.

.

.

The Stormhorn Mountains

.

In passing over the plain of Lothlan the Company encountered a curiosity that was probably of the Devil's composition. Certainly it was a new occurrence, because the Devil did not seem to have the wit to invent gunpowder till the thirteenth century, and tanks before the time of Samuel Oak.

There exists in the region of Lothlan a very ancient superstition, which is all the more curious and all the more precious, because a popular superstition in the vicinity of Anthien City is like an aloe plant in frost. We are among those who respect everything which is in the nature of a rare plant. Here, then, is the superstition of Lothlan: it is thought that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected the forest as a hiding place for his treasures. Good wives affirm that it is no rarity to encounter at nightfall, in secluded nooks of the forest, a black man with the air of a gambler or a lumberjack wearing wooden shoes, clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the fact, that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his head. This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable. This man is habitually engaged in digging a hole. There are three ways of profiting from such an encounter.

The first is to approach the man and speak to him. Then it is seen that the man is simply a peasant, that he appears black because it is nightfall; that he is not digging any hole whatever, but is cutting grass for his Miltank, and that what had been taken for horns is nothing but a pitchfork which he is carrying on his back, and whose teeth, thanks to the perspective of evening, seemed to spring from his head. The man returns home and dies within the week. The second way is to watch him, to wait until he has dug his hole, until he has filled it and has gone away; then to run with great speed to the trench, to open it once more and to seize the "treasure" which the black man has necessarily placed there. In this case one dies within the month. Finally, the last method is not to speak to the black man, not to look at him, and to flee at the best speed of one's legs. One then dies within the year.

As all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences, the second, which at all events, presents some advantages, among others that of possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is the one most generally adopted. So bold men, who are tempted by every chance, have quite frequently, as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the black man, and tried to rob the devil. The success of the operation appears to be but moderate. At least, if the tradition is to be believed, and in particular the two enigmatical lines in vulgar Neo-Logarian script, which an evil Rorian monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Antyphon has left on this subject. This Antyphon is buried near Rosecove, and toads spawn on his grave.

Accordingly, enormous efforts are made. Such trenches are ordinarily extremely deep; a man sweats, digs, toils all night, for it must be done at night; he wets his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock, and when he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on the "treasure," what does he find? What is the devil's treasure? A coin, sometimes a crown, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body, sometimes a specter folded in four like a sheet of paper in a portfolio, sometimes nothing. This is what Antyphon's verses seem to announce to the indiscreet and curious:

...

Ariyâramna URUK-Kastamir xshyathiya vazraka xshâyath.

Iya xshâyathiyânâm xshâyathiya Pârsâ.

...

Which is reckoned:

...

I am Tar-Castamir who won the Logarians their empire.

Do not therefore begrudge me this bit of the Earth that covers my bones.

...

Bronze and the others passed a plaque that read: "It is clear that the devil has appeared. Soldiers have seen him, and are on the search. In sooth, they are cunning enough to pocket Lucifer's hoard. Will they catch the devil, or will the devil catch the soldiers? O Man in later-days born, pray for their souls and make the sign of Arceus's Rings, for now their bodies lie in the Haudth-na-Dengin."

Below the plaque was a smaller one that said:

"Ahead is the Hill of the Slain. 'این تپه ای است که مردان شجاع برای مردن به آنجا میروند.'"

"I wonder what those letters translate to," said Tess. "It looks like some kind of modern Logarian. What does it say?"

"Well, I'm something of a philologist myself," said Bronze. "It means, I think, 'Here is the hill that brave men go to die.'"

"Hold a moment," said Tess. Her face lit up. "I've been here before, years ago. There's a military monument around here."

"Military?" said Jake. "Not civil?"

"You'll understand soon enough," said Tess gravely.

They went a quarter mile down the plain. The path trailed below a huge green mound buried within which were Men and huge dolomites of twisted metal. Around the upraised hill was a ring of white stones and set about with many spears. Tess left the road and walked through the whin and heather at the base of the massive sepulcher. It had been decades since the battle in the Terramist Wars that sent the souls of ten thousand men to Arceus. After the field was won by the Terramists the bodies of the enemy slain were piled in mockery, along with their weapons and war engines. Their sabers rusted, oil tanks congealed, and flesh fell away. It was called the Haudh-na-Dengin, the Mound of the Dead. When the war was over the countrymen had covered the corpses with earth, though here and there bones and grinning skulls looked out at the broad flats. It was now a hallowed spot, and none dared defile it.

"Here lie all the Men of Roria that fell at this place," said Tess in a sad voice.

"Then here let them rest!" said Bronze. "And when their bones have rotted and returned to dust, long may their Hill stand and guard the Plain of Lothlan!"

"Was this Terramist work?" said Jake.

"With the help of others, I judge," said Bronze. "But here beside their grave, I will say this for the comfort of their souls: many fell in the war against Terramists, but the Rorians were victorious. Arceus Elyon. Go to the Timeless Halls. Till all your souls are redeemed let your grave be set here."

With that the company said farewell to the mound, and passed over the plain, and climbed to the further hills east. Then they walked on, glad to have left the mournful Plain. The Mound of the Slain and its cold grey spears lay behind them.

...

They had now been walking for about an hour, and it was nearly midday. No difficulty about their direction had yet occurred; they had merely to keep going uphill and Bronze was certain of coming out of the forest to the mountain wall sooner or later. Meanwhile he felt remarkably well, though greatly chastened in mind. The silent, verdant half-light of the woods spread all around him as it had spread on when he first set out from Mitis, but everything else was changed. He looked back on that time as a nightmare, on his own mood at that time as a sort of sickness. Then all had been whimpering, unanalyzed, self-nourishing, self-consuming dismay. Now, in the clear light of an accepted duty, he felt fear indeed, but with it a sober sense of confidence in himself and in the world, and even an element of pleasure. It was the difference between a landsman in a sinking ship and a horseman on a bolting horse: either may be killed, but the horseman is an agent as well as a patient.

