The River Wall (24 page)

“An
expansion
of the All-Mind?” I asked. “Oh, no—the All-Mind grows only with the death of Gandalarans. You mean that a lot of people will die, don’t you?” The hunch twisted restively, almost ready to cast its blow. I stood up, and began to pace around the room.

“That fits with Ferrathyn,” I said. “Your being here fits with him having the Ra’ira—you’ve been connected with it from the beginning. But the death of the
race?
Surely that’s not Ferrathyn’s aim. How can an egomaniac have power if there is no one to control?”

“It
must
be connected,” Tarani said. “Zanek, you are sure—it begins now?”

I whirled to look at the old man as he nodded, and the hunch clobbered me so hard that I reeled back physically.

“Your very first question,” I reminded him, crossing the floor toward him in a stealthy crouch. I was barely breathing. “You wanted to know if
we
were the ones.”

The man leaned back in his chair, lifting his arms in a gesture of warding off, of protecting.

“You didn’t come back just to watch it all end, did you?” I said angrily. “You think there’s hope, and you think so because you
did
something. You reached into another world, and you tore us loose, and you dragged us here, without warning us or telling us or helping us.”

I leaned over the chair, just barely keeping my hands from closing on the man’s throat, because some kernel of reason was whispering:
He made you young again. He gave you new life.

“Its my turn for a question, Zanek, a question I’ve asked myself a thousand times in the past months. Why me? Why Ricardo Carillo, a teacher, and Antonia Alderuccio, a sweet, elegant young woman. Why us?
Why?
“

“I do not
know
why,” he shouted back at me. “I do not
know
who you are, where you come from, how you came here.” His words rang with such sincerity that I felt myself backing off. He came forward in his chair, speaking earnestly. “I only know that when I realized that what I was seeing was the death of Gandalara, of the people I cherished and protected, to whom I gave hope at the beginning of the Kingdom, who suffered from the corruption of that hope at the end of the Kingdom—when I saw that it was all for nothing, it would end in nothingness, that Gandalara would die …”

He closed his eyes briefly, and took a deep breath.

“I grieved. In that place of contentment, that existence of apartness, there was only restlessness and sadness. I could see the death, but not what caused it. I wanted desperately to be able to understand, to help, to prevent. It was a wish so strong, my friends”—he paused to breathe deeply again—“a wish so strong that it seemed to take form, and—yes, in reply to my wish, something happened. As you put it, I
did
something. I knew I had
done
something, but when I looked at the All-Mind, I saw no change.

“It was at that moment that I knew I must return,” he said. “Dharak’s illness was a convenience for me—I maintained the fiction of being stunned, and listened to everything.”

“You heard Thymas wishing for his fathers help,” I said slowly. “Before we left Thagorn last time, you heard us talking—it was
you
who looked at me that day.”

“It was I,” Zanek admitted. “And that was the first day I began to understand that you were different from all others. I could not be sure, then, that you were the hope and not the cause. It is only now, after I have seen you struggle for the survival of the sha’um and, thus, for the Sharith, after I have seen your respect for life, your strength, your unusual knowledge—”

He stopped, struck by a thought.

“What did you say, earlier? You are from … ‘another world’? How can that be? There is only Gandalara.”

“How can you believe that?” Tarani asked. “That place where part of you continues to exist—can you not see all worlds, all time from that place?”

“Can I?” he asked, bewildered. “I—that knowledge did not return with me, if I have it.” He stood up, suddenly excited. “But it makes perfect sense, and fits in with the few memories I have. I recall despairing as I looked on the immobile All-Mind. When Gandalara was divided by dispute and greed, I held in my hands the power to help. With the Ra’ira as my secret, my
benevolent
weapon, I brought people together, instructed them in the concept of sharing, and of the welfare of one being the concern of all. I devoted my first, only true lifetime to that task, and I saw it as nothing less than preservation of Gandalara.

“When Serkajon saw how my vision had failed the future generations, I knew that
I
had the knowledge, the power to be of service once again, and I took the action I
knew
to be right—again, with the goal of preserving something good and worth saving.

