“Just as long as he is not in a cloister,” I muttered.
A wave cuffed me hard, knocking the breath out of me. “Anything else?” I gasped wrathfully at the heavens. Another wave broke against me, and by the time I had finished coughing and choking out swallowed seawater, I had ceased thinking of Ariel and the null. The wind had been growing steadily, and it now howled overhead, whipping the waves into high peaks that broke over me until I feared I would drown clinging to the back of the ship fish. Ari-noor seemed unaffected, yet I was buffeted mercilessly by the sea, and every breath was a struggle. When I remembered my surrender to the waves in the narrow inlet, I relaxed, and at once I became aware that a song throbbed in the air, made up of the sea’s roar and hiss and the wind’s howling. The strange, wild music had a rhythm, and Ari-noor’s movements synchronized with it and were part of it. I thought of Powyrs, the shipmaster of The Cutter, telling me that the sea was too strong and vast to be fought. One must surrender to it. I thought I had surrendered to it in the narrow inlet, but I had only given up struggling against it. In order to hear the song of the waves, I began to understand that I had to give up singing my own song of fear first. Powyrs had called it surrender, but in truth he meant that one needed to cease one’s own competing song. Only then could I listen to the song of the waves and become part of it as the ship fish did.
The sensation of being in tune with the vast, mysterious ocean was profoundly soothing, and the wild waves and the roar of the storm overhead and the dreadful thirst I felt were no less a part of it than Ari-noor. I thought of the mindstream that lay at the bottom of all minds, connecting us to one another and to the past and the future. Perhaps the sea and the creatures in it were closer than creatures of the land and air to that final merging of all life that was the end of individuality, which we humans called death.
I shivered, noting dimly that I was growing cold. Ari-noor had long since ceased to feed me from her ohrana. Indeed, she no longer scolded me or reminded me to keep hold or stay awake, and I could feel her fatigue. I had the feeling that if I let go of her, she would swim lightly on, hardly noticing that she had lost me. The thought no longer frightened me. Death, too, was part of the song of the waves. A serene fatalism possessed me.
I drifted, and while I did not sleep, sleep was no longer separate from waking. Both states flowed through me, and my spirit become loose and free in my body, as if I need only lean over for it to pour out into the waves. Liquid into liquid. I felt no urge to pour myself into the sea but no fear of it either, and in that utterly passive state, I heard something. It was not music, yet it was; and it was not exactly sound, yet my spirit floating in my flesh heard it. It flowed through the water, wave after wave of exquisite sound. Swells and eddies and currents of sound that, incredibly, moved through me as if I were part of the sea, as if my flesh did not separate us. This was the wavesong that Ari-noor and Ari-roth had spoken of, I realized in wonderment. This was what sea beasts heard and what had carried the song of my need across time and space.
I floated for a long time, listening and feeling the wavesong before I understood that there was meaning in it. Not one single meaning but a thousand meanings flowing side by side. Not meaning that could be understood as words are, but meaning as music carries meaning. Even a musician without empathy can evoke anger or sorrow or fear with music, and this was like that, only a thousand times more complex. Eddies and rills and coils of meaning merged and flowed and seemed to change and develop, as if meaning communicated with meaning.
As I lost myself in the wavesong, I began to feel a warning or a foreboding of something immense and dark and utterly strange. I struggled to understand what it could be, but its meaning was too fluid. There was death in it.
Frightened, I asked Ari-noor what it was.
She made no response. I called again and realized that I could not feel her in my mind. Unease flowed through me, thickening the fluid softness of my spirit, and as I became aware of my body—how cold and stiff it was—the wavesong faded.
Again I tried to farseek Ari-noor, and to my dismay, I discovered that she was no longer with me!
Panicking, I tread water and turned, seeking the sleek gray form of the ship fish, but if she was near I could not see her, for a thick, soft, blinding mist swirled above the waves. I called out her name again, mentally and aloud, but there was no response. Either she had been too weary to register my departure, or she had felt that my letting go severed the commitment she had made to bring me across the strait. Or perhaps in allowing the wavesong to enter me, she felt I had no more need of her.
