Anyone who suddenly attacked an Imperial citizen without apparent provocation was considered unstable, Jarel realized, and modern medicine did not allow such instability to remain untreated for very long. As a doctor, he had a fair idea of what he was in for. It wasn’t going to be fun.
They would be able to uncover his motives from his subconscious mind, naturally. (The methods that the marvels of Imperial science had made available for that purpose were not confined to use in research on primitive species.) But the secret would not be endangered by this, for in his case they would not believe what they found. At least they wouldn’t believe that it had any substance in reality. Not so long as he steadfastly denied any conscious knowledge of it, they wouldn’t, which, of course, was what he must do. They would not want to believe. And on the face of it, any man who had subconscious delusions of having communicated by mental telepathy with a young girl claiming to represent a superior civilization was a prime candidate for therapy. Resisting that therapy might prove to be quite a challenge. Jarel hoped that he would be equal to it.
The whole business was pretty ironic. Here he had been ready to resign from the Corps, and now that she had given him back the dream, now that he wanted desperately to stay in, he was facing discharge. Whether or not he managed to avert that, an episode of mental imbalance on his record wasn’t going to help his career. And with his sentiments about certain aspects of Imperial policy being what they were, his loyalty might be questioned. That too was ironic, because he had never been more sincerely loyal to the Empire than at this moment.
And he couldn’t tell anyone the reason for this sudden loyalty, this new faith in the Empire’s future! He couldn’t ever reveal why he believed that Imperial civilization was less corrupt than it seemed. There’s nothing wrong with us as a people, he thought. We are not decadent, not wicked, not on the wrong road! We are going somewhere after all. We are as far below her people as the natives are below us … but someday! Is there a federation of human species, perhaps? Is Elana’s civilization the outgrowth not of one people’s maturity, but of many? Is it true that there’s good in reaching for the stars?
If it is true, Jarel reflected, then we must work for it. A hard job? Of course, because there were evils to be avoided in the process, evils like the one almost committed on this planet; and if you were involved, you had to accept personal responsibility, not some vague share of a collective guilt that didn’t really exist. Yet you had to be involved. Where would anything ever get if everybody who had any moral scruples dropped out?
Suppose he’d never joined the Corps. Or suppose, two days ago, he had been able to resign on the spot. Neither Elana nor the man she had trained would have been saved; there would have been no miraculous demonstration of the natives’ potential, and the takeover of this world would be proceeding according to plan.
He would never resign now. He would stick it out and fight—and somehow, someday he would win back the Corps’s respect. There would be some rough going. The secret would be difficult not only to keep, but to live with, for there was a frustrating side to being shown only a glimpse. In spite of that, he wasn’t sorry for anything. He would hang onto the memory of what had happened on this planet for the rest of his life; of that, Jarel was very sure.
We stayed on Andrecia one more night. I was near collapse by the time we had set up our temporary camp; the reaction was setting in. So, although it was still early in the day, Father made me lie down and, through deep telepathy, helped me fall asleep. The next thing I knew it was morning, and Evrek had already started back to the hut by the river. Before following him, we checked up on the Imperials to be sure that they had pulled out all their equipment.
I sat on the scorched ground at the edge of the now-deserted clearing and looked around at the grim skeletons of the trees. It was a forlorn, gray morning; the rents in the cloud cover had closed in, hiding the sun. From somewhere deep in the forest came the piercing cry of that elusive Andrecian bird I’d never managed to catch a glimpse of.
Father and I had not talked the day before; he had sensed what I was going through and had left me alone to do it, for which in some respects I was thankful. He’d passed no comment on my confession beyond requiring a detailed report of what Jarel and I had said to each other. Evrek had not commented, either; in fact he’d made a point of avoiding me, on Father’s orders, I was sure. Evrek had taken a terrible risk for my sake, though I didn’t know it at first, and my coolness to him must have been hard to accept.
He had tried a rescue. To my astonishment—for I would have thought the danger too great to be justifiable—I learned that he had actually been in the Imperials’ camp, under my window even, sometime during the night. He and Father, I gathered, had been communicating, though they hadn’t wanted to raise my hopes, or to further arouse my fears. For Evrek had been fully prepared to die with me if he was caught; we would not have had to rely on makeshift measures. Miraculously, he was not caught. But he found, of course, that to free me was just plain impossible. He could not even toss anything to me through the window, for Jarel was with me. As he told me this part, Evrek seemed about to say something more; but Father broke in quickly. “Later, Evrek,” he commanded. “This isn’t the time.”
Now, Father came over and sat down on the low outcropping of rock behind me. For a while neither of us said anything. Finally, following my gaze to the charred undergrowth, Father began, “It’ll grow again, you know. The forest will push its way back. To erase the clearing will take longer, for they sterilized the ground. But in time, time as we reckon it, no one will be able to tell that they ever came.”
I looked at him; then, silently, I began to cry. He put his hand on my shoulder, and I burst out, “Oh, Father, I broke the Oath! I broke it, and if Jarel ever tells what he knows all kinds of damage may be done! They may grab a dozen more worlds, and we won’t be able to stop them! I’m not any good at this; I couldn’t ever become an agent now, even if the Service would have me.”
