Knowledgeable men and priests have argued about Nothing for thousands of years and found little consensus.

Ahya, of course, did not just create the stars; she must have created everything: our world, all landscapes, humans, beasts, Claymen, the higher powers, Talon, The Nameless. Everything.

It is said that she did so because she wanted to know herself, her capacity beyond Nothing.

Some claim that the Scroll of Remembering states that there are corners of the universe where nothing still exists. That on death the souls of some individuals seek out these “corners of nothing” where they find eternal peace (The Grey Haven) or eternal torment (The Grey Waste). Even that some individuals may enter and leave Nothing whilst still living.

His world was grey. There were no walls, ceiling, sky, floor or ground. There was no space. He contemplated this and in no time came to a conclusion: the grey was in his mind. Therefore, all he had to do was fill his mind with something and that thing would be, at least in his mind. At least it would not be as boring as all the grey. The problem was that his mind was grey and there was only nothing with which to fill it. He tried very hard to have something in his mind that was not grey and in no time found it. He remembered sensation. He remembered the warmth of his body, the pressure of it, its balance and its weight. He rubbed his hands against his sides and felt the abrasion, on moving them he felt the tension in his muscles and then, all at once, he remembered smell, taste, hearing and finally sight.

His world was still grey. Almost exactly the same as when it was in his mind except now it contained an object: his body. He moved his head and looked down on his pink chest, genitals, feet, hands. Then he looked at the nothing and something was still missing. Now it took him a while to come to a conclusion because time had slipped in around him or he had created it with his movement. But in the end he had it. Slowly a horizon formed at a great distance cleaving earth and sky and he knew that he was somewhere.

The sky was overcast with thick clouds. They were almost uniformly grey with no hint of rain. He stood in a field of ash, a flat plain stretching to the horizon in all directions. The ground was hard beneath his feet.

He studied the horizon for a time and was disappointed with its regularity. He had nothing left in his mind so he decided to start moving. He took a step forward and fell, his head hitting the hard earth. He felt the pain as he hit, and the memory of pain, he tasted ash and felt an oozing warmth on his forehead. He raised himself up, wiped his hand across his brow and found blood on his fingers.

He fell many times as he crossed that plain so that very soon his body was covered with fine grey ash as well as numerous scrapes, scratches and bruises.

When the sun began to set it coloured the sky a deep red and he made towards it. He followed the sun until it sank but the clouds had disappeared now and the moon and stars shed enough light for him to continue. After a short time he came into grasslands but failed to notice the change. For a while his mind became impervious to change and it was as if he had been transported back into the nothing. His body kept moving but he could neither see nor hear anything beyond the grey. And then he fell again.

On raising himself up he found that he had entered a land of shadow. He had been climbing a steep hill and now, as he looked around, he could see giant trees rising all about him and here and there rock outcroppings entwined with tree roots. The air felt chill but not unpleasantly so, even in his naked state, and there was a sharp scent of pine on the breeze. Shadows crisscrossed before him in patterns that suggested deeper signification and the cool light of the stars dazzled his eyes. When he saw the moon he was so overcome with a sense of beauty and mystery that he collapsed again and wept. The sound of his crying mixed with the trills of night birds and the scuttling sounds of small animals and the squeak of bats. He felt as though he had come home and yet as though he had never seen anything like trees and moon and stone before.

When he had wept enough, he got to his feet and continued up the incline until he crested the hill. The crest was clear of the trees that had congregated along its slope, and he saw a dark world revealed to him, of hills and valleys covered with trees and large shapes cruising across the sky. He made his first vow on the hilltop. It was a voiceless and wordless vow but had clarity of intent. He swore that he would never return to the place that he had come from. It was from there that he saw a bright yellow light in the valley below. Because in his world the light was unique, he headed for it.

As he gazed at Jhezera the wind began blowing more strongly and it whipped his travelling cloak about him. The wind beat at him with its own unperturbable rhythm and the noise of its passing over the steppes and up the hill sounded like the murmur of faraway voices. The longer he stood there the more convinced he became that the sound of some voice was being carried to him on the air. He looked about him but there was not a living soul to be found. Nonetheless, instead of being dissipated by this proof of its nonexistence, that ethereal voice began growing clearer until he could distinguish one continuously repeated word.

“Water. Water,” the wind seemed to be saying.

He looked around once again for the voice was so clear and appeared to come from someplace so close to him that he felt as though the speaker must be immediately behind him. But there was no one to be found.

“Water. Water,” the voice insisted.

Now it seemed to be coming from his feet so he looked at the ground and moved his feet as though afraid that he might be inadvertently stepping on someone, but all he could see was the bare dirt of the hill. The voice was definitely coming from the ground but from a few paces to his right, so he moved in that direction, never taking his eyes off the dirt.