During this time Jake had been revealing his skill as a bard. He was excellent at singing in the sense that his voice carried a dreamlike quality that could carry convincing unease or pleasure. The Company had no instruments but there was a function of Bronze's Pokedex that could sequence music. Bronze was better at writing the songs then Jake, and this was his primary pleasure whenever he was not planning out the road. The study of Logarian musical traddition had been a hobby of his some years back and this introduced to Tess a new dimension of singing, which unfortunately is not yet widespread in the world.

Logarian music uses microtones, which is an art that, sadly, the northern world has abandoned. It also has the only style of overtone throat singing in the southern hemisphere. I am not a musicologist and cannot tell you why any bit of music is different in one part of the world than the other, but I may give a faint symbol of its sound through these words. There is a respectable portion of the internet where these can be accessed.

...

"O! Wanderers in the shadowed land

despair not! For though dark they stand,

all woods there be must end at last,

and see the open sun go past.

the setting sun, the rising sun,

the day's end, or the day begun.

For east or west all woods must fail."

...

"That's good," said Tess, "but there's an old walking song from Rosecove I like better. It goes:"

...

"Farewell we call to hearth and hall!
Though wind may blow and rain may fall,
We must away ere break of day
Far over wood and mountain tall.

To northern dales, where gods yet dwell
In glades beneath the misty fell,
Through moor and waste we ride in haste,
And whither then we cannot tell.

With foes ahead, behind us dread,
Beneath the sky shall be our bed,
Until at last our toil be passed,
Our journey done, our errand sped."

...

About an hour after noon they suddenly came out of the wood into bright sunshine. They were only a mile from the frighteningly perpendicular mountain spires, too close to them to see their tops. A sort of valley ran up in the re-entrant between two of them at the place where they had emerged: an unclimbable valley consisting of a single concave sweep of stone, which in its lower parts ascended steeply as the roof of a house and farther up seemed almost vertical. At the top it even looked as if it hung over a bit, like a tidal wave of stone at the very moment of breaking; but this, Bronze thought, must be an illusion.

They began to work their way eastward along the narrow, broken ground between wood and mountain. Great spurs of the mountains had to be crossed every few moments, and it was intensely tiring. After about half an hour they came to a stream, where they rested and sat down beside the water's edge for lunch. Jake began soon to be anxious about the road, for if they could make the top at all they could do it only by daylight and the middle of the afternoon was approaching.

But his fears were unnecessary. When the clear path came it was unmistakable. An open way through the wood appeared on the left, and on the right they saw the road, a single ledge, or in places, a trench, cut sidewise and upwards across the sweep of such a valley as he had seen before. It took their breath away; the insanely steep, hideously narrow staircase without steps, leading up and up from where they stood to where it was an almost invisible thread on the pale grey surface of the rock. But there was no time to stand and look at it. Bronze was a poor judge of heights, but he had no doubt that the top of the road was removed from him by a more than endurable distance. It would take them at least two days to reach it. Instantly the Company began the ascent.

Such a journey would have been normally taken from the portage station at the mountain's southward base, but Bronze knew that the Alliance would be watching it. Atop Mount Belarwaegas was an obscure sky-ferry that would take them to Anthien. "At least we don't have to climb the Frostveil Mountains proper," said Tess. "That wouldn't be possible unless we could jump around like hares." Bronze reflected that these bastard western spurs were the most perilous natural hazard they had yet faced.

The reader might have deduced by now that Anthien City cannot be reached by land or sea. It is a flying city, a metropolis that rests in the First Heaven, touching the border of Space.

The first quarter of an hour should have reduced a boy of Bronze's build and age to exhaustion. Instead he felt all that Logarian within him arising. He was at first delighted with the ease of his movement, and then staggered by the gradient and length of the climb which, even under mountainous conditions, soon bowed his back and gave him an aching chest and trembling knees. Gabite and Electabuzz were helping Bronze and Tess move further up and further in. But this was not the worst. He heard already a singing in his ears, and noticed that despite his labor there was no sweat on his forehead. The cold, seeming to increase at every step, seemed to sap his vitality worse than any heat could have done. Winter was already coming. In the few hours they had been climbing a thousand feet, perhaps a thousand five hundred. They had already been high up since leaving the Plain.

"Charmeleon, give me warmth," said Bronze. A hot fire was stoked in Charmelon's claws. This delight was passed around the Company but it kept them moving, and did little else for comfort.

The day drew on and night began to fall. Already Tess's lips were cracked; her breath, as she panted, showed like a cloud; her fingers were numb. She was cutting her way up into a silent arctic world, and had already passed from a Rorian to a Sinnoian winter. It frightened her, and she decided that they must rest here or not at all; a hundred paces more and if they sat down they would sit forever.

Jake squatted on the road for a few minutes, slapping his body with his arms. The landscape was terrifying. Already the lowlands which had made his world for so many weeks was only a thin green line sunk amidst the boundless level desolation of the highlands, which now, on the farther side, showed clearly between and above the mountain peaks. But they all knew that they had to set up camp or die.

The tents were pitched. Bronze and Jake took one with Charmeleon as their heater while Tess got Monferno for warmth. Bronze noticed that the lowlands, now an insignificant part of the landscape, were full of a sort of haze. He had never seen a fog while he was walking there. Perhaps that was what the air of the world looked like from above; certainly it was different air from this high altitude. There was something more wrong with his lungs and heart than even the cold and the exertion accounted for. And though there was not yet snow, there was an extraordinary brightness. The light was increasing, sharpening and growing whiter and the sky was a much darker blue than he had ever seen on Earth. indeed, it was darker than blue; it was almost black, even at sunset, and the jagged spines of rock standing against it were like his mental picture of a lunar landscape. Some stars were visible.

