Journey to the Infinite

The dizziness was even more intense than it had been the first time, by the lake, and the pain in his stomach quickly went beyond mere nausea.  Clearly this potion was far stronger than the ointment Oreana’s aunts had given her.  He knew he had to find her somehow, or he might never find his own way back.  He hadn’t even taken the time to fix his mind on some image he could use to return to the world he knew as reality, though pieces of it still clung to his consciousness, especially his view of the church and its three stone statues.  He seemed to be seeing them now from the perspective of the well in the center of the courtyard.

Then suddenly, looking down, he saw the dark circle of the well start to ripple as if a stone had been dropped into the water.  Light and shadow pulsed together until he almost couldn’t tell them apart.  Soon he felt himself being drawn forward, not as if he were falling, exactly, but almost as if he were flowing down a long fluid tunnel.  Ahead of him ripples of light burst like fireworks into a million stars.  Then he realized that if he wasn’t falling, he was at least accelerating.  Within seconds, the stars began streaking by him at alarming speeds, leaving dark opalescent trails.

But the nearer he got to their source, the more they seemed to run together into one huge ball that glowed so brightly it burned a hole, not just in his field of vision, but in the very substance of his consciousness.  And he knew that if he fell into this void, he would die.

Terror swept over him like a raven’s wing or the swirl of a black cloak, leaving him in a darkness so absolute it took his breath away.  He couldn’t tell if he was still falling or even if there was anything to fall into.  But just when he was nearly convinced that he was dead, the faintest trace of light appeared like a glint on the surface of a shiny black bead, and he had the eerie feeling of being watched, just as he had when he fought Endicott.  In the distance, he saw what he thought might be a line of horizon.  Then, as if this were the first day of creation, the sunrise exploded in a blinding flash that seemed to vaporize him completely.

His sense of touch returned faster than his sight, and as he felt a hard surface under him, he thought he must have somehow returned to the mission.  Ready to fight, he flinched and started scrambling to his feet.  Then he realized how easily the arms that held him let him go, and like a child waking from a nightmare, he sank back to the ground and let himself be gathered up again.

"Diego— "  She caressed the side of his face as he blinked hard, trying to bring hers into focus.  "What are you doing here?  How did you— "

"Where— ?"  His voice sounded distant.  Yet if this were a vision, it seemed far less dreamlike than the one they had shared by the lake.

"The astral plane," she said, her own voice sounding a little shaky.  "This is where thoughts take form."

The dazzling light hurt his eyes, even when he brought his arm up to shield them.  And even once it began to dim, it cast no shadows, as if it were shining right through everything.  Her face, her hair, her whole body looked like no more than a soft transparent shape against the hazy glow.  Then he realized that he himself might as well be a ghost.  His own hand, as he touched her cheek, looked as if it should have passed right through her, but it didn’t.  He squinted, shaking his head.  "How . . . ?"

Catching his fingers, she kissed them gently, then brought the palm of her hand up to his forehead, shielding his eyes, and somehow the world condensed and solidified a little, until some of the color returned to her hair and her cheeks, then her eyes, as though she were materializing right in front of him.  She wore a long flowing black robe, like a priest’s cassock, tied at the waist with a red cord, and, instead of a crucifix, a small knife in a leather sheath hung at her side.  Her hair had been pulled back into a thick gold braid that hung down her back.

"Are we—alive?" he asked.

"Sí."

"And this isn’t just an illusion."

"No more than what you perceive on the physical plane," she said softly.  "We all see what we’ve learned to see, what we expect to see.  It will just take some time to get used to this."

She was right, he thought, watching the sleeve of his own black shirt condense into focus.  His sword still hung at his side, though he saw no immediate need for it and, thus, slipped off his gloves, tucking them into the cinturón at his waist.  Then, running a hand through his hair, he swept the paliacate off his head and the mask too.  "Your brother," he said, laying them in the crown of his hat and setting it aside.  "He is on his way to San Diego with Corporal Esquivel.  Bernardo will look after them.  I told him to see that the boy gets back to your parents."

Her eyes flooded with tears.  "Gracias."

"One less pawn on Marigál’s chess board," he sighed.

"Oh, but your father— "

"I know.  Where is he?"

"In the cell next to mine.  I think Señor Magaña may have given him a sleeping potion, but he shouldn’t be in any immediate danger.  Not as long as you remain a threat."

"This I intend to do," said Diego.  "Now how do we get out of here?"

"We cannot," said Oreana.  "At least, not for a while.  The doorways are shut."

