Chasing Sunlight

The detachment consisted of himself, his fellow passengers, Captain Montgomery, and six airmen — including the brawny and wiry pair and Airman Stutt. After the long trip, surprisingly few of the crew wished to tempt fate by venturing any closer to sunlight, preferring to remain on board and take care of repairs. It was a sentiment Jonathan couldn’t fully understand, but it was convenient enough.

By personal experience, Jonathan knew that Bright Defile was no more than a day’s brisk walk to the east. They had a sled with supplies, but Jonathan didn’t expect to need much of it. The Grave of Wood was a quiet place, with neither creatures nor weather to trouble those that tread its grounds. There was only the long stretch of metal flagstones, with the looming shapes of salt bodies and wooden biers on either side.

“Whatever possessed you to go this way after your ship went down?” Eleanor asked, as they journeyed along the empty thoroughfare.

“Paths lead somewhere,” Jonathan replied. “Better to follow this one and possibly find something useful than get lost among the monuments, or the wilderness.” It had been a long time since the headlong flight from the Discovery, and whatever memories he might have held at the time had been wiped away by the impossible clarity of his first vision of sunlight.

“Can’t say I rightly expect it to be worth the trouble,” Montgomery said. Jonathan was actually somewhat surprised that he’d come himself, but a ship captain had to have some amount of curiosity to temper their necessary caution. “Still, it’d be a shame not to see what all the fuss is about.”

“If it is as potent as Mister Heights seems to think, I would advise everyone stay a distance away,” Antomine said. He trudged alongside the sled, checking over a heavy box that he’d brought with him. It was something of strange manufacture, a thick metal frame with heavy clamps holding it shut, but dozens of crossing seams to unfold in complex ways. Jonathan presumed its purpose was to capture some sunlight for the Illuminated King’s later perusal, though he had doubts that mere artifice could contain it.

He could feel the draw of Bright Defile as they walked, as if he were headed downhill. No longer was he fighting against the strangeness of the east, but he had crested the final hill and found the destination he was looking for. The familiar graves around them, monstrous and cryptic, were soothing rather than puzzling. Jonathan even found himself with a smile across his face, a cheerfulness that he had not experienced in years behind it.

“Stop looking so damned happy,” Eleanor said, squinting at him in the lantern-light. “It’s rather creepy after you’ve been serious this whole time.”

“I am merely looking forward to the culmination of this journey,” Jonathan said, smoothing his expression. Antomine looked at him closely, but said nothing as they continued the long trek along the thoroughfare. They broke for a meal, and he had little appetite but nevertheless forced himself to eat the hard bread and dried meat. It wouldn’t do to meet the final stretch with anything less than his best.

The dark path went straight and true, stretching ever eastward. Eleanor and Antomine traded remarks, Montgomery muttered to his men, but Jonathan kept his attention ahead. He knew not when it would come, but he didn’t want to miss the moment. Just as Montgomery was starting to make noises about stopping for the night, it appeared.

Sunlight.

To gaze upon it was to instantly, immediately, and intimately understand what was beheld. It carried within itself irrefutable revelation of its nature, so that it would be named and known by any who saw it. All that came in the first moment, when it touched eye and mind and heart. When for the first time, the world become truly visible.

It broke suddenly from a narrow valley between two looming mountains, existence clarified in a single step after the edge of the last flagstone. A single ray streaming down from above and filling Bright Defile, bright and pure and perfect. So pristine was the illumination that it cast no shadows — only more light. Its generosity bestowed colors more vibrant than reality could sustain, greens and browns of great trees, reds and oranges of breathtaking flowers. Even at that distance it cast a warmth that soothed both body and soul. Yet it was not without its perils.

Visible on the straight stone path of unknown antiquity that ran into that narrow valley were statues made of salt. They stood staggered in an irregular line, showing the wear of inevitable time. Some were so old that it was impossible to tell what they had been, others were clearly creatures foreign to man, but the two newest were human.

Jonathan stood basking in the barest hint of reflected sunlight, feeling its touch from the place it illuminated even if he had not entered the light itself, while the rest of the party straggled in after him. Each of them stopped, arrested by the impact of the sight and sensation. Each of them stared, touched by the nature and truth of what they saw.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Montgomery said quietly. “It really is sunlight.” Others had similar exclamations every single one of them poleaxed the moment they stepped off the flagstones by the impact of sunlight.

