Michael brought the horse to a stop. "How far did we travel?"
"Too far to walk," Bin said, sliding off the horse to the left. "We cannot ride the horse into the protected circle."
Michael dismounted and they walked across the field, stones driving hard into Michael's soft-shod feet. Ahead, vaguely outlined in starglow, was a dirt and stone mound, very much like the barrows Michael had seen in history books.
"We have those on Earth," he said.
On one side of the mound was a arch stone blocked by a circular slab half-buried in the ground. Biri reached to the left of the slab and withdrew a round boulder about six inches across. As if the boulder were clay, he scooped a hollow in it and shifted it from hand to hand. With one finger he planted a fierce white glow in the hollow. "A lantern," he said.
On the right-hand edge of the slab was a series of notches. He placed the fingers of one hand into certain grooves, then touched others in different sequences. The slab sunk into the ground with a grumble.
"Now we enter," he said.
The stone lantern showed a dank, root-lined tunnel stretching about ten yards into the mound. The floor was cut stone. The air smelled musty and chill. Biri led the way.
In the center of the mound was a chamber about thirty feet in diameter. The chamber's stone walls shone with damp. Silvery-white beard-like fungus hung from the wet surfaces.
Surmounting a stone bier in the middle were two transparent quartz coffins placed within a few inches of each other. In each was a skeleton. Biri stood on one side of the bier and Michael walked slowly around to the other, peering through the crystal sides.
"Do you know who they are?" Biri asked, his voice soft in the echoing chamber.
"I don't think so," Michael said. The bones in the left-hand coffin resembled translucent ivory and were draped in a diaphanous white gown; in the right-hand coffin, the skeleton was opaque and brown with age and wore nothing but dust and rags. In one hand it clutched a polished wood staff with a bronze head.
Michael completed his circuit and stood beside Bin. "Most of my people reviled her," Biri said, touching the quartz with the tips of his fingers. "When we returned from the stars, we were too weak to destroy your kind. Some Sidhe, including the Mage, revealed themselves to humans as gods and tried to hinder their development, but your kind was not always reverent. They grew and matured and found their own skills anyway. Your kind even used the lies and dreams the false gods revealed, like a flower uses manure.
"She thought we should live in peace with you, but at first, her ministers refused to carry out her plans. She was queen; she had guided us home, and she was a powerful sorceress; they couldn't fight her openly. But she began to wander the Earth, trying to find a solution. In time her ministers were able to convince most of the Sidhe that the queen was mad, that she had succumbed to the stresses of the journey, that - as often happened then - her powers had broken her mind.
"So she gathered together her own followers, and formed the Council of Eleu. While other Sidhe tried to control humans, the Council spread knowledge among them. While the mage, Tonn, spent centuries portraying your gods Yahweh and Baal, and others, the queen opposed him, and tried to encourage humans to develop their own finest qualities. Tonn was stronger.
"And, finally, the queen declared she had fallen in love with a human. She rejected the cold and heartless union with her own males." Biri's face betrayed no irony, or even awareness of self-criticism. "Sometimes, even now, her followers believe she truly was mad at that time, but she did indeed love the man, and when he died, as mortals will, she placed his body here. Then, for a thousand years, the Council of Eleu worked with the queen to raise humanity to a level where other Sidhe might be able to accept them as equals. But her enthusiasm had died with her husband; in time, the queen herself died, and was placed beside the one she loved, instead of in a tomb of honor or in a tree where she might pass on her wisdom.
"Tonn founded the Black Order to oppose her wishes, and put Tarax in command. The Black order, the Maln, fought every action of the council of Eleu. To this day they oppose each other, and the Council of Eleu must work in secret."
"This is Elme and Aske," Michael said. Biri nodded.
"Adonna is a corrupt god," he continued, "growing more and more senile with time. I cannot serve him. I must serve those who oppose him, and oppose the Maln."
"You want to help humans?"
"It seems I must, doesn't it?" Bin smiled grimly.
"The Crane Women are Elme's daughters?"
"Elme and Aske had forty children, the first Breeds. Twenty of their offspring married humans, and had children by them___"
"How long ago?"
"As far back as nine thousand years on Earth, and as recently as eighty years. Those with less than an eighth Sidhe heritage revert to mortals again, but can still work some magic. Their children spread around the Earth, and many of them lived for thousands of years, surviving many generations of descendants.
"Long, long ago, Elme held court in a beautiful garden, surrounded by high stone walls. She sought the advice of the Serpent Mage, the last of the original humans."
Michael's eyes narrowed.
"Do you know of it?" Biri asked, regarding him curiously.
