Opening

 
The Call
The sun is like a wise old friend, keeping watching over us as we travel.

You feel the sun shining in the energy web.
The sun announces its arrival to the web, like a great ship scattering waves across the sea.

Today, with the sun directly overhead, I feel its presence as a strong, deep vibration.

Six of us travel today, and rise together on the web, toward the closed city.
Makish carries Shazira and Tzina in a net, while I carry Berek.
Balshown flies alone.

Shazira and Tzina are skilled at flow.
But not all who flow, excel at weaving.

Flow is about change.
Those who flow, change the shape of the world around them, or change their own shape.
But the flowmaster and the world are still separate.

Weaving has some of the elements of flow, but at its heart, weaving is about connection.
You must join with the web, to glide upon it.
And in that joining, you let your energy flow into the web.

And feel the web’s energy flow into you.

Shazira and Tzina can flow their forms into birds or other flying creatures.
But today we need the speed of gliding on the web.
After the probe’s appearance, it’s more urgent than ever, that we reach the city quickly.

The wind is warm today and the sky almost clear of clouds,
The air is haunted by the scent of a sweet flower.

Wilka is a plant that grows near the sea.
At this time of year, it blooms.
The flowers stay bright and fragrant on the plant, even after the seeds form.
Then the petals of the flowers are like sails that catch the wind and fly high and far, carrying the seeds.

Balshown and Makish laughed together at last night’s dinner.

But as we prepared for our journey, they spoke little.
Each of them, in his or her own way, is possessive and protective of me.
And wary of the other.

Trust has not yet come to them.
But soon, I hope it will.

I feel unbalanced, and unsettled as we fly.
As though the world was sick.

There’s a strange energy coloring the web today.
And I open my healing eyes to look at the web’s balance.

I see the energy that floats on the web like an intruder.
It seems to emanate from the city, and it gets stronger and stronger, as we approach.

I feel more and more restless, like something is calling me.
But what will we find at the city?

 
The Mothers
It gets harder to fly as you approach the walls of the city.
So we land a hundred feet away.

Shazira is happy to get her feet on the smooth stone that surrounds the city.
She doesn’t like being carried.

As we walk toward the walls, the air is thick with humidity.
And our group seems unusually quiet.

Will we be able to enter this time?

Balshown has made many attempts to enter the city.
With no success.
No one has entered in a thousand years.

The walls cannot be flowed away.
To flow something, you must be able to see its true energy pattern.
But these walls have a shield that distorts the true patterns.

The inhibitors and weapons in Tshuan also have a shield.
I’ve used the grandmother pattern to unlock the Tshuan shields, but the pattern is useless against the shield of the walls.

“What about taking a pure energy form, Yagrin?” asks Makish.

I can let go of my physical body, and live in a pure energy form.
Usually, solid matter is no more than a mist, in the presence of the energy body.
But not the matter of these walls.

“I’ve tried it,” I answer with a sigh, “but I still can’t penetrate the walls.”

“What about transforming yourself into a twin of the wall?” asks Berek.

“I can’t do it,” I answer, “unless I can see the energy patterns, and they’re hidden.”

“What are we doing here, then?” asks Tzina.
“How do you expect to get inside?”

We’re all quiet for a moment.

“Let’s look at the murals,” says Balshown.
“I still think that they’re the key to getting into the city.”

Balshown leads us to the murals.

“Here,” says Balshown, “is the mural called the opening to the fountain.”

In the mural, dozens of feldin form a circle around a singing Kishla.
The Kishla has the usual bright colors of the great birds.
Except for two glowing, black, knife-shaped marks on its feathers.

The feldin are small, glowing, seal-like creatures.
We met by the ocean, in the land of the Bizra.

I walked in the form of a Kishla, with black, knife-shaped feathers, and sang to them.
And the feldin gave me a gift in return.
They crowded around me, and touched my face until it glowed as they do.

The mural seems to show that meeting.
What does it mean?
Why does it matter?

I look with energy eyes at the energy of the wall in front of me.
The energy of the wall is still hidden behind a sea of chaos.
But floating just above it is a ring of twelve energy patterns — the twelve mothers.

I spread my listening body upon the ring.
And nothing happens.

I see an image of a spinning wheel, with a central sphere that’s connected to the rim with twelve spokes.

Then I let the ring become a wheel.
I shape the grandmother energy pattern in the center of the ring, and surround it with a thin sphere of dark blue energy.

I connect the sphere to the twelve mothers to form a wheel, and the wheel spins, faster and faster.
Then I spread my listening body upon the wheel.

