Ibn Sharjar: In the Trickster's light, a path revealed.
Posted on 16 Jun 2023 @ 11:15pm by Atif ibn Sharjar - Merchant of the Al Ashar
Mission:
Ongoing Mission - Planet Obsidian
Location: Obsidian - "Pillar of the Moon"
Timeline: M3 D12 0420hrs
3244 words - 6.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Ibn Sharjar awoke to the soft buzzing of his chronometer, he opened his eyes and smacked his lips sleepily. The rock chamber was dimly lit by the flickering flame of the oil lamp in the corner, the wick trimmed down low. Looking up he saw the flickering light made the pictographs cut into the ceiling almost seem to move, he could imagine the odd mythical squid-like creature waving its tentacles in a celestial sea.
He heard a rustle and looked over to see Jilek was sat up and lifting off his blankets. Beside him the two boys slept soundly still. Jelik had applied some more slave to their fresh cuts before bed.
The tribesman nodded to Atif. “We will give them a little longer, it will be a long day today, we climb the Pillar and then the long ride back home” He clambered up, crossed to the lamp and adjusted the wick to give a brighter light, then began packing up their belongings.
Atif did likewise, he slid off the sleeping platform, stretched and rubbed his eyes. Then gathered up his bedroll and pack. Opening his water bag he took a drink, then cupped his hand and splashed some water on his face, shaking it off.
Jelik set out some breakfast on one of the stone shelves, dried dates, Siniki biltong, some cheese and a couple of unleavened flat bread. Atif added in some protein bars and then they woke Sasil and Gebril.
The pair sat up yawning, Sasil grimaced and his hand went to the newly formed scar on his cheek. It was a raised welt, reddened against his dark skin and black in the center with congealed blood and the ash.
“Do not pick at it!” Jelik chided gently. “It will not heal cleanly and you will spoil the lines if you do. Come pack your things and have some food, then I will give you some more salve before we leave.”
“You will not get a pretty wife if you have ugly scars” his brother teased him, his own forth scar similarly reddened.
“Ewwww… who wants a wife!” Sasil exclaimed, clambering out of his blankets.
“What about Sarea? You two play together a lot” Jelik commented. “Her mother said she likes you.”
“Sarea?! She’s good at games. But I don’t want to marry her or any girl!” Sasil protested “Ewwww!"
“Very well, come and eat” Jelik laughed and shared a smile with Atif.
After they had eaten and packed up, they made their way back out to the entrance chamber. It was busy in the lamplight, with people gathering together and talking quietly. It was chilly and Ibn Sharjar noted it was still dark beyond the entrance doorway.
The group crossed over to the beetle enclosure, to where they had left their saddles on a stone shelf. Ibn Sharjar marveled again at the precise way the stone had been cut, too accurate to have ben done by hand, surely it had been made with some form of energy cutting beam. Jelik pulled bags of fodder from their saddles.
“Feed Khasta, Fifta and Hrada, then bring your robes, gloves and mask and come and join us” Jelik instructed his sons and the two boys ran off with the feed to find their mounts.
He retrieved his own outerwear from his saddle bags, donned it and waited while Ibn Sharjar did the same. Jelik looked him over and nodded. “Good it will be cold and windy on the climb until the sun rises.”
They walked back to the group and Jelik chatted with others. There was a couple there with a pretty girl around Sasil’s age. Like his son, she had a fresh scar on her check.
“Good morning Sarea” Jelik knelt down and smiled to her, looking over her cheek. “That is a fine scar, the Red Star of the forests is it not?”
“Yes” she nodded seriously “Like mother and my grandmother”
Ibn Sharjar noted the girl’s mother had the same one.
Jelik nodded and stood up “Sasil has the Green Circle and Moon. I’m sure he would like to show you and see yours.”
The girl chuckled happily and hugged her mother’s leg. Her parents gave Jelik a smile.
A few minutes later Gabrul and Sasil arrived. “Hello Sasil” Sarea said brightly “I like your scar.”
Sasil reddened and shuffled his feet awkwardly. “Huh”
“Do you like mine?” Sarea asked, turning her cheek to show him.
Sasil barely glanced at it “’S’right I s’pose”
“As the newest Watch, you, and Sarea, will be at the front” Sarea’s mother said “Will you look after her on the climb please Sasil?”
Sasil squirmed some more “S’pose so.“
“Good” Jelik clapped his youngest son on the shoulders “With your first scar, comes your first responsibilities.”
Sasil perked up a bit at that.
Behind them someone began calling for quiet, the gathered Tribespeople turned towards the stone altar. Neifle was stood there, with Selandra, the lines and stars freshly cut on her forehead.
“Our newest Watch has taken their first scars, chosen them from those cut into the rock so very long ago. And we have welcomed another Watch into adulthood” She began “Now we shall climb the Pillar of the Moon and let the light of the Trickster reveal to us the signs our ancestors placed there for us!
In recognition of her first step to becoming one whom will be a teacher of the path. Selandra will lead the climb and invoke the gift of the Trickster!”
She turned a gestured for Selandra to come forward. The girl stepped forward and held out her arms. “Let the newest Watch come to me. We shall find the path and begin the climb together.”
