by Jim Grimsley
“I suppose I do.” She was confused at her own feelings of turmoil; but she understood.
“Don’t look so startled, my dear. I mean to give all this back to you, as soon as I can. But there are things I must teach you, first.”
“Like what?”
“Like Wyyvisar.”
He was on his knees, laying dry wood for a fire, taking his time to stack the tinder and kindling, the smaller split logs and the larger. When he gestured, the fire began to burn, smoke disappearing up the stone vent, out of sight. She had time to hear what he said, to watch him, to feel his surprise. She said, “I didn’t think you could teach Wyyvisar. I thought you would forget it yourself, if you did.”
“So I will,” he said, and looked at her. “But I’m not the real one, of course. I’m a phantom. So what I forget won’t matter.”
In the crackle of the fire they sipped the liqueur, which tasted of a fruit she could not bring to mind. Infith, maybe. He had told her he was not real, yet he was calmly sipping brandy and had moved the logs for the fire easily, with his hands. He watched her a moment, then watched the fire. “What’s happened?” she asked. “If you’re a fraction of my uncle, you’re not like any I’ve ever seen.”
“No. I’m much more functional. More independent. But still only a projection. A copy.”
She felt suddenly afraid, for no reason she could think of. He felt like her uncle, same as ever, but she could not shake the fear. “Where is the real one?”
“Inniscaudra,” he answered. “He never really left.”
“But I saw him go,” she said, and he smiled at her and she understood. Feeling a fool. He had tricked her again and again.
“You had to believe,” he said. “You had to see the trick, just like the rest.” After a moment, he said, “I’ve made you afraid.”
“Yes.”
He became more distant, cool, and shook his head. “It can’t be helped. I am who I am.”
She made no move, her glass a weight in her hand, the fire meaningless, the room still cold.
“You said you’d seen the three of me,” Uncle Jessex said.
“I had. I just didn’t understand what it meant.”
“I told you the last time we talked that I’d have to hide after I established the gate.”
“I remember.”
The fire crackled and spit; he knelt to poke the logs a bit. He liked to use his hands. She watched him and felt herself grow calmer. He turned and smiled, less distant than a moment ago. “This is part of the hiding.”
“Are all three of you the same?”
“No.” He shook his head. “We’re different in very specific ways. Only the one in Inniscaudra is complete. The real one, I mean.” He frowned, as if he did not like saying it this way. “And the one in Cunevadrim is causing trouble.”
She hardly heard that part. She was remembering that she had leapt from the horse to embrace him, the genuine affection with which he had greeted her. This one, the fraction of her uncle who was here. “So my uncle is ready to announce he’s returning to Arthen? Even though he’s really already there. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“We would prefer that you make the announcement,” he said.
“We?”
He bowed his head in assent. “Your uncle wants this. If you insist on my stating it that way.”
“Am I a prisoner here?”
He frowned at her impatiently. “Don’t be a fool, Malin. If I wanted to make you a prisoner I wouldn’t need to bring you here to do it. You’re free to go anytime you like, anywhere you wish. But we also have an opportunity that you need to think about. I can teach you Wyyvisar without any danger to your real uncle.”
“Sounds as if you’re offering a bone to a dog.”
“Have you really grown so fond of power that you can’t give it up? Even if it’s only for a while?”
That stopped her. She flushed and stood, and nearly left the room.
“Do you have any idea what you’re being offered?” he asked.
“He might have told me this himself.”
“He is doing exactly that.” The voice had grown very stern and hard. “I am your uncle in every way that matters. I am Jessex Yron. You’ll understand this when you know how to do what I’m doing, if you get that far. If you choose not to learn, that’s your choice.”
They were quiet, the sound of their breathing mixed with the sound of the fire. From upstairs drifted the echo of music, someone singing in one of the far halls of the house. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe we should talk about this again tomorrow, after I’ve rested a bit.”
“Perhaps that would be better.”
“You know I don’t like sitting on a horse, day after day. It leaves me tense.” She met his eye.
He laughed abruptly, accepting the implicit admission. “Yes, I know how much you hate horses. Did you camp? Did you actually sleep in tents?”
“Of course we did. I’m half Erejhen.”
“Oh, I know.”
The tension eased a bit. She said good night, seeing he meant to remain in the study; she took the last of her brandy and climbed the stairs to her room.
By morning she reached a state of calm. She would have to break the news to Hegra; the Marshall of the Ordinary served the Thaan, and in a short while Malin would no longer be Thaan. Hegra would become a simple marshall of stewards. But that could wait.
She took morning tea with Arvith in one of the sun gardens in the open air. Fresh from a night’s rest, the young man had a clean, strong appearance, a homeliness that was endearing. Her uncle was meeting with a party of Orloc builders deep below in the bottom of the antitower. Arvith was good company, quiet, waiting until she was comfortable with her teacup cradled in her hands, her long legs curled into a wicker chair. “Did you have a pleasant talk with your uncle last night?”
His question struck her as forward, but she resisted making too biting a reply. “Some of it was pleasant. Some not.”
