by Jim Grimsley
“Then she is a Prime.”
“If she is, she was the first of them all.” Plump spoke with a prim tuck of the chin, her bosom heaving and necklaces whispering.
“You don’t know who she is?”
Young answered, “They claim they don’t. They always have. They’re older than me, they keep secrets sometimes.”
“For your own good, baby Sister.”
“Indeed. Look at you now, pouting because we won’t let you take back that scrap of cloth we gave him.” Thin was playing with a ring, a third one, an opal; she slid it onto her hand.
“Oh, I’m not thinking about that anymore,” Young claimed, but Jessex was watching her and found it impossible to trust her. She had glided to one of the windows, shining white, erect, framed against the dark rock of the mountain.
“I don’t believe YY-mother is any sort of Prime,” Thin said, sliding off the ring again, examining it.
“I know very well what you believe, but what do you know?” Young asked.
“I don’t know what you believe,” Jessex said, watching her.
“It’s her own little fairy tale.” Young knelt by the fireplace, adding logs, stoking the glowing embers.
“Maybe. But, as you said, Sister, I am older than you. I may know a bit more.”
Young said nothing, poked at the logs, smoothed the shining fabric of her gown, and stepped languidly to the fireplace where Plump was basking in the flames.
“Tell me,” Jessex said again.
Young answered for her in a surly tone, as if repeating nonsense. “That YY was the one who spoke the Word that started the universe in the first place.”
Thin flushed to the roots of her hair.
Plump had grown very still.
“I’m sorry, Sister,” said Young, blithely. “I should have let you tell.”
“Yes, you should have.”
They were reacting as if she had interrupted some script that they had rehearsed and agreed on. He looked at Young, who was busy stirring up Plump’s fire, gaze carefully averted.
“But that’s the essence of it,” Plump said. “My Sister believes YY was the first Word. For myself, I believe at the very least that she was there to hear it spoken.”
“Then what is this place? What’s this world she made for me and for my people?”
“You and your people have always been quite vain,” Thin said. “No one ever made any world for you.”
Young gave him a careful look. “I thought you had already guessed. Elder Sister said you had, with your riddle about the prison guards.”
He was aware now that they meant to manage him, for some reason, to some end. While he dare not use true language, he could use his wits. “If this place is to be used to imprison Primes, there must be some reason.”
“Very simple, the reason. Those great green fields of the past into which the Primes intend to move—she feels very proprietary where they’re concerned, YY-mother does. She considers them to be her province. She does not want them inhabited. She does not want the original running of the universe changed, unless she changes it.” Plump had drawn an apple into her lap and was peeling it with a knife, not touching either.
Thin looked at the display with a curl of the lip. “Really, middle Sister, you’ve become a bit of a show-off.”
“You’d have me jumping up and down off my comfortable parson’s bench half the day, fetching this and that.” Plump spoke mildly, as Young moved to tend the third fireplace, the one where Thin was standing. “I don’t see why I should bother.”
“It would do you good to move.”
“Perhaps I will, sometime.” Plump complacently adjusted a cap onto her head, pulling her shawl tighter, as if she were cool, though the fire roared at her back. “I’m as spry as anybody,” she said to Jessex very directly. “Don’t let appearances fool you.”
“He’s not a child,” Young said, “don’t talk down to him.”
“You want to be his friend, do you?”
“I was his friend,” she said, and watched him. “We were all of us his friends, and he ours.”
“Times change.” Thin’s tone was brisk.
“He’s stood guard a good long time now.” Plump spoke into her hands, which were suddenly busy with needlework; she had drawn a basket to her side and picked her embroidery out of it. She was working gold thread into shining cloth-of-cream, a pattern like a winding vine stem of elgerath. This work she did with her hands, concentrated. “Perhaps he’s done his job too well.”
“What do you mean, too well?” Thin snorted in derision. She was measuring out flowery stuff from small sacks; some herbs Jessex recognized, some flower scents he knew.
“If you defend yourself with the very best defenses, then the person who finally overcomes you will be the one with the very best weapons. The consequence flows naturally from the cause.”
“So perhaps we should be worse defended.”
“I’m simply trying to piece out why YY-mother stands by and does nothing.” She was watching Jessex with a mild smile. “More tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Do you have any more questions?” Plump was smiling now. “It appears you’re doing rather nicely in terms of surviving our talk. Really, we thought you might be more imprudent. You were such a problem when we were teaching you.”
The words stung almost as much when he heard them the second time. “I hadn’t realized.”
“Speak up. We’re almost done. What more will you ask?”
“Where do I find her?”
“You don’t,” Thin said, arms folded, staring into the distance, clouds sweeping over the sky.
“Why doesn’t she help us? I understand she means to do what she pleases with me, but so many people are dying.”
“Hormling people, you mean.”
“Yes.”
