Concerning Death and the End

Concerning that which is after death, the Ambori say many things. For many stories of heroes and kings tell that the spirits of the righteous journey for many leagues into the North or the West, and so come over the plains of Grinding Ice or over the Great Sea that is forbidden, and so at last to dwell in a place which is beyond death and regret. So The Lay of the Wayateth says:

Far beyond the Northern lands, across the Plain of Ice,

Where the wintry air chokes out the sun and all is cold and white,

Across that plain he wandered and came to earth no more.

But the stories say he came at last to another sunlit shore.

And taking there a coracle, he rowed across the gulf

And passed beyond the Final Night where mortals may not look.

But a greater part of the loremasters believe, and in this they are guided by the lore of Dalia which has come down to us through that half of our race, that the souls of men journey into the deep places of the earth into the Twilight Realm, beyond or below the World of Starlight, by the Endless Stair which was revealed when the world was broken by Vishnarr’s fall. And in their lore they say that when the hour of a man’s death has come, that Death shall come unto him and make the Sign of Death, and the Sign of Death shall be unto him as a half-remembered thing, and he shall obey the summons, no matter what loves or enmities bind him to this world. Then the soul of that man will wander, blown by many strong winds, over many high mountains and many mighty rivers, until it finds at last the Endless Stair. And the soul of that man will descend the Endless Stair until he comes at last to the World’s Foundation Stone. Of this stone it is written:

Three things only there are written in The World of Twilight: All that Has or Shall Happen, which is woven in the Loom of Fate; the Law of the World that Is, which is carved in the World’s Foundation Stone, and the Law of the World that Shall Be, which is written upon the Silver Gates.

These Gates stand hard by the World’s Foundation Stone, and the souls of all the dead press in a great mass between the Gates and the Stone, and await their judgment at the Day of Judgment, when they one who made them will judge them by the Law of the World that Is and the Law of the World that Shall Be. But the Law of the World that Shall Be is greater than the Law of the World that Is. And if the soul of a man be found in close accord with the Law of the World that Shall Be, then the silver gates—so it is written—may open and admit that man before the day of judgment into Paradise.

But it is written in the books of the Loremasters of Sencankarr that there are some souls who do not go to judgment or to rest, but are born again in the world in strange times and in strange ways, and so store up for themselves a greater part of judgment, for a heavy burden of sight and years is laid upon them. These are called the Orukah, the Stretched-Thin and Long-Lived; but they come seldom into the tales of heroes or kings. Howbeit it is said they are often prophets or poets.