The Pearl of the Soul of the World

8

Rime and Shadow

Aeriel's heart leapt at the Ancient lady's words. Now at last she was to learn the riddle's end. Almost eagerly, she reached for the sword that the other had given her. Its strange, sorcerous feel alarmed her still, but she did as Ravenna bade, belting the long blade's girdle about her waist. She trusted the dark lady completely. Ravenna nodded.

"Now say me the rime."

One hand on the swordhilt, the other going to touch the pearl upon her brow, Aeriel closed her eyes and began:

" On Avaric's white plain…" She recited until she came to the final lines: The Witch of Westernesse's hag overthrown."

There she halted. That was all she knew. Without opening her eyes, she sensed the Ancientlady's smile.

"You know most of it, then. Good. Here is the rest:

"Whereafter shall commence

such a cruel, sorcerous war,

To wrest recompense

for a land leaguered sore.

With a broadsword bright burning,

a shadow— "

Abruptly, she broke off. Aeriel blinked in surprise. An image composed of beads of fire had jumped into place upon the near wall of deep blue glass. She recognized the dark features of Ravenna's liege man.

"Lady, a word," he began.

"Melkior," exclaimed the Ancientlady softly. Aeriel sensed her dismay. "I bade that we not be disturbed."

"Forgive me, my liege. The duaroughs insist…" He halted short, his gaze glancing beyond her to Aeriel. "She's awakened," he murmured in surprise. "You said you would send for me when she revived."

Ravenna's lips compressed, but not with anger. "Time presses," she began.

The dark man's eyes widened suddenly. "And you've given her the sword? You swore that you would not, not until—"

She shook her head. "I thought to spare you."

"No!" Melkior cried. "Lady, hold off. Hold off until I come!"

His image vanished. Ravenna whirled. "Haste, child," she said urgently. "I had hoped to accomplish this while Melkior was yet occupied with your companions, but he will be here in another moment.

Quickly—draw the sword."

Aeriel stared at the Ancientlady. "Am I to defend you against your liege man?" she stammered.

The dusky lady hurriedly shook her head. "No. I would not ask that of you. Nor would I wish any harm to come to Melkior. But we must lose no time. Unsheathe the glaive."

Aeriel did so. The blade leapt from the scabbard almost without her will. The misty fire along it burned and whispered.

"Hold it up before you," Ravenna bade.

Aeriel held the glaive point-upward, clasping its long hilt in both hands. It seemed to have no weight, stood humming upon the air. Lighdy, deliberately, the Anciendady brought her palm down upon the point. Aeriel started, feeling a jolt of energy course through the blade. The pearl upon her brow blazed, and for a moment, the white fire running along the sword flared in a wreath of burning colors.

"Sheathe it," Ravenna said.

Aeriel slid the blade, whitelit again, into its case. The light of the pearl on her brow had diminished now. Holding her hand, the Ancienlady seemed suddenly short of breath.

"Don't fear," she said.

Carefully, she cupped her palm to the pale girl's forehead. Aeriel felt a sudden rushing, as of hurding headlong, or as of some unbreakable diread spinning out of Ravenna and into the pearl. Its force held Aeriel transfixed. She could not have moved if she had wished. Only snatches reached her mind—of strange magics, indescribable sorceries, the woven patterns for all living things— all winding themselves away, unreadable, in the jewel's depths. Already the diread had begun to dwindle and slacken. Aeriel felt a change of air as, all at once, the wall behind Ravenna parted, and her liege man dashed through.

"Stop!" he cried. "Lady, stop—"

Gently, the Ancient took her palm from the pale girl's brow. "Peace, Melkior," she whispered, turning.

"It's done."

Her voice was hollow, her face gone ashen beneath the dusky color of her skin. The dark man started forward with a cry, and the Ancientlady sagged into his arms. Aeriel bit back a gasp as she watched Ravenna's liege man support her to the black glass floor. The Ancientlady was dying; Aeriel realized it in horror. The pearl, blazing now, enabled her to feel some echo, as beneath her own breastbone, of the other's heart, now guttering like a spent lamp's flame.

"Lady—Lady, what have you done?" she cried, falling to her knees beside her and Melkior.

Ravenna lay supine in the dark man's arms. She gazed at Aeriel. Sofdy, with great effort, she spoke.

"Child, have you not understood… a word I have said? All myself—all that I have gathered— I have placed into that jewel. You must bear it to the world's heir…to my daughter. Destroy Oriencor's army,"

Ravenna breathed, "and put the pearl into her hand."

A grimace swept over the Ancient's face. Melkior's grip upon her tightened. "No, Lady," he implored her. "Don't leave me."

