The Cave Part 11

Darkness, and the countless points of light, as if the entire void beyond was filled with the fire of a million stars. I felt as if I was staring into the eternity of a night sky beyond those wooden doors, the place beyond the actual reality, while I stood behind a curtain of scenery, the mountain and sky a mere pretense. And in that void beyond of unfathomable space, there hung suspended a mighty shard of crystal floating in place, with hundreds of a far smaller chunks orbiting around it in balanced but intersecting circles, no two in the same path. These caught the light from the center, and sparkled with inner fire each.

"What is this?" I asked, Tharkin standing motionless beside me, as if giving me a few moments to absorb this new wonder. "This is the library? How can we walk out there? Will we not fall?"

"No we do not walk out, but summon the library to us," he replied, a faint smile on his face. "Stand beside me while I summon the first orb of knowledge."

Extending both his arms above him, the hermit of the mountains did not speak, but his eyes glittered with power. At his silent commands, a piece that circled the crystal beyond came loose from its orbit and began to move towards us rapidly. This chunk of glittering stone as it had appeared, only grew larger and more defined as it flew through the darkness towards us, and I realized that we had indeed been much farther from the great shard I beheld. I felt then that we had been worlds away.

For my uninformed mind, all I could compare this moment too was as if the moon itself had decided to leave its place in the sky and come straight down to us. A huge spherical orb of glittering mass and light filled the open door way, and then I could no longer see its edges as it continued to grow in size. I beheld a solid world, a city made entirely of the silvery white crystal, with towers and windows, and wondered who lived in this great flying mass. Then a gate, an open portal lined up with our door it seemed, and the two met in a flush conclusion. I braced for the crash I expected as this moon of crystal met with the mountain, but to my utter shock, there was nothing.

My companion who had been staring with such intensity until this moment relaxed, as the two openings met with silent completion. He looked at me then with a knowing wink as if this had all been some party trick, and not the awe inspiring colliding of two worlds beyond the doorway.

"Welcome to the library," said he.

It had been pitch black through that opening, but then one by one, a pair of lights would sparkle to life with a pale blue radiance. I beheld a massive hall, with many columns hundreds of spans high lifting up into the dark ceiling above where the lights did not reach. On either side of this long stretch of room, great walls of books marched off forever it seemed into the expanse, lined up on shelves as high as the columns. If I had the lifetime of a thousand men, I do not think I could have read every volume this library contained, let alone all that I could see with my eyes.

"Come, follow me," instructed Tharkin, none of this appearing to amaze him in the slightest. He gingerly crossed the threshold and had moved off quite a ways before I could summon up the courage to follow. It is worth admitting at this point that I had never seen anything even remotely like this before in my life. I did not need to have all my memories restored to know this. I felt it in my gut. So overwhelmed was I, that I continued to look back at the way we had come to make sure it was still there, and I was not trapped in an endless maze of books. Fortunately, whatever magic bound these two worlds together was kind enough to allow the bright light of day to continue to flood through the doorway behind us with a cheering constancy.

"The knowledge of whole worlds beyond our own are stored in the great libraries that surround the central Crystal of Time," said Tharkin, and unlike a few minutes before on our climb up the mountain, I no longer carried impertinent impatience with him, but silent wonder. I had no idea who this was that I was traveling with.

"This particular crystal library pertains to our own world, and the one we think we are apart of," he continued.

"We are not apart of it actually?" I asked, my voice almost a whisper as I tried to understand this. Whole worlds of knowledge did he say? Just how vast was the unknown?

"Well, we are from one world, but that world intersects with many others, universes with others. To limit the infinite is to limit the meaning of that world. However I can see that this is too much for you at first. We will confine ourselves to the study of our history, and the beginning of the healing arts. What would you like to study first?"

There were many tables and chairs, as if in the past or maybe now and then, huge numbers of people gathered in these halls to study and dispute together. I learned from Tharkin then that it was indeed so, though in the present time, very few had access to the libraries as he did. In fact the number was small indeed, and his door into the vaults of knowledge was well guarded to keep that status quo.

"The time has not come again yet to throw open these doors to all," said he, taking a soft chair that stood in a circle of others around a fire pit. Flames suddenly sprang to life over long waiting logs, and the blue smoke swirled straight up towards the unseen roof. I sat too, the staff in my hand aglow from the flickering flames in its woven crown. The blue fire was stronger in this place, and I wondered if it was the magic around us that fed it strength.

"I have so many questions," said I, looking at the old man who lit his pipe while waiting for my response to all of this. "Crystal of Time? History or healing arts? I need guidance."

"And you can read the common tongue, yes?" he asked, raising his left hand. From across the room and over my shoulder, a volume from the walls flew with a rustle of pages towards his waiting grasp. It was dark blue cover, and along the spine were written words in living gold, a gold that glowed with inner light. "Well, let us start at the beginning and see if we do not answer some of your questions in the process."