INTERLUDE

LAR IRWAIN'S STORY




"My Child,

When you are reading this letter, you will have grown mature
and become the worthy Praecel I expect you to be.

This letter is written to prepare you for the great task
that will rest solely upon your shoulders. Long have I
searched for one who can after me continue what I have
begun, and at the time it seemed that no one was suitable,
and I would have to carry my secret to the grave. However, I
have always known that one day, maybe a little late, you
will come into this world. When you have proven that you can
meet your destiny with your palm open, YOU AND ONLY YOU will
be my heir and successor.

Listen to me, and listen well to what I have to tell you. I
will start from the beginning, which is not really the
absolute beginning, but a beginning of the history
nevertheless that you can learn from, since from this point
you may be able to trace your ancestry and do what is wanted
from you.

The planet Vestre, also named Evening Star, has always held
for me a strange attraction. It seems as if we share a
strange bond, this Star and me, and when I look to the sky
on clear nights, it would glow and tantalize me with the
pull of its beauty. As others may have told you by now, I
made several trips in my lifetime to that wild planet, going
with burning hope to find what I was seeking but always
losing purpose when I arrived, other than watching the
throbbing hearts of the HeliĆ Equation setting in a sea the
colour of blood.

Fear has always sidetracked my need to rediscover my roots
on Evening Star, roots that went as far back as the White
Radiation Ingress, which had devastated nearly half of the
settlements on the Star. I was the only survivor of that
disaster.

The catastrophe obliterated my memory, together with all
data banks on Evening Star, which would have recorded my
origins. You might say it was a new beginning for me as
well. When I was finally able to walk down the steps of the
Sanatorium, unaided after countless Seasons of treatment and
care, I had to start anew, a new life with no past. Is this
why Evening Star has haunted me all my life? It was holding
my past on the devastated side of the planet, where the
ruins of Aberon still lay scattered on a barren and
impregnable terrain.

Iucarians, I have to thank you for your courage and your
kindness. You pulled me out of the wreckage at the risk of
your own lives, you put new skin on my burns, treated my
injuries, renovated my muscles and restored my whole being.
I became successful, I was well respected, I built an
empire, I restarted a family, for your sake but mine as
well, for I have to think of an heir. Valorin he was called
at that time. And for his sake, I resolved to conquer my
fear, go to Evening Star and reach Aberon, once a teeming
science stewards' community on the other edge of the
Terahydra Forest and shunned nowadays by every Iucarian for
fear of radiation remnants.

I have fulfilled my destiny in Phylee-Patre, I have nothing
more to fear and it was thus that one evening, in Cycle 117
of Fourth Radix, an old cruiser brought me to the shanty
town of Shantelar on the banks of the river Shante. The
Terahydra Forest lies just behind it.

Many days I spent there idly and one afternoon as I was
sitting on the wooden porch of my lodgings, a young boy
approached me. He was fair of face and delicate of frame,
and had probably not even reached his first maturity. He was
dressed in the comfortable sleeveless tunic and trousers of
the local mariners and he had the long eyelashes of a young
girl. He possessed the rarity of interchanging eyes, now
violet on grey, then smoky grey on violet and he was holding
in his hand some sort of parchment, tightly rolled.

"Greetings to you," he said seriously and I suddenly had the
urge to ask him what a child, like him, was doing here,
where only mariners came for the open season on crabfish in
the river. Before I could say anything, he looked at me with
his strange eyes and spoke further, "We have been expecting
you for a long time. Now that you have come, our waiting is
at an end. We know that the enigma of the past, the disaster
that had destroyed so many, has always intrigued you. Time
and again it has drawn you from the safety of your home to
come to the hazardous shores of Evening Star but never
before have you come so far as to reach the edge of the
Terahydra Forest."

He handed me the parchment he was holding so tightly. "We
want you to have this map."

Mystified I spread the yellowish map open on my knee and I
still did not know what to say to that serious child. The
map showed the delta region of Red Lake and the Shante, and
the adjacent forest that stretched like a thick dark patch
from the southern banks of the river to the Shield of the
Acier Mountains. A red circle marked the area behind the
mountains.

