Seven Dreams (38 page)

Serena
blinked.

‘
Your
language,’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘You are not a native
speaker, I think?’

Serena shook her
head, nonplussed by the sudden change of direction. ‘Teyo is,’ she
said, gesturing. ‘And Iya.’

Rhoun Torinth’s
gaze flicked past Iyamar and settled on Teyo. ‘Ah, the topic
interests you,’ he said. ‘I can see that clearly enough. Perhaps we
will discuss it.’

Teyo opened his
mouth, hesitated, and closed it again.

‘
Very
well,’ said Torinth, unfolding himself from the bookcase. ‘This
“important matter” you spoke of. I suppose you had better tell me
about it.’

Serena glanced at
Ylona, standing frozen with one arm half-raised and her mouth open.
‘Ah... should we expect to end up like them, in the near
future?’

‘
Possibly not.’ This unreassuring assertion was all they were
to receive, for Torinth said nothing more.

Serena swallowed
visibly. ‘It’s my brother,’ she said, a little shakily. ‘He... he
died, and I cannot—’

‘
Ah,’
interrupted the Lokant. His gaze, fixed upon Serena, sharpened. ‘It
was not curiosity that led you here, then, but
self-interest.’

Serena’s
shoulders slumped slightly. ‘Um, no,’ she faltered. ‘It’s for
Fabian that I—’

‘
Let
us not deceive ourselves,’ Rhoun Torinth interrupted. ‘It is sad
for your brother, yes, but he is gone. He feels nothing. It is for
yourself that you wish him restored.’

Serena glanced
uncertainly at Teyo. He had never seen her so much at a loss, and
he was obliged to smother a brief desire to do the supercilious
Torinth a minor injury. Or perhaps a major one.

‘
He
didn’t deserve it,’ she said softly.

‘
Few
people deserve to die,’ Torinth said, with chilling indifference.
‘We cannot reverse every death. Why this one?’

Serena had
nothing to say. She sighed, and all the hope seemed to go out of
her with the exhalation. If Torinth would not help them, how were
they ever to find the information they sought? And if he was
inclined to actively oppose them, the task swiftly grew from
extremely difficult
to
impossible.

But Serena
rallied. She gestured at Ylona, and said in a firmer voice: ‘Your
daughter, I gather?’

Rhoun Torinth’s
brows rose again. ‘I would be so interested to hear where this
information is coming from.’

Serena ignored
that. ‘Ylona believes you to be dead,’ she said. ‘She came here
with the same purpose as mine: to find the secret of travelling
back through time, in order to restore
you
to life. Can you
so easily dismiss her intentions?’

‘
She
believes no such thing.’

Serena blinked.
‘What?’

‘
She
knows I did not die. She has always known it. Whatever her purpose
here might be, it is not as you suppose. And so, I’ll ask you
again: where is this information coming from?’

‘
Mae,’
said Serena warily.

Torinth’s
surprise grew. ‘
Orintha
Mae?’

‘
I
don’t know. She wouldn’t tell us the rest of her name. Or anything
else.’

Torinth was
silent for some time. ‘Orintha Mae sent you here,’ he said, flatly,
as though the notion displeased him.

‘
No,’
Serena replied coolly. ‘On the contrary, she was eager to prevent
anyone’s coming here. It was Ylona who started the search for the
keys.’

‘
Tell
me everything,’ Torinth ordered, and Serena did. Teyo stood in
silence, only interrupting once when Serena neglected a detail in
her tale. Rhoun Torinth heard it all without speaking a word, and
when she had finished he remained silent for some time.

‘
Ylona
offered you the contents of the repository?’ he said at
last.

Serena nodded.
‘If we handed over the keys we had secured. I imagine she has
offered the same prize to everyone she’s worked with. Even the
Yllandu.’ She frowned. ‘But now I think that she had no need to
make any such deal. I suspect she let us gather up several of the
keys without interference, knowing that she could take them back
any time she wanted. But she made us
think
that she opposed
us, because it lulled our suspicions and kept us going.’ Her mouth
twisted in disgust. ‘We pulled the very same trick ourselves on an
unwelcome colleague, yet we failed to recognise it being wielded
against us.’

