Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition (40 page)

“Yet there came a night when the City was closed as always,” she said. “And this one rested, as all rest when Sek is not in the sky. And in the time of rest, this one heard a voice.” She looked again at Ronan, and once again that tremor started to shake her limbs. “The voice was like the second voice that… you used to speak just now. It came from everywhere, and nowhere. It used the words you use, that this one had never heard before. It said, ‘You—’” Again she struggled to get the words out. “‘You can be far more than this. You can bring your people out of this place, this life, to something far greater. Will you do it?’”

The Yaldiv’s trembling was getting worse. “This one did not know what to answer. But the voice that whispered in the night said, ‘The ones who will show you the way will come. They will not be like you. When they come, listen to what they say. One will say the word you need to hear.’”

Memeki went quiet for a moment, looking at them. “The voice made this one frightened,” she said. “So many forbidden words… This one went through that next day in terror, thinking that those words might force their way out. For they were strong, and clamored to be spoken. They shouted night and day inside this one until it thought that Death was close to it! But nothing happened.”

Memeki still sounded frightened, but now a kind of wonder grew in her voice as well. “Then without warning came the day when what had until then seemed impossible nonetheless did happen. The Great One honored it. Everything was changed. And the rest of the Yaldat said, ‘See how merciful the Great One is! Even to such a one, whom all thought would be the last to be chosen, if it ever happened at all.’ This one became honored even among the workers and warriors. All of those said, ‘Here comes another of those who defend us from the evil Others; the mighty ones, the weapons in the Great One’s claw!’”

Memeki lifted her claws in a gesture more like the one that the warriors had used to greet one another. “But it was too late,” she said, dropping her claws again. “The words of the voice that spoke in the night, and were now inside this one, began to grow as swiftly as the Great One’s favor had. And even the mighty honor the Great One had bestowed on it began to mean little, almost nothing. It began to think that it was—” Memeki paused, then said in a rush, “That it was no one’s weapon. That it was for much more than that. That it was—” Her voice dropped like that of someone whispering heresy. “That it was itself. That it was an
I.
”

Dairine held her breath.

“And that I was for something else entirely,” Memeki said. She was breathing like someone who’d run a race, as if she was ready to fall over from the strain of saying so short a word. “And now comes strangeness, yet more strangeness. The eyes that…
I
have seen, which are not Yaldiv.” Memeki looked at Dairine. “And the voice that— I know— the one I heard whispering in the night, and that no one else could hear.” She got up again, and went over to Ronan.

He sat very still as she approached him, and as the huge claws lifted. Memeki drew very close, peered into his face. Ronan, and the Champion, gazed back.

“Hod the Splendid,” said Memeki.

Ronan blinked.

“How do you know that name?”
the Champion said.

“Before, I didn’t know what a name was,” Memeki said. “Now I know. That word was something the voice whispered to me in the night. Are these, then, also your names? Regent of the Sun, ruler of the third Day and the fourth Heaven, avenger of the Luminaries, Guardian of the Divided Name?”

Ronan nodded very slowly. “Messenger of Messengers,” he said, “chief Prince of the Presence, Winged like the Emerald, the Providencer.” He raised his eyebrows as he looked up at Memeki. “The creature with those names is within me. We’d say, ‘Those are my names.’”

“I thought so,” Memeki said. “The voice said that one was to be asked. So now I ask…
you.
What comes next? For my people’s sake, I must know. What is the word that must be heard? What must I do to become what the voice says I must?”

Ronan sat there looking stunned. “
I don’t know,”
the Defender said through him. And he looked helplessly at the wizards around him.

“There were other words still,” Memeki said. Her sudden eagerness made it sound as if just saying the word “
I”
out loud had broken a dam somewhere inside her, so that all kinds of things were starting to spill out. “The voice said: ‘You are the aeon of Light; you are the Hesper. You must find the way. But without the word spoken, there is no path, only darkness; until it speaks itself, only the abyss.’”

No one said anything.

Memeki kept looking from one of them to the next. Finally Dairine said, “You’ve asked us hard questions. We don’t know the answers. But we’ll help you find them.”