Wearily, she turned to him, touching his cheek. "Had I another choice… but we both know I must."

Her eyes drifted closed. Her hand upon the other's cheek slid to the floor. No breath now stirred the Ancientlady's breast: no pulse moved in her veins. Ravenna is dead, thought Aeriel, stunned. How can that be? She shook her head, her thoughts disjointed. Soon she will be turning into ash. Then, No, the Ancients' bodies do not crumble at death. They remain perfectly preserved, forever, unless they are burned. For a long moment, Melkior simply stared at his lady's still form; then he buried his face in her hair.

Behind him, standing in the open doorway, Aeriel caught sight of the three duaroughs: Maruha, Collum, and Brandl. The duarough woman looked as fit as the other two now, well recovered from her wound. The three of them hung back, as if in reverence turned to dismay. Maruha's face was wide-eyed, Collum's ashen and grim. Brandl looked as though he, too, might weep.

Shaking, Aeriel rose. The pearl upon her brow burned heatless white. In its depths, the Ancient's sorceries moved, unreachable: incomprehensible to her even if she could have found and read them. How am I to complete my task? she thought numbly. How am I to defeat the Witch and convert her to her mother's cause? The sword at her side murmured softly, sang. The only other sound in the room was the dark man's sobbing. A hand slipped into Aeriel's. Someone was tugging at her. Looking down, she saw Maruha.

"Come," the duarough woman said softly. "Come, Sorceress—Lady Aeriel. We must be off. We should not stay."

Aeriel stood upon the red desert sands. The smoked glass of the Dome rose at her back, curving inward over the City, now left behind. The airlock had proved a series of hatched doorways, which the duaroughs opened readily by complicated and unfathomable means. Yet, watching by pearllight, Aeriel felt a whisper of comprehension steal eerily over her: some aftereffect of Ravenna's sorcery, perhaps.

She almost believed that if she had put her mind to it, she could have opened the Ancient doors herself.

Instead, she turned heavily away. Thoughts of the dying Ravenna chilled her still. Memory of the Ancient interrupted by her liege man filled Aeriel with bitterness—only a few more moments, and she might have known the whole of the rime! Her back to the Dome, Aeriel stood gazing out at the desert dunes. It was nightshade, and by the tilt of the stars, not many hours after Solstarset.

"But it was nightshade when we came," she murmured and shook her head, amazed. Almost a daymonth spent in NuRavenna—and how many more wandering the desert and the caves? Irrylath's army must be halfway to the Waste by now! So much time lost…Maruha beside her nodded.

"We've been within for hours upon hours, Lady—handfuls of dozens of them—while you and the holy Ancient conferred."

Aeriel glanced at the duaroughs. They think I have the rime, she thought. They think the Ancient-lady gave me all of it— that I am prepared to meet the Witch.

"We spent the time going about under the Dome, Sorceress," Brandl added as he and Collum wrestled with the airlock's final closure, "surveying the City's machines—for Lord Melkior said we must be gone in haste as soon as his lady had given you all you needed if we were to join this war in time."

His young face was shining with expectancy, his words eager and bold. Already he seemed to have forgotten Ravenna fallen, Ravenna dying. But I don't have all I need, Aeriel wanted to scream. She only gave me half the rime's end— not enough! Not nearly enough. I don't even know what the pearl is, or the sword. To calm herself, she took a deep breath. The outside air felt deliciously thin and cool.

"You must not call me 'lady' or 'sorceress,"" she answered distantly instead. "I'm neither."

Collum snorted. "Indeed! And I suppose you have no pearl upon your brow, Lady, nor a sword that sings ever so softly in gift from the Ravenna herself."

"Who is gone now," whispered Aeriel, touching the swordhilt, then the pearl. She felt lost. "Ravenna is dead."

"You're her heir," Maruha insisted.

Aeriel shook her head. Not I, she thought. The Ancient boons are not for me. Yet a desperate resolve had begun to fill her. No matter that she had not the last of the rime. No matter that she now bore two strange sorcerous gifts the purpose of which she did not even know. Somehow, by means she did not yet understand, she must persuade Ravenna's daughter to renounce her treachery and become the world's heir.

"Oh, please, Sorceress," Brandl cried, coming forward. His hand had gone to his little harp. "Will you tell me the rest of the rime? I'll sing it wherever I go." He threw a glance—nervous and defiant by turns—in Maruha's direction. "I mean to be a bard, whatever my aunt may say."

"Sooth—my whole family, worthless!" the duarough woman muttered. "You're as bad as your fool uncle, lad." But she made no move to interfere.

