For the first time Grisnilter noticed the family’s obvious pain, betraying how they’d valued the human too. What has the youth done?
With tender candor Jindigar’s wife said, “I envied her what you could never give me. Only now, I’ve realized I loved her as a sister.” She collapsed to the floor at the foot of Ontarrah’s bed and commenced a Renewal’s kindred mourning.
It was only then that the children understood. His son said in a voice that hadn’t hardened yet, “Dissolution/death?’
“I think not,” Jindigar articulated as if his throat were clogged. “She’ll return. Ephemerals do, you know. But even more changed than a Renewal, and with total amnesia.” He spoke kindly to the older girl. “It doesn’t hurt them. Only we suffer the pain. Don’t deny it to yourself—it’s not healthy. She’s gone from our lives, if not her own. If we see her again, she won’t know us, and we won’t know her.”
Luminous eyes met his. “I didn’t hate her, Father, not really. I came to tell her that. I was too late.”
“Come. Let us mourn together, and I will teach you to grieve. After all, what’s the use of having an Aliom priest in the family, if not to teach the overcoming of the pain he causes!” Overwhelmed afresh, he went down beside his wife with his two children and set about the aching business of accepting a scar that would never heal. For in granting himself a moment of fulfillment he had brought Ontarrah to a lonely life on Dushaun where no other human ever came. He had inflicted a searing soul-agony on his new wife. She’d agreed to have the ephemeral in the house without knowing what it would mean. Ontarrah wasn’t a pet. She was a person. And he had condemned his Historian-talented children to suffer premature grieving scars that would hamper them all their lives long.
His integrity, thought Grisnilter, will, one day teach him that what he’s done is worse than Inverting. And on that day I’ll be there. He went to tender the report that eventually became the key argument in pronouncing exile on Jindigar, until he learned. But as he backed out of the grieving room’s door, he fell, plummeting into nightmare.
She was spinning in space, panels of every shape and color, scenes culled from the lives of uncounted Historians who’d carried this Archive, closing in on her to crash her out of existence. All trace of Grisnilter’s supreme mastery of this filing system was gone. The system itself had been scrambled according to a key well hidden within the Seals by a method only a Senior Historian could hope to apply. Takora knew there was no way she could stop her mad plunge into the Eye of the Archive—she was not Grisnilter.
She clung to Jindigar’s arm, refusing to cry out. They were living the oldest and most feared Historians’ nightmare—falling through the Gate to Dissolution at the Eye of the Archive, with the whole Archive collapsing around them, squeezing them out into nothingness, imploding to its own destruction. / gambled–and lost.
Then, with the hysterical laughter that only comes in the freedom beyond death, she shouted to the cosmos, “Ah, Threntisn, were you ever wrong! Now you’ve lost the whole Archive, and your chance at Completion, for your cowardice!” She was not coward enough even to consider grabbing the duad link and trying to Invert within the Archive. That would surely Distort the Archive—better to ride to Dissolution. At least then they’d still have a chance at the mythical postcorporeal Completion.
Jindigar’s arms enfolded her, and she felt his love like a tangible energy vibrating in her bones, making her want to live so much that the agony of slow death redoubled. //I’m sorry, Takora—I wish it could have been otherwise.//
“//Look!//” She freed a hand and pointed, both sending the alert via the duad link and yelling with her voice.
One of the panels had detached itself from the maelstrom and was arrowing toward them. It twirled on several axes as it melted away, leaving a three-dimensional image spinning toward them. But she saw a familiar face. “//Threntisn!//” Oh, no/He’ll die with us! But she called, “//Over here!//”
Spotting them, he swam toward them, body glowing with an odd indigo light. Without preamble he grabbed them by the upper arms, shoving them before him as if he wore a free-fall maneuvering pack. Within the Archive, his own element, his naked will had the power of a ship’s drive. In seconds they were speeding between panels of exotic scenes too bizarre to comprehend. After dizzying twists and turns he propelled them toward an oblique corner where black borders between panels joined and warped into another dimension. “Go!”
