Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal Page 12

  He picked up his drink and closed his eyes and broke that gaze, focusing on the cold and wet of the drink.

  The Lost One knew Rho’s weaknesses because a fragment of It was in him, as in all other living beings. It knew his own desires could be made to betray him into a mad quest across the stars, away from something else he ought to be doing.

  But what?

  There was no way for Rho to tell. The Lost Aethyr could step in and out of the flow of time as it pleased, see his possible future timeline, and act as it wished to divert him from that course.

  Rho was immediately certain that the course in question was important. And I’m getting ready to go home, but it doesn’t want me to do that. It wants me to run away.

  Why?

  There was no way to tell. But regardless of that, the stubbornness that his mother used to despair of when he was little rose up in Rho now in full force. The stars called him, and he hungered to follow that call, so much. More than almost anything.

  …Almost.

  Because he wasn’t going to do it. Not if the Lost One wants me to!

  Rho now realized, though, why he and the other wizards had had so little trouble with their stellar intervention. It was meant to be easy.

  And that’s what was bothering me about the star. Peklimut tried to tell us that something was wrong. Something had tampered with it in preparation for this…

  For me being here.

  Rho was sure, though, that he wasn’t meant to know that. He was meant to have had an exciting victory (which he’d had). He was meant to feel that endless more work of that kind lay out among the worlds away from Wellakh, waiting for him. And doubtless there actually is such work. The Lost One tells truth along with Its lie to make the lie stronger.

  But now I see my Challenge. And its nature was simple.

  Seem to do the Lost Aethyr’s will… but do something else instead.

  If only he could work out just what! …And quickly. For thoughtful attention rested on him right now from across the little table, waiting to see how he would answer.

  Rho had another long pull at his drink, and while he was drinking, listened hard. The Aethyrs he’d had a little practice listening to earlier had quieted now to a sort of murmur of background diagnostics, waiting for him to ask for something specific. But Rho paid them no mind, for what he was trying to catch now was the whisper of that one that he’d found hardest to hear: the one that seemed to suggest more sometimes with its silences than with words.

  It was markedly silent now.

  Rho put his drink container down and took a breath, doing his best to look thoughtful. Not that he wasn’t thoughtful: but he very much wanted to look as if he was being thoughtful about the wrong things. Wrong for me, at least.

  “It’s strange to say this,” he said to Mevseh, “but I think you’re right. Who’ll ever hear of me if I stay at home on my homeworld? One star, quiet now but watched constantly… It’s not exactly a pathway to excitement or fame, is it?”

  “I guess it doesn’t really sound like it,” said Avseh.

  Rho pushed his drink aside. “But the Lost Aethyr is as easy to find on other worlds as on my own. Why not take the opportunity?” He gazed up toward the ceiling as if into that blazing day he’d seen above. “There are other people at home who could do the work I do. I could go out on my own… take the paladin’s way along the High Road. It didn’t ever seem possible before…”

  “Don’t you think it’ll be dangerous?” Avseh said.

  “It might be,” Rho said softly. “But I can hardly let that stop me. It’s not as if the Aethyrs have ever promised any wizard safety when they’re out on errantry.” He swallowed. “Anyway, no one at home would be surprised if I vanished now that wizardry has come to me. I’ve always dreamed of battling the Lone Aethyr on its own ground, out there…” He looked up again.

  “But that’s what they’re always saying you’re supposed to do,” Mevseh said. “Follow your dreams…!”

  Rho nodded sadly. “I need a little time to think how to go about this,” he said. “Before I… do what I have to. Whatever that may be.”

  The two clone-sisters looked at him, and Avseh was just opening her mouth to say something when there came a soft chime, and the two of them glanced at each other. “Is that yours?”

  “No, mine, I think—”

  Mevseh looked up into the air, and a spill of text spun itself out across a stripe of color floating in front of the two young women. “Oh, look, after all these delays what do they do now but call the gate early,” Avseh said. “We’ve got to go…”

  They stood up, and Rho stood with them. “And you’re just going to go too?” Mevseh said, actually sounding a little forlorn.