Suddenly he realized the meaning of these phenomena. There was very little air above him: he was near the end of the range they were acclimatized to. The atmosphere lay chiefly in the low plains, he thought; the real sky of the planet was naked or thinly clad. The stabbing sunlight and the black sky above him were that upper troposphere above him, already showing through the last vestiges of air. If the top were more than a mile away, it would be where no man could breathe at all. He hoped the Pokemon had different lungs than humans and would be able to carry them.

Bronze passed in and out of oxygen-starved sleep. When he awoke again all his body was heavy; his feet were dragging like leaden weights. The peaks were still high above them and they were not rested enough to attempt another day's walk like yesterday's. But even while Bronze thought of this he took note that those jagged peaks blazing in sunlight against a clear blue sky need not be level with him. The road was no longer ascending. It ran on before him in a kind of shallow ravine bounded on his left by the tops of the very lowest rock pinnacles and on his right by a smooth ascending swell of stone that ran up to the true mountains. And where he was he could still breathe, though gasping, dizzy and in pain. The blaze in his eyes was worse. The sun was blinding. A hundred feet up and they would have not lived the night. Still staggering forward, they looked about them for the ferry house, whatever sort of house that would be.

Doubtless I have exaggerated the time during which we thus wandered and watched the shadows from the rocks lengthening towards us. It cannot really have been long before we saw a light ahead, a light that showed how dark the surrounding landscape had become. They tried to run but their bodies would not respond. Stumbling in haste and weakness, they made for the light; thought they had reached it and found that it was far farther off than they had supposed; almost despaired; staggered on again, and came at last to what seemed a cavern mouth. The light within was an unsteady one and a delicious wave of warmth smote on their faces. It was firelight. The Company came into the mouth of the cave and then, unsteadily, round the fire and into the interior, and stood still blinking in the light. When at last they could see, they discerned a smooth chamber of green rock, very lofty.

There were two things in it. One was a burning fire over which was a pot of melting snow, and the other was a creature Bronze presumed was a Pokemon and not any ferryman at all. Then the Pokemon spoke.

...

"Come in, Small Ones," boomed the voice. "Come in and let me have a look at you."

Now that Bronze stood face to face with the specter, he felt a surprising indifference. He had no idea what might be coming next, but he was determined to carry out his program of reaching the ferry, and in the meantime the warmth and more breathable air were a heaven in themselves. The Company came in, well in past the fire, and Bronze answered the being, which remained a hunched shape indistinct in the mixed shadows. His own voice sounded to him a shrill treble.

"We were passing through and hoped to go to Anthien," he said.

The creature's blue eyes peered at him. "You are not from these parts," it said suddenly. "I think you are from the north of Roria, boy."

"I'm from the south, unfortunately," said Bronze. "These other two are traveling under my ward. They are from this latitude or further down."

"Then your mother and father must have been from the north," said the being. "You are swarthy and that his how Arceus has designed men from the regions scorched by the sun to be. You cannot come from Alola, where I am from, for it is so hot that if any men lived there their skin would be black; in ancient times even you, boy, would be considered a pale-skin there. You do not come from the south, for any from there would look more like the other two. So I conclude you are from the north of Roria."

"My ancestors are from the north," said Bronze. He sat down on a rock and the others followed him. "I will play this game with you. You are not a Pokemon, for you should not be able to speak. But you are not a man, because your voice is unlike any man's, and your shape is curved and bent. But we thank you for this cave. We were nearly dead with cold and thin air."

The being made a sudden movement with one of his forelimbs. There was a flash and a sound like a thunderclap. Bronze stiffened (though he did not allow himself to retreat) and thought the creature was going to attack. In fact his intentions were kindly. He walked out into the firelight and they got a good look at Zeraora for the first time.

The body was primarily yellow, but colors like electrical charges in a flush of diverse colors streamed up his neck and arms and flickered over the face and head so that they stood out like an aureole or plumage. The face surprised Tess. Nothing like a Pokemon could be ascribed to his features above the purely biological level. In that sense his face was as "primitive," as unnatural, if you like, as those of archaic statues from Hisui. Zeraora was like a homogenous flame solidified and perceived by the senses, properly so called an angel or spirit, but having certainly once existed in the sensorium which exists after a matter beyond our conception in the celestial frames of reference. It was of the group of gods that were pursuing their own business, so to speak. They weren't ministering angels sent to help fallen humanity; but neither were they enemies preying upon us. Even in St. Rei one gets glimpses of a population that won't exactly fit into our two columns of angels and devils. And if you go back further: all the gods, elves, dwarves, water-people, fae, death worms. Tess at last realized that he knew too much to assume they were all just illusions.

Jake and Bronze, having seen Groudon, were inured to the peculiar sort of clarity that beholding the gods affords. Tess's eyes were opened, as it were, inward, as if they were the curtained gateway to a world of waves and murmurings and wandering airs, of life that rocked in winds and splashed on mossy stones and descended as the dew and arose sunward in thin-spun delicacy of mist. In Rosecove the cliffs are made of sand; in Alola the very lands swim. For now she thought of this creature not as Zeraora. She called him by his Heavenly name. With deep wonder she thought to herself, "My eyes have seen Euphrosyne and Jophiel. I have seen Joy and Beauty."

