A Succession of Bad Days (56 page)

They go mad, else,
Halt says.
Silence, immobility, no sensation of breath, doesn’t take six minutes sometimes.

Don’t think this is my vague dread.

Halt’s got a toolbox, it looks like, of supplies, a big high-sided tray with a top handle, Grue’s looking impatient, Blossom never says anything to
use the Power. You can feel it, though, and Zora blinks and comes up from whatever stillness the spell imposed. Not all the way up, I don’t think Zora could use the Power at all, but can talk.

“Twenty-three days,” Dove says. “You will be entirely fine, but we’ve all got to drop the link during.”

Zora nods, carefully. “We’d wind up starting all of each other’s sentences.”

Dove, very gentle, fists
Zora’s shoulder. Spook hops up on the illusory bed, presses an audibly purring spectral forehead into Zora’s. I can feel the purr. Can’t think of anything to say. Zora looks fine, rested, it’s not a harsh spell.

“The canal’s in full service. Map says they’re calling it Kind Lake.”

Pretty good choice,
Dove says, just to me.

“Still can’t argue with Halt,” Zora says, smiling, whole face lit up.

“Not today, Zora dear.” Halt’s smiling, too.

“All right, children, shoo.” Halt is moving around Zora’s bed, leaving some kind of dim powder on the floor. “Go sit in the sand pit and work on your restful circulation.”

Zora’s in the hospital another two days. Various doctors have trouble with a diagnosis of ‘the wrong brain’, and even more trouble with the idea that the way to tell it’s now the correct brain is a live Zora subsequent to a substantial sorcerous working.

Grue sympathizes with the doctors, and gets Zora through a very gradual set of workings. Which is part of why it takes two days. The
other part is straight medical nervousness, some of it Grue’s.

Setting up the working link again, they let Zora out right after breakfast the third day, takes some thinking. Not quite the same Zora, not quite the same us. There’s this moment of shared nervousness, a longer period of shared determination, and then it all works again. Halt tsks at us for hoisting ten thousand tonnes of water out
of the West Wetcreek. Not very far, just enough to be sure we could really lift it. Even with the tsking, it’s cheering.

I go right on feeling uneasy. Dove’s started to think about commenting.

Halt hasn’t anywhere to send us; “Waiting for Blossom, my dears,” Halt says, and “A moment to settle will do no harm.” There’s a twinkle. “Do avoid any barge-hoisting enthusiasms.”

There’s a chorus of “Yes,
Halt.”

Zora looks different. Not enormously different, still obviously Zora, doesn’t look older, can’t figure it out. Eventually Dove, who can’t figure it out either, does the interrogative head tip at Zora.

“Everybody in my family looks like they’ve had five kids by the time they’re thirty, whether they’ve had a kid or not,” Zora says.

Dove nods, Chloris nods, it’s a very specific sympathy. “You’re
planning on looking thirty?” Chloris says, doubtful. “Young makes sense and mature years makes sense, for the gravitas, and old makes sense for Halt, no one could cope with Halt looking young, but why pick thirty?”

“It’s not all willpower,” Zora says. “I’ve known my whole life what I’m going to look like, we all do, I’ve met some of my mother’s third cousins and they look like they could be Mother’s
sisters. So I was probably going to wind up there, maybe not
by
thirty, but I’d get there out of believing it was inevitable.”

Life-tweaker doesn’t work like necromancer,
appears in the working link, a kind of joint understanding. Zora’s heredity gets more of a vote.

“So while I was borrowing Grue’s shape-shifting I asked, and Grue said
ssh
and showed me how to comprehensively alter my heredity.”

Dove snickers. I think at least as much at my expression as what Zora said, Halt’s twinkling at me, maybe Dove and I, Chloris has a mild case of the ‘emotions later’ look.

“You aren’t going to worry too much about human flesh,” Zora says. “I want to keep mine.”

Zora makes a face. “Some plausible approximation.”

“Improves with practice, Zora dear,” Halt says. I think there’s a lot of practice in
being able to produce a sympathetic twinkle.

Blossom arrives, dismounts, goes through a who’s-a-good-horse-thing ritual that involves the crunchy consumption of a small handful of copper nails, being whistled at with feeling, and sending Stomp trotting off home. Grue must be home, to get the tack off. They had a strenuous time teaching the horse-things to not run inside Westcreek Town, they’re
smart enough to get themselves home but they don’t like dawdling.

“Well, then, children, do behave,” Halt says, and waves at us, and walks off. Stick handle’s over Halt’s arm today.