His were the only words for a time, as everyone stood and breathed and marveled. Yet it was not sufficient for Jonathan to simply see — this was a vista he had experienced before. He yearned to go closer, to meet sunlight and not simply look upon it from afar. The impulse was right and natural, and he clearly was not the only one who had it. One of the crew moved forward, as if pulled by an invisible hand, and Jonathan put out his hand to block him.

“No,” the man said, and Jonathan realized it was Stutt. “I need this. I can see past the bells. I can hear—” He took another step, and Jonathan let him this time. The short, bearded man managed three more before collapsing to his knees, face contorted in agonized relief. Even that much closer to sunlight wrought visible effect upon the man, the force of the light blowing away streaming images of his body. Yet at the same time Stutt’s expression eased, as whatever secrets or mysteries that hounded him from his time at the Caldera were illuminated and rendered harmless by a deeper knowledge.

Even that far from the threshold was hardly safe. The first salt statue, one so heavily worn that it was only a pillar with the barest hint of a shape, was only an arm’s length further forward. Stutt had likely reached his limit — any further and he would compromise himself, collapse under the weight of all his failures exposed.

“Most of you will find this your limit.” Jonathan turned away from the sight long enough to glance over the assembled people. “This is as far you should go. Each step closer to sunlight will test you. Nothing will stop you from turning back, but there are consequences for going beyond what you have earned. As Captain Hardiman and Stoneface learned.”

“I don’t need to get any closer,” Eleanor said, blinking and holding up a hand to shield herself from the light. To no avail, for sunlight cast no shadows. It was not a thing that could be blocked or sheltered from. “That’s not for me.” She shuddered, seeming pale and almost insubstantial as the shadows of her secret knowledge were stripped away. What remained was just Eleanor, and perhaps she would find succor in that given a chance, but Jonathan didn’t try to insist.

She stepped away, back from the threshold, back into darkness. After a moment of whispered discussion, Sarah, the small and dark maid, followed her. Marie, the tall and fair one, squared her shoulders, squinting into Bright Defile but betraying no eagerness to move ahead.

“I am forced to admit this is something, Mister Heights.” Antomine spoke at last, his pale eyes washed out by the sight before them. “For this entire journey I had doubts you had really found it, despite the assurances of my king.” He picked up his box from the sled, running his fingers over the sealed cover. “I only hope I can bring back enough to satisfy his demands.”

“Mister Antomine, I suspect you will find it difficult to get anything of value,” Jonathan remarked, freed of all unnecessary caution now that he was at his goal. “The light that you and your king use is but a pale imitation of the truth you see before you. For all that you seek to harness it, the only way to use it is to ask — and I do not believe it will serve you, Mister Antomine.”

“But it will serve you?” Antomine regarded him, half with skepticism and half with contempt, but with a tiny sliver of fear showing behind his eyes.

“Certainly not,” Jonathan said scornfully. “I have no need of that. It has never been my desire to control the secrets I find. Sunlight is no different.”

“Then you merely seek a greater enlightenment?” Antomine pressed, his fingers tapping the lid of the box. Like most of the others, he avoided looking directly at the ray of light for too long, likely finding it overwhelming to mind and soul alike.

“I seek sunlight itself,” Jonathan said. “Gentlemen and lady. I remind you again, if you go forward — do not seek to go further than you can endure. Each step you take will allow you to see more, understand more, be more. But we are all mere flesh and blood, assembled from a long history of mistakes and compromises. Here at the end of the journey, I know that I have forged myself into someone who will not compromise when it comes to this,” he said, only in that moment realizing he spoke the truth of it. The necessity of the journey, and of testing his resolve. That in knowing his resolve to be true, he would not yield under pressure.

“Only you can decide what is enough, but I warn you, do not overestimate yourself.” He swept them all with his gaze once more and then stepped onto that smooth and narrow path. The light thickened around him, weighty but insubstantial, exerting a pressure not of physical form but of the spirit, of the self, of history and deed. It was familiar and welcomed, reminding Jonathan of the relief of returning to the ground after too long in rarefied altitudes.

Behind him, he was aware of Antomine and the Lux Guards following, along with the brawny and wiry pair. Marie, Montgomery, and the rest of the crew seemed content with staying at the threshold and drawing what they could from that infinitesimal exposure. All of them too attached to their place in the world to even dare venture beyond it.

