How could she be dead? How could that old woman be the beautiful Sil Ebi? It hadn't been a night since he had seen her beaming with youthful beauty! How could those kids be the children of Aro Ebi, when just a day ago they had been born? But there they were, quiet like the shadows surrounding them, for the bonfire that had warmed them had died as the children's grandmother told them the deeds of their father. And there lay her body; there was no doubt that it was the body of Ada Ebi, despite the years that had befallen upon it in a single gelid night.
'We swore we would be together forever, my light,' whispered the Exiled One to his wife's ear, 'even if a thousand lands and mountains stood between us.'
With the love he professed her, the Exiled One covered the body of Ada Ebi with the same mantle with which she had covered his shoulders; he carried her in arms, and started walking again towards sunrise without even looking back at the kids he left behind.
And the kids watched him departing with the body of the single person who stayed with them, the only one they had truly known, and loved with all their souls. But they didn't stop him. They couldn't stop him. So they waited until darkness swallowed the silhouette of Sanelo to let out the tears they didn't dare to shed before. They were alone in that dead world, where nothing could grow anymore, where nothing could be born anymore.
Their grandmother had told them about the King and the Queen, who once had lighted up the sky; but they had died too, as well as their children, and it was all the fault of the one who had taken Ada Ebi away. However, the kids could not stay in the same place forever, for she had told them who they were —Adhero, Sanesro, and Idaro, the grandchildren of Ada Ebi, daughter of the gentle Sil Ebi.
'"Destined to fight in revenge of the hosts of Diuren Garan against God,"' cited Sanesro.
His brothers looked at him and, without any word, and once they had gathered their scarce belongins, they walked westward, determined to fulfill their destiny. They knew that, years ago, their father Aro, and their uncles Hero and Esro Ebi, had fought at Kasatan against the Hordes of God; that Sil Ebi, long before them, had done the same; and that the souls of all the mortal human beings that had raised arms against God lay in the Underworld —armies of unarmed, unprotected mortals. Dreamless and hopeless, they knelt at the feet of God in complete submission. Or thus were the visions they dreamed as they retraced the long path of their grandfather Sanelo. None of them knew how long it would take them to reach Kasatan, nor where it lay. Nevertheless, they must go on, because that was the destiny Sanelo had webbed —with indifference and his inaction— for them on the Mantle of Time.
The children walked for hours which turned into weeks, which turned into months and then years, without stopping but to eat and sleep. Sometimes they could see or remember —or maybe dream— the prints Sanelo had left on the ground in his eastward path; sometimes they distinguished on the sky the path the King and the Queen had made day after day, night after night; and sometimes the glow of one of their children scattered in the ethereal vastness tried to blind their eyes unused to light.
Now Adhero Ebi thought he saw the silhouette of Sil Ebi against the high mountains in the north; now Sanesro Ebi thought he heard the voices of a thousand armies that screamed for the freedom of mortal human beings; and now Idaro heard they were called from some place hidden in the shadows. But the voice of Ada Ebi would compelled them to keep on and not to stop until they had reached not Kasatan, but a little grotto on the face of a hill crowned by an old oak that clung to life in a fight it was about to lose.
So there they stopped, exhausted and hungry, to light up a bonfire and to warm their cold bodies. And as they were waiting for their meal to be ready, Sanesro took in hand the zither of Ada Ebi and he began playing it, as if he could see his grandmother's finger in front of him to imitate them.
'"Destined to fight in revenge of the hosts of Diuren Garan against God,"' sang Adhero. 'Thousands of men had tried it and thousands of men had found death under the walls of Kasatan. Is it our fate to perish as well under those terrible walls?'
'Foolish mortal human beings who against God they want to measure forces, without remembering that They created them, and that They can finish them,' replied Idaro. 'It is not convenient for mortals to want to reach the Peaks of Heaven, much less to pretend to seize the Power of God by force.'
'Our father Aro Ebi faced the Sword of God, and he died.' Sanesro sang. 'Our grandfather Sanelo faced the Might of God, and from the heavenly abodes he was exiled. And our great-grandfather Sil Ebi faced the Rage of God, and he died. Must we face God, and die too?'
In all that time, Sanesro Ebi didn't stop to play the zither, maybe because he thought his grandmother's soul would hear their doubts and silence them; or maybe because he feared that, should he let silence settle up between them, they wouldn't be able to speak, and they would march straight forward to death under the walls of Kasatan.
'It is not convenient for mortal human beings to contradict the designs of God', they all said at the same time. 'But it is not fair for God to do with us as They pleases neither.'
They didn't want to fight against God, because they understood they were not allowed to do so. But they didn't dare to ignore the wishes of their ancestors.
'It is here,' suddenly said Idaro, 'where Sanelo and Ada Ebi met for the first time.'
Without any doubt this was the place, for more than once they had seen it with the eye of the mind every time Ada Ebi had told them that story, and when they had been walking toward this place without even knowing. Sanesro then realized why he was still playing the zither —he wasn't playing so his grandmother would listen, nor to keep the silence away from them, but because that place was holy.
The three brothers stood and walked toward the grotto under the oak. Sanesro kept playing as his brothers sang a song born from the deepest and most mysterious part of their souls. And in front of them the ground opened to a void even deeper than the dead sky.
When the three young brothers began to climb down, the grotto shut. And the forth quarter of the night finally came.
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