Pellin considered not answering. The risks were unknown, but no less great for that. A chasm loomed at his feet. In the end, that same measure of risk demanded he seek guidance from the southern Vigil.
“Dukasti, has anyone ever returned from the Maveth and spoken with the Vigil?” he asked.
A stir shifted the blanket, as if Dukasti had shaken his head. “No, not in my experience or any of our writings.”
Pellin mused while the storm raged. The voice that had spoken through Elieve seemed content to wait. In the end, even with seven hundred years of experience, he was too short-lived to foresee the consequences of his decision. Even if Elieve’s vault offered access to the southern evil, Allta should be more than a physical match for the girl, but what the evil might learn of them and how it could be used were impossible to know.
What would Cesla have done? Pellin laughed, struck by the absurdity of the idea, and he rejected it.
What should I do? Guide me, Aer.
“You have been imprisoned for a very long time,” Pellin said finally, “with nothing but the rhythm of the desert to keep you company and the occasional stray man or woman to offer you an outlet for your vengeance.”
“Well laid,” the voice replied. “But perhaps that stroke landed by chance. Come, human, give me some token that you hold wisdom.”
“To what end?” Pellin asked. “What can a prisoner without hope of freedom or redemption have to offer me in exchange?”
Laughter wore the trappings of Elieve’s voice, coarse as the sand beneath them. “Perhaps our conversation is nothing more than the longing of the lonely seeking to relieve his solitude?”
“Then you could surely have engaged in such with the few who have wandered into your domain,” Pellin said, “instead of breaking their minds.”
“Would you deny the condemned interludes of distraction from their eternal imprisonment?”
Now, the voice from Elieve’s mouth spoke of itself in plural terms. How many prisoners were there? “Distraction?” Pellin asked quickly to cover his shock. “That is how you regard the images of Aer?”
Laughter shook their makeshift tent. “Images of Aer?” Elieve’s voice scaled upward in its mirth. “I thank you. By bringing this vessel to me, you offer a greater amusement than the simple breaking of—as you put it—images? You poor insects. You’ve lived with your fallen state for so long you no longer realize the height from which you descended.”
Pellin’s heart thundered within his chest with fear and the thrill of discovery. Beside him, Dukasti sat as still as if he’d become part of the desert. Pellin prayed his intuition was correct. If not, his next question might serve to end the conversation. “Were the Fayit so very lofty, then?”
“You are nothing,” Elieve answered. Pellin kept himself from exhaling in relief. “You grub like ants in the dirt, believing your hills of rock and stone to be accomplishments, all the while ignorant of the ones who preceded you. Fools!” The voice turned angry. “We were gods. The heavens and the engines of creation itself were within our grasp.”
“Until iniquity was found in your hearts,” Dukasti said.
Elieve jerked as if she’d been struck. “Do you think your definitions or constraints could possibly apply to us?”
“Do they not?” Pellin asked, desperate to keep Elieve talking. “Even the Fayit must have lived by moral precepts—else how did you come to find yourself imprisoned?” He took a breath and exhaled it slowly, striving to seem casual. “What transgression placed you in your prison of aurium?”
Instead of responding in anger, the being using Elieve’s voice evinced a measure of surprise. “Ah? You come to me with words of power on your tongue, little one, though we knew it under a different name. I sense in you some measure of intelligence, something higher and nobler than those few pitiful gnats whose minds I’ve broken over the long centuries of my imprisonment. Your mind is inquisitive, and though it lacks the perfection of the Fayit, there is much I could teach you. The knowledge of the Fayit could be yours.”
Deep within Pellin a part of him leapt, frantic at the offer. Before Cesla had undertaken to break the first commandment, before his brother had delved the Darkwater, Pellin had spent his time in the libraries of the world, but here was an offer of knowledge beyond expectation or imagining. The air, thick within the closeness of their space, became even more difficult to breathe.
He was not young, but he had avoided the profligate use of his gift that had aged Elwin to the point of death in the last ten years. If he husbanded his efforts, he would live for another two or three hundred years. What might he learn in that time? What wonders could he glimpse? He leaned forward.
“Merchants always put the best side of the melons forward,” Mark said softly.
The spell broke, and the temptation passed, but Pellin grieved the emptiness it left behind. Still, the conversation had to be played out. “In our diminishment,” he said, “we have a saying that ‘knowledge is grief, but wisdom is power.’ What price would you exact for this gift?”
Elieve laughed once more, but within the confines of their improvised tent, it sounded forced, desperate. “None,” she said. “You have only to come to me here, with this one or one like her. As recompense for relieving my solitude, I will tell you whatever you wish to know.”
Again, temptation clutched at Pellin, but he knew himself too well. Then the sound of the storm faded, and he felt himself freed. “Perhaps we will talk again,” Pellin said. With one hand, he whipped the blanket away and a shock of sunlight blinded them. Elieve wailed where she sat enclosed within the grip of Allta’s arms, her voice keening the loss of darkness until it faded entirely.
“It’s bright,” she said in her own voice. She covered her eyes with her hands.
“Thank Aer for that,” Pellin said. He put his hand on her
