Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal Page 6

  The next thing he knew, he was lying there still staring at the ceiling—except the lighting had changed, so that the designs and tracery above him were even less visible. The doors onto the terrace were dark though his original setting had shut itself off, and from the color of the sky outside he gathered that Thahit was a couple of hours set by now.

  Inside, Rho’s room had come up to evening lighting because its management mechanisms knew there was someone in it. Otherwise nothing had changed... though he did have an odd half memory of some kind of dream in which he had been having a conversation with someone.

  Rho looked around, seeing no sign that his parents had been there. That was normal: they didn't enter here unless he invited them. He'd simply awakened with a snap as if this was one more ordinary day.

  Slowly, the memory of—yesterday? Was it actually yesterday?—slid back into his brain. Rho sighed in slight annoyance at himself. And I just left them there in town like that, he thought. Mother is going to be wondering how I am. If they’re here now, which seems likely, I should go let them know I'm all right.

  Rho levered himself up off his couch, stretched, yawned. He hated falling out with his parents—apologizing afterward was always so awkward. I must think how to do that this time…

  His stomach growled, interrupting his thought. And that’s something else, he thought. You didn’t have much to eat yesterday. About two slices of barkbread… Rho let out another breath of annoyance at himself, for the Queen had gone to some trouble to get that for him. I ought to do her the courtesy of actually eating a decent amount of it. Knowing his mother, she would have brought it here with her. He could always ring for one of the staff and find out where she'd left it, but—

  Never mind that, he thought. Get out of the rooms, find her, tell her you're sorry for being an idiot— He winced a bit with embarrassment at his own misbehavior, which his mother had done nothing to deserve. I am enough of a disappointment to them, Rho thought, resigned, and here is one more way…

  Well. I can at least make myself presentable before waiting upon them, Rho thought as he headed back for the sanitation suite in his rooms. This at least would be no hardship, for Rho was one of those people who liked getting clean. Though he had had a period during childhood when he was possessed by a burning envy of other Wellakhit children, who were allowed to get dirty and stay that way for more than five minutes at a time, eventually a preference for not smelling bad had supplanted his urges toward grime.

  As a result, the sanitation suite in Rho’s rooms was something of a showplace. Over time he had caused to be added to it nearly every device that Wellakhit civilization had developed to apply hot water to oneself. After some experimentation Rho had finally settled on a large multifunction refreshment cabin made all of glass, containing a ceramic seat where one might sit and be drenched, sprayed, doused, pummeled, misted, or otherwise afflicted by water under pressure.

  Rho waved the cabin’s door open. "All-sides atomizer and heavy spray," he told the cabin, "followed by three minutes of downpour and five minutes of deluge at 310 absolute—"

  The misting began immediately, while he still had the door open. That was extremely peculiar, because Rho had not given the "go" command. He scowled. "No, no," he said, annoyed, "just wait a minute—"

  All the water stopped.

  Rho stood there and stared into the cabin. That wasn't supposed to happen either. Had the machinery suddenly developed a fault? "Now what under the sun—" he muttered in the Speech, one of his father’s preferred imprecations.

  A fat drop of water gathered on the surface of the biggest of the applicators, the one embedded in the ceiling of the cubicle, and fell. That one always did have a tendency to leak, Rho thought as it came down, splashing into the small puddle of water that had already collected in the bottom of the receptacle.

  And the splash said to him, as clearly as words, What's the problem?

  Rho froze stock-still, thunderstruck. He was used to using the Speech for casual conversation with offworlders or with his mother and father. But not with infrastructure, not with—

  There's always some problem with you, isn’t there, the water said, pooling, and sounding rather put out. Get hot, run downhill, it’s enough for most people, but with you, nothing’s ever good enough. So what are you expecting today? A different matter-state, maybe?

  Rho blinked and stared. This is turning into a good tenday for shock, he thought, feeling almost weak, and leaning one-handed against the wall of the cubicle. “What is going on here?” he said under his breath.

  He was not prepared, not in the slightest, for the small, hot spark of light that appeared in front of him, hovering in the air, almost at the end of his nose.

  And it was looking at him.

  From the core of the light it seemed to Rho that he could hear a soft rush of whispers. Something behind the mere physicality of the world was whispering to him in the Speech. And as he listened he realized that the Speech itself was changed. Suddenly it wasn’t just what it had always been to him before, words with meanings, like any other language. Now without warning there was something deeper behind every word he heard, something of far deeper import: the source of meaning, the fount of power, distant but present. Every word sang with the secret.

  The whispering came in many voices, all saying different things, all to different purposes… but they all sounded like him, like Rho thinking. But he had never in his life thought anything with the kind of certainty he heard here in every word. Here in this little core of light he heard answers: all the answers.

  For the first second or so, Rho stared at the fiercely-burning little light with as much astonishment as if it was one of the tiny flying biting shisp that sometimes, even with the protective force fields, managed to get into his rooms in the right weather. But the shock lasted only a second. He knew exactly what this was. Countless times since Rho was small he’d seen his father and his mother reach out and open a hand to have something exactly like this appear in it. Indeed, he’d first started picking up words in the Speech by hearing them speak to the fierce little cores of light held in their hands.

