Читать книгу The Cracks in the Aether - Robert Reginald - Страница 12

CHAPTER SEVEN

“YOU WANT TO DO WHAT?”

I needed help and advice, and I knew it. What I was contemplating could not be undertaken lightly or without consequence. I would begin with my immediate superior, Magister Geraklíd, the Minister of Magical Affairs in Kórynthia.

I asked for an audience, and when I received permission, transited on the next day to his home in Bizerte, leaving Scooter behind.

“You want to do what?” he said, when I told him of my plans.

“I wish to resign my position as Scanner Prime, Sir,” I said, “Or at least take a leave of absence.”

“Then the rumors are true.”

“What rumors?”

“That you’ve predicted the fall of the Kingdom within the next year.”

“That’s not what I said, Sir.” Since he already knew something of the Council’s proceedings, I gave him a summary of my reading. “I was surprised that you weren’t present, Magister.”

“I was out of town, and failed to receive the notice in time.”

“Really?” I found his answer puzzling. As a government official, he would have had to maintain contact at all times.

“We’re here to discuss your business, not mine.”

“Yes, Sir,” I said. I didn’t want to antagonize the man, since I needed his formal permission to proceed with minimal consequences to my purse, position, and person.

“So you want to abandon us at a time of crisis…if your prognostications are correct.”

“They’re true, Sir. I…uh….” The truth was, I didn’t want to tell him the truth. “I need to go on a pilgrimage of reconstitution.” Well, that was at least part of the truth!

“You want to go on a pilgrimage of reconstitution? Are you mad? The Queen won’t let you leave, not when you’re needed here, now more than ever.”

“But truly, Magister, she has nothing to say about the matter. She maintains temporal authority over the Kingdom, to be sure, but wields no direct power over the magely class. If I wish to go, why, certainly I can.”

Geraklíd began pacing on the rug in front of me, his hands clasped behind his back, his gray head and beard bobbing up and down like a hungry bird. Suddenly he stopped and turned to me:

“Morpheús…sometimes I wonder about you, boy, I really do. Yes, in theory Queen Evetéria has no authority over such as us. But the reality is far different. She can banish you from the kingdom forever—or at least until her own death. She can request that I set the dogs of war on you and bring you to account before the Court of Mages—and if I refuse, she can ask the Covenant to find a new Magister of Mages for Kórynthia. They may or may not agree, but the petition will have to be considered in any case. She can use the Lords Spiritual against us in the eternal three-way battle for power and influence in the State, and allied with the power of the Lords Temporal…well, the Lords Magical could not possibly maintain their position under such circumstances. She can withhold certain monies for the support of the Magical Estate. In sum, she can cause us unending trouble—and moreover, she is exactly the kind of ruler who will cause us difficulties, if we cross her in this matter.

“She likes you. That’s both a curse and a blessing. It gives you a certain influence over the Lady, but nothing ever comes without its price. She has you by the short hairs, Master Morpheús, and you’d best acknowledge the fact. You can’t leave, whatever the reason, and you specifically do not have my blessing.

“I have to admit, I’m disappointed in you. You were the first mage to be acknowledged as Scrutor Primoris since Doctor Scarabbaios. You’re also a Dream Weaver, although you’ve never used that talent, to the best of my knowledge. We couldn’t even measure your aptitude, because it was so high off the scale.

“Oh, you’ve done well, no question. You’ve risen very quickly in the hierarchy, and seem destined one day to take my place. But always I’ve had the sense that what you’ve accomplished has primarily and firstly been to promote the career of Master Morpheús. Everything that you’ve done has been carefully calculated to benefit you first. You’ve established no long-term personal connections with anyone, because (I think) you regard them as a potential impediment. And now that you see the inevitable collapse of the state, you’re ready to run away at the first opportunity.”

“Uh, that’s not actually true, Sir.” Although it was, of course. Who was I fooling save myself?

“Then tell me what’s really happening.”

I’d made a fundamental error, I could see that now. I’d asked a question for which I didn’t know the answer—and I should have known the answer, if I’d just taken the time to think the thing through. Now I’d compromised one of my oldest supporters, someone who was bound to be hurt, both personally and professionally, if I followed my heart. Still, I was not swayed by his arguments.

“It’s more than just my Council reading, Magister,” I said. “It’s…my life. I’ve been feeling for some time that I’ve failed, somehow, to find an appropriate purpose for what I do. Most folks just don’t want to be told the reality of their futures—and so I have to lie to them. I didn’t mind that, at least at first, but of late I’ve grown impatient with having to spew a rainbow-enshrouded version of things to come, when all I can see in most cases is old age, sickness, decrepitude, and death, sometimes interleafed with equal measures of poverty and loss of property, position, and posture. No one wants to hear that.”

“Not all futures are bad,” my superior said.

“But most contain bad elements, Sir. I’m tired of lying. I’m tired of having to be nice to everyone while misusing my craft.”

“It’s not a misuse of your abilities to reassure people,” Geraklíd said. “You simply have to be tactful in what you say.”