She asked how he was known to her so deeply. He said that is told among the wise that the First War began before Earth was full-shaped, and ere yet there was anything that grew or walked upon Earth, and for long the Mbelekoro had the upper hand. But in the midst of the war a spirit of great strength and hardihood came to the aid of the gods, hearing in the far heaven that there was battle in the Little Kingdom; and Earth was filled with the sound of his laughter. So came Xerneas the Strong, whose anger passes like a mighty wind, scattering cloud and darkness before it; and the Mbelekoro fled before his wrath and his laughter, and forsook Earth, and there was peace for a long age. Zeraora was among those spirits that descended with Xerneas, to bind their fates to the earth and make its life their own. And Xerneas and Zeraora remained and became one of the gods of the Kingdom of Earth; but the Mbelekoro brooded in the outer darkness, and his hate was given to both of them forever after. Zeroara is sometimes found in fellowship with the Swords of Justice, but he is not counted among them.

Indeed, the Swords of Justice considered themselves as a populace about the Company with Zeraora in tow. This was all part of the war strategy of the gods: Xerneas and Zygarde maintained nature against the Dark Lord; the Swords of Justice guide the nations and oppose the Tyrannies; but the general war of Good versus Evil is orchestrated by the Great Princes Dialga and Palkia, who are also called the Two Eyes of Fire, or the Fires of God. Sometimes an emanation of their souls are how the gods appear to Men; sometimes it is a direct projection. The distinction is too fine for most lesser beings to discern; for all practical purposes, these are the Powers. Tess's cheeks burned when she remembered the follies that she had called the "legendary" Pokemon.

"O Zeraora, Righteousness of Arceus," said Bronze, "how came you here from Alola?"

"I am here because Arceus has sent me to protect you," said Zeraora. "I have lived in Alola ever since I descended. With the Tapu while they were still young I ruled all else. I rounded this planet when it first arose from the Dust. I spun the air about it and helped weave the roof of the heavens. I built the Fixed Lands with Groudon and these, the holy mountains, with Regigigas, as Arceus taught me. The beasts that sing and the beasts that fly and all that swim on Alola's breast and all that creeps and tunnels within her down to the center of the Four Islands had been mine. And today all of this was taken from me. He giveth and He taketh away. Blessed be He."

"Blessed be He," intoned Bronze.

"Now, hold on," said Tess frantically, "this is a talking Pokemon. And you two don't seem shocked! Something like this should be in all the news. Why hasn't anybody else noticed it?"

"When I am here with you I am very much involved in Mysterious Ways," said Zeraora, "as in 'the Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.' But you best thank Arceus Elyon that I am benign. I have killed evil men for calling me a Pokemon. In ancient days I split sin-offerings to Arceus among the Alolans. My affinities are with fire and thunder and wilderness. Understand that I am not a comfortable figure in this case."

"But you saved our lives," said Jake.

"Perhaps," said Zeraora. "At least things would not have gone so well if I was not here. You, Daughter of Eve, must not speak so lightly of the powers. I am the avenging angel of Alola."

Tess trembled, her hands clasped. There was a perceptible bend in her knees. Zeraora saw this and said: "See that thou dost not bow! Have you forgotten that I but your fellow servant? Do you know not that you are now as you ought to be, between the angels who are your elder brothers and the Pokemon who are your kindred, friends, and play-fellows?"

"She is not a member of the Faith," said Bronze. "Perhaps she is not seeing you in the same way that we see you."

"No, no," said Tess, standing well back, but extending her hand. "You'll speak none of your blessings over me. If ever I take to religion, it won't be your kind. My father was a preacher. But here's my hand. What I have just seen...but no matter for that. And I'll say this, Bronze, why would a girl want to lengthen this? God bless you all, but wish me a good night."

"The sun is growing brighter every minute," said Jake.

"Yes," said Zeraora. "The vessel which you are to travel to Anthien in now is almost within the Air of this mountain. You should not stay till then."

"Why, sir?" said Tess.

"Because you will be waited for."

"Me, sir?"

"Yes. The ferryman will be waiting for a party of three. Should you not go to him?"'

"Must I go now?" said Tess. "Out into the cold?"

"You will not find it so cold," said Zeraora. "If you leave the decision with me, it is now that I would send you."

"O Zeraora, do not send us away," said Bronze. "We still have many questions that only the gods can answer."

"Southstar, Arceus is proud of you," said Zeraora. "You have carried out His will better than Moses son of Amram. Speak and I will now see what I might say in return."

"Is the whole story of my race no more than a side theatre in a multiversal war?" said Bronze.

"I see no more than beginnings in the history of the Worlds," said Zoraora. "And in ours a failure to begin. You talk of evenings before the day has dawned. I set forth even now on ten thousand years of preparation, then it will be whispered that the real morning is at hand."

"I am full of doubts and ignorance about many things," said Bronze. "In our world those who know Arceus at all believe that His coming down to us and being a thing of flesh is the central happening of all that happens, so to speak. If you take that from me, o god of heaven-born, whither will you lead me? Surely not to the Enemy's talk which thrusts my world and my race into a remote corner and gives me a multiverse with no center at all, but millions of worlds that lead nowhere or (what is worse) to more and more worlds forever, and comes over me with numbers and empty spaces and repetitions and asks me to bow down before bigness. Or do you make another world the center? But I am troubled. What of the people in those other worlds? Would they also think that their world was the center of all things? I do not even see how our world can rightly be called ours. To them we were made yesterday. And what of the things beneath its crust? And of the great spaces with no world at all? Is the Enemy easily answered when he says that all is without plan or meaning? As soon as we think we see one it melts away into nothing, or into some other plan that we never dreamed of, and what was the center becomes the rim, till we doubt if any shape or plan or pattern was ever more than a trick of our own eyes, cheated with hope, or tired with too much looking. To what is all driving? What is the morning you speak of? What is it the beginning of?"

"Slow!" said Zeraora. "I am not an orator. I know little of the Other Worlds or the End. That is something you will have to ask Celebi, or Dialga, or even great Xerneas-Elohim about. Your purpose, Southstar, you will have to ask Arceus about. I was sent to give you a little lodging on the road and increase your hope. From the Original One, I was also bidden to give you these words. Thus sings all the Logarians who await their king:"

...