"Shut.  You mean—we’re trapped here until the drug wears off."

She nodded, then said, "Oh, I suppose we could find a way out, but the drug has weakened the cords that link us to our bodies.  They could break if we were not careful, and they are all we have to guide us back."

He frowned thoughtfully.  "Like the ball of thread that gets you out of the labyrinth, eh? (1)  An interesting metaphor, but, Oreana, right now I need to understand our situation in terms that are a little less . . . literary.  How, exactly, could we find a way out?"

"It is not a metaphor," said the girl.  "We all have such a thread.  Here—look."  As she raised her hand, he felt his eyebrows rise as well when he saw the nearly transparent fragile looking cord she was holding.  It seemed to be linked to a faint glow that enveloped his whole body, though he might not have seen it at all if she hadn’t shown it to him, and he simply couldn’t follow where it went as it disappeared into the periphery of his field of vision.  But as she gave it a gentle tug, he felt an immediate physical sensation he couldn’t begin to put into words, something not unlike the feeling of enormity and heaviness he sometimes felt right before falling asleep, especially when he was very tired.  Mildly shaken, he could only nod when she said, "In this place, symbols are literal.  But the Watchers—they let you find your way here.  Usually, it takes years to— "

"The Watchers?" Once again, the rational part of his mind was tempted to dismiss this whole experience as nothing more than the product of his own imagination, except when he remembered how often lately he had had the feeling of being watched.

"The guardians of the elemental watchtowers," she said, glancing around.  "They must have thought they knew you."

"Elemental . . . as in the elements?"

"Sí."  Her eyes widened.  "Fire, earth, air, water."  As she spoke, she glanced up and motioned to what might have been the sky, then down toward the ground, then from left to right, almost as if she were crossing herself.

Diego pursed his lips thoughtfully and shrugged.  The notion that the world was made up of four basic elements seemed rather quaint to him, and he started to ask her if she had ever heard of particles called molecules, but then he changed his mind.  Obviously this wasn’t a chemistry lesson.  Instead he simply asked, "Why do you call them guardians?"

"Because they guard the doorways," she replied.  "They control the flow of energy between this world and the physical world.  This is why we evoke them when we go between the words, just as I did when I cast a circle that night by the lake.  And this is why you learned to feel their presence, too, whenever you fight with a sword.  They ensure that whatever we send out returns to us.  If we harm no one, they protect us.  They witness everything we do."

"Everything?"

"Sí."

Suddenly he had to grin.  "This is a fine thing to tell me now."

She giggled softly, then added, "The guardians witness all our rituals.  They are the ones who allow us to work magic by influencing things on this plane.  Whatever we intend takes shape here, and if we empower the vision, either by raising power or drawing it down, it will manifest itself in the physical world.  This is how magic works."

"So it all starts here, and this"—he brought his fingertips to his forehead— "this is our link to here.  That is what you meant before."  As she nodded, he was surprised at how much of this explanation felt right, as if, in some part of his mind, he had indeed known it all along.  "But then, why can you not suspend the laws of nature—if you are limited only by your own imagination?  You should be able to make mountains disappear, no?"

Oreana quit trying not to laugh.  "We are also limited by what others imagine," she said with a helpless shrug.  "All mankind dreams the world into being, and too many people would still believe the mountains were there.  I could not dispel so much power by myself.  Not all at once."

"But with help? Over time?"

"Over time, men made mountains appear in the Egyptian desert."

"The pyramids?  But they were built by slaves.  It wasn’t magic."

"How do you know?" she giggled.  "A sorcerer does not specify how a thing is to be done.  He simply envisions the result.  Stones need not fly through the air."

Resting a forearm on his knee, Diego cupped his chin.  "I see what you mean," he said.  The girl took his other arm, leaning against him.

"But with all the problems we face right now," she said, "why are you so interested in making mountains disappear, anyway?"

"I do not know."  His smile faded.  "But someone is.  I can almost feel it happening."

Her eyes widened as she studied him.  Then, as if he had just drawn her attention to some faint sound she hadn’t heard before, she nodded thoughtfully.  "Sí, you are right.  Men—will tear down mountains.  It will happen in California.  But why?"

Diego pressed his knuckles against his lips.  Then he sighed.  He already knew the answer.  "Gold," he said.  "They will find gold."  The word itself seemed to trigger a flood of images, scenes of death and destruction so horrible they made him wince.  Hordes of people descending like locusts, leveling hillsides, tearing up stream beds, driving off natives and wildlife alike, killing them both just for sport.  "But it won’t be for many years," he said, as much to reassure himself as her.