I feel like I’m in a great room, with a ceiling fifty feet high.
In this chamber, there is a three-dimensional glowing model of the city, with all of its levels, and with the detail of all of its rooms.

It’s only a model, but this model is connected to the energy of the city.

I still can’t read the shielded energy of the wall.
But I see the wall, surrounding the city, and the mural, that covers a glowing opening.

And far below the model city, I feel a great pulsing energy.
I reach out with my will and I see and feel a small box that seems to hold the great pulse.

When I “reach” inside, I feel an opening, a gateway to a world of pure energy.
Is this the cursed artifact?

The patterns and flows of energy are breathtaking.
And within that world, I feel a distant presence of living creatures of pure energy.

The model hints at what is there.
But it will not take me there.

I pull my awareness back from the model.
I must return to that world of energy.

But first we must get inside the city, and hear the warning.

 
The Glow
“Where were you Yagrin?” asks Balshown.

“I saw a complete model of the city,” I answer, “and I even felt the energy of the artifact.”
“There is some kind of opening here at the mural.”
“But I still don’t know how to open it!”

We spread out, and look at the many murals of the feldin on the city walls.
Is there a clue somewhere that we’ve overlooked?

Most of the feldin murals seem ordinary.
The feldin are swimming, playing, and digging for food.

“Any ideas,” I ask, turning to the others, “why the feldin are so important?”

“No,” says Berek, “but I noticed something odd about one mural of the feldin swimming and playing.”
“There’s one feldin in the mural who is not glowing.”

We all follow Berek to the mural, and look at it.
It seems completely normal, except that the one feldin is painted without the glow.

“Yagrin,” says Shazira.
“Can you still glow, as you did after the feldin touched you?”

“I don’t know,” I answer.
“I haven’t tried.”

Then, I imagine my face glowing.

“It’s working,” says Balshown.
“You’re glowing.”

I turn back to the mural, and it looks blurry to me, as though it were moving.
I open my energy eyes and try to look at the energy of the wall.

“The energy patterns of the wall are still chaos,” I say.
“But I see the mural as a painting of bright energy that rests on the chaotic energy of the wall.”

“And I can see through those shapes to the rooms behind it.”
“It must be the glow,” I add.

I imagine the glow as a kind of energy spotlight.
And I use my intention to focus the light on the single feldin image that has no glow.

I see a kind of energy movie.
An energy image of that single feldin seems to swim across the wall, from its mural to the opening to the fountain, about 20 feet away.
Then the energy image returns to its place and stops moving.

I tell the others what I see.

“Do it,” says Shazira.

“What?” I ask.
“Take the shape of the feldin,” she says, “and move in a swimming motion along the wall.”

“Brilliant,” I say, realizing that this makes perfect sense.

I flow into the shape of the feldin.
What a wonderful creature!

It has powerful energy eyes, and can glide easily along the web.
I see the energy of things so much brighter and clearer than ever before.

Until now, I’ve been looking at the energy world in dim light, and now I’m looking at it in bright light.
Even when I try to close my energy eyes, the edge of the physical bodies of my friends glow and burn with the energy that’s there.

No wonder the feldin glow, even in the physical world!
Look at how the energy world glows before them!

Now, the images of the mural are visible to me as energy images that won’t stay in their place, but move playfully along the wall.

I’m distracted for a few moments by the sight.
Then, I glide along the energy web from place to place with a swimming motion.

As I move, it seems as though the wall gets more transparent, and the inner room sharper.

“The wall was partially transparent for a moment,” says Shazira.
“Try again. Maybe that will do it.”

I try it a few times, but it’s the same every time.
“It’s not enough to open the wall,” I say as I change back.

“All of us,” says Berek, “and he changes into the feldin form.”
“Let’s try it,” I say, and we all change.

If I thought that the world was bright before, it’s much brighter, and each one of us shines.
It seems like we radiate an energy that brightens the energy world.

Shazira wiggles herself closer to me along the ground, before she discovers that she can glide on the web.
There’s an extraordinary pleasurable sensation that I feel when I’m near other feldin.

We all feel it.

The six of us complete the movement together, returning to the place where the image of the non-glowing feldin rests.

The wall is unchanged.

“We’re close to the answer,” says Balshown.
“I know it.”

“Everyone stand near the opening mural,” I suggest.
The wheel of patterns still spins by the opening mural.

I shape a second wheel, with a ring of mother patterns, and a central sphere that holds the grandmother.
I put this second wheel by the second mural (with the dull feldin), and it begins to spin.

Now, both murals have identical, spinning wheels.

It’s not swimming that I need to do!
Swimming is only a dim echo of the graceful movement of gliding along the web.