  Rho concentrated on keeping his true thoughts away from his face and his body, even away from showing too obviously in his mind.

  “I think I must,” he said very slowly, as if in struggle. “If my family learn that I’m here, who knows, they might prevail on Crossings security to send me back.”

  “Then you should go now,” said Mevseh said. “Before anyone can stop you from following that dream!”

  “Yes,” he said after a moment, heavily. Then as if coming back to the courtesies of the moment, he nodded and bowed slightly to them. “Go well,” he said. “And a good return to your home!”

  “You helped that happen,” Avseh said. “We’ll never forget you…”

  And they started off down the concourse. But as they went, Mevseh looked back at Rho… that thoughtful look again.

  Rho swallowed. Overshadowed, he thought, with that same sense of touching a live powerguide. To act as if he recognized that state was one thing. To say it in the clear to oneself—thereby making it to some extent real— was quite another, for it ruled out any possibility other than the Lone Aethyr Itself being here to tempt him.

  He could have laughed at himself if he’d dared, and it would have been most ironic laughter. Did I desire more danger in my Challenge? Then someone on one side or another of the divide has heard me.

  Rho quickly bowed his head and turned away, standing for a few moments just gazing down unseeing at the tabletop.

  The logistics of the situation, though frightening, were also interesting. To interfere properly with a living being, the Lone Aethyr (so wizardry lore maintained) had to temporarily enter into spacetime and be subject to its laws and limitations. If It was presently indwelling to some extent in the body of an Archaint (and which of them? I think Mevseh but I could be wrong…), that meant It presently possessed at least some level of telepathic sensitivity… but not necessarily enough to read the depths of Rho’s mind.

  In any case it was smart to take the most rigorous precautions he could manage quickly, while he laid his plans. And what are my present power levels for if not the exigencies of Challenge?

  Not that what Rho had now to do would be easy. His mind was a whirl of frustration and confusion and anger and fear. But he had both talent and training in the art of focus, and had been taught by a master. If you are in the midst of dealing with the inside of a star, my son, no matter how badly you might want to, you do not sneeze...

  The irony, though, remained painful. Rho had desired his Challenge to be a matter of terror and wonder, worth singing about. But mostly he felt like cursing. That art his mother had been the one to teach him, and though he wanted so much to indulge it now, he dared not. Later he would indulge himself with some of his mother’s favorite invective, for good example was always worth following; and the cursing of Miril am Miril could raise welts on a stone wall even without wizardry.

  Right now, though, what mattered was for Rho to get himself into a protected place where he could think. He had only a little time to choose a course of action and enact it.

  As he considered how to do this, a memory arose into Rho’s mind as if from a great depth, and speaking seemingly in his father’s voice. In doing what you must, fear not sometimes to do what it seems It wants you to do. But at a
ll costs, do so in such a way as to produce a different outcome than the one It desires.

  And with those words came an image. In the back of Rho’s mind he found himself gazing at something his father had shown him pictures of when he was very small: the disk of Thahit, all unstained, like a bright shield of bronze without a single spot.

  Slowly Rho’s eyes opened again, and he gazed unseeing for some moments into the air in front of him.

  Then he turned and went to the drinks kiosk not far away.

  The Rirhait tending it came over to him as Rho leaned over the counter, gazing thoughtfully down at the menu flowing past under the surface. “What’s your pleasure, gentlebeing?” it said.

  Rho thought about that. Finally, “Cousin,” he said, “I need a great deal of something to drink with this chemical in it.” And he pinched his Aethyr into visibility so that it could display for the Rirhait a diagram of the compound he meant.

  The being focused a fair number of its eyes on what was displayed. After a moment it said something that sounded a great deal like “Wau”, and wreathed its eyes at him. “All right. What you want is fesh. How much?”

