The Nomad - By Simon Hawke Page 0,107

his identity disintegrated and the young elfling known as Alaron, named after a bygone king, simply ceased to be. And as he lay there, senseless, dead and yet not dead, the fragmented pieces of his mind sought desperately to preserve themselves, and started to reform anew. And as if the cry was heard in a world beyond the plane of his existence, there came an answer. First one, then two, then three, then four…

* * *

“I know,” he said softly, opening his eyes. He swallowed hard and blinked back tears. “I… know.”

“Yes,” said the Sage, gazing at him with a kindly expression. “Yes, you do. Was it what you wanted?”

“All those years, wondering, yearning for the truth… and now I wish I had never found it,” he said miserably.

“It was a hard truth that you discovered, Alaron,” said the Sage.

“You know my truename?” Sorak said. “But… you said that you would not be with me on the journey…”

“Nor was I,” said the Sage, shaking his head, sadly. “It was enough for me to know what you would discover. I had no wish to see it for myself.”

“You knew?”

“Yes, I knew,” the Sage replied. “Even though my path in life took me away from them, some bonds can never break. I felt it when she died.”

“She?” said Sorak.

“Your mother, Mira,” said the Sage. “She was daughter.”

“Father?” said the Guardian, emerging. “Is it true? Is it really you?”

“Yes, Mira,” said the Sage, shaking his head. “You were but an infant when I left. And I have changed much since that time. I did not think you would remember.”

Tears were flowing freely down Sorak’s cheeks now, but it was the Guardian who wept. They all wept. All of them together, the tribe, the Moon Runners, who had died, and yet lived on.

“I do not understand,” the Guardian said. “How can this be? We are a part of Sorak.”

“A part of you is part of Sorak,” said the Sage. “And a part of you is Mira, the spirit of my long lost daughter. And a part of you is Garda, my wife, Mira’s mother, and Alaron’s grandmother.

“The powerful psionic gifts that Alaron was born with, but had not yet evidenced, had forged a strong but subtle bond with you, and with others of the tribe, and he could not accept your deaths, so he would not let you die. He did not know what he was doing. He saw you dying, and he could not endure it, so some inner part of him held onto you with a strength that defied even that of death itself. His tormented little mind could not suffer the hardship, and so it broke apart, but in doing so, he sacrificed his own identity so that you could live. You, and Kether, and Kivara, and Eyron and Lyric and the others…”

“But… what of the Inner Child? And the Shade?”

“The Inner Child is the one who fled in terror from the horror it had seen, and cocooned itself deep in the farthest recesses of your common mind. The Shade is the primal force of your survival, the fury that you felt at death, the last defiant rebel against inevitable fate.”

“And Screech?” asked Sorak, returning to the fore. “What gave birth to Screech?”

“You did,” said the Sage. “He is the part of you that knew the path that you would walk even at the moment of your birth, the embodiment of your calling to choose the Path of Preserver, and your fate to embrace the Druid Wu. He was born at the moment Alaron had ceased to be, when in his last extremity he drew strength out of the werid itself, and manifested in your mind. Screech is that part of you that is Athas itself, and every Irving creature the planet has produced. You are the Crown of Eves, Sorak, born of a chieftain’s seventh son. The prophecy did not say that it would be an elven chieftain. Your father fell, when he came to the rescue of your mother, and then he rose again, when she tended to his wounds and saved him, and out of that a new life was created—your life.”

“And the great, good ruler?” Sorak asked “Not a ruler, but one who hopes to guide,” the Sage replied. “The avangion, a being still in the process of its slow birth, through me. And now that you have come, and learned the truth about yourself and me, another cycle in the process has become complete. Or, perhaps