Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal

by Diane Duane

  This was no mere simulation of that unending blast of energy by the machine elsewhere in the building, not just a mockup done in light and low-grade radiation, but something that burned with a splendid ferocity more real than anything else in sight. All that great sea of outrushing power sang with the utterly alien thought and intention of the body, the being, the creature hanging at the center of it, breathing, burning, alive.

  Rho’s sheer satisfaction at being able to feel it at last shook and rippled in him like the plasma and the radiation echoing through local space. “Finally,” he said in the Speech, “finally, good morning, cousin!”

  —and the whole upper atmosphere shivered in anticipation of how, in six minutes or so, it would be crackling with auroral discharge, the token of the star’s sudden delight.

  Finally, Thahit said, or seemed to say: cousin, good day!

  Rho stood there for a few moments just bathing in that calm approbation.

  And then, somewhere away behind him inside Sunplace, a door slammed.

  Rho knew where. Ah me, he thought, here it comes!

  He could hear the footsteps in the Great Room. A few moments later the room’s doors were flung open, and out came his royal father in his sleeping robes, moving faster than Rho had seen him move in many sunrounds. “Noble and extremely ill-behaved Prince and son,” his father roared at him, “where have you been!”

  Rho bowed to his father as he came, then straightened up, lifted a hand, and pinched his Aethyr into life.

  His father actually skidded to a stop, staring.

  “The Crossings,” Rho said.

  Through the terrace doors right behind him came Rho’s queenly mother, in casual trousers and tunic because she was always up before her royal spouse. She hastened to Rho, took him by the arms, looked searchingly into his face, and then pushed aside the one lock of his hair that kept getting into his eyes. “And that was all?” she said.

  “Well…” Rho said.

  His father looked at him piercingly. “Well?”

  “I talked to some people,” Rho said.

  Nelaid and Miril exchanged a glance, then turned back to him. “And?”

  “I visited another planet and helped heal its star.”

  Nelaid immediately produced his Aethyr and began scrutinizing it. His mother, meanwhile, looked at him and said: “And?”

  For the moment Rho merely looked at her and said nothing.

  The Queen smiled half a smile that suggested she would get the further details out of him eventually. But for the moment she simply embraced him, saying, “Your father has made breakfast. Come eat.”

  ***

  Eating was the least of what happened during breakfast. Rho told his tale in full—or as much of it as he felt able to, after such a day. He had felt half faint with hunger when he sat down in his parents’ rooms and started to eat what his mother began, in plate after plate, to set before him. Now, though, he was feeling as sleepy from being full as he had been from the day’s exertions, and much feared he would fall asleep in his plate if this didn’t finish soon.

  Rho described his challenge as well as he could, in broad strokes, quite willing to allow the more difficult portions of it to wait for another day. But the King, with his normal acuity, went straight to those portions and began to analyze them. “The Lost One…”

  “My husband…” Miril said, pouring herself a third draft of her morning drink as they sat around the common table in the King’s and Queen’s rooms.

  “Mother,” Rho said, “it’s all right.”

  “It is not omniscient, my son,” said Nelaid. “It has access to one’s thoughts and motives only when one has attracted its attention…”

  Miril sighed and nodded. “And it sounds as if by virtue of your wizardry, its attention, as regards you at any rate, will be elsewhere for a good while.”

  “Which is as well,” the King said. “Politically, matters will become somewhat more complicated, not less. Suddenly there will be a royal heir who someday will assume the Sunwatch in the full of his power, possibly even as the most senior wizard of our line on the planet…”

  “I will be one more person to curry favor with,” Rho said. “One more to blandish, one more to woo.” A chill ran down his spine. “Or kill, if I refuse to cooperate, to behave as expected…”

  “Not without coming through me,” his father said softly.

  “I had hoped this might relieve you of a little pressure,” Rho said with some regret. It had occurred to him that this change in the local political economy could mean the tensions between him and Nelaid could very well increase, not decrease. There will be ways I see my work, my destiny, that won’t be the way the Sunlord sees them…

  “My son,” the Sunlord said. “Stop that.”

  Rho had to smile at him. “Reading my mind, noble sire?”

  “Reading your face,” his father said. “You’ve had too long a day. Son, we will manage this for the best. What our political allies and enemies will make of it, we’ve long had our suspicions. Plans that have long lain prepared will simply need a little adjustment to suit present conditions.” And he smiled a small feral smile. “The plotters and planners of Wellakhit politics have had enough trouble dealing with two wizards in Sunplace. With a third one in residence?” He waved a hand. “They have no hope. There may be excitement in the short term, but things will yet go well.”

  “When shall we announce this?” Miril said. “There will need to be celebrations.”

  “Oh mother no…” Rho said, hiding his eyes.

  “The people cannot be cheated of an excuse for a paid holiday, my son,” said his father. “Perhaps the beginning of next tenday? It will allow the employers time to start adjusting their schedules…”

  “That will be then,” Rho said, getting up and finding he was still wobbling. “This is now. And now is when I want my couch.”

