I had hoped that I could direct your endeavors quietly without further endangering myself. I am now convinced that the time is too short, the danger too great, to withhold from you the details of my life and identity.
My name is Ciaran. My home is Eternum, a Realm in some ways much like your own, with one important difference: in my world, over the ages, time has slowed down to the extent that it exerts no force at all. Time here is meaningless. Nothing ages, decays or dies.
I am not a scientist, and cannot explain why╤hair continues to grow, as do plants, but almost nothing reproduces. There are no predators, and our people eat no meat. Animals rarely give birth; the sight of a young animal is cause for much amazed discussion.
When one of us bears a child the scandal is immense, for no one believes he has seen such a thing before; not because it has not happened, but because we have lost the ability, or perhaps the will to remember.
And why not forget? Life is gentle here. Food and shelter are too easily available to require any work at all; no great projects are undertaken; no revolutions ferment. Wealth is meaningless. There are no landmarks in our history to differentiate one time from another.
Our only remaining passion is the passion for companionship and love. But even relationships fade eventually, to be replaced, and replaced, and replaced again, and
no one remembers that any day has ever been different than today.
Before Caine arrived, I was doomed to a perpetual, shallow youth. I forgot my days as soon as they were over, learning nothing from my experience.
Caine entered our world one day a thousand years ago, though it seems so clear to me that it has the immediate power of a vivid dream. He was like no one I had ever known, a man of vision and charisma and personal power. He made me his student, then his lover, then his accomplice. He revealed to me the sources of my own strength.
His intensity, his remarkable mind, his assessment of me as a brilliant, beautiful woman were new and quite welcome to me. I fell deeply, profoundly in love with him.
He brought me exploring into other Realms. I watched as he built his knowledge and experience to a dizzying height over these thousand years, fueling his obsession for control over events and objects. My understanding has also grown, and now I can see his madness.
Caine knows nothing of this. He still thinks of me as his loving, awestruck, dependent shadow, and that is as it must be. If I were to reveal my capabilities, he would surely take action to protect himself from them.
At first I accepted without question his descriptions of the evils of his native Realm, and his scornful belief that Eternum should be shaken from its timeless sleep. But now I know better.
The Realms are not meant to combine. They will destroy each other if such magic is unloosed. Each may be incomplete, as he says, but each has its own value, and together they will cancel each other out, leaving devastation. They were created as they are for reasons that he, in his hubris, will never understand.
Jonathan Shoresby, you are uniquely able to take action on my behalf and ultimately, on behalf of all existence. You are in the right time in the right realm, and your ancestral connections place you in a strong counterbalance to Caine.
I have pleaded with Nathaniel to no avail. He is dispirited and defeated. And James, poor dear James, was no match for Caine at all. You are my best hope, and all the stronger for the quiet fierceness of soul I see in you.
I beg you to help me!
I do not know where Caine is, or exactly what he intends. As the Millennium approaches he grows increasingly irritable and restless. His visits to the Chamber only add to his unease. You must go there. You must wait for him. You must stop him.
Please destroy this message when you receive it.
I will try to remain in contact these next weeks. I can see no farther than that. My fate is in your hands.
