<html> <body> --------- Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars IV: Infernus (i) Saturday, May 12, 708 CR The world whirled around him so that he could not tell what bit of ground he saw spinning around him was actually the ground and which was the sky. Lush vegetation of so many colors that it hurt to stare rushed past as he hurled aimlessly. Trees with roots spread in every direction swam past him with their leafy boughs like a man doing the backstroke. Giant fish bounced along after them, flapping their fins as if striking drums. Streams of color like ribbons of light which smelled like frying fat and decaying eggs bounced between each and then spun around Charles, sending him spinning on his side so that he had to close his eyes to keep from throwing up. Air grasped him from every direction. Things struck him and pushed him along, slicing as they went so he was sure half of his tail had been chopped off. Something wet smacked him in the face and chest and for a moment he thought it his own blood. He screamed and flailed, hoping for any purchase at all in the madness of his fall. And then, for no apparent reason at all, the air around him slowed and he felt something soft gliding past his whiskers. Charles opened his eyes. Little petals of bright yellow drifted in the air as if a child had blown them there from a flower picked on a lazy summer afternoon. He stared for a moment in wonder, stretching out one hand. The petals brushed against the pink flesh of his fingers, broke and shattered like pollen into a scintillating dust. After passing through the petals, Charles looked around him to see where he was. There was no where since there was no sense to be made of anything he saw. But a seeming short distance to his right he saw a broad field of wildflowers that from his vantage looked normal. He waved his arms as if swimming to angle himself in that direction. And to his surprise it worked. A moment later and he was setting his paws on the ground. He grimaced as he felt hard stone where he should have felt grass, but he would not risk listening to the music again. He did not breathe too deeply on landing, rather he glanced at his tail to make sure it was not shorn in two. The pink flesh was whole without any sign of injury. He gripped his tail, pressed it to his snout, and was comforted by the scraggly smoothness he always felt from it. At least he was real and felt as he should. Charles lowered his tail, sighed, and glanced around wondering what might have happened to his guide. The field he landed in was rich with wildflowers of red, white, yellow, blue, and violet blossoms. An eerie breeze of such gentleness flowed through the meadow but its direction changed moment to moment as if in a tempest. The meadow was framed by trees whose roots were bushy with leaves and whose branches were gnarled and coated in dirt, as if they had grown upside down from the air and were now burrowing into the meadow. Beneath one of them a colorful awning had been built from poles with red stripes down the sides. Sitting under the awning was a dark-skinned man in a black robe. Charles gaped in surprise as he stared at the man in the robe not only because he was the first person he'd seen here, but also because he was familiar to him. Unlike Craig or Wessex, this was a man he'd known from his life in Sondeshara before he'd ever even heard of a place called Metamor. How often he had dreaded standing in the shaded market squares while this man asked them question after question to force their minds. Unlike most Sondeckis he had never been a Follower and had been content with the consolations of philosophy and abiding by the call of justice he felt from his Sondeck. A Master, a man of erudition, and one of Charles' instructors, he had died from old age ere Charles fled the Order. Now he seemed advanced in years but with a renewed vitality. The skin of his cheeks and head were smooth as if freshly shaven. Long ears framed a wide face with wide-set, penetrating eyes which remained closed. Hands with spidery-long fingers covered his knees. The robe, black, had upon the breast the familiar symbol of upturned white sword in a palm inscribed in a red shield. His posture appeared relaxed, but from it the man could leap and cleave the air with a thunderclap. Or so he had once shown many years ago. Charles walked toward him and saw that the man's eyes were closed. The rat took a deep breath and stopped seven paces away. “Master Hindemar,” he called, only to wince as his voice sounded like a woman's voice again. “Master Hindemar!” The face turned ever so slightly, but not quite in his direction. “Hindemar is merely a collection of sounds to indicate that something other than myself seeks the attention of my mind. Or so its sounding would suggest if I paid any trust to such things. Rather than the word of some other whose existence cannot be proven, it is more likely that I am, for the purpose of testing ratiocination, imagining a vocal emanation originating from outside myself. To provide verisimilitude to this imagination, and, concurrently though not primarily, allow for the possibility that an actual other than myself is participating, I shall provide my responses to this apparently imagined inquiry with the use of my tongue, or at least, what I imagine to be my tongue.” The voice, the scholarly enunciation, and dizzying circumlocution were familiar to Charles, and for a moment it was as if one of his teachers had come back from the dead. And then, an upward glance at the upside down trees recalled where he was. The woman's voice resonated from his throat as he said, “I'm really here standing in front of you, Master Hindemar. It is I, your old student, Charles Matthias of the Sondeckis.” “An identity to this emanation? If offered as evidence of a separate existence it is insufficient. The operation of thought is capable of providing an identity to offer verisimilitude to its imaginative construct. To borrow from the vaults of memory is