Numbly, Aeriel knelt before him on the cool sand. "I cannot give you all," she said. "For Ravenna did not give me all. But I will give you what I can:

"Whereafter shall commence

such a cruel, sorcerous war,

To wrest recompense

or a land leaguered sore.

With a broadsword bright burning,

a shadow…"

Aeriel bit her tongue and fell silent. She did not know the rest. She could not bear to look at Brandl's face, to see the disappointment she knew must be there when he realized how pitifully little she had gained for all her time in Ravenna's care. Dismay swept over Aeriel as she allowed herself to consider: so many futures possible. How could they hope to win this war without the rime's end as a guide… ?

She had no time to think more—aware suddenly that even though her words had ceased, the recitation of the rime had not. Another voice now whispered it, a soft, strange voice that creaked like oiled wood. Aeriel's startled gaze went to the sword at her side—but it was not the sword that spoke. It was the scabbard.

"With a broadsword bright burning,

a shadow black as night

From exile returning

shall champion the fight…"

The scrolls upon the inlaid surface of the wood swirled and shimmered, shifting their pattern, becoming a bird.

"For love of one above who, flag unfurled,

lone must stand,

The pearl of the soul of the world

in her hand…"

The bird stretched, long narrow wings coming free of the sheath. Its white feathers shimmered.

"When Winterock to water

falls flooding, foes to drown,

Ravenna's own daughter

shall kindle the crown."

Aeriel stared at the slim white bird upon the swordcase. Its bright, round eye stared back at her. She felt a rush of wild joy and disbelief.

"Heron!" she cried.

Maruha and Collum both stood gaping. Brandl hastily fell back. The heron blinked slowly, her metamorphosis only half complete.

"By rights," she replied woodenly, "in my present form, you should be calling me Scabbird, but I suppose 'heron' will do if it must. Now let be. This is a difficult transformation."

The white bird's long, sharp bill snicked shut. She closed her eye and, flapping mightily, struggled free of the sheath. She gained size as she did so, her feathers losing their silvery gleam, till she stood on the desert sand at last, ruffling her snowy pinions and flexing her long, ungainly legs.

"What magery is this?" Maruha whispered.

"Ravenna's messenger-bird," Aeriel laughed, reaching to stroke the other's white breast feathers, "that I have not seen since Orm."

The heron ruffled and danced away. "I have been about my lady's business," she snapped, "as you had all best be."

Aeriel nodded. She felt buoyed up. She had the rime now! As well as the pearl, and the sword—none of them riddled out as yet, but all of them in her hand. Turning back to the duaroughs, she said, "Tell me, Brandl, have you got the verse?"

The young bard goggled a moment, still gazing at the bird—but then he regained himself and said all three long stanzas of the rime back to her, even the last, almost perfectly on the first try. She nodded, smiling. Perhaps he would make a bard after all, despite Maruha. He had a bard's memory, at least.

"Well, Lady Sorceress," Maruha said at last. "We had best be on our way. The Ancientlord Melkior told us of underpaths not far from here. We must return to our people and tell them all we have learned of our fellows forced to serve the Witch."

"We must march belowground to rescue them!" Brandl added, face flushed with excitement, his eyes bright.

"He's not an Ancient," Collum muttered beneath his breath. "Lord Melkior's a halfling, like the Witch."

"No longer," answered Brandl sobering suddenly. "He's a golam now, all gears and wire— like the starhorse." His voice dropped softer still. "The Ravenna rebuilt him after Oriencor's treachery left him for dead, a thousand years ago. He has served the Ancientlady since."

Maruha hissed at him, impatient to be gone. "We're off," she said, offering her hand to Aeriel in the duaroughish fashion, but Aeriel would not take it. Such a gesture was too formal by far. A sorrow almost as strong as her joy at meeting the heron stole over her now. Kneeling, she embraced the duarough woman.

"Fare well. I am in your debt."

"Debt?" Maruha exclaimed. "Sooth—nonsense, Lady. The removing of the pin was the Ravenna's doing, and if you had not kept the weaselhounds from us, we should all have gone to the Witch."

Brandl, having seemingly conquered his astonishment at last, stood studying the heron intently as she pouted and fluttered in the amber sand, ignoring him. Maruha seized her nephew's arm.

"I'll make a song of you, Lady Sorceress!" he called as his aunt pulled him purposefully away. Only Collum remained, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

"The luck of all the ways go with you, Lady," he murmured at last.

"And with you, Collum," Aeriel said.

"If you fail," he started, stopped, then charged ahead. "If you fail us, Lady, we are all lost. No Ravenna remains to save us now."