"When will a courier come from Roria?

saying that the Emperor of the family of the Old Race has come,

Having a thousand elephants, being upon them an elephant-keeper,

Having raised banners, in the manner of the Logathrim kings?

The advance-guards are led by the generals!

A man should be dispatched, a clever interpreter,

Who may go and tell Hisui and Aredia

What we have seen from the hands of the corrupted Logarians.

All at once they weakened the religion and killed their children.

We have become inferior, they are like gods.

They have taken away the sovereignty from the Men of Roria

Not by virtue and valor like Old Logarians,

But in mockery and scorn like demons.

By force they have taken away from men.

They have demanded again the tribute, a heavy impost.

From us shall come that New King

Possessing marvellous power, of the family of the Old Race

We will bring vengeance on the Evil Djinn

A hundred times what Rei brought upon him.

...

"For the very first I am alive to myself," said Zeroara then, quoting the Hisuian Coda, "since my sinful eye beholds the noble land, and also that earth to which so much honor is given. That has come to pass for which I have ever prayed: I have come to the place where Arceus's messenger blessed me. Such fair lands, rich and noble, as I have seen elsewhere, you are the honor of them all, save Mount Coronet. What miracles have come to pass there! That the lord of the angelic host was made Flesh; was this not a perfect miracle?"

Suddenly the diffused light of the fire brightened and flushed. Bronze looked up and perceived a great lady standing by a hole in the wall. It was large, almost gigantic. It was not human, though it was like a woman divinely tall, part naked, part wrapped in a flame-colored robe. Light came from it. The face was enigmatic, ruthless he thought, inhumanly beautiful. It was opening the door for him. He did not dare disobey ("Surely," he thought, "I must have died"), and he went in: found himself in some place of sweet smells and bright fires, with food and wine and a rich bed.

...

When he awoke next morning with the vague feeling that a great weight had been taken off his mind. Then he remembered that he was the guest of a god and that he had wandered off. He was, he realized, lying on a bed in a lodge. Outside through the frosted window pane was the mountain peak.

"Good morning," said Tess, showing him some food and drink.

"When did you leave the cave?" said Bronze. "Shame on me for dozing off in the middle of the Gloria. Do tell!"

"There isn't anything to tell," said Tess. "Jake and I also fell asleep. Oh, you should have seen that liquid light, felt the supernatural warmth. When we came to it was in this lodge."

"The angel must have carried us from the cave," said Bronze. "And who was that Huge Woman?"

"No, not at all," cried Tess. "I'm not sure about the woman, but it's the cave that you're wrong on. We asked the ferryman if he had ever met the creature living in the cavern down the bend, but he said there is no cave around for miles. We even went out an hour ago. There was no cave at all!"

"Praise Arceus!" laughed Bronze. "Oh, praise Arceus! There was no cave! There was never a cave at all! Obviously its high time you converted, Tess."

.

.

.

Eclipse Base Prime

.

"And that," continued Emrett, "is why a systematic training in objectivity must be given to you. Its purpose is to eliminate from your mind one by one the things you have hitherto regarded as grounds for action. It is like killing a nerve. That whole system of instinctive preferences, whatever ethical, aethetic, or logical disguise they wear, is to be simply destroyed. When you have attained real objectivity you will recognize, not some motives, but all motives as merely animal, subjective epiphenomena. We are going to begin your therapy now."

The philosophy which Emrett was expounding was by no means unfamiliar to Robert. He recognized it at once as the logical conclusion of thoughts that he had decades ago accepted in his secular days and which at this moment he found himself irrevocably rejecting. The knowledge that his own assumptions led to Emrett's position combined with what he saw in Emrett's face and what he had experienced in this very cell, would have effected a complete conversion in any case. All the philosophers and evangelists in the world might not have done the job so neatly.

"I get the idea," said Robert, though with an inward reservation that his present instinctive desire to batter Emrett's face into a jelly would take a good deal of destroying.

After that, Emrett took Robert from the cell and gave him a meal in some neighboring room. It also was lit by artificial light and had no window. The executive stood perfectly still and watched him while he ate. Robert did not know what the food was and did not much like it, but he was far too hungry, by now to refuse it if refusal had been possible. When the meal was over Emrett led him to an anteroom and at once he was stripped and re-clothed in surgeon's overalls and a mask. Then he was brought in, into the presence of a number of empty cages. To his surprise, Emrett took not the slightest notice of them. He led him across the room to a narrower little door with a pointed arch, in the far wall. Here he paused and said, "Go in. You will speak to no one of what you find here. I will return presently." Then he opened the door and Robert went in.

A man of trained sensibility would have seen at once that the room was ill-proportioned, not grotesquely so, but sufficiently to produce dislike. It was too high and too narrow. Robert felt the effect without analyzing the cause and the effect grew on him as time passed. Sitting staring about him he next noticed the door, and thought at first that he was the victim of some optical illusion. It took him quite a long time to prove to himself that he was not. The point of the arch was not in the center: the whole thing was lopsided. Once again, the error was not gross. The thing was near enough to the true to deceive you for a moment and to go on teasing the mind even after the deception had been unmasked. Involuntarily one kept shifting the head to find positions from which it would look right after all. He turned around and sat with his back to it. One mustn't let it become an obsession.

Then he noticed the spots on the ceiling. They were not mere specks of dirt or discoloration. They were deliberately painted on: little round black spots placed at irregular intervals on the pale mustard-coloured surface. There were not a great many of them: perhaps thirty...or was it a hundred? He determined that he would not fall into the trap of trying to count them. They would be hard to count, they were so irregularly placed. Or weren't they? Now that his eyes were growing used to them (and one couldn't help noticing that there were five in that little group to the right), their arrangement seemed to hover on the verge of regularity. They suggested some kind of pattern. Their peculiar ugliness consisted in the very fact that they kept on suggesting it and then frustrating the expectation this aroused. Suddenly he realised that this was another trap. He fixed his eyes on the little table in the room.