also possible, but the Charles Matthias I recall was a man and did not possess the aural characteristics suggested by this apparent voice which has more of woman about it. But neither is this proof of the existence of the other for the mind is very capable of engaging in error when presenting ideas to the self.” One of the man's hands lifted and a single long finger was held up though not toward the rat, as if to bid him silence a moment longer. “Because of the obviousness of the ploy, and its inherent weakness, I would like to forestall the apparent other from offering up recollections to demonstrate its veracity. Any memory that it could recall to convince me is a memory my own mind will possess and so the assumption of my imagination conjuring this conversation is also satisfied. Nor would stating a memory that I do not have because the mind is fully capable of developing ideas in absence of sense perceptions.” Charles felt a bit flustered as he tried to follow the chain of logic that was presented before him in Hindemar's rapid Sondesh. His nose tickled with an earthy scent as if somebody were cooking some sort of meat nearby. He brushed his paw over his whiskers and tried again. “Then I won't, Master. But I am who I say I am. Why not open your eyes and see for yourself?” He grimaced a bit when he realized that he'd still been human when his teacher had seen him last. “To what end should I open my eyes? They are a tool of sense and as such cannot be trusted.” “My eyes brought me to you,” he squeaked in that persistent female voice that was starting to bother him. “I trust my eyes.” “Then you, O murmuring thought who claims to be my student, have much to learn. Perception is fickle and cannot be relied upon to form our thoughts. Our thoughts must be clear and reasoned first through introspective ratiocination before our senses can be tested for comportment with thought.” “I do not understand your meaning, Master. Please, speak words that I can understand.” A grimace touched the dark-skinned man's pink lips. “Clarity of thought requires clarity of diction to express it. Imprecision in my words will mar the purity of my thought. If you are other, then you are capable of thought. Allow my instruction to challenge your thought so that it will be trained to understanding.” Charles grimaced at the rebuke. During his years in Sondeshara he had often had to ask Master Hindemar to speak with simpler words. Never before had he been denied that request. Hindemar had once prided himself on his ability to be understood by everyone who came to ask. He always began with exquisite and painstaking erudition, but if no one could understand he would reach down to their level and draw them up step by step. What then did his rebuke mean? A possibility came to the rat, and so Charles twitched his whiskers and took a deep breath. “You refuse to speak more plainly not because you believe I can with careful thought follow all that you say, but because you do not believe I am here at all. You believe I am just an imagination!” “That is a perceptive observation and one I would expect my imagination to note.” “I am not part of your imagination!” “To what end do you, O phantasm suggested by the ears that claims to be an old student named Charles yet who sounds the delicate tones of a woman, proffer such a denial? The imagination is equipped to test the acumen of intellect via false claims. Without a logical chain of reasoning to establish it a denial is of no substance.” He ground his teeth in frustration and narrowed his eyes. “If I were to touch you, you would know that I am real.” “A sensation proves nothing. It is only in thought that truth occurs.” “We learn truth by our senses; it is the only way in which we are capable of having thoughts. If we do not experience through our senses, then we have nothing to think about!” “Thought shapes our ideas. What we experience only conforms to our thoughts. It is only by thought that we know we exist. All that we sense must be doubted because the senses are not reliable.” The master's head tilted curiously though his face did not bear toward Charles, as if the man were lost in his own thoughts. “You, a noise in my ears that claims to be the voice – a woman's no less – of my long ago student, trust so keenly what your eyes offer, and your ears provide from my own lips? Are the words that I speak the words that reach your ears, if there are truly ears to perceive them, for I can discern only denial of wisdom and caution. Open mine eyes, these utterances that touch mine ears proclaim, trust that which cannot be trusted?” “But our thoughts are reliable then? What we conceive, through logic, is what is real?” Hindemar appeared to scoff at the suggestion. “Thought alone is incapable of verifying the verisimilitude of the other. Only the self is discernible through thought. Thought demonstrates the existence of the self but not the other. No amount of sensory perception can be employed to demonstrate the existence of the other due to the unreliability of sensory perception. It is equally likely that the other is a conjuration of the imagination as it is a distinct but unverifiable reality.” Charles blinked. He could faintly hear the strange, wandering melody again. The scent of cooking meat was stronger and tantalizing. He had to fight to keep from panting in hunger. It made clinging to the slippery threads of epistemological pondering even more difficult than it was to begin with. Still, one thing was becoming clear and with a grating sigh, he lamented, “So you are saying that there is absolutely no way that I can convince you that I exist, Master. Will I always be just a figment of your imagination?” “The senses are an unreliable means of information outside the self being conveyed to the self. In order for the other to demonstrate its existence it must rely on some other means of providing proof of itself.” “What else is there but our eyes, our ears, our hands?” Matthias stretched his arms wide, flexing his