Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal

by Diane Duane

  “To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—”

  Everything was silent, everything was waiting for him. Ronan needed a big gasp of air for the last few words, and it was as if the air jumped into his lungs, hurrying, wanting to be said in those last words. “Until universe’s end—!”

  It was like finishing a race. Ronan felt wrung out, wanted almost to bend over forward to recover, the way you did after a lap around the track. He actually felt like he couldn’t get another breath until he got down off that wall, stood up straight, breathed. Hurriedly he slid down off the wall and stood up in that light, clutching that piece of paper, and beside him Pidge stood up too. Ronan saw, without understanding, the movement in the air of the light behind him, shivering as if something too bright or strange to see flexed outwards and then folded back behind Pidge; like a shadow, but bright.

  The gasping took a few moments to pass off. “Remember that,” Pidge said, kind of low, as if there was someone he didn’t want hearing him. “Remember how it feels, that air, you may want it later.”

  “Kind of want it now,” Ronan said, and took one or two more gasps of it before he felt right again. When he did, he looked down at the piece of paper again and had to laugh a little at how blotchy and ineffective the ballpoint writing looked. And then something occurred to him. “Y’know,” Ronan said, holding out the paper to Pidge, “sure this isn’t strictly legal.”

  Pidge blinked at him as he took the paper and folded it up again, shoved it in his jeans. “What?”

  “Well, we’re in Ireland, aren’t we? There’s gotta be an Irish-language version too. It’s the law. Giving it to me in English, honestly? Makes me wonder if you did the homework...”

  Then he got confused because Pidge started laughing at him. “Seriously,” Pidge said after a good few moments, because he was practically gasping with it, “after all that, the whole bloody Oath, that brings you up short??” He wiped his eyes. “And what makes you think all this has been in English? Listen to you.”

  Ronan turned a withering look on Pidge. “Oh come on,” he said, “give me a break—”

  Except that wasn’t how it came out. It was what he meant, yes. But the words came out differently… and nothing he’d ever said in his life before had shaken the air in his chest and the ground under his feet, so he could feel it vibrating right through his trainers. More or less of their own accord, his arms flailed out behind him to brace against the wall, and Pidge reached out and steadied him. I’m my own earthquake, Ronan thought, half in terror, half in delight. And also: Did I say that? Or did it say me?

  …Whatever “it” was. Ronan discovered that he was shaking as he had been earlier, but for a whole different set of reasons now.

  “Yeah,” Pidge said, “now that you’re listening for it, you’re hearing it.” He sounded satisfied. “When you speak the Speech to things, they pay attention. But then it was used to make them, so… it’s all good.” He grinned. “Meanwhile, far as the Oath goes, you’re gonna have to wait for it as gaeilge. You’ve got other things to think about right this minute.”

  “Yeah, like how do I— Is that going to keep happening?” Ronan stared around him, suddenly and completely unsettled, as if someone had changed the world’s rules on him and not told him what the new ones were.

  Pidge’s eyes glinted at him. “Count on it!”

  “Then I need a dictionary, or a phrasebook or something—!”

  “That’s not how it works on this side of things,” Pidge said cheerfully. “You want to know the word for something in the Speech? Ask it. Till you sort out what’s coming, it’ll be looking over your shoulder. You need a spell? Ask it, it’s yours.”

  “A spell,” Ronan said under his breath. “Dear effing God this is real—”

  “Yep, I was waiting for that one,” Pidge said, and grinned. “Nothing will ever be realer! Well, maybe some things. But right now this is your very own version of the new real. Make it count, because for just this little while, you’re the one who gets to say what it is.”

  Ronan shook his head and reached out to grab Pidge by the shoulders and shake him. “What the feck does that even mean?” he shouted. “What did you do to me?”