Another step, past the liminal space where Stutt still knelt, and the trial truly began. Within his mind, the searing truths of sunlight rose up as a challenge, a labyrinth that challenged the very nature of a person. The last time he had been here, it had nearly defeated him. He had been uncertain, invested in his past and his way of life, his reputation and his possessions.

Jonathan walked not just upon the level path, but in a place wrought from his self. Every person he knew, every place that he’d been. Every thing he’d owned, discovered, and lost. It had been there all along, but only in the revelatory light was it made manifest.

Beacon itself, and his home within it, projected through the lens of his years there. Danby’s, Autochthon Reach, and even the ruined town of Danner’s Grasp — all these places lay behind him, the substance of their ideas illuminated for scrutiny. The temptation of Terminus, and settling for merely good enough; the temptation of the Players and their Game, and settling for the wrong dream. The cities of Tor Ilek and Angkor Leng; the city of Ukaresh, with She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed at its heart. By sunlight all such places could be seen, whole and entire, despite their size and distance.

Perhaps Ukari herself noticed some distant connection, as sunlit truth drew her from Jonathan’s mind. Others appeared as well, the animated memories and knowledge of those Jonathan knew. His chauffer Johann, his housekeeper Agnes. Captain Hardiman and Captain Montgomery; the men of the Exploration Society, the betrayer Tiuni. Of course, Antomine and Eleanor.

Strangely enough, there was something more to his fellow passengers. They were present not just as representations, but their very selves gave life to their figures. Eleanor was clearly startled to be there despite herself, even while she appeared as barely an outline, washed away by the brilliance all around.

“What the devil?” She asked, startled, once again trying to shade her eyes. “Jonathan, if you’ve—”

“Peace, Eleanor,” Jonathan said, taking another careful step forward. Even prepared as he was, each moment and each movement revealed another layer, burned away another false truth, refined him one more fraction. Everything needed to be done with care, with the proper caution and dignity it was due. “There is nothing to harm you here save your connection to me.”

“This is rather disconcerting,” Antomine said, behind him both physically and in the reality revealed by sunlight, a doubled image. By the strain in his voice, his comment was a vast understatement. “I do not see why this was so alluring to you.”

“Of course not.” Jonathan took the question as one component of the path forward — as indeed it was. He was not struggling through some created challenge, an artificial test. It was exactly the same challenge as navigating any other part of the world, a natural consequence of the construction of reality. Just as it was difficult to scale a cliff face, or to lift heavy weights, or to endure extreme temperatures, so too was it difficult to proceed toward sunlight. Only now that he had tempered his mind and soul could he advance with any assurance.

“You are a creature of your king,” he said, after a moment of thought, and one more step forward against the flensing edge of light and truth. “How could you give yourself to something else? To accept a reality where he is irrelevant would be to burn the whole of what you are.”

Antomine, Jonathan decided, was a warning about the past. About the preoccupations and powers that ruled the human city of Beacon and its many daughters — for good or ill. Jonathan had no desire to stay and be merely part of the dark sprawl of the world, even if he were rendered rich and famous. He found such goals to be tawdry next to the purity of the truth.

The pressure of the light changed, but did not lessen. There were no right or wrong answers; the trial was not a puzzle to be solved. Either his understanding would be sufficient to carry him through, or he would find himself crumbling. As if in reminder or demonstration, his steps brought him within touching distance of one of the salt statues, a remnant of some failed pilgrim from ancient history, one that shared Jonathan’s intent but not his drive or his will.

“Are you to judge me next?” Eleanor demanded, her voice sharp and cutting — but all her own, the way he had known her when they had first met. “Is that why you’ve drawn me into this—” She choked on whatever word she was trying to say, for naming sunlight as false or illusory was more than to merely lie. It was impossible. “This crusade of yours?”

“It is not for me to judge you,” Jonathan said. “Only myself. Eleanor, under the light of sunlight I tell you, I did not mean for you to be hurt by the secrets of the Garden. Now I wish you to go and live your life, as you wish to. Beyond that, I have no advice to give. A vast gulf separates us, for you are of the dark and I am of the light. I wish you well.”

With great deliberation, he let go the last of his ire toward Eleanor — and his fondness for her, too. Whatever connection they had, from first meeting to last, no longer mattered. The light burned it away, and he took another step. Her phantom presence faded with something like relief, forever severed from him.