He was uncomfortable for a moment, then shrugged. “That’s the way of families, I guess.”
“You know we’re not really kin,” Malin said.
“Yes. But you’ve lived so long together.”
She sipped her tea. He spoke to her as an equal. No doubt because he had grown so used to Uncle Jessex. “How long have you been in service here? How long has he been here?”
“Ten years,” Arvith said.
She had sensed nothing of this in all that time. “He’s been here that long?”
“Off and on, yes. He came here permanently before the winter.”
“You’ve become very close to him.”
Something softened at the center of Arvith’s eyes. “Yes.”
“But you know what he is.”
“I know he’s only an extension of the real Irion.”
“That’s one way to say it, I suppose. And you don’t mind that.”
Arvith spoke with perfect simplicity. “This one is very real to me.”
The copy of Uncle Jessex was crossing the garden toward them, casting a shadow in the morning sun, shaking dew from the branches that he brushed as he passed. She was thinking she liked the way his face had aged; she wondered if she looked as dignified when she got old, before going into the Deeps for renewal. He joined them at the table and called for tea. He spoke to Arvith pleasantly and sent him away on some errand that would keep him for a while. Malin said, when Arvith had departed, “He’s a nice young man.”
“He’s very talented. I’ll want to teach him some of what I’m offering to teach you.”
“Wyyvisar?”
He nodded. “I think he can learn.”
“Why not send him to one of the colleges?”
“I don’t want him to be Prin. At least not yet.” He had asked for tea and one of the householders brought it. For a moment he mulled over the tea, face blank of expression. “How are you feeling?”
“A bit less irritable.”
“And?”
She found her heart qu
ickening a bit. “I want to learn whatever you’ll teach me.”
He smiled. “At least you give me that much faith.”
“I give you quite a lot more than that, I think,” she answered. “I know who you are, Uncle Jessex. It’s just very strange, and you ought to know that.”
“I suppose I do.” He watched two birds flittering on the ground on the near part of the lawn. “I guess I’ve gotten used to this, myself. It seems normal for there to be three of me.”
“Have you crossed to the other world again?”
“Yes. I have to be careful now. But I travel there as often as I can.”
“You have to be careful?”
“This thing we call magic doesn’t work so well there, yet, though I’m doing what I can about that. Its presence there is dangerous in other ways.”
“Tell me.”
“The world beyond the sea is called Sha-Nal or Sah-Nal. We have apparently known this for a very long time, since this name or one very like it is recorded here in very old records. But the people who live on Sah-Nal, including the ones who we call the Anynae who crossed the ocean into our country, say they were not made on this world. They were neither created here nor did they evolve here. This world is a colony of another world, named Earth.”
She was interested in spite of her reluctance to talk so freely, her wish to nurse her resentment a while longer. “This thing we call magic, that’s what you call it now?”
“My doubts about who and what we are have grown stronger, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Why?”
He looked into the clouds as if to compose himself. “You’d understand if you’d seen this world, Mallie. Sah-Nal is full of miracles that even the Prin couldn’t easily accomplish, and yet none of what they do is called magic, and all of it has an explanation in their science, which is their word for a way of observing the world and learning about it.”
“Our people are beginning to think that way, too,” Malin said. “Under the new sky.”
“The people in that world call themselves Hormling. There’s very little in their world that the higher forms of magic could not do, but the scale of it, the billions of them and the billions of their machines, the sum of it is staggering.”
“Are you afraid of them?”
“No. Not that way. The way of Wyyvisar, the way of Eldrune, both of these ways will prevail over anything Sah-Nal can offer; I’m sure of this, since I’ve tested it. Once we make devices in that world, once we make the gate into stone, this way of ours will prevail there, if we wish. But that still doesn’t tell me what it is, this power that we use. Or what God is, who taught it to us.”
“She’s God. The power is God’s power.”
“Is it? Is she really God? Or is she something else?”
“Like what?”
“If living things can make so much happen simply through study and consciousness, if Sah-Nal can come into being with all its technology without our magic, then what more might technology do?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“For all I know, there’s a technology and a science at the core of YY, of God, that we simply don’t know and can’t see. For all I know, these languages of power that we use are simply ways to tap into that technology.”
“Then why would magic work at all beyond the gate?”
“Because YY reaches beyond the gate, too. Or wants to. Because whatever technology she uses that we think of as magic can affect that place, too.”
For a moment Malin understood, glimpsed the world as he saw it; but the image was too much too fast, and fell apart. She stood and paced a few feet. “Is any of this in the King’s book?”
“Yes.”
“I think I want to read it.”
“When you learn Wyyvisar, you’ll have no problem opening the outer box whenever you like. Did you bring your copy?”
“No. I’ll send for it. I took it with me to the old house at Carathon. I left it in Edenna’s library.”
He nodded. He was still thinking about the rest, the new universe that he was trying to show her. “A good place for it,” he said, absently.
“You say this world, Sah-Nal, is connected to other places? You’re sure of it?”