There were spots on the table too: white ones. Shiny white spots, not quite round. And arranged, apparently, to correspond to the spots on the ceiling. Or were they? No, of course not. Ah, now he had it. The pattern (if you could call it a pattern) on the table was an exact reversal of that on the ceiling. But with certain exceptions. He found he was glancing rapidly from one to the other, trying to puzzle it out. For the third time he checked himself. He got up and began to walk about, taking a look at the hanging pictures.

Most of the pictures were not of a strange kind at all. At first, most of them seemed rather ordinary, though Robert was a little surprised at the predominance of scriptural themes. It was only on the second or third glance that one discovered certain unaccountable details; something odd about the positions of the figures' feet or the arrangement of their fingers or the grouping. And who was the person standing between the Incarnation and the Golden Company? And why were there so many beetles under the table in the Halls of Adunakor? What was the curious trick of lighting that made each picture look like something seen in delirium? When once these questions had been raised the apparent ordinariness of the pictures became their supreme menace, like the ominous surface innocence at the beginning of certain dreams. Every fold of drapery, every piece of architecture, had a meaning one could not grasp but which withered the mind. Compared with these the other, surrealistic, pictures he had seen that created such disgust were mere foolery. Long ago Robert had read somewhere of "things of that extreme evil which seem innocent to the uninitiated," and had wondered what sort of things they might be. Now he felt he knew.

They were, in a sense, playing quite fair with him: offering him the very same initiation through which they themselves had passed and which had divided them from humanity, distending and dissipating men such as the Hood into a shapeless ruin while it condensed and sharpened Emrett into the hard, bright, little needle that he now was. But after an hour or so this long, high coffin of a room began to produce on Robert an effect which his instructor had probably not anticipated. There was no return of the panic attacks which he had suffered in the cell. Whether because be had already survived that attack, or because the imminence of death had drawn the tooth of his powerful desire for the unknown, or because he had (in a fashion) called very urgently to Arceus for help, the built and painted abominations of this room had the effect of making him aware, as he had never been aware before, of the room's antithesis. Against the evil of the room there was Something else, something he vaguely called the "Normal." He had never thought about it before. But there it was solid, massive, with a shape of its own, almost like something you could touch, or eat, or fall in love with. It was all mixed up with Lily and fried eggs and soap and sunlight and the birds cawing at Mitis and the thought that, somewhere outside, daylight was going on at that moment. He was not thinking in moral terms at all; or else (what is much the same thing) he was having a deeply moral experience. He was choosing a side: the Normal. "All that," as he called it, was what he chose. If the view of Team Eclipse led away from "all that," then be damned to their point of view! The vehemence of his choice almost took his breath away. For the moment he hardly cared if Emrett killed him.

I do not know how long this mood would have lasted; but while it was still at its height Emrett returned. He led Robert to a bedroom where a fire blazed and there lay a bed. The light gleaming on glasses and silver and the soft luxury of the room so raised Robert's spirits that he found it difficult to listen while Emrett told him that he must remain here waiting. For what he did not tell Robert.

Emrett retired. Robert glanced round the room. He was reckless now. He saw no possibility of leaving this complex alive unless he allowed himself to be made into a dehumanized servant of the Evil Djinn. Meanwhile, do or die for it, he was going to have a meal. There were all sorts of delights on that table. Perhaps a smoke first, with his feet on the table.

...

For some time now Robert's waking life was divided between periods by the bed and periods in the room with the spotted ceiling. The training in objectivity which took place in the latter cannot be described fully. The reversal of natural inclination that Emrett inculcated was not spectacular or dramatic, but the details would be unprintable and had, indeed, a kind of nursery fatuity about them that is best ignored. Often Robert felt that one good roar of coarse laughter would have blown away the whole atmosphere of the thing; but laughter was unhappily out of the question. The horror was to perform petty obscenities under the unchangingly serious inspection of Emrett, with a stopwatch and a notebook and all the ritual of scientific experiment.

Some of the things he had to do were merely meaningless. In one exercise he had to mount a stepladder and touch one spot on the ceiling, selected by Emrett: just touch it with his forefinger and then come down again. But either by association with the other exercises or because it really concealed some significance, this proceeding always appeared to Robert to be the most indecent and even inhuman of all his tasks. And day by day, as the process went on, that idea of the Straight or the Normal which had occurred to him during his first visit to this room, grew stronger and more solid in his mind till it had become a kind of mountain. He had never before known what an Idea meant: he had always thought till now that they were things inside one's own head. But now, when his head was continually attacked and often completely filled with the clinging corruption of the training, this Idea towered up above him, something which obviously existed quite independently of himself and had hard rock surfaces that would not give, surfaces he could cling to.

"Well?" said the Hood to Emrett after another session with Robert. They walked down the passage, conversing in low tones as they went.

"It is profoundly perplexing," said Emrett. "It certainly looked, I say looked, as if he thought he was hypnotizing us and that he was really in charge of the situation."

"Oh, surely, my dear friend, that would be a most disturbing hypothesis."

"Excuse me. I have made no hypothesis. I am describing how it looked."

"And how, on your hypothesis (I am sorry, but that is what it is), would he be resisting his wellness therapy?"

"That is the point. If he is not being cauterized and burned out, then he, perhaps being fed information by someone quite outside our calculations, namely the enemy spirits, knows our whole plan of campaign."

"Not the immediate, physical plan to retrieve the Bottle and Brick?" said the Hood. "Could he interfere? We are going to capture both of the relics at once, unless we are missing the enemy's movements."