“You will not be released that easily, I’m afraid. You made an irrevocable commitment, to which you’re still bound.”
I dropped my head to my knees and sobbed. For a time Father let me cry. Then, gently, he drew me around to face him. “Look at me, Elana. Be very honest: are you sorry you chose as you did?”
There was only one thing I could say; I met his eyes and said it. “No. I would do the same thing again. And the mission did succeed on account of it. Yet I betrayed the Service.”
Astonishingly, he smiled. “No, as a matter of fact you didn’t. There’ll be a formal inquiry, but you’ve no need to worry about the outcome.”
“But I failed to stick by what I was sworn to!”
“Elana,” Father said seriously, “the Oath demands more of us than blind obedience. Its literal words are a mere reflection, a poor attempt at expressing something that can’t be fully expressed. They are anchors, not shackles. You didn’t fail by violating them any more than Georyn succeeded by repeating the magic spell you gave him; the Emblem is no less an artificial device than the Stone.”
“Do you mean to tell me that breaking my sworn word is all right?”
“No, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is a much harder thing to grasp: sometimes, when in our best judgment it is justified, we must be willing to do what’s wrong and take the consequences. We wouldn’t be fit for this work if we didn’t have human feelings! And in this case none of the consequences were bad. You needn’t worry about the disclosure spreading. If Jarel tells later, without proof, he will not be believed.”
I stared down at the ground. There was a strange-looking beetle that had somehow escaped the invaders’ destruction of native life forms; I watched it try to climb the rough surface of the rock beside me. All of a sudden I caught a hint of Father’s thought, something that he wanted to tell me, yet did not know quite how to bring up.
“You knew!” I exclaimed. “Somehow you knew in advance what I was about to do and how it might turn out!”<
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“Yes,” he said quietly. “During that rescue attempt, Evrek overheard your opening words to Jarel and realized that you were going to reveal the plan. I guessed enough of what could come of that to gamble on it; otherwise I wouldn’t have let it happen. You know, don’t you, what a strict interpretation of the Oath demanded of me?”
I nodded, not daring to speak.
“So you see,” Father went on, “that I’m in much the same position as you are, and Evrek is, too. He did not stop you by force, which he was equipped to do; nor did I order it. For that matter, for him to try the rescue in the first place involved a risk of disclosure that strictly speaking ought not to have been taken. All three of us are technically forsworn, and not one of us has any regrets.”
Awed, I asked, “How could you possibly have known enough about Jarel to trust him?”
“I didn’t. I trusted you.”
I’d judged Jarel accurately, of course. And yet— “They arrested him,” I said. “He was the only Imperial who disapproved of what was being done to the natives. Why should he be the one to pay for it?”
“Because he was the only one willing to,” Father answered.
“Everyone we contact is hurt by it!” I said unhappily.
“Yes. But from what you’ve told me about him, I think Jarel’s as likely as the rest of us to find the game worth the candle.”
Slowly I said, “Evrek’s been hurt, too. And yet he took that awful chance! I didn’t deserve it. Oh, Father, the whole mess was my fault. I got caught because of a feeling for Georyn that I never meant to have, that I knew was foolish and wrong—”
“That’s not the way to look at it, Elana.”
“What other way is there?”
He hesitated. “Why do you think I failed to do anything when I first saw how it was with you and Georyn, if not because I believed that the love between you, hopeless though it was, might lead to good?”
“But then you—you used me, in just the same way as you used Georyn! I was only another pawn.”
“In that sense, Elana, so are we all. We act in the light of the knowledge we have. Do you suppose I see the whole picture? Do you suppose anyone does?”
He stood up and held out his hand to me; I scrambled to my feet. As we walked back across the clearing, Father said softly, “A very wonderful thing happened here yesterday, a thing that in some societies would be counted as a miracle. Don’t let your joy in it be spoiled by the circumstances; for neither you nor I can be sure that it would have happened as it did if they had been any different.”
“A miracle,” I said bitterly. “Yet it was all a sham, a fake, right from the beginning.”
“No! It was real, Elana! As real as anything ever can be. The Youngling interpretations of it may be superficial and naive; but so is ours. Our presumption in thinking that we saved this world by our intervention is, underneath, as ridiculous as Georyn’s in thinking that he did it by slaying a dragon. Or Jarel’s in crediting it to his personal humanitarianism. Yet the fact is that the invaders are gone, and they would not be gone if any of us had been less faithful to our own beliefs.”
“That’s almost like saying that Youngling beliefs are true.”
“Of course they’re true. How else could they be worth living for or dying for? But there are different kinds of truth. And if our kind is more mature than theirs, it’s so only because we know that.”
In the pocket of the cloak I was wearing was the Stone that Georyn had returned to me. Slowly I drew it out and stared at it, weighing it from hand to hand. Father watched; his face had a faraway look. Then suddenly he turned to me. “Let me have that,” he said gently.
I hesitated, not wanting to part with the thing; it had come to mean something. Wasn’t I to be allowed even this much of Georyn? “I—I was planning to keep it,” I wavered. “As a sort of souvenir.”
