Read Online Temple of the Traveler: Book 02 - Dreams of the Fallen by Scott Rhine - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Scott Rhine
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others as well.”
“I see,” said the sheriff.
“Do you really? It took us 150 years to get the math right.”
Tashi thought he saw where the fiend was leading him. The first gate was the Stairs, constructed by the dwarf. They no doubt used it in a time of war to escape the religious pogroms. However, they used the mechanism before it was fully understood.
“This natural instinct for metaphysics irritated Osos because Calligrose was conceived between Osos’s wife and his chief political rival. Osos took her as a means toward power, but I don’t think he really loved her. Osos loved himself first and foremost. Ironically, Calligrose took that from him, too.”
Tashi stopped him. “Conceived?” Archanon nodded without elaborating.
Tashi looked for other clues, other stray words like bread crumbs to follow. “I know about the formation of the Compass Star. But what do you mean ‘too’?”
“What has your master told you happens when you pass through the Doors of Eternity?”
Tashi repeated what he had learned. “Roughly speaking, the Halls are where we go when we dream. It’s a common region between the world of the gods and ours. Passing the threshold, you transcend the mere physical. Master Jotham calls the process translation and tried to explain what it felt like to me once. He said that there is something that ties us to this plane called the silver cord, much like a newborn’s umbilical cord. To pass the threshold, you must travel backward up this silver cord, passing back through every moment of your life like a tunnel. The experience was so horrible for him that it turned his hair prematurely gray.”
Archanon held two hands apart and then joined them. The disjoint concepts linked in Tashi’s mind. “A pregnant woman translated. The Traveler was born on the other side! The child had nowhere to go but through her. The act would have been instinctive, like floating to the surface of a lake to breathe. The birth trauma must have killed her. How horrible! Let me guess; you made laws preventing that disaster from happening again. Calligrose was the first and only one born in the Halls between worlds. This makes him unique, the god of borders.”
“There are many other ways he’s different.”
Tashi was still churning with the information. “Calligrose accidentally killed Osos’s wife. That’s what started the feud. I’m sure Osos’s rival was dead or left behind. That meant that Calligrose has no mother or father. That’s why he’s the god of orphans. I’m guessing the whole community must have raised and trained him. This is how he collected the teachings from the gods that became the six-fold way.” The phrasing of certain earlier comments struck Tashi. Was the Traveler technically even a member of the Dawn race? What loopholes did this lack of membership open up in the Rules?
However, Tashi couldn’t stop to examine this small detail; his thoughts about the nature of the Traveler had gained momentum like rocks rolling down a hill. “But it wasn’t the same as having a family. No one else in your world was the same as him. No one else would ever be. He helped us, studied us, and walked beside us. Yet he didn’t fit into this world either. He must have been a stranger in every place, alone in any crowd.”
Shards of memory blurred with the suppositions. Tashi’s breathing became more rapid as he fought sympathetic vibrations from his own past. The rocks rolling downhill had started a landslide.
“Excellent reasoning, but are we talking about him, or you?”
Tashi grabbed his forehead. There was no single revelation that the fiend wished to trigger; rather, his aim had been to demonstrate how such disjointed riddles could be assembled when one knew about the connection. He viewed everything spoken by the gods through this lens. Thoughts and education from a dozen lifetimes from the abbots in his amulet connected and collided at the threshold of his epileptic seizure. A single
“I see,” said the sheriff.
“Do you really? It took us 150 years to get the math right.”
Tashi thought he saw where the fiend was leading him. The first gate was the Stairs, constructed by the dwarf. They no doubt used it in a time of war to escape the religious pogroms. However, they used the mechanism before it was fully understood.
“This natural instinct for metaphysics irritated Osos because Calligrose was conceived between Osos’s wife and his chief political rival. Osos took her as a means toward power, but I don’t think he really loved her. Osos loved himself first and foremost. Ironically, Calligrose took that from him, too.”
Tashi stopped him. “Conceived?” Archanon nodded without elaborating.
Tashi looked for other clues, other stray words like bread crumbs to follow. “I know about the formation of the Compass Star. But what do you mean ‘too’?”
“What has your master told you happens when you pass through the Doors of Eternity?”
Tashi repeated what he had learned. “Roughly speaking, the Halls are where we go when we dream. It’s a common region between the world of the gods and ours. Passing the threshold, you transcend the mere physical. Master Jotham calls the process translation and tried to explain what it felt like to me once. He said that there is something that ties us to this plane called the silver cord, much like a newborn’s umbilical cord. To pass the threshold, you must travel backward up this silver cord, passing back through every moment of your life like a tunnel. The experience was so horrible for him that it turned his hair prematurely gray.”
Archanon held two hands apart and then joined them. The disjoint concepts linked in Tashi’s mind. “A pregnant woman translated. The Traveler was born on the other side! The child had nowhere to go but through her. The act would have been instinctive, like floating to the surface of a lake to breathe. The birth trauma must have killed her. How horrible! Let me guess; you made laws preventing that disaster from happening again. Calligrose was the first and only one born in the Halls between worlds. This makes him unique, the god of borders.”
“There are many other ways he’s different.”
Tashi was still churning with the information. “Calligrose accidentally killed Osos’s wife. That’s what started the feud. I’m sure Osos’s rival was dead or left behind. That meant that Calligrose has no mother or father. That’s why he’s the god of orphans. I’m guessing the whole community must have raised and trained him. This is how he collected the teachings from the gods that became the six-fold way.” The phrasing of certain earlier comments struck Tashi. Was the Traveler technically even a member of the Dawn race? What loopholes did this lack of membership open up in the Rules?
However, Tashi couldn’t stop to examine this small detail; his thoughts about the nature of the Traveler had gained momentum like rocks rolling down a hill. “But it wasn’t the same as having a family. No one else in your world was the same as him. No one else would ever be. He helped us, studied us, and walked beside us. Yet he didn’t fit into this world either. He must have been a stranger in every place, alone in any crowd.”
Shards of memory blurred with the suppositions. Tashi’s breathing became more rapid as he fought sympathetic vibrations from his own past. The rocks rolling downhill had started a landslide.
“Excellent reasoning, but are we talking about him, or you?”
Tashi grabbed his forehead. There was no single revelation that the fiend wished to trigger; rather, his aim had been to demonstrate how such disjointed riddles could be assembled when one knew about the connection. He viewed everything spoken by the gods through this lens. Thoughts and education from a dozen lifetimes from the abbots in his amulet connected and collided at the threshold of his epileptic seizure. A single
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