A male who sat opposite the door stood and said in Dushauni, “You see, she’s not stable enough to attempt duad-grieving. This is no time for dangerous experiments with ephemerals. I can’t permit this. That’s my final judgment.”
Krinata understood him and the general murmur of agreement from the others but was certain he didn’t know it. She fought the splash of cold needles that prickled her skin at the vision of Jindigar dying, because his peers rejected him– because of her. Then she blinked aside a dizzying sense of deja vu, more Takora’s than her own, though it seldom seemed that Takora was really a different person anymore.
Darllanyu put her hand over Krinata’s and searched her eyes, whispering, “What is he worth to you?”
“My life,” she answered without hesitation. ‘Tell me what to do!”
Darllanyu squeezed the human hand with soft, napped fingers, rose, and faced the others. “You have the right to refuse to risk your lives for the community Raichmat’s zunre have started here. Perhaps you can constitute an Oliat without me or Jindigar, but it could hardly be more than a heptad subform!”
“Even properly grieved and freed of the Archive, Jindigar would still be an Invert,” answered the leader. “Who here is willing to balance with an Invert Archivist?”
Someone challenged, “Jindigar’s no Archivist.” The man came around the circle to confront Darllanyu. “That was settled when I tapped Grisnilter’s Seal and discovered it had been breached. We all know what Jindigar is and what he’s done. He should be allowed to go to dissolution/death without taking anyone else with him.”
Darllanyu replied, “Your own grief for Prey colors your feelings, if not your skills, Threntisn,”
“You will leave my son out of this! I’m Senior Historian here, and—”
Not Frey’s father! The Historian Darllanyu had expected to lift the Archive from Jindigar was Prey’s father.
“You’re in first grief,” countered Darllanyu. “You’re forgiven. Perhaps you truly can’t do anything for Jindigar.”
“Darllanyu.” It was the leader. “He is Senior.”
Another man rose to stand beside the leader, who seemed to be about to walk out. “Threntisn is right. If we try this, we could all be lost in the Archive—and wife an ephemeral, there’s hardly any chance of success.”
One of the darker indigo, thus older, women scoffed, “Who told you pioneering would be safe! Ephemerals have been doing it for millennia, without complaining of the risks. What are you, a bunch of duomorphs? Can’t you see we need Jindigar?” Her eyes stopped on Krinata, and she shifted languages. “Do you know what the dangers are? What it could be like to be lost in such a large Archive?”
“Not exactly, but I’m willing to risk my life—which is not the same,” she granted, “as you risking yours.” Under questioning she told them all she remembered of her last brush with the Archive, the banishing of the Desdinda Loop, ending, “And I died with Takora—I really thought I was dead until I woke up.” —and found Jindigar dead. “I’m still not sure what was real and what wasn’t. I’m not sure how Frey died.”
“We’ll have to go through that with Jindigar,” added Darllanyu. “Find out exactly how Frey died.”
Find out that I killed him? She swallowed and knew she’d do even that public penance to revive Jindigar. Will they label me zunre-killer and shun us both?
Darllanyu cut through a general dissension, saying, “Jindigar is in crisis. Krinata came to help him, even though she doesn’t need to grieve Frey to survive this. I won’t let her stand alone! I’ll grieve with them!”
Krinata was sure Jindigar’s tremors were increasing, his whole nervous system in chaos. She pled with one of those still kneeling beside him. “Can’t you do something?”
“He’s had all the medication we dare use. At least it stopped the convulsions.”
Zannesu came across to Darllanyu, saying, “And I’ll grieve with them.”
That started a general movement as one and then another rose and came 4o Darllanyu, saying things like, “I don’t approve of him, but I can’t desert him for bad judgment.”
And, “He’s our only priest after all.” Or, “I’ll never balance him, but we can’t allow him to die.”
Finally eight people stood with Darllanyu, including those who’d knelt beside Jindigar, trying to help him.
Then her heart sank as the leader confronted them. “Ten of you? It’s much too dangerous. This community can’t afford to lose so many. I can’t permit it.”
