvial chutes and are carried down to the berm, but the milled flour is sifted, and the pass-through winds shears out of the stone breaks.”

“Dominick, is it?” the young woman said, eyeing him with a sidelong glance, not turning her head.

“Aye.”

“My name is Lindsey,” she said simply.

Dominick smiled to himself, still observing the far distance but not the landscape alone. Perhaps there was more hope for this quest than he had first thought. The travelers were softening.

The sky was gray with billowing clouds, gathering rain that had only briefly spilled and spattered before, but were now swirling with a darkening heaviness that portended a great deal more of it to come.

A teen girl, who had been listening to them, observed solemnly, “Is that why the roads seem to glow?”

“Aye, same reason,” Dominick nodded, “The wagons carry and shake some of it off as they drive away to the west there to reach the main road, but most of the wagons circle the hillside until the end of the workday. The wagon drivers are almost ghost white by the end of the day. The grain dust cakes everything. The grain fields seem to be pale perennially. They are only green during the midseason. Near harvest they become white again. See those rain clouds, yonder?”

The watchers nodded.

“After the rainfall, that field will be rinsed from much of the powder. If there is green in the stalks and leaves, the nearer end of those fields will become pale green. Unfortunately, the flour dust coats the plants and prevents much of the sunlight from getting to the leaves, so the prospect of rain is always a welcome sight. If the rains are frequent enough during the growing season, it will yield a better harvest. For that reason, the farthest ends of those fields yield more of the grain since the dust doesn’t carry that far.”

A taller man, who had been observant and quiet spoke up. “My name is James. I am sorry for the snide remark one of the others made about your father’s wagon. You’ve done a great deal here with what you had. This system is more sophisticated than I could have imagined, and you seem to know considerable more about it than even you’ve shared with us.”

“Aye,” Dominick responded quietly, “We learn as we find. Me mother’d see this below as a lesson connected with how a new life should be lived. A second sight, she has. She’s a seer. Me father too. ‘Tis a way of seeing beyond what is there before you. A way to see the meaning in it. An attribute coming from Excavatia itself. The capacity for that sight is planted in everyone who follows in The Name of The One. Aligning to the will of The One, is why it is important to give your names to the quest. It is His will that calls us to it, not merely the calling from a man like O’Brian.”

A degree of understanding altered the expression of both Lindsey and James, the two travelers standing nearby who had offered their names to Dominick.

The three others standing near them noticed, but only one of them responded.

“My name is Gemma,” the young teen girl tugged on Dominick’s sleeve. “Please tell us what your mom would see.”

Dominick grinned, “I am but a follower of this quest too, y’know. Tis not I who you should be giving your names too on behalf of The One.  My name as well as me mother’s and me father’s already appears on The Marker Stone from long ago, before it was given a burial. We are committed. Determine for yourselves what your choices are, and you will see a lot more in this journey ahead than merely what appears before your eyes.”

One of the remaining, unnamed ones, a man who had stood silent and seemed to be observing and taking in much more by choosing to listen rather than interject, finally spoke up. “Dominick, my name is Tiernan. What do you see with that insight you speak of when you observe what is below?”

“I see a field moving from outside of its grave clothes and learning to thrive in the freshness of a cleansing rain,” Dominick said, gesturing forward.

“From this vantage point, upon the hilltop on this granary, we observe that when the harvest time comes, the grain seeds in the stalks must cut from the ground, bundled and carried up the hill for threshing. Much like a man or a woman must be in life. The value of the plant is in the head of the stalk. The head represents the soul of mankind, also referred to as the heart. Your hearts must endure the threshing and separation process from the desires of the flesh, like the valued grain must endure the separation from the dying chaff. This is not an easy process, but it is a necessary one. The grains must separate from the chaff and fall to the ground before it can be replanted. There is a verse in the Ancient Texts that says: “When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t grow into a plant unless it dies first.” (1 Corinthians 15:36b NLT) It is only through death that life is reborn and renewed. The seed that is completely crushed into powder will never bring forth life, because it does not survive the pressing of the millstone, the trials and tribulations of life and the testing we must endure. The powder of the crushed grains represents merely the death shroud of the flesh. As it flows downward and is allowed to cover the living, reborn stalks of grain, the newborns suffer in the layers that separate them from the Son. If we are given rebirth, we need the rains to wash us clean of the powder of dead seeds, before we can thrive to produce the harvest value in the field. That is why the far end of the field, furthest removed from the influence of the grave thrives the most. These are the lessons me mother and father taught me from this vantage point. To see the cycle of the seed as it reflects the cycle of our lives. The Xarmnians have no knowledge of the fields, so they remain blind to its lessons, because they cannot access the second sight in this second world.”

The four who had given their names to Dominick–Lindsey, James, Gemma, and Tiernan–looked again on the outward lands and fields below with a new appreciation, both for what it represented and for Dominick and the wisdom he had gained through the influence of his parents and a faith in someone ever-present, but yet unseen. The other, a young woman, who had remained silent but had been listening closely, had a growing sense of uneasiness about all that had been shared between Dominick and the other four. Perhaps, she thought to herself, we may have chosen the wrong side.

*Scene 04* 3:30 (Vector and Vengeance)

Thousands of feet below, in the deep darkness of a cavernous world, carved by a monstrous metallic worm boring into the flesh of the Mid-World, the sentient trans-dimensional beast calling itself ‘Sheol’, twisted and flexed in the darkness, displacing earth and rock jettisoned behind its coiled flanks, and huffed into the hollow by it pulsing and flexing scales. Its monstrous mind followed the invisible scent and signature, gaining lost ground on its Surface World prey that it had lost seeking passage around the immovable rib of stone that projected, horn-like into the hills above. The land above that unbreakable stone smelled sweetly of dead and decaying flesh. The deep soil below it anointed and drenched with saturations of human blood, untainted by the machinations of the hybrid crossbreeds.

Every movement the beast made to come from below and injest and consume the bloodied earth, its inner ears pounded with shrieks and wails that disoriented the shadow-dwelling beast. It had dug blindly about, losing its inner sense of direction, always digging frantically away from the buried Stone, but finding itselfs ramming into it, and stunning its senses further.

Finally the beast cut a wider circle and was able to distance itself far enough from the blood hallowed ground and spine of Stone, that it began to sense its way again, and pick up the northwestern trail of the travelers above.

It sent out sonic pulses to its covert agent, looking for further connections to triangulate and vector its subterranean approach.

“Where are you, (רוּחַ טִיט) titu ruah?!” it growled, its frustration and anger accompanied by flashes and electrical pulses of red light, lighting up the cut tunnels. “Do not deceive me! The body I gave you to serve me, I can take that form from you at any time, you vaporous wretch!”

A old woman’s raspy voice responded to the beast from a far distance away, muffled by the need to whisper through the energies of the ground.

“We travel by wheel and wagon. Rains have muted my ability to communicate, but they are a sign that thousands of my sisters are nearby and follow us. I am working out a way to eliminate both a Seer and the child. An opportunity is presenting itself. Please be patient, Sire. I should have them dispatched soon and then you may take their leader and dispose of the company that follows him. Your glut of blood is coming, my Lord. When my feet touch the ground you will know where I am. Come swiftly, my Lord. Come with vengeance, and power. Burst the land and take them upon the hill of grain and separation.”

*Scene 05* 5:15 (Pushed to The Precipice)

Elsewhere atop the granary plateau, beyond the dumping deck, where the sheafs of grain were typically unloaded and spread across the large, flat-stone milling plate, a further low-walled stone bin, slightly smaller in circumference, was slanted and stepped down about five-feet below the wider main deck. A large canvas tent was held up by poles and roped stakes covering the lower grinding areas. Large wooden rakes were tied in bundled lay-by racks to be used by the workers when the granary was in full operation. The furthest ring was also canopied and that lower ring, sitting another ten to twelve feet lower than the previous ring ran closer to the pointed edge of the escarpment with the more sheer cliffs dropping away with a flattened rock-faces hundreds of feet high.

Becca had refused to leave the wagon and was not responding to any effort to coax her out of it. One of the other women agreed to stay with Becca and keep an eye on her, and a young man had offered to stay and steady the team of horses, lest they spook and take off towards the edge of the escarpment with Becca still in the wagon.

Seeing that nothing further could be done with Becca, Nell and Miray walked hand in hand down under the stepped and canopied sifting decks and Cheryl followed in a limping gait.

Nell tried to calm Miray by distracting her and telling her all about the granary operations. She showed her the dropping floor where the kernels of grain that had been separated and sifted in the upper rings were finally allowed to fall downward into the bore holes to end up in the catcher pits hundreds of feet below the top of the hill. They both hunkered down on the spilling stone, which bore thousands upon thousands of dark pitted boreholes, making the stone surface appear speckled.

“This is where the kernals of grain fall through down into the catcher pits far below.”

Miray squatted further, laying prostrate and putting her eye close to one of the boreholes, looking down into the dark shadowy grooves unable to see anything but pitch darkness.

“I can’t see anything,” she seemed disappointed, “How far down do the seeds fall”

Nell tossled the young girl’s curly red fair, with a gentling hand, “If the gathering doors were opened below, you could see all the way down there into the grain bins where there are tons of grain stored in the lockers and catcher pits.”

“Do the seeds fall all the way to Hell?”

Startled, Nell asked, “What makes you say that, child?”

Miray raised up and wrinkled her nose, shrugging with her shoulders, turning a palm upward, “Well they fall into a dark pit. Isn’t that like falling to Hell.”

Nell smiled at the child’s innocence. “Oh, I see,” Nell said, helping Miray sit full upright, “Not nearly that far down, lass.”

Miray dusted the fine grain powder off of her jeans and hands, rubbing them together. “Is it far down there, then? How deep is it?”

Nell rose to her knees, but she put out her hands to Miray.

“If you will hold tight to my hands, I will give you an idea, lass,” Nell said gently, glad she had finally piqued the girl’s interest.

Carefully, Nell and Miray approached the steeper edge of the escarpment, and Cheryl hobbled up beside them. The escarpment edge jutted out from the final pit onto a promontory with a granite stone edge of jagged rock. Yellow scrub grass whipped and whirled in the updrafts as they gazed out upon the open country and valleys below. Miray was impressed by the sheer heights, and Nell smiled at the child’s wide-eyed expression as she attempted to take it all in. Miray held tightly to both Nell and Cheryl’s hands, but she strained forward a little, wanting to get closer to see over the jutting edge. “We must be up really high, huh?” Miray exclaimed, “I can see the furthest, and I am the shortest of all you guys.” Both Cheryl and Nell chuckled.

At last, Miray said, “Miss Nell?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Can you put me up on your shoulders, like my daddy does, so I can be the tallest?”

“As you wish, dear,” said Nell, bemused.

Cheryl laughed, as she helped Miray balance on Nell’s shoulders, while Nells secured both of Miray’s hands in hers, with the child seated prominently around the back of Nell’s neck.

Cheryl has almost turned away to enjoy the high vantage vista, when she caught the sight of the swift, but furtive movement of a small figure running up behind Nell and the delighted child together taking in the grand view, oblivious to all the others roaming the upper plateau.

Becca was approaching in a ducked run, almost as if she were some primate animal, and the savage and pleassured look on the young girl’s face did not appear to be that of an innocent child.

*Scene 06* 8:23 (Tensions Rising)

As Begglar and I ascended the stairway from the lower decks, a task which took much longer than it did coming down, we continued our conversation through labored breaths.