You’re feeling twitchy,
Dove says, and I nod back. As it gets closer, it’s definitely dread.

Don’t know why.

Blossom doesn’t mind the
children
, Grue does, not sure why.

It’ll be true by relative age when I’m a thousand.
Blossom’s just plain happy.
People take me too seriously, Grue not enough.

There’s a thread of confusion from Zora, Chloris, I’m trying to understand what Dove thinks is sensible about that statement.

Finely divided aggregate’s one thing.
Blossom’s still happy.
When you’re all Independents, get me to tell you about Grue’s bees.

Blossom is unable to explain how Zora’s illusory bed got into the
hospital, it’s not a next-year thing, it’s a Blossom thing, a general understanding of bound illusions that Ongen can do something similar to, and maybe Dove will understand some day, but no one’s figured out how to teach.

“Peculiar to enchanters,” Halt says.

Halt hasn’t come back, it’s a voice out of the air.

It’s a reminder why I don’t mind, too, I don’t want to be The Enchanter. You’re going
to benefit from the same effect.

The hospital certainly doesn’t want an ornate bed, and Zora does, so Blossom extracts it, and we wind up walking up to the Round House with an chunk of fairy tale floating behind us. No Block classes in the morning has been hard to get used to, it was the most regular part of our day. Wake’s got us doing imposition of the will drills, taking a quantity of sand
and making it correspond to a visualization. This is enormously more difficult than making an illusion. No one knows why; there are, Wake says, competing stories, no one can achieve anything that’s even a hypothesis.

It’s fun, but it’s not the same.

Energy drills are something to do in the Eastern Waste,
Blossom says.
When the canals aren’t so full of twice-displaced, we’re going to pick up all
that sodium and make sodium carbonate out of it.

Can’t just throw it in a lake,
Dove says. There’s some honest regret.

Extremely weedy lakes only,
Blossom says, grinning like the sun.

The bed, the dome of the canopy, won’t fit through the doorway.

Zora?
Chloris says.
I might break it.

I’ll live,
Zora says.

Chloris does something, and the bed, all of it, the illusory mattress, the illusory sheets
and blankets, contracts. Factor of two, or nearly.

Chloris’s teeth are set, the lines of Chloris’ back, the raised lines of neck-tendons; we slide the whole thing through into the main floor, and there’s a ‘pop’ sound as Chloris lets go of whatever wreaking shrank the bed.

“Almost giving the empty space in between the Power in the illusion over to death is impressive control,” Blossom says.

“There’s
a better way,” Chloris says, carefully not panting. Blossom’s explanation would have sounded different if there wasn’t.

“This is one of those things about illusions that’s much easier than actual stuff. Actual stuff, the space between the atoms isn’t very adjustable. The illusion is just pretending, it picked up your expectations and set a value. You can request a different one, you can do that
temporarily. Go slow enough you don’t light the physical binding on fire.” Blossom’s obviously very pleased Chloris could get it to work the difficult way.

Chloris isn’t, and the thing Blossom just explained takes Chloris a quarter-hour to make work, the whole bed slowly, it takes a couple minutes, shrinks until you could pick it up with one hand if you were sure the canopy was sturdy enough.

Chloris and Zora and Blossom go off with the tiny floating bed, down the west stairs.

I don’t move, and Dove, who had taken a step, stops and half-turns and looks at me over our joined hands.

Have to look down in here; look up, and the ceiling gets you, all of us, still, at least half the time.

“All of a sudden you smell really nice.” All of a sudden, all the dread is here.

Embarrassingly, focused-ly,
nice. In ways that don’t care what Dove thinks about it.

We have the same thought as one thing together, as our hands fall apart.

Hatching.

I’m just to the door, running, I need to be outside, very outside, away from people, when I hear, the link’s down, dropped, as down as I can make it fast, there’s a feeling like pure wrath coming through the floor, Dove saying “Up, intact” in an voice empty
of anything but strength.

“Fetch another rock for an old lady, would you dear?”

Halt is old. It’s not a pose, I mean Grandma Halt’s a role, art, really, calculated won’t go that far. But Halt’s
old
. Not senescent, I don’t think we do, but Halt’s ancient. Much larger than I am, a bite out of the sky, so it’s two rocks. Two strips of stream bottom. There were rapids there, now it’s a waterfall. No one’s going to
mind too much, not an encumbered stream, no one uses this lake, swamp, for anything, either. Still rocks above the falls for the little diver birds.

Dark out. Cloudy sky. Was under the swamp. I think it was one day under the swamp.

Not sure.

Nothing bothered me.

