″Partly as a reward. I flatter myself that I was a good judge of men, and choosing you for the mission to the east was perhaps the best decision I ever made. And you met one who is a far, far better judge; one who laid a charge upon you. Both of us are very pleased with you.″
Outside they walked on a country lane. Land rolled around them, green field and wood and orchard. It was like and unlike the land of little farms around his birthplace, like the summers of his remembered boyhood when the chores were done and he lay watching the clouds and dreaming vast formless dreams until his mother called him in for dinner. Far distant mountains climbed steep and blue, their peaks floating like ghosts of white. He thought the silver towers of a city rose in their foothills, tall and slender and crowned with banners.
″And partly you are here to give you heart for what is to come. Much depends on you.″
″Then . . .″ He looked around. ″Victory is not assured? Even though we have reached our goal?″
Dmwoski shook an admonishing finger. ″This is our common goal, my son. And no victory is ever assured until the very last. We are made in His image; and so we have freedom, which must necessarily include the freedom to fail. Adam and Eve walked with Him in unimaginable closeness when time itself was young, and they failed their test. Yet even their failure was redeemed, for mercy is infinite and grace fills all creation.″
″But . . . forgive me, Father, but if you are here, don′t you know whether we succeeded or failed?″
″No. That I am here is . . . sealed in Eternity, as it were. But how I arrived at this is still—from your point of view—contingent, because it is in Time, not in the eternal Now. Did I die defending the altar at the last, against a tide of triumphant darkness? Did I die of old age, in bed, with you among the watchers, contented and tired and longing for this with hope and confidence? That, my son, is up to you.″
″And where are my companions?″
″They also are being told as much Truth as they can bear, in the words that will mean most to them.″
″As am I?″ Ignatius ventured.
Dmwoski laughed again. ″There is one God, maker of Heaven and Earth,″ he said. ″Start with that, my son, for it is absolutely true. But you must build your own faith. That is something only you and God can do together.″
A bird flew from the hedgerow by them, caroling and trailing colorful feathers. Their sandaled feet scuffed through the thick white dust of the road; insects chirped. Beyond the hawthorn barrier apricots glowed like little golden suns in their world of green leaves.
Ignatius shook his head in rueful acknowledgment. ″You still reward work accomplished with yet more work, Father!″
They laughed together. He stooped and picked up an acorn:
″I remember, Father, how once you lectured my class of novices and used a seed like this as a simile for the soul. How every stage of the tree′s long life was implicit in it, yet never guaranteed before it came to pass?″
″I′m glad you remember. I taught you as best I could . . . and what I taught you is true. Very true, I find. But not . . . complete.″
″How could it be?″ Ignatius said. ″Didn′t you tell me also that Truth is a ladder of many rungs, and that from each we gain a new perspective?″
The abbot rested a hand on his shoulder; it was a light touch, but the younger monk felt a sudden shock at the depth of the contact. As if he was a ghost, a figment, and the contact had revealed him as unreal, a dream within a dream that strove to wake itself from illusion.
″I tried my best,″ Dmwoski said. ″I sinned as all men do, and sought forgiveness, and sinned again despite my wishes. Yet perhaps the most important thing I accomplished in my life was my part in forming you, my son.″
″That . . . is a humbling thought.″
Dmwoski snorted. ″It should be! I merely had to be the best possible version of myself. For every day of your life, you must strive to be the chosen Knight of the Immaculata!″
″Yes,″ Ignatius said, and was elsewhere.
Rudi Mackenzie made another step, and another. Arrows drifted past him, and he could see them turn as the fletching caught the air. He cast away the world-huge weight of his shield and knocked the sallet helm off his head. Their clatter on the cobbles was distant, like the beating of surf on beaches a world away. Mathilda staggered beside him, then slid to the ground and crawled, dogged and brave, and her love like a force behind him, pushing him forward into a world of resistant amber. A building loomed, handsome and simple, three stories of red brick with white pillars beside the door.