"No.  But I think Señor Magaña may have foreseen this also."

"He is behind it?  Is this why he wants you to join him?"

"Oh, no," she said, searching the space in front of her as if to verify the truth of her words.  "No one man could be behind such a thing.  I think it more likely he wants me to help him stop it."

"To help him stop it?"

"Sí."

"I—am not certain I understand.  You would not wish to stop it?"

"It would be like trying to stop the change of seasons."

Diego let his gaze wander off into the fog that seemed gradually to be lifting, revealing the vague outlines of a landscape around them.  They were in a small grassy meadow surrounded by fir trees and pine, with perhaps a little scrub oak, cottonwood and birch mixed in.  The gentle hillside on which they sat grew thick with purple wild flowers, and a calm silvery pool nestled just below them in a hollow at the base of an adjacent hill.  In the far distance, smoky indigo ridges of tree-covered mountains faded into a soft pale blue sky laced with wispy cirrus clouds.  But he was far too busy trying to remember the conversation he had overheard between her and Marigál to pay much attention to the beauty of the scene.

He understood why she had no desire to help the man if it meant harming innocent people like Alonzo del Valle.  But what if it meant saving thousands of lives?  He felt her hand caress his shoulder.  "It is not always good to be able to hear the voice of the wind," she said softly.  "But the Watchers—they let you come here.  They must believe you are wise enough to understand."

"To understand what?"  His eyes darkened as they turned on her, but hers only softened.

"That you cannot save the world," she said.  "Nor can I.  To think so is arrogance of a kind the gods cannot forgive.  Some things we cannot prevent, any more than we can prevent the Old One from someday cutting the cords that link us to our bodies.  We can only prepare and try to help as many people as we can.  Those who try to stop the turning of the wheel will be crushed by it.  And they will do more harm in the process than they can possibly foresee."

"But Marigál—Magaña—he thinks the two of you can do it."

"He thinks we can raise enough power to turn it aside a little.  Yet he knows there will be a heavy price to pay.  I suspect he thinks he can shield himself from harm by using me, just as he has used poor Urbino and Señor Endicott."

Diego studied her for a moment.  "You really do not know the effect you have, do you."

"The effect?  What do you mean?"

He brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek, then cupped her chin.  "Magaña has no intention of using you that way.  He doesn’t want you dead.  And incidentally, it wasn’t your aunt he was in love with.  It was your grandmother."

How do you know this?

He smiled—"Trust me"—then added, "you know, I am not sure I can really blame him—for that, or for wanting to protect the missions.  Thousands of lives.  A whole way of life.  Would it not be worth the sacrifice, if one man really could prevent so much destruction?"

"Do not say such a thing."  She clasped his hand between hers.  "Do not even think it—not in this place, especially.  Querido, surely you must know that if it were possible, I would give my life as well, to save so many.  This place where we are now—look around you.  I fear that it, too, will one day be ruined, and it is home to many people.  Native tribes hunt game here.  My own family lives not far from here."

Diego looked around him again, then gave her hand a gentle squeeze and got to his feet.  A soft summer breeze had begun to blow, carrying with it the bittersweet scent of wetlands and warm pine pitch.  The buzz of insects brightened the sunlight, and in the dappled shadows of the nearby tree line, amid the clumps of tall grass, a pair of quail bobbed cautiously, the cock keeping a sharp watch as the hen searched and pecked, her chicks darting here and there like tiny wisps of fuzz, barely visible except by their movements.

"But we are not really here now, are we," he said, noticing as he stooped to pick up his hat that the quail didn’t even seem to see him.

"We are not on the physical plane," she replied, getting to her feet also, "but our thoughts are here.  I think often of this place.  I store power here.  This is why I came.  Señor Magaña—he has never seen it before, so he does not know how to get here."

"You are safe from him here, then, eh?"  As she nodded, he adjusted the brim of his hat and tucked the loose bits of silk into his cinturón, then said, "But I have never seen it before either."

"I know."  She took his hand as he began to walk toward the adjacent hilltop, beyond which he imagined he would find a green valley lying between them and the distant mountains.  "But you knew how to find me," she said, "just as I told you you would."

"How do you think you will ever be able to find Alonzo del Valle?"

"Ah, for this I must ask the Watchers."

