by James Enge
Further, said the other Power, we are not stupid. Zahkaar is stupid. I am wise with all the events that have been fated, are fated, and will be fated.
Since no event is fated, Torlan is stupid and therefore Zahkaar is wise. Ha ha ha.
“So which is which?” Ambrosia asked, turning from one to the other.
“Stripes is Torlan; Patches is Zahkaar,” Aloê murmured. “That’s what it looks like, anyway.”
I had patches before Zahkaar, thundered the striped Power with great dignity. But they were unfitting to the Supreme Power of All.
Supreme Power of all liars, thundered Zahkaar, and they were off again, casting talic bolts of fury back and forth, as the mortals between them were shaken by their hatred and their power.
And their stupidity. Aloê more and more realized that Ambrosia was right. They were powerful beyond belief, far mightier than any god she had encountered in her travels. But they were stupid as stones.
Time passed. Ambrosia fell into unconsciousness and awoke as Hope. Morlock was appalled at first, thinking that his sister was dying. Aloê explained the business as well as she could, with Merlin throwing in a few sullen words of correction.
She was aware of a certain sense of peace and balance as she spoke but didn’t realize what it was at first. Then she knew: the Two Powers were no longer throwing hatred at each other. It was possible they were listening.
Merlin caught her eye and nodded. “Yes, there is some danger there,” he said. “Whatever we say to each other becomes part of their knowledge.”
This was disturbing and comforting. The Two Powers could not really be the cosmic entities they pretended to be, perhaps even thought they were, if they needed to eavesdrop on mortals. But they could not share knowledge and plans with each other without the Two Powers knowing of it.
Morlock and Hope were talking, tentatively, to each other. It was oddly moving, this first meeting of a brother and sister.
Time passed.
There was a stream of water on the island that ran down into the fog. The water was clear and free from poison. Their bodies were kept alive by the same sort of tal-infusion that Merlin had used in his cage-beasts. Aloê increasingly felt light and empty as a dried leaf, but not hungry nor any nearer death.
Time passed.
And they talked. They had to talk. There was nothing else to do, for one thing. For another, the Two Powers would often cease hurling their bolts of hate at each other and fall silent to listen. That silence of the gods was a great relief to the mortals. The worry that they were feeding information to the Powers was trivial by comparison. But Aloê began to wonder if the Two Powers were not very subtle, in fact. If they wanted to know something from the mortals they had captured, they had set up the perfect trap to get those mortals talking. But they never seemed to act on what they heard.
And the flow of information was not only one way. Once, when Morlock and Hope were discussing the Balancer, Morlock lifted his head and said, “Do the Two Powers know the Balancer?”
We know all, thundered Torlan. Or at least I do.
Zahkaar intoned, All that is, or was, or ever shall be is but the shower of sparks from our blades locked in eternal combat.
That, said Torlan, is a stupid metaphor. Blades do not act like that.
You’re stupid. Blades acted like that in the endless un-time that preceded your intrusion into my being. They will act like that again in the un-begun un-time that awaits your dissolution.
You’re the intruder!
“Then you do not know the Balancer?” Morlock asked. “He is but one spark among others in your conflict through time?”
We know the Balancer, Torlan thundered. He is our servant in the world made by the conflict of our wills.
I knew him first. I know him better.
Lies!
“Did he suggest you capture Ambrose?” asked Aloê. She thought she guessed what Morlock was getting at.
The idea was an artifact of natural law—
—the conflict of our wills.
It does not matter who had the idea.
Aloê translated that as a “yes,” and so did Morlock (or so she guessed from the thoughtful look on his face).
Time passed. They engaged in various plans of attack or escape; at least, Aloê, Morlock, Hope, and Ambrosia did. Merlin sat aloof, almost as scornful as the Two Powers, speaking rarely and almost never of their situation.