The door swung open, and light blazed from it. His hand went up before his eyes, but the light shone through it, through him, as if it were real and he a shadow. Within it was a shape, straight sweep of tapering blade, crescent guard, long double-lobed hilt, pommel of moon opal grasped in antlers. Pain keened into his ears, his eyes, his mind. A lifetime of it passed in each step. His foot touched the first step, the second, the threshold—
″Mother?″ Rudi Mackenzie said, walking forward.
The three figures around the campfire looked up at him. His eyes flicked back and forth. The fire killed some of his night vision; he could sense huge trees rearing skyward, like the Douglas fir in the Cascades above Dun Juniper but grander still and with more deeply furrowed reddish bark. Scents like spice and thyme and flowers drifted on air just cool enough to make him glad of his plaid.
He glanced down for an instant. He was in shirt and kilt and plaid. The short slight redheaded figure in the middle wore a shift and arsaid, and leaned on a rowan staff topped by a silver raven′s head. On her left was a tall thin woman with black skin and broad features scored by age, her cropped cap of white hair tight-kinked, wearing unfamiliar clothes that had the look of a uniform. On her right was a not-quite-girl of a little less than his own age, long-limbed and blond and comely, in a strange outfit of string skirt, knit tunic, feathers and a necklace of amber-centered gold disks.
″Mother?″ he asked again.
Then the wholeness of what he was seeing caught him. Three women, youthful and matronly and aged . . .
″Yes,″ the one who bore the countenance of Juniper Mackenzie said. ″I am.″
″Are you—″ He hesitated. ″Are you my mother? Or . . . Her?″
His hand moved in a sign. She answered it. ″And the answer to that, my lad, is . . . yes!″
Impish amusement glinted in her green eyes for a second. The black woman snorted; there was something about her that reminded him of Sam Aylward, though there was no physical resemblance at all. When she spoke there was a soft drawl to her words:
″Call me a Crone, and you′re toast, bukra boy.″
Rudi didn′t know what a bukra was, but he suspected the word—she prounced it as bookra—wasn′t a compliment.
He brought the back of his right hand to his brows.
″As you wish, Wise One,″ he said—which was just another name for the eldest of the Three.
″Damn, but it′s annoying to be just a person again when you′re used to being an archetype. Or vice versa. I suppose we had to. I feel like someone has squeezed me down into a can of Coke.″
She looked at her own hands, flexing the fingers as if the sensation were unfamiliar.
″Marian, how long have we known each other?″ the blond girl said, a soft purling lilt in her tones.
″Forty-seven years, or untold billions, depending on how you define we and know.″
″And either way you′re still a grouch.″
She smiled at Rudi. ″And they called me Deer Dancer, in my day. I died three thousand years before your birth, on another turn of the Wheel. I was the Maiden sacrifice, and I was the Mother who loves, and in my age I tossed silver hair to dance down the Moon. Now I wear this face of Her once more, for a little while.″
Two ravens soared down from the branches and landed on one of the logs that flanked the fire, preening and grooming themselves. Somewhere a wolf howled. Sparks drifted upward, into
boughs underlit by the flames, towards stars larger and brighter-colored than any he′d seen before; yet that paled beside the shining glory of a full moon. Despite the darkness, what he could see was hard-edged, somehow more definite than any vision by the light of common day.
If the trees had spoken, he would not have been surprised. He did not feel as if he dreamed; rather that he had woken, as if he had been drifting beneath the sea all his life and now had plunged upward like a leaping dolphin into the shock of air and light.
Rudi made reverence; then he stood erect, his arms crossed on his chest.
″Why am I here, Ladies?″ he asked bluntly. ″When last I remember I was on a task of some urgency.″
″You are here to understand, a little,″ the Mother said. ″We have to come towards you in forms you can grasp so that we can talk at all; but that limits Us.″
″Of course,″ he said. ″How can a man tell all his mind to a child, or a God to a man? What can you tell me?″
″What did I tell you about magic, child of my heart?″
Many things, he thought. But . . .
