“I have been close enough to ‘All Over’ that sometimes, it’s hard to remember where I’m actually from. Teehee,” Serghan began his tale. “But I see from the look on the face of
Tindar of the Eternal Scowl that this answer will not suffice. Let me try for a more mundane rendition.”
Thus the audience began. While dusk was still hours away, shadows crept across the ruin as the sun passed its zenith, falling gradually behind the tall trees encircling us.
“Yes...yes I think I must start with this place first, then add more about me,” Serghan nodded to himself.
“Start somewhere,” Tindar jibed in exasperation.
Serghan looked sharply in his direction. “What is this place Tindar?” he asked emphatically.
Startled, Tindar replied, “I...we don’t know.”
“Yes you do!”
“It is a gate,” Syha offered.
“Ah, yes indeed! Or it was, at least.”
“A gate to where?” I wondered aloud.
“Ha! A gate to where, Tindar?” Serghan turned the question around.
“ ‘Straight through the sun, marching through tomorrow, lies the Hidden Land’,”
Jerome repeated the rhyme he had told us before.
“Space?” Tindar ventured doubtfully.
“You know it darned well,” Serghan winked. “For starters at least.”
“It couldn’t be,” Del’yar whispered with the rustling of the boughs above.
“Why ever not?” Serghan asked.
“It’s too fantastic,” Tindar said more in half believing awe than disdain. “How does it work?”
“Did it work,” Serghan corrected. “Err, or will it work...well, the present tense was wrong at least, for sure.”
“We can make it work again?” Jerome jumped in.
“We’ll have to look at one of the others to figure out how,” Serghan explained.
“Others?” Syha picked up on the implications.
“Do you think they called it the Fourth Gate with poetic license in mind?” Serghan teased, laughing deeply at his own joke. “No, that suggests there were at least 3 others, doesn’t it then? In fact there were six all together.”
“How could such wonders be kept secret all these thousands of years?”
Ascher asked.
“Through the thankless work of generations of guardians, just like Jerome’s family,” Serghan explained. “Some have fared better than others, some worse...preserved more and less of the lore behind the rituals. It was hard to believe and easy to hide as a secret during the years the gates were dormant.”
“Why were they dormant?” Danidesh piped in a question.
“It is a complex thing to explain...the ebb and flow of the Universe.”
“The Days of the Field and the Stream,” Jerome muttered, remembering some distant forgotten fragment from his youth.
“Ah, yes!” Serghan beamed a huge smile. “Much more has been preserved than I could have hoped. You remember, Jerome.”
“Not enough to have understood really. Just that we are entering a phase of higher energy, where many more things are possible. I always thought it was a little...well, flighty of my mother. She always spoke of it with such wistful hope.”
Serghan clapped him on the shoulder, “and well she should Jerome.”
“You said once you wanted some influence over who put the pieces of this puzzle together,” Syha remembered. “Why?”
“Well, let’s just say it has been my life’s work to uncover this lost gate. There are those tracing it even now through the Reston artifact who would use it...well, perhaps you can imagine some dubious uses for such a thing.”
I think perhaps we were a little too overwhelmed to imagine any such thing.
“Are you a guardian of one of the other gates, Serghan?” Tindar asked pointedly.
Serghan suppressed a grin poorly. “Now we’ve got you using your noggin lad. You’ve half guessed it, I suppose. Hm, yes, I suppose we are back to that part aren’t we...who am I?”
“I couldn’t imagine how else you would know all of these things,” Tindar laid out the framework of his deduction.
“A very wise guess,” Serghan chuckled. “But not quite it, completely. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Serghan, last guardian of this, the Fourth Gate...”
“But I thought Jerome, you said you were the last guardian of the Fourth Gate,” I interrupted. “How can you both be...?”
“He was mistaken. For I am also a Majz of Deep Twilight from the Thirtieth Wanderer Generation, at your service,” Serghan finished with a flourish and a deep exaggerated bow.
“Now that’s an entrance,” Tindar laughed.