The tiny hand pointed to it. "There," the child said, "once
stood Aberon, warm and alive. It is dead now but it is the
destination of your voyage. We want you to go there, brave
the radiation and in rediscovering your past, you will find
what you have been seeking. You must not fail. When you
reach the Acier Shield, wait for the occurrence of the
catalyzing storm and the Equalizer Rainbow."

I grabbed his hand and held it for he would have run away.
"Who are you?" I demanded, "Who are 'we'? How do you know so
much?"

He slightly turned and pointed to the entrance of the yard
where a huddled figure stood, covered with cloak and cowl,
on a warm day. "He, and me," he said, "are 'we'. He and me
will always be together." I looked into his bright eyes and
I thought, 'By the stars, this boy loves whoever is hiding
behind that dark cloak, loves with all his heart!'

He suddenly twisted and broke free of my grasp. He ran
across the yard. "Wait!" I called, "wait, there is so much I
have to know."

He turned on his heels like a graceful dancer and shouted
back: "There is nothing more we can do! We have helped as
well as we can but it is you, yourself, upon whom you must
depend. They will escort you through the forest." He pointed
once more to the other side of the yard where three dusty
mariners were gathered, sitting patiently on their backpacks
waiting for orders. They had entered the yard silently while
I was talking to the boy. When I looked round again, the boy
and the cloaked figure had disappeared.

The next morning, in the company of my fellow travellers
whom had been so helpfully thrust upon me, I embarked on my
journey through the forest. Straight we went into the
tangled reign of the hydrafond trees, into a shadowland of
gnarled trunks and jagged leaves. The stream of daylight was
soon dimmed into twilight by hanging webs of lianas as we
marched deeper into hostile country. No whimper or complaint
passed through the lips of my companions who proved to be
the strangest, hardiest and the most sombre and taciturn
people I had ever met.

We cut a path through the twisted mesh of nettle and thorn
shrubberies, a hard labour even with our powerful
flashwilters. At some places the hypertrophied branches of
the hydrafrond trees had rioted and intermatted with one
another forming a massive contortion of garbled limbs. The
only way to break through was to hack and crawl through
these grotesque arboreal formations.

The nearer I approached my intended destination the more
acutely aware I became of the fact that all sounds in this
green darkland had fallen silent. Not one screech from the
tera-mosshides, the denizens of the forest, who according to
belief quarrel from dayrise to nightfall. A moss polypod
occasionally clambering up a trunk like a flying green rug
indicated these creatures were still around, but most of the
time they kept out of sight and their quarrels out of
earshot. All that our ears could hear during that strange
trek was our breathing, our grunts and curses, and the
crackle of the flashwilters.

Nonetheless, the journey went smoothly. If the area was
notorious for its hostility, then we proved it wrong for we
did not encounter ferocious animals or other danger. My
fellow travellers skilfully flashwilted a way through the
tortuous jungle and provided companionship—not friendship,
mind you—in nearly every aspect, from supplying food, drink
and the homeliness of a fire. However, they did not talk to
me, nor did they talk among themselves, the only sound they
gave was their mutterings of directions. They were as
deathly silent as the forest itself on the last leg of our
journey.

During seven HeliĆ ascensions we plodded on when at long
last on the eighth ascension the matted bushes and
liane-webs thinned out and the trees shied away from each
other, leaving gaps in the foliage that made our progress
easier and faster. Dusk had fallen when we reached the other
edge of the forest and before us where ground seemed to
blend into the reddish sky of the setting HeliĆ, a ring of
granite mountains rose like a bulwark of black stone.

We stood on the summit of a hill and looked down on a rugged
canyon, obscured by a veil of shimmering bluish mist: the
dreaded radiation. That night we pitched camp on the hill.
The air was cool and for the first time since the
commencement of this undertaking, I could see the sky
clearly, not just ruddy patches blinking through thatchings
of twisted leaves and branches.

I watched the mountains: a seamless face of gleaming stone
without the warts of ridgelines and outcroppings. They
filled me with amazement and strange foreboding. My
companions had meanwhile settled around the campfire and at
last they broke their silence, chatting in low and grumpy
voices, now and then breaking into a monotonous chant as if
imploring nature for goodwill and mercy. The song echoed in
the still night, around the hilltop and in my ears as I
popped out the sleep bubble and succumbed to a dreamless
stupor.

