by Andre Norton
The Mirror—concentrate wholly on the Mirror—push back into the furthest corner of her mind that uneasiness, that feeling that she was another housed in this body—someone very different from Ortha, channel through which the Farseeing might rise and flow.
Under her steady gaze the dusky surface of the mirror changed. First came a clouding, as mist might gather, in its center, spreading outward in rolling waves towards the frame which held the full plate firm. Thicker grew the mist, stronger. Here and there one portion of it began to darken more than the rest.
Those shadow spots deepened, drew into them substance so they were no longer drifting, but stood sharp apart from the veiling which had given them being. She saw people now—small, distinct, if lacking in color—for all the Mirror revealed was not the outward seeming of any person, rather the life force which was the innermost spark.
Behind those sparks of life arose towers and walls—a city. Therein those building cores of spirit went about their affairs, even as did the men and women they represented in life. Swiftly the scene changed, one bit melting into the next. It was as if she were suspended above the rise of walls—those avenues filled with crowds—gazing down upon the far spread of the community from a bird’s winging height.
Yet that from which she so arose was a mighty city—fast shrinking as she watched. From this place all the world was ruled. Its buildings in their splendor spread across leagues to form the mightiest monument the human kind knew. Now all dwindled away swiftly permitting her to see more and more of the land lying beyond its walls.
From where she flew—or floated—Ortha could no longer detect those life sparks. Such were too small, too lost in the wide land. Yet even higher her vision carried her. There was a bright thread of river—flowing to empty into the sea. Tiny splinters coasted on the surface of the waters—ships, the work of men in their pride—tying thus one portion of the world’s land to another. Higher still—she could no longer sight the splinters lost in the immensity of the sea.
Then—
Out of the heaven, through which she spun, burst light—a ball so brilliant that it banished the somberness of the mirrored world. The blaze was blinding—yet the eyes by which she viewed it were not so bedazzled that she could not see clearly the horror which it brought.
It fell—that orb of fire, now it was accompanied by an army of lesser flares. Down these plunged, into the sea. As they struck, so the world she looked upon went mad.
Out of the water arose steam, and, following that, the very stuff of the earth itself appeared in ragged, uplifted ridges, spewing forth more fire. While the rest of the water (such as was not boiled away by the fires) rose, to roll towards the shores—mountain-high grew those masses of raging water. She saw the first frantic wave strike at the land furiously, spitting into tongues of moving destruction which swept all away—angry and tormented water against which no man nor anything of his handiwork might stand.
Inward raged the first of those great waves. Now Ortha was closer so she could clearly watch the sea take over and doom a world to destruction. A port city vanished as if it had never been. Yet the fury of the wave was in no way diminished. Rather it seemed somehow to be fed, energized by the very destruction it so wrought. On it went, covering leagues faster than any air-boat could flee, even with a storm wind behind it.
Now rings of fires showed to the north, bursting forth from the ground even as they had first arisen from the sea. Raw upthrusts of land belched forth molten rock and clouds of ash, tossing that in great masses towards the sky.
The waves washed on. Now she saw the tips of them loom up and up—and below lay the city which was like a hill of ants when an unheeding bootsole came crushing down. The water seemed to pause for a long instant of agony before it fell, to leave nothing but the swirling force of it.
She saw towers she had known all her life topple—among them that tallest one from which the star readers searched the heavens. There came a rocking of the land—water—fire—The wrath of powers which had slept since the forming of the world was being shaken into wakefulness. Man—man could not exist amid such fury. It was the end of the world which the Mirror was showing her. She wailed, a thin keening cry.
“Death,” she cried with stiff lips. “Death— that which rides the heavens brings with it death—by water—by fire, by the torture of the earth itself. So does death come now upon us!”
She swayed from side to side on her Seer’s seat. Her voice raised into a higher wail:
“There shall be a new moon in our heavens to move above, hiding that one which is known now to us. With it comes that which shall fall and kill—showers of death. Out of the earth shall there be an answer, raised from grievous wounds, both fire and poison winds. Against that which comes even the Power which flows cannot save lives. There shall be nothing left but the water, fire and the raw wounds of the earth—”
“You lie!”
The words came cold and clear, cutting through her terror as a keen-edged knife might sever a cord. She was so jerked from her Seer’s trance, shaking, sick with what she had seen, also by the too quick severance of her vision.
Ortha’s arms were rigid on either side of her body, her fingers achingly curled about the edges of the tripod stool. Only that grip kept her in place. Now she turned her head to look toward the High Throne, feeling spittle seep from between her lips and trickle down her chin.
She who was the Voice of the Power leaned forward, her eyes like spear points seeking to impale Ortha with their hard, gemlike glitter. The blue of them was ice as they accused.
Now the Voice arose, her perfect body only lightly veiled by the gold gauze of her robe-of-presence, the gems of her girdle as hard and cold as her eyes. Over her shoulders flowed the long waves of her sun-fair hair, so like unto the gold of her robe that it was hard to tell which was wispy fabric, and which was her natural veil.