  His father’s face didn’t smile, but his eyes did. “When you arise again, my son, come see me. Doubtless there will be much you’ve forgotten to tell me, since recollection of such events doesn’t come all at once.”

  “Indeed not,” Miril said. “I recall it took easily four sunrounds after we met before you told me the bit about falling down the stairs…”

  The King of Wellakh threw the Queen of Wellakh a look. The Queen grinned at the ceiling.

  “Royal father,” Rho said, “you shall hear it all. For now… I beg you hold me excused.”

  His father got up and to Rho’s complete astonishment, bowed to him: actually bowed. “Welcome on the Journey, my son,” he said. “Three times welcome!” And then Nelaid ke Seliv straightened up and pulled Rho to him and held him tight.

  “And now,” the King said, “to the planning…!” He turned and walked away for all the world as if he had something important to do. “Perhaps a parade…”

  Rho hid his face again. “Mother!”

  “Let him make his plans, my son,” she said. “He has waited a long time for this.”

  There was so much love in her voice that Rho felt his couch could wait just a few moments more. He sat down by her again.

  “I kept thinking of you,” he said. “You at the door, the other day. And you as you are now, just around here… being strong.”

  She reached out and squeezed his hand. “And now,” Miril said, “you may tell me what you would not while your royal father was here, for fear of upsetting him.”

  Rho looked at his mother and hid his mouth, the gesture of one amazed at another’s wisdom, and not for the first time. “Mepi,” he said, very softly, “I paid a price.”

  She simply looked at him, and waited.

  Rho took a long breath. “If you want to see the details,” he said, “I give you leave.”

  Miril looked at him for a few breaths more. Then silently she lifted a hand and produced her own Aethyr.

  Thoughtfully she gazed into it. Rho waited for her face to change, to crumple with pain when she saw the upsetting truth.

  He
was therefore most confused when she tilted her head at him in negation, and gave him a considering slantwise look. “So,” she said. “You fear that you have lost some years of your life.”

  “Not a fear, mother,” he said. “A certainty. The Aethyrs will not be cheated… and I did agree.”

  “Of course they will not,” said the Queen. “But, my son… I do not see here, in the description of the price, time lost from your life’s span. I see time lost from your life.”

  Rho blinked. Miril was using two different words in the Speech, and one of them he wasn’t sure he understood, enacture or no enacture. “Queenly mother, I think my vocabulary may still need work…”

  His mother had often enough teased him about that, and she would have reason to tease him now: but mercifully she declined. “See here,” she said.

  She brought her Aethyr into phase with his, so they could both examine the same materials. The sensation was peculiar, but after a few moments he could see what she desired him to see.

  In mind she pointed toward part of the log record of the wizardry. “The time period denoted here as the price would be… some three sunrounds, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “But look over here. Did you not think to check the record of the transaction after it was completed?”

  Mostly I was really trying to avoid doing that. “I did think about it,” he said. “But, mother…”

  “No matter,” his mother said. And that was exactly like her: always willing to save you face before you lost it. “Look closely, my son! The price you see in this column, yes, beyond question, it will be paid. The Aethyrs will no more be cheated than They will cheat. But there is no statement as to when this particular debt will be called in. And the mode of payment required—see it?”

  Rho looked at the notation. Assumption of Guarantee, it said.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her in confusion. “So this is not a deduction,” he said, “a shortening of life. This is… doing something else with that period?”

  “So it would seem,” Miril said. “Being required to do something else, at Their pleasure.” She let go of her Aethyr; it floated a little distance away and went out.

  For a few seconds later they looked at each other. Finally Rho said, “Noble mother, I have no idea what that means.”

  “No more do I, my princely son,” Miril said, and leaned back in her chair. “I merely wished you to let this trouble go before you slept, for I saw you were troubled. But this I do know: at last my son is a wizard.” And she picked up her drink and sipped at it, and smiled at Rho over the rim.

  “You were both so sure this would happen some day,” Rho said, standing up and wobbling again. This time the weariness was going to take him whether he liked it or not, and he knew he needed to get away.

  “It had no choice,” said Miril. “Now of course everything will change in this world, after we announce.” She sighed. “But at the end of the day, our people will be no match for us. They owe us too much: and we are too good at not letting ourselves be used. What matters most is that the great majority of the planet will be glad a wizard of your father’s line will follow him.” She smiled. “He, of course, is already off being ridiculously proud of you. As am I! But you will just have to put up with that.”

  “And as for the subterfuge…”

  “The Lost One is constantly seeking new playthings to assuage its hunger for what It gave up,” said the Queen. “Either It will forget you, or It will remember. Indeed It would like well for you to live your whole remaining life in fear of what It might do if It caught on to your ruse. But what would be the point in that?”

  Miril sipped at her morning drink again. “Let us therefore do our work as it presents itself to us, and leave It to do as It will. We have no choice but to do so anyway...”

  He nodded. “Royal mother,” Rho said, “I take my leave.”

  “Be off with you and lie down before you fall down,” said the Queen of Wellakh. “And when you rise again… I saved that barkbread for you.”

  Rho kissed his royal mother on the top of her silver-fair head, and then took himself away to obey her command.