Krinata loosed Jindigar’s knotted fingers and stood up, indignation welling up as she drew breath. A silence fell that let them hear every shovel of dirt pitched by the gardeners, every echoing hammer blow from far outside the stockade, and every cry of the half-tamed beasts of burden.
“It says there”—Krinata pointed to the portal where the artisan had ceased carving—“Fidelity is a Law of Nature. That’s carved over the lightning symbol of Aliom. The carving’s not even finished yet, and you’re all acting as if familiarity had blinded you to the real meaning!
“Jindigar opened my eyes to the Me force connecting all living things, and I learned that as created beings we’re much safer using created implements, rather than daring to manipulate the force represented by the lightning. But twice Jindigar has Inverted to save lives, seeing how the life force running in him belonged to all. Twice he survived it because he was right. If you reward his fidelity with your cowardly betrayal, then by your own law—by the very Law of Nature you believe is destroying the Squadron as it fights this planet—it is you who will suffer, not nun!”
She hadn’t known she’d ever had such thoughts, but just for that instant she’d understood their alien viewpoint and framed the thought easily in their own language. When she finished, a breathless silence fell.
The old woman said, from her seat, “Jindigar’s always been eccentric, but he fears Inversion as much as any of us. I think Lady Zavaronne represents one of his more resounding coups. At least, / will grieve with her.” She came to Krinata. “If she will permit?”
“If numbers help, I’d welcome anyone.”
There was a silent shuffle as more came to Darllanyu. Finally only a handful clustered around the leader, who said, “This is irresponsible. Come, at least some of us must survive to transmit Aliom.” He turned to the door, taking his musical instrument with him. A man and a woman deserted his group for Jindigar’s, and only five left the building.
Darllanyu knelt beside Jindigar, putting one hand to his forehead. Krinata said, “Do you all know he’s never considered violating his priesthood to become a Historian? He fought Grisnilter until it would have been a violation not to take the Archive.” And then she noticed that Threntisn had remained, standing a little apart, listening.
The Historian came to look down at the trembling form amid the blankets. “I thought to remain to Archive the end of this matter, but—” He scanned the group, weighing them each, and Krinata saw the lines of tension around his eyes. “May I join you? I need to grieve my son.”
“Grieving is not a private matter,” answered Darllanyu.
“But I won’t touch Jindigar—or what’s left of Grisnilter’s Archive.”
“Your choice,” agreed Darllanyu. “Now let’s get Jindigar over to the fire, and somebody get his whule.” There was a general shuffling as several of them moved Jindigar, then placed Krinata beside him, his whule on her other side. She grasped his trembling hands again.
In moments they were all settled in the circle around the fire, Darllanyu poking it up to a blaze while Zannesu stacked on more logs and kindling, muttering how the open roof was going to make this cold work.
The late afternoon sun had abandoned the angle into the building, so they sat in shadow. Darllanyu took the place near the door, opposite Jindigar, and put a pipe to her lips, producing a high, bittersweet note. Krinata heard a general wail rise up outside, and the sounds of work ceased.
Darllanyu piped a simple melody, ending in t
hat same poignant note, and Krinata sensed that those outside had moved away. Other instruments joined now, and the music began to fill the room, a tangible substance.
It wasn’t the same as Jindigar had played in the small canyon that night near the river. But it opened vistas and brought instant tears to her eyes with the solemn finality of the dirge reserved for the Emperor, and Kings, representing an irrevocable turning of the times and seasons. There was no going back, no second chance. The clarion voice of Darllanyu’s pipe called out over the strings, good-bye to the souls departed, a day and a life ended, a season and a generation turning.
She’d never heard the melody before, yet instantly it drew to mind all the deaths that had ever touched her life, all the people gone forever. Her eyes and nose were running as the last note died away to a silence that seemed now to grip the entire community around them.
Halfway around the circle, Threntisn sat tailor-fashion, eyeing Krinata as if surrendering to an inevitable fate. On Jindigar’s other side Zannesu knelt, hands on his knees, eyes lowered. As the silence stretched he glanced expectantly at Krinata. She blinked, sniffed, and queried with an eyebrow. He leaned over and hissed, “Duad!”