They slammed through what felt like a soap bubble membrane and popped out over a narrow ledge cut into the side of a sloping pinnacle of chipped flint. They landed in a heap, facing a triangular archway cut out of a single, huge square etched into the flint.
Jindigar picked himself up, assessed the portal, and announced, //I know this place! It’s the Guardian of the Primary Oath! Come on! This way out!// He strode off through a white mist that occluded the entry.
She knew what had happened then> though her memory seemed to be blurring. Somehow Threntisn had heard her and had decided to risk himself to save them and the Archive—by throwing them out through one of the anchor points she’d planned to search for. Ahead of them Jindigar’s memory led to the outside world, a trail familiar to him, but which she couldn’t possibly negotiate alone. She ran after him.
Squinting against the searing light, she forged ahead until she fell over a ridge and into knee-deep water. On hands and knees she managed to get an eye open and saw the water stretched ahead into the dark blue of ocean deeps, but a plume of spray rose from its center, spreading mist between her and the figure standing on the far shore, tall, white-clad, filling her vision, impossibly bright—seemingly a figurine lit from within. Flanking it crouched two ferocious-looking animals. As she scrambled to her feet mist and light cast rainbows around the figure.
Jindigar was standing on top of the water before the figurine. “Who are you?” challenged the odd being.
“All and none,” answered Jindigar. “There is only one identity, of which I am an infinitely small increment. Yet I contain the pattern of the whole.”
“What do you seek?”
‘To practice the Laws of Nature.”
“Sufficient, though you may find it more difficult than you expect.”
Jindigar sighed. “Don’t I always?” And he trudged past the figurine onto a white, crushed gravel path that led into the distance where grass and trees dotted a peaceful landscape. He turned and beckoned to Krinata, and she started toward the Guardian. Before she’d gone two steps, he challenged her.
“Who are you?” asked the figure.
“All and none,” she said, and started on past.
“That’s not your own answer.” The figure raised a hand, and she was-held in place by an invisible force. “Who are you?”
‘Tm not sure. I have many names. Takora, for one.”
“I didn’t ask your name; your identity.”
She suddenly felt on the verge of tears, like a small child caught fibbing about her name. “So call me Krinata if you prefer! I’m not even sure what identity is!”
“What distinguishes you from all others?”
She searched the far reaches of memory and was astonished when a black wall barred her from questing more than a few decades back. She swallowed sudden fear and answered, “I’m the first human to join a Dushau in an Oliat subform. I was with Jindigar in duad. He’s right there.” She pointed.
“Ah, then do you define yourself in terms of what you do or of who you know?”
The stupidity of her answer crashed in on her, and she chewed her lip, perplexed.
Patiently the figure asked, “If I took what you do and who you know away from you, who would you be?”
“A believer in peace. I wouldn’t torment you like this!”
“So you define yourself as different from others by what you believe about right and wrong.”
Way out on the plain, Jindigar turned his back and began to walk away, shoulders slumped, head bowed, failure and dejection in his ev
ery move. In a sudden fit of urgency she threw a fistful of water at the figure, though the drops fell short even of* the fountain between them. “If you don’t let me pass, I’ll go around you!” She cupped her hands around her lips and whistled piercingly. “Jindigar! Wait!”
“You’ll have to travel the other ways eventually, but those roads are much harder.” Gently the figure asked, “What is it about your identity that you fear so much?”
At wits’ end, she snarled, “Losing it, you fool!”
Reasonably the figure replied, “But if you don’t know what it is, how do you know you have it?”
“What is this, the riddle of the Sphinx? I’ve got to catch up to Jindigar!” She waded into the water, determined to swim across and force her way by the figure onto his path. But she sank like a stone. Mentally she cried out in frustration, So I don’t have an identity! I’m nobody!
She began to float to the surface where light beckoned, and a suspicion seeped into her consciousness. She surfaced on the other side of the fountain, close to the figure. Furious at being tricked but triumphant at having seen through it, she declared, “There’s no such thing as identity! That’s the answer to your riddle!”