“How did your spies know they are heading this way?”

“I’ve told you before of the place I once lived in the Surface World.  It was a seafaring village.  A port of call for many boats, but fishing boats in particular.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“On the sea, a good sailor never loses a sense of the direction where land is.  His or her home port.  If you get lost at sea, chances are high that you are a landlubber, a novice, and that your journey was ill-fated before you even set sail or stepped aboard the vessel.”

He fished into his pocket and produced a small metal device with a pivoting screw hinge, a blunted point and a combination of three eye loupes.

“What is this?”

“A good luck charm.  I may be far from the sea, but seawater still flows through these veins.  That’s a device used for finding your way.  It took quite a bit of time locating one of those here.  This is a much older version.  Crude, but it works after a fashion.”

“What do you mean?”

“The problem is in the stars.”

“The stars?”

“Yes.  The sky here is all wrong.  High above it cracks and has strange fault lines.  Like a vein of silver or gold in the rock, only the marbling of the sky obscures most of it.  The clouds and fog obstruct its usage.  The moon is hard to follow and transparent at daybreak.  You’ve seen it.  It is luminous but seems muted.  If memory serves, I remember it much closer and brighter up in the Surface World.  The problem with that is the moon is not a fixed point.  The device relies on a fixed point in the heavens.  Without it, the device is useless, to a certain degree.”

“A certain degree?”

“It can be used in other ways, we’ve discovered.  Both the sun and moon follow predictable paths.  At sunrise or sunset, we can be certain of directions east and west, and by consequence north and south.  Moonrise and moonset take longer and are tricky because of the roll of the land, and the influence of the Sun.  The Sun reveals the moon as it leaves and swallows the moon in the light as it rises.  That device becomes useful when one has determined where the true points of direction lie on the horizon, from observing the passage of the Sun.  Once you can sight those fixed points, you can measure the degree or direction from your vantage point from just about anywhere you are standing.”

“And your spies have one of these?”

“Absolutely.  And they know how to use them.  We recruited them from the lake country.  They had found them useful on the boats, but also overland.”

“How did you get seamen to leave the sea?”

“That was easy. When the Xarmnians decided they wanted to regulate and control the fishing. Xarmni wields most of it power in the large cities. In the cities, people are grouped and packed closely together and are more easily controlled by regulating their access to goods and services. In the outlier communities and rural areas is where the Xarmnians have the greatest challenge to maintain their rule. Those communities tend to be more independent and self-sufficient. They are by and large agrarian communities or game hunters or fishermen. They can live off of the land and water sufficiently enough to have no need to ask from the government much of anything. They don’t like being ordered about by some distant ruler who knows little about them, their needs or their way of life. So when the soldiers moved in and started harassing them, they fought back. They valued their independence. They did not need some power-grabbing ruler to order them about. They fought long and hard until the soldiers came in larger numbers and began to quell the rebellions. Men, women, children. It did not matter to the Xarmnians. They were slaughtered by the hundreds. Marched in chains up to the Marker Stone and killed before it until the townsfolk begged them to stop and agreed to let themselves be ruled.”

I had been away too long.  So much had happened here, while I had become so preoccupied in the Surface World.  Hearing all of this, my gut tightened and turned at what these residents must have gone through.  Witnessing it happening firsthand may not have made much difference, but sometimes even the presence of a fellow in the midst of tragedy can mean so much to the one suffering through it.

I closed my eyes and bowed my head at the thoughts and implications hammering into me.

Begglar continued, “The seamen, like the rural farmers and herders, were of good hardy stock.  Muscled and grizzled, deeply tanned and weathered by a life lived in the open and earning their daily provision by the sweat of their brow.  These were the men most desired to be in the armies of the powerful, but these were the men, most averse to being conscripted.  So the Xarmnian leaders had to gain leverage over them.  Each circumstance is a little different, but by and large, the leverage taken was most likely a loved one brought back to live in the walled cities.  In a place where the Xarmnians could keep an eye on them, and a metal shackle about them, if necessary.  Needless, to say, they sought us in the Underground out and gladly volunteered to go down the lion’s throat and live within the belly of the beast, it that might serve the cause.  When the time comes, they will be within striking distance.”

“How many of the stones are being watched?”

“Ten.  And by all accounts, they started moving at the same time.  We can only assume that the same is true with the other two.”

“And they are all pointing back to The Marker?”

“Everyone that we observed, yes.”

“Then we don’t have much time.”

“No,” he shook his head, “we don’t.”

As we exited the upper stairwell onto the granary deck, we witnessed something very odd and disturbing.

Cheryl pounced on Becca and pressed her to the ground but was thrown off as if she were a mere rag doll. Nell had Miray upon her shoulders, and they were dangerously close to the edge of the steepest edge of the escarpment.

Two of the men had run up behind Becca, but they hesitated to approach her too fast for fear she might lunge at Nell and Miray and push them over the cliff.

Begglar shouted in a bold and loud voice reminiscent of his sea command days, an order brooking no argument, “Nell! Dominic! Others! To the wagon! All of you!”

Becca turned, responding instinctively to the shout, and that is when the two young men charged her and with difficulty, managed to restrain her.

Becca did not resist, this time, but only winced as if the two young men holding her were squeezing her too tightly. “You all don’t understand! You are all being fooled! You don’t know what she is!”

By this time, Nell had swung Miray down from her shoulders and Cheryl was attempting to get back up on her feet, but had hit the stone milling pit and had painfully suffered additional scratches and severe bruising.

“Who are you talking about?” one of the young men holding Becca asked.

“Her!” screamed Becca, jabbing her desperate and accusing finger at Miray.

*Scene 07* 6:02 (The Remains)

In the abandoned burg of Basia, the storm winds continued to gain in strength. Gusts raked across the face of the stone bungalow near where the Surface Worlders has first encamped, slamming the old, thick-oak door, now free of its mat covering of vines, against the jamb, almost snuffing out the stuttering fire inside the cabin still struggling to breathe light into the dusty room. Two squat-figures had emerged from the hovel, but, upon seeing the approaching horseman and the startled woman fleeing across the intervening stream, they had fled along the side of the structure scrambling over the embankment that backed the brow-built dug-out, preferring their chances out in the stormy open terrain to being trapped in the small cabin. The rider had started to give pursuit, but the two figures seemed to fade into the darkness, camouflaged by the storm-lit terrain, rustling through the whipping field grasses, blending into the mud-caked hill, and scrabbling over the rock-ridge beyond.

Coming back around to the front of the makeshift hermitage, the rider dismounted, and guided his black horse closer to the facing wall of the small domicile, allowing the hill and the intervening structure to shield them from the harsher blows of the crosswinds coming down from the upper ridge.

He patted the horse’s nose, shearing off some of the rainwater that had collected on its muzzle. “Hold here, Starlight,” he spoke calmly to the horse, as he slipped the reins into what remained of the source roots growing along the edge of the doorframe. The stubs of the vine-cover showed clear signs that the foliage covering had been recently hacked away.

The rider drew his short-blade from a scabbard tucked and hidden under the split-flap of his thick gambeson, worn beneath a hooded, rain-cloak that he’d oiled against the wet weather. The door brace bolt lay across the wet muddied floor in a puddle of water. The shadows of the small dusty room jumped and stuttered against the stone stacked wall and glinted off of the dusty pane of a small inset window. Dusty shelves covered in cobwebs, signified that the place had not been lived in for many years. Mice scurried along the top of a bracing rafter, casting enlarged and furtive shadows, along the upper ceiling. The white ash at the edge of the hearth was mixed with settled dust and had only recently been raked and scattered on the hard packed dirt floor. A wooden table predominated the interior, flanked by a single-sized bed that had not been slept in for many years. Dust covered what may have once been a bundle of blankets and a web of yellowish plants and cobwebs had tried and failed to root into the pile to add additional cover. Only a freckling of white mushrooms and fungus seemed to have found stasis in the former sleeping frame. A set of three small candles in low saucers were placed on two of the chairs and on the flat plank of the long bench that were configured along the table to provide light for something that lay across its top.

The rider lowered his blade for the room was too shallow to hold any occupant that could be concealed behind the spartan furnishings it contained. The wind drafts through the door had extinguished the candles, but the staccato of lightning allowed the man to navigate entry. He slowly squatted and retried the bracing bar from the puddle and leaned it against the door, to prevent it from closing behind him. Moving carefully to the stone bricked hearth he lifted a lightly burning ember from the fire and lit one of the candles on the stool and chair near the table. He lifted one of the sconce saucers to better examine the charred mass that lay across the table.

The light revealed a thick but short body, badly burned with its clothing flaked and charred, its flesh desiccated and blistered. Its arms were drawn into angular bends, pulled tightly into around its upper torso. Its hands were black skeletal claws, like knobby, and brittle winter branches. Flakes of its scorched clothing and flesh littered the table with sooty powder. A Troll.

Its large feet were facing the fireplace, its upper torso was pointed towards the sole window, enfolded in its grisly, struggling arms still in a frantic postmortem posture, still very much in shadow. When the man raised the candle toward the thing’s face he drew back with a sudden start.

Lightning and thunder clapped, bleaching the room with ghost light. The creature’s head had been hastily removed. A pool of oozing black blood seeped onto the tabletop and wept black droplets to the dirt floor.

The man moved the candle over the pool, examining the ragged stump of the troll neck. The black ooze seemed to ripple under the light of the candle flame, tendrils of the liquid seeming to burrow in between the slats of the table.

Suddenly, the bar plank, that he had propped against the doorframe, clattered to the floor, splashing into the shallow rain puddle. In one swift motion, the man dropped the candle, whirled to face the portal and drew out his blade as the giant shadow of a dark, massive man obscured the sole doorway. Ponderously, the giant man leaned in from outside the doorstep, ducking carefully under the top lintel, and moved slowly, filling the room and fully blocking the man’s only escape.

A voice rumbled out of the giant man, as his face was partially revealed by the firelight. “I would be very careful with that body. Despite how it may appear, …not all that is in him…is truly dead.”

*Scene 08* 4:21 (The Down Grade)

“Let me go, you bullies!  I was only trying to see what Nell was showing Miray!” Becca struggled between the two young men, as Begglar and I approached her.

Some of the others rushed over, and Nell held Miray close to her, protectively moving away from the edge back onto the sifting floor, drifting over towards Cheryl, but keeping a wary eye on Becca and the boys.

“Hold her!” I directed, and Becca glared daggers at me., and we went over to check on Cheryl.

She lay groaning on the deck of the threshing floor, struggling to get back up.  Nell knelt and helped support her into a sitting position.  Cheryl could barely speak for not only had she been thrown, but the wind had been knocked out of her.

“Are you okay?” Miray asked.

“You’re bleeding,” Nell said, dabbling at the weeping cut on her arm, and checking her other limbs for evidence of broken bones.

Cheryl wheezed, “Can’t…”

“Rest easy, dear,” Nell admonished, “Catch your wind.”

Miray looked over at Becca, and Becca seemed to snarl at her.  She moved closer to Nell and Cheryl, eyes widened, and feeling a cold shiver shimmy up her spine.

Begglar looked at Nell, “Me darlin’, are you and the wee one, okay?”

Nell looked up from her ministrations with Cheryl, “Aye, me Love, right as rain. May need yer help gettin’ this lass to the wagon, though.”

