She had been watching him with concern. Now, seeing his smile, Aurilelde smiled back. It was altogether like having a statue smile at you— but a vital one, with life in the eyes, and on the smooth features a look of intense life— made still more intense by an edge of fear.
“You’ve changed,” Kit said.
She gave him an amused look. “Of course I had to change. We all changed. We had no choice. The new world wasn’t going to suit our old bodies...”
Something else was different now: the light. Kit got up from that bench and walked over toward the side of the Tower, where he could get a clearer view of what was outside. It took no more than a few steps for him to realize that the city was no longer sitting in a flatland crater but under a mighty shadow. Looking out through the walls of the Tower, he looked a long way up indeed before he could see the top of the vast shape shutting away that whole side of the sky. The city was sitting on the shoulder of the highest mountain in the Solar System. The wide flat rust-colored cone of Olympus Mons loomed behind the spire of the Scarlet Tower, utterly dwarfing it.
Kit gazed at this in amazement ...then made his way back to Aurilelde and sat down again. “Maybe you want to start from the beginning,” Kit said. “And tell me about this as if I don’t know anything. Because I don’t—”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “No,” she said, “I understand that. A lot of us had trouble remembering, when we woke up from the long sleep.” She shook her head. “It was a hard time. Everyone was afraid. Everyone was horrified, and in grief. Nobody wants to see their planet destroyed...” She reached out to his face: then paused. “May I?”
Kit looked at her, perplexed. “May you what?”
“I can’t let you see what I see without asking leave first. I may not be a wizard—” and her eyes glinted at him, amused— “but that much I know is the law. The mind is the outer fastness of the soul, and access to another’s mind must be requested.”
Kit nodded. Aurilelde reached out, simply touched the side of his head, then looked away. All around them the view of the Tower washed out in a wave of dark.
We lived on the first world for a long time,Aurilelde said as they looked down on a distant world in Earth’s solar system. We were all alone in this system. That aloneness gave some of us— ideas. And those ideas were possibly fed by the one you know, the one all wizards know: the one who lies in the darkness, waiting.
The Lone Power.
Yes, Aurilelde said. Because we were the first ones to come to life in this system, at the bottom of all our lives, and all our joys, there was always a shadow of fear. We knew we would bear the weight of the Darkness’s enmity: it would come for us and try to destroy us. Even the Red Rede spoke of it.
The Red Rede?
One of my ancestors wrote it, Aurilelde said. Then she laughed. Or I did! Some people say we’re all the same person, the Seers in the Dark. They say we come back, again and again, to get it right— to stop making the mistakes we made the last time. So after our world was destroyed, it was hard to know how that could still happen… how the Darkness might return and attempt to destroy us once more. You’d have thought once would be enough.
Kit saw it as she saw it. Out in the darkness, blocking away the stars, the shadow grew. We could not divert the planet, Aurilelde said sadly. All our wizards tried. It was a mighty effort, in which many died. Even then they could only deflect it enough to avoid a direct impact. Through her vision, Kit saw the rogue planet approach. And in retrospect, she said, there are those who said it might have been wiser if we hadn’t. If we’d just let the Doom out of the Darkness end everything, there and then.
Together, they watched the rogue world come plunging in through the system. Kit was horrified. You couldn’t just sit there and let all your people be doomed! he said.
But look what happened, said Aurilelde, as the last-ditch forces crafted by the planet’s wizards lashed out. Shamask-Eilith shattered; the rogue world’s course, perturbed by the forces applied to it by the wizards and by Shamask-Eilith’s fragmented mass, now shifted, heading for the inner worlds. A second later, Kit saw it plunging in toward a new world much closer to the Sun, a world where the surface was still molten. As he watched, the rogue planet struck the edge of that new young world, and a vast gout of magma and barely solidified stone splashed outward in its wake as the rogue planet blundered on. Behind it, the Earth shuddered, nearly disintegrated, and then slowly, painfully began to reform itself.
See what we almost did to your world? Aurilelde said. Because of the blow the rogue planet struck yours, the silicon-based life that had just arisen there was all but wiped out. Life found another way, but— She sounded sad. It might have been better if we’d left well enough alone.
But you couldn’t have known that, Kit said. You were trying to save yourselves!
She looked at him sadly. That’s what you said the last time, she said. You were always the pragmatist.
Kit looked at her and shook his head. Aurilelde, he said, you can’t be sure it was me. I don’t remember any of that! Of being— what’s-his-name, Khretef—
I am sure, she said. And she looked at him sadly. I understand. You’ve been a long time in your present life; the old one must seem like a dream, if that. She fell silent.
Kit, watching the young Earth slowly coalesce, and watching the splashed-out rock gradually form itself into the Moon, shook his head at himself. How come I never used the manual to take a look at this moment in time myself? he wondered. How come I had to wait for someone else to show it to me? Considering how much Kit liked the Moon, it seemed like a missed opportunity. But then again, in recent months, Mars had come to occupy the forefront of his mind—
Kit let out a breath, looked over at Aurilelde again. How come you showed yourself to me that other way first? he said. This way is prettier—
Even as Kit spoke, he was surprised that something like that had come out of his mouth. But it was true. This shape had a fitness about it that the sultry look of the previous Aurilelde had not.