Abruptly Collum turned and strode after the others. Aeriel watched them heading for a low outcropping of rock jutting up from the sand not many paces distant. For a moment, Aeriel's heart grew cold as she considered the truth of Collum's words. All rested upon her now. And on the pearl and the sword and the rime. Rising, she brushed the desert from her knees. The heron returned to stand beside her, shaking the red grit out of her feathers. Reaching the outcropping, the three duaroughs waved. Aeriel raised her own hand in farewell as they disappeared from view.

Aeriel turned from the distant rocks and rested one hand against the City's dark glass Dome. She chafed her arms against the cool breeze and shivered, feeling alone suddenly, despite the heron.

Absently, she ran her fingers through the downy feathers cresting the white bird's hard little skull. The heron tolerated her touch with indifference.

"Do you know the meaning of the rime?" she asked.

"I only carry my lady's messages," the bird replied. "I do not interpret them."

Aeriel sighed, eyeing a little amber scorpion traveling across the sand. The heron darted after it, stabbing in its wake. "Hark," she observed, through a billfull of sand. "Your shadow nears."

Aeriel frowned, not understanding. She fingered the sword pommel a moment, remembering Ravenna's words—but she had no shadow, had had none since Orm. No shade now trailed her by any light. Sighing in frustration, she let her eyes stray to the far horizon. The Witch's Mere lay direcdy ahead.

She understood this somehow without having to think about it. The downy light of the pearl pervaded her senses.

Then something stirred among the shadows of the dunes, something dark as a Shadow itself, black as the night. Aeriel beheld a figure coming toward her across the swells of sand. Even so distant and by starlight, she recognized it at once: that which, like a second self, had shadowed her since desert's edge, the one she had dreaded and fled so desperately—because to have turned and faced her follower would have reminded her intolerably of her own identity and of all the other memories that the pin had banned.

She felt no fear now as the dark form approached.

"So you have found me at last," the pale girl said. "I'm glad."

"You led me a merry chase," the other snapped. "When I had no light to track you belowground, I thought you lost—until the heron found me."

Aeriel gazed at the one halted before her. Erin stood as tall as she herself did now. The dark girl wore a blue shift, sleeveless with great open armholes for ventilation. If she had carried a desert walking stick, Aeriel might almost have taken her for one of the Ma'ambai. Barefoot and sandy, the dark islander looked weathered thin, her skin still black as a starless sky. Erin cast a reproachful glance at the white bird.

"She led me within sight of the City's beacon before abandoning me, hours since."

The heron fluffed. "And why should I do more?" she inquired. "You are a demanding shadow."

Having lost her scorpion in the sand, she stalked haughtily away.

"Are you well?" Aeriel asked.

Erin reached to touch her hand, as if to assure herself the other was real. She nodded. "And you?

You look strange somehow—unweathered. The heron told me what befell you, of the black bird and the pin."

Aeriel shook off the odd, lingering feeling of newness and drew the dark girl near. "Yes, I am well,"

she said. "Ravenna tended me." When Erin released her at last, she continued, "But I have had no news of Irrylath and the army in daymonths."

The dark girl shook her head, laughing a little with fatigue and relief. "Nor I, since I left them two daymonths ago."

Aeriel touched the other's cheek, remembering the distant bustle of the camp and the sigh of tents.

Two daymonths—had it really been so long? "Tell me what happened when first you discovered me gone."

Erin leaned wearily against the Dome. "A furious uproar and a fruitless search ensued. Of course your disappearance was all my fault—so your husband would have it, as I was the last who had been with you." The dark girl's voice grew guarded, tight. "At last a sentry confessed to having glimpsed you striding off across the dunes, and your fine prince Irrylath almost ran him through."

Listening, Aeriel closed her eyes. The pearl strung all Erin described before her mind's eye in moving beads of fire.

"Your tracks beyond camp's edge were found at last, ending in a moldering scatter of stinking feathers. Irrylath grew wild at the sight of them, choking out something about the lorelei building the wings of her darkangels from such."

A dozen paces away from them, the heron preened. The stars above burned bright and cold, little pinpricks of light. Aeriel eyed the constellation called the Maidens' Dance.

"And then?"

"When it was concluded you must have been plucked away by icari, taken hostage by the Witch, the camp fell into turmoil."

Aeriel flinched, her mind on fire with the other's words.

"What of Irrylath?" she insisted. Every news of him was precious to her.

Erin's voice grew tighter still. "Great protestations of grief! He should have appointed you bodyguards; he should have warned you against walking unescorted abroad—small help all this contrition after the fact," she scoffed. "His mother the Lady Syllva spoke of taking the Edge Adamantine away from him lest he do himself or others harm."

The pale girl bowed her head, appalled. "And when you departed to follow, to find me," she managed, "was he yet wild with this grief?"