Begglar moved to lift Cheryl, and Nell admonished him, “Gently now.”

Carefully, Begglar and I moved to scoop Cheryl up, but Begglar waved me away.

“I’ll carry her, O’Brian,” he snorted, “Get them to the wagon.  We need to get off the hill and down into Jezreel.  Nell’ll drive the teams down.  She’s a steadier hand with the animals.  My hands are more suited to a wheel, a rudder, and a tall ship.”

We moved up through the five bordered ring catchers where the grains were separated under the tented canopies and gathered around the wagon.  Becca followed grudgingly, flanked by the two young men to insure she caused no more mischief or misunderstanding.  Cheryl was loaded first, under the wagon cover and moved gently towards the back of the buckboard bench.  Begglar helped Nell climb up onto the buckboard seat and sat next to her, handing her the tracer reins.  Dominic checked the horses and the tack fixing them to the harness and wagon tang.  He nodded to his parents and moved to the back of the wagon to raise and lock the loading gate.

I sat near Cheryl, making sure she was stable and okay, casting furtive glances at Becca seated between her two self-appointed guards.  The other travelers crowded between us all along the inner benches and seated with knees drawn.

I knew we couldn’t travel this way for too long, and we would soon require individual horses, but we were out of options.  Begglar and Nell, for all their planning, had never imagined that there would be twenty-three of us joining them from the Surface World on this journey.

In moments, we felt the wagon began to tilt forward as the horses pull its wheels onto the descending road.  The riders invariably shifted in the wagon bed and along the seat benches as their bodyweight began to feel the effect of the descend grade. The winding road down the side of the escarpment was very narrow and had only a makeshift low stacked-stone wall railing, separating the road’s edge from the precipitous edge.  It was a good thing Begglar, and I had pulled the canvas canopy cover over the wagon bows, obscuring our outside view.

Miray sat on the other side of me, her arms around her legs, ducking close to me, holding the back of my arm, trying to keep from looking at Becca.

Before she had been very angry at Becca, wanting to have it out with her, for daring to insinuate that there was something improper about our friendship.

Now she was scared of her, and desperately trying to stay as far away from her as humanly possible.

*Scene 09* 5:25 (The Sword in Question)

On the buckboard bench, seated along the steep-edge of the driver’s seat, Begglar whispered quietly to Nell, “It wasn’t who I thought it would be.”

His gaze was distant and disturbed. He chewed his lip unconsciously.  “I never…” he began, then broke off, finding it hard and distasteful to say the words he was thinking out loud. “I never thought enough about how evil masks itself.”

Nell sighed quietly, feeling an even greater degree of unease than that sensed by her husband.  She had perceived the truth, but her natural inclinations made her reject the idea that kept persisting in her mind and spirit.

The Seer’s sense.  A sense that she had once welcomed and had even tried to sharpen, until its honing revealed how dreadful it’s truthful revelations could be.  Some truths were hard to face, especially those involving the machinations of humanity.  Theirs had been a land where evil was mostly overt and those practicing it were emboldened enough to never feel the need to conceal their open contempt of others.  But even a heart could be deceived.  And a strong desire for the otherness of sincerity and goodness, could blind a person to the signs of a slipping mask hiding the nightmare visage of a monster beneath.

Begglar pondered his own troubling thoughts, knowing what must be done, and fearing the inevitable outcome.  He well knew from hunting in his youth upon the moors and cluains, that when a quarry is cornered along a bawn or esker, seeing no other way to escape, it will turn upon its pursuer with the savagery of desperation and fight viciously for its own life.  If the quarry is, in fact, a predator, its savagery will arise out of its anger at being cornered rather than its desperation.  And a predator was specifically designed with a natural prowess for making its killing wrath known.

Searching for words to formulate a question, he finally broached the distilled contemplative silence, “How it can take forms that seem…”  He sighed, breaking off.

Nell leaned next to him, feeling his warmth as a rising wind gust chilled the air, causing the horses to falter a bit, and grumble in protest as the weight of the wagon behind them urged them to move down the grade faster than they should.  Their hooves cut divots into the dirt roadway, resisting the insistent push into their harnesses.

“I think we knew it that night, the wee Miray stayed with us,” Nell voiced.  “But it is a hard thing.  T’will be a hard thing to reveal to the others, who don’t yet know what we know…or ‘see’ what we perceive.”

Begglar grunted, “You’ve known all along now, have you?”

“Aye.  But willin’ it away, has kept me from the truth,” Nell answered quietly.

Begglar hugged her closer to himself, feeling the rise in the winds and the beginnings of a wintery bite to it, “Seems we’ll all be havin’ ta face many truths in the days ahead.  You know you’ll have to teach them, doncha?”

“Aye. More’s the pity.” Nell sighed.  “Twill upset their sense of comfort.  Liftin’ the rock, to see the writhin’ serpents lurkin’ underneath.  The roaches scuttlin’ forth amuck.  Such a sight makes you flee to safety of the former unawares.  To pine for it.”

Begglar grunted, “We doan have tha luxury n’more, me darlin’.  I’ve no doubt of that. It we face the dangers, we faces them head on and clear-eyed now.”

“So we’re ta be tested then?  The Shibboleth, as ya call it.”

“It’s the only way,” said Begglar, resigned to the course they had agreed to.

“Are you worried?” Nell asked softly.

“Aye, there’s no denying it.  The devil cornered will bring the devil’s due.  I am thinking of that sword in the gully now.”

“We examined it b’fore, my love.  I am certain it is the very one brought to the inn in Sorrow’s Gate.  I have never seen its like before or since.  T’was a covenant sword to be sure.  An Honor sword if there ever was one.  Legend says there are only twelve of them in existence.  And I distinctly remember the Capitalian who carried it.  Kind, he was, but determined.  He would never have surrendered such a sword if there was not a good reason for’t.”

“I am only hoping that when the time comes, O’Brien will be able to draw it out and swiftly remember how to use it.”

*Scene 10* 7:24 (The Taint of Black Blood)

“I would be very careful with that body. Despite how it may appear, …not all that is in him…is truly dead.”  The large man’s voice was deep and resonant, filling the room with a strange warmth that the miserable crackling fire in the hearth had failed to provide.  But the implication of the man’s words was chilling.

The rider held his blade in a warning fashion, still unsure of the giant man’s intentions.

“I am not here to harm you,” the giant rumbled calmly.  “You can put that away.”

Slowly the man lowered the tip of his blade.  At last, returning it back to its sheath.

“What do you mean by saying this thing is not truly dead?” the man asked, gesturing back to the body on the table, his tense posture slightly easing.

The giant moved slowly closer, holding up a wax-sealed glass vial into the firelight.  Something within the vial squirmed and writhed against the flickering glow of the fire, casting a wriggling web of shadows on the inner walls of the cabin, seeming to make the immolated body of the troll wrench and flex responsively.

“What is that?!” the man reflexively reached again for the hilt of his sword.

“It is what is draining out of that unfortunate creature there on the table,” the giant responded, “The last of what remains of its ‘living’ essence.”

The man flinched at the words but stepped carefully away from where the black “essence” had been pooling on the dirt floor.  A tendril of the black puddle, suddenly followed the shuffling movement of the man’s foot, as if seeking it by some wet-oily probing.

“Slowly,” the giant cautioned. “That candle you dropped.  Its flame still embers in the wick.   Pick it up carefully, cupping it against the breeze.”

Cautiously, the man crouched and retrieved the fallen saucer. The candle had bent in the fall but was still securely fixed in the drying puddle of the wax that filled the plate.  A small orange point of light, glinted off of the blackened wick, embedded in the tallow.

The giant gently pulled the door of the cabin closed behind him, reducing the noise of the storm gusts outside of the hermitage.  With a large hand seeming to finger a small twig, the giant picked up the plank that the man had used to brace open the door.  The firelight in the hearth seemed to brighten the room, now that the cold wet wind no longer competed with its influence upon the inner chamber.

“Gently blow on the wick, and it will ignite again,” the giant instructed, now a little more revealed by the inner firelight.

The giant had a ruddy complexion, deeply tanned, yet by more than just the influence of the sun.  His large build was powerful, his hair a reddish color that looked almost bronze.  A gentle golden light seemed to emanate from the giant’s exposed skin, making it seem more like a metallic luster of polished brass.  The man’s garb was an assemblage of tanned hides, and goat’s hair weave, along with dark coverings of wool.

As the man coaxed the flame back to life with the gentle huff of his breath, a light of recognition for his erstwhile giant companion followed the brightening of the ember as it gathered back into a flame.

“I am called Ryden.  Who are you?” the man asked, still keeping a wary eye on the black liquid tendril that had extended out of the bloodied puddle near his feet.

“Who I am, is of no consequence,” the giant responded.  “What is of immediate concern is that you hold that candle down where that line of the creature’s essence approaches your foot.”

Forgetting the implied danger for that brief moment, the man, known as Ryden, looked and saw that the black oily stream had inched closer to where he had been standing.  He froze, but the giant admonished him quietly. “You not bear the enlivened flame. Lower it near the darkness and watch carefully.”

Carefully Ryden did so, squatting and holding the candle and saucer towards the wet, black tendril, and suddenly it recoiled and seemed to join back into the larger pool of black blood, from which it had arisen.  Startled the man almost feel backward from his crouched position.

“The darkness cannot abide in the presence of the light.  You would do well to remember that, my young friend.  Bear the light, and you need never fear the darkness.”

The words were comforting and strong. Reassuring.

At last, the man knew to whom he was speaking.

The giant man present in the room opposite him was the one the people in the lakeside villages of Skorlith referred to, in hushed tones, as ‘The Walker’.  A man of mysterious origin, or so the stories told.  Rumored to be an ancient Surface Worlder, whose primeval residence in the Mid-World was established long before the coming of other men and the earliest families had formed the primal settlements, then communities, and later thriving cities.  Every one of the rural communities had its own legend about him.  Some were more fanciful than others.  Some cast him as the hero.  Others as the villain of the tales.

The giant man was an enigma.  Said to be unaging.  A walking mystery, who some men feared as did the beast men that were rumored to occupy the dark forested wilds of the Moon Kingdom in the northlands. But to the old ones among the Skolithians, many had felt a certain comfort in his presence, long before the fearful tales of him took root.

Seeing the giant man now, revealed in the flickering firelight, Ryden realized that perhaps many of the fanciful rumors he had heard of this giant man since boyhood, might very well have contained many surprising elements of truth.

*Scene 11* 8:30 (The Creek Bed Graveyard)

Eventually, we felt the wagon level off and gradually ease down the final grade of the winding road. Nell drove the team and the wagon beyond the stone-cut stable gates, past the large grain bin doors, and down the frontage road at the base of the escarpment. We approached a footbridge that spanned a dry creekbed. To the left of the bridge, was a widened basin of stagnant water, beneath a steep rockface of the escarpment. The assemblage of stones around the basin was covered with blackened lichen and dead moss, where the flowing water had once poured out of a cleft in the rock escarpment higher up the rock cliff face.

Begglar dismounted the buckboard seat at the head of the wagon and steadied Nell as she gathered her skirts and pivoted out of the high seat descending to the ground. Dominic sprung from over the back gate, through the loop cover, and pulled back the wagon cover ties, securing them around the bow posts. He lowered the wagon gate again, to assist us in unloading.

“Where are we going? Are we getting out now?” one of the travelers asked me.

