He put down what was left of the bread, and stared across the table at the lover’s-cup. It needs, now. I’ve taught it loneliness, which it never knew before. And now I’m going to have to teach it pain, because I can’t be what it needs, but I will go get what I need—
The cup sat there, full of wine and promise. It was the Goddess’s cup, the cup poured for Her at each meal to remind those who ate that all set before them was, one way or another, the product of Her love—as were the people with whom they ate. When the meal was done, if there were lovers there, the youngest of them would drain the cup together in Her name. If one was alone, one said the Blessing for the Sundered and drank it in his own name and the name of his loved, wherever that one might be. Herewiss remembered how it had used to be in the lonely days when he was young. He had been rather ugly, and when he drank the cup and called on the Loved Who Will Be to await his coming, he secretly despaired of its ever happening, of ever finding another part of himself. Now, in these later days, at least he had a name to speak; but most of the time he seemed to be drinking the cup alone, and for the past month or so the ceremony, once a reassurance and a joy, had become bitter to him.
Here, though, was a possibility. To take the Soulflight drug, and step out of the body, and go in search of Freelorn; to meet him outside the flesh, so that they could admire anew each other’s inner beauties, without the bitter base emotions clouding their eyes. To look upon one another transfigured, and share one another in the boundless lands beyond the Door, united in an ecstasy of freedom, of joy and omniscience and incalculable power—
Sunspark came back in with the bottle. Her eyes were shadowed and she would not look at Herewiss directly; her glance lingered on the lovers’-cup as she came to stand by the table. Herewiss reached out and took the bottle from her.
“Thank you,” he said.
Her eyes glanced about uncomfortably. Herewiss reached out, took her warm hand, looked up and met those eyes and held them. Deep brown-amber eyes, shot with sparks of fire, looked fearfully back at him.
“Sunspark,” he said, “don’t worry, I’ll be all right. Please don’t worry.”
She squeezed his hand back, but the fear in her eyes was no less. She turned and left.
Herewiss reached for the lovers’-cup, unstoppered the bottle and poured the drug into it, just a little more than he had used the last time. He mixed the wine to dissolve the drug, and drank.
Then he sat back, his eyes closed, and waited.
•
It was like falling asleep this time. But not falling; rising, rather, a floating feeling, as if he and the chair both were borne upward. After a time this ceased, and silence rang in his ears like a song. He opened his eyes, and raised his hand.
It came out of itself, slipping free; his own large hand, but changed—both more sensitive to what it touched, and more sensitive somehow to its own handness. Just curling it and flexing the fingers outward again was an exquisite feeling. The shell of flesh from which it had emerged was inadequate-looking, a stiff, cold, pitiful thing. Herewiss stood up and came free of himself effortlessly. He did not give his body a second look; he scorned it, and thought himself elsewhere.
Immediately he was away, and the instantaneous transition itself sent a ripple of pure pleasure through him like the first anticipation of the act of love, a deep glad movement at the center of one’s self. He was standing in air, as if on some high mountain, and below him was spread all the world known to men, from the Waste in the east to the mountains in the west. More than that, he could sense the lives of the people who lived in those lands, all the lives in the Kingdoms, mens’ lives and animals’ and Dragons’ and other creatures’, spun about and through each other, woven into a vast and intricate tapestry of movement and being. It was very like the Pattern that he had glimpsed in Sunspark’s mind. Once this vastness would have frightened and confused him, as the Pattern had. Now, though, he could see it, see all of it, comprehend it, predict the motions of men and the intimate doings of their hearts; perceive the deepest motives, the best-hidden dreams and loves, and see how they moved the people who owned them, or thought that they owned them—
He hung there in starlit stillness for a long time, letting his mind range free, tasting thoughts and emotions from a great distance. As he used the ability, it sharpened, deepened, and soon the hardest, coldest minds were yielding up their secrets to him. He walked the hot bright hearts of Dragons and knew what they thought, and why. He found their secrets, and learned the Draconid Name, which only the Dweller-at-the-Howe knows, and passes on to the new DragonChief when she takes office. Where he sensed resistance, he bent his thoughts against it, and passed through into knowledge. He found himself hearing even the thoughts of mountains and rivers, until he knew what the trees say to one another in their slow silent tongue, and what Day says to Night when they pass at the border of twilight. And still he listened, and listened, caught up in the intricacies and vastnesses of his own power, drunk with it—
There was a new note. A note at the bottom of things, a deep bass note that somehow wound itself into the fabric of everything that was, and Herewiss perceived it first with interest, and then with growing horror. By the time he realized what it was that he heard, it was too late. His power was total; as he pushed it, it grew; he had grown into hearing the note, and he could not now grow out of it.
It was the deepest bass note in all the worlds: the sound of the Universe running down.
He heard it everywhere. It twined through the structure of the tiniest blade of grass and dwelt in the hearts of stars; the empty places far above the earth were full of it; the core of the world sang it slowly and softly to itself, the Sea whispered it with every wave, the wind sighed with it and fell silent. Men shook with it as they were pushed out of the womb, and breathed it out as they died. Its long slow rumbling shook mountains into dust. The bright remote satellites of stars fell into their parent suns, and the suns devoured them, and then died themselves, dwindling into nothing, and darknesses deeper than nothing. From these wells of notness the bass note sang loudly as the voice of the earthquake; they were great devouring abysses, wombs of unbirth teeming with potential lost forever.