  “Gave you what you wanted!” Pidge said, laughing a big laugh of sheer triumph like nothing Ronan had ever heard out of him before. Then he looked at his watch. “Whoa, will you look at the time,” he said. “Gotta fly, Ro.” And he grabbed Ronan by the shoulders and shook him in return. “Listen to me just for one sec, yeah?” Their eyes met, and Pidge’s brown eyes were suddenly so much brighter than Ronan had ever seen them, so much more urgent. “Whatever you need: this first time out, it’s yours. Take whatever you need and don’t be afraid, yeah? Just do what you’re going to do.”

  Pidge let him go. Ronan staggered—

  And then something started bleeping at him.

  ***

  His eyes flew open. He found himself staring at lichen, his face against a rock.

  What was that, he wondered. In his pocket, the phone was bleeping piteously, its alarm going off. I fell asleep. A dream—

  Except that hadn’t gone the way his dreams usually did. Usually, when he realized he’d dreamed something, the memory faded away within a matter of seconds. But this time there was no such instant fade. He remembered. The wall, the piece of paper, the words he’d read—

  “Ow,” Ronan said under his breath, sitting up to stretch himself on the leaves that were now well packed-down under him. He felt stiff and sore, and could feel every single place the stone had been digging into him when he’d dozed off. He had to squirm himself around a bit to get the phone out of his pocket and shut it up. The digits 15:30 were flashing on and off.

  Jayzus, he thought, another sleep that didn’t feel like any sleep at all. What’s the point of a nap that doesn’t even leave you feeling like you’ve had one? He punched the OFF button and took a big breath—

  Instantly Ronan was seized by sudden sense memory of how hard it had seemed to get a breath in that strange bright place. It was as if his lungs didn’t know what to do with that air, with the brilliance in it, how clean and sharp and almost fierce it was. It’s not like the air’s all that bad out here, really. But that, that was just so different—

  He sighed. It had been an odd dream, a good dream, full of promise. But at the end of the day, just a dream. And this, now, this was the end of the day, more or less, and Ronan found himself being assailed by thoughts of everything that was waiting for him out there, outside his little shelter of tilted stones. The walk home, his suspension, how long he was going to be able to keep it secret, the awful inevitability of tomorrow morning when the post came… Everything that had seemed just far enough away to ignore when he’d taken refuge here now, just a couple of hours ago, seemed an uncomfortable step closer.

  He leaned back against the stone, letting out a frustrated breath, and gazed out past his feet at the bracken just past it on the hillside. A leaf of it twitched, not far away, and he held his breath and stared for a moment, wondering what might be out there, down low in the greenery: a hare maybe? But then some feet away another frond of the bracken twitched, and then off to his left another, and Ronan realized what he was seeing: the rain starting.

  Great, he thought, morose. Just one more thing. One way or another by the time he got down off the Head and home again, he was going to be soaked to the skin. And then if anyone was home early, they would start quizzing him about why he was so wet, and where’d he been, and it was all going to start coming out. Even the little bit of peace he’d been hoping for between tonight and tomorrow morning would be over with already.

  Outside the shelter of the stones the trembling movements of the bracken were becoming more widespread as the raindrops started falling more and more thickly and shaking the stems and fronds they fell on. Soon all the little patch of greenery that Ronan could see before him was trembling with the
big fat drops of the beginning of a downpour. Ronan looked away across the bracken to the edge of the hillside and saw how solidly dark the sky had gone.

  Maybe I should sit tight for a little longer, he thought. Maybe I can wait it out, maybe it’ll pass over... But a good look at that leaden sky to the eastward dashed any hope that this rain was going to pass over any time soon. It was going to just keep on coming down. And for all he knew in a while there’d be flooding too, because the Head’s ground was generally too stony to hold the water from a heavy downpour long. There was flooding from here and into the streets below all the time.

  No point, Ronan thought, disgusted. Everything was conspiring against him to have a miserable time of it. Might as well get on with it, then.

  He wriggled himself out of the shelter as best he could. It took a couple of minutes of pushing himself forward and outward more or less feet first, as there was no real room inside to turn around. Once out he stood up hurriedly at the feel of big raindrops starting to hit him all up and down his front. Minimize the target, he thought. But there was really no hope of that.