"I do not see how that would be possible," said Emrett. "Robert is locked away and can do nothing. Neither can his wife. The spirits aren't helping them. We have the Swords of Justice tied down guarding Bronze from our psychics. Xerneas and Rayquaza have their own concerns that we've made for them. No, I am not speaking of the physical campaign. We cannot get inside him. All the acts that he can never recover from would kill him. It would be a black stain on our record for him to die unconverted."

"If it no longer becomes practical we should knock him unconscious and dispose of him," said the Hood.

"Sooner or later we will shoot him, if things keep going as they are," admitted Emrett. "It will always be from behind, walking down a corridor. Ten seconds would be enough. In that time the world inside him could turn over. And then suddenly, without a word uttered, without a check in his step, without the changing of a line in his face, suddenly the camouflage would be down and then: bang! There would go the batteries of his hatred. Hatred will fill him like an enormous roaring fire, dark fire. And almost in the same instant: bang! There would go the bullet, too late, or too early. We will have blown his brain to pieces before we can reclaim it. The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of our reach forever. We would have blown a hole in our own perfection. To die hating us: that is freedom."

"Then what will you do?" said the Hood. "I am beginning to think that this avenue is using up your invaluable time."

"That, my dear friend," said Emrett, "is why the retention of Robert and Lily and a certain extreme delicacy in our attitude to both is required; at least, until we have some further developments in Anthien. We make them think they are no longer detained. The word detained has implications...there is no question of detention. On the contrary, the most cordial welcome, the most meticulous courtesy..."

"Do I understand that you have always tried to make him picture us as colleagues rather than captors?"

"As to that," said Emrett, "my conception of the personal, or even official, relations between us had always been elastic and ready for all necessary adaptations that the Djinn gives us. It would be a very real grief to me if I thought he was still preserving any of his own dignity. Provided, of course, that this course really is beneficial."

"What is your plan for the moment?"

"To let him see his wife. If you remember, the request was that he should be able to get a good look at her."

"There was no request," said the Hood flatly. "We were ordered."

"I am not satisfied," said Emrett. "As for the Brick, you do not seem to realize the dangers of the situation. The Djinn's orders to capture Kyogre and Groudon have failed. We also must take into account the possibility that the Brick is not with Bronze. He could have disposed of it. And if it is not with him, then the boy knows things he ought not to know. If Robert deceives us, to allow an imposter and a spy to remain at large in the organization is out of the question. We must find out at once from the Djinn how we can amend the losses suffered at Brimber and Rosecove, and then how we can know exactly where the Brick is."

"The, ah, clerical personnel said they had come in answer to our advertisement," said the Hood. "I wish to do full justice to the point of view you have expressed, my dear Emrett. Admittedly the failure to capture Kyogre and Groudon, two powers that would have been beneficial to some parts of the plan, was very dangerous and it also exposed our activities. But it is not certainly in any case that they would have been useful allies. As for Bronze, the spirits are fairly certain that he has it. The few times they have gotten past the Swords of Justice they have seen it. And for Robert, if he deceives us, it is because you did not live to your end of the job. What about his religion? Have you expunged that?"

"Forgive me for saying that I have never been able to share your root and branch attitude to religion," said Emrett. "I am not speaking of dogmatic Arceanism in its primitive form. But within religious circles and ecclesiastical circles, certain types of spirituality of very real value do from time to time arise. When they do, they sometimes reveal great energy. Father Doyle, though not very talented, is one of our soundest colleagues; and Robert has in him the germs of that total objectivity (allegiance is, I believe, the term you prefer) which is so rare. It doesn't do to be in any way narrow."

"What do you actually propose to do?"

"I will, of course, consult the Djinn at once. I use that term, you understand, purely for convenience."

"But how can you?" said the Hood. "Do you not remember that in two days time you will be going to Anthien for the Indwelling? You will be able to talk to the Djinn all you want, without any intermediates or amplifiers, when that time comes."

For a moment Emrett's face remained still, the mouth wide open. He had indeed forgotten that the night was coming when the Djinn was to walk free again. But the realization that he had forgotten, even for a second, troubled him more than it would have troubled another. It was like the first cold breath of winter: the first little hint of a crack in that great secondary self or mental machine that he had built up to carry on the business of living while he, the real Emrett, floated far away on the indeterminate frontiers of ghosthood. He was well over a hundred, and the preserving magic and medications could not last forever. Or if it did last forever his years would soon become very unpleasant indeed.

"You have therefore to consider at once," said the Hood, "what to do with these two prisoners that evening. It is out of the question that they should attend the raid. It would be madness to leave them to their own devices."

"I will be guided by circumstances, then," said Emrett. He had long known that his continued intercourse with the beings he called gods or spirits might have effects on his psychology which he could not predict. In a dim sort of way, the possibility of complete destruction was never out of his thoughts. He had schooled himself not to attend to it. Now, it seemed to be descending on him. He reminded himself that fear was only a chemical phenomenon. For the moment, clearly, he must step out of the struggle, come to himself, and make a new start for the prisoner's treatment later in the evening. For, of course, this could not be final. At the very worst it could only be the first hint of the end. Probably he had years of work in the coming new order before him, if he was to die at all. He would outlast the Hood. He would kill the admins. The Hood could not have stood better with the Djinn than himself, after that business in the desert.

Emrett had been right in thinking that the aphasia would be only temporary. As soon as they were at Robert's cell he found no difficulty in saying, as he shook the man by the shoulder, "Get up. What do you mean by sleeping now? Come with me to the Objective Room."

...

Meanwhile, in the Objective Room, something like a crisis had developed between Robert and Emrett. As soon as they arrived there Robert saw that the table had been drawn back. On the floor lay a large copy of Arcean rings, almost life-size, a work of art in the Hisuian tradition, ghastly and realistic, with a mutilated Arceus centered within them. "We have half an hour to pursue our exercises," said Emrett, looking at his watch. Then he instructed Robert to trample it and insult it in other ways.

