Sagaria (10 page)

My footsteps echoed as I walked toward the woman on the throne. Still, I wasn't nervous, as I might have been approaching some potentate or bigwig in our world. As I neared her, I saw she was beautiful, more beautiful than any woman I've ever seen – with the exception of your grandma, of course. She had something ageless about her. She was dressed in a silver robe, and on her head she wore a delicate crown with a big jewel in the middle that was cut in countless facets, so it seemed to be every color there ever was and, at the same time, no
color at all. She had a perfectly oval face, skin the color of fresh milk and long, light brown hair, but it was her eyes that held me the most. They had that lovely Oriental shape, with perfect curves above and below coming to graceful points at either side. Instead of being dark, though, they were the sort of striking blue-green you sometimes see in the eyes of a cat. But their shape and color weren't the main things I saw about them: it was the astonishing depth of caring and wisdom in them. I felt as if should I ever have a secret so great I didn't want to tell it to even the ones I loved most, she was someone I could tell it to.

I was just starting to bow (she was the kind of person you instinctively wanted to bow to) and was opening my mouth to say something meaningless but respectful when she spoke first.

“Welcome to Sagaria, Melwin.”

I was stunned. She knew my name. I knew I'd not given it to the guards or to anyone I'd met upon the road. How could she—

“Of course I know your name, Melwin,” she continued, looking at me with those delicate lips of hers turning up into a slightly impish smile. “I can sense the trueness of your heart and your mind, and they tell me you are a nobleman from the Earthworld who has been brought here for a purpose. As for your name? Well, no one truly chooses a name, you know. It's the names that choose
us
. The only name someone with your soul could have is ‘Melwin' – the word means ‘honest trustworthiness' here in Sagaria.”

“B-b-b-but,” I stammered, “there's some mistake. I'm not a nobleman, I'm a forest ranger. I work with my hands to earn my living. I'm not rich or famous or—”

“Riches and fame mean nothing in this world.” She gazed sternly into my eyes. It embarrasses me to tell you what she said next, Sagandran, but there's a lesson to be learned in it, so I will. “You have a nobility of the soul, Melwin,” she continued. “That's what makes you a nobleman, and that's why you've been led here.”

I couldn't find the words to respond to this. I must have looked like a fish in a tank, pop-pop-popping with my mouth, my eyes big and round.

She gave me another of those mischievous little smiles, not just with her lips but also with her eyes. It was the kind of smile someone gives you only when they've known you a long time, and very closely. Of course, she did know me well if she could sense what my heart and mind were telling her, but I was still startled to see her looking at me that way.

“So I have indeed been brought here, and did not find my way by accident,” I said, my voice sounding a bit like those hinges on the castle gates, only a lot less noisy. It was as I spoke that the full force of what had occurred began
to strike me. Up until then, as I've told you, I was accepting everything quite calmly. I'd been calm when I was falling through the skies. I'd spoken to the people on the road and in the town much as I might speak to the folk I meet in the post office every day. Consciously, I might have known that I was in some otherworld, but deep in my subconscious mind, there had still been the illogical belief that this was all a dream, or a vision, or something that had a perfectly natural explanation. Now it was as if I'd just tripped over something unseen and fallen flat on my face. The full enormousness of what had happened to me since I'd fallen down the well filled my mind to bursting point.

I staggered, reaching behind me blindly for support. All at once, there was an upright chair waiting for me that I could have sworn hadn't been there before. I plopped down into it, breathing heavily. Queen Mirabella still had that bewitching smile on her face. Once she saw that I had settled down a bit, she carried on speaking.

“Ah, Melwin, you're beginning to think that you've been taken all the way to the other side of the universe and back, and you're starting to get scared about being so very far from home – but you're not really. You might think Sagaria is the strangest otherworld there ever was, but that's not true either. Sagaria has existed as long as your world has. It has evolved to become what it is today in just the same way yours has, even though the details have turned out very different. Surely you didn't think that your world, the Earthworld, was the only one of its kind in all the universe? Or maybe your shock is because you didn't expect to find different worlds so close to your own? I suppose you might call Sagaria one of your closest neighbors in the universe – since our world is a part of yours and yours a part of ours, our two worlds overlap. There's a further world overlapping our two, you know, but perhaps I'd best not overload you by telling you more about that right now, other than that it's called the Shadow World.”

She was right in not wanting to overload me. Even the very thought of there being worlds with their realities all overlapping each other was making my mind want to squirt right out through my ears.

Mirabella was still talking. “Sometimes, when you've been at peace in your heart and mind, you've felt the presence of Sagaria, even though you've not known Sagaria was what it was. Of course, it's not the world that you've felt but the people and creatures who live here. They come in every shape and size. Languages are no barrier here if we speak our hearts; our voices automatically convey our thoughts to every human, or any other creature you might recognize from your sagas and fairy tales.”

“You mean there are trolls here?” I said, surprised. “And dragons, gnomes and goblins and all the other magical beings?”

Queen Mirabella smiled again. “I see you are not unfamiliar with such beings, though they often have different names here. We have trolls all right, though we call them worgs and gnomes are called opposomes. If you're lucky, you'll not meet any of them.”

Then she became serious once more, as if the sun had briefly peeped through the clouds but was now obscured again. “You were brought here via one of the many gateways we created a long time ago as a link between the worlds, to help them grow toward balance and harmony. At the same time as the gateways were brought into being, three crystals were made that were filled with magical powers: a clear white crystal for the world of Sagaria, a midnight-blue stone for the Shadow World and a rainbow-colored crystal that represented balance for the Earthworld.

