by Greg Curtis
“No. Stay for a moment, please.” Baen asked as he put his bowl down on the table beside him, a thousand confused thoughts running through his tired brain. And one question he suddenly needed an answer to.
“Great Uncle,' he called out. “You already know the question I am about to ask.” And he knew it was true, because in a little while he planned on asking his great uncle that question. “What's the answer?”
“There is no answer you annoying dimwit! Yes your death would harm me, throw my world into chaos. But that doesn't mean I don't care. That I wouldn't be hurt!” He grumbled at him angrily, clearly annoyed by the question. It offended his honour.
Baen meanwhile smiled, because his great uncle had actually answered two questions, though he quite possibly didn't realise it. The first was simply that his death would have a profound effect on Mortimer. Not because of grief and loss. But because everything he remembered of their future together would have to change. His memories would change. And for a time he would be broken.
But the second was perhaps even more vital. His knowledge of the future was limited. He could only remember the part of it that affected him. And as it did so. He was literally remembering his life. And like all memories, only those things that directly impacted on his future, were really remembered. Ask anyone about important matters in the realm that had changed and they could probably give you a few sentences. But ask them about their nearest and dearest and they could likely write a book of their time together!
The only thing that mattered though, was that a seer's future memories, which were exactly like all their others, could change in a heartbeat.
Baen's question and the answer affected the future profoundly, because it told him the shape of the war. And they were in a war he now knew. But his great uncle only understood the part of it that affected him directly. The slight to his honour and decency.
“You can't afford change, can you?”
“I can change things, but only a little. Things have their own pattern. Their own way of unfolding. And when you do try to change things, it hurts. It scrambles things. You have to let them run their own course. Satisfied child?”
“Yes,” Baen replied, understanding for the first time exactly what his great uncle was trying to tell him. And more importantly he understood what it meant. Why it was a disaster. “By the Lady, yes! Thank you!”
“Baen?” Nyri looked concerned.
“He's not a seer!” Baen let the confused mess of thoughts spill out as he tried to put them together into something that made sense. And then he turned to her and stared her straight in the eyes. “The others are the same as Mortimer, aren't they?”
“They're all difficult,” she answered him, not understanding what he meant.
“Of course they are!” She had told him enough. Others had told him the same thing before, but he simply hadn't listened. “They're not seers either!”
His great uncle didn't see the future at all. He lived in it at the same time that he lived in the present. In fact he knew his entire life from birth to death. And the one thing he could never afford to do, was change it. He was doomed to having to live his entire life according to how he remembered it. He was living in a prison. That wasn't a gift – that was a curse.
But it was worse than that. His prison didn't have walls. He could change things. But if he did, if he changed anything in the world that would affect him in the future he changed himself. All his memories were altered. If you changed your memories, you became someone else. It was like dying and being reborn. Every time you changed something.
He knew first hand what it was like to live in a world of confusion where you didn't remember who you were. It was a nightmare. Even now that he was recovering, it frightened him. He had moments when he knew nothing but that terrible feeling of being lost. Not knowing who he was. He would do anything not to go through that again.
And that was what Great Uncle Mortimer lived with all the time. It was what all the seers lived with. They were completely impotent! Able to change anything. Desperate not to.
All at once what should have been the most powerful gift in the world became the most difficult to use. Almost useless in fact. No wonder his great uncle was so cranky! He was living in hell!
But then what happened if the future they were destined to live, was horrible? What if like the chicken they saw themselves heading for the chopping block? Did they still make that walk? Or did they fight? Try and change things no matter what it cost them?
Of course they fought! Anybody would. And when they did that, anything could happen. They could change the world! No, he realised! They would change the world!
“You said your seers have become more challenging?” He was finally starting to understand what was happening. Why so many people were doing things that didn't make any sense.
“They cannot see so clearly and what they see keeps changing. They are becoming lost.”
More correctly Baen realised, they were becoming desperate. The future was changing. Their memories of it were being shredded. Their very lives were being torn apart.
So what would they do to stop that happening? How far would they go? In fact how far were they going? Dariya had told him only the previous day that some of those who had fled to G'lorenvale had fled back claiming they had been imprisoned for no reason. Much as he had been. And Nyri had told him several times over the previous days that the Fae in the Missions were not hearing from their loved ones anymore. Something was happening in the Realm of the Fae. But he'd been too fixated on his own suffering to pay it any attention. Suddenly he had to. Not least because it centred on him.