I glide powerfully, from one mural to the other, letting my energy and my glow, mix with the web.
The wall gets more transparent, and the energy images from the second mural move toward the opening.
I follow it.

When the energy images of the two murals meet, the wall opens, and the six of us are pulled through.

 
Shilann’s Welcome
We quickly change back into people, and shape ourselves some new clothes.
Our old clothes are resting outside the wall.

The light in the room is as bright as daylight, and seems to enter the room through a crystal ceiling.
The ceiling reminds me of the watchtower.

Even with all that light, the world seems a little duller than before, without the feldin eyes.

I glance around the room.
The furniture looks like nothing I’ve ever seen, but I feel strangely at home here.
This is a comfortable room, a place to meet, relax, and talk.

We sit down.

A three-dimensional image appears, and I recognize the person at once.
The image of Captain Shilann stands before us.

Berek stares at the image, fascinated.

“Greetings friends,” he says.
“I’ve waited for you for a long time.”

“This is just a message.”
“I’ve been dead for close to a thousand years.”

The image walks towards us and sits down in a chair facing us.
“The walls,” he says, “were designed so that they would not open for a thousand years.”
“And then, only with an unsual combination of skills, foretold through prophecy.”

“When we crashed on this world, only a few of the energy priests survived.”
“The Bizra taught them to see an energy world that they knew little about.”

“The first lesson was that the skills must not be kept secret, but taught to all who have a talent for them.”
“I hope that it is still true in your lands, today.”

“Understanding of the energy world grew quickly.”
“We used our technology, and our energy knowledge to manipulate our bodies in many ways.”

“Our improved bodies lived strong for centuries.”

“We were few, and the world was large.”
“We might have let time fill the world with people, but we were impatient.”

“So we produced children in artifical wombs, some of them cloned.
“Our population grew rapidly, and built great cities.”
“And we always kept one eye on the sky, waiting for our enemies to return.”

“We learned to use technology to manipulate the energy web.”

“More important, our energy travelers brought home knowledge from many worlds, and we collected a great library.”
“And finally, we were able to open the artifact, and this amplified our power even further.”
“This city was built to hold the library and the artifact.”

“We shared our knowledge with the Bizra.”
“But they found most of our discoveries beneath their notice.”

“They continued to live as they always had lived.”

“When we first arrived on this world, I helped to lead the people.”
“But after a century, I abandoned the cities, and ran away from the politics.”

“I came to this city when it was built, to manage the library.”
“And I was 400 years old when the war came.”

“Most of the cities and people were destroyed.”
“Only this city was completely untouched by the war.”

“We asked the Bizra to help us, and tell us how to start over.”
“They taught us how to build these walls to protect the city, and the artifact.”

“The greatest of our energy travelers could see glimpses of the future, like the Bizra.”
“She looked into the future, and guided the making of the murals so you might find your way here.”

“We had a machine which enabled us to draw power from the artifact.”
“We destroyed it.”

“The Bizra told us to build a chamber to cover the artifact.”
“Most people cannot enter the chamber.”
“For others, the chamber is a bridge to the artifact, and gives them visions.”

“The Bizra call this place the Heart Fountain.”

“Then, the Bizra searched through our library.”
“They helped us select which knowledge to teach freely, and which knowledge should wait for future generations.”
“And which knowledge we should abandon as too dangerous.”

“Within the city are teaching machines to teach the best of what we learned, that can now be revealed.”

“The time after the destruction was a time without hope.”
“And many of us wanted to begin again, on another world.”

“Most of the surviving energy masters left our world, never to return.”
“The teaching of advanced energy ways was forbidden for a few hundred years, and the city was closed.”
“The few masters who remained died away in time, and left behind a simpler world.”

“The Bizra promised that they would reintroduce additional energy teachings when a few centuries passed.”

“I still wonder at my choice to spend my last days in the closed city, alone.”
“The Bizra suggested it, and it feels right.”

“We built an intelligent machine as a guardian that watches over the city and keeps it working, waiting for you.”
“She was my only friend in my last days on this world.”

“She will answer your questions when the message is done.”
“If you are worthy, she will show you the riches of the city.”

“I hope you are worthy, my friends.”
“Or what will become of us?”
He shakes his head.

“Someday our enemies may follow us here.”
“The guardian is programmed to send out a warning along the energy web if she detects any signs of the enemy.”

“Blessings to you, my friends.”
“May the knowledge you learn be a benefit to all creation.”

“I lived through two horrible wars that were started by fools.”
“May you succeed in living in peace.”

The display ends, and a woman appears in the room.

 
 «Read Part 1: Whispers of War