  Frustrated, he thought Oh who cares, gonna get soaked anyway… and leaned his head back to look up at that gray sky. The first few raindrops drops struck him in the face. He flinched a little —

  Wet, one of them said to him.

  Wet, said another.

  Wet. Wet. Wet, wet, water, wet, wet.

  Ronan blinked in astonishment. The rain got into his eyes.

  Wet, wet, other wet, tears, rain, skin, rain, wet, water, sky—

  Ronan’s mouth fell open.

  —humidity, condensation, atmospheric convection, arcus, shear, ridge, core punch, inflow band—

  They were falling on him faster and faster, pouring down with ever-increasing force, pounding on him: words. Not English words, and not Irish words either, but words in that other language, in the Speech, the one he’d been speaking without knowing how. But now he was going to know how to do it in the here and now, because they were falling all around him—

  —tropopause graupel retrogression microburst anvil dome fractus helicity mesolow jet stream isotherm squall line stratoform rope cloud lapse rate—

  The downpour of words just wouldn’t stop; they were roaring in his ears all the time now, drowning out other sound. And the words weren’t just about the things they meant, weren’t just descriptions. They were those things. They were those things’ names. Everything shook with them, thundered with them, inescapable—

  Ronan stood there transfixed by astonishment, and by a weird kind of delight, as in drifts and curtains of meaning like rain the words came pouring and hammering down on him. How can it rain words?! But it didn’t matter, because there was more of it, endlessly more, waiting for him, just waiting for him to ask for any word he wanted, any knowledge he needed, anything at all. These are the words in which wizardry is conducted, they told him. All here. Waiting for you. Any time. Any place. Life, the world, other worlds, unfathomable and unplumbable depths of existence, they were just waiting for him to ask about them, learn about them, find out how to act on them, learn how to change them and move them. The impossible made possible, endlessly, from now until the day he died.

  It was as if a gateway had opened, like a door in the sky, pouring all this stuff down on him. Not just rain words or sky words or air words, but as the water started running down the hill, earth words too, sedimentary inclination gneiss fossils conglomerate— Ronan shook his head, shook the water out of his eyes and laughed out loud. This is so amazing—!

  And it wasn’t just that he was being given these words that was so wonderful. They brought with them a sudden storm of certainty, soaking him skin-deep and deeper. He’d never felt anything like it before: to be sure of things, to know what they were called, what they would do, could do. Suddenly Ronan realized how much of his life was spent—or even wasted?—being unsure about what would happen next. But this, this was certainty, right down to the bone, his bones and the bones of reality all around him; the ground had a name, had lots of names: the air had names, the water had names—

  —he could hear the sea murmuring with them, a little distant here because the slight rise in the ground still protected him from it, salinity, water cycle, ionic composition, relative molarity, circulation mode, conservative element, hydrophiles, chop, neap tide, clapotis, fetch, shoaling overwash backrush cusp—

  The words built around him like a flood, a rising wave, one that he’d have gladly waded out into except he didn’t need to. An old memory rose dimly to meet him of being tumbled over and over by a wave when he was out swimming when he was small. There was something a bit uncomfortable associated with that, but it didn’t matter right now, none of that mattered, he would gladly be rolled over under this wave and lost in it if it was made of words like this—

  And all around him the thunder of words pouring down from nowhere just kept on and on. There was even something strangely familiar about it, as if this endless downpour was part of a huge undersound that had always been there, that he’d just never heard before… or had tuned out somehow. It was strange, but Ronan was starting to get the idea that maybe once when he was very little he’d heard it?… but had been talked out of it, somehow. Sure it’s nothing, he could almost hear his Mam saying, soothing; you were imagining it, forget about it now…

  Ronan found himself wondering, Was that a real memory? Did she say that once when I was little, did I hear something?

  Most do, the something said back, though not in words. Often when they’re very young. Often they get frightened. Sometimes it’s too big to handle, then. So they forget, and others help them to.