Don’t think I ate anything, might have inhaled a frog. Didn’t notice. Between the sun and the whole process, there was thrashing.

Hatching
hurts
.

Figuring out there’s nothing that says a weed can’t talk, that I’ve got some kind of emotionally parasitic life cycle, that there’s serious question Dove ever wanted me, chose the consonance, for any real value of wanted, hurts worse than hatching.

Now I’m perched on a rock in the dark, and Halt’s just about fit, carefully, compactly, all of themselves on to two rocks side by side. I can’t
sprawl off mine.

I’ve got this mad impulse to apologize for how wet the rocks are, ripped out of a stream bottom. In a swamp. When, well, we’re not
aquatic
, but it’s mostly a fluid environment.

“Quite right, dear,” Halt says. Well,
says
. It’s not the undertone of the Power. It’s not a voice, not really. Don’t know what it is, not as mechanism.

Not much interested in mechanism just right now.

I don’t say anything, I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything to say, and if I start saying it I’ll go on for days.

Halt sort of looks at me. Not angry, there’s really no way even Halt could be angry and not have it show, not now.

“Did you ever wonder about the consonance, why Dove, why so suddenly?”

No wouldn’t be an answer. “It seemed like another part of the better world.” Seemed.

Halt produces
a gentle smile, call it that.

“Have you wondered why so many fail at the Shape of Peace?”

I, well, say I shake my head. “I got taught, turning small parts, there were so many ways to do it wrong there was no counting them, and only a very few, usually only one, way to do it right. I don’t think that’s different for anything, and being an Independent correctly seems difficult.”

Considering I’ve
just failed.

“One narrow path,” Halt says, actually gently.

I nod. How I could have done it right. Though I couldn’t, not without, I don’t know.

“Many, most, typical, let us say typical, strong talents, are unsuited to existing in the Peace,” Halt says. “Whoever made the Power made it work that way. Stronger talents tend to an inability to believe they’re not special.”

Strong talents are
rare
, but anybody who made it through school ought to be able to remember why that’s different.

“Not content with this, the creators of the Power, well, I think of it as intended adversaries.”

Wait.

“It is not enough,” Halt says, “to provide an ability to coerce; that leaves open a possibility of sanity, of discipline, of an order imposed on those Talented in the regular way.”

Coerce. Coerce is most
of what I’m afraid of, most of what’s so wrong.

“Did Dove really say yes?” I’ve been in Dove’s head for months, most of a year.

I’m not sure Halt really likes the Peace; what you, what Halt, can use peace to do, yes, but that’s not the same thing. Some of it’s that lack of order. Brain’s skipping.

“Dove really said yes.” There is no doubt in Halt’s, it’s still a voice, none. Halt doesn’t need
an absence of doubt to grind down mountains, but this would, all by itself.

“There is a certain pattern of attachment to the strongest talent available; not usually so abrupt, but your talent, your nature, were suppressed into maturity.”
Human maturity
sort of hangs there, not quite words. I’m not likely to forget, even without Halt making clear that it’s important.

“It is rare,” Halt says,
rare
vast in understatement, “for the attachment to possess a stronger talent.”

“Dove is almost Blossom.”

Halt, smiles, really, it’s smiles.

“Dove is Dove, dear.”

“Consider what would happen in the less unusual course of events; a person with an entelech’s ability to command the wills of others, their desires and beliefs as much as their thoughts, achieves adulthood, achieves, sometime, it is in
large matter a function of the strength of the talent to which they have attached, a successful hatching.”

Someone not bound to the Shape of Peace as an apprentice sorcerer, someone who hasn’t been taught how to shapeshift, how to alter their basic desires, someone…

“They’d devour them alive.”

The only person left in the world they might believe loved them. That they almost had to love. Love beyond
reason.

Must keep talking, or I’ll think. “Probably can’t forget how much they enjoyed it.” If there’s any strong analogy to the mammal skin-contact version, it’s not any kind of forgettable.

If I live a million years, I’m not going to forget having my face pressed into the curve of Dove’s neck, the sense of peace and safety and hope.

Halt nods, slowly.

“Sometimes they kill themselves.” Halt
is entirely conversational. “Sometimes they conquer a continent.” There’s a pause, reflective, contemplative. “Sometimes two,” Halt says.

In their kingdoms of wrath
rises out of my memory, presenting a terrible vista.

“I have killed myself.” And Dove, and Chloris, Zora, losing me because I was an idiot and got executed for mind control isn’t plausibly recoverable and there’s a ripple over the
surface of the swamp and Halt says “Edgar,” in a stern voice.