* * *

I woke up with the warmth of the early morning HeliĆ
caressing my face. It was a brilliant day and my spirits
rose. I could even think of my taciturn companions with some
affection.

But the morning was full of surprises. I collapsed the sleep
bubble and straightening up I looked upon the campsite but
saw not one of my fellow travellers around. A basin of cool
spring water stood ready nearby and on a smouldering fire my
breakfast was simmering. Besides that, no other evidence was
testifying to the fact that I had broken through a dense
forest with three companions at my heels. I was alone and
they had left me. The rife radiation in the canyon was
apparently too great a threat.

My backpack was untouched and the provisions left behind
were enough to last for several days. I looked back at the
way through which we came and it gaped at me beneath the
heavy foliage like a tunnel from the netherworld, dark and
menacing. I turned to look at the mountains rising with
tabular crowns bright and shining in the orange red light of
the HeliĆ, challenging and beckoning for me to come and
wrench their secrets from their bowels. I heaved up my
backpack and searched for a way down the hill. Beneath a
fringe of bushes, rainwater had gouged a shallow gulley out
of the slope that meandered to the foot of the hill before
worming out of sight into the canyon.

I slithered down the gulley and entered the radiation
barrier. Coming into lands of the blue mist produced no
immediate effect other than a slight titillating sensation
at my scalp and on my bare skin. Static was prevalent in the
atmosphere. By midday I came upon a small stream and here I
took a rest and ate a little.

The reign of silence persisted even in this canyon where
coarse grass matted the rocky ground and bramble thickets
run riot over each other as if grappling for every measure
of land. No creatures manifested themselves. The land was
only populated by the haunting of one's past but finally
today sounds of the outer world had invaded it: my trudging
footsteps and my heavy breathing. By nightfall I had crossed
the canyon and stood at the foot of the Shield. I looked up
and could only see sheer heights of polished stone reaching
and touching the ruddy sky.

I felt terribly alone. I did not know how to breach these
grim walls but the map clearly pointed the way: Aberon lay
on the other side.

Aberon. When the Great White Radiation has struck out of
space, it had not only destroyed nearly half of Evening
Star, it had also mutated the face of nature on this side of
the planet. The temperature had risen to the heat of
deserts, the fabric of climate and environment had altered,
and an entire region of an inner sea had been laid to waste.
The town of Shantelar and the surrounding delta of Red Lake,
the Terahydra Forest and this nameless canyon had once been
part of coastal lands, which had foundered, and the Acier
Shield marked the perimeter of a continent, the Acier
Continent. How was I going to scale the height of a
continent?

As I sat by my campfire that night and ate my meagre dinner,
I pondered my fate. There was absolutely no turning back.
Aberon was holding all the answers and without finding those
answers, I might as well die here at the foot of the Acier
Mountains.

On the following morning, through the thin veil of the mist
the sky looked as clear and dark pink as when I had stood on
the hill. A faint breeze brought freshness to the oppressive
atmosphere. It filled me with some hope. I desperately
needed it. I also needed strength if I were to put my plans
into action and start a hike around the foot of the entire
range. The scarcity of my provisions somewhat alarmed me.
The surprising fact that small streams of fresh, albeit
slightly tangy, water were in abundance in the canyon meant
food presented the only problem. Wild life was non-existent
and I reminded myself to look for fish in the streams or
maybe edible berries in the crooked bramble thickets. At
that moment how to penetrate the stone walls posed the first
challenge.

I skirted along the mountain base, pausing now and then to
look through the dense and thorny overgrowth that at some
places reached to my height. The land refused to give up its
secrets and the mountains frowned down upon me, an insect
fluttering in futility against their stony faces.

Everywhere I gazed the walls presented a glossy surface of
glazed stone with no secure footholds whatsoever. I cursed
myself for my shortsightedness, for having neglected to
bring mountain gear, or a Hi-Sprint skipod. And yet, I
thought again, it was nearly impossible to ascend a steep
wall, which reached to the skies and was as smooth as glass.

The HeliĆ closed her eyes and the night found me sitting
alone, exhausted and despondent. Dark clouds began to weave
through the sky and a cold wind began to stir. The first
time in so many nights since I started this journey I had to
cover myself with a blanket in the sleep bubble, and before
a dwindling fire I dozed into a troubled sleep.