The demands of sunlight pressed on him as they had once before, the first time that he had seen Bright Defile. Any lies or deceptions, any shadows or uncertainties were laid bare in its presence. Secrets and mysteries were unraveled and made moot.

The insight wasn’t merely into his own self, but into the underpinning of the world. Like the Players and the Game, there was an understanding of the true scope of the things to be discovered — except this was all that was true in the light, not merely sprouted in the darkness. It gave him the impression of some great expanse, where all the most profound secrets he had yet wrested from the corners of creation were bare pebbles compared to the rich and fertile country stretching before him. Such was the allure and promise – the incontrovertible truth – that had drawn him onward. Had drawn so many forward after that first glimpse, as the pillars of salt testified. As the Grave of Wood testified.

His steps approached the twin statues of Captain Hardiman and Stoneface, expressions of determination and fascination etched forever in salt. Jonathan had no idea why they didn’t turn back, nor what had driven them beyond their abilities — but they had not been the first, and would surely not be the last. Lack of judgement was one of the very flaws that would cause someone to crumble under the revealing light.

Only a pace behind him, Antomine seemed to be laboring, finding the weighty demands of sunlight a burden, rather than relishing the pressure the way that Jonathan did. The inquisitor had made it further than Jonathan had expected, accompanied by his Lux Guards. The wax men showed no particular strain, but they were things rather than people, something that became increasingly clear as sunlight stripped away the trappings of humanity that had been layered upon them.

Bright Defile drew nearer, step by step. The physical distance was hardly at issue; ten feet or a thousand miles, all that mattered was the intensity of sunlight. The layers of truth and knowledge, the continual refining away of that which was dross. The uncertainties and failures.

“Mister Heights!” Antomine’s voice pulled Jonathan from his reverie. It was hoarse and strained, and when Jonathan looked behind him the inquisitor was haggard and worn, as if he’d traveled the thousand miles rather than the ten feet. Progressively less substantial versions of Antomine streamered out behind him, the sunlight exposing his faith and belief to inscrutable truth. Jonathan himself had no ghostly images, having shed his attachments and made of himself someone ready to go into sunlight.

“This is the limit,” Antomine continued, needing to take a breath. “This is as far as we go. I need…” He trailed off, wrestling with the box he carried, unlatching it and opening it up. The faces unfolded to expose a gleaming glass and crystal interior, a mirrored array clearly intended to trap and carry the smallest portion of sunlight. Jonathan watched for a moment, unable to tell whether the device worked or not — but the truth was something more than could be conveyed by mere artifice. Then he turned away, facing Bright Defile once again.

“What are you doing?” Antomine’s voice snapped, some of the life returning to it as Jonathan took another step. “I said this is as far as we go. We cannot tread any further.”

Jonathan stared at Antomine with something like disbelief. It was impossible to lie or dissemble under the touch of sunlight, so he knew the inquisitor was serious. Yet Jonathan found it hard to believe that Antomine would be so incredibly foolhardy — or deluded.

“You cannot, perhaps. But I? Did you think that I came all this way merely for a taste of the fruit, and not the tree entire?” Jonathan laughed scornfully, no longer worried about hiding his opinion — or even able to, under sunlight. “No, I know my path.” An expression of fond reminisce stole across his face. “From the very first, I knew I would go unto sunlight, go whither truth may wend and walk the far shores of revelation.”

“You cannot!” Antomine straightened against the force of the light, closing his box with a snap. “I forbid it.”

“You forbid it?” Jonathan squared his shoulders, brushing off the spotless sleeves of his suit. Its pristine nature was beginning to fray, as the secrets Jonathan knew that kept him unblemished were exposed and made moot. “We are far beyond any point where your authority mattered. I have allowed you the liberties necessary to ensure that we made it here, but no longer. You are insignificant, Mister Antomine. An impotent agent of an irrelevant king. Take your box and go.”

“It is my role to safeguard the humanity of the Illuminated King’s people! On that responsibility alone I must stop you.” Antomine clearly wished to say no more than that, but in the truth of sunlight he was compelled to continue. There was no dissembling within sight of Bright Defile. “The idea of a man such as you mastering secrets even the Illuminated King cannot fathom is a terrifying threat to everything he has built. That is a circumstance that cannot be borne.”

“Then stop me,” Jonathan said, dismissing the petty concerns of the inquisitor and his master. “You know you cannot. You never could, and the bleating of a terrified animal has never really mattered.”