He reached for it and, reluctantly, I opened my fingers. “Souvenir? The word’s cheap,” he said. He began to reknot the leather thong with which Georyn had bound the Stone to his belt. Passing it through the Stone’s hole as a single strand, Father fashioned it into a pendant.
Smiling, he held it out. “Wear it, Elana. You returned Evrek’s Emblem; wear this in its place until you get one of your own.”
I bent my head, overcome by an inexplicable surge of happiness. Father raised the Stone, free-swinging, just as he had held the Emblem before the campfire on that first night. I sensed what he was waiting for: Not casually! With ritual, Elana! And so very softly I whispered the now-familiar phrases, as I had at my investiture, and then with the formal words, the words of the Presentation, Father placed the thong around my neck.
It is still there. And though when the trip’s over and we are home again I will receive a proper pendant to replace it, I do not think that that will have any more significance.
Father took my arm. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to the hut. Evrek’s waiting for us, and I’ve recalled the ship.”
I didn’t move. Georyn! I couldn’t just go without telling him that I had the Emblem back again! He was undoubtedly still somewhere close by. “Do we have to sneak away like this?” I said desperately. “Couldn’t you bring the ship—”
“Here? So that Georyn could watch you fly away in your enchanted chariot?” He shook his head, and then with forced lightness he went on, “No, I should say not! They will have legends enough without that.”
Now in the days following the slaying of the Dragon, Georyn went in triumph to the King and received of him gold, fine raiment and armor, and a spirited mount. But of this wealth he gave much to his father and elder brothers, who had been among the freed captives, and much also to the poor folk of the village; and for himself he kept only such as he could carry on a long journey. For he no longer wished to live as a woodcutter nor yet at the court of the King; and since the world beyond the Enchanted Forest seemed not so perilous as it once had, he intended to see it, for perhaps in the seeing he might find another sort of wisdom.
But ere Georyn set forth, he went again to the abode of the Dragon; and the monster had disappeared, and so too had all its fearsome servants, who had no doubt by now regained their natural form. It was a dismal place, upon which the destruction that the Dragon had wrought lay heavy, and he was not sorry to ride away. Upon leaving, he avoided the glade where he and the Enchantress had parted. Rather, he rode back to the deserted hut by the river; and he searched for some token that had been the Lady’s, but everything that had been made by magic was gone. By his own pallet, however, he found the carven cup she had given him on that sunlit day when she had taught him the charm: the cup from which they had drunk the magical draught, seeing for the first time into each other’s hearts. And this he put carefully away in his saddlebag, knowing it for a greater treasure than any the King had placed there.
He knew that he would not see the Enchantress again. She had passed out of his world—where, and by what means, he could not ever hope to understand, but he knew that it was not like dying; somewhere, in that strange enchanted realm beyond the stars, she lived as she had lived here, and experienced all the joys and sorrows to which her human heart was heir. And no longer did he fear for her; for once, at the moment of her going, she had spoken to him. She had been nowhere nearby, yet suddenly he had heard her voice as clearly as if she stood beside him, and he had answered.
Georyn!
Lady! Can you then speak from the enchanted world?
No, I am still in yours. I speak in the way of my people; I did not know you could hear!
Your voice is clear to me. Could we have spoken so all along?
We did, in a sense. But from this distance it is a rarer thing. It requires a feeling, an urgency—of fear, perhaps …
Or of love?
Or of love, Georyn.
Will we be able to do this again?
Never again, for I am leaving. In only a few moments, I am leaving! But I could not have gone without telling you that I again wield
the forces of good magic!
Your full power, Lady?
My full power. I wear the Stone, and it has, for me, the might of the Emblem; and someday soon I shall regain the Emblem itself.
Was there then no evil after all?
There was evil, but it is overridden. I am safe from it, for a time, at least. I thought you would want to know.
It is the only happiness now possible to me, to know that all is well with you!
Do not say that, Georyn! I cannot bear that it should be so for you! What will you do now?
I shall travel to the ends of the earth, Lady, for have you not told me that the world holds wonders past my knowing?
You are wise, as usual; it is the best way, for you will indeed see wonders. I too shall visit lands beyond my present imagining; and in time this grief will lessen, for both of us. Let us remember only the joyous part.
I shall remember it as the core of my life.
Then, as the Lady’s voice faded, he glimpsed the world as she saw it, from above. Oh, Georyn, I wish you could see … our meadow is a circle of pale gold, and the river a shining thread, and the Enchanted Forest is not dark at all, but only a patch of greenness … and of the village road, I see both ends, though there is another road beyond it which is hidden. Georyn, we are rising above the clouds now …
And after that, she was lost to him. Yet he was sure, as he would be sure for ever after, that the powers that were hers to tap would endure beyond time and space, for as long as the worlds of men or of enchanted folk should abide.
EPILOGUE
Andrecia shines below us, blue-green but swathed in white. We have remained in the vicinity for some days, awaiting our new orders, for the ship’s original mission was canceled when we were diverted here. But we are breaking out of orbit now, and soon there will be only the emptiness of interstellar space. The next planet we see will be the world of a different people, and it may be thousands of years before a starship touches Andrecia again.
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