I awoke with a start to look upon a grey morning. The HeliĆ
had disappeared behind the cover of red-haloed black clouds.
A sense of urgency drove me to gather my things and continue
my circumnavigation of the mountain base. My chronodisc
indicated I was approaching midday once again when I came
upon a clearing where a sapling was bending against a
hummock.

Exhausted I sank down under the sapling and took some
morsels of dry food. The mountains faced me with their
silent mockery. I asked myself, how much further do I have
to go? I had walked in this canyon for two days and found
nothing. Everywhere I looked the land stared back with stark
monotony: at one side the sheer forbidding mountain wall, at
the other side the canyon with its hard grass and tangled
islands of thickets. It gave one the feeling of walking in
circles. Though at least in this clearing the weeds grew
sparse and apart, not in perpetual wrestling match with one
another. At last a wrinkle in the uniformity.

I rose and walked around, surveying minutely, not the
wilderness at the foot of the mountains, but the isolated
clumps of bramblewood. The growth was clustered in
methodical layout around the clearing. There were traces
that the wood had been manipulated; flashwilted or cut to
form shelters, a camping ground. Standing within that
semi-circle of the clearing, I gained a new field of vision
of the Shield. Barely visible, now partly overgrown, a path
that initiated from the edge of the clearing led to the
mountain flank, the path to my past.

I came running back to the wall with the flashwilter
swinging in my hand and like one demented I blasted great
gaps through the springy and heavy overgrowth. There, at
last, before my wide eyes the mouth of a cave gaped to lure
me inside. I dropped down on my hands and knees and crawled
into a deep gully.

With my heart thumping in my chest I crept down the winding
and narrow shaft. It was dark as night inside and I flicked
on my wrist torch. The path twisted, dipped and climbed,
which seemed like an endless journey into the unknown until,
quite unexpectedly, the tunnel opened onto a wide space.

I had come upon a chamber of rock, spacious, dry and
comfortably warm. The floor was covered with fine white
sand, the kind you would usually find on Calidan beaches.
Heaps of broken wood littered part of the floor and the
ceiling was as high as a house and the cave was surprisingly
habitable.

But it also led nowhere. There were no hidden exits or doors
that would penetrate the thickness of the Shield. At the far
end of the cave I found three mounds of earth, neatly in a
row. There stood strange stone markings at the head of each
mound and in the shadows each mound looked as if someone lay
there asleep all bundled up.

Sorrow and dread suddenly overwhelmed me. This is a burial
chamber. People had died and were buried here: those mounds
are their graves. I could not stay, better elsewhere than
here sharing warmth and comfort with the remains of unknown
dead. I went back, or more likely fled, through the twisting
shaft back into the canyon.

The weather outside welcomed me back with a nasty surprise.
A storm was approaching and the wind had gathered in
strength. The mountaintops were shrouded in a bulbous ring
of heavy clouds. I had to find myself a dry hole to hide in.
The sleep bubble would be no protection against gale force
winds. Those clusters of bramble had provided adequate
shelter to whomever had improvised them then, but now they
had withered into useless hulks of drywood.

Rain began to fall soon after my flight from that dreadful
cave, first a spitting drizzle, then a steady stream as the
moments wore on. My clothes were soaked but I plodded along,
despairing of my plight and cursing the cruelty of the Acier
Shield. The rain swelled to a storm, blotting cliffs and
canyon out of my sight. All that I could see before my eyes
were cascades of water, water and water once again. It was
torture to continue.

The only dry place in this deluge was the cave I had found.
I was chilled to the bone and in desperate need of warmth.
In such dire circumstances the prospect of spending the
night in a burial chamber did not appear as horrifying. I
turned round and backtracked my way through the rain closely
against the wall. With the wall as my support and my guide,
I found the entrance to the cave once more.

The cave was heavenly dry, a fitting resting-place for the
dearly departed. Here, at least, their bones would not be
washed away by an all-consuming rainstorm. I gathered some
of the scattered brushwood and started a fire. I took off my
wet clothes and sitting by the fire I warmed myself and ate
a little. The cave started to have an atmosphere of
coziness. The triplet heaps of earth remained obscured in
the darkness. The food and the warmth lulled me into a
dreamless sleep.