Torinth’s gaze
drifted to his daughter’s inert face, his own expression puzzled.
‘I suspect,’ he said at last, ‘that this is about Orlind. She
regretted its passing, more deeply than her siblings. If she felt
there was a way to undo its destruction and restore the great
Library to the world, perhaps she would take it. Though I do not
know why she would do so only now, after so many years.’ He shook
himself, blinking, and said: ‘But this is no concern of yours. To
return to your stated purpose: though I sympathise, most sincerely,
with your plight, the matter is not so simple as you imagine.
Consider: were you to wander back some hours in time, and prevent
the demise of your brother, what then? It may seem as though you
have merely rectified a wrong, righted an injustice. In fact, you
have interfered with the order of things at a fundamental level;
you cannot know what the impact of your actions will be, nor their
eventual effect.’

‘
But—’

Torinth held up a
hand. ‘Why do you imagine I locked all of this away?’ he said,
softly. ‘Why do I persist in guarding it? For I
am
its
guard. You asked me how I am alive: in truth, I am not, precisely.
One might more accurately say that I am
preserved.
It is a
sacrifice I made for precisely this reason. The contents of this
repository are both deeply important and extremely dangerous. They
cannot be freely given away, and I do not for a second believe that
my daughter had any such intention.’ He paused, frowning. ‘When I
created the Dreams, it was not for any such purpose as
this.
If ever some future denizens of the Seven were to come crashing
through my doors, I thought that it would be a matter of grave
emergency; of life and death on a grand scale. I have preserved
myself against just such an eventuality: great need.
This
was not what I had in mind.’

Serena lifted her
chin. ‘It is a matter of grave emergency to us.’

‘
Yes,’
he said, with a trace of irritation, ‘but you have merely landed
here by accident, because of my daughter’s actions. Ah, the irony!
That I should lock this away because of Orlind, and because of
Orlind my daughter has opened my repository to the world...’ He
sighed, shaking his head. ‘One death is inconsequential,’ he said,
recalling himself once more to the topic at hand. In a gentler
tone, he added: ‘I know it doesn’t seem so to you, but when you
have lived as long as I—’

‘
I
don’t
care
how long you’ve lived!’ Serena burst out. ‘I hope
I never live as long as you, if I should end so
cold
!
NO
death is inconsequential! Every single one
matters!’

Torinth blinked
at her, momentarily silenced. ‘Well—’

‘
Save
it,’ Serena hissed. ‘I care nothing for your distant judgements and
your heartless pronouncements. Who are you to decide whether my
brother lives or dies? You hold here the secret to his resurrection
and
I will find it.
’

Teyo was
intrigued to notice signs of real strain in Torinth’s face. He
appeared visibly shaken, and for a long moment he had nothing to
say. ‘Have I come to that?’ he said, so softly Teyo barely heard
him.

Serena merely
glared at him. She was magnificent, Teyo thought: drawn up to her
full height, her shoulders back, chin up, her eyes blazing
determination and contempt and passion as she stared Torinth down.
He may be a Lokant of impossible age and unthinkable powers, but
next to Serena he suddenly looked pale, fragile and very
old.

Torinth gathered
himself. ‘If,’ he began, ‘I permit you to restore
one
soul,
where does it end? I must permit it again, and again; every single
one of you who comes crashing through the gate will have some other
request, some other desire. If I allow yours, I must allow them
all. This you can surely see.’

‘
I
don’t care,’ Serena said bluntly. ‘My thoughts are for Fabian
only.’

Egg cleared her
throat. ‘Ah... if it helps, I don’t think you’ll be getting any
more visitors for the next while.’ She held up both of her hands.
Clutched in her tightly-curled fingers were seven keystones, three
in one hand and four in the other.