“I can’t!” Sudden fear lanced through her. They expected something she couldn’t do. “Jindigar always did it! I don’t know how I did it when—” But even so, I couldn’t! It felt as if she’d been asked to thrust a recently burned hand into an open flame.
He took her hands and placed them on Jindigar’s face. “Lean into his inner vision. Follow aliom in. What a triad has lost, the duad must grieve. Must, Krinata. We can’t do it without you.”
She remembered how the river gorge had intimidated her, but she’d whipped it. What was the Archive but another kind of void? Oh, Takora, where are you when I need you? “I don’t know how!”
Zannesu appealed to Darllanyu, who replied by sounding another note on her pipe. A murmur rippled around the circle, then Threntisn nodded and moved closer to the fire, the circle closing behind him. The music picked up, filling the dusky shadows with eerie life. Threntisn took two long-handled paddles of some reflective material and thrust then-flat ends into the fire, flipping them over rhythmically, causing a whirling pattern of lights to dance above the fire.
To Krinata’s heightened senses it seemed that the sparks of light coalesced into a form, wavering in the heat shimmer above the fire—Prey’s face!
No! She’d felt him dissolve. He was dead. He couldn’t be here—completing the triad. But he was there, tangible to her mind. The Jindigar-Frey axis called to her—and suddenly she was in triad again.
NINE
Grieving Is Not a Private Thing
Frey screamed, voice and mind echoing hollowly. This is what it’s like to be raped. This is what drove Desdinda beyond help, he thought as his awareness constricted, chipped away by the monstrous, alien mind that forced him into contact with Desdinda. Her searing hatred raced through his nerves like burning oil, etching channels of fire that consumed more of him. He felt himself wrapped around himself, squeezed to a point of nothingness, / can’t! he begged, Let me go! I can’t!
But the monstrous, ancient multimind was unmoved. He was a specimen, exotic, fascinating, but his individual pain and fate meant nothing to them. His zunre’s frantic pleas meant nothing to them. All Jindigar’s might was nothing; all Krinata’s passionate pleas were nothing. Death meant little to them, for they weren’t truly individuals.
He wept for Jindigar’s pain at the loss of a student, crying out in his last moment, “This’s not your doing, Jindigar. I wanted to learn too much, too fast. Save Krinata!” Torn to shreds by pain, he dwindled to nothing and was gone.
Krinata, stunned by the sheets of fiery pain, clung to the , triad bond to the very moment of its snapping, certain that she would be sucked into dissolution/death too. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
She sensed presences around her, fleeing the pain like particles flying from a disintegrating nucleus. But she clung, determined to accept the fate she’d brought on her zunre. She felt a touch—a light, nap-skinned whisper.
//Krinata?//
She was clinging now to a cold, hard, faceted pinnacle, her hands touching– //Jindigar!//
Jindigar clung to the other side of the chipped flint pinnacle, his hands barely able to reach hers. Around them was blackness, a starless void. She knew, with his knowledge, that in the pit below was the Archive. They clung to the highest apex of his memory, but it didn’t reach to outside reality. The memory between them, tapering up to a sharp point, every facet lacerating their flesh, was the memory of Prey’s death.
He knew, with her memory, why her human pride had insisted she deal with Desdinda alone, and though that decision was far down this pinnacle, it wasn’t the base, for knowing her character, he should have predicted her behavior. Always she’d coped with her problems without leaning. She was independent, and thus what she did, felt, and decided didn’t have to affect everyone around her.
She knew, with his sense of Purpose behind the Laws of Nature, that her independence was an illusion arising from the ephemeral existence in which all memory was lost at each Renewing Birth. Any Dushau could see that everything was a manifestation of the energy represented by the flicker-flash of the lightning bolt. Living and nonliving were all part of one fabric. Every thought and feeling, conscious and unconscious, registered permanently on this substrata, which supported all manifestation and affected all reality.
She defended herself against this idea, unable to face the weight of responsibility for every tiny feeling she’d ever had, every moment wasted indulging in the simpleminded diversions she mistook for pleasure. The abyss below held less terror than this dread truth.