“We are,” I responded, “There is something we must do before we go further.”

A young man piped in, “What are we gonna do?”

“Something we call the Shibboleth test,” I answered cryptically.

“The which?”

“Shibboleth. We’ll explain more when we get out of this wagon.”

Begglar secured the horses’ reins to a hitching post near the edge of the dried streambed, just shy of the stone bridge. Dominic stood attendant as we parted the wagon canvas and crawled down the loading gate.

When I emerge from the wagon, Miray clutched my hand tightly, still hiding behind me a bit, avoiding any unchaperoned contact with Becca. She was trying to be brave, and I could feel the slight trembling in her hand as she warily moved opposite from any direct line of sight to the girl. The incident on the upper escarpment had terrified her and had sobered her to the possibility of what Becca might be capable of. If these two had been friends once, as Becca had claimed, there certainly was no sign of that affinity now.

Distracted by all that had gone on, I now noticed that the sky had darkened quite a bit, from the time we had taken to descend the winding road. There was a greenish tint to it, and that olive light bathed everything below it into a kind of a bruised cast. The rock walls of the escarpment, though carpeted in dead blackened moss, spotted with bright green blisters of lichen where the water had once flowed and splashed over their surfaces, now looked beaten and bruised.

Miray and I ambled towards the open stone railing of the short bridge.

“You okay?” I asked her.

Miray nodded but did not look up at me, careful not to be distracted from her wary marking of Becca’s visible position in relation to hers.

In a whisper, Miray pleaded quietly in words that I was not sure were meant to be heard, “Don’t let her get me.”

The winds were picking up, adding a chill to its breezy buffeting. Leafy detritus crackled and stirred across the undulating exposed stone slopes and concavities that once had been underwater, drawing my attention back into its plight. A swirling breeze teased the dead leaves scattered helter-skelter in the dried streambed, bouncing them and raking them across their headstones, as if mocking the sanctity of the graveyard and their helpless detachment from deserting the ranks of the overarching boughs above. It was very possible that these dervish winds had been the very invisible knives that had stropped and cut through the branches above, stripping the skeletal arms of their green children, while the now waterless creek dried up their exposed roots that had extended below the brow of the banks and below the former waterline. It was as if the dark roots had gripped and curled around the broken and exposed stones in the streambed, desperately trying to squeeze from them any remaining moisture to sustain their strength to resist the constant hectoring and heckling of the mocking winds. What we were witnessing was the struggling aftermath scene of a battlefield of nature.

Miray and I studied these things in a solemn sadness that choked away all comments we might have made. Miray still kept an eye out for Becca, always moving around me to an opposite side away from her vicious gaze. Becca was still flanked between her two self-appointed male guards. I was grateful to them for sensing the need to keep these two girls separate for the time being, but I knew it was something that could not always be maintained throughout the days ahead on our journey. There would be another confrontation, but I hoped it would be later rather than sooner. Whatever was wrong with Becca’s attitude towards Miray, would not be easily solved by me keeping them monitored, distracted, and apart.

The others in the group milled about, examining the dried creekbed and the stand of tall trees that framed its banks in their rustling regiments. Some of them, though not all seemed to notice the interplay of the natural struggle too. I could see it in the way they observed their surrounding, their looks drew toward those things I had noticed, resulting in solemn expressions. Four of them, in particular, appeared to be gaining an understanding of this place and its deeper import that I had not noticed in them before. When some of them noticed me watching them, they smiled, slightly, but continued in their scrutiny of the land and its conditions. I suspected they had at last given their names to at least someone in our company of Mid-Worlders, even if it was not shared with me. That was something, at least, I consoled myself. If I was not the one to lead this party and this quest and had misunderstood my inner promptings, perhaps, there was someone, yet to be revealed, who would rightfully assume that role soon.

The left side of the bridge shelved upward but had a wider and deeper pool that now was mostly filmy mud and stagnant water where a waterfall had once hollowed out its upper basin before spilling down into the stream. The stream was roughly five to six feet deep, judging from the banks and extended roots from the trees that had once been fed and nourished by the fresh water from the side of the escarpment.

Oddly, it reminded me of a verse in the Ancient Text, which seemed strangely pertinent to the imagery presented by the starved creek, now lacking the liquid flow that had once given it life.

“One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out.”

John 19:34 NLT

The creekbed cut and channeled beyond the stone bridge, in the distance, did not bear a spear, but a sword, shadowed in the dappled and shifting patina of the branches and leaves of the trees that overhung the now waterless creek.

Begglar moved up to my side and muttered, “Call them together and have them step down into the dry creek. I will await each one at that sword in the distance. Dominic will usher each to stand before me there to be tested, and he will return alone to escort the next when we are done. Keep them here until they are sent for. It will not do for any of them to overhear what I have to ask them or to hear what others before their turn have responded. Nell will stand with those who have completed their test. I will signal you when to come to me at the last.”

I sighed, “They are an impatient lot. What shall I do to keep them here until they are called.”

Begglar folded his arms and a half-smile crept into the corner of his face, and he winked at me with his answer.

“My suggestion would be that you tell them the story. You were once very good at that, as I recall. And for you, cooking for them is definitely not an option.”

*Scene 12* 20:44 (The Grawplins of Xarm)

In the massive stone city, the regent capital of Xarm, the seeds of war were beginning to break the soil of the city’s monotonous daily life. The ramparts had been cleared of the recent hanging dead, and the dread monarch had not been seen on the balconies or walking the parapets for a few days now, but that did not hinder his subjects from carrying out his recent orders.

The Apothecaries had gathered their supplies, preparing their laden war wagons. Barrels and barrels of the black, mysterious water had been transported under heavily guarded Xarmnian patrolled caravans, crossing through deeply timbered backtrails winding up into the hills near the breaks of the highland escarpment close to a series of densely forested waterfalls known as “The Cascades.” These were a combination of twelve falls fed by four major rivers and tributaries, each within a rough mile of the others with some degree of variation. The Xarmnians had taken a few years to stockpile the mysterious barrel-bound waters before varying the routes and frequency of replenishment journeys.

A shrewd observer, daring speculation far from the potential ears of any Xarmnian official or potential informant, might venture to comment on the strange coincidence that the population of Trolls throughout the Mid-World countryside suddenly began to emerge and increase in direct correlation to these clandestine restocking journeys.

The priesthood of a now-defunct cult that once had occupied “The Cascades” area, had all but mysteriously disappeared, as if as a response to a shared signal. Adherents and acolytes of the strange cult eventually disperse and blended back into their respective communities, refusing to talk about their former lives and loyalties.

Oddly enough, many of the priests of the former mystic order looked very much like the haggard and bearded members of the hooded enclave sect that presently comprised the regiments of the Xarmnian Apothecaries.

The city was aswarm with activity. Merchants and stockmen loaded all manners of foodstuffs: fat grain sacks; wheels of cheese; primed churns of butter; husk-wrapped haunches of beef, deer, and elk; dried and smoked meats rolled in cheese cloths and sausage casings; canisters of spices; ropes of pepper clusters; netted garlic buds; and barrels of ale and fresh fruit and water. An army could not stand on the field of battle if it was not well-nourished.

Xarmnian armories outfitted filing ranks of soldiers in weaponry, and armaments. Destrier war horses were led through the city streets and markets, attended by fierce-looking men, both riding and leading the powerful animals. Spindly youths were conscripted and forced into the war-making efforts as squires, pages, stewards, bannerets, and vassals.

Females were corralled, cornered, and loaded into caged box wagons. They came either walking upright led by the arm of a forceful grasp or were carried like grain sacks over the shoulders of large and scarred men with a signet of the royal crest on their garments. The captives’ ages ranged from barely adolescent to just shy of the age where their comeliness and feminine attributes began to lose their carnal and sensual appeal. Silent tears wet many of the girlish faces huddled closely together in the box wagons. They knew why they were being taken and these cowed women also knew better than to resist their captors. Xarmnian command relished the challenge of breaking the spirit of any who dared. Evidently, a full stomach and bladder weren’t the only pangs of hunger to be met for the men at the end of each brutal day of fighting.

Those male youths deemed unfit for any kind of military service whether in the fighting or in the supporting efforts were considered to be wastrels and these were snatched off of the streets and clandestinely taken to an inner courtyard, called the Grawplin chamber. The large chamber occupied a courtyard set to the back of the castle keep, near the sparring fields. It was open to the sky above, but entirely closed off by high ramparts, constructed of cut, chiseled, stacked, and fitted stone. Each stone of the wall of this special inner courtyard, had been milled, grooved, and channeled, with one side especially grind-polished, and turned so that the polished inner faces of the stones formed smooth, tightly-fitted walls, allowing no risk that a tool, hook or claw might chance to find a grasp hold in a mortar groove to scale the inner well and achieve the high observing deck and thus escape through the halls of the castle. The wastrel teens were imprisoned within this chamber for no less than a full day without food or water. The noonday sun peered into the high opening of the chamber, intensifying the heat in the polished prison hold that bore neither vents nor windows that might allow cross-breezes to cool the sweltering temperatures or mitigate the heat of its fierce flaming eye.

Those captive wastrels that survived the first grueling day of these conditions were, in the evening, finally given prepared meats dropped to the floor from the upper overhead gallery, that had been laden with the elixir of the Xarmnian apothecaries. A lever opened a well in the middle of the courtyard where shielded access to a water well, allowing the captives to lower a rope and bucket into the well and draw up water to slake their cruelly cultivated thirsts.

All access portals to the inner well were controlled by iron entry gates that were locked from the outside. Inside this secured courtyard, there were a series of low strong boxes, fixed and secured to the floor, with their doors locked during the first terrible day. Once the wastrels had feasted on the meat and drank the water from the well, most summarily fell into a deep sleep.

Guards then entered the chamber and stealthily opened the ranks of boxes before the morning of the second day. Each box allowed some degree of relief from the forthcoming heat of the rising sun. A small dual vent on the bottom floor of each box provided a waste drain and a narrow air vent that allowed cooler air to arise into the box to provide shelter from the sun and heat. The second day passed for the most part without additional provision of food until the evening, yet the water well remained open. The wastrels naturally were conditioned to take shelter in the boxes, only coming out for food and water. Fatigue and lethargy, caused by these conditions, ensured that the captive wastrels were in no condition to resist the King’s servants who came in to ensure the process went smoothly. On the evening of the second day, the servants entered the chamber to ensure all of their weakened prisoners were each in their own “sleeping box”. The joint and muscle soreness would have set in by then, so the half-aware prisoners could not resist their jailers as they curled them up securely into each box.

On the morning of the third day, the wastrels would awaken to the realization that each of their sleeping boxes had been locked and sealed them in, and that something strange was happening to their bodies. They felt a searing pain, growing in their joints.

A commanding voice addressed them from the upper gallery. A voice that seemed hypnotic, and powerful. A voice that, even in their individual pain, they could not resist hearing, being in awe of, and at last loving.