They were quiet for a long time.
“They are a special case,” said Young. Her voice rang out so very clearly; Plump was visibly perturbed, and Thin set her jaw in an angry line.
“That’s all, I’m done,” said Young, with a show of meekness.
“That’s enough, I’d say.” Thin’s voice cracked like a whip, and the room dimmed as clouds grew heavy over the mountain.
In the silence Jessex held himself very still, kept his mind open and clean.
“Very good,” Plump said, smiling at him. “You passed all your tests. You’ll live to leave Chulion.”
But she told him nothing about where to find God.
2.
At least part of a wizard’s wakefulness is mental discipline, which Jessex could practice without recourse to Words. Still, he found himself surprised in the night when Young Sister came to his room and told him it was time to leave, that she had come to escort him to the borders of Unyurthrupen, the Orloc name for Middle of the Mountain; it had been their city at one time, according to her.
“I thought Thin was escorting me,” Jessex said, wary at the way she paced the room, arms crossed. He tried to tell whether she was using Words on him, found he had no notion, his senses befuddled. That alone was a bad sign.
“No. She’s occupied.”
“Really?”
“This Rao fellow,” said Young, picking at the brooch pinning her undercloak, shining it a bit with her head-wrap. “He’s troublesome for us, too.”
“Then why don’t you do something—”
She shook her head firmly. “We may not intervene in your world. That fact has not changed since you were our pupil. Only YY can do that.”
“Why?”
“Old as you are, you’re not ready to know that yet.” She signaled Coromey to come to her hand, petted the cat-hound, knelt to look it in the face. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. Be very quiet, and stay close to me.”
“Why?”
“Do as I ask, Jessex.”
She spoke in a tone he remembered, or thought he remembered. Her white robes were changed
to dull gray before his eyes; day had become night again, darker than any night he could remember since he had left his own country.
Down stairs they descended, beyond the entry gallery, hurrying from one staircase to another, Coromey loping along beside. They passed a room where Thin was slumped over a desk, lamplight slanting across her face, asleep. Young paused to approach the desk, dim the lamp, unhurried. She led him down through the empty floors of the tower into a narrow, dark stair that wound down for a long time, and he realized, after a time, that they were far below the Orloc barracks, far below the main gate and the path that led to the glacier stair. Young Sister led him down into the dark.
“You put Thin to sleep,” Jessex whispered, when they had been descending for a long time, Coromey gliding ahead of them, stopping now and then to look back, amber eyes glowing. “Yes.”
“How?”
She smiled back at him, never breaking stride. “My secret. Beyond you at the moment.”
“Where are we going?”
She reached for his hand to move them along faster; her grip was warm but filled him with apprehension. “Don’t be afraid, I only mean to hold your hand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s natural,” she said, shaking her head. “Creatures like us never come close to one another without thinking twice.” The touch of her hand made him tingle with fear. She smiled at him, and they were watching each other; she was moving them both now, a device running along the stair similar to the climbing-runes of a tower. “I’m taking you where you wanted to go.”
“To YY.”
“Yes.”
He felt very quiet and very still. After a while he sighed. “Will your Sisters be angry?”
“Of course. I’m intervening, in a way. Disobeying. But I’m due. I’m sure I’ve paid the penalty for their disobedience long enough.”
He wanted to ask the question this suggested but thought better of it. There were only so many questions she would answer, even in a good mood, which this might not be, entirely.
“She may kill us both,” said Young. “But for once I don’t care.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t concern you yet. The business of your betters.”
He set his jaw, feeling the way he had felt at fifteen when the Sisters refused to answer one of his questions. “Tell me.”
She watched him. They had come to the bottom of the stairway; he carried his full weight again, a sluggish change. She had made light around herself; he still felt constrained to use no Words of his own. Through old chambers, treasure rooms shut tight, empty prison cells, through large chambers with fresh air blowing, though by now they traveled far underground, they hurried deeper in the pale light Young Sister cast. Through rooms lined with casks of brandy and wine and rooms lined with chests of all sizes, down a broad stair, he hurried as quiet as he could to follow her, Coromey sometimes behind them, sometimes ahead. Young Sister passed through the doors at the end of the stair without opening them and pulled him through in the same way, a freezing chill passing through him.
“She rebelled herself,” Young Sister said. “YY did.”
“When?”
“Many years from now. When the Primes first agree that none of them will travel in time, she will be the only one of them who knows how. She will come back in time and break her vow.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s already done it. Because that’s why we’re here.”
She stood in a long tunnel, damp, ringing with dripping water, roomy enough for one of the Hormling vehicles. The tunnel ran straight in either direction, as far as he could see when he stepped into it himself. Coromey prowled the darkness in one direction. She took his hand again and smiled and began to run, Jessex falling into stride beside her, the cat-hound following. Soon they were moving effortlessly fast, watching each other.
