Have I made all the amends, begged all the forgiveness I need’? he wondered dully, running through a list of people in his mind, hoping that absolution would come in any case for whomever he had inadvertently harmed with his intervention. He thought mostly of Achmed, and what the changes in Time had cost him. Forgive me, he thought in silent prayer to a man he had also never met. In my place, I think you would have done the same. He remembered the words of contrition that the Bolg King had offered up to the Patriarch in the new history and smiled wanly. Given the choice, I think you would have wanted it that way, too.
His ultimate goal, of course, had been paramount; all sacrifices, all changes that had occurred between one history and the other had been worth the cost. Whatever detriments had come from the revision were to be added into the balance sheet and weighed off against the result, just as all more fortuitous outcomes were merely coincidence. Meridion looked up once more at the image of his mother in happy events of the new history and exhaled. Had he not sliced his father out of Time in his youth and grafted him back into the Past for the purpose of meeting her, she would never have followed him, never would have journeyed with Achmed and Grunthor, never would have had this moment, and any other happy ones that might follow. And the world would have been consumed in fire. I didn’t do it for you, he thought, staring at the projection. But I am still glad.
Before his eyes the darker image of his birth faded and disappeared into oblivion.
I am fading, too.
Slowly Meridion reached over and shut off the Time Editor’s switch, separating the machine from the light of Seren. The glowing instrumentality vanished into utter darkness. He closed his eyes as the remains of the timefilm he had known ignited on their reels, dissipating like the smoke from the last embers of a long-dead fire.
The circular glass walls of his observatory melted away in a heartbeat.
The last words he heard as the world fell down around him were spoken in the voice of the man who had guarded him from birth, who stood with him until the moment he entered the Time Editor’s enclosure, had comforted him in his own awkward way.
Will I die? Meridion had asked his guardian, knowing that the answer could not impact his undertaking. He heard the reply again now as the air from the circular glass room left, rushing into the dark vacuum of space. The words reverberated against the disappearing glass of the windowpanes in fading echoes.
Can one experience death if one is not really alive? You, like the rest of the world, have nothing to lose.
Amid the horrific noise and swirling vortex that consumed his life energy, Meridion felt the translucent form that had been his body expand, stretched infinitely out over the vastness of Time and space, then explode in a burst of agony. His diminished awareness ebbed, then grew, only to flash around the outer reaches of the sky, an incandescent beam of light, until it fell like a blazing stone through the windswept clouds, hurtling to the Earth below.
The last fragments of his conscious thought screamed with the anguish of death, howled with the pain of birth, tumbled, blind, through the flashing images of a Past he didn’t recognize, of a future he could barely see, until it stopped, became aware again, like awakening from a dream-filled sleep.
Meridion opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the familiar, smoothly polished stone and thick glass windows of the high tower around him. He felt the coldness of the marble chair on which he sat, chilling the muscles of his body, a body that had pleasurable heft and weight to it. He was glad to note the reunion of his conscious mind with his physical form; he remembered that the first few times he had meditated, traveling back or forth in Time, he had been petrified there would be nowhere for him to return, but had eventually reconciled himself to the risk.
It was reassuring to step out of Time and back into himself, into his memories, the history he knew both from the old tales, and from seeing it himself.
Whatever he had been seeking on this journey had eluded him. He had always had a sense that there was something different about Time than the way it appeared, but could never find the link, the evidence, that any other reality had ever existed than the one he knew, and could see in his mind’s eye. It seemed to him for some reason that his memories, and the history he was able to view, were somehow new, fresher than one might think they should be.
Sometimes in his dreams there were flashes, fragments that seemed to belong to some other time, some other reality, filled with images of strange lights and darkness and spools of something that looked like thread, suspended as if hanging among the stars. Always in these dreams there was a sense of dread, an urgency that he could not escape, from which he would wake, panting, fearful, to the bright sun of morning that did little to warm the chill from his soul. He had tried to explain the strange misgivings he felt to his mother, who herself had been prescient, but she had never really been able to grasp what he was trying to convey.
The door in the tower room opened, and she came in; Meridion watched her out of the corner of his eye as she set the tray she was carrying down on the table next to him. He smiled at her, then turned in his seat and regarded her thoughtfully. Many years had passed since the day of her wedding, and she still looked exactly the same, although her face held a look of wisdom that had not been there in her youth. His father still had the appearance of youth about him also, though time had etched a few more lines around his eyes, visible when he smiled.
“All finished?” Rhapsody asked, handing Meridion a mug of dot mwl. He took the cup of steaming liquid gratefully and nodded, sipping the rosy amber drink they both liked. His father drank it on occasion, but had never really developed a taste for it. Meridion swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”
She came behind him and slid her arms around his shoulders. “Where did you go today—forward or back?”
Meridion thought back to the only image he remembered, the hazy picture of his parents running through a starry night. “Back,” he said, taking another sip. “I think I attended your wedding, but I don’t remember much. Your gown was beautiful.”
“Miresylle would have been glad to hear that you thought so,” his mother said, picking up her own mug. “She worked for two months straight on it.” Her emerald eyes gleamed. “Did you see Oelendra, my mentor, at the wedding?”
He thought for a moment, searching his memory. “Yes, but not this time. This is only one of many times I’ve gone to watch the wedding, because the fireworks were spectacular. I don’t remember seeing her this time. Or the fireworks, for that matter.” He lifted the mug to his lips, unwilling to reveal that he remembered nothing but the one image from the journey. Everything else was blank.
Rhapsody blinked quickly and nodded. “I wish you could have known her, Meridion; she was very special.”
Meridion smiled. “I did know her, in a way,” he said. “You didn’t notice on the day you first came to Tyrian, but I was one of the children in her swordplay class.”
Rhapsody laughed and tousled his hair, leaving her hand resting on the wiry golden curls a moment afterward. “You really have been all over in Time, haven’t you? I remember you from the fountain in Easton; you used to ask me to play the same song over and over.”
Meridion nodded and took a sip of the dot mwl. “I came to witness the Cymrian Council, too, but I was an adult then.”