At this moment it crossed Robert's mind that there might seriously be something precious in preserving it, safe and whole in his mind. "It" was the Arcean faith. Emrett who was watching him carefully knew perfectly well that this might be the result of the present experiment. He knew it for the very good reason that his own training by the spirits had, at one point, suggested the same odd idea to himself. But he had no choice. Whether he wished it or not this sort of thing was part of the initiation.

"But, look here," said Robert.

"What is it?" said Emrett. "Pray be quick. We have only a limited time at our disposal."

"This," said Robert, pointing with an undefined reluctance to the horrible white figure in the rings. "This is all surely a pure superstition to you. It won't deconvert me to smash it."

"Well?"

"Well, if so, what is there objective about stamping on the face? Isn't it just as subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean, damn it all, if it's only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?"

"That is superficial. If you had been brought up in a non-Arcean society or weren't a professed believer yourself, you would not be asked to do this. Of course, it is a superstition; but it is that particular superstition which has pressed upon our society for a great many centuries. It can be experimentally shown that it still forms a dominant system in the subconscious of many individuals whose conscious thought appears to be wholly liberated. An explicit action in the reverse direction is therefore a necessary step towards complete objectivity. It is not a question for a priori discussion. We find it in practice that it cannot be dispensed with."

Robert himself was surprised at the emotions he was undergoing. He did not regard the image with anything at all like a religious feeling. He was doing this to save Bronze and Lily's lives and he would have done it instantly if had been anything else. Most emphatically it did not belong to that idea of the Straight or Normal or Wholesome which had, for the last few days, been his support against what he now knew of the innermost circle at the Eclipse complex. The horrible vigor of its realism was, indeed, in its own way as remote from that Idea as anything else in the room. That was one source of his reluctance. To insult even a carved image of such agony seemed an abominable act. But it was not the only source. With the introduction of this Arcean symbol the whole situation had somehow altered. The thing was becoming incalculable. His simple antithesis of the Normal and the Diseased had obviously failed to take something into account. Why was the Arcean ring there? Why were more than half the poison-pictures religious? He had the sense of new parties to the conflict: potential allies and enemies in the spirit world which he had not suspected before. Hitherto he had regarded Emrett's "spirits" as Pokemon intelligences, if they were real at all. Now he was inclined in a different direction.

"If I take a step in any direction," he thought, "I may step over a precipice." A donkey-like determination to plant hoofs and stay still at all costs arose in his mind.

"Pray make haste," said Emrett.

The quiet urgency of the voice, and the fact that he had so often obeyed it before, almost conquered him. He was on the verge of obeying, and getting the whole silly business over, when the defenselessness of the figure deterred him. The feeling was a very illogical one. Not because its feet were bound by silver chains and helpless, but because they were only made of wood and therefore even more helpless, because the thing, (or all its realism) was inanimate and could not in any way hit back, he paused. The unretaliating face of a doll such that he had pulled to pieces in boyhood had affected him in the same way and the memory, even now, was tender to the touch.

"What are you waiting for, Mr. Tercano?" said Emrett.

Robert was well aware of the rising danger. Obviously, if he disobeyed, his last chance of getting Lily out of the complex alive might be gone. Even of getting out of this room. The smothering sensation once again attacked him. He was himself, he felt, as helpless as the wooden Arceus. As he thought this, he found himself looking at the rings in a new way: neither as a piece of wood nor a monument of hs religion but as a bit of concrete history. There did not exist any doubt that Arceus had lived and had been executed thus by the Team Eclipse of those days. And that, as he suddenly saw, explained why this image, though not itself an image of the Straight or Normal, was yet in opposition to crooked Eclipse Alliance. It was a picture of what happened when the Straight met the Crooked, a picture of what the Crooked did to the Straight...what it would do to him if he remained straight. It was, in a more emphatic sense than he had yet understood, a cross.

"Do you intend to go on with the training or not?" said Emrett. His eye was on the time. He knew that those others were conducting their pre-raid operations and that already some of their men must have reached Anthien. He knew that he might be interrupted at any moment. He had chosen this time for this stage in Robert's initiation partly in obedience to an unexplained impulse (such impulses grew more frequent with him every day), but partly because he wished, in the uncertain situation which had now arisen, to secure Robert at once. He and the Hood and possibly (by now) Harry, were the only full initiates in the Eclipse Alliance. On them lay the danger of making any false step. For him who took the right steps there was a chance of ousting all the others, of becoming to them what they were to the rest of the organization and what the organization was to the rest of the world. He knew that Eric or Harry or the lower admins were waiting eagerly for any slip on his own part. Hence it seemed to him of the utmost importance to bring Robert as soon as possible beyond that point after which there is no return and the disciple's allegiance both to the Great Djinn and to the teacher who has initiated him becomes a matter of psychological, or even physical, necessity.

"Do you not hear what I am saying?" he asked Robert again.

Robert made no reply. He was thinking, and thinking hard because he knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the decision out of his hands. This Being Himself, bound in those very rings, had discovered God to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom He trusted had forsaken Him: had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Robert had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. They had been a safeguard. They had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making as he turned to Emrett and said:

"It's all bloody nonsense, and I'm damned if I do any such thing."

When he said this he had no idea what might happen next. He did not know whether Emrett would bring out Beheeyem or produce a revolver or renew his demands. In fact, Emrett simply went on staring at him and he stared back. Then he saw that Emrett was listening, and he began to listen himself. A moment later the door opened. The room seemed suddenly to be full of people, a man with a respirator, a man with a missing hand, and the Hood.

"That's all the time you get," said the Hood. "It's about time you prepared. We set out for Anthein tomorrow."