“You lie—or else you have been touched by the Dark—” She gave judgment slowly and distinctly.
A murmur rippled among those gathered along the walls.
“It would seem,” the Voice continued, “that you do not see the truth, Seer. Thus it is time you be judged and the Power finds elsewhere a new servant.”
Ortha shook her head from side to side. That which she had seen still enwrapped her. She could not believe that the truth of her seeing was being questioned. Surely it was known that no Seer could falsify what the Mirror showed. Why should the Voice deny it—and her?
She looked now to the other, who shared the High Throne as the Arm of Purpose. He glanced first at Ortha and then to the Voice, but he made no move, spoke no word. It was the Voice who raised her hand in a small, commanding gesture.
Two came to stand on either side of Ortha. Hands clamped down with cruel strength upon her shoulders, exerting pressure to draw her up. The sacrilege of that profane touch broke through the spell the horror of Full Seeing had laid upon her. No man, be he priest, or guard, had the right to handle a Seer. She felt now the flame of anger rising in her. It was underpriests who were forcing her up and away from her seat—servants of the Arm—still he had given no order by word or gesture.
They swung her around now, away from the Mirror, to fully face her accuser. The Voice continued to stare at her coldly, as if silently daring the girl to raise some protest, to call upon the Power in this, its own place of manifestation.
“You—” Ortha began, but it would seem that the Voice was not going to allow any Further word from a Seer she had declared discredited. One of the priests clapped his hand over the girl’s lips with force enough to bruise her skin against her teeth.
The Voice turned a little away, looked to those who had Power right, standing uneasy in their ranks, murmuring among themselves.
“This one is clearly forsworn. The heavens have been read for twenty months—there hangs nothing there to trouble us. It may be that the Dark One has found a weakness in our guardianship and so seeks to cause trouble. Or it may be that this one has looke
d too long. She shall spread no further lies.”
The Voice flung wide her arms and now came the manifestation of the Power which was housed in her and used her for its speaking tongue. From the tips of her outstretched fingers arose ribbons of light, weaving out and out. In all colors played that radiance, the green-blue of the sea, the rose-gold of the dawn, the pure white which was always the full Presence. Those rays pulsed into the air, streaming out, to hang above the heads of those present, bringing to them the peace and joy which was the gift of the Power.
In Ortha there was no peace nor joy—only anger and the beginning of a new fear, for she knew that the Power had used her truly, and that what the Mirror had shown would come to pass—though the hour of that coming she did not know. How then could the Voice use the Power to deny its own truth? This kept Ortha in a state of bewilderment as the two who were now her captors marched her forth from the hall—those gathered there falling back as if they feared any close contact with one the Voice had declared to be of the Dark.
The confusion grew in the Seer as she went. For she had never before heard of such an act. Her kind used the mirror and what was seen was clearly foresight granted by the Power—why then could it be denied? Nor by custom could the Voice lie either—for had she not, just after condemning Ortha, drawn upon the Power herself? Such a paradox was something which the Dark One could well have devised for the bafflement of the just.
She was hardly aware of where they were taking her, for her bewilderment added to the weariness which always followed a foreseeing. This time it was not Thrasa, her own attendant who supported her, nor would there be waiting for her the cooling, refreshing drink, the long rest on her own sleeping cushions. Instead she roused from a half daze sitting on a rough stone niche in a cell which had been only half carved out of the earth—the rest of it being a natural cave. She felt damp, heard the drip of water. Ortha had never been in this place of Holding for Judgment, but she could guess that she was indeed a prisoner until the Voice and the Arm chose to deal with her.
Leaning back against the chill stone of the wall which she felt keenly through the light tunic she wore, Ortha struggled for a measure of understanding. Go back—go back to that being she had half knowledge of, her sense urged her. See where the roots of the war within the Power truly lay.
The beginning—a memory broke through. She—not the Power—but she herself was two—two now locked in battle, one against the other. All living things knew that the Power was the center of all life, that one was born to hold an infinitesimal spark of it, served it on this tangible world, returned to it, bearing such lessons as one had learned, only after a time to be again reborn. She had touched on other lives of her own during the deep dreaming when she had entered seer training. Some she had been allowed to remember in part because what had been learned therein was important to her present existence.
She had been a fisherman’s daughter who had the company of sea animals and had learned to communicate with them in the days when such knowledge was feared. Then she had died upon the harpoon of her own brother when she had broken his nets to let out of captivity one of the friendly creatures who had swam and played with her in the waves, upon whose back she had ridden, filled with the joy of living.
In another life she had been a man who had a talent for the forging of metal and who had chanced upon a secret of tempering that to such hardness that the rulers of nations had come to bargain for what he wrought. And he had been proud of his craft—until a lord so jealous and cunning that he wished to keep such secrets for himself alone had had that secret plucked from the smith’s mind and then had slain him.