I stop thinking, it’s about all I can manage. The ripple stops.

“That girl could turn you into slurry.” Halt’s some combination of amused and absolute, I am not to misunderstand this. “Though you have your thousand years.”

Halt doesn’t mean a literal thousand. I don’t know what language that thought started in, what it’s called, thinking
in it doesn’t tell me what it’s called, but
thousand years
is
a really long time
. Ever since I hatched, hatched for real, Halt’s thoughts come with annotations.

Helpful, terrifying, hard to tell how much of which applies. Perfectly Halt.

“Your consonance isn’t doing what it is supposed to, what those who made the Power must have wanted, to be sure there would be terror and chaos, that no single
discipline would make a peace out of the mad desires of the powerful.”

Breathe just isn’t the right word. No air, no heartbeat, no air. Hard to remember I’m not dead.

“As well as anyone ever chooses anything about the future, dear, you both made a real choice.”

There’s, well, call it a sigh.

Everything around us is quiet. It was quiet with just me here, couldn’t do anything about that, wasn’t,
am not, thinking clearly, but Halt, having Halt here makes it flatly still. There’s no anticipation to it, no waiting, it’s not even fear. Nothing moves, and somehow, when Halt sighed, all the movement that wasn’t happening grew less.

“The general distribution’s been bred in. In the beginning, there were nulls and the mighty, and they were less mighty in those days, and more mad.”

More mighty,
that’s obvious, winning tends to avoid being selected against. Wizards in the Bad Old Days would try to breed servants, would try to breed heirs, whatever heredity the Power has would get distributed, it’s had something like a quarter of a million years.

“For some time now, I have seen the possibility of effective organization.” Halt’s voice changes, saying that, it’s not harsh, it’s not, not
precisely, certain, but it would be like filling my pockets with rocks and walking upstream on the bottom of a fast river would have been, before, to argue.

There’s no possible way Halt means the Commonweal by ‘some time’.

“Can’t speak so around human shapes,” Halt says. “They crumple.”

There’s a smile, I’m going to keep calling it a smile. “Blossom detests crumpling, but not more than Dove, dear.
Do remember that.”

There’s going to be a coil of red-gold fire in the world. If I haven’t broken everything.

“Really, Edgar.” Halt’s back to merely firm. “As is your inescapable hereditary nature, you have found someone to value unreasonably, someone you wish to ward and protect, which is not so different from any other person. There’s no question of coercion, of mind control, as there might
have been with Chloris, absent your fortunate meeting with Dove.”

“Entelech-the-word used to mean something that made you all yourself, or all itself, a thing done its becoming.” Something you learn in school, about poetry in a language much, much younger than the Power. Still hesitant saying it. “The use for the Power that can compel anything’s taken that one over, well, and understanding selection.”
You can’t really talk about the entelechy of the oak trees anymore, doesn’t work outside good poetry. “School talks about it like a disease, a fatal condition.”

“No widespread talent, dear; any entelech would live. Not today, not for a long while.” Halt, on the whole, Halt approves.

Not much difference, well, no, honesty, an infant entelech would be
better
and
more thorough
and
unfixable
mind,
not even mind control,
Do thou all my desire
is a simple declarative sentence. Mind obliteration, mind replacement, as few other weeds achieve.

The parasite saved my life.

“Possibly twice,” Halt says. “Your exercise of the Power grew to feed the parasite.”

So I started trying to learn sorcery with much better access to the Power.

“You could keep up.” Halt reaches over, pats my, oh, shoulder?
back? something, there have to be words. “Which, well, you’ve got that lovely multiplicative effect, sure to be useful. That effect, and much other good, you obtain by justifying Dove’s hope that you shan’t die and bereave them.”

Again.

Dove doesn’t need anyone else to die. I can believe that, I can completely believe that.

“Yes, Halt.” Because, because
happy
is good, but what matters, it’s not
just my happy, or Dove’s, it’s everybody’s, so what really matters is getting Blossom time to enchant stuff and Halt time to machinate so people mostly don’t decide this is too much choice now, stop.

“Clever child.” Grandma Halt’s terrible smiles are nothing on this, absolutely nothing, there might be a barren patch of shore for the next thousand years.

“Neglect not your joys, Edgar, none of
you. Death and Strange Mayhem, you cannot avoid that, should not try. Your whimsical engineering and moments of absolute insect repellant, don’t avoid those either.”

Those were fun. There might be a future.

“Most certainly,” Halt says. “Your future has Parliamentary testimony in it.”