Pelmen stood backstage in the shadow of the green-velvet curtain, watching Gerrig. His giant friend joked and sparred with Regort, who had been a cordial enemy for years. Pelmen wasn’t fooled by Gerrig’s relaxed demeanor. The pressure building inside him caused the man to laugh too loudly, to wink too broadly. The light banter between the two adversaries crackled with repressed hostility and promised a night of electrifying performances.
Danyilyn didn’t bother to hide her nervousness. She paced the stage, belting out lines to test the acoustics of the hall and the mettle of her voice. These were old lines, speeches she’d spoken so many times that her phrasings bore the ruts of much use. She wouldn’t dream of letting slip any new lines, nor would any of the other actors and actresses who paced in circles around and beside her, making their own adjustments to this theatre. No one wanted to tip his troupe’s hand to the others good lines got stolen that way.
But Pelmen was quietly confident. He had dared to take-his alter-shape the night before; on falcon wings he had come to investigate the final rehearsals of the competition. In a way, he felt a bit troubled at his unfair advantage, for he was a man of integrity, and the act smacked of cheating. But Parmi had reassured him this morning that it was only good sense. “Your purpose whatever it is surely warrants your using every power available to you,” Yona had said. “Besides,” he’d added,
“it’s not as if you’re going to steal any of their garbage.” Indeed, the other offerings seemed a cut below average this year perhaps as a result of the unstable national conditions. It was difficult to re hearse consistently when starving. As he’d described what he’d seen to his friend, Yona had agreed that they need feel little anxiety this year. “Our material is better,” Yona Parmi had grunted, and Pelmen was inclined to agree.
That’s why it puzzled him to see Yona Parmi acting so strangely. The short player prowled the dark backstage area, peering behind dusty flats and regarding the clutter of props suspiciously. Pelmen strolled up behind him.
“Are you looking for something?” he began. Yona Parmi jerked at the sound of his voice.
“No,” Parmi snorted gruffly. “I’m looking for nothing. That is, I’m hoping to find nothing.”
“You’re sure to find that back here.” Pelmen smiled. He felt sure that he knew, now, the reason for Yona’s strange behavior. He didn’t mock him.
Yona ducked to peer behind a cutout of a tree. “Seems like a legitimate enough place for powers to be lurking,” he mumbled.
“In my experience, powers don’t lurk. They act. I think they’d prefer to be out on the stage than back here in the dust.”
“And why is that?”
“That’s where most of the people are.” Pelmen shrugged.. “And they’re fascinated by people.”
“Oh.” Yona Parmi glanced about him, then smiled in tight-lipped amusement. “Then I prefer to be right here.”
“You’re afraid of them.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. Not the powers themselves. More of the people who use them.” >
“Yet you use them. You did last night.”
“I know,” Pelmen replied quietly.
Yona Parmi understood. “You’re afraid of yourself.” Pelmen nodded, then arched a friendly eyebrow. “And as long as I remain so, I feel rather confident that I’m Nothing, really, to be afraid of. It isn’t the powers you need to fear, Parmi, for if they’re here and you don’t know it, lyou’ll never notice them. And if they’re here and you do
|fcnow, they’re yours to mold. But those others who know, \0aad who mold they’re the people I fear. They’ll shape to jit their whims and I’ve seen too much of mankind’s sings to feel encouraged by that.”
The “Wizard in “Wailing
Yona Parmi froze his ironic smile into place. “Your words are encouraging me to dig a deep, cool hole and bury myself in it.”
“I’ve considered it,” Pelmen joked, but there was more than a hint of seriousness in his words.
“And yet you say you fear being shaped. Explain that.”
Pelmen blinked, then his eyes looked beyond Yona, as if gazing at a reality beyond human sensation. When he spoke, it was in hushed tones heavy with mystery. “Sometimes I fear that. Perhaps it comes so unexpectedly. I sense a power, I begin to shape, then somehow, inexplicably, it begins shaping me. And then when it happens, I’m elated. Once it comes, I fear nothing at all. I never know exactly what I’ll do then , ..” Pelmen’s eyes finally found their way back to Yona’s. “And that’s a rather frightening prospect in itself, don’t you think?”
“Not necessarily. That is, I’m not convinced you really believe it so, since you persist in chasing the experience. But tell me, these religious followers of yours ”
“They’re not mine.”
“ of the Prophet’s then ”
“They’re not his either.”
“All right, have it your way. Of the Power…”
“That’s got it.”
“Do they experience this ah being shaped as well?”
“Some do,” Pelmen said with the quiet confidence of one who knows he won’t be believed. “Not all. Not all of them have discovered yet that this is what it’s all about. Some grab at the trappings of faith without experiencing faith itself.”
Yona Parmi nodded thoughtfully. “So you entrusted the new Prophet with the task of helping them?”
Pelmen met his eyes. *7 didn’t”
Yona Parmi looked away in discomfort. “Pardon me,” he muttered, “but it’s rather difficult to shift one’s entire view of the world in a moment.”
Pelmen nodded. “It isn’t easy to attribute actions to something other than people, when you’ve been used to seeing them as the only movers.
As I say it’s people who do most of the shaping, consciously or unconsciously. And much of that turns out badly,” he added with sadness. His mind wandered then, briefly, to Lamath, and the gentle plowed fields of that earnest, hard-working region. Then he continued.
“I guess you could say that Erri the Prophet is responsible for being himself and for letting others see in him the difference between shaping and being shaped.”
Yona Parmi cocked an eyebrow. Even in the dark, Pelmen could see clearly his quizzical expression. “Doesn’t Erri shape?” he asked.
“Not often.” Pelmen smiled. “That’s why he’s the Prophet, and not I.
I’m much too impatient. I prefer to shape my own destiny.”
“Which, in turn, makes you dangerous.” Yona Parmi nodded wisely.
Pelmen looked at him, a bit startled at this insight. Then he also nodded. “Exactly.”
“Yet if you didn’t battle these others, these various pow-ershapers who inhabit Ngandib-Mar, who would?”
“Perhaps the Power would,” Pelmen replied thoughtfully. It was evident from the way he said it that this was something not fully clear in his own mind.
“Then why battle at all?”
“Because there are people I care about who are in trouble,” Pelmen answered. Quiet determination lent backbone to his words, as he finished. “And it might be through me that the Power chooses to aid them.” It seemed to Yona Parmi that Pelmen’s eyes blazed out of the shadows. He felt enormous relief when Danyilyn scurried over and grabbed each of them by the arm.