  Rho actually sagged against the refresher cabin, staggering back a step to lean his back up against it as if the little burning light was going to jump at his face. It did follow, but just enough to keep hanging in front of his nose.

  An Aethyr!

  Rho opened his mouth and said to the little spark of light the words he never thought he would speak to another being as a wizard. "Dai stihó," he whispered.

  A chorus of greeting came back to him, in the same word, or words: one answer, and all the answers. In the response Rho could hear every word there had ever been, singing in the background of the reply. Immensities were bound up in that little burning light. All languages, endless knowledge of other species, all the secrets of wizardry—assuming he could figure out how to ask for them.

  Because it wasn’t just any Aethyr. It was his Aethyr.

  I am a wizard, Rho thought, his mouth dry with shock and astonishment. Finally, finally it’s happened!

  He swallowed, or tried to, because that meant something else was finally upon him as well. Now would come the test—the Challenge, as his own people called it; though instantly many other idioms for what was to follow rushed through his head. The Certification, the Nightwalk, the Ordeal, the Invigilation—

  Beyond all hope, and so very late, Rho’s turn had come. He was a probationary wizard. But now comes the proving, he thought. And what would it look like? His father’s, in so far as he knew anything about it—for Nelaid had always been shy of discussing the subject—had come during the last period of instability in Thahit's deeper atmosphere. His mother's had had something to do with the weather. Once when he was small, before he understood the proprieties surrounding such discussions, Rho had questioned the Queen about it. Miril had simply smiled and said, “There was a storm.”

  He instantly imagined his mother as a mighty heroine, standing on the
sky with arms raised in a blaze of glory, forbidding the storm to wreak havoc on some distant settlement or populous city. “You had to stop it?” Rho had said.

  His mother tilted her head in rueful negation, and said, smiling as if amused at herself, “No, my son. I had to let it happen.”

  Rho had gone away from that discussion greatly confused. But now there was at last a chance that he might understand, not just that, but so many other things—

  Gingerly he reached up to the little blinding spark, still hanging so close to his nose it was making him blink, and pinched it between thumb and forefinger.

  The voices that Rho heard singing instantly grew louder, but not deafeningly so. And they all sang now on one note, one tone. They were waiting, whoever they were—waiting to see what he needed. Anything he asked for, any knowledge, any word, if it was right for him to have, it would be given him.

  The sense of the power locked up in that little core of light made Rho begin to tremble. This is why our wizards came to call this instrumentality ‘their Aethyr’, he thought. As if they held the great Powers in their hand.

  Because they do.

  I do!

  And the Aethyr in his hand was waiting for him to do something. Speak, the voices said, act, command! The worlds are waiting.

  Rho gulped. This was wondrous. It was terrifying. And he had no idea what to ask for. There he stood, gaping, while the knowledge of the universe, wizardly and nonwizardly both, suffered itself to be pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and looked at him—he could feel it looking at him—with considerable patience.

  He opened his mouth, shut it again. And then it came to him.

  All I want right now is out!

  Rho went hot and cold all over with the sudden sheer wonder of the idea. To be Sunborn—at least, when one was of the Royal line and also a child—was to be guarded night and day and never allowed to go anywhere alone. His tutors in the royal household had spent his earliest years drumming it into him that there were people who would be happy to use a new young prince as a tool or weapon against his parents. Once he’d understood the threat, Rho had been most careful never to try to escape his supervisors or do anything else that would give his mother and father cause to fear for him on that account.

  But even though they’d long since taken the childproofing forcefields off the balustrades of the high terraces in Sunplace, and he could walk home by himself from lessons through spaces normally felt to be secure, Rho wasn’t all that much freer now. There was still always the chance that he might be taken captive to be used as leverage against them. Even so, he wasn’t allowed to go about the planet by himself without the journey or errand being arranged far in advance, and security put in place. And as for going offplanet, that was simply out of the question. He had long since learned to stifle the terrible longing to just be somewhere else, someplace where the unbreakable chains of expectation and duty wouldn’t bind him down.

  Rho swallowed hard. But they don’t now. Not tonight! I could go— I could go…

  His imagination simply failed him in the face of the impossible breadth of the vista now laying itself out before him, possibilities that had never, ever been available before. It was as if someone had pulled the sky apart and revealed another sky past it, wondrous, endless, full of other worlds.

  Which it was. How many millions of worlds existed out there, places Rho had thought he’d never see until some unimaginably far-off time when he would be grown up? If even then. But now no one could stop him… not even his parents.

  I’d never want to frighten them, Rho thought. But just this once, just tonight—it’s my Challenge and surely this is my right, to have a few moments to enjoy this before the trouble starts! Whatever the trouble is. I'm a wizard now! I can go out, I can—

  Rho quivered all over with the opportunity. “I can, can’t I?” He said to the Aethyr in his hand.

  You can travel to any location for which you are willing and able to pay the price of transport, the Aethyr said, sounding utterly unconcerned. Determine your desired location and a price and details of the transit spell will be provided to you.

  Rho stared in wonder as he realized the Aethyr wasn’t going to act as a surrogate for his parents. It was just going to let him do what he thought right. This is so incredible, he thought, and hugged himself with glee.

