Feldon took a deep breath and called upon the powers of the land. He thought of the nervous scholar in his thick spectacles, rummaging relentlessly through the decaying paper and rotting vellum. He tried to call a being that summed up the nature of the creature in one place.
There was a pause, and then an identical duplicate of the scholar appeared.
No, not identical. It was taller, and its flesh had a ruddier hue. But it was thin and nervous and had thick spectacles and a knowing manner.
The scholar (the real one), walked up to the created being and looked over his glasses at it. The duplicate did the same.
Feldon was amazed. 'Is it real?' he choked out at last.
The scholar reached out and touched the quasiduplicate, and the duplicate touched back. 'Feels like it,' said the scholar. 'A lot of the little details are wrong, but you aren't just summoning me. You're summoning the essence of my me-ness as a scholar. You can keep this me around by keeping that part of your mind aware of me, but it isn't. Me, that is.'
Feldon worked his way around the scholar's thinking process. 'But what can I do with this-you.'
'What you would expect a scholar to do,' returned the bespectacled man, 'research, investigate, know certain things.' In a slightly more excited voice he added, 'but I wouldn't know anything about fighting or lands I had never visited or anything like that. It would be beyond my nature as a scholar.'
'And I could do the same with… Loran?' asked Feldon.
Both scholars nodded. Feldon found the duplication unnerving and dismissed the part of the spell that held the magical scholar in place. He faded from view like snow in the rain.
'You can summon your lost love back,' said the scholar, 'if that's what you truly want.'
Feldon thought about the scholar's words on the way back to his home, the wagon shuddering through the deep ruts in the road. It was raining again by the time he returned, and the servants had kindled a fire in the hearth. Before he entered the house, he checked Loran's grave, beneath the inert, rusting form of the automaton. The earth was undisturbed, and that made him feel slightly better.
He thanked the servants and retreated to his workshop. There, among the tables draped with cloth and the reagents settled into multicolored layers in their beakers, he allowed himself to remember.
He remembered Loran. Not just the feel of her touch or the way her hair moved like a dark waterfall. He remembered her: when she was happy, when she was angry, when she was gardening.
When she was dying.
Feldon thought of Loran and the life she spent with him, of the tales of her youth, of their work and lives together. The joy of life with her and the sadness of her departure felt like a great bubble rising within him. He fed his memories of the land into that bubble, memories of the mountains, the forests and shore, the swamps and the temple, and he filled it with power and life.
When Feldon opened his eyes, Loran was there. She was perfect and whole and as young as when he first met her at the gates of Terisia City.
She gave him a knowing smile and said, 'Why am I here?'
'You died,' said Feldon, his voice choking as he spoke.
She nodded and said, 'I seem to remember that. Why am I here?'
'You're here because I missed you,' said Feldon.
'I missed you as well,' replied the spell-Loran, and she reached out to him.
Despite himself, Feldon shrank from her embrace. She paused, then asked, 'What's wrong?'
'You're not her,' he said at last.
'No, I am not,' she said, her voice in the lilting Argivian accent he remembered. 'We both know that, and you know that I could be nothing less than what you remember of her. You remember her as being honest and strong. I am the sum of her, taken through your feelings. I am what you remember.'
'You are memories,' sighed Feldon, 'and though you are pleasant memories, I must leave you as memories. If you are here, you are no more than the automaton in the garden-unliving, an imitation of what was. I'm sorry. I went to so much trouble to bring you about, but I know that I cannot keep you.'
'Then why am I here?' she said.
'You are here,' said Feldon, taking a deep breath, 'so that I can say good-bye.'
The spell-Loran paused, then smiled slightly. 'I understand,' she said at last.
Feldon crossed to her and embraced her. She felt very much like Loran as he had known her. All that was Loran in his memories was encased in the spell-creature he had created.
When they parted, there were tears in both of their eyes.
'Good-bye,' he said, his voice thick with emotion.
'Good-bye,' she replied.
Feldon allowed the spell to elapse, and the form of Loran began to dissolve.
'I understand,' he said to her vanishing form. 'At last, I think I understand.'
All that was left was a knowing, soft smile. Then that was gone as well.
Feldon returned to the work in his library and workshop, taking up small matters that had been abandoned ages ago. In a few weeks, the scholar appeared at Feldon's doorstep and was amused to see that save for the servants, Feldon was alone.
After a meal the birdlike scholar asked, 'What became of your lost love?'
'She was lost,' said Feldon with a deep sigh, 'and it was beyond my power to bring her back. It was beyond my desire. But I had a chance to say good-bye.'
'That is what you truly wanted?' asked the scholar.
'That is what I truly wanted,' said Feldon.
The scholar spent three weeks in Feldon's library and then left, but he promised to send interested students to the grizzled man's home. Every so often some would-be scholar or mage would appear, and Feldon, remembering his promise, would let the wizard go through the library. Over dinner he would tell his own story of what he had learned about magic.
Sometimes the aspiring mage would listen politely, sometimes intently. Occasionally, after everyone had gone to bed, a mage would creep down and find Feldon sitting by the fire. The flames twisted into the form of a smile, a soft and knowing smile.
And Feldon, the ancient wizard, seemed to be content.
