Now he gazed emptily at the twisted bodies strewn all around him on the sand, and it was a sight too horrible for his young mind to accept. He stood there, breathing in short gasps, feeling a terrible pressure in his little chest, tears flowing freely down his cheeks as he whimpered pathetically. And then something within him snapped.
He turned and started walking out into the desert, not knowing where he was going, not caring, unable even to think. He simply placed one foot before the other, walking with his eyes glazed and unfocused, and after a few steps, his little legs began to move more quickly, and then he began to run.
Half whimpering, half gasping for breath, he ran faster and faster and faster, as if he could somehow outdistance the horror that lay behind him. Farther and farther out into the desert he ran, gulping deep lungfuls of air as an intolerable weight seemed to press down on his chest and something deep within him twisted and churned and writhed. He ran faster than he had ever run before, he ran until his strength gave out completely, but something in his mind broke down long before his muscles ceased responding. He fell, sprawling, face down on the desert sand, his fingers scrabbling for purchase, as if he had to grasp the sunbaked soil to keep from falling off the world.
His father had simply left one day, and now his mother, his guardian and his protector, was also gone forever. Pretty Kivara, his mischievous young playmate . . . gone. Happy, little Lyric, who always laughed and sang ... gone. Eyron, who was just a few years older and always seemed to know everything better than anybody else... gone. Kether, their noble, visionary chieftain ... gone. Everyone and everything he knew was gone, leaving him alone. Abandoned. Helpless. Why had he survived? Why? Why?
“WHYYYYYYYYYY?” his mind screamed, and as it screamed, it shattered, fragmenting into bits and pieces as his identity disintegrated and the young elfling known as Alaron, named after a bygone king, simply ceased to be. And as he lay there, senseless, dead and yet not dead, the fragmented pieces of his mind sought desperately to preserve themselves, and started to reform anew. And as if the cry was heard in a world beyond the plane of his existence, there came an answer. First one, then two, then three, then four...
“I know,” he said softly, opening his eyes. He swallowed hard and blinked back tears. “I... know.”
“Yes,” said the Sage, gazing at him with a kindly expression. “Yes, you do. Was it what you wanted?”
“All those years, wondering, yearning for the truth ... and now I wish I had never found it,” he said miserably.
“It was a hard truth that you discovered, Alaron,” said the Sage.
“You know my truename?” Sorak said. “But... you said that you would not be with me on the journey. ...”
“Nor was I,” said the Sage, shaking his head, sadly. “It was enough for me to know what you would discover. I had no wish to see it for myself.”
“You knew?”
“Yes, I knew,” the Sage replied. “Even though my path in life took me away from them, some bonds can never break. I felt it when she died.”
“She?” said Sorak.
“Your mother, Mira,” said the Sage. “She was daughter.”
“Father?” said the Guardian, emerging-true? Is it really you?”
“Yes, Mira,” said the Sage, shaking his head. “You were but an infant when I left. And I have changed much since that time. I did not think you would remember.”
Tears were flowing freely down Sorak’s cheeks now, but it was the Guardian who wept. They all wept. All of them together, the tribe, the Moon Runners, who had died, and yet lived on.
“I do not understand,” the Guardian said. “How can this be? We are a part of Sorak.”
“A part of you is part of Sorak,” said the Sage. “And a part of you is Mira, the spirit of my long lost daughter. And a part of you is Garda, my wife, Mira’s mother, and Alaron’s grandmother.
“The powerful psionic gifts that Alaron was born with, but had not yet evidenced, had forged a strong but subtle bond with you, and with others of the tribe, and he could not accept your deaths, so he would not let you die. He did not know what he was doing. He saw you dying, and he could not endure it, so some inner part of him held onto you with a strength that defied even that of death itself. His tormented little mind could not suffer the hardship, and so it broke apart, but in doing so, he sacrificed his own identity so that you could live. You, and Kether, and Kivara, and Eyron and Lyric and the others….”
“But... what of the Inner Child? And the Shade?”
“The Inner Child is the one who fled in terror from the horror it had seen, and cocooned itself deep in the farthest recesses of your common mind. The Shade is the primal force of your survival, the fury that you felt at death, the last defiant rebel against inevitable fate.”
“And Screech?” asked Sorak, returning to the fore. “What gave birth to Screech?”
“You did,” said the Sage. “He is the part of you that knew the path that you would walk even at the moment of your birth, the embodiment of your calling to choose the Path of Preserver, and your fate to embrace the Druid Wu. He was born at the moment Alaron had ceased to be, when in his last extremity he drew strength out of the werid itself, and manifested in your mind. Screech is that part of you that is Athas itself, and every Irving creature the planet has produced. You are the Crown of Eves, Sorak, born of a chieftain’s seventh son. The prophecy did not say that it would be an eken chieftain. Your father fell, when he came to the rescue of your mother, and then he rose again, when she tended to his wounds and saved him, and out of that a new fife was created-your life.”
“And the great, good ruler?” Sorak asked “Not a ruler, but one who hopes to guide,” the Sage replied. “The avangion, a being still in the process of its slow birth, through me. And now that you have come, and learned the truth about yourself and me, another cycle in the process has become complete. Or, perhaps I should say, may soon become complete, depending on what you decide.”
“What I decide?” said Sorak. “But... why should that decision rest with me?”
“Because it must be your choice,” the Sage replied. “Your willing choice. You are the Crown of Elves, and it is you who must empower the next stage of my metamorphosis, without which I cannot proceed. But it is a decision you must choose to make, of your own free will.”
“Why ... of course, Grandfather,” said Sorak. Tell me what I have to do.”
“Do not agree so quickly,” said the Sage. “The sacrifice mat you must make is great”
“Tell me,” Sorak said.
“You must empower me with the tribe,” the Sage replied.
“The tribe?”
“It is the only way,” the Sage said. “They shall not die, but they shall live on in me. Not in the same way they have lived in you. Our spirits shall unite and be as one, and that one shall be the natal avangion. Merely the beginning of a long process yet to come, but a necessary step.”
“Then... it was fated that all this should happen?” Sorak asked.
“Fate is merely a series of possibilities,” the Sage replied, “governed by volition. Yet, for most of your life, you have lived as what you are, a tribe of one. Before you agree, you must consider this: could you bear to live without them?”
“But... I would still be Sorak?”
“Yes. But only Sorak. You would no longer have the others. You would face that which almost destroyed you once before. You would be alone.”