Perhaps his scorn was justified. All of their attempts failed. The one weapon they had was Aloê’s glass staff, but it’s impulse wells were void of charge and could not be filled. They daydreamed catapults to hurl . . . something at the Two Powers, or extendable bridges to take them over the lake of burning fog. They daydreamed many things, but the dreams always sank on the rocks of reality. “If only we had this . . . If only we had that . . .” They had nothing but themselves. And it was not enough.
Merlin was particularly amused by the bridge plan. “Yes!” he said mockingly to Morlock. “If you could run across the top of the fog, perhaps you could punch one of the Two Powers. Perhaps even both of them. That would solve everything. Man of action!”
Morlock’s gray eyes grew a bit wild. Aloê could not remember ever seeing him like that. He turned away without speaking.
Time passed.
A time came when Morlock said in a dry unemphatic tone of voice utterly at odds with the madness in his face, “I am going to walk through the fog.”
“Young fool,” Merlin muttered.
“If I get across, I may be able to—”
“If you get across, you may be able to leap to the paths of the three moons, or juggle the sun with your bare hands. You don’t understand what the fog is. It is a talic zone projected by the Two Powers. Passing through it will strip the potentiality from your actuality until you are nothing. Then, my son, my proud man of action, you will be dead.”
“I believe I can maintain the integrity of my identity indefinitely under the talic pressure of the fog. I will follow the path of the stream: it must come to some outlet below. If I can reach the other side of the fog—”
“You believe this because you want to believe it. Your harven father probably taught you that suicide is wrong, and this is the feeble pretext you give to your self-destruction.”
“Old man,” shouted Morlock furiously, “shut up!”
“No use in my talking, certainly. There would be some point in that only if there were someone to hear me.”
Morlock turned away. He hugged his sister, who was Ambrosia at the moment, and kissed Aloê fiercely.
“I am sorry you were brought here,” he whispered, “because of me.”
“Get as far as you can,” she said, “and then come back. The first try may not succeed. The last step, not the first, completes the journey.”
He looked at her with those wild gray eyes and said, “Aloê, good-bye.”
His father’s suicide theory seemed more likely all the time, so she didn’t say good-bye. She said, “Morlock, come back to me. Like some stupid fisherman’s stupid wife, I say it: come back to me.”
He shrugged unhappily with his crooked shoulders, turned away, and walked downhill into the mist. Presently he was gone.
“We will all go that way, eventually, I suppose,” Merlin remarked. “Just as boredom and frustration made us talk, boredom and frustration will send us into the mist. It is the only escape, the only refuge for us. But I have lived with death as a familiar enemy for many years, now; I am not so eager to rush into her arms.”
Aloê and Ambrosia made no reply, but stood next to the stream and watched the spot where Morlock had vanished. Even the gods were silent. They waited.
As Morlock walked he summoned the lowest level of vision—not enough to prevent him from walking, but enough to exert some control over his talic self.
He was startled by the pain that emanated from the fog, like cold fiery claws or burning veins of poison. The ascent to vision usually precluded any feeling of physical
pain.
But perhaps this was not physical pain. He felt himself to be less himself, and even less with each step he took. But he clenched the monochrome flames of his talic identity like fingers and struggled onward.
He followed the course of the stream through the glowing fog. It grew wider, deeper, stronger, louder. The thunder of its waters rang in his ears. He hoped that meant this pain he was in would end someday. He no longer remembered what was causing the pain, but hoped if he could pass through it he would leave all shame and fear behind.
A woman with many faces but one single mouth approached him, looked at him curiously with an improbable number of eyes, and passed onward in the mist.
Pain. Time. Mist. Long slow footfalls.
The river ran downhill into a valley. On each side of the river were level meadows. And on one side of the river he saw a flock of white sheep, and on the other a flock of black sheep. And whenever one of the white sheep bleated, one of the black sheep would cross over and become white; and when one of the black sheep bleated, one of the white sheep would cross over and become black. And he saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half of which was in flames bright as wrath from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf. Nearby he saw a young man sitting upon a mound, and two hounds (long and thin like knife blades) in leashes lying by his side.