Herewiss reeled, tried to flee. It was no use. He strode among suns and through glowing clouds like violet and golden veils cast across the face of the darkness; he moved like a god through great spiraled treasuries of flaming stars, and knew the thoughts of the inhabitants thereof, from the greatest to the smallest; but the bass note followed him everywhere. It was wound through all the songs, the darkness at the bottom of every light.
He fled back in terror to the silver-blue mote of light that held the Kingdoms, and descending into it, walked the bottoms of the seas, and the rivers of fire beneath the mountains; but the note was there. He passed through the minds of men and Dragons again, and there it dwelt too, though in a more subtle fashion. There was a defense against the death, and that defense was love; it was effective, though only on a small scale, and only temporarily. But unknowing, men flung love away from them with insane regularity, trying to defeat the Death with strength instead. Herewiss moved from place to place, seeking desperately some place or mind free of the Death, but there was none. Despairing, he judged humankind and found them fools and madmen. In their crazy pride they chose to ignore the fact that Death is the ultimate swallower of all strengths, and that only the ephemeral vulnerability of love can hope to combat it at all—
And then he realized what he had been perceiving, and stopped in the middle of a flowering meadow somewhere in Darthen. The place blazed up in the night with a brilliance of green fire, the warm growth of spring, but like all else the fire had the seeds of death in it. Herewiss stood there, and mourned, understanding at last.
This is how the Goddess sees it, he thought. Everywhere She looks, She sees the Error. Against the fall of Night, only Love will suffice—and even that, even Her love, which was enough to create the worlds, is not enough to keep these worlds
from being destroyed—only enough to slow the Death down. She loves Her children, gives them the gift of that love—and they just throw it away. Oh, Mother…
He shook his head. I’m forgetting myself. It was for love’s sake that I came this journey. Where is Freelorn?
The thought was enough. Herewiss was there, standing by some little creek in eastern Darthen, looking at Freelorn—
—and at Segnbora, with whom Lorn was moving gently under the blankets.
Herewiss wanted to leave on the instant, but by the time he had conceived of the idea, it was too late; he had already perceived the situation in its entirety with his heightened sight. The bitter shock and loneliness that washed over him could not obscure it. Here was Freelorn, sleeping with Segnbora. Well, that was not entirely unexpected, or terribly unusual. Herewiss had gathered some time back that Segnbora often slept with one or another of the men, for her own pleasure, or theirs. But he looked at the two of them, and saw their thoughts and motivations from top to bottom. Segnbora’s were pleasant enough, at least on the top levels. Under the long slow swells of her passion, he could feel pity, compassion, gentleness, a desire to console, to reach out and touch and straighten a hurt and angry mind, to support until the status quo should reassert itself; the desire to give Freelorn back to Herewiss in a few months, tuned, as it were-made gentle again, gotten over his anger, grown into some kind of realization of his own problems and what he did to himself to cause some of them. It would be a present, a thank-you to Herewiss for trust given and received.
Under that, though, the motives were darker. Control. Segnbora looked at Herewiss and Freelorn and envied them. She had no lover of her own, had tried once or twice, but her own fears had stifled the loves; she could not give, and did not understand why; she thought she trusted, but dared not open the deepest places. Love which has no roots in the depths, often dies when commitment runs shallow; such had been the case with her. She saw the trust between Freelorn and Herewiss, and coveted it, and tried to take a little of it for herself by intruding into the relationship ever so slightly… leaving behind her a message, something to remember her by: I may be incomplete, but there is something I did that you could not. And below that lay levels more primitive and profound, where her passions raged in fire and ice—old angers, old fears, cruelly bound up past her present ability or desire to undo them.
And then there was Freelorn—in love, suddenly, with Segnbora; sharing, opening himself to her, letting himself give her his best. And a level down, sealed away from his own perception, dwelt anger, bitter anger at Herewiss, for being something other than what he was supposed to be…for daring to defy Freelorn’s control, daring to break the old patterns. Anger at Segnbora seethed there too, for her daring to understand what he could not about Herewiss, and daring to put the needs of the Power above anything else; for supporting Herewiss against him, for coming between them, for being a threat. Freelorn would use her, then—would assert the only control over the situation that was available to him. And when Segnbora’s fears (which he had sensed) made her begin to back away from him, Freelorn would be safe again. He would be hurt, and she would be hurt, but he would be blameless. Then later on, when Herewiss came home, he would see what seemed to have happened, and would forgive Freelorn, and everything would once more be the way it had always been.
All this Herewiss saw and sensed, as he stood over them, watching the movements under the blankets, hearing the words of love spoken. He could not ward away what he had heard, or forget it. He had grown into the hearing, and now he could not grow out of it. He perceived Freelorn and Segnbora in all their tangled intricacy, knew the woven lights and darks of their selves; and he backed away, afraid. He understood them both, in terrible completeness, but he could not forgive them.