fingers, and folding back his ears. The melody was growing stronger and he could not discern from whence it was coming. It seemed to almost follow the strange lilt he heard in his own feminine voice. “The mind is all that there is,” Hindemar pronounced as if the matter were settled. “There is no other.” Charles wrinkled his nose as the scent of refuse mingled with the cooked meat, and with it he thought he saw something dark at the edge of his vision, as if for a moment his hands were black instead of a fleshy pink. He glanced at them, turning them over once but saw nothing untoward. Anxious, his tail wagged. How could he argue that the senses could be trusted when his own seemed to lie to him? Charles swallowed and decided to attempt one last time to convince this man whom he had once admired. “Master, you speak about the other and ponder its existence. But if you are all that exists, if there is nothing real except your thought, then how could you have pondered the other in the first place? If there is no other, how could you have even conceived of it?” Hindemar's face tilted upward, though the eyes remained firmly shut. The tight lips and cheeks softened and a faint smile seemed to touch the edge of each. “Now that is the first intelligent question that you have asked of me. How could I conceive a you if I am all that there is? To suppose I am all that exists and then to imagine things that do not exist suggests that I am insufficient. But if I am insufficient, I can only be satisfied by something that must exist. Therefore, even though I may not be correct, and that my senses may indeed be suspect, nevertheless, my ability to imagine something beyond myself necessarily implies that something beyond myself does indeed exist. There is an 'other'.” He lifted a finger and Charles fancied the melody danced around it like angels on a pin. “Nevertheless, while this does demonstrate that the other exists, it does not demonstrate it in a given case. Therefore, I still cannot conclude that you are anything other than a consciously derived phantasm.” Charles grabbed his ears in his paws and tugged, claws digging through the fur at their tips. “Why can't you just open your eyes and look at me! I'm right here!” “And now you sound like any other woman, incapable of reason and prone to frustration.” He grimaced and tucked his tail between his legs. Charles took a deep breath, fairly certain that he would never learn anything useful from Hindemar. Is this what this place did to the souls captured here? Lied and lied and lied to them until they finally sat with their eyes closed, ears stopped, and mind running in circles like a cat chasing its own tail? “All right, let me make one last challenge to you, Master, and then I will leave. How do you imagine I look?” Hindemar's frown returned. “I recall how Charles Matthias appeared when last I saw him, and despite the woman's voice I hear I have imagined you, if there is a 'you', vaguely in his guise. Though of late I suspect you really are, if you really are, a woman and have lied to me about being Charles.” “But you would not have suspected that I have been transformed so that I have an animal guise and not a human one.” Hindemar opened his mouth and for a moment said nothing. At last the dark-skinned philosopher admitted. “No, I had not imagined that. Perhaps there is an other here speaking to me. Could it be that my senses for once are not betraying me?” “Take a chance and open your eyes. See for yourself.” Hindemar's face relaxed for a moment. The eyelids trembled as if they had not been used for years and were weighed down by more than just death. Charles stood with hands on hips, snout turned a little to the side so that his old teacher would see him in quarter profile. His eyes opened, white iris about a dark pupil filling with light. The Sondecki leaped to his feet screaming. Charles stumbled backward as his old instructor shouted incoherently, his hands balling into fists. “Lies! Lies! Lies!” Charles managed to hear before the cries became strangled again. Hindemar punched himself in the forehead and temples again and again until the bones in his face cracked and all of the flesh fell forward like a pouch of broken pottery. His eyelids opened once more and the eyes fell out, dangling by syrupy red cords. They whipped against either side of his temples leaving bloody smears as they bounced. Even through the screaming Charles could hear the melody without rhythm or repeat as if somebody were whistling into his ears. He turned to try and scramble away, but the ground beneath them both buckled, collapsing inward. Chunks of earth were sucked downward their vibrancy lost in a smear of gray. Hindemar sank with the shattered earth, hands wrapped about his retina cords to try and rip them free from the inside of his skull. Charles dug his claws into the earth but froze in horror as his old Master sank into a huge maelstrom laying just beneath the ground. The dark-skinned man's flesh was bled of all hue as it stretched outward, bent like taffy as a thousand other wailing soul reached out and clutched at his legs. Hindemar screamed and laughed at the same time, his upper torso remaining in view for several long seconds before it too was whisked away into the spinning disc and its dark vortex which howled with the roar of a sea pouring down from the heavens. For one moment before it was swallowed in the maelstrom, Charles saw his mentor's face, eyes dangling against his stout, dark cheeks, the lips creasing in a rictus of insane laughter that had no end. He felt something brushing against his legs and Charles scrambled upward against the sinking stones, trying to gain some purchase to keep from falling into the same abyss. Their taunting voices redoubled in his ears, and their touch seemed to fill him with a fiery thrill. The only other thing he knew was that strange song dancing around over his head. With one last grasp he reached for it. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>