“But when I saw this new danger, I knew I was helpless to serve again in any meaningful way. I was plagued with doubt, in fact, that my earlier efforts had been in vain—or worse, that I had unknowingly created whatever situation would result in the utter destruction of Gandalara. When I wished for help, I wished for knowledge and insight beyond my own limits. I wanted something or someone to see everything clearly, to know what was happening, to know what to do about it.

“And I see, now, that I could not have wished for a Gandalaran,
any
Gandalaran.” He offered me both his hands. “More than I can tell you, I regret that you were drawn here against your will, your own life destroyed,” he said. “I tell you again, it was not my conscious choice, I would not have done this harm to you deliberately, even if it meant Gandalara must truly die. But I see the goodness of what you have done already, and I know that, however this occurred, you were well chosen for this task.

“
You
have the knowledge that is needed. Who else—what Gandalaran—could have seen the danger to the sha’um, and taken such quick action to prevent it?”

“He is right,” Tarani said, standing up and extending her hands to touch our joined hands. “How often have we said that to one another, Rikardon—that it is our
difference
which is so important to our destiny?”

“Destiny?” Zanek repeated. “Then you know? You know what is to happen, why you are here?”

“We know some things,” I admitted reluctantly, and pulled my hands from the three-way joining. I moved closer to the table and poured faen into the three drinking cups. I handed Tarani one, Zanek another, then took up the third as I sat back down in my chair. “Forgive me my anger,” I said. “The few things we do know we have found out in small pieces, never enough to make sense. It
still
doesn’t make sense,” I said, letting my frustration show.

“Perhaps,” Tarani said, taking her seat again, “our difference has been inhibiting our full understanding. Each of us,” she said, gesturing in particular to Zanek/Dharak, “has a different kind of knowledge. Let us each share it, and perhaps together we can find the answers.”

“Tell me first,” Zanek said, “of the Ra’ira. You mentioned it, and a man’s name—Ferra …?”

“Ferrathyn,” I said wearily. “Look, I’m having trouble trying to keep straight what you know as Zanek, and what you may know from Dharak’s memories, and what I did or didn’t have time to tell Dharak. It seems the long way around, I know, but why don’t Tarani and I tell you our story, as it has happened from the start? Maybe you can find your answers along the way—and maybe the retelling will jar something loose we haven’t seen before.”

“That is an excellent plan,” Zanek said, and raised his cup in a salute to each of us. “I will not interrupt with questions, unless I truly fail to understand your words. And I fully expect to be fascinated.”

It was dawn, and I had walked outside the house to stretch, watch the brilliant colors seep across the unblackened part of the sky, and wonder if I had dreamed the events of the night. It seemed incredible that Tarani and I had spent the past several hours telling a man from the dawn of history about the immediate past history of his world.

I heard a rumbling to my right, and Keeshah came stretching out of the bushes, and stopped beside me. Without warning, he slammed his head into my stomach and levered me off the ground slightly, then he moved on past. I caught his tail as it slapped into my side and pulled lightly; he snatched it free and jumped ahead, looking back disdainfully.

*Look silly
, * he said, then walked to the stream for a drink.

I looked down at myself, and realized that the action of his head against my midriff had broken loose the haphazard tucking of the bedcover I had continued to wear through the night. The cover had slipped off and puddled in a circle around my ankles. Otherwise, I was stark naked. I bent over to grab the cover, then jumped forward with a yelp as something cold touched my bare bottom. The cover caught my feet, and I sprawled face down in the dirt, my dignity badly damaged. A paw and a lot of weight slapped me down again as I tried to push my shoulders off the ground, and two young but well-grown sha’um used me for a doormat, ignoring the ungentle things I was calling out to them through our mindlink. The last paw left my back, and I rolled over furiously—only to see Yayshah looming over me, one paw lifted delicately.

“Not you too?” I groaned, and grabbed to protect the most vulnerable part of my anatomy. But Yayshah placed her paw delicately on the ground on the other side of me, and carefully stepped over my prostrate—and thoroughly dirty—body.

I sat up with every intention of yelling at the cubs, then I grabbed frantically for the bedcover. Tarani and Zanek were in the doorway, laughing like idiots.

What the hell?
I thought grumpily.