  And the sound just went on, scaled up, an unending hissing roaring blanket of white noise from the thousand dictionaries’ worth of words that the new immaterial rain was bringing with it, a million libraries’ worth of them, there were too many, too many—

  Ronan collapsed to his knees under the weight of the onslaught of words, knowing they would never stop coming unless he wanted them to— And I am never gonna want that! He turned his face up into the rain again and it ran down his face and into his eyes and splashed into his nose and he didn’t care, couldn’t get enough of it: tilted his head back and opened his mouth and drank the rain, drank the words as they came down, he felt them soaking into him, all kinds of words! He wanted to jump, to yell, to run, to shout (and hilariously from the back of his mind came the image of Fred Astaire spinning around a lamppost and singing: now Ronan understood what the singing was about).

  Because this was real. Magic was a reality, wizardry was a reality, this was real. The words just kept coming, hammering Ronan into the happiest kind of submission. Without this, he’d have been tempted to write off the whole conversation with Pidge—or whoever was being Pidge right then—as some kind of weird dream, a hallucination. But there was no mistaking this experience for anything but the truth.

  Everything was there for him now… a vastness of knowledge that was his now to call on whenever he needed it: whenever the Powers sent him on, what was the word, errantry, or when he saw something that needed tending to himself. Ronan could just ask the world what could be done about a problem, and it would tell him. He could pick a method of intervention and the words would be given to him, the power put into his hands. …Up to a point, something reminded him: because the power of the moment wouldn’t necessarily be with him at a later date. He’d have to make up for the lack of invincibility with brains. Well, okay, Ronan thought. I can do that.

  I can do that.

  I will do that!

  And Ronan gasped, and gasped again, at the certainty, at the truth, when you said something in the Speech. It became real. He couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful, or more dangerous. And that gift, that power, had been put in his hands. His.

  And as the downpour of knowledge continued all around him, all Ronan could think was:

  But now what? Who does this make me?

  What do I do…? />
  ***

  And elsewhere in reality, deeper in, one party regards another with a certain amount of puzzled disbelief.

  What, just like that? Seriously?

  Just like that.

  A suspicious pause. A little rushed, wouldn’t you say? Not going to get the best response out of him under these circumstances.

  Now there’s something I wouldn’t imagine you caring about one way or the other! One more failed wizard? I’d think that’d be a positive result for you.

  You know… I’m starting to wonder why you’re so interested in my reactions, one way or the other.

  Oh?

  Yes. In fact I don’t imagine we’ve had this long a chat about anything for…

  Amusement, not at all thinly veiled. You’re going to try to work this out in terms of local time periods, are you? This should be fun. …Then again, you were always big on trivia.

  …Years, it would be here, wouldn’t it? Quite a lot of them. I have a vague memory that something very large sinking into the sea would have been involved. What was its name again?

  A slightly pained pause. There would have been quite a few.

  Afállonë, yes, that was one. Atalántë, the Downfallen Land. Atlantis… And a pause not at all pained, but entirely too darkly pleased. Death by water; so inevitable, one way or another. Such a lovely symmetry, when life arose from it. And a smile. I think I see some resonances here that I can exploit.

  Oh really?

  Yes. You’ve shown your hand rather more than expected.

  I rather doubt I’ve shown you anything that will do you any good.

  Well then, maybe you won’t mind me rushing things a little.

  If you think it’ll help you.

  Oh, it will. Just watch…

  Incorporation

  He was never quite sure how he got home that afternoon. He had little memory of the walk. Because there was no one home when he got there, Ronan had plenty of time to check on his Nan (who noticed nothing about him odd at all, not a thing) and put himself into the shower and get into clean clothes, and put his that-day’s uniform in with the rest of the wash that his mam would do that evening. The silent whispering that he started realizing he could hear all the time, even in the house’s quiet, he wrote off as being something like the ringing in your ears you got after a long day at a music festival or a night with the headphones on too loud.