She led the way across the surface of the “pool,” strolling out as if onto a crystal floor. Nita and Kit followed her, pausing with Quelt at about the middle of the surface to look down into the depths. There they saw eight figures, male and female, plainly Alaalids by their coloration, hair, and dress. Seven stood more or less together; the eighth one stood apart.
Nita started to laugh, then. “They really are short compared to the rest of you, aren’t they?” she said. “No wonder we’re such celebrities!”
Quelt laughed, too. “I should have brought you here first to explain it,” she said.
They walked above the group standing there under some other sunlight, in another time, in a field full of flowers very like the ones all around them now. When she stood still, Nita found, she could see those figures down below moving, talking, consulting with one another—all but the one who stood apart, an Alaalid taller than the rest of them, dressed all in white, and coolly beautiful, with eyes of a gorgeous burning amber.
“Wow,” Kit said. “Who’s that?”
“Esemeli,” Quelt said.
“She’s hot,” Kit said, in considerable admiration.
Nita threw a glance at him. Next to Kit, Ponch, too, was gazing down into the depths… but he was starting to growl softly. Kit looked at Ponch in shock, and then at Quelt. “Oh no. You mean she’s—”
“The Lone Power,” Nita said. “The local version.”
“That’s her,” Quelt said. “But we came in in the middle of the story. If you come over here, you can see it from the start.”
They walked over to the far side of the Display, and looked deep down into it. The landscape that presented itself was like the one in which they stood, but less groomed-looking, rougher around the edges. There was a field full of the blue jijis flowers; it seemed to stretch to the horizon, which was unusual in that world where no landscape seemed to go very far before running into the sea. In the middle of the field stood the seven Alaalid men and women, and in the center, the extremely beautiful one.
“That’s her when she first arrives,” Quelt said. “And there are our first seven wizards, who’re making the Choice.”
Nita cocked her ear at something she was coming to recognize since she’d started to study the Speech more closely earlier in the year—the “Enactive mode,” one of the most powerful ways in which the Speech could be spoken. Quelt wasn’t using the mode itself, but a secondary form called the pre-Enactive voice: a form for talking about first-level enactments and other major change, without actually using the words that would bring the change to pass. Its tenses were very weird if translated into any human language, where present and past are usually separate; so Nita didn’t bother trying to translate it in her head, and just let it sound like one very large kind of present.
“Come on,” Quelt said. “They tell the story better than I can.” And she stepped right down into the crystalline surface as if it were water.
Nita and Kit both stared. Quelt looked over her shoulder at them. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s not an actual portal, just a replay. You can’t actually interact with it, but it’s as if you were there… ”
“How do we—” Kit said, and then looked around him in surprise as, very slowly, he started to sink into the crystal where he stood.
“You just let yourself,” Quelt said. “There’s no problem breathing or anything; the wizardry takes care of that for you.”
Do I have to go, too? Ponch said to Kit. I feel like running now.
“No, it’s fine,” Kit said, still sinking. “You go ahead.” Ponch bounded off the Display and out into the flowers.
“I think I’d rather do it your way,” Nita said, and followed Quelt’s lead, just taking a step down as if she were standing on a flight of stairs. The substrate behaved that way, too, letting her foot go down into the crystal.
Nita followed Quelt down into the substrate, while beside the two of them Kit just kept on sinking where he stood, as if he were on some kind of elevator. Within half a minute or so, they were standing in the same field of flowers as the seven figures and the eighth one, standing in the center of the circle. “Let me get this straight,” Kit said. “This isn’t actually the past, and that wasn’t some kind of timeslide—”
“No, not at all,” Quelt said. “I don’t think that’d be allowed. You wouldn’t want to get involved in time paradoxes where a Decision was involved.”
“I don’t know,” Nita said as they walked toward the circle of Alaalids. “There have been times when I’ve wished we could do something like that with ours.”
Quelt gave Nita a concerned look. “You’re going to have to tell me more about that later,” she said. “Anyway, this wizardry just makes it seem as if we were there. We can hear what they say, watch what they do.”
For the moment, though, none of the figures seemed to be doing much of anything. “The scenario repeats whenever anyone who sees it wants it to,” Quelt said. “Most people get taken here once or twice when we’re little. I got to see it more often than most people, because Vereich ran me through the Choice a lot while he was training me as his replacement.” She looked a little amused by this. “There’s not really a lot to it, but it is history, and something a wizard here would need to know about… ”
They walked around the circle. “So these were our wizards,” Quelt said. “That little one there: He’s the chief, Seseil. He wrote out the first part of the Telling.”
“He wrote it?” Kit said, looking at the lean figure, slight for an Alaalid, who stood there among the flowers, barefoot, in breeches and a loose shirt. “Elsewhere it usually just seems to arrive somehow. You hear it, or find it, or find that you know the beginnings of it… ”
“That’s sort of how it went for us,” Quelt said. “Seseil wrote the words that he heard the wind Telling the water. All the others did that, too, sooner or later, except they all heard different words. Seseil had to journey all over the settled lands, from island to island, to find other people who’d heard the words and could tell him the ones he didn’t know. It took a long time to find them all, but he wouldn’t give up.”