″That it doesn′t stop being magic when you understand it?″
She nodded. ″Then see.″
Darkness; a nothingness in which he floated, nothingness so complete that even emptiness was absent and duration itself had not yet begun. A point of light, and existence twisting as it expanded and the arrow of time sprang from the string, soaring upward. Darkness that swelled, dense and hot and pregnant with Being, and then a flash of light as suns fell in upon themselves and lit. They burned with a glow that illuminated curtains of red and yellow fire, structures so vast that worlds would be less than grains of sand amongst them. Stars and galaxies flying apart from each other. Darkness again, as they dwindled into distance. Suns turned swollen and red and guttered out, or exploded in cataclysmic violence that faded into cankered knots of twisted space. Those boiled away in turn. Darkness more absolute than imagination could encompass, as the stuff of matter itself decayed into absence. Darkness without end, for nothing was different from nothing and nowhere was anyplace and everywhere.
″What does that remind you of?″ his mother′s voice asked.
He blinked back to something like the waking world, where light flickered ruddy on tree bark.
″It′s . . . it′s like the way Sandra Arminger sees the world. From what I picked up over the years in what you might be callin′ her unguarded moments. Dead, in a way. Everything moving on its own, without spirit. Grand and glorious and wonderful, but . . . empty. And we gone like a candle flame when we die.″
He blinked alarm. ″You′re not saying that′s true, are you now?″
She smiled gently at him, and indicated their surroundings. He nodded, taking the point, and she spoke:
″No. But once it was, until it was made to be different. What did″—she looked up at the ravens—″a certain old gentleman tell you once about history and time?″
He blinked again; that night on the mountainside was far distant in miles and months, but it wasn′t the sort of thing you forgot. Even if you′d been dreaming a vision while your wasted body lay on the edge of death. He repeated what those deep tones had so cryptically revealed:
″Fact becomes history; history becomes legend; legend becomes myth. Myth turns again to the beginning and creates itself. The figure for time isn′t an arrow; that is illusion, just as the straight line is. Time is a serpent.″
After a moment he went on: ″Was that truth? The whole truth?″
″Yes. No.″
The figure who bore his mother′s semblance smiled sympathetically as she denied him certainty. The blond maiden spoke: ″It′s so hard to say this in words—″
″But hey, you′ll give it a try, ′dapa,″ the black woman said sardonically.
The Maiden tossed her fair head and said: ″Then see again.″
His body dropped away, and once again he floated in nothingness. The point of light, and the same eon-upon-eon passage from light to dark. But this time a light was born in the last darkness, and it looked at him.
″That is Mind,″ the Mother whispered. ″Wisdom. Wisdom itself, that brought together all knowledge of all that ever was.″
″Hope,″ the blond Maiden added. ″Love.″
″That′s us,″ the black figure of the Wise One said. ″Including you. Many times removed. Mo′ removed than you can imagine. More than we can say in words—″
″You keep saying that, but you speak in words nonetheless!″ Rudi said, exasperated. ″And it′s more ignorant I am afterwards than ever I was before!″
″Then see,″ the Three said together.
This time the perspective was different. More abstract; he strained to see pattern, and meaning, but for a long moment all was chaos. Then order appeared. Instead of the point of light, there were two great sheets of . . . Being. Rippling through spaces in which whole universes of stars would be less than one kernel of barley in an ocean, like the banners of divinity flying on the ramparts of the Western Gate. The sheets drifted towards each other, and in that contact was born the light he had seen at the Beginning of his twin visions.
But there was a difference. Something passed from one cycle to the next. Something tiny, yet containing everything, and from that all changed as existence spread out again.
″Mind,″ his mother, all Mothers, said. ″The universe births life. Life creates Mind. Mind encompasses that which bore it blindly, spreads through all the stuff of matter and makes a new Heaven and a new Earth. One in which from its beginnings through all time life is no accident, and is not doomed to death forever, but instead is transformed. To return upon itself once more and give Itself birth.″
″And now there is a God,″ the Wise One said.