Something solid hit her feet, and she stood, waist-deep.
“Your attitude is not optimal, but you may essay the journey—at your own personal risk.”
Crazy Dushau! If there’s no such thing as identity, how can anyone take a personal risk! But she kept her thought to herself and trudged up out of the water, right through the figure, as if it were a projection, and out onto the trail that snaked away toward the distant mountains. She hurried to catch up to the indigo form that scuffed along the path far ahead of her, shoulders bent in defeat.
Almost as she willed her feet to move, she was beside him. He looked around startled. //Ontarrah!//
Ill wish you’d stop calling me strange names. I know your silly Sphinx doesn’t think identity exists, but I’m a bit attached to mine. I’m Takora—I mean, Krinata.//
//Yes, Ontarrah, anything you say. But walk a little! faster. We’ve got to get to the concert before it’s over.//
She was so disturbed to be mistaken for Ontarrah, she strode off ahead of him, trying to outrun the knotted tangle of emotions that mistake evoked. But Takora knew that that particular grieving scar stood at a crossroad of memory Jindigar had to travel in every farfetching. Familiarity didn’t dim its bright pain. She had only viewed Grisnilter’s recording of Ontarrah’s death. Jindigar had to relive it all, every time he wanted total recall of something that had happened before Ontarrah.
She slowed the pace of her irrational flight, waiting for him to catch up to her. She heard the music then; it was sweet, with a strong, triumphant beat, a thrill of gratitude, and a celebration of truth. As she got closer she could grab hold of it and shape it, guide it, infuse it with the energies gathering within her that had no other outlet. Her heart was made of music, and music filled reality. It became the substance of identity, pulsing back and forth within her body, leaving reawakened senses in its wake, defining the meaning of life.
“Krinata!”
Icy Dushau hands grabbed at her slick fingers, trapping them. Her vision spun, her heart thundered in shock. Dushau voices gabbled incomprehensibly over the final crashing chords of atonal Dushau music. A whisper somewhere beside her: “I lost Frey. I lost your son. It was my fault, Threntisn.”
“I couldn’t keep him from going to you. He said he’d search for you a thousand years and follow you the rest of his life. In the end he didn’t feel you’d failed him.”
A heavy sigh was the only answer.
Krinata felt pulverized, aching in every muscle and joint as she hadn’t since they’d first left Truth. She pried her eyes open, discovering she was sitting cross-legged, leaning on the whule in her lap. She raised a hand, twisting it free of a Dushau grip. It was wet. Sticky. “What happened?” The fire had burned low, chill darkness engulfing the unfinished hall. People were moving around.
“Here,” said someone, and a wet cloth was pressed into Krinata’s hand, reeking of antiseptic, stinging her flesh.
She felt ice-cold, stiff. But she forced her eyes to focus on her hands. Blood. They were covered with dark red blood. The finger board of the whule in her lap was also smeared with it. “Where—how did we—” She vaguely remembered setting out to grieve for Frey, to lure Jindigar out of himself—but nothing after that.
Seeing her eyeing the instrument, Darllanyu said, “You played Lelwatha’s whule as well as Takora ever did—though how you could with only five fingers, I don’t know.”
The whule had been left to Jindigar by Lelwatha, the eldest member of Kamminth’s—Jindigar’s last Oliat. She’d met Lelwatha only minutes before he died protecting his zunre. He’d been dark, emaciated, elderly, with deep, wise eyes. But some other part of her remembered him as lighter-colored, jolly, wickedly humorous, intense at composing for whule and durichord. He had taught her to play on this very whule, painting her fantasies of how she’d take Dushaun society by storm at her next Renewal if she could learn a few chords to accompany her splendid singing voice.
Dizzy with the doubled vision, Krinata fought clear of fantasy as her eyes came to Jindigar.
He was lying beside her, the blanket pulled up to his chin, Zannesu holding his head up so he could drink from a steaming cup. His eyes were open. “Jindigar!”