They'd abducted him. Locked him up. Broken his mind and shattered his identity for a while. And everyone kept telling him that the priests shouldn't have done it. That it was wrong. And behind their denials and confusion was a simple question – why? Why had they done that? If he was an enemy why not just kill him? Except that the priests wouldn't do that. They had truly believed he was tainted with the Reaver's evil. Despite having found nothing. Despite having seen the enchantment in the book he'd taken it from.
Which could only mean that someone had persuaded them to do it. Someone had lied to them. Manipulated them. Played them like puppets.
Someone whose intention had always been to shatter his mind. Because in doing so, he or she had stopped him working on his plans to stop the King's madness. Because he wasn't important enough in his own right for someone to want to stop. His importance lay in what he was doing.
Ironically in doing so, they'd made it possible for him to understand what was happening to the seers. So that he could change things! Unintended consequences! It was so obvious. If you were a seer living in the future as well as the present, you knew what would happen. You could remember what changes led to what events. And then assuming you were willing to endure the agony, you could change them. But you couldn't know everything that would result from what you changed.
He wasn't an enemy after all, Baen realised. Not to whoever had done this to him. He was a piece on a board game! And he didn't even know who the players were. Only that they were desperate. Trying to keep their lives from being shredded. And they couldn't see the outcomes of all their moves.
The question was, what was he supposed to do? He didn't know. But he did know what he wanted to do – tell everyone. And he guessed that whoever had arranged for him to be tortured wouldn't want that. And whatever was happening in the Hallows, the reason the Trading Mission couldn't speak with their home, was probably an attempt to stop what he'd learned from getting back.
“You have a problem!” He told Nyri. And then he stood up, hurriedly knowing what he had to do, and that others would know it too and want to stop him. Others who knew not only what he would try and do but where and when. “We need to go to your Mission. And we need to be armed!”
“Great Uncle?” He turned to Mortimer.
“I stay here,” his great uncle told him.
“As you must. An
d I tell you about it later.” Baen understood that. His great uncle had to remain where he was because that was what he remembered doing. But more than that, he remembered him being alive in the future telling him what had happened. If he changed what he remembered doing, that could change Baen's fate. If Baen died, Great Uncle Mortimer's life got shredded. All his future memories of his life with him, got replaced. Mortimer had been born in the teeth of a lifelong trap, and it was a truly devious one. He could not escape it. But his enemy had been born in the same trap. Now some of the teeth were about to close on one of them. And his enemy was desperately trying to avoid them.
“Baen?” Nyri looked uncertain.
“I'll meet you on the ground floor. Grab Dariya too. And tell her to bring her weapons. I'll explain then.”
Five minutes later they were all standing in the store front. Both Nyri and Dariya though were clearly confused. Unfortunately, Baen knew even as he walked to the front door with his staff in hand, that his answers to their questions would not help. But he had to try.
“All right,” he told them as they stepped into the forest by his front door. “This is going to sound like madness – because it is madness. But it's also what's happening.”
“Nyri, you heard Great Uncle Mortimer. He can see the future, but he can't change it. He can't afford to. That changes him. It's like taking a scalpel to your own brain. You would have to be completely desperate to even consider such a thing. But I think someone out there is completely desperate. A seer. Maybe many seers.”
He stepped out in front of them and cast his first defensive wards, wondering as he did so, whether whoever they were up against, could see what he was casting. He doubted it. whoever it was the seer wasn't with them and no one else surely would have been able to tell him or her the exact details of what wards he'd cast. Besides, if his great uncle remembered him being alive in the future, this was at least supposed to work. Or it would until someone changed it.
“Desperate?”
“One or more seers have seen their own death – or some other fate they can't stand. Something so terrible that they would rather cut out pieces of their own brains than go through it. They’ve remembered it in the future and are trying to stop it happening. So the seer or seers have set about changing it. But each change leads to others. And some of those changes affect other seers.”
“So –?”
“So this has always been a battle of seers,” he answered Nyri even before she finished her question. “Something has gone very wrong for one or more of them, and they're busy changing the future, no matter how badly it hurts them. But each change they make affects other seers, and those seers are fighting back to protect their own future selves. Everything is in flux.”
“Like any litigant whoever began this is sacrificing his or her skin in the desperate hope of saving his bones. But the changes being made threaten other seers and they're now desperately trying to save their own bones. They're probably half out of their minds too. And they're all doing it by pushing and nudging and changing events to bring about the desired outcome. Small changes leading to large ones. And large ones are having serious consequences.”
“You have proof? Or better yet a name?” Nyri wasn't going to simply accept what he was telling her. And Dariya looked dubious too.
“I have a story. One that only now makes sense.”