“My children. You are the new order. You are my Grawplins. You are in transition. For the next three days, you will feel the fire of a new power in your body. This fire will burn away your old useless life and make you into something more than you ever could have been in your miserable lives. You are being given a gift that you did not deserve, because of the clemency of the King, The Son of Xarm. The King believes you are worth something to him. You will feel the change in your bones and sinews, your muscles and organs. You will be given physical power to combat the forces that threaten the King’s glorious empire. You will be given shares from the King’s table. You will be made useful to this Kingdom, and you will help to achieve the rule and influence of the Xarmnian empire. You will be given gifts of change and disguise, a way to elude capture and discovery. You will be given the insight to face your enemies and see into them and retrieve their greatest personal fears. You will finally be given the respect you deserve as servants of the King. Your sworn fealty is your key to freedom. Once you are willing to swear this fealty, you will each be released from your box, to join in the war effort to achieve power through might, and share in the spoils of this great empire. We shall give you a few days to think on these things. You will each be fed as you begin your change, my children. My servants will attend to your needs, as you pass this day in the darkness of your boxes. These are the graves of your former miserable lives. When you are at last freed from each of these coffins, your old life will have passed, and your new life will begin as a Troll army of spies serving our dread sovereign, The Son of Xarm. Long live The Son of Xarm! Say it with me.”

A lackluster noise arose from a scattering of prisoners within the boxes, seeming to comply with the order from the voice, in practice, if not in spirit.

“Consider well, that this phrase must enthusiastically come from your miserable lips if you expect to be fed and watered this day or the next, my reluctant children. Now let’s try this again. Long Live The Son of Xarm!”

The second response was arguably much stronger than the first. But the voice did not seem satisfied, nor did it make a further reply.

Shihor has witnessed the exchange from the gallery, three days prior.

He had been morbidly interested in the Grawplining process but was frustrated by the fact that he was unable to watch what specifically happened to the wastrels. During their transformations, they were caged individually in a locked strong box with only breathing holes and slits where food might be shoved into the box by a cringing servant who may have narrowly missed losing a few bitten fingers, in their attempt to feed those monstrous creatures. The transitions required that the wastrel remained in darkness. The resulting Trolls would be light-sensitive for a while afterward, while the process continued beyond “the extreming” of the initial days.

Now Shihor walked and stood among the boxes listening quietly, seeking some assurances on whether or not one or more of the boxes might finally be ready to be opened. Incubation (also called “the extreming” in which the most radical physical alterations occurred) was said to be slowing within five days, but that was a general estimate that did not always prove true. Their bone density was like iron, and their raging strength was equal to that of wild primates. The pain in their contorted bodies drove their savagery. Their hands grew large, and their knuckles hardened like stone. Their skulls grew thick and dense with large occipital bulbous ridges. Their faces compressed into a jowly fatness, as their spines contracted and shortened. Their thighs and shins thickened and contracted, shortening their natural height. It was only when these boxes grew quiet for a full day, that anyone might even consider opening the latches. The Grawplins were extremely dangerous if let loose too early.

Vicious tales were told about them around the campfires. Of a Grawplin that had twisted and ripped off the arm of one of its keepers and beat him with it while he bled out. Of a Grawplin that sprang out of its box and tore the head off of one of its feeders, when someone failed to secure its box latch. Of ranks of soldiers being trapped between an untimely releasing of Grawplins onto the battlefield and the soldiers fleeing into the bristling spears of their enemies, rather than being cut asunder by these berserking creatures. The military council had taken a hit on that one. Releasing Grawplins into the war theater could either prove fortuitous or disastrous. The aforementioned untimely release had caused Xarmni to suffer a humiliating defeat against an array of Skolithians, and it had emboldened them to believe that Xarmni’s forces could be successfully repelled. There were limitations to using Grawplins on the fields of battle. Each battle unit now had to allow for a new rank officer to govern them in the proper usage of Grawplins, and that officer had to be a schooled and certified Apothecary, with credentials and recommendations from that shadowy group. Grawplins could only be released at night, and only within five days of taking their first taste of the elixir. Grawplins could be converted and confined during a longer military march, however, the wastrels had to be found among the ranks of the pages and bannerets. Young enough to endure the change, yet not performing other field-essential duties that kept the soldiers supplied, dressed, and actively fighting, or waiting to relieve the moving phalanx formations.

Shihor was just angry enough to try opening a few of the boxes just so he could revel vicariously in the violence that might ensue from it. He was not a man to eschew danger. Rather, he reveled in it. Took a sinister pleasure from threatening and mocking those who sought to avoid it at all costs. Cowards were not tolerated in the outer Xarmnian scouting militias or the Protectorate Guards. Though there were plenty enough of them occupying the high ranks of leadership–Council members that were too fat to ever mount a tall horse or even a squat donkey.

He had already wasted too much time. Three days of deliberations in the royal council among those stuffed, pretentious cowards coming after seven grueling days of hard riding that had taken him from the eastern coast, across country plains, fields, down into valleys, and over mountain passes into the formidable stone and iron gates of Xarm city, was too much politics to be borne.

Jehaza could keep that pretentious rank he’d offered him, Shihor thought to himself, if such a position brought with it the expectations of enduring these bloviated councils.

He was anxious to set out again, with or without a Troll, but his last mount he had slaughtered in his haste and had it fed to some of the young street ruffians, after the butchers had quartered, bled, hide stripped, and deboned the fresh meat. The resulting steaks had been boiled in stewpots to soften the meat before slathering the result into a sickly-sweet simmering vat of the black elixir prepared by the Royal Apothecaries. It was a pity. That final mount had been a good horse. Now it served another ignoble purpose: Transition food for a pack of nascent Trolls.

The Grawplins were useful militarily or for savage sporting events where traitors were led into an arena where a few were released and men and women could make wagers on the outcomes, yes, but Shihor hated when they became full Trolls. They were more docile than in their Grawplining stage. Almost servile, yet had an infuriating proclivity towards mischief, often hiding from those seeking them, only to turn up at the last moment, pretending to have waited on the searchers to finally exhaust their efforts and capitulate to these beings’ superior craftiness at becoming inconspicuous. Such annoyances often got them beaten when they could be discovered, so the Trolls were incentivized to not let that happen very often. Still, the kingdom had a peculiar use for them as well, and their kind had been running thin as of late. They were useful in brokering deals with the mysterious creature known as The Pan who stalked the darkened forests of the north with his infernal ranks of Half-Men.

If Shihor were to go where he planned, he must suffer the journey in the company of one of these Trolls. Perhaps, he reasoned one more day was warranted, just to be sure his traveling designee in whichever of these boxes contained it was fully resolved into becoming what was needed…a slobbering servile, grunt that could be used to spy, scout, and blend in when necessary. And most importantly, get him past the shadowy wood of Pan’s Moon Kingdom.

*Scene 13* 46:08 (The Seed of Nachash)

Within the cabin at Basia, Ryden sat near the fireplace on a wooden stool opposite the giant man, revealed to be “The Walker”.

“What do we do with the body?” Ryden asked wringing his hands together, casting cautious glances back towards the blackened corpse on the table.

“The answer is beside you,” the giant rumbled, “We must complete what has already been started.”

Ryden whipped his head around, “Beside me?! Wha-What’s beside me!?”

The giant gestured with the back of his left hand towards the fire now crackling in the hearth with a healthier glow.

“The remains of that creature on the table. It was not always in the likeness as it appeared before the burning. Its once-body was overtaken. Crushed and reshaped like clay, into its present form. Its life was snuffed out by the remains of the seed that entered it. A formation of the nachash. Only light can dispel the darkness of nachash. Every living thing touched by the nachash, bears the reversal of what the nachash once was. The light-bearer and the children of its seed only bear the darkness now, for since the beginning it has rebelled against The Light.”

Ryden leaned forward, “I am not sure I understand. The body on the table appears to be that of a Troll.”

“That is your word for it. The body is only a field that has seed planted in it. The life of any creature resides in its blood and its breath. A co-mingling. A twisting strand that formulates life, between The Creator and the created. Nachash has never been able to create, but only corrupt that which is birthed with a given beginning. Nachash bites into the heart of mankind, and into the intertwining of its lifeforce. It adds itself into the co-mingled dance as a divisive strand. The union of a man and a woman is a sacred symbol of mankind’s intended relationship to The One. Its seed is a dark thread, appearing to our eyes like this…” here the giant brought forth, from a pocket, the glass vial he had shown before.

“Is that what came out of him?” Ryden asked.

“It is what got into him,” the giant responded calmly.

“Where does it come from?” Ryden asked, peering into the twisting tendrils that spun and wove within the glass cylinder.

“This is what remains of the physical form of a Nephil from the days when I lived in my father’s house in the Surface World and the beni-Elohim forcibly took from us our sisters and daughters mates as they chose. The union was an abomination to The One, but they saw it as a method of weaving themselves into the bloodline of mankind to be joint heirs of the gifts that would eventually be given to mankind in the prophecies of The One to come. The stars of The One were cursed for what they had done, and they were eternally bound into Tartarus–the place in the outer realm where no light shines. Their essence cut into the seed of men and insinuated itself coiling around its strand like a serpent as it entered the ovum. The resulting offspring were giants.”

“You’re a giant,” Ryden offered, “does that mean…?”

“No!” the large man thundered, a look of disgust on his face. The muscles in his neck corded in revulsion at the very idea.

Ryden flinched and shrank back, afraid that the giant man might strike him for the insult, but the giant’s face then flooded with sadness, that Ryden had not expected to follow.

“Young man, it is clear you have no frame to refer to what I have witnessed through the epochs of time, and through the folds and creases in the fabric that divides this veil from that former world. Though I know you meant no harm, I do understand that my size compared to yours may confuse you, into thinking we are not the same. But let me assure you, that I am just as much a man as you are.”

Ryden tried to relax but still stiffened himself in anticipation of a blow that would not come.

“When I walked the land of the Surface World, it was not as it appears in the recent accounts of men from that place. The atmosphere was lush and full of the lingering Breath. Death had not worked its way into mankind as securely as it has through the course of their time. Our bodies were strong. Our food was good for the eye as well as the form. Death and decay took time to leave their mark in our inner forms and upon the surface of our skin. The morning star was veiled under a bridal canopy of glorious clouds. The seas were contained within the land as well as in the skies above us. Our bones grew strong, and we grew tall and our hands and sinews grew rough as we worked the land and cut and hewed wood and stone for our dwellings. The strength of the Maker’s forces holding the world did not pull upon us as strongly as they do now. We walked among large beasts, but were not cowed by them, nor did they fear us, as they do now. Before I was taken to this place, I was shown what would be. That I would leave the world I had known but would leave my son as an omen for what would come after, when the world would be judged for its rebellions. At first, the shining ones had taken our sisters and daughters, and had unholy unions, producing the Nephils that were so large they killed their own mothers at their births. The giant Nephilim retained only as much of their humanity as good be given by their human fathers and mothers, but the seed of nachash dominated them, and they stood taller than I–and bore six fingers on their hands and six toes on each of their feet. Their eyes were striated with black webbing as if a spider had spread inky nets over the colors in their eyes, for darkness lived within them and came out of them. These Nephil were near twice my size, and their mouths contained double rows of teeth with which they tore and devoured flesh. Men were terrified of them, but some venerated them and brought them gifts of appeasement and began to offer them their children to ensure they could gain their favor.”

Ryden rubbed his head, trying to imagine the immensity of a being nearly twice the size of the giant man who sat across from him. The tale seemed unbelievable, but the graveness by which the giant delivered the account, bore no hint of insincerity or deception.