He blinked at her, then smiled languidly, whispered, “It’s all right now, Ontarrah.” He pushed the cup aside and struggled to sit up, barely able to move without Zannesu’s help. “I mean Krinata,” he corrected himself, and seemed almost normal. “Where are we?”
Everyone began to talk at once. Finally Darllanyu summarized recent events, and he focused on her, enchantment suffusing his features as he croaked, “Don’t I know—Dar? Is it really—I thought I contacted—but—” Enchantment faded to puzzlement. “Avelor?”
They all told him of the deaths, Darllanyu ending with, “We’re only a triad now, and since Sarvesun won’t balance you, I don’t know how we can constitute any sort of Oliat.”
“This community needs an Oliat,” declared Threntisn, eyes narrowed as he surveyed them all. “I will modify my position. If you’ll accept Jindigar as your Center, and he survives it, I’ll take the Archive from him—and take my chances with it.”
That was met with an uproar, Darllanyu’s voice cutting through it all. “You don’t know what you’re asking. It’s much too late for him to Center. He’s a priest—”
“I know what a priest is. It’s no more than you’re asking of me. And we all have the whole community to consider. I leave it to your professional judgment.”
He dusted the knees of his trousers and pushed through the group to the door. Someone started to go after him, but Jindigar raised a hand, panting with the effort but seeming to have sorted out the realities of the situation very quickly. “Let him go! His suggestion won’t help, anyway. Is there anyone here who’d work with me?”
Eyes suddenly inspected the fire, faces going stony. Finally Zannesu said, “Most of us would prefer not to.”
“Then, while someone goes for your Active Priest, we will leave—though I think I’ll have to be carried.”
Krinata began the slow, painful business of getting her stiff, numb legs under her. When she was sitting on her heels, Darllanyu said into a breathless silence, “Jindigar, we have no Active. You will have that office in Renewal.”
Jindigar stared. “No Active? What happened to—” He rapidly named off a list of Dushau.
Answers came from different people around the circle, until in the end Darllanyu said, “None of them are here, though some may still be on their way. We have so little talent left, we dare not attempt another Oliat without guidance.” She told him of the way Avelor’s bad judgment had led them into ambush. “Avelor’s wasn’t adequately balanced. But if you would take Active, I will work with what we have.”
An Aliom priest was “active” only
during Renewal. Knowing Darllanyu wanted to spend Renewal with Jindigar, Krinata appreciated the woman’s sacrifice. But Jindigar said, “No, I can’t do that while Threntisn’s offer stands and while the community is threatened.” He sounded weaker as he added, “You haven’t mentioned the Squadron.” When they’d filled him in on what they knew, he mused, “Tornadoes? Well, even so, it can’t be much longer until they find us. Tomorrow—tomorrow we’ll see if I can constitute an Oliat. Tomorrow….” He fell asleep in mid-word.
But it was three days until Jindigar was strong enough to sit in a chair for more than an hour, and two more before he was walking. Darllanyu kept Krinata informed, often by sending Cyrus with a daily bulletin. She hardly needed the news, though. There was an awareness in the back of her mind, a growing strength that kept a smile on her face. She accepted the residual link, far short of a duad, and never thought she was responding to it when it suddenly occurred to her that Jindigar would love to see Imp.
She had been lying on her back in bed, drowsily realizing it was getting light, when Imp leapt in through an open window and deposited a still flopping fish on her chest. Stifling an outcry, she dried the piol off and took him and his fish to the Dushau* compound, trying to convince him to gift Jindigar with the fish. The Dushau who met her looked dubious, but Imp took his fish and scampered past the gate as if homing on a scent. Much later Krinata learned that Imp had found Jindigar’s bed and had deposited the cold, wet fish under his nose, making him laugh for the first time.
Later she sent Jindigar word of how their Cassrian orphans had been adopted by a childless Cassrian couple who were giving them the kind of love they needed, while Terab and Irnils were accepted by the Holot community.
She hardly saw any of the other refugees. After being cooped up with each other for nearly a year, it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t seek each other’s company.
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