She just looked at him, though, and smiled sadly. It was the way best suited to you right then, she said. I knew that as soon as you were ready, you would want to see me as I was again. You were never one for false seemings.
The sorrow of her expression was painful to see. When we were ready to settle in the New World, you were the first one to come and tell me that you liked my new form even better than my old one. And Aurilelde smiled. Even my father didn’t think to do that.
She sighed, looking at the scattering fragments of the First World as the ships and the two surviving cities, one from Shamask, one from Eilith, fled it. But there was so much ambivalence about having to change our shape, our way of living. Many of us said that if we changed our form, it would change our minds, the way we thought: we’d no longer be the people we were. Others said— she looked down— that maybe that would be a good thing. That since our people awakened in the First World, we’d done nothing but cause each other grief. And truly, we were never a peaceful species. Some people said that was because we were in the wrong shape: that when we took the new one, things would settle down. We would find the way of life the One had always meant for us.
She shook her head. But no one wanted to decide on the new forms right away, so soon after the disaster, and not without careful assessment of which other world in the system would be best for us. The refuge-cities and the ships were built so that all the survivors could sleep for many years, allowing the system to settle after the disaster. For none of us wanted to leave the system: this was our home! We were the First Life here. We dared not abandon the place.
Aurilelde looked even sadder, as if touching on a memory that still hurt. The Sun— even at this distance, the Sun cried out to us,‘Don’t go!’ And we couldn’t. But there were no other worlds ready. The other solid ones were too close to the Sun, not yet settled out of the molten state. The outer ones were places where not even we could have lived— and our old forms were used to the
cold. So our last wizards swept all but the least fragments of Shamask-Eilith into a nullspace portal to ensure that the new inner worlds, our homes to be, would take no harm from them ...
Aurilelde shrugged. And then we slept. A long time, out in the darkness, the ships and the cities slid in long slow orbits far from the Sun, waiting. How many years— She shook her head. If I ever knew the actual count, Aurilelde said, I’ve forgotten. But eventually we woke. The city-ships knew, because the wizardry and science built into them told them, that the system was ready for us again. And so we woke, and looked about us. We saw the beginnings of your kind of life on your world—She looked at Kit with a strange affectionate expression, almost the way someone might look at a pet, some life form not quite up to their standard.
And for a second Kit saw the Earth for a moment as she and her people saw it: a small, new, green world, where the native bipedal life had just begun to look up into the sky and wonder about the little bright lights it saw there, and the two great ones. That looked like a good shape for a life form, she said, the one that rose on the surface of your world. And so we thought, Why not? And for a while there was discussion about whether we too might settle there. But others looked at the further one— the red one in the next orbit out. It was empty. Water it had, and air it had—
Kit saw the young Mars as Aurilelde and her people had seen it: a Mars with huge icecaps and half-blue with seas. He gulped in wonder, for the oceans were of much wider expanse than even the most ambitious Earth scientists’ theories had yet suggested. And so we adapted ourselves into bipedal form like yours, Aurilelde said, but hardier, tailored to that world’s temperatures, ready to make it our own.
Through her eyes he saw the last two great cities settle onto the Martian surface, a very long way from one another— one near Olympus Mons, even then one of the greatest shield volcanoes ever seen on any planet in this galaxy: the other at the far end of Valles Marineris, then a vast channel being carved out by fierce young rivers running down to the sea, untrammeled by the heavy gravity of a world like Earth, and eroding the ancient sandstones with astonishing force. There we settled, and there we lived: and for a while it seemed as if everything would go well ...
Aurilelde shook her head sadly. But then we found that the Darkness and the Doom had other plans for us. Our new home’s atmosphere had never been thick. The Sun flared many times over several centuries and stripped much of the red world’s air away. And worse, its orbit seemed to be shifting. We feared it would edge out into the great dark again, perhaps even drift too close to the great banded world in the next orbit out and be torn apart by its tidal forces. Our birth system was beginning to look like a trap. We would be forced to move from world to world and never find a home we could depend on—
Aurilelde looked sadly at the floor of the Throne room. And so many of our wizards had died, she said. There weren’t enough left to change what was happening to us. Khretef was one of the last great wizards among the Eilitt; my father was one of the last among the Shamaska. Of course, there were some others, from the other city— the ones who disagreed with us...
Your enemies, Kit said.
Yes, Aurilelde said. They offered to work together with us to save our whole species. She laughed bitterly. But we didn’t trust them: their people had tried to betray us before. And they didn’t trust us, either, certain that we’d would do the same to them. Even back in the First World, there had always been voices in the City of the Eilitt calling for us to be stamped out—for the world to be cleansed of us so that our race could begin again, have a fresh start.
She shook her head. Again and again my father and others from our city came to me, saying, ‘See the future for us! Tell us what to do; show us how to find peace, stability, an end to the danger and the death!’ She looked into Kit’s eyes, troubled. But I could never see that. You cannot compel vision...