“What do you mean, that’s why we’re here?”
“She came back here, she made this place, after she broke the agreement with the other Primes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because she really isn’t one of them. Maybe because she didn’t want any of them to learn how to move in time. Maybe because she knew they would all break the agreement in the end, and she wanted to find a place to defend herself.”
He was realizing what she had said. He was staggered. “What you mean is that it’s all happened already. It’s all over.”
“I didn’t say any such thing. All over?”
“YY already broke the agreement and came here. The rest of them all waited till the end of time and did the same thing. Everything’s already happened.”
When she answered, the moment drew itself out, then and in his memory. He thought he caught of glimmer of fear in her face. She drew her hood around her. They were still running, in terms of physical effort, but because of whatever Words she was using, the velocity was much greater; they might as well have changed into wind and howled through the tunnel, the effect was much the same. She kept them balanced and steady as if they were flying. He could taste the rune lines along the tunnel walls.
“What’s happening here to us is new,” she said. “And none of the rest may come out the same because of us, all of it may split into a thousand timelines, or collapse, or too many other possibilities to count.”
“What’s happening to us here—”
“She came back. She changed the past when she did. Not just because she came back.”
“How else?”
“She made Aeryn. After that she made the rest of this place.”
“A prison and a fortress at the same time.”
“And more. A nexus. A way to reach a lot of different places. But there’s more.”
“What?”
“The Hormling. You know their legend, that they were brought here by a colony ship, that they came from Earth.”
“It’s true, as far as I know,” he said. “The ship is really as old as they say, I’ve walked on it.”
She gave him an envious look. “I wish I were as free as that.” But her expression changed. “You’re quite right that the legend is true. The Merced did come here from a place called Earth, the ship did establish a successful colony that grew to cover all of Senal. But not in the first running of the universe, and not without help.”
It took him a moment to hear. The flood of emotion was intense; he felt nearly breathless. “There were no Hormling?”
“In the first running of the universe, the Merced was lost.”
“But she rescued it.”
“YY did, yes. When she broke the pact, when she came back herself, she found the Merced and brought it here. She tended the Hormling as patiently as she tended your people.”
“Why?”
Her expression was grim. “To make targets.”
His stomach lurched; he closed his eyes. He wished he could speak Words that would make the meditation-space in his head in order to rid himself of this feeling of helplessness, but he shook off the impulse.
“She wanted to draw the strongest of the Primes, which required a true prize. Eventually she plans to draw them all here, to tempt them with something they can’t resist. The combination of your gates and the wealth of the Hormling is the lure. As is she herself.”
“I don’t understand, why my gates? She could have made them herself.”
“Could she? She never has.”
“But surely you Sisters can.”
“Not in your world.”
“But the other Primes?”
“To make a gate, they have to know Wyyvisar. Teachers are hard to come by. And even you don’t know all that it means to speak that language. Not yet.”
He was beginning to understand. “You said the Hormling are part of it, too.”
She grimaced. “The truth is, no one expects the Primes to settle themselves in uninhabited stars when they head back into the past. They’ll head for one of the inhabited worlds, for slav
es or diversion or what all. So YY made a big puddle of sentients and added your gates as soon as she had you ready to make them.”
“Bait,” he said. His heart was sinking.
“And now she means to destroy your Oregal.”
His heart was pounding; he felt certain now that Young was attempting to ensorcel or ensnare him in some way. But he also recognized the truth when he heard it. “Because we do our job too well.”
“You were always a bright lad.”
“Rao’s here,” he said. “The trap worked.”
“And where Rao goes, others are sure to follow.”
“What don’t I know?” he asked.
“About what?”
“What you said before. Wyyvisar. What don’t I know about it?”
He expected a teasing look, but what he got was sadness, even an edge of pity. “You’ll learn sooner than you like. Don’t rush it or try to foreknow it. Nothing helps prepare you.”
“You’re trying to frighten me.”
“I would if I thought I could,” she said.
You can, he wanted to say, a knot in the pit of his stomach.
“God lives in the Words.” At the time he thought only that she was expressing a spiritual belief, bringing that part of the conversation, and the journey, to an end.
3.
Before, she had carried him at a speed he could comprehend, but now they moved faster still. He was no longer sure whether Coromey was with them and he had no way to ask, he had no voice. There was no question of talking; he had to balance himself, in an odd way, which was easy to do but which required concentration. He was blind, feeling only the balance of himself, wondering whether Coromey was near, feeling Young Sister around him, encompassing. Where were they going?
Did she warn him he would become blind and stay that way for a while, before it actually happened? He remembered a warning in her voice. He remembered suspecting that she was using Words. But he was nervous at the darkness, not only his eyesight but all his internal senses blinded, so that he truly saw nothing for the first time since his childhood.