The young man was playing a lute in a piece of sunlight that somehow fell through the mist. His shoulders were crooked as Morlock’s own. The youth’s face was long and snouted, and covered with gray scales like metallic plates, and his eyes were red.
“Who are you?” Morlock asked. “Why are you here? Will the pain end soon?”
“I am here because you are here,” said the youth, putting down his lute and giving Morlock a sharp red glance. “I am Ambrose the Ancient, the founder of your house . . . or as much of him as remains in you. You may not be here much longer yourself, though, if you are seeing me. You are in some zone of dispersal that is separating what you are from what you might be. When that process is complete, you will be no more.”
“Will the pain stop then?”
“I don’t know. In time I must have died, I suppose, but your life meets mine at an earlier point, when I would have scorned the release of death. Go back, Ambrosius. Escape the fog and live. You never know what may happen, eh?”
“Sometimes you know.”
“Then you are wiser than I, and don’t need my advice.” The gray youth took up the lute and began to play again.
Morlock turned away from the music and struggled uphill alongside the river. He could no longer remember what he was doing or why. But he remembered that someone had said something to him about footsteps, so he kept on taking them.
They did not make the pain stop, though. Nothing did. Soon there was no memory of words, no footsteps, nothing but the fog, and the pain, and the sound of someone screaming far away.
When they heard Morlock screaming, Ambrosia leaped forward to go after him, but Aloê grabbed her. “Wait!” she said.
“One of us has to go!” Ambrosia shouted. “And he’s my brother! You’re just his bimbo!”
“Shut your foul mouth and listen. Hook my belt to your belt. Maybe I can pull you back if—”
“Right! Right! I’m sorry, I just—”
“Shut up and go.”
Merlin was there also. As his daughter passed into the mist he hooked his belt onto Aloê’s, then shed his white (well, whitish) cloak and tied it to the end of the belt.
Now Ambrosia started to scream also—and, horribly, Hope’s voice could also be heard. Aloê and Merlin pulled on the white robe like sailors hauling up an anchor. Through the mist two monstrous figures could be discerned: a two-headed screaming woman and something manlike, bristling with arms and legs like a troll.
But as they emerged from the mist they were merely Morlock and Ambrosia, their eyes wild and mindless. Merlin tended to Ambrosia (who fell to the ground like a stone), while Aloê led Morlock’s staggering steps to the other side of the island.
There came a time when Morlock was himself again, and the pain of life receded a bit. He hoped he was on the other side of the mist, but when he opened his eyes he saw that Aloê was sitting beside him.
“Didn’t make it,” he croaked. His throat was sore for some reason.
“No, sweetheart.”
“How far’d I get?”
“Hard to say. Not far. Ten or fifteen steps.”
“Oh.”
He had failed. They were doomed. And, however it had happened to him, he was the one who had done this to her. Aloê would be alive and facing the future back in the Wardlands if it were not for him. That dark thought accompanied him all the way down the long slope to unconsciousness.
Morlock was not eager to return to awareness, but when he did it was not so bad. Aloê and Merlin were talking in quiet voices of some place in the southern islands that they both knew. Ambrosia was playing a board game against herself, using scratches on a flat rock for a board and pebbles for pieces. He went and sat down across from her and they played the game for a while, speaking rarely, absorbed in the game.
Later he walked with Aloê around the island’s edge. They spoke in hushed voices of the last time they had made love, and the island of Old Azh. She told him of the strange dog people who lived under the island and the strange not-living thing that tended to them . . . or had done so, before the Two Powers destroyed all that. Evidently Merlin had witnessed the devastation, but Morlock did not wish to speak to the old man.
The gods were mostly silent, perhaps because they were listening. That was Aloê’s and Merlin’s thought, but Morlock was not so sure. It was more as if they were running down. . . .