Michael stared at the skeleton in the radiant gown and didn't know how to react. Finally, his eyes welled up, as if all his life he had heard just parts of a wonderful and sad story, and now it had been completed for him.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
They returned the way they had come. Michael hardly noticed the pyrotechnics; he held on to Bin and the horse and turned his thoughts inward.
He had learned things no history class on Earth could ever have taught him. He suspected there were far more things of which he had heard only partial truths, or no truth at all.
The horse stopped on the ledgetop overlooking the camp and pawed the ground with its hoof. Its fangs were no longer apparent and its eye was gentle. Michael swung down from the horse and looked up at Bin.
"I don't trust you," Michael said. Bin returned his gaze with expression unchanged. "Oh, I think you've told me the truth about Aske and Elme, and what you know of Sidhe history. You'd have no reason to lie to me about that. Perhaps you know I've heard a lot of the story from others. But I don't necessarily believe you've abandoned Adonna."
Bin smiled ironically. "You'll entertain the thought, however?"
"I'll consider it as a possibility," Michael offered. "But everything is going too smoothly. Everybody wants me to go to the Isomage. Only the Ban of Hours told me I was a pawn, caught between two forces - the Council of Eleu, and the Maln. I trust her, I think."
"She is a worthy female," Bin said, nodding his respect.
"I think it's time I acted on my own," Michael said. "I want to return to the Pact Lands."
"They no longer exist," Bin said. "Your people and the Breeds have been moved, put in new communities."
"Camps, you mean," Michael said. "Take me to one of the camps."
"They are closely guarded. Tarax wants no more like you to come to the notice of the Council of Eleu."
"You and I together, we can-"
"I have forsaken Adonna," Biri said, shaking his head firmly, "but I will not fight my own kind."
"Yet you want to serve the Council. You can do that by helping humans."
Biri said nothing.
"I'm not sure that going to the Isomage isn't what the Maln would have me do. They released me from the Irall, and that makes me suspicious."
"What would the Council have you do?"
"I don't know."
"Who has opposed you most?"
"Human-hating Sidhe."
"The Maln."
"I just don't know." Michael said, confused again.
"It seems obvious," Biri said.
"Then why didn't Tarax kill me when he had the chance? I'm not very strong. Any Sidhe could have killed me. You could, right now, just by raising a finger."
"Perhaps you are not as weak
as you think."
"Oh, no?" Michael laughed. "You just hollowed out a boulder and lit a fire in it. It's all I can do to keep myself warm."
Biri dismounted and squatted on the ledge to peer into the canyon. His red-shouldered robe made him look disembodied in the starlight, as if his bust floated on a gray platform over the canyon. "You call yourself a poet," Biri said. "The Sidhe have long regarded poets with respect."
"I am sixteen, maybe seventeen years old by now," Michael said. "In my lifetime, I've written maybe five halfway decent poems, probably less. In the Realm I've hardly had time to write any. And when I've tried, I've heard somebody else's voice in my head giving me suggestions, or just creating things for me. I'm more a pawn than a poet, believe me."
"So what do you intend to do?"
"Maybe sit right here, travel with Nikolai and Bek. See what I'm really capable of before I make any decisions." He paused, then said under his breath, "From what I've learned, I can't see Clarkham being any help. I'm not even sure he's human, or really cares about humans."
Biri nodded. "If you are a pawn, do you think the forces using you will allow you to remain aloof?"
That stumped Michael. He sat beside the Sidhe and dangled his legs over the canyon. "At least they won't have me behaving like a silly puppet."
"If you are being used, either by Tarax or the Council, you face very powerful adversaries if you defy them."
"So what do you suggest I do?"
"Not much, perhaps. Advance in your discipline. Finish your training."
"The Crane Women are gone," Michael said. "I don't expect them to pop up around here anytime soon."
"I can train you," Biri said. He held his hand out in the direction of the camp. "Tonight, while they sleep. Then you can decide." His smile in the dark was radiant, feral. Michael's back prickled.
"And if I decide against the Council?"
"My allegiances haven't solidified," Biri said. "Perhaps you can guide me."
Michael thought for a moment. "Won't Tarax come after you, try to take you back?"
"Why? I am useless to him, useless to Adonna. I am just another disaffected Sidhe. They won't waste their time on vengeance. Only miserable Sidhe like Alyons engage in such silliness."
Michael stepped over to the horse. "So teach me."
"Beginning now," Biri said, getting to his feet.
Chapter Forty
It might have been the longest night in the history of the Realm. To Michael, it stretched on forever. and it was not pleasant. Bin walked with him away from the canyon until they stood in the middle of a broad belt of sand and small boulders.
"First, you must realize you are alone," he began. "For a Sidhe initiate, his aloneness is confirmed by the murder of his horse; there can be no closer relationship and no greater shock than being required to kill his most treasured companion."