Abruptly, I stopped splashing and shouting, aware that I was alone in the rain-swept sea and that sharks were probably scything through the waves, drawn by the discordant song of fear I had been emanating.
Something banged against my feet, and I would have screamed in fright if I had had any strength. A wave crashed over me, thrusting me downward with such force that it felt as if I had hit something solid. I thrashed my arms, desperate to reach the surface, and grazed my elbow. I imagined sharks seething in the water, snapping at my flailing limbs. I managed one breath of air before another wave pummeled me, this time sending me tumbling head over heels. Dizzy and confused, I was no longer sure which way was up or down. Again my elbow and then my knee struck something hard, and I realized I must have been washed into a shoal! I could be battered to pieces on the rocks just below the surface. Another wave lifted me and threw me down. My head struck something, and I dropped into blackness. I sank like a stone to the depths of my mind. The descent was so swift that I knew I would not be able to prevent myself from entering the mindstream. Instead of feeling fear or desperation, my will dissolved and I ceased trying to slow my descent.
But I came to a sudden violent stop above the mindstream. Stunned at how abruptly my fall had ended, it took me a moment to understand that some other will had stopped me. Only one will was powerful enough for such a thing.
“Atthis.”
“Even I could not stop your fall alone,” sent the Agyllian. “It took all of the eldar, and even we would have failed without your friends.”
“My friends?” I echoed.
“The cat and the horse who are your protectors,” Atthis said. “The dog Rasial and the funaga Gavryn, Swallow, and Maryon. They have agreed to let us draw on them.”
My mind reeled at the names. “But … how?”
“I entered their dreams and summoned their aid. When they opened themselves to me, I drew on their spirits to strengthen our merge, just as the ship fish fed you their ohrana,” Atthis answered.
“Then my friends know what has been happening to me?”
“No,” Atthis answered. “They know only that ElspethInnle was in great danger of death and must be saved. I asked their aid, and they gave it. Now you must exert your own will and rise, for it drains all of us to hold you.”
I tried to do as she bid me, but my mind was sodden and responded sluggishly. “I can’t,” I sent.
“You are hurt badly,” Atthis said. “We have taught your body to heal itself, and it will begin to do so when you withdraw from the mindstream. This close, your body cannot heal. Draw back, and we will send help.”
I strove again to focus my mind and rise. This time, I managed to withdraw from the mindstream a little, but I felt the strange, wrenching regret of leaving behind that inevitable final merging with all that had been and would be. I tried to throw off my regret by thinking of Maruman and Gahltha, strange Gavryn and the others, who had somehow allowed themselves to be used to save me. And I thought of Cinda and the little boy Mouse, who had endured such horrors, and their will and courage to go on living. Most of all, though, I thought of the west coast, that I alone had the chance to save. If I died, thousands would die of plague.
“If you perish, a world will die,” Atthis sent. “All beasts and funaga and plants. All.”
“If I live, I will save them?” I asked.
“You will try, and you may succeed,?
?? the Agyllian elder answered. “Now rise, for even augmented, our merge weakens.”
I tried again to rise, but the mindstream sang to me, its song as great and alluring as the wavesong, and I was weak. There was only one way to save myself. I delved into myself and tapped the dark killing force that slumbered deep in my mind. I was careful not to rouse it, but its dark hot strength flowed through me, and I heard Atthis gasp as I began to rise swiftly. As I felt Atthis slip away from me, I faltered in my will to rise. A bubble of matter rose lazily and inexorably from the mindstream to engulf me.
“… I am Cassy,” said Cassy. She was smiling at a middle-aged woman.
“I am Hannah Seraphim,” the older woman said in a warm, soft voice.
