This time the perspective was different. More abstract; he strained to see pattern, and meaning, but for a long moment all was chaos. Then order appeared. Instead of the point of light, there were two great sheets of… Being. Rippling through spaces in which whole universes of stars would be less than one kernel of barley in an ocean, like the banners of divinity flying on the ramparts of the Western Gate. The sheets drifted towards each other, and in that contact was born the light he had seen at the Beginning of his twin visions.
But there was a difference. Something passed from one cycle to the next. Something tiny, yet containing everything, and from that all changed as existence spread out again. ?Mind,? his mother, all Mothers, said.?The universe births life. Life creates Mind. Mind encompasses that which bore it blindly, spreads through all the stuff of matter and makes a new Heaven and a new Earth. One in which from its beginnings through all time life is no accident, and is not doomed to death forever, but instead is transformed. To return upon itself once more and give Itself birth.? ?And now there is a God,? the Wise One said.
He fell through singing veils of light, struggling with awe and anger at himself, that he could not grasp the concepts roaring by him like dragons. Then he stood before the fire again. ?Is Godhood many, or one?? the Mother said. ?Both,? Rudi replied.?Both at once.? ?She is all things.? The Maiden nodded. A sigh.?And so, He is divided.? ?Your friend the padre would say there was war in Heaven,? the Wise One added.?He?s not wrong, either. Don?t mistake this you?re seeing for the only truth.? ?The Cutters!? he said suddenly.?As above, so below. Sure, and if there?s war here, there must be so above.?
The three nodded. The Mother spoke: ?Not exactly. In the stuff of Mind, there is… it?s more like arguing with yourself than a fight between Good and Evil. Would you say a tilled tamed field is best, or a wilderness unbound and unguarded, living only by its own law??
Rudi blinked.?Why… both, of course. How could either be best ? Both are needed for the wholeness of things. Humankind is there to be the guardians of it; to tend, to take what they need, but not to take all.? ?Yet some long for order; for the hedged garth, for the tame-bred kine, for the richness of the grafted fruit. Some long for the wolf?s howl. Some would have the universe unfold as it will, and run to its ending as matter itself decrees; others would take matter up into the stuff of Mind.? ?Submission against structure,? the Maiden said. ?Not a fight for us, unless you mean inner conflict and that happy therapeutic horseshit,? the Wise One snorted.?But it?s sure enough a fight at your level, boy! One between Good and Evil, or Us and Them, which is close enough for government work.? ?You need have no doubt I?ll fight,? Rudi said grimly.?Whether I may win or no. The Cutters… the Cutters and the Power behind them claim all humankind and the world as well, and say none of us may breathe or believe save as they permit. If a God said that to me, a God with the sun in His left hand and the moon in His right, I would dispute it by the sword. Or my fingernails, if they were all I had.? ?Good man! And it?s a fight you?d better win,?cause we can?t do it for you. Not without undoing ourselves and more worlds than this.?
Rudi nodded his head, a single brief jerk. He wasn?t sure of much, but he was suddenly certain that the person whose appearance that Power bore had also been a warrior once. ?You?ve shown me matters great and terrible, Ladies,? he said. ?But… one thing I do know, and always did. This Earth of ours, however bright and dear and grand to us, is but the smallest fleck in all that is; and you?ve shown me that that All is vaster by far than I knew. Yet here the Powers are contending for our allegiance as if we were the sum of things. Why us??
The Three looked at him. The Maiden spoke gently: ?Because here is where Mind begins. There has to be a one first place… and this is that one. From it, all else springs.? ?Fermi,? the Wise One added.?Not to be too paradoxical.?
The Mother cast an exasperated sidelong glance.?Don?t stray from the issue just because you?re limited enough again that you can be distracted, Marian.?
To Rudi:?It nearly didn?t happen here either. Mind is a weapon as well as a blessing, and its power is terrible even when newborn.? ?The Wanderer spoke of a child with a knife, or with fire.?
She nodded.?Terrible especially when newborn.?
They faded before his eyes. For a moment he saw the island, but with no cover save a few crumbled ruins of brick and stone, a bank of sand that glowed with heat. Hills of salt lay where the ocean should have been, save for pools in the distance that seethed in a bubbling roil that would end only when they were gone forever. The air lay thick, hazy, hot, and motionless. ?A thousand times ten thousand times that was the end,? the Maiden said.?Or others that were worse.? ?What could be worse than that??
The same landscape, but the very air was gone somehow; the sea had turned to ice, that sublimed outward into the outer dark beneath a sky that crawled with steely energies and strange, powerful engines. Then another vision, where water still curled on the sandy beach beneath a clear blue sky where birds flew, but their patterns were mathematics precise beyond his comprehension. A man walked between buildings that were perfect, and empty. He turned to look at Rudi for an instant, and where his eyes should have been were silvery tendrils that waved and sought. ?We could agree on stopping those histories,? the Mother said, as the campfire returned.?Edging them out, cycle upon cycle, until they vanish in implausibility.? ?Yet the Others would not let us do much more,? the Maiden said, sadness in her voice.?What we did… was something so terrible that only a greater terror made it possible to think it.?
The Mother nodded.?All we could do while Mind was divided… was take this island out of its year, so that it could then reach across the spiral and make the Change. The Change gives you time, no more, as the island was given time. Time to learn, so that when you regain the powers taken from you they?ll be used properly. How the future of this turn on the Wheel is shaped… what we become… that is up to you. You youngsters. You are the seed of God. We can turn through time-we have traveled the endless coil-but we cannot do more than help, and open possibilities.?
The Maiden scowled.?The Others can. They take, because they care less for the damage they do, they who serve entropy. So we have made the Sword for you, to sever their power and show humankind the truth of things. That much we can do in this turn of the Wheel, without breaking reality asunder with our contentions. All the rest is your burden.?
Rudi took a deep breath.?I will bear it.?
There was a glint of tears in the Mother?s eyes as she spoke with a trembling tenderness: ?Then bear what you must, O my child, my child.?
The Maiden?s warmth, a scented flower meadow in spring: ?Do what you must, beloved.?
The Wise One?s sternness, like rock and iron: ? Become what you must, to serve the world?s need.?
And he was… elsewhere.
The others saw him as he stumbled down the stairs, bleeding from nose and ears and eyes and mouth. The sheathed form of the Sword lay across his palms. He met their eyes, and choked out: ?Remember. Remember, all of you. Most of all you, Matti, anamchara , beloved.?
Mathilda?s voice was infinitely gentle:?Remember what, my darling?? ?That I was a man, before I was King. Remember for me, when I forget.?
His hand closed on the black double-lobed hilt, and the moonfire in the opal glowed. He drew the Sword, thrust it high.
And screamed as pain beyond all bearing ripped through him like white fire, turning his body to a thing of ash and smoke.