“It may take a while,” Ronan said.

Memeki settled down again, and combed that wayward palp back into place. “I will wait,” she said. Then she looked up. “The way we came out of the City… I can go back that same way, before morning? No one will know?”

Ponch opened an eye and looked up at her.
I can take you that way,
he said.
Nobody will know.

She looked down at him, admiring.
You are very wise.

Out of the corner of her eye, Dairine caught a glimpse of Kit hiding a smile. “I can rest here meanwhile?” Memeki said. “I am tired. This has been a day full of strangeness.”

“Not just for you,” Dairine said, getting up. She went over to Memeki and patted her on the shell. “Rest,” she said. “Nothing will happen to you here. We’ll take care of you.”

The strange eyes dwelled on her. “
Yes,
” Memeki said. “
You will.
”

A tremor went through Dairine. The voice had sounded exactly the way Ronan’s voice did when the One’s Champion used it.

Dairine turned away. After a moment or two, Memeki started to lean a little to one side. Quietly Dairine went over to look at Spot’s display. The hearts’ rates were dropping quickly; the Yaldiv’s neural activity was sliding down almost to nothing.

Dairine straightened, looked at the others as the readings bottomed out.
She’s gone out like a light,
Dairine said silently.
It almost looks more like a hibernation state than our kind of sleep.

Yes,
the Champion said.
She’ll be that way for some hours, I think. I’ll stand guard while you others get back to your rest.

“You’re out of your mind,” Kit said. “Who could sleep after that?” He let out a breath, then Ponch’s nose came over his shoulder. Kit sighed and reached into the box for one more dog biscuit. “We found her. We’ve talked to her. She’s the one!”

Without any possible doubt,
the Champion said.

“But what do we do now?”

Ronan shook his head. “He already said, he didn’t know.”

“Yeah, right. And a lot of help
you
are!” Dairine said.

“Who, me?”

“No,
him!
” Dairine said. “The Defender!”

We’re not omniscient, you know,
the One’s Champion said, sounding annoyed.

“Oh, sure, you’re not. Just immortal and incredibly powerful, which doesn’t do us much good if after all this running around, you can’t give us a clearer sense of what we’re supposed to
do!”

Ronan frowned and looked over at Kit. “What is it with these Callahan women,” he said, “that they’re always after yelling at you and giving you grief?”

“Not always,” Kit said, sounding resigned. “Just when it’s going to get most on your nerves.”

“We yell at you because you’re hopeless,” Dairine said, and sat down, looking extremely cross. “But I guess it’s not your fault this time. And where did all these other names come from all of a sudden? I’d have thought you had enough already, just in our own mythologies.”

We pick them up in our travels,
the Champion said with a weary and resigned look.
It’s an occupational hazard.

“And it’s not like
you
don’t have a fair number of names,” Ronan added. “Dairine. Dair. Squirt. Right pain in the arse. Speaker to hardware. Botherer of her sister—”

“Deliverer of punches in the nose,” Dairine said, looking Ronan in the eye. “Ruthless punisher of those who don’t cut her some slack.”

“One of those was a little weird,” Kit said suddenly. “‘Guardian of the Divided Name’?”

Ronan nodded. “The One’s full name.”

Roshaun looked perplexed. “Why would that need guarding?”

It doesn’t,
the Champion said.
You do. From
it.

“But the One is on our side, I would have thought,” Filif said. “Or we are on Its…”

That’s not the point,
the Champion said.
You can’t really have any sense of how much raw power is tied up in the One. Physicality can’t express it. Nothing can express it; it’s not meant to be expressed. It’s meant to
be.
If the One wasn’t careful about how It manifests Itself inside space and time, everything would all just dissolve.

“So that even the One’s Name in the Speech has to be divided up to keep it safe,” Kit said, “like a critical mass.”