I stared at her in wonder, for this was the first time I had ever seen Hannah Seraphim, leader of the Beforetime Misfits and the first woman to dream of me and my quest. She was shorter and smaller and more ordinary-looking than I had imagined her, but her mouth was full and smiling, and her eyes were extraordinary. They were brown. Not the opaque brown of stone and earth, but the clear transparent brown of a forest stream, a warm, dappled brown with moving glints of green and gold in their depths. Beautiful eyes, watchful and intelligent.
“I only got in this morning,” Cassy was saying. “I … I couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
Hannah answered in her deep slow voice. “I’m glad you are here and gladder still that you’ve wasted no time in visiting us.” Hannah held out a small strong hand to Cassy, and after a slight hesitation, the tall younger woman laid her own in it and smiled nervously.
“Welcome to the Reichler Clinic, Cassandra,” Hannah said formally. “I am afraid this is a very grand building of which we have only a small part. Our patron, although he would laugh to hear himself described so, would happily give us the whole building, and indeed he has the means for it.” She smiled a private, rather lovely smile. “But what we have here is sufficient and safer.” There was a slight grimness to her mouth now, and her eyes were stern.
“Please, call me Cassy,” said the younger woman as they began to climb a flight of steps. She looked around, prompting me to do the same, and at once I recognized their surroundings. They were in the entrance foyer of the building that contained the Reichler Clinic Reception Center, in the city of Newrome, under Tor. But I could hardly reconcile the dim, water-stained foyer within the crushed building in a submerged and ruined city into which I had dived, with this shining hall of marble and glass. Through the windows, I saw huge trees and shrubs growing where now there grew a dark submarine forest of waving fronds sunk in an endless emerald twilight.
Hannah and Cassy had reached the top of the steps, to the foyer’s main section, and I noticed the absence of the enormous glass statue of a woman surrounded by beasts. It was missing because it had yet to be created. Cassy gazed around, her eyes narrowing speculatively, and I wondered if this was the moment when the seed of the idea for that statue had been planted. “It seems so impossible and so wonderful to be here,” she said. “All those years ago when I was tested in one of your mobile units, I was so desolate to be told that I had no paranormal abilities.”
Hannah sighed in vexation, and after one swift assessing glance around, she said in a soft voice, “Those mobile units! Who knows how many like you were turned away because the equipment was useless. At the time, I thought William was just technically incompetent because, after all, he had written Powers of the Mind. Of course, he had not written the book at all, but it was not until later that I discovered it.”
“When will I meet the others?” Cassy asked shyly.
Hannah looked at her and, after another glance around, said very softly, “Cassy, listen to me carefully, because I won’t be able to speak like this once we enter the elevator. There are listening devices in it and also in our reception center. The other paranormal students are not here, because despite its name, this is not the Reichler Clinic. The government and the general public believe it is, because that is what we want them to believe. Our real work with paranormals is undertaken elsewhere so we can be sure there will be no repeat of what happened at the first Reichler Clinic facility. I have been unable to speak of this in our e-mails. I have often warned you to say little in our communications, citing competing factions and cyber pirates as the reason. The truth is that we must protect ourselves from the government.”
“But where …?”
“The true Reichler Clinic is not so far away, but we will not go there today. Now you are going to meet those who come here to maintain our facade. Some are paranormals and others are not. You and I are about to enact a performance for the spy eyes and listening devices planted throughout our rooms.”
“But why bring me here if we cannot speak freely?” Cassy said in confusion. They were approaching a bank of gleaming metal doors, and Hannah laid her hand lightly on Cassy’s shoulder as she reached out to press her palm against a glowing square on the wall beside the doors. Cassy’s eyes showed a fleeting look of astonishment, but she managed to turn a cry of surprise into a sneeze. Sensing what was happening, I entered her mind.