“The latter outrage was more grave than the former, for mankind began worshipping and currying favor with these monstrous and unnatural creatures, rather than The One who gave them both life and the promise of the restoration of their fellowship with Him. These actions and the neglect of those who had betrayed The One grieved The Giver. He determined that this line of monstrous creatures that had insinuated itself into the human bloodline would find no peace either in the Surface World or in any of those to come. They, like their progenitors, were cursed and banished, destined for the outer darkness of Tartarus, to be forever separated. The Ancient account’s book of Jude testifies to this. My great-grandson was to be the last of the race of men living in the Surface World, before The One separated the old world from the new, by breaking the barriers of the world’s waters between the land and the skies above. The land would be renewed and reborn out of the waters of the old, just as children were born out of the waters within the wombs of their mothers. But the waters were to be a force of destruction for those of unholy unions, and both the land and sea would crush them, rendering their forms inert, but separating them between the old world and the new, across even the barrier that separates this Mid-World from the Surface World. The cursed ones of the Nephilim lost their bodies. Their flesh and their blood became this blackness and was drained here, compressed by the crushing of the world they once ruled, and flowing into dark hidden pools within this world.”

“If they could not pass into the next world, what became of their spirits?” Ryden queried.

“Their spirit, their nepes was part human, so the breath that gave mankind life, cannot be unmade. Anything that was made cannot ever fully be unmade, so it passed into the between worlds, but is bound to the Surface World until their time of judgment comes. They are a plague to the race of men. They are the shedim, forever seeking the possession of a form in lieu of the one that was taken from them. Like no other, they crave form and substance. They are obsessed with it and every carnal delight they once enjoyed when they had their mighty forms among men and were worshipped by them. The shedim are bound to the Surface World and its fate, but the lost essence of flesh and what passes for their blood remain bound here. And this is why I have been on my most recent journey into these highlands. To seek the source from which these remains are being used to seed and seduce the men and women of this land. My children and grandchildren.”

Ryden shook his head. The number of incredible revelations coming from this giant man was much to process and think over.

“H-How do you know all this? Who are you? If you are as old as some say, how come you haven’t aged?”

The giant man reached forward and stirred the fire quietly, gazing into its dancing light with intensity and focus, almost as if he had not heard Ryden’s questions.

“My name is Hanokh. Although in the modern tongue it may be pronounced Enoch. My son was the oldest man to ever live upon the Surface World, yet I was here for most of his adult life. His life span was unnaturally long for men dwelling on the Surface World, but it was an attestation to the longsuffering mercy of The One towards our kind. He also had a son whose name reflected the grief he and I had over the rebellious heart of man. The One is ever merciful, but cannot abide the darkness of sin. It pierces His heart. He had to separate Himself from us, or all flesh would perish, for His physical presence is like a harbinger. It clears the way before Him, pushing the darkness away. The level of sin and darkness present in mankind began to grow to such an extent that men began to curse Him whenever He took form upon our world, for His presence seared them like the heat rising off of these flames. He could no longer embrace His children for they fled from Him and cursed His name. The dragon’s seed coiled and recoiled within them. Devouring them and tormenting them.”

The fire popped and sparked as wetness in the burning wood split and the sap inside it met with the bright fingers of the flames. The giant turned his face and sad eyes towards Ryden, and Ryden noticed the wetness of tears within them, and a sheen of wet where they had coursed down his large bearded face and pearled into the tangle of his thick wooly beard.

“Families of men were more intentional with the names they gave their children. More thoughtful. Children represented both the past and the future. Their births were either celebrations or occasions for grief. When man reverenced The One, they often sought His Purpose and blessing in the naming of their children. I know I did. My name means ‘teaching’ or ‘lesson’. My father’s name–Yared–meant ‘coming down,’ for it was in his birthing time that the ‘shining ones’ from the Heavens descended from the mountain and took our girls and women. The ‘shining ones’ have no females among them. They appear as powerful men in bright linen, but never have we ever encountered a female equivalent to our kind among them. They envied our gifting to produce direct offspring. They asked us probing questions that made many uncomfortable at first, but eventually, we became more accustomed to their questions. Some even began to pity them. Why would The One not make equivalent mates for them? They questioned His justice since they no longer pursued fellowship with Him. Both of my parents felt so unease around these golden beings. Painful though it might prove to be, they sought The One, crying out to Him to intervene, for there was talk among the councils of men that we should offer the ‘shining ones’ our sisters and daughters as wives, giving to these beings what The One had chosen not to.”

Ryden wrung his hands, feeling a coldness in them, despite the rising warmth from the fire, “Why would The One not create suitable mates for them, if they had the desire and capacity to need and express love?”

The giant squared his shoulders and leaned back, regarding Ryden with a sobering expression.

“The ‘shining ones’ were in league with the Nachash-the serpent that had deceived our mother and enticed our father to join her in the first disobedience that allowed death into the Surface World and into any world where men might go, filling the land with spiritual darkness, strangling the spirit of man, cutting off his connection to The One. These had no desire for love, despite what they claimed and led others to believe. When they were given what they wanted, they began to take more than was offered. The things done to our daughters and sisters were horrible and shameful. There was no love or care in these golden ones. The darkness within them took a while to show on them, but by then it was too late. As I said before, the ‘mighty men’ birthed out of these unnatural unions, torn their mothers asunder, and both the ‘child thing’ and their fathers, consumed the dead flesh of the mothers in celebration of what they had done. When the men of the council realized what they had done, they became infuriated but were too terrified to do anything about it. They feared ‘the shining ones’ and their fearsome and enormous offspring. The fear eventually subsided into futility and resignation. They dared not seek The One for remedy, for the shameful ways they had treated Him, but neither could they mount up a meager resistance of men against beings so powerful, so they waded into the further outrage and eventually worshipped and praised the might of these new half-human creatures, even after the Guardians took the ‘first fathers among the shining ones’ and binding them and casting them into the dark fires of Tartarus. The half-human giant beings we called Nephilim. My family resisted them from the beginning. We never surrendered our sisters or daughters to them. They were evil, and whenever one of their kind came to snatch one of our women away, invisible guardians thwarted the attempt. Our family was protected because we still held reverence and worship The One who had given all life. We were born into conflict. We trained ourselves to be ready to resist the darkness that was coming. I sought council from my fathers and his fathers, and our fathers before them, for Adam was yet living when I was coming of age. He taught me many things, for he and his wife knew what it was like to walk in the physical presence of The One. The stories he told me, mystified me and raised a craving within me to also know what it was like to walk with The Presence. I begged for it. Hungered for it, but father Adam told me that it was only possible if one rejected all sin, and continued to follow in the ordinances of annual sacrifice seeking the imperfect atonement until the prophesied One came back to redeem us. I wept greatly, for I knew it was becoming far beyond the capacity of man to live a holy and sinless life. Death was working its way into us more and more each day. Temptations and feelings of futility and hopelessness threatened to cause me to abandon what I so yearned for. To be in His presence and to fellowship directly with The One.”

“What happened?” Ryden asked.

“One day while praying and offering a lamb upon the altar, I felt heat in my body, not just from the fire I had built, but a strong persistent warmth that I could not lessen by moving away from the altar.”

“What caused this warmth? Were you sick with a fever?”

The giant filled his cheeks with air and exhaled slowly.

“A fever makes you feel cold, though your body burns. No,” the giant corrected, “This was more than that. My name was called, and the sound of it seemed to come from many places and all around me. I stood there bewildered, for I could see no one, and I had journeyed to the old altar of our fathers alone on that day to give sacrifice. I searched the sky and the fields and the trees around me, looking for the source of The Voice, wondering if I had heard it or only imagined that I had heard it by wishing for it.”

“What happened then?” Ryden leaned forward again, fascinated.

“As I turned back to the altar, a white lamb stood before me, watching me but not moving to eat grass or move away from the smoldering fire burning behind it. I stared at the small creature and it gazed back at me, its ears slightly twitching. I wondered if somehow I had only imagined having sacrificed the lamb I had brought, and that this was my mind giving me a dream even as I stood awake and shaken by the sight. I reached for my stone knife to fulfill what was required of me, if I had only dreamed the duty, I thought I had performed, but this time I hesitated, and that was when The Lamb spoke to me.”

“What did it say?”

“It spoke my name again, and its voice was like the sound of many waters crashing upon the shores of the sea. There was power in that Voice but also compassion and a gentleness that I had never experienced before, even as a babe in the arms of my mother.”

The giant took a deep breath, captured by the memory that informed his present story.

“‘Your desires have been granted, for you have sought me with all of your heart,’ The Lamb said. ‘I AM HE WHO WAS AND HE WHO IS TO COME. Remove the coverings from your feet, for the ground upon which you stand is sacred and consecrated to Me.’ Immediately I fell down before The Lamb, unsure whether I was still awake or had fallen into a deep sleep. The warmth in my body tingled and slightly stung, and I felt a numbness come over me, but as I lay prostrate before Him, I reached down and loosed the bindings from my feet. Weakness came over me and I had no strength to raise my head. Loosening my foot coverings had exhausted me. I was terrified, and wondered if I had offended The One by daring to desire His presence as a sinful man.”

In awe, Ryden found himself leaning forward, towards the giant man, quite taken with his story, almost as if he was somehow a young boy again curled under a blanket in his own childhood bed listening to his father’s bedtime stories, held again in a rapt wonder that forestalled his resistance to the encroachment of sleep. “What happened then?”

“The Voice of The Lamb told me to rise, and somehow I found strength in the warming of my body, enabling me to do so. As I lifted my head, I noticed that The Lamb was quite close to me now, and I saw that its fleece glistened with a fresh whiteness, but that down its back there was a bloodied red scar, and flecks of dried blood matted the line where the line of the wool the bordered a healed scar that should have been fatal to The Lamb, but signified that the creature had been torn through its mid-section between the shoulders and its hind flanks. With sudden recognition, I trembled and my knees went weak and knocked together and I almost fainted, but The Lamb spoke again to me. Its words gave me the power to remain standing though my body felt as though it was going to collapse. Each word seemed to bear my weight and hold me in a bowed position before Him.”

Ryden found himself holding his breath in anticipation of the words that would follow.

“I AM THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN BEFORE THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WORLD. I AM THE LAMB THAT WAS, IS, AND IS TO COME. NO MAN COMES TO THE FATHER BUT BY ME. NO MAN NOR ANY OTHER CREATURE IN HEAVEN AND ON THE ERETZ, OR BENEATH THE SURFACE OF THE ERETZ, NOR AMONG THE STARS OF THE HEAVENS STANDS BEFORE ME, BUT BY MY DESIRE ALONE. I AM THE ONE, THE ONLY SOVEREIGN, AND CREATOR OF THIS WORLD AND THOSE TO COME. I WAS THE LAMB THAT STOOD IN THE GARDEN UPON MY HOLY MOUNTAIN. I AM THE LAMB THAT WAS GIVEN TO PROVIDE A COVERING FOR THE RACE OF MEN AND THEIR BLOODLINE ALONE. THE BLOODLINE OF HUMANS HAS BEEN THREATENED AS IF MY PROPHECIES COULD EVER BE THWARTED. THE REBELLION OF MY FIRE CHILDREN WILL BE PUT DOWN BY THE SEED OF MEN. THEIR CAUSE SHALL NEVER SUCCEED UPON THE ERETZ, NOR IN ANY REALM WHERE MANKIND IS BROUGHT TO DWELL. MY WORD SHALL STAND AND BE FULFILLED IN THE COURSE OF TIME. I HAVE SEEN ITS BEGINNING AND ITS ENDING. NO WORD SPOKEN BY ME SHALL EVER FAIL. I AM THE GUARANTOR OF THE PROMISES GIVEN AND THE FULFILLMENT THEREOF. DO YOU UNDERSTAND, SON OF MAN?'”