  Then his eyes went wide with shock and he threw his arms wide again, staring in horror at the Aethyr still held between finger and thumb. “Sorry, I'm so sorry, are you all right? I didn't hurt you?”

  This instrumentality, the Aethyr said, sounding quite dry, is fairly robust. You need not be concerned.

  “Good,” Rho said. “Good. Then I want to go somewhere else.”

  Coordinates? said the Aethyr.

  The image had fleeted through his mind a few moments ago, and now returned much more strongly— a place he and his parents had passed through some years back, ever so briefly, on their way to a meeting with a delegation of wizards interfacing with a group of planetary executives. The place had been huge and terrifying and confusing and loud, and it had haunted his happiest dreams for years. “The Crossings,” he whispered. "Just for a little while—”

  Worldgating costs for transits to the Crossings can be partially offset by parasitic debit-reference to the portal structure installed in this facility, the Aethyr said. Otherwise, the duration of your visit to any off planet location is entirely elective, assuming there are no extraneous life-support requirements. Desired time of departure?

  He was tempted to say Right now! Or ten partitions ago would have done as well! But from many long discussions with his mother and father Rho knew that you needed to be precise in your language when dealing with an Aethyr—otherwise problems would ensue, and though some of these might be funny in retrospect, others could kill you. “Fifteen partitions,” Rho said in the Speech, and then glanced down at himself in sudden horror. It would not do to appear at the Crossings in raiment that suggested he’d slept in it.

  Starting countdown, said the Aethyr. And suddenly Rho saw a column of Speech-digits appear in the air and begin flashing downward through a count of fractional partitions of the Wellakhit hour.

  It didn't take him fifteen partitions to make himself ready. It was more like five. Any prince worthy of the name often found himself faced with four or five ceremonials to attend to in the day, and precious little time to change between them… so he knew how to do this in a hurry. Seconds after the countdown began Rho was deep into his tiring-room, waving his frantic way through racks and shelves and hanging-space. Shortly he came up with a dark red-gold overrobe and darker red tunic and trousers and soft boots, an ensemble that looked quietly well-to-do but not flamboyant—as the last thing he wanted was someone from the Crossings contacting the Royal house or one of its equerries to inquire whether they had mislaid a prince.

  Rho threw the clothes on and set them to rights in what for him would have been unseemly haste. Well enough. Money— Hastily he went scrabbling through a chest of drawers at the back of the tiring room. From it Rho dug out and pocketed a few cash-charged valuta plaques that had only anonymized contact with the Wellakhit world banking system—as, much to their credit, Rho’s parents felt no need to know what he did with his allowance.

  Hand baggage, Rho thought. Without having any in such a place, he would be too likely to stand out. He dug around in his presses and closets and came up with a simple strapped carrier bag, along the lines of what the Queen had brought the groceries home in the other day, though heavier and with touch-sensitive security fastenings on the flaps. Because who knows, I might see something I want to bring back… Finally he hastily brushed his hair out, pulled it back, and knotted it once behind in the simplest and most utilitarian way, a worker’s or cleric’s style.

  Quickly Rho looked himself over in the mirror by the tiring-room door. Even if anyone recognized him as Wellakhit, he would most likely be mistaken for some kind of business person, maybe some household’
s official out on an errand. He glanced up to see the countdown digits (which had been following him around as he attired himself) flickering into the next sequence of five hour-partitions.

  Rho headed out into his living area again, where the Aethyr was hanging patiently in the air, waiting for him. As he reached out to it he felt his pulse start to pick up again. My first spell. Oh, in the Most Central’s name, I can't believe it, I can't believe it's finally happening—!

  “Display the worldgating matrix, please,” Rho said, trying to keep the tremor of excitement out of his voice. And there was just a little edge of fear there, too. What if I mess it up? What if I get it wrong? What if I'm not really meant for this?

  —Except of course I am, they wouldn't have given it to me otherwise—

  But this was still a probationary activity. His Challenge was about finding out whether he was good enough at this to survive contact with the Lost Aethyr, who in one form or another routinely turned up to eliminate new wizards if It could. And Rho knew, because over time his father and mother had told him, that there were wizards who weren’t good enough. There were those who had the Great Art offered to them and couldn't bear the weight, or got something crucial wrong and didn’t come back from their Challenge—

  Please advise if prepared for early departure, the Aethyr said.

  Hurriedly Rho reached out and took hold of it. Then something occurred to him and started him panicking again. “Do I have to keep hold of you? Or how do I—”

  Just a touch of amusement was audible in the dry pseudovoice. You cannot lose this instrumentality, the Aethyr said. Reach out and you will find me within touch. Now— The countdown sequence flicked over to breaths and fractions of a breath, with the annotation under it in the Speech, Time to termination of current CIWF receptor area booking.

  The room went dim around Rho. From the empty space where he stood, a complex diagram, chorded circles nested within circles and other more complex geometric figures, spread itself out all around from his feet, all full of words in the Speech. He had another moment of panic: there was too much written here, he didn't know where to begin reading, what if he said something wrong or in the wrong order—