When I opened my eyes the fire before me was still burning.
I could not immediately tell whether it was morning or night
but my chronodisc told me it was early the next morning.
Even from inside that chamber, so deeply hidden within the
walls of the Shield, I could hear the rain outside pattering
forever and ever. Huddled in my blanket, I started on a
lonely vigil waiting for the rain to stop and it seemed as
if ages went by as I sat by a smouldering campfire waiting
and listening. At times I would glance over my shoulder to
the corner where those mounds lay hidden. Who were they,
what had happened to them, who buried them?

As my chronodisc winked away the time a dull depression took
hold of me. The rain did not, would not, stop. My thoughts
were turning more and more to those who lay in the far
corner of the chamber, my companions in despair. Were they
explorers like me, searching something that was out of
reach, finding instead a stark canyon, a harsh, sheer wall
of mountains, a dry cave and death? How did they die? One of
them must have survived, the one who buried them. I
conquered my inexplicable fear of the mounds and walked
closer to examine them. Slowly I focussed the light of my
torch on the rough markings that were placed at their heads.
Strange, and yet so familiar: an oval ring of stones
encircling a white piece of pointed flint, like a Core.
Iucarian? I shuddered. How could I forget. WE, Iucarians
would plant as a token of grief and mourning the beautiful
thornbushes whose icerosin flowers would light up this whole
cave like chandeliers.

The graves struck me with sudden revulsion and anger. I drew
away abruptly. The musty air was stifling me. The rain had
not stopped and I wondered whether with so much water
falling from the sky the canyon would be flooded. This cave
would no longer be a haven of safety but a deathtrap of
cascading water. I could not stay here. There, outside,
challenging the pitilessly beating rain was a hundred times
better than waiting for death or madness to succumb body and
spirit. Without a second thought, I turned my back on my
cozy campfire and crawled straight through the winding shaft
out into the open again.

The sight staggered me. The rain was falling so thickly that
stretching out my arm in front of me I could not even see
the fingers of my hand. Sheltering my head with my arms I
ran forward: a strange sight of a half-dressed demented
individual running around in the rain with only a blanket as
cover. A faint shade loomed before me and I fell against it.
It was the little sapling in whose shade I had rested, which
all seemed so long ago. It bowed limp and drooping under the
torrent but still stood, unbeaten. I clasped my arms around
it, pleading to give to me the secret of its quiet strength.
My eyes went over the regular contours of the low hummock,
and I realized with piercing sorrow that I could not
understand that it was another burial mound and the sapling
was planted here to mark it. A sapling in lieu of a
thornbush. How many more had died, why and for what purpose?
The sapling bent in the cruel rain and stood. I would stand
by this sapling; its fate would be mine.

I was not sure how long I stood there, embracing the
tenacious little tree. Time simply stopped to run in that
never-ending cascade of rainwater and the sapling and me
were the only living beings in a grey world of lasting rain.

Then, the pounding seemed to diminish and my eardrums were
lifted out of the strain. I lifted up my head and cautiously
explored the environment. Although scarcely visible,
thickets, sky and cliffs were reshaping into view once more.
The walls of the Shield shimmered before me through a
gossamer of water. The storm waned and stopped.

I beheld a most wondrous sight. A rainbow swept across a
grey sky. It looked to me like a sky avenue cast in a riot
of colours, but it was a belt of energy and under its fierce
glow, the canyon vibrated with a feverish glitter as if
water-sleek rock and water-laden grass were beset by
precious stones. It was an extraordinary phenomenon, because
the rainbow did not originate from the sky but from the
mountain wall.

Like a sleepwalker I stumbled to the spot where the tail of
the rainbow touched the ground. Its shimmering path cleaved
right through the flanks of the mountains and I stepped into
its radiance.

When I took this step I remembered the hurried words of the
young boy of Shantelar, something about the catalyzing storm
and the Equalizer Rainbow. I entered the rainbow, into a
world of bright-hued swirling particles like fireflies. The
path climbed and forced a straight way to the other side of
the Acier and I trudged along the dazzling corridor like a
sleepwalker until I reached the inner edge. There at the
inner edge lay Aberon.

The weather had cleared up as suddenly as it had
deteriorated and I stood breathlessly under the warm shine
of the HeliĆ. Aberon, once a prosperous land, lay sprawled
and broken at the edge of a vast continental plateau. Dust
and rubble only remained, nothing else.