“No, Sir, you have to lie! All the time! I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything worthwhile. There has to be some better use of my talents, whatever that is. Maybe this captive woman….”

“What woman?”

Oh, now I’d done it! I hadn’t intended to reveal the connection I’d made in the æthersphere. Hellfire and damnation!

So I told him about my several adventures probing for links to the Otherworlds, one of them involuntary.

“You’re not a neomage, Morpheús. I don’t have to tell you that what you’re doing is foolish and risky beyond belief. This being that you’ve encountered may not be human—or a woman—or even flesh and blood. You know nothing about it beyond the barest of suppositions. You have to stop this right away.”

“That’s what my familiar said.”

“Well, your familiar is right,” he said. “You said you actually Dreamed a connection. Has this ever happened to you before?”

“Well, no.”

“You have that talent in your repertoire, the ability to shape reality through unconscious imaging. Perhaps it’s finally beginning to emerge from your psyche. Such powers are little described in the literature, probably because they’re so rare and elusive. Your distant ancestor, the Magus Magorum Parakôdês, was said to have been a Dream Weaver. But his life is the stuff of legend—he lived so long ago that the stories about his makings have become almost myths, and we don’t know how his talent actually worked.

“But the real question is: why should your Dreaming emerge now?”

Why indeed? I’d thought about this for the past several days: “Something triggered the connection, Sir—and it had to be from the other end. I did not—could not—consciously activate what I can’t control and don’t understand. I think it was the woman who sparked a response—and that could only be due to her possessing a similar ability that created a resonance between us, even at this great distance. That’s why I must find her. I have to know who I am and what I can do to make a difference. Otherwise, my existence is meaningless.”

“I see,” the Magister said. Then he sighed, long and loud. “Yet, my judgment remains the same: if the crisis will be as great as you claim, we need you here to cope with it—and to nurture the Queen. The needs of the many….”

“Yes, I know, Minister. I do appreciate your candor, Sir, and I understand your position; but in the end, I have to make my own decision, whatever the consequence. I’ll let you know what I intend to do after I have sufficient time to think on it.”

He gave me his blessing, and I returned home.

But in my heart, I’d already made my choice. I’d follow in the footsteps of my illustrious progenitor, and accomplish something significant with my life, instead of remaining a government functionary.

In my bedroom was a small alcove with a marble bust of Parakôdês. I lit the three candles—ebon, ivory, and emerald—that flanked his image, and bowed my head in respect. Then I spoke the words that my father the proud soldier had given me.

“I invoke the name of he who gave me flesh, faith, and foresight. Parakôdês of the Red-Lands, awake thou from thy sleep!”

The great bearded image shook itself slightly, straightened with a deep groan of stone, and then opened its eyes, in a startling, even blinding flash of blue-green. I avoided their twin gaze, as I’d been told.

“Is this my true path, o grandfather of my soul?” I asked.

“Yes, my brilliant son,” came the reply, a hollow, heavy, hissing sigh with overtones of the æther. “This is what you must do, both to save yourself, the world in which you dwell, and the greater sphere in which your orb is a mere pearl littered upon a beach of worlds. The ætherspace has begun to fracture, and only you can make it whole again.”

“But…but…why me? Why has this fallen to me, o Great Mage?” I suddenly felt overwhelmed by a burden that I neither desired nor felt capable of handling. I heard a small crack, and saw one ear flake from the bust.

“The son must rise to take his place in the cosmos,” he said. “You were born at this time to do this one thing, whatever else you might accomplish. No one else can do it for you.

“But remember, Oridión the Morpheús, that there is a price to be rendered for every action that we take, and you must ultimately pay the ferryman his token, just as I did so long ago. That is why we hypatomancers may not envision our own futures, lest we breach the line that is drawn in the sands of eternity to keep us sane.

“Go now, flesh of my flesh, and do what must be done. Find the Eggs and restore the balance that has been lost.”

“Eggs? What Eggs? Whatever are you talking about, Grandfather?” I was lost again in a mire of self-pity, trying to fathom what the old Mage was saying, and wondering how one man could do anything to save the entire cosmos. Another crack, and the back of the image’s head crumbled into dust.

“The four Eggs of the Elephant—you must find and control them to restore order to the shattered spheres. The First Egg will open the Way. The Second Egg will show you the Way. The Third Egg will find the Way. The Fourth Egg will make the Way One.”

“I don’t understand.” Grandfather’s nose dissolved into eternity in a puff of dust.

“The knowledge will come to you if you let it. When you need some answers, twice more you may call upon me, and twice more will I respond. But should you call my name a fourth time, I will come for you, my child, and that will be the end of it.”

And then he was gone, the statue disappearing like a breath that’s been held a very long time and is suddenly exhaled. Perhaps it was my breath, for I seemed to have difficulty of a sudden regaining my wind. Then I snuffed out the candles in reverse order, and hearing the barest click of claws on stone, suddenly pirouetted.

Scooter was watching me from the doorway, its small, bewhiskered head cocked to one side.

“You humans—always full of surprises,” it said.