He had taken maybe thirty paces across the top of the hill when he saw three jewels lying on the ground.

“Water. Water,” said the jewels.

Ren was overcome by their beauty. Two of the gems were a deep green and the other was red, like a rose, and as he stared into their depths, he felt that they must hold an infinity of space between their many faceted surfaces. He bent down to pick up the red stone but as he touched it the gems screamed. It was a scream thick with pain, fear and rage and it made his limbs tremble.

“Water. Water,” said the stones, but this time he heard it so softly that it once again sounded like the wind.

He had filled his canteen with water at the stream so he took out the stopper and poured the contents of the canteen over the jewels. He watched the stones sparkle as the water ran over them and he noticed that the soil must have been very dry for it sucked up all the water almost immediately.

“Please,” said the stones. “Thank you. Please, more water.”

Ren descended the small hill and filled his canteen at the stream. When he reached the stones once more he poured the water over them. He waited expectantly for the stones to speak but instead he began to hear popping sounds all about him. When he turned to look for the source of the sound he saw small explosions of soil erupting at numerous points about the hill. One occurred very near him. First the ground began to crack and then a small mound was formed. He could see the mound vibrating as though a tiny mole were rising up to the surface. Then, with a loud pop, the loose soil sprang into the air to a height halfway up Ren’s shins. When the dust settled he saw a blue gem resting on the surface in the centre of a miniature crater. Gems were rising to the surface in this manner all over the hilltop.

Almost before the dust settled the stones spoke again.

“Please,” they said. “Please help me.”

“Who are you?” Ren asked. He was fascinated by the gems but also wary of them.

The promise of power suggested by their appearance did nothing to ease his apprehension.

“My name is Jade. I am a Clayman. I mean you no harm.”

“Where are you?” Ren looked once more around the bare hilltop.

“I am the gems. My story is long and my strength is failing even now. Please, collect all the gems into a heap and continue pouring water over them. You have my word that I will not harm you.”

Ren still did not move. He stared dumbly at the speaking stones wondering if he should aid the being. William had said that the Claymen were a peaceful people but, not ever having seen one, Ren could not be certain that this was, in fact, a Clayman. In the end his curiosity decided for him. The appearance of the gems had been quite a spectacle and he wanted to see what happened next.

He collected over a hundred precious and semi-precious gems and placed them carefully on the speaking stones. All the gems bar one were about the size of Ren’s thumb and varied in colour from clear diamonds to red rubies and green amethysts. The one stone that was different was a piece of jade that was as large as his fist. As he descended the hill to get more water he thought of the fortune in jewels that lay on it. It was his for the taking and although he would not have taken them for their monetary value he felt deeply captivated by their beauty.

When he reached the stones once again he opened his canteen and poured the water over them. Almost immediately the stones began to move. Quite a lot seemed to sink back into the ground while the others shifted and slid across each other and eventually formed the semblance of a human head. One eye was a blue carbuncle and the other a bit of quartz, the nose was a pear-shaped diamond and two elongated rubies formed the lips. One cheek carried the slab of jade while the other, as with the rest of the head, was formed by an encrustation of numerous stones.

“The granite,” said the head. “You’ve forgotten the granite.”

Ren combed the bare hilltop once again and soon came back with a piece of granite nearly as large as the jade. He had ignored it previously because he had taken it to be like the other commonplace rocks and associated rubble that littered Barehead, but looking at it now it struck him that the granite was just as beautiful, in its own way, as the gems that he had picked up. Although it formed a rough ball, two sides were flat planes that met at an angle and these were a glossy black. The rest of the stone was rough and had veins of some glistening white material running through it.

He placed the granite directly in front of the head and as soon as his fingers had left it the jewelled head descended swiftly over the granite and with a loud grating smashed itself on the rock. Ren gave out a gasp and expected gems to fly everywhere with the force of the impact but the head sprang back into place without a stone being dislodged. Ren had the distinct impression that the head had swallowed the block of rock.

Ren headed north the next morning and didn’t see a Clayman all day. The going was slow because he took the time to hunt. He had no supplies left and he wanted to carry as much food into Jhezera as possible. He didn’t know how long he would be inside the mountain and he didn’t like his chances of catching anything edible within Jhezera. So the journey from the Truthstone took almost four days because of his slow pace but, at the end of it, he had a full pack of cooked and salted meat.

At the foot of the mountain trees grew thickly so he didn’t see the cave until he was within twenty paces of it. He didn’t actually see the cave either. What he saw was a group of about thirty statues blocking the cave mouth.