Only—this memory struggling for freedom now in her was none of those. It had not emerged during seer training, rather it was new born and very vigorous—as if it were no life memory at all but something tied to the here and now.
Because this other identity which she could not recognize might have in it the cause of the trouble, Ortha set herself to welcome it—to allow it to build, setting one fragment against another, hoping to see eventually it as a whole.
Gwennan—Out of those swarming fragments emerged a name—as clearly as if it had been written on the dank air before her. Not of the past—then—when?
Ortha spoke the name aloud, as she might a word of ritual used in control of talent—meant to render memory the clearer. Closing her eyes upon the cell, the dusk, she thought “Gwennan” with all the energy she could summon by her training.
Though she had been taught to be a Seer, she had always been aware of other latent talents. Because of obedience to the demands of her calling she had never tried to explore along those other lines of energy. The Temple of Light was itself erected over a multitudinous crossing of paths of that force which was the natural life blood of the planet. That those arteries centered here had been sensed centuries ago.
Therefore, in this place, the earth’s own vibrations were very strong. The Voice and the Arm had been trained to call upon those, tap them for the good of all just as a Seer tapped them in another fashion. Ortha was only a vessel through which Farseeing poured when she faced the Mirror. Never had she attempted to draw upon the Power for her own use.
It was only now in her bewilderment, her sense that something was very wrong with what she had accepted as the very foundation of her world, that she dared this thing. If she sinned, if she were only a fraction from control, then she would be consumed by that which she presumed to use.
Ortha’s hands clenched into fists, she willed with her whole mind, all the strength in her slight body, to this task. She set in her mind the scheme of force lines, running like bright gold in the sun—veining the earth to insure that life on it could prosper and survive. Those lines formed a network and there was a center under her—that she must hold in mind.
So—who was Gwennan? What was this other part of her which struggled now for its freedom? And what had it to do with the here and now?
“Gwennan?” she did not repeat that name as an order, no, she called in a low, soft voice as one who coaxed a timid animal, a shy child, to come out of hiding, to make itself visible.
The lines—Feed me! Her prayer was close to a demand because of her driving need.
“Gwennan!” Now it was an order—one into which Ortha put the full force of what was rising in her.
She saw—as if her eyes were not closed, but open and fixed upon the Mirror once again. Only now there was no sight of ominous world disaster—rather she viewed a field, a hill, and on that set three stones. There was power in those stones—that which moved within her recognized that. It had been very long since it had been called upon, tended. It was faint, nearly flickering into extinction—no one had used it who knew how to tap and draw.
A woman stood by those stones. The hour was one of night and there were clouds across the sky. But the power in the stones lit her face so Ortha could see her. Only—she had not expected to see that other wearing her face! Never before had identification from one life to another followed such a pattern. This must indeed be an undying part of her encased in another shell. Only the stranger was unknowing, stifled, the door to her far memory firmly closed. What a spiritual darkness had fallen on her!
Dark—the Dark One! No, there was no evil cloud about this stranger—only a sense of length of time, of ignorance and forgetfulness—as if memory itself had worn away. For this Gwennan who had once been Ortha was not of the past—she stood in the future!
In the future! Ortha drew a deep breath. Had she indeed seen falsely—had she cracked under the continued stress of farseeing? Certainly the world she had watched go down to destruction could have no future. How might there have been any survivors? Mankind was too frail to withstand the horrors of a world tearing itself apart.
Still—there was talent within her, enough to recognize that other who stood by the stones in the night. Even those were not from Ortha’s time. She believed them a much cruder way of tapping the lines—perhaps set so by some who had merely a v
ague memory of what could once be drawn upon. Though, rough and crude as those devices were, they were akin to that which abode here. If the temple she knew had gone as she had watched it, wiped from the face of the earth, what it had housed had not been entirely forgotten.
She strove to push speculation concerning the stones out of her mind, center her full concentration upon the woman—somehow learn from her what had happened between their times of birth/life, and return/death.
Still—she would come to be that Gwennan—in some far time. Therefore—there must be survival. Ortha sighed with regret that her talent was so limited she could not use it to force that other’s mind doors. Nor was there anything in what she had learned to solve her own paradox—why she had been branded a false Seer?
However she was aware of a change within herself. That struggle to read the other’s identity had, in some manner, altered her. She had been narrowly trained, fitted into a single role to best serve the temple needs. By rights she should never have attempted to step beyond her duties, to go questing. But, because she had done so, now her horizons had been pushed back. She sensed a new rise in her spirit. Of course she was no Voice, she could not control such forces, use the Power as a garment, a tool—Yet she had drawn upon it outside her own prescribed pattern and it had answered her.
She was so tired, her body was trembling—she was emptied, weak, as that which she had held within her for moments seeped away—so blood might drain from an unclosed and dangerous wound. It could be that indeed death was the answer to her audacity—she would be emptied, not only of what she had now drawn in, but also of all else she had had. She would end an empty husk. Such might prove in part the truth of the Voice’s denunciation of her.