Kit nodded. He’d heard this often enough from Nita, lately. So what did you do?
We feared we would have to sleep again, she said, as the New World grew colder around us, as the oceans dried and froze and the air fled. We tried to change the world, to preserve the air, the water—
Aurilelde shook her head, suddenly looking miserable. We could not. Nor could we take the cities out to space again: there was not enough of their motive substance to power them. And where once wizardry alone could’ve driven them, we no longer had enough wizards. So we buried the cities, and greatly against our will we slept again, setting protections about us that would warn us when someone came to disturb that sleep. Whoever came would be set tests that would assess whether they had the skills to wake us in a world that was stable at last.
She looked proudly at Kit. And you have the skills, she said. You’ve proved it. Now is the time. Break the spell: let us out into the new life! We’re ready! We’ve been in prison for so long, children of misfortune, the species that has tried and tried again to get its start in the right way, and been foiled again and again by circumstance and the ill will of the Power that walked behind the Darkness, and waits still to be our Doom.
Kit shook his head. I can’t just do that! he said. It’s not up to me. I haven’t been a wizard very long: I don’t have the authority to take a decision like this into my own hands!
Aurilelde looked at him incredulously, took his hands again, and gripped them. Your power gives you the authority! she said. That you’ve come this far, that you’ve done this much, says that this is the will of the One! It’s our time to be awakened! You can’t deny us this!
And she reached up to touch his face again. Especially not you, Aurilelde said. Long ago when you went into the last danger to try to save our world, you said to me, ‘If worse comes to worst, I’ll weave my last wizardry in such a way that you will be the one to whom I return. One way or another, you and I will be the ones to free our people—’
She shook her head again, turning her face away. What’s the matter? Kit said.
Aurilelde seemed once again to be fighting back some emotion that ran deeper than tears— if her species could even shed them. He said to me, ‘The Third World seems the most likely to bring forth civilizations, and wizardry. So I will die so that I may return with a foothold in a soul of that world. I’ll come to you as a wizard of the Third World and help you awaken the children of the First One.’ And then Aurilelde laughed sorrowfully. He said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid! I may look strange and alien to you when I come again, but it will still be me, your Khretef. I’ll set you free, and we’ll be together again, together the way we were always meant to be... but were never able to because the world went wrong.’
She turned away from Kit. The vision came on me then, she said, and I looked forward and saw that it was true: that it was even written in the Rede, and I had never realized it before—
Something came into Kit’s head. ‘The one departed is the one who returns,’ he said, ‘From the straitened circle and the shortened night...’
Then he looked up at her, surprised. How did I know that?
Because you are Khretef, Aurilelde said, smiling. You have come back to me, as you promised ...and you always keep your promises.
And Kit sat bolt upright in bed, staring in sudden morning light at the map of Mars.
12: Tharsis Montes
Nita was up early on Sunday morning. She’d gone to Wellakh the previous evening to have a word with Spot, even though Bobo reassured her that he could make the necessary adjustments to Dairine’s “brainfeed” without her doing the extra mileage. But she’d also wanted a chance to see firsthand how Dairine was getting along with Nelaid, for she was starting to have a feeling that things were about to get busy at home.
Dairine had been so busy working with the Thahit simulator that she’d barely had time to even look at Nita. When she did, Dairine just sort of frowned absently at her sister as if not sure what the heck she was doing there. Nita found this entirely acceptable, especially when she stepped aside to talk to Nelaid, who was watching from one side
of the simulator hall.
“She has reached that point in the study where the mind starts to catch fire with it,” Nelaid said softly to her. “I hadn’t hoped to see her in this state quite so soon: it is a good sign, though I will admit it may seem slightly disconcerting to you.”
Nita shook her head. “I get this way sometimes. It’s a family thing. Should I tell my dad she might wind up staying here some nights?”
“No need for that, I think,” Nelaid said. “I think she will sleep better on her own couch.”
“Bed, we say.”
“Her own bed, yes. And your father will be relieved to see her do so. He and I will consult at his leisure as to what to do if she wishes her study to become more intense by virtue of having to travel less.”
Nita had nodded and taken herself back home. She’d picked up the note Kit left her late that night and gone happily to bed, grateful that an already busy day had presented her with nothing more challenging.
Now, in early light in the quiet of the dining room— for Dairine had once again left very early— Nita was browsing through the Martian section of her manual, surprised to find that there was already a new section about the Cavern of Writings (as the manual was now calling it), and an early Shamaska-Eilitt syllabary. This is so cool! she thought, turning the pages and looking over some early diagrams and annotations. And there was also imagery from the Cavern, and a replay of the memory spell that had played out for them there.
It had surprised Nita to learn that the manual didn’t have all the answers. But then, she thought, it never claimed to. I just assumed... It turned out, however, that a surprising amount of the information in it came from wizards themselves—as Nita had started discovering during some of her more recent studies, especially just before her mother died, when she had been seeking desperately for ways to save her mom’s life. There were many strange sources of power out there, not least among them the manual itself, which kept the secrets of the universe, new and old, structured and updated so that wizards could find them.