"Do I have to kill the horse?" Michael asked, suddenly queasy.
"No. Your feeling toward the animal is shallow, uncertain. You were not raised with it. The Mafoc Mar did not pick it out for you from the fields when you were young; you did not grow to youthful maturity with the horse by your side. You must find something else."
"Maybe another shadow-self?"
Biri shook his head with irritation. "That doesn't concern me."
They stood in starlight bright enough to cast shadows.
"No swords, no baubles. Those are all human misunderstandings of magic, human preoccupation with technology. Magic lies purely in the mind. The Sidhe are among the most dishonorable, unreliable creatures on all the faces of Creation, but they have one thing - concentration. What they want, they focus on completely."
Biri sat down in the grass and gestured for Michael to do likewise. "You are alone," Biri said. "You are the only thing in existence. You will never truly know there are others. Because humans have souls is no reason to believe they differ from the Sidhe in this, that they are eternally alone."
Michael shook his head. "What about friendship, love?"
"Love does not occur to the Sidhe male," Biri said. "But I can demolish love even so. Did you love the real person, or your image of the person? Did you love an external, or what the person was to you?"
"But there has to be someone, something, to love or to be disappointed with."
"Only yourself. Alone. Life is alone, love is alone."
"But then you don't exist. Nobody else exists."
"Together, we are alone. That is the peculiarity of our being. We never know true community. Not even Sidhe, who can reach inside each other's aura of memory, out-see and in-see; not even Sidhe can avoid being alone. You can never rely on another, not to the core of your being. You can never ultimately trust in another. for how is that possible, when you are alone?"
Biri seemed to vanish, leaving Michael on the grass. Alone.
He pulled up a sprig and contemplated it, feeling dead inside. If he was unique, solitary, without any support in all of reality - including his own internal reality - if even his mind was alone, with just one voice, and all else illusory -
The deadness was replaced once again by enormous calm. How often could he have devastating realizations, and then have them smoothed away like a waveless ocean?
How many more revelations would there be, ending in the same assurance of mastery, all illusory?
The blade of grass was alone. Together, they were alone. They were alone together.
The ground of the Realm was alone. The blade of grass was alone with the ground.
Words flowed within him, arguments, changing shape and meaning, having no meaning. He gave them up only after a tremendous, jerking pain swept him. ,
"I am in love with words," Michael said. "They are my horse. I ride them, use them. But I can never kill them. Even if I cannot use words to get where I am going." The realization of his dependence was enough.
His aloneness suddenly became apparent, without words, truth, meaning or thought.
The only way one can truly be alone is to be at one with everything, everybody.
The entire universe, having only one voice.
All the faces of creation, alone.
Michael became aware of what he had been doing when he performed the small tricks the Crane Women had taught him. 'To be alone is to be difficult to spot."
He could improve on that. "Aloneness means isolation from needs." He could last indefinitely without food or water.
"I only fight shadows. If I am alone, there is no enemy to fight." And ultimately, no need to fight. "It is crazy to fight when you are alone."
He put down the blade of grass and looked up at the multitude of stars. Biri had helped him build this structure piece by piece, carefully. Now it began to collapse. The whole thing was ridiculous. How could he ever believe such nonsense? Yet as it collapsed, it did not take the calm or sense of mastery with it; they remained.
They had built a boat, crossed a river, and the boat had crumbled just as he stood on the opposite shore.
Biri came up behind him.
"It's all wrong," Michael said. "It doesn't make sense."
"That is the sign over the gate of your acceptance," Biri told him in Cascar. "For a Sidhe, being alone is exaltation, being alone is ridiculous. You must never trust us. or our philosophies."
"Then I shouldn't trust you at all?"
"Never trust a teacher."
He didn't seem to be joking. Michael was far from convinced he knew what this final discipline was all about, undeniable though its effects were. And if it was such a discipline that made the Sidhe behave as they did - that segregated males and females, and led to such odd behavior in the males - then he would just as soon be rid of it, effects or no.
But there was nothing he could do now. He felt stronger, better able to cope. They returned to the canyon, Biri following Michael down the path.
The eastern horizon was brightening. The long night was finally over. Nikolai and Bek still slept as they approached the camp. The fire had died down to sm
oking ashes. Biri stayed away from the sleeping figures, staring off down the river.
"What do you plan to do now?" Michael asked him.
Nikolai woke up, rolled over and stared in groggy surprise at the Sidhe. "Who's that?" he asked, scrambling to his feet. Bek sat up on the ground. Biri ignored them.
"I think I will go to the Isomage," Bin said.
"That's where we're heading," Nikolai said, glancing at Michael.
"Not necessarily," Michael said. "Why go there?"