The youngest group of children began to move towards her. Sarea boldly took Sasil’s hand and pulled him forward. “C’mon Sasil, you can look after me.”
He rolled his eyes and allowed himself to be tugged forward.
Jelik and Sarea’s father chuckled together. “Headstrong girl you raised there Bredul”
“I know, she gets it from her mother” Bredul replied, dodging nimbly as his wife went to elbow him in the ribs.
Salandra formed the youngsters into a line of two behind her, made sure they were all buttoned up and had their masks on, then started forward towards the doorway, somebody handed her a red lantern which she held aloft. The next groups fell in behind them, followed by Neifle and then the rest of the adults. Red lanterns dotted amongst the column.
“It will be cold and the wind will have stirred up the shards” Jelik said quietly to Ibn Sharjar as he fixed his headdress and mask in place “Make sure not to leave any flesh exposed”
Ibn Sharjer nodded, wrapping his Thawb tightly around him, donning his eye protection, mask and gloves.
They wound their way out through the cavern entrance and turned left in the pre-dawn darkness. Above them was the light of stars in the clear sky. As soon as they cleared the shelter of the doorway a bitter wind tore into them, with it came the sting, the rattle and clatter of shards of glass.
It was like being in a sand-storm with sharp edges. Ibn Sharjar hunched over against the buffeting of wind, he could feel the prickle of shards of obsidian on his clothing. As Jelik has warned, any exposed skin would be rubbed raw and bloody in minutes.
The column wound along beside the towering rock cliff for perhaps two hundred meters. Ibn Sharjar could just make out some pictographs ln the glow of the lanterns. Then when he glanced ahead, he was surprised to see the head of the column had disappeared, people were turning left and then seemingly walking right into the rock face and vanishing.
As he reached the point he saw there was a natural looking fissure in the rock and the people before him turned into the narrow hole. He followed Jelik into the deeper darkness. Ahead was somebody with a red lantern. In its light Ibn Sharjar saw that the fissure was perhaps three or four meters deep but from it led an arched doorway on the right wall, the people were entering the doorway and he followed along.
The doorway was perhaps a meter wide and two high, the top a perfectly rounded arch and like the sides, it was smoothly cut from the living rock. Again he thought, the work was too perfectly symmetrical to have been made by hand. It was dark within and he stumbled when his foot hit something, a step, then another, he found himself on a stairway cut into the rock, the steps were broad and shallow, easy to ascend and following Jelik he trudged upwards, barely able to see in the near darkness, lit only by red lanterns ahead and behind.
The climb continued, fifteen or twenty minutes had elapsed he reasoned, despite the chill he was getting warm in his heavy clothing, just as he was about to lower his mask and open his thawb the stairway leveled out and opened up onto a wide space, he stepped out and peered around him. Stiffening when he realized where they were, the enclosed stairway had brought them to an open ledge on the rock face. To his right, just a few feet away, was an open drop!
He moved out of the way for people coming up behind him and gingerly moved towards the edge to peer over, keeping one gloved hand on the rock wall beside him. In the time taken to climb up here the sky was starting to show the first glow of dawn, off to the right, he could just make out the ground below, they were perhaps three hundred or more meters up. The wide expanse of the black obsidian polar plain spread before them as far as the eye could see, bending off at the edges as the landed curved away over the horizon.
Impressed with the view but wary of the drop Ibn Sharjar backed up and moved to stand by Jelik, the ledge was a semi-circular shape, perhaps ten meters deep at the deepest; the rocky ceiling maybe three meters above their heads. The edge by the drop-off looked natural, but the floor, walls and ceiling were smooth, cut out from the rock by the same method than had made the stairway.
The people found their places, adults at the back, the various younger groups before them. Neifle and Selandra stood together in the center.
The light was steadily increasing now, changing from a cool bluish starlight to a warm orangey-red as Loki clawed its malevolent way over the horizon and up into the sky. As the sun rose the wind lessened, the heat warming and changing the air currents, soon people began to lower their masks and Ibn Sharjar undid his, the air was still cool but no longer chilly, and no longer full of grit.
Neifle spoke quietly to Selandra, then embraced her and stepped back, the young woman turned to the people.
"Remember now the words of the Song of the stars “And three did meet the vengeful fate. But one, hidden by the Trickster Star.”
“Here did the Pathfinders of the last great Caravan find a place of hiding, a place of concealment, a place that was not illumination but a trick of light. A star in which to find shelter and safety. They searched within its light for a green oasis: there were seven circles within the light, but none were green.
On this black circle came they to settle. From all evil they brought the people, safely concealed. And here to the Pillar of the Moon did the Pathfinders come after the Prophet was betrayed!
And here they did use their knowledge and their wisdom and the ways that had they used to cross the stars. Here, did they use the light of the Trickster to hide the path, from all but those who keep the watch, from those who did betray them and from the servants of evil alike.
Here, did they place the signs for the faithful. But only twice a year, nine days before the solstice, nine dawns for each of the nine watches who guided the last great caravan here!