As they came around the side of the circle, Nita looked into that hard, wise face, frozen for the moment into immobility, and had no trouble believing what Quelt was telling them. “That’s the Imrar, isn’t it?” Nita said. “The poem about the Island Journey. It got mentioned in one of the orientation sources.”
“That’s right,” Quelt said. “It took him three hundred years, and he had all kinds of adventures. But he found all the words at last. And up above us, in physical reality, in that field—that’s where they started the argument that ended with Ictanikë arriving.”
“Wait a minute,” Kit said. “I thought you just said the Lone One’s name was Esemeli.”
“That’s her second name: it comes later. So here you see them with Ictanikë, when she turns up for the first time. They were confused about her, because she plainly knew about wizardry, though she wasn’t a wizard.”
“I’ve heard many a strange tale on my travels,” Seseil said. The sound of his voice was fading in slowly, as if somebody was turning it up, and Nita wandered a little closer to hear. “But this is one of the stranger ones. What exactly is it that you’re offering us?”
“It doesn’t sound like anything new,” said another of the wizards. “This is the world, and entropy is running. We have time, and life to live in it.”
“But not in power,” Ictanikë said. “Not in power that you can depend upon. You sailed the seas from inner to outer and back again, finding a word here and a word there, hoping the wind would bring you what you need to know. Why should you be at the world’s mercy this way? With help from someone wise, someone longer in the world, you can find your power much more quickly. I can help you do that.”
The Alaalid wizards looked at one another, not quite sure what to make of this. “Help is always welcome,” one of them said.
“But you must pay my price,??
? Ictanikë said.
The uncertainty among them grew. Nita saw several of them exchange glances, and, in particular, Seseil began to regard Ictanikë with what looked like the beginnings of suspicion. “Among us,” Seseil said, “when one person needs something, another one gladly gives it to them. That way, you know that when the day comes that you need something, another will be ready to give. If you have a gift to give us, we’ll accept it gladly… assuming it’s a thing we need. But this talk of price—”
Ictanikë smiled, and there was a sly look to the expression that Nita didn’t care for. “So adult beings conduct their affairs in the worlds beyond your world,” Ictanikë said. “Go the way I will show you, and you, too, will do your business among the worlds in such a way as to impress all with your wisdom and power. But you should also know that not all beings even in this world conduct their business in such a kindly way, giving freely and accepting freely. Even here there are places where the creatures of the world take what they please, and give little back, or nothing. You must know how to conduct yourselves in such places, and how to defend yourself from those who would take what is yours by force. I can teach you these things.”
“And how is it you know about that in the first place?” Seseil said. “You speak confidently of the worlds beyond our world. You speak of prices to be paid, as if our way of giving and accepting were a trap. Nor do any of us know you, or where you come from. I think any advice you might have to give should be looked at with care.”
Nita watched, and saw how most of the wizards drew together toward Seseil. But one or two of them still stood off to one side, regarding Ictanikë with curiosity if not interest. And one of them, an Alaalid with long red hair hanging down below his shoulders, moved a little way toward Ictanikë and said to her, “What exactly would your price be?”
Nita froze… for the redheaded wizard was the small man, just her height, who had come to her in the dream of statues and said, “I’ve been waiting for you… ”
Ictanikë’s smile grew somber. “It’s as you’ve said, entropy is indeed running. But with my price, you can buy yourselves an exemption. Around you, you see what happens to the rest of the world. Even the mountains are worn away in time; all life ends. But for you, for the wise, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways to go on, to reject the fate of the material things around you. If I help you, you can have life… and then cheat death.”
The wizard with the long red hair looked thoughtfully at Ictanikë. “Who is that?” Kit whispered.
Quelt waved a hand, and all the figures froze in place again. “That’s Druvah,” Quelt said. “He was one of the oldest of the wizards. You can tell by his hair; ours doesn’t usually get that red color for a long time.”
“Uh-oh,” Nita said. “I think I see what’s coming… ”
Quelt let the Display continue. “You still haven’t said what your price will be,” Druvah said.
“It’s only a little thing,” said Ictanikë. “I know the One who brought entropy into being. For those who’re that One’s friends, there are privileges and rewards. One of them is to circumvent the waste and pain that come with age. A people who make this bargain have no need of watching the strength and joy of youth slip slowly away. It’s theirs forever. They have an eternity to grow from power to power… and if they so desire it, more than an eternity. They can go onward into the time beyond Times, in their own bodies, in the flesh. To do so, of course, they must take entropy’s inventor as their master, not some impersonal wind. The relationship is far more rewarding, more personal.”
“But is it more free?” said Seseil. “Those who speak in terms of prices, themselves will do nothing for nothing. The wind has spoken the name of one of the Powers that lives in the dead calm, in the sun that beats down and parches the dry isles and dries up everything that would grow. We want nothing to do with that Power, or Its gifts.”
And the wizards began to argue. Nita sighed, because she had heard various versions of this argument since she’d become a wizard, and it rarely turned out particularly well for the world in question. The Lone Power had had eons of practice at making Its case, and was extremely good at befuddling the innocent and putting one over on the clever. As she watched, Nita noticed Druvah walking off in an absent sort of way, and Ictanikë went after him.