That’s right,
said the Champion.
The Name of Names has so much primacy of power over mere created matter that it could change or wipe out whole universes if irresponsibly used. So the Names are leaked into creation only in fragmented form … a little bit here, a little
bit there. Even names in less central levels of creation get divided up that way—a bit here, a bit there…

Dairine let out an annoyed breath. “Yeah, well, if even the One’s names are so powerful,” she said, “why do
we
have to be running around all the time and cleaning up the messes all over our universe? Why doesn’t It just get Its butt in here and take care of things?”

Behind Ronan’s eyes, the Champion looked surprised.
What fun would that be?

“For It?”

For us,
the Champion said, sounding as if He was surprised Dairine didn’t get it.

She stared at him.

“All right,” Filif said, glancing at Dairine as she took a breath. “Memeki knows—for the moment—what she is. But not
who
she is, or what she can do. How can we best assist her? For until she fully becomes the Hesper, and achieves whatever her full power may be, there’s no hope that she can do anything about the threat to the rest of our universe.”

I have no immediate answers,
the Champion said.
She’s still only in the middle stages of embodiment. Such a process has to proceed at its own pace.

“There’s not a whole lot of time left for it to proceed
in!
” Dairine said. “The Pullulus is pushing everything apart out there, the structure of space is suffering, whole civilizations are going to pieces—”

“He’s right, though,” Ronan said.

Dairine stared.

“It took a while for me to come to terms, too,” Ronan said. His voice was unusually subdued. “I didn’t even know he was in there until Nita recognized him.” Dairine was interested to notice that when Ronan had started speaking, he’d been looking at Kit, but suddenly he wasn’t looking at him anymore. “And when I found out what was happening, I really hated it.” He glanced at Memeki. “She seems to have gotten past that, which is amazing. Different psychologies, I guess. But then there still comes a moment when you have to”—he shrugged—”agree to act together. Not just to passively accept what’s happened. How’s that going to be for her? Can she do it? Her people’s lifestyle seems to revolve around doing what you’re told. How fast can she get past
that?
Can she
ever
get past it?”

Dairine shook her head, and looked over at the great sleeping figure. “We’d better hope she can,” she said, “and try to figure out some way to hurry her up.”

Kit yawned. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t help it … I need to at least stretch out for a while, whether I actually get any sleep or not. What do we do in the morning?”

Dairine shrugged. “Take her back. Turn her loose. Wait for something to turn up.”

“
Wait?
”

“Something always turns up,” Dairine said.

“But not because of the waiting!” Kit muttered.

“And in the meantime,” Dairine said, looking over at Ronan, “I think Kit’s got the right idea. You’re going to keep watch?”

Ronan nodded.

“Then I’m going to try to pick up where I left off,” Dairine said. She headed off for her pup tent, glancing over her shoulder. “Spot?”

“I can finish this analysis inside,” he said, and got up to follow.

They went back to the pup tent together.
You’re a little quiet today,
Dairine said,
even for you. What’s bothering you?

I’ve been running analyses on more than the syntax of written Yaldic, if that’s what you mean.

Yeah,
Dairine said,
it is.
She sealed the pup tent and sat down on the floor next to Spot. He crawled into her lap. “You’ve been really quiet ever since we got here from your people’s world. What’s going on?”

“My people installed a great deal of new software in me,” Spot said. “I’ve been getting to grips with it. Some of the things they loaded into me were patches for my oracular functions.”

“Yeah, I noticed you’d stopped the poetry,” Dairine said. “Frankly, it’s kind of a relief. The notes were starting to cramp my style.”

“I found them troubling, too,” Spot said. “The problem seems to have been that the messages from the Powers simply had too much content embedded in them: I wasn’t able to process them correctly, so they were coming out truncated. But with the patches, I’m now able to perceive more clearly exactly what it is the Powers and the manual functions are trying to tell me in terms of cloaked content, the kinds of things that were showing as blacked-out in Nita’s manual. As a result, I’ve been able to analyze the present situation a lot more accurately.”

“Sounds like good news to me,” Dairine said.

“It would be if the results of the analysis weren’t so troubling,” Spot said. “We’re missing something—both in terms of something we don’t know, and something that’s not here, something we urgently need. A variable is missing.”