It took a few seconds before Trentaya recognised him. Another second and her brain told her it could not be true, so he was once again unrecognised. He was older than the man she'd known. His hair was grey, not the dark, dark depth of black that she had known before. He wore the clothes of the Shadowlanders – loose fitting garments coloured in grey, green and brown, like the rocks in which they lived. His dark skin was wrinkled, rather than glossy smooth. It could not be him. Then he smiled and she knew.
It was him.
Trentaya ran to him and hugged him. 'Ralkino... Ralkino...' she said.
'Yes, yes,' he said. 'It is me. I am here. We are here.'
Trentaya stood back and looked at him again. When she spoke again the joy in her voice was replaced by pain, and some anger.
'Why?' Trentaya said. 'Why are you here. How?' She groped for words to explain what she was feeling. 'What ... What made you leave Seren-ila? Why did you leave? Ralkino, your leaving caused pain. Have you been here all that time? Could you not – could you not send us a message? What happened?'
'Are you really Ralkino?' asked Mertingo. 'Are you the Ralkino that stood in Fountain Square and told the stories that we loved? Ralkino who disappeared in the middle of a story?'
'I was there on that day,' said Bolseno. 'I was only a child, but I remember it well. You just faded away. How did that happen?'
'Trentaya, and all of you from Seren-ila. Let me tell you, I didn't leave because I wanted to leave. I had no choice in the matter. If I could have got back to my own land, to my partner and daughter and all my people, if I could have returned to finish telling the story that was so strangely interrupted, I would have done so straight away. I couldn't. And so I have made my home here in the Shadowlands.'
'And is this what we are expected to do?' Trentaya asked, her eyes blazing, looking from Ralkino to Karema. 'Are you saying that we should become Shadowlanders? To live the rest of our lives in these caves, away from our own world? Away from those we love?'
'You will not have to do that,' Karema said, stretching her hands between Trentaya and Ralkino, 'but you must be patient. Let Ralkino tell you how things are. Then we will all agree how we are to proceed.'
'Yes,' said Ralkino, 'living as a Shadowlander has taught me many things. The people here live between Bartyronis and Seren-ila, and they know something of both lands - things that have been forgotten in both lands. We need this knowledge to be able to change things. Please, all sit down, so that I can tell you this whole story.'
Trentaya opened her mouth to speak, but Karema jumped in before she could get a word out.
'Trentaya, you more than anybody must be dismayed by the appearance of Ralkino ...'
'I am dismayed and overjoyed,' Trentaya said, '...and... and confused! And angry! I have feelings that can't be described in words. I must know how and why Ralkino is here.'
'And so you will,' said Karema. 'But first you must know why all of us are here.'
And so they heard the story of the Shadowlanders.
***
Ralkino waited for all to be seated. There was a special sort of hush which descended when he was ready to tell a story, and this was no less true with these few, than when he stood in front of crowds of twillo or more in Seren-ila.
'We must travel back in time,' Ralkino began, 'and then the story takes us further back. And then even further, to times that we only know as legend. It takes us back to the time of the Great Heat.
'What do we know of those times? So little. So little. If we could meet somebody from that time, we would ask many questions. Were such people like us? Were they like the people of Seren-ila? No. And also yes. Were they like the people of Bartyronis? Yes. And also no.
'The people who lived before the time of the Great Heat saw the world as a good place. Good for some of them, anyway. They had a world full of things. Things had been pulled from the earth, and transformed with all the ingenuity that people can command. This is what the legends say. In legends, fact and imagination are woven together. People's imagination is full of things that are hard to believe, though we would like to believe them. But the real history of the world also has its share of things that seem unbelievable. I know, because I stand here before you as someone who has vanished and reappeared in another place, a thing we would all think impossible. And all of you have undertaken a journey which we hardly believed possible. So how do we unravel the facts woven into the imaginings of legend?
'Some bits of the legend are easy to see as products of the imagination. Everybody knows the idea that people journeyed to the moon cannot be true. But I tell you that, impossible as this idea is, there is some part of me that believes it.'