The giant swallowed visibly trembling at having been able to repeat the words spoken by The Lamb, fear, and awe even now creasing his forehead, and working the muscles in his cheeks as his jaw bone clenched and unclenched at the memories.

“I had no voice, but to weep, as the words washed over me with a love I could feel, as I cowed in abeyance before Him. I felt my lungs fill again with a fresh breeze and a coolness that eased the warmth that burned in my bones and muscles. I croaked out an acknowledgment that came through me in a quiet whisper. The Voice spoke to me again and this time it came to my ears as the soft, calming voice of a single man. Fearfully, I lifted my eyes and beheld a man standing before me where The Lamb had stood. He was dressed in white linens with a golden sash about his waist and a purple robe of royalty draped over his shoulder. He touched me with a hand that bore a scar in his palm and wrist, and I felt strength return to my muscles and bones and flush through my blood, feeling as if I had been reborn anew at that moment, and all of the power of my youth came back in a flood of energy. The man’s eyes blazed with an inner flame, but it was as the gentle glow of this firelight, providing warmth from the outer cold of the storm that buffets this humble cabin. ‘You have been granted your heart’s desire, son of Yared, son of Mahalaleel, Cainan, Enos, and Seth, and son of the first Touch of My Hand and My Breath-son of Adam. You are well called, Enoch, child of ‘the lesson’, for I have called you to teach the sons of these generations what is to befall them and to instruct them even if they do not yield to My words through your lips. You will be a judgment against them and a witness. A voice calling out in the lands of their wandering, pleading them to return to Me again and hear My Words of love to them. Their end is coming, for I shall remove them from the sins of their flesh, and bathe this world anew. I shall teach you as you walk with Me until the time for words to this generation are over and they no longer choose to listen. I will spare Myself a remnant from among them, and all manner of fowl, mammal, and fish that I have chosen to remain upon the Eretz I have chosen as My Kingdom’s footstool, beneath My Holy Mountain. I will use the sins of my fire sons to scourge this unrepentant generation so that they may consider returning back to Me. Their children shall pass through the waters, and lose the flesh that they have stolen from the people of My Breath. Their bodies will descend into corruption and be buried beyond the reach of the condemned spirits which once inhabited them. They will be made mortal and shall perish in their apostasy. The ‘shining ones’ –My morning stars that I placed among the Heavens–shall forever be bound to the fate of the eretz where I gave mankind their dominion. Mankind, whom they thought to subvert shall one day judge them for their attempt to subvert their bloodline. I shall raise up a nation that I shall call My own portion. I shall use them to drive the seed of this unholy line from the lands I shall give them. I shall require that this generation and the one to follow be scourged and put down by my Holy nation. I shall give this charge to My human forerunning champion named Yeshua, and in his failing, I shall complete the scourge with My Champion to Come, The One I Have Promised to your fathers before you. Now walk with Me and I shall show you many more things that will be to come. I shall spare your line, and your children shall be the root of all mankind that will follow the judgment in the days to come. Your great-grandson, yet to be born, I have chosen for the days ahead. He shall bring the remnant to a place of rest, as the eretz is cleansed to be renewed again and drawn out of its baptismal waters. You shall witness that judgment from a place I have created for the audiences for my councils ahead. Your son soon to be born shall dwell upon this land until the day of his death and I bring the end to this obstinate people. Take heed to My Words and name him well as a testament to the other children and daughters of Adam. I will teach you in My Ways, for you are to be My First Prophet and I shall teach you how to preserve the Words of mankind that will bless all generations to come, for Death shall remain in you from the inheritance of Adam’s seed working to steal away memories. If You remain faithful to Me, I shall preserve you through all the days ahead, so that you shall even witness the fulfillment of the prophecy I shall put in your mouth, before your death to come.‘”

Ryden sat now in stunned silence. His mouth felt dry and his body ached from the tension, having flexed muscles he was unaware of during the course of the giant’s words. He blinked, trying to process all he had learned. The legends he had heard about this giant were nothing compared to the first-hand account he had just heard. This was Enoch, Hanokh of old. Living History. A man that should have been long dead by now, but wasn’t.

Ryden finally broke his silence, clearing his dry throat, “How do you still have strength?”

“I am not from this Mid-World. My time stopped when I left the Surface World. My life is still bound to the world of my birth. Any Surface Worlder coming here, for any period of time, will cease aging for the duration of the time spent here. Time is relative to place. This world is a Mid-place between the Surface World and Excavatia. The coil of time connects them, but The Sovereign One moves through human history in whatever direction He wills. He is not bound by His Creation but transcends it according to His Design. He brought me here long ago, for He knew there would be a time when the outrages of the Surface World would express themselves here. He knew that I would recognize its effect when the time came, along with its parallels in the Surface World from which I came. The days of my great-grandson Noah are returning both here and in the Surface World above. This is the inflection point. I am to fight and expose them here, while the Stone Quests proceed forward again. I have seen their signs in the skies above, even as we once read the signs of the planting and reaping seasons in the days I spent in the old world I left. The Harvesting is coming. Excavatia will be found again. And the enemies of mankind, both seen and unseen are doing everything they possibly can to stop them. This time they are targeting my children.”

Ryden raised his hand, “Wait! Didn’t you say that you left your family back in the Surface World, in the old days? Your son, Methuselah. His death signified the commencement of the judgment. Your grandson, Noah, and his family were spared, according to the accounts in the Ancient Text.”

The giant grunted, “That is true. The words have been written on The Marker Stone from the beginning of the worlds. Their human text was transcribed through the accounts of faithful men, sensing the Presence Breathing Through them onto the ancient scrolls that were copied and preserved throughout human history.”

“I don’t understand,” Ryden scratched his ear, “How is it that you say you have children here if you left your family back there?”

The giant chuckled in a deep and resonant laugh that seem to fill the hovel and push back the darkness in the corners not reached by the firelight.

“Oh, I see,” he rumbled. “How can one have had sons without having a wife to bear him children? Do the intimate ways of a man with a woman still elude you, at such an age?”

Ryden blinked, surprised that he had not already surmised this sooner, “You mean your wife was brought here also?”

Hanokh laughed again, “Of course, my young man. Did not The One say to Adam in the Ancient text, that it is not good for man to be alone? Would The One who can do no wrong and always works to the good of those who love Him, cause me to forsake or abandon my wife of sealed promise if He caused us to become one with each other?”

“But there is no record of it in the Ancient Text?”

“There also was no mention of how we sired sons, nor a full accounting of our daughters, though we did have them, and much more. The Ancient Text covers the History that is pertinent to the revealing of The One. All written words given to it are serving that Purpose. Have you not read where The One Himself said, through His penman David in the Holy line of Kings: ‘Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me’ (Psalms 40:7 & Hebrews 10:7)?”

“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” [John 5:39 KJV]

The giant gave Ryden a moment to process those thoughts and come to a realization. “Are you saying, we are family?”

“Distant though the relations may be, we are. Though you may be related through marriage. There is another here from a later point in Surface World History, though he is not seen much and tends to shy away from large groups. He is something of a recluse, but his family still tolerates his odd eccentricities. He too was given the charge of being one of The One’s appointed prophets. You may have heard of him. He is called The Fire Prophet, though nothing in his appearance would give one cause to recognize him as such. It may be that I will have to seek him out soon, once I discover the present source of the Seed of Nachash. It seems to be traveling through the rivers that flow from these headlands down into the lower valleys. It contaminates the drinking water. I suspect The Pan and his Half-men creatures have a source for it within the deadened woods in the north, but that does not seem to be where the Xarmnians are getting it, nor where it is entering the streams that flow into the rivers. I have been scouting the headlands, tracking back to the source springs from which they originate. The springs seem to be clear, so there must be someplace further downriver, where these dark waters are entering the flow that waters these lands. I need to find the source soon or it will eventually affect everyone drinking the waters downstream. The taint is diluted enough so that it does not readily appear to affect those who drink it. But over time it will, and the results will be disastrous.”

Ryden sighed, “So what about this thing on the table? Do we set it afire?”

The giant harumphed, “For now we wait out this storm. Burning troll smells bad enough. When the storm abates we can slide it off the table into the fireplace. Then we can be on our way.”

“To the rivers then?”

The giant shook his head slowly, “Soon, but first, there is a specific place I must visit, before heading back down from the highlands.”

“The Marker Stone has been buried, if that is what you’re thinking,” Ryden offered.

“I know of that already. No, it is a bit further, next to a place where they built a granary. There is a place near the bottom of the escarpment. A dried river bed remains where fresh water once flowed. The oak tree I planted near the brook to commemorate the terebinth is there. Some called it the “Oak of Moreh”. It is one of the oldest living trees in the Mid-World. It was planted when I was first brought here. Recently a sword was driven into its roots where it extended into the brook, that no Mid-Worlder may remove. I must see for myself if the sword still remains there.”

“A sword?!” Ryden arched an eyebrow quizzically.

“A very particular one, yes,” the giant rejoined.

“And if it remains, will you take it up?”

“No,” Hanokh shook his head solemnly, “It is not for me to do so. The sword is meant only for one man called to wield it. And when he takes it up, I’ll know that the prophecy of the Stone Quests will have been rejoined once more.”

*Scene 14* 19:37 (The Terebinth)

At the base of the escarpment and hilltop granary, Begglar and I gathered our group at the sloped embankment that descended into the dried streambed.  Begglar looked at me and nodded, and I cleared my throat, not sure how to begin.

“There is a reason we stopped here.”

“So, we’ve gathered,” one of the young men snarked.

I gave him a solemn stare and he shrugged sheepishly.

“We are going down into the creek bed.  Each one of us.  I need you all to wait here with me at this bridge until you are called.  Begglar will await you at the cross-split of the stream.  From here you can see there is a sword there.  Begglar will wait for you at the sword.”

Faces turned towards Begglar, and a woman asked, “What are you planning to do with the sword?”

Begglar spoke up, “I will just be asking each of you a question privately.  It is important that you give your own answer to my question, so I need each of you far enough away from the group so that you cannot hear another’s answer.  The sword is a ceremonial sword, a symbol of truth, so it is important that you answer honestly.  The place of this juncture point is significant also.  The roots into which the sword has been placed belong to one of the oldest trees in this land.  The roots are exposed now, but they used to be under the waters of this stream.  Roots represent what your deepest beliefs are, below the surface of what you present to others.  The tree itself is perhaps one of the most significant symbols of all, for it is a Terebinth.”

“What is a terry bince?” Miray asked.

“Terebinth, dear,” Nell corrected gently.

“But what is it?  And what was that word you said, O’Brian?  Back in the wagon.  A Sibby-smeth?  What are these strange words all about?”

“The word is Shibboleth,” I answered, “and it is a good thing that you were not in the land of promise, crossing the Jordan in the days of the ancient judges, when you mispronounced that word, or you would have been struck down by a Gileadite warrior’s blade for doing so.”

“What does that mean?!” another asked, her voice rising in alarm.

“The Ancient Text records the story in the book of the Judges,” I answered calmly, trying to diffuse their uneasiness with the even timbre of my voice.

