“You’ve said that about every Flier you’ve seen since leaving Perris,” said Olmayne coldly.
“But this time I’m certain! Where is a thinking cap? I must check with the Fliers’ Lodge at once!”
Olmayne’s hand rested on my arm. “It’s late, Tomis. You act feverish. Why this excitement over your skinny Flier, anyway? What did she mean to you?”
“She—”
I halted, unable to put my meaning in words. Olmayne knew the story of my journey up out of Agupt with the girl, how as a celebate old Watcher I had conceived a kind of paternal fondness for her, how I had perhaps felt something more powerful than that, how I had lost her to the false Changeling Gormon, and how he in turn had lost her to the Prince of Roum. But yet what was Avluela to me? Why did a glimpse of someone who merely might have been Avluela send me into this paroxysm of confusion? I chased symbols in my turbulent mind and found no answers.
“Come back to the inn and rest,” Olmayne said. “Tomorrow we must seek renewal.”
First, though, I donned a cap and made contact with the Fliers’ Lodge. My thoughts slipped through the shielding interface to the storage brain of the guild registry; I asked and received the answer I had sought. Avluela of the Fliers was indeed now a resident in Jorslem. “Take this message for her,” I said. “The Watcher she knew in Roum now is here as a Pilgrim, and wishes to meet her outside the house of renewal at midday tomorrow.”
With that done, I accompanied Olmayne to our lodgings. She seemed sullen and aloof; and when she unmasked in my room her face appeared rigid with—jealousy? Yes. To Olmayne all men were vassals, even one so shriveled and worn as I; and she loathed it that another woman could kindle such a flame in me. When I drew forth my starstone, Olmayne at first would not join me in communion. Only when I began the rituals did she submit. But I was so tense that night that I was unable to make the merging with the Will, nor could she achieve it; and thus we faced one another glumly for half an hour, and abandoned the attempt, and parted for the night.
8
One must go by one’s self to the house of renewal. At dawn I awoke, made a brief and more successful communion, and set out unbreakfasted, without Olmayne. In half an hour I stood before the golden wall of the Old City; in half an hour more I had finished my crossing of the inner city’s tangled lanes. Passing before that gray wall so dear to the ancient Hebers, I went up onto the high place; I passed near the gilded dome of the vanished Mislams and, turning to the left, followed the stream of Pilgrims which already at this early hour was proceeding to the house of renewal.
This house is a Second Cycle building, for it was then that the renewal process was conceived; and of all that era’s science, only renewal has come down to us approximately as it must have been practiced in that time. Like those other few Second Cycle structures that survive, the house of renewal is supple and sleek, architecturally understated, with deft curves and smooth textures; it is without windows; it bears no external ornament whatever. There are many doors. I placed myself before the easternmost entrance, and in an hour’s time I was admitted.
Just inside the entrance I was greeted by a green-robed member of the guild of Renewers—the first member of this guild I had ever seen. Renewers are recruited entirely from Pilgrims who are willing to make it their life’s work to remain in Jorslem and aid others toward renewal. Their guild is under the same administration as the Pilgrims; a single guildmaster directs the destinies of both; even the garb is the same except for color. In effect Pilgrims and Renewers are of one guild and represent different phases of the same affiliation. But a distinction is always drawn.
The Renewer’s voice was light and cheerful. “Welcome to this house, Pilgrim. Who are you, where are you from?”
“I am the Pilgrim Tomis, formerly Tomis of the Rememberers, and prior to that a Watcher, born to the name Wuellig. I am native to the Lost Continents and have traveled widely both before and after beginning my Pilgrimage.”
“What do you seek here?”
“Renewal. Redemption.”
“May the Will grant your wishes,” said the Renewer. “Come with me.”
I was led through a close, dimly lit passage into a small stone cell. The Renewer instructed me to remove my mask, enter into a state of communion, and wait. I freed myself from the bronze grillwork and clasped my starstone tightly. The familiar sensations of communion stole over me, but no union with the Will took place; rather, I felt a specific link forming with the mind of another human being. Although mystified, I offered no resistance.
Something probed my soul. Everything was drawn forth and laid out as if for inspection on the floor of the celclass="underline" my acts of selfishness and of cowardice, my flaws and failings, my doubts, my despairs, above all the most shameful of my acts, the selling of the Rememberer document to the invader overlord. I beheld these things and knew that I was unworthy of renewal. In this house one might extend one’s lifetime two or three times over; but why should the Renewers offer such benefits to anyone as lacking in merit as I?
I remained a long while in contemplation of my faults. Then the contact broke, and a different Renewer, a man of remarkable stature, entered the cell.
“The mercy of the Will is upon you, friend,” he said, reaching forth fingers of extraordinary length to touch the tips of mine.
When I heard that deep voice and saw those white fingers, I knew that I was in the presence of a man I had met briefly before, as I stood outside the gates of Roum in the season before the conquest of Earth. He had been a Pilgrim then, and he had invited me to join him on his journey to Jorslem, but I had declined, for Roum had beckoned to me.
“Was your Pilgrimage an easy one?” I asked.
“It was a valuable one,” he replied. “And you? You are a Watcher no longer, I see.”
“I am in my third guild this year.”
“With one more yet to come,” he said.
“Am I to join you in the Renewers, then?”
“I did not mean that guild, friend Tomis. But we can talk more of that when your years are fewer. You have been approved for renewal, I rejoice to tell you.”
“Despite my sins?”
“Because of your sins, such that they are. At dawn tomorrow you enter the first of the renewal tanks. I will be your guide through your second birth. I am the Renewer Talmit. Go, now, and ask for me when you return.”
“One question—”
“Yes?”
“I made my Pilgrimage together with a woman, Olmayne, formerly a Rememberer of Perris. Can you tell me if she has been approved for renewal as well?”
“I know nothing of this Olmayne.”
“She’s not a good woman,” I said. “She is vain, imperious, and cruel. But yet I think she is not beyond saving. Can you do anything to help her?”
“I have no influence in such things,” Talmit said. “She must face interrogation like everyone else. I can tell you this, though: virtue is not the only criterion for renewal.”
He showed me from the building. Cold sunlight illuminated the city. I was drained and depleted, too empty even to feel cheered that I had qualified for renewal. It was midday; I remembered my appointment with Avluela; I circled the house of renewal in rising anxiety. Would she come?
She was waiting by the front of the building, beside a glittering monument from Second Cycle days. Crimson jacket, furry leggings, glassy bubbles on her feet, telltale humps on her back: from afar I could make her out to be a Flier. “Avluela!” I called.
She whirled. She looked pale, thin, even younger than when I had last seen her. Her eyes searched my face, once again masked, and for a moment she was bewildered.