Bolseno interrupted. 'Honoured Ralkino,' he said, 'this is a good start to a story, but you must come to the part that concerns us. What happened in ancient times is fascinating, but it's what is happening now that we must hear more of. What are we to do about Seren-ila and Bartyronis?'
'I understand your impatience, honoured guest.' Ralkino stopped to check the name of his questioner, then he continued. 'I promise you, Bolseno, that you cannot understand what is happening now, unless you understand what came before. Let your mind wander in the landscape of my story. It is in these imaginings that you may find a path to lead us out of this maze. Can you indulge me and agree to this?' Ralkino looked around, and saw people nodding their consent. Bolseno also nodded, and Ralkino continued.
'Legends say that the Great Heat was caused by people themselves. People like you and me. People like Seren-ilians and Bartyronians. Just like the idea of people travelling to the moon, this is hard to believe. But when we look at all the things we know, we become convinced that it is true.
'Once, the number of people on this planet was many more than it is now. Numbers like the number of stars in the sky, or the grains of dust settled from Greblara's smoke. Numbers that we have no words for, though the Bartyronians may have such words. They have more need of them, with all the things they make, and the watchfulness that they need to keep their people obedient. But it was not the enormous number of people that caused the heat and illness. It was what people did, how people made things, how they dragged the blood and guts of the earth to the surface and burnt it. How they treated the animals of the earth as their possessions, to be caged and broken as they wished. In these ways they changed how winds whirl, how seas move, and many more things that we don't understand. But the result was that most places could not be lived in by humans, and humans became afraid of other humans. People fled to places that were less bad, but eventually many of those also became too hard to live in.
'So the numbers of people on earth declined, and those that were left ran to places which seemed most comfortable. One such place was the valley in the midst of the Greblara mountain range. There was a way to get there, a passage through the rocks that only a few found. Some people, grandparents of our grandparents' grandparents – oh, I would need to go on much more to tell you the real distance back – but those people managed to reach that place. It was a place they could live in, though life was hard. And the mountain often changed its shape – rocks would fall and passages became blocked. So some people got through to the valley, and others remained trapped beside the mountain. Greblara was the end of their world.
'I do not wish you to grow impatient with this story, so I must run on. Let me give you a picture of how things were many years after those first people came to the valley of Greblara. The early years of hardship, which also led to fighting, meant that some returned, with great difficulty, to the other side of the mountain. But for those who remained, hardship was a great learning guide, and what those people learned was that their lives would be better if they worked together, rather than trying each to do better than the other. It is an easy thing to understand, but a hard one to practise. But after a while, they found that working together became a habit, and when they looked after the land on which they lived, it returned good things to them.
'But on the other side of the mountain, a different lesson was learned. There people were led by one strong man, a tyrant who made all others do his bidding. The tyrant managed things by bullying the people, making each one believe that they were less important than someone else. And everyone was less important than the tyrant. The tyrant wanted things to return to the way they were before the Great Heat, and took strength from a vision of a world of things. He wanted machines and tall buildings and hard surfaces. Weapons and fast carriages and high walls. And he made his people want such things.
'Some of those who had fled from the valley, then fled once more, this time from the tyrant. They wanted to go back to the valley, but couldn't reach it. They lived between the two lands, in the caves of the mountain. They did not benefit from the good things that were eventually found by the people who stayed in the valley. They had not stayed long enough to learn how the people there organised things, but they did find their own way of cooperating in the harsh world of the mountain caves.
'So now there were three worlds on this part of the earth. There was the world of the valley, which its people named "Seren-ila", which you know means "the best place". There was the world of the tyrant, which was called "Bartyronis", and there was the world in between. The world that we are in now. The Shadowlands of the people who lived in caves.'
The herb lights flickered around this room, which Trentaya suddenly remembered was really a cave. The party from Seren-ila listened rapt to Ralkino's story, which seemed to explain much which had been mysterious before. But mysteries remained.
'Ralkino,' Trentaya said, 'I don't understand. You say that the people here in the Shadowlands ran away from the people of Bartyronis. Why couldn't they return to Seren-ila?'
