‘So, I grew without learning to care. When I learned to care at last, I did not know it until too late. Only after I had learned to know, and to trust, and then lost all – only then did I know what I had lost.
‘So when I met you, Jaer, there was something in you of Alan. Why should I try to hide it? You know it already. You I learned from the inside out, like learning an author from his book or a musician from his song. You did not seem strange to me, even when you were most strange. And when I saw what they had done to you in Murgin, then I knew what they had done to Alan and could not pretend for a time that he was either safely dead or wholly alive. You did not die! Did he? For a time, Jaer, I prayed you would die so that I could believe him dead. Then for a time, there beneath the Hill, I convinced myself once more that he was dead, but I could not hold that conviction. Now – now, there is only cold, hopeless certainty that he lives. His only hope is where you are going. My only hope is where you are going. But I am lonely….’
Jaer started to say that she, too, was lonely, but the falsity of that speaking was in her heart before the words came. ‘I am not lonely,’ she said. ‘Not anymore.’ The wonder of that reality bloomed within as a fire might flower upon dried wood, warming and consuming at once, radiant and fell. ‘I am not alone, Medlo. Never alone. I am many. A multitude.’ She saw Medlo’s eyes on her, hating her because he was not more to her than merely one of that multitude, having no more reality for her than one of her inhabitants, one of her story-people.
She saw the expression on his face, understood it. ‘You are with me, Medlo. Truly. Here, within me.’
He choked on bitter laughter. ‘What am I like, Jaer? Is it truly me you have there? Do I feel pain and laugh and sneer and die of longing for Rhees there within you? How real ami?’
Jaer, feeling that the Medlo within was more real to her than the Medlo who stood before her, did not say so. Sympathy stayed her, that and a feeling much like love. ‘Only as real as I will ever be able to know,’ she said honestly. ‘I’m sorry. I’d comfort you if I knew how.’
‘Yes. I suppose you would. Still, if we go toward death, Jaer, I still fear it. Being preserved within you, Jaer, like a fly in amber, does not comfort me at all.’
‘Forgive me, then.’
‘There is nothing to forgive. Only to understand.’
‘Try to do that, then. Your dreams may yet be fulfilled.’
Terascouros interrupted, weary of their demands upon one another. ‘Let us be on our way. He does not know from day to day what his dream may be. He dreams of living, betimes, and of dying, betimes, and of founding a new kingdom of Rhees, betimes. When one has so many dreams, it is not unlikely at least one may be fulfilled. Avoiding all possible confusion, now, that might be a worthy dream for all of us! Let us try that.’
Jaer hung her head, for a moment ashamed, though of what she could not have said. ‘Will it help avoid confusion, Teras, if I say where we are going? We go to Tchent. To the abandoned archives of Tchent, at the very edge of the Concealment.’
Terascouros eyed her keenly, without doubt but with great curiosity. ‘We have been patient, Jaer. We have not badgered you with questions, though we have felt them. Please, for our peace, tell us what it is you know, or guess at, or even have hints of. We will travel more contentedly so, and if we must die in the travel, die with better heart for it.’
‘Teras, trust you to say you would die happy if only your curiosity were satisfied. Well, I would not be happy at your death, no matter how satisfied you might be. What can I tell you?’
‘Tell us who you are.’
‘Oh, by the Powers, Terascouros. When I slept, people told me tales. A man would tell me of his youth, of a place, a time, of others in his life who were important to him … or perhaps not important, merely well remembered. And here, inside, somewhere, that man would begin to live, to think, after a little time to speak, to tell me stories of his own. From a few words, a pattern. From a pattern, another few words, another pattern.
‘At the Hill, Teras, you had those sharp cuts of crystal hanging in the light, breaking the light into rainbows. Yes, like that. From each telling, the person would break within me into still others, and those others into others yet, all real, all whole.
‘Each one added made it larger, not merely a little larger but much larger, so that I thought I would break and split to shed those thousand, thousand selves and that pattern of time and place. Suddenly there were connections which I had not thought of before, which no one person had ever thought of before, for no one man – no one woman – no one had the knowledge, the time. About Cholder. About