  Rho pinched the Aethyr again and got it to show the Rirhait a suggested dosage.

  “Wau,” it said again, examining some readout of its own behind the counter and plainly investigating Rho’s physiology to make sure what it was about to give him would be safe. “All right, gentle customer. However, please note: your eyes’ll knot themselves right up if you try to have two.”

  Rho could only laugh at that. “One will be enough,” he said, “or nothing will.”

  “Here, or at the table?”

  Normally he’d have said At the table, please. But right now, irrationally, he didn’t care to be alone. “Here.”

  A tall round stool promptly grew up out of the floor next to him. Rho sat himself down on it and waited patiently for the Rirhait to produce the drink from the the Crossings’ master comestibles-supply system. When it arrived, sludgy-colored in a tall thin glass, Rho reached for it eagerly and took a big gulp.

  His eyes almost rolled back in his head as he felt the first effects of the vital chemical almost instantly. For a while, he thought, I am going to be very, very awake.

  And with the initial jolt of the chemical through his system, Rho irrationally began to hope. Possibilities were already stirring at the back of his mind. He didn’t dare start thinking them through yet. But one way or another I am of the Princes’ line of Seriv, and if I must fail I will do it standing on my feet and doing my best! That will be worth singing about after I’m dead, if nothing else…

  Rho had another long drink of the fesh. It tasted truly awful, but he was getting more alert every second. That was good, because he was going to need alertness now more than he ever had before.

  He glanced up at the Rirhait, which was leaning over the counter and gazing idly up the concourse with some of its eyes. At his glance, a few of them looked back at Rho. “I might seem for a short time to be meditating,” Rho said.

  A ripple of legs went down the Rirhait that Rho read as its own version of a shrug. “I’ve seen it before,” it said. “If you don’t want anyone bothering you, I’ll keep an eye out.”

  Rho couldn’t help it: he had to laugh. “Thank you.”

  The Rirhait wreathed some eyes at him and turned most of its attention back to the concourse.

  Rho breathed out, pinched his Aethyr into presence again and gazed into that blazing little core of starfire until his eyes began to water.

  Is it possible for you to create a space around me through which my thoughts cannot be overheard even by senior-dimensional entities?

  Yes. Warning: such spaces can only be maintained for short periods, and the power outlay is considerable.

  Is it possible to assemble a wizardry and enact it from inside such a safe space?

  Yes. Again, power outlay warning.

  All right. As regards the safe space: enable.

  ***

  Nothing visible happened around him, but Rho was amazed at the total silence that fell all around. The never-entirely-silent din of the Crossings, all the sound of every kind of creature in the Worlds going about its business, was completely absent now. It was like a hint of how things might have sounded in the depths of time when the Most Central had been about to start work.

  But he had little time to spend considering this wonder, as he could already feel the power running out of him in a slow steady stream, like water running inexorably downhill. Rho let his eyes drop mostly closed, so that almost all of his attention was directed toward the shadowy space inside of him where the immaterial image of his Aethyr hung in the emptiness, still as some distant star.

  He began marshaling his thoughts the way he would have when he was about to present his royal father with a project to run in the simulator. Starting position: plan of action: ways and means.

  The starting position was easily stated. Rho had been tempted by the Lost Aethyr, overshadowing the being Mevseh in one of Its many aspects—that of the Interlocutor, Rho thought, who had come to Wellakh in the time of the Choice long ago. There It sat, right across from me, looking at me out of a mortal’s eyes, asking me questions the way the legend says It asked them of the first Wellakhit and the first Wellakhit wizards.

  Having so been tempted, I must be seen to have fallen. For if I come out of this space and reject the temptation, my whole world will very likely suffer. The Lone Aethyr’s attention was for the moment focused on him, waiting to see what Rho would do. If he went home, It would very likely follow him to watch the results of Its work. And I have no desire to have its attention turned back to Thahit once more. Or Wellakh’s people, or my parents.