'And there is something I don't understand,' said Mertingo. 'When the people of the Shadowlands came here, you say they knew nothing of the way we run things in Seren-ila. But here we have many things which seem to come from Seren-ila. Even the decorations on the walls here speak of Seren-ila. We have books from Seren-ila. There is a Counsel of the Wise, as there is in Seren-ila.'
'Yes,' said Ralkino, 'there is another story which explains that. I will let Karema tell more of that, all in good time.' Ralkino looked over at Karema, who smiled. Then he continued, 'But for now you should know that the Shadowlanders made contact with the people of Seren-ila, and they would have joined them. They would have returned to the valley that they had come from, if it wasn't for the great catastrophe.'
Ralkino paused. Again he looked at Karema. Then he continued:
'The catastrophe was the eruption of Greblara.'
'Eruption?' said Mertingo. 'Was there a time when the mountain hadn't been pouring out smoke?'
'We, who knew Greblara as a mountain constantly breathing smoke had got so used to that, that we find it hard to imagine without a dark cloud above. But now the cloud has gone. It has returned to the condition of all those years ago. The likelihood is that Greblara follows a pattern, which we humans cannot trace, for our lives end too soon, and our memories are not always passed on. Greblara was formed as part of a great explosion, before there were any people on this planet. For many turnings of the earth, it belched out its smoke. Then, after many more years, the smoke stopped. The Shadowlanders, who know the mountain better than anybody, think that this has happened many times.'
'And is this why the smoke stopped before the Bartyronians came to Seren-ila?' asked Bolseno.
'Yes. We think so. But there is a complication. You noticed, I'm sure, that you had to swim to get here. That is because of the flood. A short time ago, water started to appear in the caves. Much, much water.'
'A hidden spring?' Falera asked.
'No, this was not spring water. This was water pumped in from the outside. Pumped in by the Bartyronians.'
'Why would they do that?' asked Mertingo.
'To try to stop the mountain from giving off its smoke,' said Ralkino.
'And they succeeded,' said Bolseno.
'No, they did not succeed,' Ralkino replied.
'But we have seen that Greblara has lost its plume,' Trentaya said. 'That must have been the work of the Bartyronians.'
'No. It is natural that if one thing happens after something else, we think that the first thing caused the second. But this is not always true,' Ralkino said. 'No doubt, the Bartyronians believe that the pumping of masses of water into Greblara was the cause of its going quiet, but the Shadowlanders know different. The water was not enough to stop the mountain smoking. Its effect was just to make life much harder for the people living here. Habitations were lost, and things that had been worked on, including Karema's project, were badly damaged. The Shadowlanders had been preparing for the dying down of Greblara for many years. Living in these caves, they knew when it would happen, and it happened exactly when they thought.
'The people here knew that when the mountain stopped smoking, there was a good chance that the Bartyronians would invade Seren-ila and put it under their control. They planned that they would visit your people at that time, and warn them of the danger they were in. This would also be the time that I would be able to return home. Others had also planned to come and live in Seren-ila, if you would have them. I waited so eagerly for that day.
'But things didn't work out like that. The Bartyronians discovered the existence of Seren-ila before the mountain stopped smoking, so they were ready straight away to send their forces to take over the valley. We thought we had time, and hadn't yet worked out the way to get across the mountain. You know very well that it is difficult to cross. And of course, our lives were now more difficult in our home, overcome as we were by sea-water.'
'I still haven't discovered why, or how, you left Seren-ila! You must tell us that, Ralkino!' said Trentaya. Ralkino's story seemed not to have calmed her anger.
'Yes,' said Ralkino. 'But my coming here was not my doing. That was the result of Karema's experiments.'
Karema spoke up then. 'Yes, I must take blame for stealing Ralkino from you, and from his home in Seren-ila. This was a bad and dangerous action on my part. I ask forgiveness from you, and from all Seren-ilians. But my mistake has caused far less anguish for your people, who are also our people, than the other disaster which has befallen Seren-ila. What is more, I believe that the cause of Ralkino's translation from your land to ours may also help our fight against that disaster. Let us tell you our plan.'