The Glimourie Light
Christopher took the night shift on the tiller as they passed through the Northern Shoals. The stars were out in uncountable thousands, and the sea all around was darkest blue.
There was a noise above his head; something huge was flying through the night towards him. His first thought was manticores. He drew his sword and moved instinctively to set his back against the body of the boat. And then he gave a cry of delight as the face took on shape and familiarity.
‘Naravirala!’
The sphinx landed on the deck of the boat and furled her wings. Even in the moonlight he could feel the power in her great leonine body radiating from her, the sinewed strength of her shoulders and limbs.
‘Do not speak,’ said the sphinx. ‘Do not wake the others. The stars have told me you are in trouble – is that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me what is the nature of the trouble?’
Christopher hesitated for just one second – one second in which the bliss of telling the sphinx, and handing the whole terrifying situation over to her, rose up in him.
She could call in the dragons; they could burn the bandits to the ground.
Then he thought of Irian, and the words of the ransom note, and it was with absolute certainty that he said, ‘No. I can’t. ’
‘Good,’ said Naravirala. ‘That is a good answer.’
‘How did you find us? Did the stars tell you that?’
‘The stars are not traffic wardens, Christopher Forrester. The mermaids saw you pass by. I received your letter. We must discuss it. But first, you must answer a riddle.’
Christopher groaned.
‘Beware, child of men! Do not take liberties with a sphinx.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Here is your riddle: I rise without waking and fall without pain, I come in without greeting and go out without goodbye. I am stronger than man or sphinx. What am I?’
Christopher tried to think. What was stronger than sphinxes?
‘I dislike riddles,’ said Naravirala. ‘I find them trite. But it is tradition that if you fail I must eat you, and I am old enough to know the value of tradition.’ She glanced over the edge of the boat as the waves lapped against the prow, and raised one tawny eyebrow at him.
‘Oh! The ocean!’ he said. ‘Wait, no – the tide!’
‘The tide. Yes. Stronger even than any man or beast.’ Naravirala smiled a barely visible smile. ‘Now tell me about your letter. Tell me about what you meant when you said it is speech without speaking.’
Christopher told her. He told her how animals had always come to find him, since he was a baby, but with his time in the Archipelago it had strengthened.
How the unicorn had sent out its newborn exuberance so powerfully.
About the flash: how it sharpened to become an invisible green-gold thread that rooted deep in his chest.
Naravirala stopped him. ‘Green-gold?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you came through the waybetween to Glimouria, did you see coloured light in the water? A gold phosphorescence? Was it the same—?’
‘Yes, yes!’ said Christopher, excitement rising in him. ‘Exactly that colour!’
‘Green-gold is the colour of glimourie.’
Naravirala moved towards him; she circled him, unblinking, her feet deft on the wood of the deck. She pressed her great forehead against his face and sniffed deeply. Then she nodded as if a suspicion were confirmed.
‘I have heard of this power before,’ she said.
‘It is a meeting of the Earth’s force and the mind’s skill.
I do not know how it came to you, nor precisely how it functions.
I will consult the writings on the mountain, and the stars.
But I do know its name. The sphinxes call it the Light – the Glimourie Light. ’
‘The Glimourie Light,’ he echoed.
‘How does it feel, this Light, to a human who can wield it?’
He told about the pain that came with the flash, the vertigo and nausea, the ache that was still in his bones. But he told her too how thrilling it had been – like seeing an extra colour, or hearing an extra musical note that he’d never guessed existed.
‘And these two,’ she said, ‘the behemoth and the unicorn – these are the only times you have used this power?’
Christopher shook his head. Uneasily, he told her about the Cerberus, about how its mind seemed to rise up and overcome him. ‘I felt its chains against my legs. I forgot my name.’
‘Your name?’ Naravirala swished her tail in concern. ‘It is your good fortune that you had Anya Argen with you, or you might not have returned. You must learn to keep better hold of yourself, else you will be in the gravest danger.’
‘Danger of what?’
‘Of becoming stranded. Suspended in limbo, animal mind in human form. If you use this connection, you must do it unselfishly.’
‘Unselfishly?’ Christopher could not suppress a contraction of his eyebrows.
‘No, my child.’ Just a twitch of her claws gave warning.
‘Do not look at me as if I were some nursery teacher telling you to share. Listen. The great mystery of this world is the life of other living things; we never know what it is to be anything but our own selves. It is the hard work of great minds – to put themselves in a position to see for even one fleeting moment the true reality of another living soul, of the world that lies outside our own confines. You have been given an extraordinary way into that mystery. To connect. But this gift carries great dangers. If you use it to conquer, to dominate the minds you reach, it will in the end destroy you and all you touch. It will be a great temptation. I have heard stories that would fill your heart with dread. All power, no matter how good, carries the risk of evil.’
‘It wasn’t evil,’ he said stubbornly. He thought again of the great burst of joy the unicorn had telegraphed outwards.
He looked very young to the ancient sphinx: very young, and brave, and stubborn. She smiled at him. ‘Remember what I have told you. Do not allow what happened with the Cerberus to happen again. Anchor yourself.’
‘How?’
She looked hard at him and he could almost feel the waves of heat radiating from her glance. ‘By remembering what it is that makes you a person. What makes you yourself. Find your anchor.’
She said nothing more. She only nudged him with her vast head, and breathed on his face.
Then she beat her wings and was gone. The night swallowed her so swiftly and so absolutely that he felt for a moment it might have been a dream.
But the scent of her wings, animal and glimourie, still lingered on the deck.
He ran down to the sleeping quarters to tell Anya.