In the quiet calm that comes from accepting failure, Morlock suddenly saw something he had not before. He took things he knew and fitted them together like the parts of a puzzle, of a machine, of a broken statue. The face was lost in splinters and atoms but still, it was there, if he could find the right pattern. And when he found it, he saw the solution smiling at him.
“I know what to do,” he said, loud enough so that the others could hear him.
They all looked at him: his father, his sister (who was Hope at the moment), and his beloved.
“What is it, honey?” said Aloê, her glorious golden eyes wet with pity.
He examined his solution and it was sound.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, and turned away from them all with some satisfaction. He had work to do. At last, he had work to do.
In Merlin’s often-expressed opinion, Morlock had gone mad. The younger maker used Aloê’s glass staff to break off pieces of rock from the island surface, and then he spent endless time using the rock to work on other pieces of rock.
“Madness and suicide are the two common afflictions of long-term prisoners,” Merlin remarked, and proceeded to tell stories of jails he had known.
Aloê was not sure he was wrong. But when she looked at Morlock, she saw none of the wild-eyed recklessness that had driven him into the lake of mist. He worked calmly, carefully, swiftly (given his materials).
What he made, in the end, was nothing extraordinary, although he displayed it to the others with a considerable amount of satisfaction. It was simply a perpetual motion machine—a small hand-sized version of the ones attached to impulse wheels all over the Wardlands.
There were two wheels of intermeshing gears on armatures. The one wheel drove the other, and the other drove the first. Given the materials he had to work with, the transfer of momentum was not perfect, and he occasionally had to tap one wheel or the other to keep the gears meshing.
“And this is your great solution?” Merlin burst out at last. “This is your weapon against the mightiest beings in Laent? Shall we make an army of these little things and send them on wheels to topple the two thrones—is that what you propose?”
“This is not a weapon, no,” Morlock said. “It is really a statement of the problem.” He
tapped one of the gears and remarked, “Torlan is greater than Zahkaar. This much is clear.”
This doomful truth even Ambrosius sees, thundered Torlan, the symbols freighted with hate for Zahkaar.
A god who grovels for the opinion of mortals is no god, replied Zahkaar. It is because I am greater that they do not see it.
There is one thing to see in you: an inferior god.
You are inferior, as I shall prove at Time’s end.
The talic bolts of hate flew back and forth over the mortals’ heads for some time, and eventually stopped.
Morlock had ceased to tap the gears of his little machine, and they also ground to a halt.
The cold light of an unsuspected idea flooded Aloê’s mind.
Merlin stepped toward his son and faced him over the motionless stone toy. The old man’s hands were trembling. He flicked one of the gears and shouted, “Only Zahkaar is real! Fate and its idiot-child time are but the dreams of Chaos! Soon he will awake and sweep all away in his fury!”
Zahkaar roared on his throne. Vile Torlan, even Ambrosius sees my glory! Surrender your futile struggle and forget your useless hate! In the end as in the beginning, I must triumph!
You, raged Torlan, are inconsistent and inept! When Ambrosius spoke for me you were void of belief. Now you deign to sniff after the opinions of a mortal. No true god would do thus, and you have done it, therefore you are no true god. You are rebuked.
Zahkaar thundered snidely, You did it first, therefore you rebuke yourself by your own logic. Ha ha ha.
You did it first! You always do everything first!
Thank you. I accept your praise and surrender. I am First, and you are Nothing.
I am First and you are Nothing! I hate you! I hate you!
I hated you before you existed.
My hatred called your being into existence.
Meanwhile, Merlin was staring at Morlock, who bore it calmly. The younger maker looked at Aloê and Ambrosia.
It was clear that Morlock could not speak his idea aloud, lest it become part of the Powers’ knowledge. But Aloê was sure that she understood. Morlock was proposing that the Two Powers were not gods at all . . . or at least not living beings. There were machines—or, better, two gears of a single machine that drove each other into motion.