I settled down on the debris of a square overlooking a
shattered city and quietly wept. Aberon was the bridge
between my past and my present: here I had escaped death and
from here that I had started a new life. But Aberon had been
dealt a mortal blow by a calamity no one in Iucari-Tres knew
where it came from, and Aberon will never rise again. Then
what was I doing here? I came here out of a sense of some
uncompleted business, but I cast my eyes upon a dead city,
and by entering Aberon I had sealed my fate. Now that the
HeliĆ was shining at full force, the rainbow corridor had
disappeared: my only means of escape from this accursed
land. I have to wait for another storm, but I could wait for
a long time and all the provisions that I had were on the
other side of the mountain.

With a shock I sat upright. I opened my eyes to a sky
peppered with brilliant stars. I had fallen asleep from
sheer exhaustion right there on the debris-strewn square.
The city was wrapped in inky darkness but, most strangely,
near the place where I sat a light flickered, so faint at
first that it might just be the reflection of a shard of
glass. Slowly I stood up and wound my way through the rubble
of twisted beams and jagged stone until I stood before a
crumbling flight of stairs. The light was throbbing just
above it.

I climbed the stairs warily. The thought that somebody or
something might have somehow survived in the city struck me
with a mixture of fear and excitement. The beam of light
beckoned and guided me into an open hall where the roof was
ripped to ribbons by a tremendous power. It appeared to be a
reception area of some kind and there, before my astonished
eyes, in an obscure corner amidst dust motes wafted by the
night wind, the source of the light blazed forth like a
beacon.

I quickly approached it and saw that the source of the light
was buried under a heap of fragmented concrete. Using a
broken rod as a tool, I set to work and cleared away the
debris. Once exposed something that had been lying concealed
there blazed like a small star. The glare seemed to reach
into my mind with sudden force. I covered my eyes with one
hand and stretched my other hand to touch it. I gasped in
agony for the Thing of Light held my hand in a scorching
grasp. For one insane moment I thought I was being hurled
back across time to the exact moment when Aberon met its
destruction. Space ruptured by a hernia of a white-blue
star, worlds spinning into collision, the impact with the
force of a series of exploding comets annihilating
Aberonians while they worked, played and slept, flattening
mountains, vaporizing seas. The massacre of creatures and
nature was complete and thorough.

"And only I survived!" I screamed.

'Yes', the Light seemed to answer, conveying its message by
its flaming touch, 'for I brought you here.'

I wrenched my hand back and the moment of madness had
passed. Did the Light really speak to me or was it just a
streak of hallucination of my overwrought mind?

All of a sudden I was filled with overwhelming elation.
Exhaustion and anxiety dropped from me like brittle shells
and a new freshness surged through my body. If it is true
that the Light, this powerful Hexstone, as I named it, had
been brought here through me, where did it come from? I do
not remember, I do not care. I have fulfilled my task.

I was purposed to find something. I have found the Hexstone
and I will bring it back to the civilized world.

Since I was not able to touch the Hexstone, I had to find
another way to take it with me. I wrapped it up with the
blanket that I had thrown on the ground. So strong were its
rays that they pulsed through the thick fleece. Summing up
courage, I grabbed the bundle with both hands and though it
felt as if I was holding a hot steaming kettle with only a
thin cloth, I endured the pain and ran out, down the stairs
and into the shattered square. Out in the open night the
Hexstone's shine filtered through the blanket like a dim
star and it threw out a thin stream of radiance that pierced
a path through the black city right to the spot where the
rainbow had uncovered the corridor in the mountains. I knew
the Hexstone would show me the way out and gritting my teeth
I followed the path that it wanted to take. In my agonizing
haste, the folds of the blanket had come loose. Partly
uncovered the Light cleaved through solid stone like a lance
of white-blue radiation and the astral corridor reappeared
cutting a way out through the walls of the Shield.

I sped through it with my hands as if on fire and I found
myself back in the canyon in no time. Panting and moaning I
dropped my scorching cargo on the grass. My hands were red
and blistered but there were no burn marks on the blanket
other than steaming damp spots. The Hexstone scalded only
the flesh of those it deemed not worthy to hold it. I was in
terrible pain and I remembered there was a medical kit in my
backpack. I covered up the shine of the Hexstone with
bramble shrub and returned to the cave to retrieve the
backpack and other belongings. My fire had long since burnt
out and nothing had changed. Rubbing balm over my scalded
hands and forearms, I stood for a while before the three
mounds of earth paying homage to whoever lay beneath there
resting in all eternity. They were a mystery too but it was
not for me to pursue it. For me it was to get home as soon
as possible.