He fell through singing veils of light, struggling with awe and anger at himself, that he could not grasp the concepts roaring by him like dragons. Then he stood before the fire again.
″Is Godhood many, or one?″ the Mother said.
″Both,″ Rudi replied. ″Both at once.″
″She is all things.″ The Maiden nodded. A sigh. ″And so, He is divided.″
″Your friend the padre would say there was war in Heaven,″ the Wise One added. ″He′s not wrong, either. Don′t mistake this you′re seeing for the only truth.″
″The Cutters!″ he said suddenly. ″As above, so below. Sure, and if there′s war here, there must be so above.″
The three nodded. The Mother spoke:
″Not exactly. In the stuff of Mind, there is . . . it′s more like arguing with yourself than a fight between Good and Evil. Would you say a tilled tamed field is best, or a wilderness unbound and unguarded, living only by its own law?″
Rudi blinked. ″Why . . . both, of course. How could either be best? Both are needed for the wholeness of things. Humankind is there to be the guardians of it; to tend, to take what they need, but not to take all.″
″Yet some long for order; for the hedged garth, for the tame-bred kine, for the richness of the grafted fruit. Some long for the wolf′s howl. Some would have the universe unfold as it will, and run to its ending as matter itself decrees; others would take matter up into the stuff of Mind.″
″Submission against structure,″ the Maiden said.
″Not a fight for us, unless you mean inner conflict and that happy therapeutic horseshit,″ the Wise One snorted. ″But it′s sure enough a fight at your level, boy! One between Good and Evil, or Us and Them, which is close enough for government work.″
″You need have no doubt I′ll fight,″ Rudi said grimly. ″Whether I may win or no. The Cutters . . . the Cutters and the Power behind them claim all humankind and the world as well, and say none of us may breathe or believe save as they permit. If a God said that to me, a God with the sun in His left hand and the moon in His right, I would dispute it by the sword. Or my fingernails, if they were all I had.″
″Good man! And it′s a fight you′d better win, ′cause we can′t
do it for you. Not without undoing ourselves and more worlds than this.″
Rudi nodded his head, a single brief jerk. He wasn′t sure of much, but he was suddenly certain that the person whose appearance that Power bore had also been a warrior once.
″You′ve shown me matters great and terrible, Ladies,″ he said. ″But . . . one thing I do know, and always did. This Earth of ours, however bright and dear and grand to us, is but the smallest fleck in all that is; and you′ve shown me that that All is vaster by far than I knew. Yet here the Powers are contending for our allegiance as if we were the sum of things. Why us?″
The Three looked at him. The Maiden spoke gently:
″Because here is where Mind begins. There has to be a one first place . . . and this is that one. From it, all else springs.″
″Fermi,″ the Wise One added. ″Not to be too paradoxical.″
The Mother cast an exasperated sidelong glance. ″Don′t stray from the issue just because you′re limited enough again that you can be distracted, Marian.″
To Rudi: ″It nearly didn′t happen here either. Mind is a weapon as well as a blessing, and its power is terrible even when newborn.″
″The Wanderer spoke of a child with a knife, or with fire.″
She nodded. ″Terrible especially when newborn.″
They faded before his eyes. For a moment he saw the island, but with no cover save a few crumbled ruins of brick and stone, a bank of sand that glowed with heat. Hills of salt lay where the ocean should have been, save for pools in the distance that seethed in a bubbling roil that would end only when they were gone forever. The air lay thick, hazy, hot, and motionless.
″A thousand times ten thousand times that was the end,″ the Maiden said. ″Or others that were worse.″
″What could be worse than that?″
The same landscape, but the very air was gone somehow; the sea had turned to ice, that sublimed outward into the outer dark beneath a sky that crawled with steely energies and strange, powerful engines. Then another vision, where water still curled on the sandy beach beneath a clear blue sky where birds flew, but their patterns were mathematics precise beyond his comprehension. A man walked between buildings that were perfect, and empty. He turned to look at Rudi for an instant, and where his eyes should have been were silvery tendrils that waved and sought.
The Sword of the Lady Page 58