  Nevertheless, It having tempted me, the temptation must now not only pay off, but be seen to pay off.

  Not that the prospect of the possible future It had suggested to him did not possess terrible strength, even now. That freedom, that power, the excitement of that life… But Rho shied away from considering that too closely. The only thing standing between his will and the Lost One’s at present was a short-term overdosage of a common Wellakhit stimulant chemical, and the Aethyrs’ aid… assuming any of them were paying attention to the Challenge of a single wizard in the depths of a relatively large galaxy.

  So never mind that, Rho thought. Time to consider ways and means.

  He would need a course of action that was audacious enough not to be readily predictable. And considering that, some possibilities had begun to present themselves.

  The Lost One is proud, Rho thought. Everyone knows that. And in a paradox, to see another’s pride subverted by Its own actions is therefore one of Its great joys. Therefore what action I take must be shaped by that outcome. I must be seen to have had my own pride broken… and to be doing Its will rather than mine.

  He considered the paths that seemed to be forking away from him and this moment in time. In one of them, he would reject the temptation and go back home to Wellakh, followed close behind by the Lost One’s anger and enmity at having resisted It.

  In the other, Rho would have to seem to accept the role it was offering him, that of a wandering paladin-wizard. He would go out among the worlds and do a certain amount of good in the service of the Aethyrs. But this subterfuge would mean he dared not return to Wellakh again for a long time, if indeed ever. And regardless of his taking this path willingly and as a ruse, doing so would still permanently divert from that other path that the Lost Aethyr somehow saw ahead of him and did not want him to tread. And that other path almost certainly leads to something the Bright Aethyrs want me to do for the worlds’ good.

  There in the darkness—and also sitting there at the kiosk— Rho dropped his head into his hands for a moment in despair.

  But what can I do? There’s no way out of this. I can’t walk both paths. I can’t be a paladin and go home. If I go home, I risk my star, my world, my family. If I go out on the High Road forever, I do the Lost One’s will and… an
d probably die out there alone.

  For a moment anger and pain flashed alive in him. Haven’t I been long enough alone?! His eyes began to prickle.

  But he heard an answer, then. His own voice in memory, speaking to imminent tears: No.

  And as for dying alone: No dying. I forbid it.

  Rho wanted to laugh at himself. Such big words. Now he knew the real size of them.

  Except… did he?

  He looked again at the statement he hadn’t really questioned before.

  I can’t do both.

  Without warning, an answer floated up to him from such an unexpected source, such an inappropriate one: yet another memory.

  I want those.

  You can have one or the other, his queenly mother said. Not both.

  Why not? I am a Prince! Of course I can have both!

  He could still hear her laughter, loving and amused. At the time it had infuriated him. Now it just made Rho smile. And then he realized that he might have been putting the wrong construction on the concept.

  Not ‘why can’t I have both’, but how can I have both!

  Rho opened his eyes and had another drink of the fesh. He shivered all over as another jolt of the stuff went down his throat. It was starting to make him shake a little bit.

  The Rirhait looked at him with a few spare eyes. Rho shook his head. “Sweet Aethyrs but that’s terrible,” he said.

  “That’s what I hear,” it said, and went back to fiddling with the kiosk’s data systems.

  Rho closed his eyes again. Moments were running over him still like water running downward, but he thought he might be onto something. Both, he thought. Both. Not one outcome, not one path… but two.

  Two!

  Rho imagined himself once more in the darkness with the Aethyr hanging there shining. I need assistance in the construction of a spell, he said, as the required level of complexity is beyond my present competence.

  Assistance is available. And Rho breathed out in relief, because otherwise he knew what he intended would be impossible. Describe the wizardry, please.

  All the voices of the Aethyr seemed to be working in chorus now, as if for some reason unusually intent on what he was doing. After getting used to their multiplicity up to this point, the effect was a little strange, a little unnerving… but once more Rho reminded himself that at the moment he didn’t have leisure to indulge in overanalysis.