"Of course."  As he slipped an arm around her, Diego chuckled, not only at the obviousness of the answer, but at his own less than obvious state of mind.  Rationally, he knew they were still in danger.  Yet he no longer felt especially anxious, as if in this place it was hard to imagine any real harm coming to them, even from death, as though death itself were but a change of seasons.  And suddenly he understood that he had seen the changing of many seasons.  "So where do we find these Watchers?"

As he spoke, he heard the fluttering of wings in the branches of a nearby cottonwood and the mellow trill of ravens’ voices.  Several of them began to squawk and chatter discreetly, until at last one of them flew off in what was more or less the direction Diego had been heading.  "They know," she said, smiling.  "They are your guardians."

Noting the look of amusement in her eyes, he cupped his chin, then shrugged.  "Them?"

"Well what did you think—it would be foxes?"  She pressed the smile from her own lips.  "Look at you."  Then, in a conspiratorial tone, she added, "I think they like the way you dress."

Holding his arms a little away from his sides, noting the graceful cut and flow of the black cloak he still wore, he could only laugh, especially when he thought of how he had almost decided not to bring such a formal piece of clothing home from Spain, wondering where he would ever wear it.  Then, realizing that it was just a little too warm to wear on such a sunny summer afternoon anyway, he slipped it off and tossed it over his arm.  "And you?" he asked.  "Do they confide all their secrets in you?"

"I can sometimes read their signs," she smiled, taking his hand again as they continued past the pond and up the next hill in the direction the bird had flown.  "I have many allies."

"Horses, no doubt."

She nodded.  "My sisters call me Ané, after a girl who rode a red mare no one could catch.  But Anetena, the weaver, she watches over me also.  She led me to you, remember?"

"The spider, eh?  Yes, I remember.  That was quite a fateful little . . . accident.  And I heard your brother call you Ané as well.  Why didn’t you tell me you had a pet name?"

"Soon you will know everything about me," she said as she let her arm slip around his waist.  "Then where will I be?  All my mystery will be gone, and you will lose interest."

As they got to the top of the hill, he stopped and turned toward her, pulling her body tight against his, searching her eyes, feeling her lips only a whisper away, thinking it was hard to believe they weren’t really in the physical world.  "I want to know everything about you," he said quietly.  "The more I know, the more . . . interested I seem to become."

Her eyes narrowed and her lips parted with a desire he felt as acutely as his own, and suddenly he didn’t care if she promised to love him forever or not, just as long as she loved him now.  Letting himself slip into the tender oblivion of her kiss, he ran his hands down her back, then over her hips and up to her waist, where he began to unfasten the scarlet cord that cinched it.  Then she pulled away, and immediately he felt foolish.

"Forgive me," he said, turning away.  "I presume far too much."

"Oh, no."  She caught his arm, then, awkwardly, let it go.  "But you do not realize, Querido.  You do not know what it would mean.  Joining our bodies on the physical plane, this is one thing.  But here, on this level, it would mean something more.  And I could not commit you to such a thing unless you knew what you were doing.  I would be taking advantage of you in a way that, even if you were not a Catholic— "

Diego chuckled wryly.  "Taking advantage of me?"  Then his grin faded as he turned back to her.  "This is what you were talking about before, eh?  The ritual beyond what we have already done.  The one that isn’t for the once-born."

She looked down, nodding, then added, "This would link, not just our lives, but our fates.  And such a joining cannot be easily undone, even by death.  If one of us did not return to the physical plane, if either of us were to be trapped here— "

"Oreana, where, exactly, is ‘here?’  This place—this is really just a dream world, isn’t it."

"No, Diego, I— "

"Tell me the truth."  He took her arms.

"I have," she insisted, looking up at him squarely, her eyes wide, searching his.

"But not the whole truth."

"The whole truth is hard to tell all at once."

He let her go.

"This is what you might call . . . the Afterlife," she said, half wincing at what she feared his reaction might be.  Looking back toward the hillside where he thought they had been sitting, he realized the whole landscape had shifted a little, so that he wasn’t sure they could get back to where they had been just by retracing their steps.  In fact, the harder he tried to orient himself, the less familiar everything looked.  A chill ran through the whole length of him.

"I thought you said we were alive."

She nodded.  "We are.  But the drug Magaña put in the wine, it is a kind of poison.  It may dissolve our links to the physical plane.  And then the lares, the guardians, they will take us where we must go.  Yours—the ones you saw—they will take you there.  Look."

As he glanced back toward the far horizon, following her nod, he noticed that the jagged tops of the sierras had become the white battlements of what looked like an ancient walled city.  It may as well have been an engraving of the New Jerusalem taken from the pages of some huge old Bible, he thought, complete with big pearly gates and a radiant inner glow.