I have been cheated. Cheated. Something has been stolen from me. I never wanted to see this, no one should see this, not this way. Something’s gone. Something’s stolen. Something of mine—
Some nights after Herelaf had died, all that while ago, Herewiss had gone out into the Wood and had walked aimlessly through the cold night for a long, long time. After a while it had occurred to him that he was looking for something—something taken from him, unfairly, while his back had been turned. His innocence? Or else he was looking for somewhere to get rid of this new thing that had taken possession of him: his guilt. But Herelaf was gone, taken, stolen, his brother whom he loved. And instead of the love, only the deathguilt remained, as if some thieving night-creature had taken away the love between them and left this in its place. A shiny hollow glittery guilt, one that reflected chill accusing lights back at him when he examined it. For a long time Herewiss had let it stay there, feeling that it was better to have something in that echoing empty place, than nothing at all. But now he looked at the cold cheap gleam of it and began to be revolted…
But I was cheated. How can I love him now, knowing this? And it was the drug that did it! And You, Goddess! My love, my caring, You stole them from me—
A pause. A long one. And a slow dawning realization.
My love? Mine? The way he thinks I belong to him, with no thought for my wishes in the matter? Goddess, I’m no better than he is! And Herelaf, then— Another pause. His fear rose suddenly up in him.
I could look, now. I’ve known whole worlds at once tonight, held all their thoughts at once. I could certainly know what makes me work.
With the very idea, he knew, just a little. There were two of him. Three. Nine. He multiplied suddenly, shattering in his inward vision into countless bright prisms, a frightening flurry of mixed motivations and swirling personality-pieces, dancing before his terrified observer-self like a snowfall set afire. They were all bits of him, and they were all hotly alive, and they were all arguing with each other. An impossible and confusing blizzard of joys and fears and angers, they strove among themselves for dominance of him, the him that walked the world and acted as one being. He had never dreamed that there were so many of him, or that they were so at odds. Imposing control upon them seemed a ridiculous impossibility. And there were currents sweeping through the jeweled snow, winds of anger or hopelessness or pain, so that all this myriad selves were taken and moved by them—or did those selves make the winds to carry them where they wanted to go, and Herewiss with them, whether he wanted to go or not?
The one of him observing was horrified. How much of what happens to me do I make happen? Oh Goddess, I don’t want to see any more!
There was a sudden consolidation. There were fewer of him now, but they sang together at him in tearing harmonies of challenge and promised pain, No? You could know yourself. You could dare—
No!
You could. More voices joining in the chorus, all his own, distracting discords blending with the purer notes of cold reason. And if you don’t dare, you’ll never find out the truth about the world. Who sees clearly through a cracked glass?
NO!!
Coward.
He wanted to weep, and found that he could not. Maybe I’ll dare later, he said.
Maybe, came the reply, some of the voices pacified, some skeptical. And then one high clear voice spoke, still his own, but with a cutting edge that went through him like a sword. “Maybe” means never, it sang in a minor key, and you know it. With “maybe” you pronounce your own doom, and that of a thousand lives tangled with your own. A life of “almost” is its own reward.
And then the multitudes went away, and there was one of him again. Herewiss had never felt so lonely in his life.
First Herelaf gone.
Now Freelorn, abandoning him for the moment, intending to pick him up again later when he was more amenable, more willing to be what Freelorn wanted him to be. I’m not a loved to him. I’m a tool. I’m a symbol for something else. I’m something to use—
He wandered away slowly. He had come looking for joy. He had found only misery. Cheated—
Eventually he found himself back in the gray place again, isolated in the cold gray fog and glad to
be that way. There he stayed for a while, sitting on the damp hard ground, letting his sorrows have free run through him, mourning his losses, sunk in his wounded self.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it last. His own wry sense of humor began to betray him—there was no holding it in abeyance for long. Well, he thought, I was a god for awhile, and that was nice—and then I died a little from something my loved did to me. That’s the way the pattern usually runs, isn’t it? So now I should go be reborn, so that the circle can be closed, and all things start again. It’s such a nuisance—
He laughed softly to himself, and the act destroyed the cold place around him, leaving him hanging free again amid the myriad brilliances of the stars. They look like my mind did, he thought, his heart slowly opening out to them, rejoicing in them—celebrating the stately passage of their bright-burning companies, the way they opened shining arms to the wide darkness, blown swirling in slow grandeur by winds he could not sense. But how calm, how serene. Is this what the Goddess’s mind looks like, then?
He hung there for so short a time, it seemed. He had perceived all these families of stars at once, and all the lives upon their worlds, and the knowledge had been as nothing. Now he turned his mind outward and found something that he could not comprehend, though he could feel the currents of it stirring around him— the vast breath of a Life greater than all life, to which all that lived would eventually return. He strove to understand, pushing his mind outward again, and found to his bewildered joy that, no matter how hard he pushed, the Sharer of that greatest Life was always far ahead of him. Herewiss finally gave himself up to the joy, his heart taking him into regions where cold thought could not.
Much later he came back to some knowledge of himself, and sighed, feeling diminished, but not alone. It’s good to know, he thought, that there’s always something bigger than you are…