When I came out, dawn had risen in a ruby-streaked sweep
over the canyon. I could not believe my eyes. The veil of
radiation had lifted from the region except along a thin
strip around the foot of the Acier Shield.

I hastened to where I had dropped my bundled discovery and
to my relief it still lay there covered up. I wrapped some
of my clothes around the blanket before I stuffed the whole
package into my backpack. The Hexstone was hidden and as I
walked my way back to the Terahydra Forest, to my great
surprise and excitement I heard voices in the distance.
Presently I came face to face once more with my three
companions who had a few days ago so shamefully deserted me.
However, I was too overjoyed to be angry.

"Well," I said, "have you come to bury me?"

"My Lar," one of them said, "we have come because the signs
indicate that you have been successful in your quest. We
were under oath to leave you alone for the task is for you
alone to accomplish without the help of anyone else. Just
look and listen!"

The land had suddenly come alive. I could hear the hesitant
flutter of birds in the thickets and the rustle of small
animal in the bushes. From high above came the first cry of
a bird of prey. Even my companions had changed in a
remarkable way. Once grim and terse they joked and chattered
as if a great yoke had been lifted off their shoulders.

The return journey through the jungle went smooth and
uneventful. My companions were eager to be back home and so
was I. We wasted no time and sooner than we expected
Shantelar was looming in the distance. On the outskirts of
the town, I thanked my fellow travellers for their
assistance and we parted as the best of friends.

I returned to my earlier lodgings, and there sitting on the
porch patiently awaiting my arrival was the little boy. He
stood up as soon as he saw me in the distance and I observed
him calmly as he observed my bandaged hands.

"You were not able to hold the Light in your bare hand?" he
asked.

"No," I said

His face crinkled in an expression of acute disappointment.
I thought he was going to burst into tears but he held
himself firm with admirable strength.

"Are you in pain?" he asked.

"Excruciatingly so," I answered.

He stared at me with his haunting eyes. "And yet you have
endured."

"Because it is not in my nature to give up," I told him.

He was silent for a while and then spoke, quietly and
seriously: "And that is why you have succeeded where others
have failed, but the real task has just begun. You have
found the Light but it is not for you to use it. You must
pass it on to the one who will be its rightful keeper: the
only one who can take the Light into his bare hand. Out of
you children have been born. Love them all, for out of them
a Firstborn may come forth who will be your true descendant.
The Light does not tolerate false hearts and cruel
ambitions. Always remember Aberon. Murderous insurgents
wanted to capture the Light Force for their own use and to
gain power. As a consequence Aberon was destroyed."

He turned his head slightly to gaze at the gate of the yard
where the hooded figure stood bowed in silence. A spasm of
unexplainable dread numbed my whole being as if the faceless
figure was holding my destiny in his gloved hands and he and
I were doomed together.

"Who are you?" I shouted, "Who is he?"

"I am Vereina and we love you," the boy said, swinging round
and running away, and with the cloaked figure at his side
disappeared into an alley. It was at this moment that I
finally perceived by the sudden movement of his tunic that
the boy was not a boy at all but a lovely young girl.

Back home I put the Hexstone safely away in a heavy layered
strongbox. I am haunted still by the burden of
responsibility that was put on me. To whom I should bequeath
this Hexstone had always been my tormented question. All the
ones I loved and trusted had left me, leaving me with no
worthy successors. Until the time that you are born, my
heir, the Hexstone should remain hidden. I have tested its
forces once or twice but only in deepest secrecy without any
apparent harm. Still I should not have used it and harm
might still have been done by my actions.

Take care, once you know you are the master of the Hexstone,
there will be others who will battle with you for its
powers, for the Hexstone is the true legacy of a Lar! It is
a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. ALL must heed the words
and warnings of the girl and remember the death of Aberon.
The Hexstone's fate lies only in the hand who can grasp it.

You are my memory and my everlasting spirit.

Your Father