Luminous eyes met his. "I didn't hate her, Father, not really. I came to tell her that. I was too late."
"Come. Let us mourn together, and I will teach you to grieve. After all, what's the use of having an Aliom priest in the family, if not to teach the overcoming of the pain he causes!" Overwhelmed afresh, he went down beside his wife with his two children and set about the aching business of accepting a scar that would never heal. For in granting himself a moment of fulfillment he had brought Ontarrah to a lonely life on Dushaun where no other human ever came. He had inflicted a searing soul-agony on his new wife. She'd agreed to have the ephemeral in the house without knowing what it would mean. Ontarrah wasn't a pet. She was a person. And he had condemned his Historian-talented children to suffer premature grieving scars that would hamper them all their lives long.
His integrity, thought Grisnilter, will, one day teach him that what he's done is worse than Inverting. And on that day I'll be there. He went to tender the report that eventually became the key argument in pronouncing exile on Jindigar, until he learned. But as he backed out of the grieving room's door, he fell, plummeting into nightmare.
She was spinning in space, panels of every shape and color, scenes culled from the lives of uncounted Historians who'd carried this Archive, closing in on her to crash her out of existence. All trace of Grisnilter's supreme mastery of this filing system was gone. The system itself had been scrambled according to a key well hidden within the Seals by a method only a Senior Historian could hope to apply. Takora knew there was no way she could stop her mad plunge into the Eye of the Archive—she was not Grisnilter.
She clung to Jindigar's arm, refusing to cry out. They were living the oldest and most feared Historians' nightmare—falling through the Gate to Dissolution at the Eye of the Archive, with the whole Archive collapsing around them, squeezing them out into nothingness, imploding to its own destruction. / gambled–and lost.
Then, with the hysterical laughter that only comes in the freedom beyond death, she shouted to the cosmos, "Ah, Threntisn, were you ever wrong! Now you've lost the whole Archive, and your chance at Completion, for your cowardice!" She was not coward enough even to consider grabbing the duad link and trying to Invert within the Archive. That would surely Distort the Archive—better to ride to Dissolution. At least then they'd still have a chance at the mythical postcorporeal Completion.
Jindigar's arms enfolded her, and she felt his love like a tangible energy vibrating in her bones, making her want to live so much that the agony of slow death redoubled. //I'm sorry, Takora—I wish it could have been otherwise.//
"//Look!//" She freed a hand and pointed, both sending the alert via the duad link and yelling with her voice.
One of the panels had detached itself from the maelstrom and was arrowing toward them. It twirled on several axes as it melted away, leaving a three-dimensional image spinning toward them. But she saw a familiar face. "//Threntisn!//" Oh, no/He'll die with us! But she called, "//Over here!//"
Spotting them, he swam toward them, body glowing with an odd indigo light. Without preamble he grabbed them by the upper arms, shoving them before him as if he wore a free-fall maneuvering pack. Within the Archive, his own element, his naked will had the power of a ship's drive. In seconds they were speeding between panels of exotic scenes too bizarre to comprehend. After dizzying twists and turns he propelled them toward an oblique corner where black borders between panels joined and warped into another dimension. "Go!"
They slammed through what felt like a soap bubble membrane and popped out over a narrow ledge cut into the side of a sloping pinnacle of chipped flint. They landed in a heap, facing a triangular archway cut out of a single, huge square etched into the flint.
Jindigar picked himself up, assessed the portal, and announced, //I know this place! It's the Guardian of the Primary Oath! Come on! This way out!// He strode off through a white mist that occluded the entry.
She knew what had happened then> though her memory seemed to be blurring. Somehow Threntisn had heard her and had decided to risk himself to save them and the Archive—by throwing them out through one of the anchor points she'd planned to search for. Ahead of them Jindigar's memory led to the outside world, a trail familiar to him, but which she couldn't possibly negotiate alone. She ran after him.
Squinting against the searing light, she forged ahead until she fell over a ridge and into knee-deep water. On hands and knees she managed to get an eye open and saw the water stretched ahead into the dark blue of ocean deeps, but a plume of spray rose from its center, spreading mist between her and the figure standing on the far shore, tall, white-clad, filling her vision, impossibly bright—seemingly a figurine lit from within. Flanking it crouched two ferocious-looking animals. As she scrambled to her feet mist and light cast rainbows around the figure.
Jindigar was standing on top of the water before the figurine. "Who are you?" challenged the odd being.
"All and none," answered Jindigar. "There is only one identity, of which I am an infinitely small increment. Yet I contain the pattern of the whole."
"What do you seek?"
'To practice the Laws of Nature."
"Sufficient, though you may find it more difficult than you expect."
Jindigar sighed. "Don't I always?" And he trudged past the figurine onto a white, crushed gravel path that led into the distance where grass and trees dotted a peaceful landscape. He turned and beckoned to Krinata, and she started toward the Guardian. Before she'd gone two steps, he challenged her.
"Who are you?" asked the figure.
"All and none," she said, and started on past.
"That's not your own answer." The figure raised a hand, and she was-held in place by an invisible force. "Who are you?"
'Tm not sure. I have many names. Takora, for one."
"I didn't ask your name; your identity."
She suddenly felt on the verge of tears, like a small child caught fibbing about her name. "So call me Krinata if you prefer! I'm not even sure what identity is!"
"What distinguishes you from all others?"
She searched the far reaches of memory and was astonished when a black wall barred her from questing more than a few decades back. She swallowed sudden fear and answered, "I'm the first human to join a Dushau in an Oliat subform. I was with Jindigar in duad. He's right there." She pointed.
"Ah, then do you define yourself in terms of what you do or of who you know?"
The stupidity of her answer crashed in on her, and she chewed her lip, perplexed.
Patiently the figure asked, "If I took what you do and who you know away from you, who would you be?"
"A believer in peace. I wouldn't torment you like this!"
"So you define yourself as different from others by what you believe about right and wrong."
Way out on the plain, Jindigar turned his back and began to walk away, shoulders slumped, head bowed, failure and dejection in his every move. In a sudden fit of urgency she threw a fistful of water at the figure, though the drops fell short even of* the fountain between them. "If you don't let me pass, I'll go around you!" She cupped her hands around her lips and whistled piercingly. "Jindigar! Wait!"
"You'll have to travel the other ways eventually, but those roads are much harder." Gently the figure asked, "What is it about your identity that you fear so much?"
At wits' end, she snarled, "Losing it, you fool!"
Reasonably the figure replied, "But if you don't know what it is, how do you know you have it?"