The Makers of Light
Page 31
"Do you want to learn an algorithm for making tables, then? Is metalwork the reason for your visit, Adept Brighid? If it is, please let me know what exactly you want. I tire of long, circumventing explanations."
"No! This is not what I mean! I already have an algorithm inside me! We all do!" Darius's mild question seemed to have interrupted Brighid's flow of thought, and now she stared at him, shocked by her own uncontrolled shouts, all smiles and fakeness gone. "The concepts are inside us!"
Darius returned her gaze, his once again mild. "Imagination is a wonderful thing, but I am afraid it is not enough for working with metal, Adept Humanist. It might be possible that everyone has the potential to learn, and yet not everyone learns how to make things that work. For that, you need skill, and you need practice of both your mind and hands to acquire skill, and you need concentration—"
"Adept Darius, we, ourselves, are the algorithms that make the world. We humans, but especially we Bers. Our minds are what makes the world, and without them there is no world to speak of, only unconnected parts. True, it matters much that we know how to turn mountain into metal—but even more than that it matters how humans look at us, and how they look at the world, and what world they truly see." Brighid was talking as if she had not even been listening to Darius but was responding to a few non-connected words of his that she had overheard. To be fair, Darius was doing the same thing with her.
Suddenly Merley understood. They had no common language, the Artificer and the Humanist. They might as well have lived in separate worlds—his a world of tiny building parts and clockwise precision where humans never mattered, hers of words and images that grew inside humans and needed humans to matter or even exist. His world needed only fire, Magic, and metal, and there were consistent rules of how to bend these things to an Artificer's will. In her world, humans themselves were the materials, and the rules of how to bend them to her will must change with every individual, since humans had wills of their own.
About the world Darius and Brighid talked, and yet they did not see the world, for each of them had taken a part of the world and buried his or her self so deep in it that it seemed to be the whole world—and yet, it was not.
"You are both wrong," Merley said, quietly, and were these other adepts, perhaps they would have both jumped at the presumptuous acolyte. These two only looked at her expectantly, and Merley suddenly knew that whatever their worlds were, there was something both of them shared. Whatever their reasons, they both had the clarity of thought needed to listen to one whom they were not obliged to listen to but who had something to say.
Such people were dangerous and only one of them was a friend, but the thought of that was just a small thought amongst many. It fled away when Merley suddenly jumped from her chair and rushed to the window. A tiny flickering light had risen where the Sun had set—a light that was not a star, for even now it was moving through the sky. Merley watched it until it was gone, just a little light above the many lights that had started glowing down in the city, and yet a light different from all else—and Merley did not know how she knew that, but it was very important that she could see both it and them.
"You are both wrong," she whispered, almost to herself, as she slowly walked back to the table and took A History of Metal Making, its bulk suddenly solid and reassuring in her hands, even though it had been heavy and burdening earlier when it had not offered her the answers she had sought. Answers about how Magic worked, to questions asked by the Qynnsent lord and the water witch lady. Merley had told them that knowing how Magic worked did not matter; she had even shouted at them, and yet after that she had spent days amongst crumbling pages and imagined dust, seeking—seeking what? She had not known. Did she know, now?
"You are both wrong," she said, once again, "because one world is not enough."
Darius said nothing, and Merley could read nothing on his face, but Brighid laughed with the motherly laugh that she had forgotten to use during the last few moments. It was as if Merley's words had just now jerked the woman out of the strange mood she had been in, that of showing true emotion by quarreling with Darius.
"My dear," Brighid beamed at her. "Those words would have warranted a visit from the Bers if you were not a Ber yourself."
"You are visiting, aren't you," Merley murmured.
Brighid smiled once again, with a hint of something like affection.
"But a Ber you are, and I say that you have the right to say such words if these are the words that would save us all. Yes, perhaps this is exactly it ..." She was lost in thought for a moment, then smiled yet again.
"But I have not yet told you what I came for. Time has come for the world's algorithms to change so that the world itself would not fade. What say you, Acolyte and Adept Artificer, of working on a device that no Artificer has ever worked on before?"
END OF EXCERPT
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Mentor
Dominick
Dominick
Dominick
Dominick
Chapter 2: Ber
Merley
Merley
Merley
Chapter 3: Life is What Moves
Linden
Linden
Linden
Rianor
Chapter 4: Firebringer
Linden
Rianor
Rianor
Linden
Linden
Chapter 5: Stratagem
Rianor
Linden
Rianor
Linden
Linden
Chapter 6: Paths of Darkness
Dominick
Dominick
Also by Lynna Merrill:
Excerpt from The Weavers of Paths, Chapter 1: One World
Merley