“But the inhabitants of the Earthworld grew greedy and hungry for power. Where humans once lived in accord, violence and bloody wars now spread over the surface of the earth. The rulers of Sagaria felt it was only a matter of time before we would be caught up in this Earthworld turmoil. Some of the greatest magicians of Sagaria, drawn from every corner of our world, united their magic to destroy the gates.

“All the gates except one. They left one on the Earthworld, hidden beneath the ground. Only someone who was true in heart and mind would be able to find it. But not just
find
it – a person like that would be drawn by the gateway, would be made to discover it. Did you really think it was pure chance that you tripped and fell down a well? Have you ever done such a thing before? A forest ranger, who knows the ways of the land? Even though your mind was filled with grief for the loss of the woman you loved beyond all else, you'd have seen that well long before you came to it … if it had been there before you fell in.”

I wondered how she knew all this. I still can't rightly say, Sagandran. It's just that, well, Mirabella's like that.

“The crystals were lost during the magical destruction of the gateways between Sagaria and the Earthworld,” she was saying. “One has been rediscovered by a man of evil named Arkanamon, who has created a new portal into the Shadow World. Another, the Star Crystal of Sagaria, was found soon after, but Arkanamon has succeeded in stealing it. The third, the Rainbow Crystal of the Earthworld, has never been rediscovered, and it is best that way. If all three crystals were to be brought together again, they could bring great happiness or great misery to the worlds. The latter's far too great a risk to take. Better the Rainbow Crystal remain forever lost.”

I had read enough stories about lost crystals and rings and other gewgaws of great magical power that folk quested to find. In most of those stories, the 
rediscovery of the bauble brings nothing but trouble to the world. So I shivered at the queen's words.

She raised her gaze from mine for a moment and stared at one of the stained glass windows. The sun had caught the image of a creature rather like a unicorn except that its tail was made of feathers. The creature glowed with life.

Then Mirabella looked back at me. There was a new intensity in the blue–green of her eyes – something that might have frightened me had she been anyone else.

“Although the children of the Earthworld are sometimes able to visit us in their dreams, only through being chosen by the gateway can your kind enter Sagaria bodily. I know that the gateway must have read your heart and decided you were a true nobleman, but I cannot tell what other reasons it had for choosing you. There must have been some, for even the Earthworld is not short of noble people. But it selected
you
, Melwin, out of all the others who came its way.”

“There are not many who pass through that forest,” I mumbled.

Queen Mirabella heard me. “What makes you think that the gateway is always in your forest, Melwin?”

“I just thought …”

She raised a hand and my words withered in the air. “The gateway is always in the same place,” she said, “which is where it needs to be. That doesn't mean it's always in the same
physical
place.”

I must have looked perplexed, because she laughed. The noise was like the music glasses would make if you could tap a thousand of them at once with your fingernails. It was an enchanting sound, one that seemed to appear in your mind not just as music, but as pictures.

“I'm sorry,” she said at last, “but I know exactly what you're going through, and I sympathize. It's just a different way of thinking, Melwin. You'll find that here in Sagaria, people often think in ways the folk of Earth have forgotten how to. A place is defined by its position in the overall balance of things, not by whether it's next to this mountain or that stream or down below the ground here or there or somewhere else.”

I did understand what she meant. I always had. The smile froze on her face when she looked into my eyes and discovered that this was so. The reason I'd been looking nonplussed was not because I didn't have the same comprehension as her about what a place really is, just because I'd never before come across anyone else who thought that way.

When she spoke again it was with a greater gravity in her tone. “Melwin, I think you already know the choice I'm going to give to you. Once upon a
time, there were countless gateways between Earthworld and Sagaria, but then the magicians destroyed them. Each of those gateways had a gatekeeper, but the gatekeepers were scattered like seeds on the wind when the gateways disappeared. The only portal left between our worlds is the one that selected you. It read your heart and decided that you were the mortal being best suited to be its keeper. It wasn't by chance that you found the key and opened the door. If the portal hadn't accepted you as its master, the key would have remained invisible to you – but that doesn't mean you have to accept the task. The decision is up to you. So I'm asking you, Melwin, are you willing to accept the responsibility of guarding the portal to ensure that people of ill will from Earthworld never accidentally discover it and find a way to batter it down and come rampaging into our world?”

I thought over her words. “Surely the gateway can be found only when it wants to be?” I said.

“I cannot pretend to know all of the laws that govern our complicated, interlocking realms,” she said. “All I know is that it is possible, however unlikely, for a gateway to let itself be discovered by misadventure and, once it has done so, to be breached. As the keeper of the gateway, you would most probably never be called upon to defend it, but the job would be no sinecure for all that. You would have to be perpetually on the alert, in case the secret of the gateway might be revealed.”

After she'd said this, there was a silence in the room so deep I felt I could hear the sound of the colored sunlight falling on the carpet. I looked at my hands for a very long time; at some point I'd knotted my fingers together, and now I couldn't think of a way to unknot them.

Then I raised my head. Queen Mirabella looked so beautiful and so true sitting there on that throne of hers that was several sizes too large. But it wasn't her beauty I saw, it was the infinite love and compassion that dwelled in her eyes. I knew I wanted to protect her any way I could, to protect her world. I had a sense that the two were very much the same thing.

“Your Majesty,” I said, “it will be my privilege to serve this world for the rest of my life.”

She smiled a warm and beautiful smile, and I felt the way you do when you're all wrapped up in your bed and the wind's howling outside and the rain's pelting against the windowpanes.

“You'll receive no reward for your labors except happiness and satisfaction,” she observed.

“I would ask for nothing more,” I murmured.

“But,” she held up a finger, “there is one thing more you will have.”

Mirabella reached her hand into thin air, her fingers outstretched, and plucked out of nowhere a golden disk with a fine golden chain attached to it.