Serena stared.
‘Egg! How did you—?’

‘
Palmed them on the way through,’ she shrugged. ‘Wasn’t easy, I
grant you. I got stuck halfway between, for a while. Thought I’d
torn it for good.’ She smiled.

Serena threw her
arms around Egg and squeezed her tightly. Such a display of
affection was uncharacteristic of Serena, and it was even more
uncharacteristic of Egg to permit it, but Teyo thought she looked
rather pleased.

Torinth’s
jubilation was not such as to equal Serena’s. He observed Egg with
an air of mingled approval and chagrin, and finally sighed. ‘I
don’t think you understand what you are asking,’ he said. ‘Do you
imagine that it will be as simple as stepping back a few paces in
time, correcting one mistake and that will be the end of it? It
cannot be. Consider all the myriad of events that led you up to
this moment in your lives. A mere few seconds of reflection ought
to bring several events to mind which, if they had turned out
differently, might have sent you in any number of alternative
directions. These may be big events, or the smallest of
occurrences, but the impact they have had upon you is profound.
Every single happening in your life, no matter how small, can have
an extraordinary degree of influence over your future. Consider
what that
means
.’

Torinth paused,
and nobody spoke. Teyo’s own thoughts were whirling, for he grasped
the Lokant’s meaning in an instant. How had he come to be standing
here? Because he was a part of Serena’s team. And why was that?
Because he had erred so far as to involve himself with the Yllandu,
and amends must be made. Why had he joined the Yllandu? Because on
one appalling day far in the past, his parents, his brother and his
entire family livelihood had been wiped out by a robbery gone
wrong. Had that not happened, he might be a stonemason today, like
his father. Or better yet, a farmer. At this moment he might be out
in his orchards, harvesting the year’s crop. The thought left him
with a familiar pang of regret.

On the other
hand, he might never have left the Yllandu; that choice had come
about as a result of the things he’d chosen, or been obliged, to do
during his time as an Unspeakable. Had that turned out differently,
perhaps he might never have left; he might still be crooked and
thieving, a stain upon the world.

The others were
engaged in similar reflections, he judged, for the repository was
quiet, and their faces were thoughtful. Without Serena, of course,
his team wouldn’t even exist, and she was here because of the
actions of Thomaso Carterett. Her team was a refuge, for Teyo and
Egg and Iya. Even for Fabian, whether he realised it or not. A new
idea entered Teyo’s brain at that thought: deplorable as Carterett
Senior’s actions may have been, were the consequences wholly bad?
If he could somehow have been prevented from behaving as he had —
if his death could be reversed — then all of the many good things
that had grown out of it would be lost.

And the same
applied to his own life.

He realised
slowly that Torinth was looking directly at him, a shrewd look upon
his face. ‘The reflections are interesting, are they not?
Difficult, but interesting.’

Teyo nodded,
feeling obscurely uncomfortable as his team-mates all turned to
look at him. ‘Um, yes,’ he said, wittily.

Torinth smiled
faintly. ‘The point I wish to make is simply this: we all believe
we wield some degree of control over the things that happen to us,
and around us. We are deluded. Suppose I permit you to try to save
your brother. What do you think will happen?’

Silence. At last
Serena said: ‘He fell, and cracked his head. We just need to
prevent that fall, that’s all—’

‘
And
the conditions that led to the fall? Can you control all of
that?’

‘
No,’
Serena admitted.

‘
Everything could turn out differently the second time.
Everything.
And you have no control over any of it. Do you,
then, still wish to proceed? Whatever the consequences might be,
they are yours to live with.’

Teyo began to
feel that sick foreboding in his gut again, but Serena said without
hesitation, ‘Yes.’

Torinth said
nothing, only raised a brow.

‘
I
understand everything you’ve said,’ Serena continued. ‘Truly, I do.
But I have no choice. He’s my brother, and I have to
try.’

‘
There
are always choices,’ said Rhoun Torinth coolly.

‘
Not
in this case. What if it were one of your children who—’