  When he finally collapsed onto his couch, after bizarrely yet lying wakeful a while staring at the ceiling (partly due to the excitement and the thoughts that wouldn’t stop going around in his head, perhaps due to the fesh), Rho eventually dreamed again.

  He was simply too tired to remember very much later on of the dream that later visited him. It was a strange disjointed business, full of darkness and fire and dust, quite a lot of dust; all most untidy. And everyone seemed to be shouting or crying, and there was a voice he didn’t recognize yelling at him in the Speech; a young voice, he thought, perhaps a girl’s. But twined strangely together with this noise, far quieter, in the background as it seemed, he could hear someone thinking—and was it him?— The induction into wizardry did not come until you desired the power not for your own sake, but for someone else’s.

  Those words echoed in the dream like a gong struck, strangely weighted with importance. Rho opened his eyes and found himself still resonating with them, as if the gong that had been struck was him.

  For a good while more Rho just lay there staring up at the patterned ceiling in the slantwise light of Wellakh’s afternoon, now streaming in through the glass doors to the terrace. It feels wrong, he thought, like it should be morning. Or midnight. I don’t even know… Too many planets in too short a time: “gatelag”, his father called it.

  And I’m a wizard.

  Even after everything that had happened, it still felt impossible.

  Lying there flat on his back, he raised his hand and pinched thumb and forefinger together.

  Ever so gradually and demurely, as if teasing him, his Aethyr faded into view.

  Funny, Rho thought.

  There was no reply except a general sense of reciprocal amusement.

  And now here I am, Rho said to the Aethyrs. Here is where you told me it was wisest to be.

  After a good while, what seemed a possible answer came back. It seemed you were the one who made that choice.

  True, but You hinted really, really hard.

  …A matter of interpretation, surely. Very faint, that whisper: very hard to hear unless you were really paying attention.

  Rho smiled. And what do I do now?

  What every wizard does. What there is to do, day by day.

  He thought for a moment of the version of him now making its lonely way among the stars. And what of him? Rho thought.

  He is your sacrifice, said the Aethyr. And sacrifice has its own power, even when it seems in vain. No sacrifice is ever wholly thrown away. Sooner or later the energy returns. All being well, the day will come when someone sacrifices on your behalf. Balance will assert itself.

  Rho sighed. And as for the Lost One…

  Someday, all going well, It will not be lost. Every sacrifice made is made on Its behalf as well: for all is done for each. And balance will be asserted, though It may assert otherwise as It pleases.

  There was a strange sense of satisfaction about the words. Rho began to wonder whether it was not merely an Aethyr he now possessed, but also one of the Aethyrs, occasionally presenting itself in the disguise of the instrumentality. And is there even a difference? he wondered. Perhaps someday I’ll know.

  He took a deep breath… and wrinkled his nose. In the meantime, Rho thought, I need hot water on me. I smell like I’ve been in a ditch.

  He pinched the Aethyr away and threw his clothes off… then paused, picked them up, and draped them neatly over a chair where the day staff would find them and take them away. Then he headed into his sanitation suite—pausing as he did to greet the water. And having done so, and afterward having well cleansed and arrayed himself, then Roshaun ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Nuiiliat det Wellakhit, son of the Sun Lord, beloved of the Sun Lord, son of the Great King, descendant of the Inheritors of the Great Land, the Throne-d
estined, stepped out at last into Thahit’s light to begin his life’s practice of wizardry.

  ***

  In the days and months to come, the outer circumstances of Rho’s life did not change that much… though Rho himself changed, seeing that he would need to do so to make things work. His mother teased him about his sudden shift in behavior, but that, Rho knew, would inevitably be part of the future burden of his Art.

  He became assiduous in his labors with his father in learning Thahit’s subtler ways, all available to him now that he too could speak to the star without mechanical aids and hear him speak in return. He went out of his way to dress as a prince might be expected to dress, and punctiliously made his presence felt at all the royal and government functions he could reasonably be expected to attend.

  In public he never spoke a word that was not in King’s-speak, and insisted on using it even at home—because who knew who might overhear? Gradually to all viewers outside his family the Prince was seen to draw a redoubtable cloak of cool reserve about him that he would suffer none to penetrate. Many were the Wellakhit who for one reason or another—politics, intrigue, genuine interest—attempted to become friendly with the Sunlord-to-be, only to strike that shell of smooth hauteur for which he became well known, and rebound from it, rebuffed.

  For his own part, Rho thought often, more often perhaps than he liked, about how he had been played—or very nearly played—by those strange pink-skinned aliens with their hair too like his father’s in its shade. It had chosen such an innocent shape in which to hide Itself, the Lost Aethyr, and he had very nearly been caught out by its wiles… nearly. He went about his days intent on making certain that nothing similar would ever be allowed to happen to him again.

  Most people took this response to be the result of some trauma associated with the Prince’s entrance into his wizardry. None but his mother and father knew what truly underlay his apparently unbreakable aloofness. And even they only occasionally suspected something of the fierce awareness with which he went about his work every day, knowing that he had put himself in the Lost Aethyr’s way… and would not be anywhere else.