Down the mountain slope, there was indeed a valley, but it wasn’t the fertile pastureland he had envisioned.  In fact, it looked as desolate and barren as the first level of Hell, its rocky soil yielding little but bramble bushes, thistles and soft white mounds of asphodel.  A dark river, no doubt the one souls crossed in death, meandered across its floor.

The vegetation looked a little greener on the slopes of the gentle foothills that rose up toward the city.  Orchards and olive groves lay just outside its walls, and flocks of sheep grazed peacefully.  But on the side of the valley nearest them, the cliffs were steeper and rockier.  Then he saw that there was a kind of gaping hole, a cavernous crater that looked like an open wound in the valley floor.  And as he saw the faint glow of flames flickering against its walls, he knew what it had to be.

The cottonwood tree where he had seen the ravens was still not very far away, and several of them still perched there.  But suddenly, the black iridescence of their wings began to leach out into the air around them, draining them of all color, and their faces began to change as well, flattening out until they looked more like owls whose legs grew longer, thicker, and, except for their taloned feet, more human.

As they fluttered their huge wings, he realized the feathers had been folded over bare shoulders and arms.  Finally, the fuzzy down disappeared from their cheeks, leaving only their eyes unchanged, glittering with something that still looked hard and round and bird-like.  Then, suddenly, they all flew off in different directions and faded into the sky itself, like spent fireworks.  But he knew they weren’t really gone.  "We must go," said Oreana, backing away.

Diego simply nodded, but as he turned away from this hellish vision to follow her, he was not at all sure that where they were going would be any safer than where they were.

"You see?" she said, taking his hand again as he offered to help her climb back up a hillside that looked almost like the one where he had originally found her.  "I told you there were a lot of people who dreamed that place into being.  Its power is very strong, and if you were pulled into it, well, I could not just leave you there, even as it is.  But if our fates were linked—"

"We might both end up in hell.  Forever."

"Sí."

"Unless . . . ?"

"Unless you do on the physical plane what you have just done here, on this level.  Turn your back on all that Christian guilt.  Walk away from all the fire and the brimstone, all that thinking about punishment and forgiveness, good and evil."

"And do you never feel guilty?" he said, suddenly feeling surprisingly defensive of a religion that, while he had often questioned it, had always been there like a sky, forming the very backdrop of his life.  "Only a man like Endicott could just turn his back on guilt.  Is that what you want?"

"Am I like Endicott?" she said in an equally defensive tone as she stopped walking.  "Of course I feel bad sometimes.  But I don’t assume that everything will be all right if I just confess and say a few prayers.  The harm returns to us anyway."

"So now you think you must pay—again—for a mistake your grandmother made."

"And for my own.  This is also the third time Teresa’s death has come back to me."  All at once, she was in tears.  "If not for that," she said, "I would have gone to San Diego with Urbino, and he would still be alive, and you and your father would be safe."  Feeling as shocked as if he had struck her, he gathered her into his arms and held her like a child.

"That is doubtful," he said.  "It is far more likely that Magaña would have found another way to get rid of Urbino—and he would not have given up his plans to take over our hacienda.  He probably knew that even if you had left that day, I would still have been in love with you."

She nodded, hugging him tightly, then chuckled through her tears.  "I do not know what I did to deserve your love."

Laying his cheek against her soft golden hair, he smiled.  "Something horrible, no doubt.  But how do you know Alonzo del Valle isn’t back there?  He too is Catholic, after all."

"He is not dead.  He is simply lost."

"Then we will find him together."

"That may not be wise."  With a deep sigh she let her eyes caress his face, then turned out of his arms.  "By now I am sure Magaña knows you are on this plane," she said.  "The Watchers speak to him as well.  And he probably doesn’t want you dead—at least not yet—but he may want to keep you here."

"Here?"  Diego looked around him.  Even though they hadn’t come very far, he noticed that once again the whole scene had shifted.  They were no longer anywhere near the hillside where he had found Oreana in the first place.  In fact, they seemed somehow to have wandered into a thick fog that smelled heavy with moisture yet fresh and cool.  It parted here and there to reveal glimpses of huge trees, as if they were now walking through a dense rainforest.  And he knew that he, at least, was utterly lost.

It had occurred to him that Magaña might have meant to lure them both into a trap.  But there was little to be done about it now.  As he rolled his eyes and started after her down a narrow path that led through leafy undergrowth and huge mossy tree trunks, he only hoped that Oreana’s Watchers really were watching over them now.