Behold now, as the Trickster reveals to us, we, the faithful in our watch, the path to the Green Circle!” Selandra turned back and looked out over the edge.
Ibn Sharjar watched with the rest, an expectant hush had fallen over them. The light was growing swiftly now. On the black plain below, a rich orange glow was spreading from the east. Where before had been a flat empty blackness, he could now see some features, the marks of fissures or cracks in the obsidian, similar to those he had seem on the journey here.
In a few minutes the fissures and cracks became clearer, there seemed to be more here than on other parts of the Lathini Deadlands. More distortion, perhaps the result of ancient tectonic activity or currents in the molten glass as it cooled, he mused.
Then, as the light grew, his eyes became drawn to a particular spot, where there had been a ragged natural fissure now became a straight line of shadow, it cut neatly out across the plain, alongside the line appeared other shapes.
Initially they appeared random but as the rising sunlight became brighter and the shadows became deeper, they turned into stars and circles. A first one or two, then more and more, the line of shadow zigzagged back and forth across the plain, with each second Loki rose in the sky so more shadows and shapes were revealed, there were now dozens of them, lines and stars crisscrossed the plain. below the ledge.
“Behold the path! Behold the journey of the pathfinders! Behold, the way to our green oasis!” Selandra called out.
Inb Sharjar was astonished, where there had been an empty natural plain of black glass, now there was a bewildering mass of constellations.
He tried to make sense of it, it was somehow familiar but yet confusing. If it was some kind of route or path or stellar transit, the shapes were in the wrong order, the line of travel, if that’s what it really was, was not linear, but it seemed to double back and loop over itself.
He racked his mind, thinking of his ship's navigational computer, when he planed out a route, it did not look anything like this. He mentally ran through the process, enter the start point, destination point, vector to galactic center, superimpose known obstacles, project that into the three-dimensional plot chart and…
He stopped himself, there was something about the three-dimensional plot chart but what?
He pictured the holographic sphere hovering over his plotting screen. Something was there, he could not grasp it though.
He stared out at the plain again, focusing on one part of the lines of shadows. The line came in from the bottom left, passing what appeared to be a constellation shape, but them the line did a right angle turn and went right through another constellation shape, then made another sharp angular turn before passing a group of three circles and star shape.
He stared at it… What was that? That doesn't make sense... But then he had it
“Ha!” he nearly snorted out loud.
It was like looking at one of those optical illusion pictures, at first glance the image appeared to show one thing, but let your focus change and suddenly there was another image hidden within. Two faces in profile, became a pair of sitting figures; stairs going up and down, in impossible ways; swirls and spirals that seemed to almost suck you into the picture, or rows of shapes that seemed to undulate and move as you looked at them.
He saw now what he was looking at; a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional trans-stellar route!
He pictured his holographic plot display again, if that illuminated image was flattened out, instead of a sphere it would be a circle and the plotted route, instead of forming a line, in three dimensions, would be bent and zigzag back and forth, just like the shadow line on the plain!
It was truly amazing, to create those marks on the plain, which would cast the right shadows only in the dawn light of two particular days each year, could only be achieved by a people with an advanced knowledge of astronomy, of mathematics, of trigonometry, of interstellar navigation, people who understood and could manipulate three- dimensional thinking and then recreate those concepts as a two-dimensional image on the ground. Then further, set it up so that it was viewable from this particular vantage point, a balcony cut high into a cliffside.
As he watched, the shadows began to slowly fade, as Loki rapidly climbed up in the sky, so the shadows ere washed away in the glare of its baleful gaze.
The whole image had lasted perhaps six minutes; maybe for just four of those it had been really clear, with the deepest shadows and most defined lines. Now it was fading away to the dull black-gray of the glass, what had been clear lines and shapes became just fissures and cracks and natural marks, or disappeared completely.
Before it faded at last, he tried to grasp some idea of scale or distance. It was impossible to judge but based on the words of the Tribe's Song of the Stars, they recounted nine generations of pathfinders That would be maybe thirty to forty years a generation. The line had passed dozens and dozens of shapes, constellations and systems, A journey of, at least, three centuries or more!
He looked around the tribesmen gathered on the rocky balcony, were they really the descendants of an ancient space-going civilization?
Their myths, their legends and folktales; the workmanship required to create this place and the very image he had just witnessed, seemed to suggest they were!
With the lines now vanished and the sun rising, the hush that had been over the people broke, they chattered together, naming shapes they had seen in the shadow lines, pointing to their own scars which matched some of them.
Sasil and Jelik came back, Jelik hugged his sons. “You have seen our path for the first time” he said to Sasil, kneeling down by his boys.
And you for the fourth time, Gabrul. This our ancestors left here for us, that we always may strive to keep our watch, for one day the evil will find us and then shall the Pathfinders return. And we shall do battle with them against the Black Giants.
Only the true and faithful, only those who stand their watch, only those who keep to the path will be worthy and victorious. And it is they, they who shall begin the journey home to our green circle! Do you understand my sons?”
“Yes father” Sasil nodded seriously “I understand”
“I too father” Gabrul replied
“Good” Jelik patted his sons faces. “Now we shall descend, we have a long ride home.”