The mountain was made of solid granite. Irregular, rough surfaces covered its face but it also contained numerous planes of highly polished rock as though some enormous blade had sliced off sections of the peak. These highly polished surfaces glistened in the sun and reflected the light, dazzling Ren. He could easily believe that the Suzerain of Salador had failed in his attempt to tear the mountain apart.

The statues were all human figures and highly polished. The detail was astounding. He half believed that at any minute they would come to life and walk the earth like Claymen. There were numerous men, and a few women, clad in the armaments of war with huge broadswords and axes strapped to their backs and shields on their arms. A few of the figures bore long robes, some with intricate designs carved on them. And some of the figures appeared to be dressed in ordinary garb like Ren himself and the common village folk that he had seen. They bore varied expressions on their faces but all appeared to be in the act of speaking, for their mouths were open.

The statues stood on a granite slab nearly as high as Ren’s knees and they blocked the mouth of the cave entirely. It would have been impossible for Ren to squeeze his way through them to reach the cave. He followed the slab, which was overgrown with vines and creepers on its vertical faces, to the right where it turned at ninety degrees back into the mountain. Where it joined the mountain he found a carving of a huge head. The eyes in the head protruded remarkably from a rounded skull, above cheeks as large as melons. The nose almost disappeared into the crevice between the cheeks and an impossibly long tongue snaked out of the mouth between canine teeth and curled on the ground. He found a duplicate head at the other end of the slab.

Jade had advised him to say “Welcome!” when he stood in front of the statues but he felt reticent to utter that word. He felt, for no reason that he could explain, that the next thing he said would be critical. He was standing at the mouth of Jhezera and he could almost taste the danger and threat that the mountain exuded.

He examined the statues and the two heads in detail once again hoping for some clue as to what he should do next. He would have liked to step up on the slab but there was no room and he doubted that he would feel comfortable amidst that lifelike stone.

After about an hour of futile searching he sat down with his back to the slab and ate some of the cooked meat that he had prepared in the previous few days. The whole area was quiet. Not a bird twittered nor was there any rustling of small animals in the grass. He could see the wind playing in the treetops a short distance away but no sound reached him. He was surrounded by complete and utter silence.

The silence was soothing. He had come on a long journey, travelled a hard road and now he felt like resting. He knew that he would not be able to solve the puzzle of the entrance to the cave and, even if he could, there was death within the mountain. He could feel it. He couldn’t guess how many men and women had died within those granite walls but the Claymen, who had been in the vicinity for perhaps as long as Jhezera itself, had said that no-one had come back from within. Better to get up and walk away rather than die on a hopeless quest. But there was really no point in leaving. There was little for him out in the world. The Homecoming Inn represented a life of boredom and stagnation and, if he created some other goal for himself, he would have another hard road to travel with no guarantee of success at its end. No, better to just stay here and sleep and forget struggle, and disappointment, and allow oneself to be soothed by the silence.

As Ren dozed he lost his balance and slipped to his left. In his half asleep state he thought that he was falling further than he actually was and convulsively shot out his arms to stop the fall. As he did so his left hand grabbed onto a section of creeper on the slab face to support him. The creeper tore off and Ren hit the ground with a thump.

He got to his feet slowly, feeling that he had been asleep for hours when he had only dozed for a minute or two. As he was dusting himself off he noticed the patch of slab that had been laid bare by the torn creeper. There was something carved on the face of the slab.

His mood of a few moments ago was completely forgotten as he got out his small axe and quickly cut off all the vines and creepers on the slab face.

The carving that was revealed was obviously some form of script but one that was completely unintelligible to Ren. The fingers of his right hand followed the intricacies of the script as though through touch he might understand that which his eyes and mind could not. He stepped back and pondered the writing. If only he could read it he was certain that the next action he should take would be revealed to him.

He noticed that his left hand now held the small coin that Sidney had given him. Unconsciously he had dug for it in his pack while he examined the script. He looked at the coin. It was a flat, tarnished round of copper. All markings on one face had been smoothed out as if by long use. The other face still held the image of a crude chisel worked into the metal. The coin was warm, making him think that he must have held it for quite a while.

He regarded the script once again but his mind was still wondering why his hand had sought out the coin.

The script began swimming in front of his eyes. He blinked quickly a few times, not being able to focus on the individual lines. For a second his vision was clear but then the lines began to sway again. They looked alive as though they were bending and shifting position, trying to re-write themselves. After a few minutes they stabilised once again but now Ren could read the script:

Say Welcome! and join our company

And you can live for eternity.

Say Greetings! and pass our arms in peace.

For as long as you respect silence.

Say Farewell! and win devotion.

Learn wisdom, and hold your tongue.