Kit noticed that, too. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Neets is right. I know where this is going.” He glanced over at Quelt.
Quelt made a gesture with an upraised hand; Nita read this as a shrug. “It goes on for a while,” Quelt said.
Off to the side, Nita could see Druvah and Ictanikë talking animatedly. “I bet that one does, too,” Nita said.
“Oh, yes,” Quelt said. “Do you want to skip ahead?”
“Sure,” Kit said.
Quelt made another gesture with her hand, and all the figures blurred back and forth briefly, then came to a stand again. Ictanikë and Druvah were walking back toward the main group now, and the others watched them come, Seseil watching most carefully. To Seseil, Druvah said, “Ictanikë has told me a great many things, and I’m convinced that we should give her suggestions a more careful hearing.”
Seseil’s face was calm, but in his eyes Nita thought she saw signs of the first anger she had yet seen in an Alaalid. “I feel no such need,” Seseil said, “nor I think does anyone else here. We want nothing of her ‘exemption.’ Through her voice the dead calm speaks, and there’s no good in that. We will cast her out. We will wall her out of our world. And, henceforth, we will take our chances with the winds.”
The other five wizards in the circle with Seseil held up their hands against Ictanikë in a gesture of rejection. She began to be battered back away from them as if the wind was actually blowing her from the circle, though in the grass around there was no sign of it and only the slightest breeze stirred the flowers. Nita held her breath, waiting for the storm to break. But to her surprise, nothing happened.
Druvah stood there and watched Ictanikë being forced away, and finally turned his back on the Lone Power. But then he also turned away from the other wizards and began walking off through the flowers, a lonely figure.
“You will call me back, before the end of things,” Ictanikë said, and looked warningly around at the wizards as their intention pushed her away. “You think you are acting in virtue, but you are acting in ignorance. And though you are swift in decision now, you will have long to repent it!”
“Never,” Seseil said. “We want nothing to do with you. Take yourself away, and do not bother us again.”
Ictanikë looked one last time at the other wizards with Seseil. Every one of them was of the same face and the same mind. Her frown became terrible; still in the act of being forced away, she raised her hands. Nita winced. Here it comes, she thought. I bet now we find out why this planet has what looks like a really big impact crater…
But Ictanikë simply let her hands fall, and stopped resisting the wizards’ spell, turning and walking away from them, the way Druvah went, not hurrying. Slowly she vanished into the dazzle of the day, and was gone from sight a long time before she came anywhere near that impossibly distant horizon.
Seseil and the other wizards lowered their hands, and closed up their circle again. Kit glanced over at Quelt. “That was it?” he said.
“That was it,” Quelt said. “Should there have been more?”
“Well,” Kit said, “not necessarily. But I’ve seen Choices that took a little longer.”
Nita looked around again at the scenario with some confusion. “This is kind of strange,” she said. “The way Druvah was acting—unless I’m misunderstanding it—it’s more like the kind of thing the Lone One would do. Are you sure he wasn’t—” She paused. It was a word no wizard liked to use about another one.
“Overshadowed,” Nita said at last, when she realized that Quelt wasn’t going to say it.
“You mean actively being influenced by the Lone Power?” Quelt said. “No, not as far as we can tell.”
br /> “What happened to Druvah afterward?” Kit said.
“He left,” Quelt said. “The reasons given differ. And he did say that he didn’t care for the way the Choice had been made… Some versions of the story tell how Druvah said he didn’t want anything more to do with his own people. They say he threatened the other wizards and said to them something like what Ictanikë had said—that they couldn’t make this Choice without him, or that later they’d wish that they’d listened to him, and that someday they’d need him back and wouldn’t be able to find him. But all the stories agree that he went away from the place where he lived and was never seen there again.”
“A sore loser,” Kit said.
“Maybe not,” Nita said. “Maybe he was just sad, or embarrassed when he realized he was wrong.”
“You might be right about that,” Quelt said. She watched as slowly the various wizards wandered off together across the flowery fields, heading out into the world they’d helped to shape. “There are other stories that say how sometimes people would see him for a day, an hour, on some lonely road, or climbing a mountain, or sailing by himself on the sea, always looking for something, always acting as if something was missing. But it wasn’t thought lucky to see him. He was tricky to talk to, they said, and he didn’t always make sense. Or you might hear his voice behind first one tree and then another in the forest, always moving in front of you when you got close, never staying where you thought it was.”
Quelt turned and started walking up through the crystalline air again. Kit and Nita walked up the air behind her. “Sort of a trickster,” Nita said.
“That’s right,” Quelt said. She shrugged. “There’s even one story that says he went wandering right out of the world, among other worlds, looking for whatever he was missing. It doesn’t really matter in terms of the Choice. It’s made now. And pretty well made, I think.”
They broke the surface of the crystalline Display and walked out across it, back to the sward that surrounded it. Kit looked all around him at the bright day, as if wondering whether he should say something, and then, finally, he said, “So people here do die… ”