How do I know? I've never tried.
"But I'm crazy--" I sit back on the floor, striking my knees with my fists.
Not as crazy as when I came here.
I watch, stupefied, as memories that could not possibly be mine flood my mind's eye. I remember my journey here; I remember its end. ... I saw the face of one woman on the body of another, and used her, like an animal. . . .
I murdered a man in cold blood.
"No! No, no ..." I hold my head, knowing that the memory of the bloody knife driving into his chest will
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explode out of my skull, that my heart will stop, that surely now damnation will swallow me up at last--
He killed Ang! He would have killed me! I had, I had to kill him--
But not like that. Not like that. The voices in my head wail a dirge--the voices of a thousand ancestors crying my shame, avenging furies that will torment me forever for my crime. I sink down again, embracing my punishment, and my guilt. I belong here after all. This is fitting.
And yet, some small, stubborn part of my mind insists that even my guilt proves I am no longer what I was.
That I am someone new, reborn. . . .
After a long time I am calm enough to remember where I am again. I hear someone enter the outer room.
From the light tread, I guess that it is Song. I stumble to my feet, sick with anticipation. How can I protect my mind from her--how can I control the Transfer?
Control the Transfer. I see half the answer, in a sudden flash of clear thought . . . and maybe more.
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Song appears in the doorway, her face burnished by
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the chamber's ruddy light. Before she can open her mouth I shout, "Question, sibyl! I have a question for the sibyl Moon Dawntreader Summer of Tiamat--" not knowing if I ask the impossible, not caring.
"No!" Song flings up her hands in protest. But her body goes rigid and her eyes glaze as the Transfer carries her away.
I move close to her, watching her pitilessly, straining for a sign of someone else's presence. Her eyelids flutter;
her eyes look at me, through me, all around me--back into my own. She gasps.
"Moon?" I murmur. "Moon, is it really you?" I brush Song's cheek uncertainly. I can't believe that I have really called her here to me.
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Song's body quivers, as if someone else longs to move it. "Yes . . ." she whispers. "BZ! How . . .
what do you
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. . . want of me? Please . . . give me more information."
It is all she can do, imprisoned in the Transfer's eye.
I try to focus my own addled thoughts, afraid that I will lose her-- "I'm . . . I'm here on Number Four, at a place called Fire Lake. I need help. Something gets into my head all the time, and . . ."
Rambling! Stop it! "I'm a sibyl, Moon! Someone infected me, the woman who sees me now for you. She wasn't meant to be a sibyl... she's out of her mind." I swallow painfully. "And I think ... I think I am too. I'm trapped here, I can't get help from anyone else. Tell me how you control the Transfer!
Every time I hear a question--"
"A sibyl. . . ." Song's voice reaches out to me, but it is Moon who fills the words with compassion. "Don't be afraid of the infection, BZ. It doesn't have to make you insane. Fear of it can be your worst enemy. I know you ... I know that--" Song's hands twitch--"that the finest, gentlest, kindest man I ever met must have been meant for this. That you must have been chosen, somehow. . . ." Song takes a deep breath. "It's difficult
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for everyone, at first. Complete understanding . . .
complete control of the process takes many months.
But I can give you enough to help you. There are word formulas for the channeling of stimuli, patterns that become a part of your thought processes in time, like--"
she breaks off, as the sibyl mind searches for a meaningful analogy, "the adhani discipline practiced on
Kharemough."
"Really? I practice that--"
"Use it, then. It will help you concentrate. But there are key words you need to make a part of it.
You know that there is a kind of ritual to the formal sibyl Transfer; it starts with the word input. No other questions need to be recognized. Learn to block casual questions by concentrating on the word stop."
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"Stop?" I say, incredulous. "That's all?"
"Yes. It's very simple; it has to be. But there's much more . . ." Her own words flow easily now, a clear stream.
I gaze into her eyes as I repeat every phrase, seeing
Song's face but knowing Moon's heart and mind lie behind it. The knowledge helps me focus on her words;
I am afraid to lose even one in the clamoring wilderness
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Song has made of my mind.
At last she has told me all that she can. ". . . it takes time. Believe in yourself. This is not a tragedy; it could be a blessing. Perhaps it was meant to be."
Never, I think, knowing the truth about what I have become. But I whisper, "Thank you." I touch Song's face again. Her eyes shine with tears. "You don't know what this means to me--" I take her hands in mine and kiss them. "I love you, Moon. I'll never love anyone else. I've hated myself ever since I left Tiamat." I take a deep breath. "I can tell you that now, because I know I'll never see you again." I try to see her as she must be--no longer a pale, stubborn barbarian girl, but a woman, a queen,
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the leader of her people. The once painful knowledge only makes me love her more.
Song blinks her eyes, and sudden tears run down her cheeks. "I need you," she cries, like the crying of sea birds. Her eyes begin to stare.
"Moon!" I clutch Song's shoulders, clutching at the spirit that inhabits her. My kiss smothers the last words that come to her lips: "No further analysis!"
Song sways; I catch her as she falls and lay her down on the bed. I straighten up again, still feeling the moist pressure of her lips against mine. "/ need you." Were those words really Moon's, or her own? She stares darkly at me, wiping her eyes, but she says nothing. I look away.
Twice now I have used her body to answer my need for
Moon. ... I tell myself angrily that I haven't used her half as badly as she has used me.
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I leave her alone in the tower and go out into Sanctuary.
The night is red with the Lake's unquiet glow. There are still many people moving through the ghosts in the levels of the ancient city, in the relative coolness of the night. I see lights in windows, and hear shouts and laughter and screams. Some of the lights are phantoms, and some of the voices echo inside me. I hear Spadrin's last scream, and I stumble against a wall, clinging to the rough stone.
I push myself away and move on, passing through ghosts, watching buildings melt and reform like mutating tissue inside clouds of ghost-light. It is almost as though I am looking through time, seeing Sanctuary's history unfold, superimposed on reality. I wonder how many people actually live here in the present, and how many of them are sane. ... I hold the trefoil briefly; let it fall against my chest again, touching it now and then with my fingers as I walk.