I stood up, gathered the bedcover, and threw it to the ground. Then I took off for the stream at a run and, before the sha’um could catch my purpose and react, I vaulted over the cubs and landed painfully—but with a great deal of splashing and satisfaction—in the middle of the stream.

The cubs howled and backed away, shaking themselves. Yayshah looked mortally offended, so that I felt obliged to say: “Sorry—I know you didn’t deserve that.” Keeshah merely turned upstream to drink from the unmuddied water, but he had to have the last word.

*Still look silly,*
he said.

I turned around to climb out of the stream, but found Tarani there, holding out a bar of scented soap. “As long as you’ve begun …?” she said, and my grumpiness dissolved. I took the soap, laughing, and she laid a towel and a set of clothes across a twisting dakathrenil limb. “Breakfast will be ready, when you are dry.”

Over breakfast—fruit and bread and a soft cheese—Tarani and I discussed how much we still did not know. We had overcome our disappointment over Zanek not having all the answers, but I, for one, felt the niggling frustration of having the answers within reach.

“All the pieces are here somewhere,” I said, for probably the fourteenth time. “Why can’t we see how they fit together?”

“I must repeat that I am not the one who is
capable
of assembling them,” said Zanek, who had been silent and thoughtful through most of the meal. “There must be something that you two—no one else—know or can do.”

“We have told you of Ferrathyn, and our resistance to his power,” Tarani said. “Is that not unique in Gandalara?”

“It’s unique,” I said, “but—I know this sounds stupid, after all we’ve been doing—but its not
important
enough. Ferrathyn
is
dangerous, he
will
corrupt and destroy the
societies
of Gandalara. But how and why would he deliberately destroy the people themselves? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Perhaps Ferrathyn is only part of it,” Zanek said. “He may be, in fact, the part of the puzzle which
I
detected—it might have been the misuse of the Ra’ira that caught my attention in the first place. There are other things you have done which have affected Gandalara profoundly. Perhaps it is only as a whole that it makes sense. Eddarta becoming more humane. The sha’um protected from destruction. The Sharith, for the first time in generations, with a Captain to lead them. The—What is it, my friend?”

I had caught Zanek’s hand without realizing it. The fruit he held fell unnoticed to the floor. I was looking at him, but what I was seeing was something else. Hazy images were crystallizing, pieces were falling into place. A map. A volcano. Salty deserts. Copper. No iron.

The result was an answer that I believed and rejected in exactly the same thought.

“No!” I moaned. “That
can’t
be it!”

But I knew it was true, and it raised a specter that terrified me so that I began to shake all over.

“Please, no,” I said again, whispering now. I turned my eyes toward Tarani, who was watching me in alarm. “Not now, not ever, that’s too much to ask.”

“Rikardon,
tell
us,” Tarani pleaded, sliding down from her chair to kneel beside me. I still clutched Zanek’s hand fiercely.

“Get the map,” I begged Tarani. “Hurry, get it, please.” She rushed to hunt for it, and I looked down to find Zanek’s fingers turning white in my grasp. I released his hand, mumbling “Sorry.”

“You know, don’t you?” he asked softly. “Is it so horrible? Can it be changed?”

“Changed?” I echoed. Tarani arrived, knocked the dishes aside, and, kneeling beside me, unfolded the map on the small table. “You were the one,” I said to Tarani, “who first mentioned that the map looked familiar. Study it now, and try to figure out
why
it’s so familiar.”

She started to protest.

“Don’t you understand?” I asked, nearly yelling. “I could be wrong, so wrong! I need you to figure it out on your own. Look at the map through Antonia’s memories. Please, Tarani, do it.”

With a puzzled frown, she did as I asked. Her fingers traced the lines of the Walls slowly, and her face was intent as she stared at the parchment. After a moment, she said, in a strained voice: “There is still a familiarity, but I cannot capture it. I
cannot
, my love. Please—just tell me.”

“Try this,” I said, and took the map. “Gandalaran map convention shows the Great Wall as the northern border of the world, right? But we both know that this line”—I pointed to the thick line that ran unevenly across the top of the map—“actually runs sort of northwest-southeast.”