“Beyond the gate are millions of worlds. Most are at vast distances, and quite unreachable. But every star you see in the new sky is a sun, and many have planets of their own. Some have life, like the Hormling, only it evolves as a matter of course over billions of years, as they claim happened on Earth. Unthinkable, but true.”
“But that didn’t happen with us.”
“No. We have a lot of evidence to the contrary. The forty thousand were real. We did not evolve. We were created.”
“Then what are we?”
“Something else. Something different from all the rest.”
“And this place?”
“At first I thought it was an incubator. A place to house us and to protect us while we learned what YY created us to learn.”
“But now?”
“I haven’t given up that idea, because it makes sense. But it isn’t the whole story. This world, Irion, Aeryn, whatever we call it, is a crossroads, I think. A place between other places, one that YY made herself.”
“A crossroads?”
“Beyond the ocean is Sah-Nal, if one learns to cross it the right way. Beyond the mountains is Zan; we know this from our history even if we can’t reach it ourselves. The Drii came from there, according to their stories. I think they’re true, who knows? The Drii had to come from somewhere.”
Wonderstruck, she sat there, as the world grew bigger and changed. A peaceful bird song strayed from a lark nearby and filled her head with its intricacy. She said, “There might be routes to other places that we don’t know about.”
“It’s possible.”
“And God?”
“Maybe she’s simply something far older and far more knowledgeable than we are,” he said. “Some like these Hormling might become, if their technology and science go on improving to their limits. Maybe that’s what a god is to begin with.”
“Maybe.” She felt small and young again, and wished he would say something to comfort her. The truth made her cold inside. “Does this have anything to do with your bringing me here to teach me?”
“Of course it does. It’s our work, my dear, yours and mine, to discover whatever else is out there. To discover who YY-Mother is and where she came from. We have no choice now.”
“Before, when we talked, you said there were others like you.”
“Like us, I said. Yes.”
“Do you know more?”
“Some. I can teach you that, too. We’ll be safe here for a long time, until the gate is made into stone, at least.” He had led them back to the wicker chairs, the low table where the teapot still sent up its trail of steam.
They sat for a while, and made plans for what they needed to accomplish, restoring Uncle Jessex to the office of Thaan, and moving part of Malin’s household to Chalianthrothe. Only later, when Uncle had departed for more meetings with his builders, did she understand that her lessons had already begun.
25
In story and song, so easy it was to swear to love forever, through all eternity. But the truth of a long life, as Malin learned it, was in the forgetting and not in the remembering. She had her uncle as a guide, and he had been guided by those before him; still, the lessons were not pleasant. No human mind could contain the memories of a thousand years; her early life was not in danger, but the memories of the middle years faded, and would have been lost except for what Uncle taught her. One night with Jedda, one night of the deepest, most sudden kind of love, could not defeat the centuries that passed, one by one, while Malin studied under her uncle’s tutelage, while Kirithren grew, while, in the ocean, the fleet of wooden ships struggled to begin the building of the Eseveren Gate.
When the gate was complete, when her own teaching was finished and she had learned how much more of magic there
was than she had guessed as a Prin, she was only occasionally tickled by the memory of the evening of Uncle Jessex’s state dinner so many centuries ago. The careful plan unfolded, the gate allowed commerce between Senal and Irion. By then Malin had traveled in the Hormling world herself, and had understood that what separated her from Jedda was still time more than space.
The answer might have been in the King’s book, but she kept the box closed until one day when she walked into the audience hall of Shurhala and found the Hormling delegation waiting, among them Jedda Martele, who spoke Erejhen, who had no idea who Malin was.
In that moment, what was important was not the memory of an evening that had happened for Malin a long time ago, which had clearly not yet happened for Jedda. What was important was that when Malin looked at Jedda now, she could hardly put her eyes anywhere else, even at this moment of crisis, when the battle that Uncle Jessex had been predicting for so long was about to begin. She could hardly take her eyes off Jedda, and wondered what would follow. How long would it be before Uncle Jessex took this Jedda back to that night so long ago? How much longer would Malin have to wait?
She went alone to her rooms that night and sat with the box in her hand, palms smoothing the wood, oiling it, then, finally, she touched the box at the corners and said the words she had known for a long time. The seal opened. The leather of the cover was a deep blue, almost purple, and smelled new. She drew out the book and held it in her lap.
Part Four
Shadow of a Hand
26
At the last moment before Irion sent Jedda back, the ring gripped in her fist, she thought to ask to read the letter he had written; but it was already too late and she could feel the wrenching of her gut as she traveled.
Pain hit her all at once and she slipped on the ring. She fumbled and for a moment had a terror she would drop the thing and then it was on her finger and she felt better, at least, for having done that much. At first she felt no different, only waves of pain that were increasing now, and a laxity that seeped into her limbs from the ground. She was relaxing but some hand was holding her in place and at the same time she was wracked with pain in all her joints, as if her bones were exploding, and yet she could neither move nor make a sound. She hung there in the hand that she could not see. She had never felt such agony in her life. The world, the storm over Arroth, her companions in the putter, of these she could see not one trace. After a few more moments, even her sense of her body became less.