“There you are wrong. I certainly can stop you.” Antomine’s eyes flashed, and for a moment the presence of the Illuminated King himself seemed to radiate out from the white pupils. “You are still a human, still one of the men of the west. I order you to come back.”

Jonathan felt a stirring, a tether within his mind being grasped. Whether it was something that the Illuminated King had done upon their meeting, or just a natural connection by virtue of Jonathan’s origins, Antomine knew how to reach some secret aspect of Jonathan’s own self. An appeal to something primal, rather than a compulsion — meat before a starving beast, rather than a whip upon its back.

It was something that likely would work on someone unsuspecting, uninitiated in the deeper mysteries and ignorant of their own drives and compulsions. Jonathan was no starving beast, and he responded to the command by letting the sunlight blaze through him in righteous fury, focused on Antomine. Memory of sunlight alone had borne enough of the essence of truth to burn the unworthy, and in the presence of the thing itself he felt it more surely then ever.

In that light he uncovered that deep connection and let it burn away under the weight of raw reality. There would be no hidden motivations where he was going. His anger washed over Antomine, drowning out the paltry light of zint. The inquisitor screamed, the white in his pupils burning, and the Lux Guards leapt forward to seize him.

They failed.

The wax guardians melted in the light of the sun as Jonathan blazed, zint leaking out and the armor dropping to the ground. A great wind blew and the spreading puddles of metal and wax turned to salt, while Antomine collapsed to his knees. The white in his pupils was gone, and he looked like a man lost. Jonathan turned his back on the inquisitor and faced Bright Defile. There would be no more interruptions.

Another step and Jonathan was closer than he’d ever been, pacing another set of ancient salt statues, pitted and worn by the passage of time. The vestiges of failed understanding still clung to them, but he was firm in his convictions and all his weaknesses had been scoured from him. The reflected memories of his past were still with them, both a strength and a rod for his own back, a weight to bear while they guided him forward. The closer he got to Bright Defile, the less distinction there was between that which was within and that which was without.

Suddenly he stood at a threshold, a point beyond which no statues stood. A deep gulf lay before him, and in that place there was no difference between a barrier of understanding and that of the land itself. A darkness, in a land defined by sunlight, yet its nature was entirely clear, for there were no secrets under the revelatory reality of Bright Defile. The final barrier was one that could only be crossed if all else was shed, for to live in sunlight was to have no shadow left.

His empty estate was the first memory to burn, kindling like paper as that sacrifice lit up a bare fraction of that gulf. Then his connections to his chauffer and his housekeeper, two more candles in the dark. Each decision he had made to truly commit, to erase his way back, to sacrifice the past and present for this moment rose up to pay for his way.

The death of Tiuni. The destruction of Tor Ilek, a burning city lighting his path. Each book that he’d thrown from the deck of the Endeavor a single spot — like stepping-stones on his path. Laying a god to rest, the burning of its corpse lighting his way. The sacrifice of Angkor Leng, a golden city inside the dream of a god providing an ephemeral radiance. The loss of his friendship with Eleanor; his banishment from Ukaresh. The visage of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed flashed briefly, stern and commanding, and perhaps even nodded to him before adding to the pyre. The rejection of the Players and the Game, the dark inverse of sunlight’s bright truths.

At the last, his cane lay as a thin sword-blade across the final stretch, letting go one last time, sacrificing it to cross the impossible gap — a perilous crossing, but one that Jonathan could not shrink from. The final step was in darkness washed by light, closing that last infinitesimal gap between himself and sunlight. Then he was through, and stood within the bounds of Bright Defile.

Beyond the narrow valley was a great green country, stretching out and up in all directions, with proud mountains and clouds of purest white. In every leaf and blade of grass, every stone and drop of water in the swift and flowing rivers were writ the secrets of all time and space, and far above was a vast blue sky. And the sun — older than worlds, older than time, and vaster than anything that could be imagined. Behind him, the whole of the shrouded lands he had come from was a dim mote, floating in a gap between sunbeams, an overlooked corner of creation.

Jonathan felt the warmth of the sun on his face, a wind wild and free at his back, and the liberty of truth before him. And he smiled.

In the lands westward from Bright Defile there was a flash of light, and a great silhouette of a man. Jonathan’s shadow stretched from the furthest east all the way to Beacon, where the Illuminated King stood in his tower. For just a moment, he was a titan fit to bestride the world — and then he was gone.