Anxiety rising, she thought, We can’t stay here, at the point of Prey’s death! She shinnied around the pinnacle, grabbing his hand in both of hers, and tore him off his perch, sending them both into a swan dive toward the abyss.
Only after it was done did she remember her fear of emptiness. But Grisnilter taught me about this. It should be easy. She peered with eyes that saw above her head and below, to left and to right, all at once, Dushau eyes, normal eyes. She felt with the nap of her skin sensitive to a thousand signals from her environment. She heard with twice her audible range. She remembered deep into the past and could see patterns imperceptible from the perspective of an ephemeral.
//There!// she told Jindigar. //An unSealed Gate!// Gleaming in the darkness, a tesseract form warped into other dimensions. Faceted sides twirled, showing scenes from within, like windows enticing the unwary. To enter by any of those scenes was certain death, for it would lead them only into the vortex at the center of the Archive, the point of contact with Infinity, the Gateway to Dissolution, the Archive’s Eye. A Sealed Archive was a self-contained maze with no exit—but no entry, either. A partially unSealed Archive was a deadly trap for those lacking the key. No key would work on a Tampered, Mai-edited, or Distorted Archive. Such an Archive was an abomination capable of closing the Gate to Completion for-an entire generation.
//No!// He pulled away from her grasp, hand trembling with fear. //Takora! No! We mustn’t Tamper– //
//Not to Tamper! We can’t get out through Frey, because he ended inside. We have to search for a contact point. There must be several that anchor the Archive to you.//
The logic was impeccable, but still he resisted with the stubbornness of the superstitious. A horrifying thought occurred to her. //You haven’t dared to interact with that Archive, have you?//
//No! I swear it, Takora, by my Oaths and Offices!//
She believed him. //Then there’s no prob– //
They were almost at the unSealed Gate, a black panel amid the brightly colored ones. At the last minute, before they breasted the Gate, Jindigar screamed, //No! I swore to Grisnilter—I’ll take the Archive to Dissolution rather than risk an alteration!//
He wrenched and twisted, pitching them into a panel -showing a lavishly appointed,
royal sickroom.
An old, old human woman lay shriveled and nearly invisible among sumptuous covers on a bed sheltered from drafts by a gorgeously embroidered canopy, Jindigar’s crest on the Dushaun colors. The room was close and humid, yet the old woman complained bitterly of the chill.
Jindigar, trembling visibly, adjusted the thermal currents for her. He still glowed with the vital luminosity of Renewal, the brimming energy of returning youth. He had decades yet to go. Grisnilter knew now how integral the human had become to Jindigar’s Renewal. Her death would leave a gaping hole to be filled by scar, leaving the youth handicapped when he finally came for Historian’s training. A scar acquired mid-Renewal. How will I ever train him around that? But he’s too talented to abandon.
“Ontarrah, you won’t suffer long now,” said Jindigar.
“You shouldn’t have come. I never wanted you to see me like this. You must remember me forever young as you are.”
“Not forever, Ontarrah—there’s only a minor discrepancy between our lifespans.”
“I believed that once. I was wrong.”
Jindigar edged onto the bed and took one wandering, skeletal hand in his.
She smiled up at him, a spark of youth in her eyes, her teeth pearly, her hair ashen blond, but her skin old beyond numbering the years. “If I hadn’t decided to chase you all the way to Dushaun, I’d have taken my own life long ago.
I know that now, but I also know I’m leaving you to tens of lifetimes longer than I’d have faced. I was selfish, Jindigar. That’s no way to Completion.”
Eyes bright, he whispered, “I pay the price of your company these years gladly.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead gently as her eyes closed. He stayed that way a long moment, waiting for Ontarrah to draw another breath. Then he sat up, and Grisnilter heard him whisper, “I loved you. I hope you knew that. I hope it helped.”
When at long last he rose and turned, his face showed the unmitigated desolation possible only in Renewal. His wife was behind him, and both their children. The moment of payment was upon him, and Grisnilter felt he should leave, his job as Recorder completed with the death of the first ephemeral to join a Renewing household.
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