“Let’s go back to the beginning. Think about your uncle, Dariya. He launched an attack on the Fae that made no sense. No matter what he told you, he didn't need the Fae to make his potions. So what was the purpose?” He stepped carefully around a low hanging branch and then checked carefully to see if anyone was ahead. Lying in wait.
“What if it wasn't his purpose at all?”
“You think it was Estor's?” Dariya asked. “That she's behind this?”
“No. She's not a seer. If she was she would never have allowed her gift to be bound. She's an enchanter like me, more or less. But I think she told the Duke he needed to launch the attack. And she used her formidable gifts to make the attack possible. And even before that she told the Duke that he had to tell everyone that he'd killed her. As to why she did it? I think that someone in the Hallows told her she had to. Which is why someone is now making certain that she won't tell anyone who told her what she needed to do. It’s why though she's locked away, I would bet that no one is questioning her.” And the chances were that she would soon be dead if she wasn't already. Or else freed.
“In any case, I think that the someone or someones who were behind the attack, wanted it for the sole purpose of starting a war. A war suited them. The Duke didn't need to abduct those who were taken to crush them into paste and make potions from their bodies. That's just fancy dress, there to conceal the true face of the enemy. The Duke already had the magic he needed, thanks to Estor’s potions. But the story that was spread about how the Fae were going to be used? Grinding people up into potions? That's just a horror story. One calculated to make the people in G'lorenvale angry. The chances are that the papers showing what the Duke planned on doing were deliberately allowed to be stolen. Because it added to the cries for retaliation. And it was the Glade of Grace that was attacked – Illoria. A place of great beauty and peace. A sacred place. Another calculated insult designed to offend.”
“The attack didn't succeed. If it had whoever was behind the scenes pulling the strings would have stopped and we would already be at war. It was probably always a high risk. But our enemy was desperate and something about that attack if it had worked would have saved his or her life. Unfortunately the law of unintended consequences changed things and I got involved and the war failed and the Duke was identified as the perpetrator.”
“What?!” Dariya stared at him.
“In the original future, there was no raid and no chance of a war. I sat on my roof drinking ale and listening to the songs from the glade. And our enemy suffered some terrible fate never even knowing I existed. He then saw a chance to save himself and changed things, and a minor thane like me suddenly came out of nowhere to turn his plans upside down.” It was obvious when you put the events together from the point of view of someone with his great uncle's gift.
“The attack failed. Then the King launched a counter attack against Duke Barnly. Castle Alldrake was levelled. The Duke was no doubt intended to die in the attack. And when he did Grenland would have fallen into chaos as the information about the false claims to the throne was released. But whoever is behind the Duke and Estor, couldn't have that. Estor no doubt gave the Duke the tools to raise those spirits so he could escape. Maybe because she was told to or maybe not. I don't know. So he escaped and that wasn't acceptable to some of the others who are playing this game.”
“Others?”
“Seers.” He told her. “This is all about seers. One change leads to another. And if those changes are big enough, they tear the future selves of all the other seers apart. Leave them lost and confused. And maybe place some of them who had had good safe futures ahead of them, with death looming. So of course, they want to return their futures to how they had been. They strike back.”
“The Duke's attack might have been foiled, but he was still free. A powerful force in the world. As such he was potentially able to change the world and with that the future selves of other seers. So what one seer did, another undid. Or tried to.”
“I think that’s why somebody whispered in the King's ear and I was conscripted. And of course, the seers would know from that future how I would likely respond. I hunted down and allowed the King's soldiers to capture the Duke as they hoped I would.”
“It should have been all over then. The Duke was no longer free, the world would go back to how it should have been? But it didn't. Things were suddenly back on track, but whoever started this chain of events and set the Duke off on his attack was once more looking at a disaster for him or herself. The Duke had to be free.”
“So we get more strings pulled. Someone had already got me conscripted into the
Order – and so then someone else got me booted out of it – probably because they feared I might change things. Meanwhile someone else whispered in the King's ear and he started making all these strange new decrees about those with gifts like me. More importantly, someone told him about the circlet.”
“What?” Daria abruptly asked.
“Oh yeah.” He nodded. “The circlets a part of this. It's another string being pulled. Remember when King Richmond sent his soldiers to attack Castle Alldrake, he had them bring a portable gallows with them. He fully intended to hang his uncle – and damned be whatever trouble his death could cause him. But then we roll forward a few weeks to when the Duke was captured. And suddenly there are interrogations and prisons in his future instead of a gallows. There's talk of a circlet that your mother wore – but which you never saw her with it. And in time people are trying to kill you at the King's commands. All for a circlet you know nothing about. But one that would apparently prove you the rightful Queen.”
