Order me."
The Lake roars into my mind, her voice echoes inside
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me, until I can barely speak. "Order--you to do--what?
Who are you? Where are you?"
"Lost . . ." she moans. (Lost lost lost.) "Save me. . . ."
"Damn it--" I dig my fists into my eyes until I see stars. I know this is important, desperately important.
But the Lake is all around me. "The Lake? Are you a prisoner of the Lake?"
"No . . . Lake. Here."
"Where? What--" I try to think. "What are you?"
"Lake. Lake." (Lake lake lake . . .)
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My breath catches. The Lake is speaking to me, through Song. "But what are you?" I shout, shouting down the echoes inside my head.
"Your servant... Lake." Song's eyes are vacant, helpless.
I turn away, shaking my head, wanting to shake her.
"How can I help you?"
"Ask . . ." she gasps, "ask the right questions."
What are you, what do you want from me, how can I help you--? "I can't think of anything else!"
And unspeakable anguish fills me.
Song falls out of Transfer into a sobbing heap. "Please, please . . . I" she cries, as if her heart is breaking. "I can't
... I can't . . . bear it. Help me--"
I fall on my knees beside her and take her in my arms, holding her against my heart, because her pain is mine, as bitter and unstoppable as tears. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry
. . ."I groan, to her, to the raving monster that holds us captive. "I tried." Seeing now that she is as much its
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prisoner as I am. "Why does it do this to you ... to us?
By all the gods, what does it want from us--tell me, Song!" I do shake her now, to make her listen.
She looks at me in fear, as if she thinks she will fall into Transfer again. "Don't!" I shout. She doesn't. "It's so alone--" Her voice trembles. "There's no one else who hears it--not through a thousand years. So it keeps
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me here ... I keep it here ..." She wipes at her eyes.
"It's lost in time. It needs ..." She caresses the fire globe that lies in her lap.
"What?" I ask.
"You were supposed to know! You're supposed to
... to know."
"Why? Why me? Why not--Goldbeard, or somebody
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else? Why not you?"
"I can't! Nobody can answer it; nobody knows what it wants, nobody knows what it is! ... I'm lost. I can't hold on to anything. It takes everything away from me
. . ." She clings to me, burying her face against my neck.
Her whole body shudders. "It's eating me alive."
"Gods...." I wipe my nose, sniveling with self-pity. I have failed again, failed miserably, and I don't even know at what. Why me? What do I know that matters? I'm no one-- "I thought... I thought you controlled the Lake. I thought you knew what it was! I saw you with those men, you called up a power and you killed them--"
"The Lake killed them!" She pushes away from me. "It took them somewhere else. It touches the crowd through me. When it comes that close, things happen. Things used to happen to Sanctuary all the time, that's what everyone says. Until I came. Now they only happen when I can't hold on, when I hate them so much...." Her hands clench. "I just never know what--"
"Were those men guilty?"
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"I don't know." She looks at me strangely. Suddenly her fingers sink into my flesh. "I don't care!
They're all guilty, those maggots! I suffer to save them--let them suffer too!" She begins to cry again, bruising her fists against my vest.
"Help me find my brothers," I say softly. "I know they're here. You even saw them, you passed judgment on them. Help me find them, and I'll take you away from here."
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"That's not the answer!" Her eyes are like black glass again. "I know them, two Kharemoughis.
They were worms, even the Lake didn't want them. So I let Gold beard sell them."
I straighten up. "Who owns them? Where can I find them?"
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"You don't want to know. That's not why you came.
You don't care about your family. Nobody does, it's all a lie."
The words sink into my heart like a knife. "That's not
. . . that's not true. My father . . . your mother--"
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"I hate my mother! She never understood anything.
She made my father feel like nothing, because he was
. . . full of dreams. She never had any dreams. She never understood about being a sibyl. It was only a job to her.
She let the Company use her and give us nothing. She was a sibyl, she could have asked for anything! But she wouldn't go somewhere where we could be rich and honored. She wouldn't listen to us--"
"Sibyls aren't supposed to want money or power," I say weakly, but she isn't listening.
"She didn't understand when I told her to infect me!
She knew I was lying ... but she did it anyway. And now she's sorry, but it's too late, too late. . . ."
She wrings her hands. I realize finally that it wasn't World's End that drove her mad, but her madness that drove her into
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World's End.
Did mine? I climb slowly to my feet, staring out the window at the Lake. "I hate my brothers," I say thickly.
"I don't know why I came . . . except that maybe I hated myself more." I turn back to her. "All my life, I always tried to do the right thing--but it always came out wrong." I'd been as self-deluded as any of the others back in C'uarr's place, the ones I'd despised for running away into World's End.
But this doesn 't have to be the end of the world. "We can leave 176
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here, Song. Nothing's keeping us here. Tell me how to find my brothers--"
"You'll never leave here. Not unless you ask the right questions!"
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"How?" I wave my arms. "What else can I try?"
She only stares at me, her face darkening. She gets to her feet suddenly and goes into the bedchamber with the globe in her hands. After a little I hear her call out the window to someone. I follow her into the other room.
She stands before an ornate mirror, holding a pot of red paint in her hands. She has put on the white shift I
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saw her wearing the day I came here, the day I saw the
Lake kill the men on the platform. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, I see that the shoulder and neckline of the shift are torn; I remember that I was the one who tore them. I look away self-consciously as she glances at me. "What else is there to try?" I ask her reflection.
"You'll see," she says, gazing through me. She dips her fingers into the bright liquid, drawing swirls and lines across her face. I remember the patterning she wore when I saw her on the platform. I look down at the faded patterns on my own arms; finally I know how they got there.
I hear the tower door burst open, and heavy footsteps cross the floor of the next room.