“… how we will communicate,” Hannah was farsending. “But it was necessary for you to come here because of our communications so far. You are, after all, the daughter of the director of the institute at which kidnapped paranormals are being secretly held, and you have been communicating with and have come to visit the Reichler Clinic from whose destroyed compound they were taken. No matter what you sent me, I have been lukewarm in my enthusiasm. No doubt it frustrated you that I have many times suggested that you are likely to test normal, despite the fact that your e-mails made it clear that you were definitely paranormal.”
“My e-mails.” Cassy gasped aloud.
“Exactly,” Hannah farsent. “But don’t worry. After you communicated with us the first time, we knew there would be official consternation. We set up programs to alter all of your communications before they were logged, and we hacked into your computer to erase all traces of the original messages. What the officials monitoring our incoming e-mails read were the rather fatuous and romantic ideals of a girl who believes herself to be special. Not an uncommon feeling among young women, and one that might be expected of a neglected young woman who is the product of a broken relationship between two busy, rather cold parents with careers, who are less than attentive to their only daughter. Forgive me if this pains you.”
“It … it is only the truth,” Cassy said.
“I am sorry, but the truth is always the best shield for a greater truth. The e-mails I sent you were responses to those false e-mails. Of course, you were careful because the captive paranormals would have warned you to be careful. Nevertheless, we removed even your veiled references to the kidnapped paranormals and your communications with them, because although much time has passed, we do not want the government to guess that we know they destroyed the original Reichler Clinic.”
“It was not the paranormals who warned me to be careful, and it was not because of them that I contacted you …,” Cassy began, her mindvoice clearer as she forgot her self-consciousness in her urgent desire to communicate. “I did not know how to explain without sounding mad, but it was the flamebird—”
“I have some inkling of what you will tell me. But the elevator is coming now, and we must concentrate on our performance for this meeting. The output of the spy eyes and listening devices will be very closely scrutinized because of who you are, and we must give the government nothing upon which to hang their suspicions. You will take various tests that will reveal very slight latent paranormal ability—that you are basically normal. You, of course, will be terribly disappointed. And tomorrow you will console yourself by hiking in the mountains near the entrance to Newrome with a handsome young student of Newrome University who will come this evening to your hotel bar and offer to buy you a drink. But we will speak more of that later. Remember, guard your expression and play your part convincingly, lest you put all of us in danger.”
“Your voice is so … so clear,” Cassy sent.
“In part because I am touching you,” Hannah sent. She released Cassy and stepped forward to press at the panel with apparent impatience. Then her mindvoice came again, but with less strength and clarity. “The closer you are, the easier it is. But rest assured, although my mindvoice may seem strong and clear, with very little training, you will surpass us all.”
“How can you be so sure?” Cassy asked.
“I have seen it,” Hannah said aloud, but softly. Her face was suddenly ineffably sad, and her sadness lapped at me.
I became aware that I was floating. Somewhere in me was a terrible thirst, but before it could surface, I saw that there was a red-haired woman floating in the water beside me. The water about her was red with blood, and I recognized her from Dragon’s comatose dream as the betrayed queen of the Red Land—she whom sea creatures called Mornir-ma. In the coma dream, the dying Red Queen had summoned whales to smash the slave ship that had carried her and her little daughter from their land. Then she had called a ship fish to bear Dragon to the nearest land, the west coast. There was no sign of Dragon, though, and as the woman’s blood flowered into the sea about her, I understood that the ohrana of the sea was drinking her spirit.
“Is this the dreamsea?” I asked.
The red-haired woman opened her eyes and looked at me. Then she answered in the bell tones of Ari-noor. “The sea is without end. It ebbs and flows between. It is the place where all things meet and change. It is infinite.”
I am dreaming, I thought. I began to rise again toward consciousness, but I had too little strength to maintain a shield against the drifting tendrils of dream stuff.
Suddenly I was kneeling in rustling brown and yellow leaves, cupping my hands under a rill of water that bubbled from a cleft in an outcrop of stone. The water was so cold that my palms grew numb as I scooped some to my mouth.