“Another obscure passage from this Ancient book?  How do you remember all these quotations, and stories?” a young man folded his arms in irritation.

I blushed, partially embarrassed, but committed to making a full account of myself, if I ever hoped to gain their trust, “Actually, it was more than just having read the stories myself, but an incident that happened at the Stone Marker, when I first came to the Mid-World.”

“What happened?”

“I tripped and fell against it, and caught myself with my hands, touching the surface of the stone and the golden letters you saw.”

They looked to Begglar for corroberation, and Begglar nodded.

“The letters touched him,” Begglar assented, “They lept from the stone and covered his body with golden light, flashing across his skin, and, instantly, he fell down to his face. We all witnessed it. O’Brian cried out, but we were afraid to touch him. He reacted as though he had seen something that terrified him.”

They all turned to me and one said, “What did you see?”

I cleared my throat, remembering the shame of that moment, and said simply, “I saw myself, as I really am. And then I saw myself as The One sees me. And then I lost my sight.”

“For three days,” Begglar added. “Jeremiah, our then leader, finally pulled him away from the Stone, but of course all of the rest of us had moved back from it. One does not touch its surface without a profound effect, coming from the experience. We weren’t sure what had happened to O’Brian. He was silent for those three days following. There were times in our journey afterward though, when he had regained both his sight and his voice, that we suggested that perhaps he might want to touch The Marker Stone once more. Kidding, of course.”

“Ha, ha,” I mock laughed.

“So what did it do to you?” a girl asked.

I closed my eyes briefly, remembering the experience. The shame of what I saw in me, and the soothing, and beckoning of what I felt from the Words of the Living Golden Letters. I opened my eyes, seeing the expectant faces, knowing that they might not understand my response.

“The Words live in me. Live through me. It is hard to describe, really,” I fumbled. “Passages of the Ancient Text leap into my thoughts when I experience something in this life. It is almost as if I am living simultaneously in two worlds, but only recently gained the insight to ‘see’ into the second one, and I have a strong sense that yet a third one remains, just outside of these two. That third promises to be grander than both of these. It is strange. It is like being deeply homesick for a place you’ve never been to, but only heard rumors of. But somehow, you know you belong there.

“My memory is like a deep, shadowy well, and when I seem to thirst, a pail of the Golden Letters seemed to rise upward from the well, like a light in a dark tunnel. The passages pour out of me, and that is why Jeremiah kept me near him for most of our journey together. The Golden Letters were what he needed to hear, and they came through me then, before I betrayed the party, when I followed Caleb into The Pan’s forest. Afterward, when Caleb was taken, Jeremiah found it hard to trust me again. And the words in me seemed to fade with his trust. I became confused and irritable. I felt like the blindness had come back to me, only this time it did not cloud my physical eyesight, but something deeper. A perception I had experienced but did not know I possessed before touching The Marker Stone. This darkness lingered in me, eventually causing me to no longer trust myself with a decision. I lacked a clear vision. I became a danger both to myself and to others, and so I eventually parted from our company and moved to that shack, I built in Basia. When I was later discovered by the enemies in this world, and they attempted, unsuccessfully to drown me, I left the Mid-World entirely. Expecting never to be allowed to return. Only the visions and the Voice would not let me stay there. I was brought back here for a purpose, and I believe it is to complete what was left unfinished. The Golden Letters compel me to. The Marker Stone has marked me, and I am now tied to both Its Fate and Its Quests.”

There was a deep and profound quiet for a moment as the group pondered my words, but above and in the distance, the silence was interrupted by the rumble of thunder amid the susurrant rustling of the leaves. The calm seemed pregnant with an ominous threat soon to be birthed in the darkening sky above us. Black and grey fleets of immense clouds skudded across the sky, a juggernaut armada that promised more winds and rains to come.

“We’d better hurry this along,” Begglar grunted, as he moved down into the creekbed, gesturing to Nell. “Bring the wee lass first.”

I released Miray’s hand and nodded reassuringly to her, “It’s okay. Go along with them. I’ll be along afterward.”

Miray seemed reluctant, but she nodded trustingly, and walked to Nell’s outstretched hand, holding fast as Nell helped her down and they made their way across the dried stones, around pits, extruded tangles of roots, washes, and gulleys of the descending creekbed.

We followed them down, taking brief shelter from the stirring winds under the bridge, and stood among the rocks that had brown traces of dried moss from when the water had once flowed over them. The team of horses and wagon were tied and secured above us along the trestle supporting the short bridge and the low walled, railings. They slightly stirred but remained relatively calm.

One of the women stood beside me as we watched Begglar, Nell, and Miray standing in the distance. Begglar on the opposite side of the mysterious sword, Miray stands before it with her back to us, like a young acolyte before a priestly altar. Nell moved to one side, off to the left. Dominic had followed them part way, awaiting his father’s signal to come to escort the next one of our company forward.

The young woman spoke quietly to me, “What do suppose he’s asking her? This Shibboleth thing?”

“I expect so. But I have no specific idea what the question might be.”

The woman cleared her throat, “Well, it clearly not her name, for you already know that already.”

I detected a bit of mirth in the statement and regarded her with a sidelong glance.

“I am familiar with the…,” here she indicated in finger quotes, “…’Shibboleth test’ passage in the Ancient Text. It’s in Judges chapter 12, isn’t it? The story of Jephthah, and the Ephraimites spies. Are you thinking we have a spy among us?”

I gave a noncommittal grunt. “There might be. Begglar seems to think it is important we find out before doing anything else. I feel it is prudent to yield to him in this. I sense something-a vague shadow-but cannot be sure what it is.”

“Considering, he is questioning the young girl, I don’t think it is necessarily a phonetics test, he is giving her, like in the Ancient Text passage. It is, perhaps, something like that in the reason it was done in the past. He is unmasking something, I think. He does seem to feel threatened, and his family stands to risk more than us by merely associating with us. Further so, by joining us and helping us. He must really trust you quite a bit, doing so.”

I remained quiet, cautiously wondering what she was leading up to.

After a moment, she sighed, like she had finally made up her mind, and then offered me her hand. “My name is Lindsey,” she said simply. “If Begglar and his family can put that much faith in you, so can I. For whatever it is worth, I am with you and will support you in your leadership of this ‘quest’ thing.”

I turned more fully toward her and took her proffered hand. My eyes moistened and threatened to reveal how profoundly moved I was by her sincere offering of support and trust.

I choked back a lump in my throat, knowing that I had not yet proven myself worthy of anything, much less her confidence.

“Thank you,” I said, unable to say much more.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she teased, lightening the moment.

“I shall strive not to,” I added, “…with help.”

We turned to watch as Nell led Miray away and up near the large oak overshadowing the copse and streambed. Its branches were large and thick– powerful. It shadowed the stream, creating a canopy and covering the juncture of the stream, where the channels branch outward and split to the right and left of where Begglar stood with the sword, creating a small transept, as if it were the branches off of the nave in a cathedral, with Begglar occupying the sacristy in the crossing. This Shibboleth test was almost like observing a ceremony, for indeed it did appear so, with all of the graveness and solemnity with which it was carried out.

Dominic turned and was coming towards our gathering, tasked with escorting the next person in our group to undergo this mysterious questioning. As Begglar had advised me before, I would be the last one called to stand before him, for even though, as Lindsey had pointed out, Begglar had already placed a great deal of trust in me as it pertained to the welfare of his own family, there might still be some doubt in his mind on whether or not I was fully committed to shoulder the responsibility that would follow in leading this band and this renewal of the quest.

If there were traitors among us, I suspected that it may prove to be more than just a single bad actor. All prior quests were reflected in the numbering of the company as well as in the elapsed time between the prior quest that had gone before it. There had also been the vague indicators along the edge of the skyline and eastern sea, that I had spotted before the encroachment of the coming fog had obscured my vision. If my count had been correct, there should only be twenty-one of us Surface Worlders, in this group, counting myself, corresponding to my twenty-one years of wandering and separation from the prior quest. Counting, Begglar, Nell, and Dominic, we were twenty-six all totaled, but Begglar had become a more permanent part of this Mid-World by marrying Nell and being made one with her in the ceremonial union. That left three persons unaccounted for. Three wild cards in the deck of the hand being dealt to us. Who were these three? Considering we were in the mysterious land of the Mid-World, I might just as well ask the question, ‘what were these three?’ For this land had beings and creatures that were adept at concealing their identities, even from those who might seem to lead and trust them. My own personal experience with Jeremiah chaffed me in that thought, as I reflected with shame on the way I had treated him placing his faith and trust in me. Considering such, I felt I deserved the sting of a reciprocal betrayal. His brother was dead because I failed to stop him from his foolishness. He had asked me, entrusted me with his confidence to look after his brother and make sure he did not get into mischief, and I had failed him in that and led him to distraction and grief, which endangered the rest of our former company. Seven of the fourteen had died that I’d heard of. Nine, if Begglar was correct. That old uneasiness stirred within me, threatening to cloud my inner sight again. The persistent shadow that I both perceived and felt moving underground and within me somehow seeking to blind me permanently from the perception and clarity I still longed for.

The winds were picking up, stirring the leaves in the creekbed more vigorously now. The stands of trees along the creekbanks began to sway as if urging the procession and progress of Begglar’s questioning to hurry and be done with it before we would be driven to take shelter again. The air around us felt agitated, as the pressure began to drop. The scent of it was slightly acrid and seemed to pinch at our nostrils. Begglar seemed to notice this too, for the procession of questionings picked up, and Dominic performed a yeoman’s service as he escorted each person down to the creekbed to stand before his father, before collecting the next one of us.

I was not able to determine which of our party might be the ones falling under suspicion, for Begglar performed his inquiries under a quickening cadence.

Lindsey spoke to me again, just before she was called to make the long walk down the dried creekbed. “Mister O’Brian, what is a terebinth?”

“A terebinth?” I asked, making sure I heard her clearly, for the wind was gathering force and fury.

“Yeah,” she said, “Isn’t that some sort of tree?”

I paused. It was in some respects, but it was more than that in others. It was a type of nut-bearing tree in the modern opinion. But in the old world understanding, and the Ancient Text context, it was a commemorative tree. A sacred tree is said to mark a memorial place where a deity was to have visited mankind. The Ancient Text referenced the Oak of Moreh, where The One appeared to the patriarch Abraham in the passage of Genesis 12:6-7 to announce the coming blessing of his line. Terebinth trees were of a type said to be sources of incense such as frankincense, balsam, and myrrh, as well as certain burning oils such as turpentine. All of these things were representative of worship. In Genesis 18, the site beneath the shade of a Terebinth tree known as the Oak of Mamre was also the place where The One met with and advised Abraham of the upcoming fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. It struck me then that this place of the ancient oak had added significance when coupled with the strange presence of the sword, and the bone dryness of the brook.

This was a place either of great blessing or of great judgment and wrath to come. The Terebinth Oak signified a place where The One touched the land to either bless it or curse it. A place where the Stone Quest I was called to would either begin or end, depending on what Begglar was asking of us.

My throat seized up and felt raw and dry, and the woman–who I now knew to be called Lindsey–had to leave with Dominic, having not received my answer to her question.

When my turn came to stand before Begglar and hear what he had to say, I knew that such a portentous moment had come. The choice to choose either the monster or the mission. Was this place beneath the shadow of a Terebinth tree to be representative of Oak of Moreh (blessing) or Oak of Mamre (cursing)?