Said Erin acidly, "His cousin Sabr comforted him."

White jealousy flared in Aeriel then, hot as a flame. She felt the dark girl's hand tighten upon her own.

Erin muttered, "I'll put a dagger in his heart when next I see him."

"You'll not," Aeriel exclaimed, her eyes flying open now. Erin tried to pull away, but the pale girl held her. "He's mine. If you love me, you'll leave him to me."

Erin said nothing for a long moment. At last she asked, "So you do love him still—even now?"

Aeriel sighed and could not answer. What she felt was rage and pain and longing—a fierce, unquenched longing for Irrylath's love. The dark girl looked at her.

"I love you," she said, very softly. "Freely. And always will."

Aeriel reached to touch her cheek, but Erin turned away, crossing her arms. The pale girl eyed her a few moments silently, before murmuring, "So you alone did not believe I had been taken by icari."

The other shook her head. "No. I saw the darkangel in Pirs scream and flee at the sight of you."

"Did you tell Irrylath this?"

Erin snorted. "Your husband does not listen to me."

Aeriel looked down, deeply grieved for Erin's suffering on her account. Irrylath's, too. She had never meant to cause either of them pain. Aeriel lifted her gaze toward the distant, unseen Witch's Mere. The soft white glow of the pearl filled her eyes.

"So you set out on your own in search of me."

"If Ravenna's heron had not found me a daymonth past, I should be searching still," Erin answered, calmer now. "What will you do with Irrylath when you return?"

Aeriel sighed and shook her head. The wind from the desert was cool and full of fine sand that polished at her anklebones. The heron, testing her wings, rose into the air, hovering a moment before realighting. Aeriel looked away.

"I am not returning with you, Erin."

The dark girl pivoted to stare at her. Abruptly, she shoved away from the Dome and halted a few paces from Aeriel. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "You must ride at the head of the army that has gathered in your name! I did not travel all this way to be told you will not go back."

Carefully, Aeriel unbuckled the sword at her hip. "Ravenna has given me another task. I mean to meet the Witch, but not in battle. I must confront her face-to-face."

"Are you mad?" Erin cried, catching her arm.

"Bear word back," Aeriel told her, "of our allies the duaroughs marching underland against the Witch.

Say that I have spoken with the Ancient Ravenna."

"No!" Erin exclaimed. "I won't. I'll not leave you." She did not let go of the pale girl's arm. "If you mean to face the Witch unguarded, I'll stand at your side."

Aeriel shook her head and held out the sword. A little of the Ancient rime was slowly becoming clear to her. The glaive burned and whispered in its sheath. "Someone must champion the fight in my stead,"

she said softly. "Whom can I trust but you?"

Erin looked at the sword, then back at Aeriel. The pale girl waited. At last, very reluctantly, Erin took the sword. "Oh," she cried, gripping the pommel and sheath. "Oh, what is this? It feels alive."

Aeriel did not answer—for truly, she did not yet know what power the sword might hold. The Witch's pin was what it once had been. What manner of thing into which Ravenna had now transformed it, she could not say. Intently, the dark girl girded it about her waist. The sword hung, shimmering in its sheath. As Erin lifted the now-plain scabbard to study the silvery grain of the wood, running one finger along its sheath's smooth edge, Aeriel felt a strange sensation, as of something lightly stroking her side.

She shivered, frowning, and brushed herself. When Erin warily tried to pull the blade free, it would not come.

"Soft," Aeriel murmured, sure only as she spoke that what she said was so. "Now is not the time, though you will be able to draw it at need." The pearl told her this, she realized, scarcely stopping to wonder at it. She gazed out over the dry, crested dunes before turning back to Erin. "Fare you well," she said.

"Wait—" the dark girl began, groping for words, unwilling still to let her go. "Have you no journey fare, no water?"

For the first time Aeriel noticed the little sack of provisions and the waterskin slung from the other's shoulders. The pale girl shook her head. She felt not the slightest hunger or thirst.

"The pearl feeds me," she answered, certain suddenly that she would need no nourishment so long as she wore Ravenna's jewel upon her brow. As Erin embraced her, Aeriel pulled the wedding sari from her bodice and handed it to her. "Give this to Irrylath," she said, "to make a banner of. And tell my husband he will find me at the Witch's Mere."

The dark girl carefully tucked the folded square of yellow silk into her shift. Aeriel drew back. Behind them, the City's bright beacon flared suddenly from the highest tower within the Dome. Aeriel started, turning.

"Heron, what is it?" she cried.

The white bird skimmed to her across the dunes. "Melkior is burning my lady to ash," she said. "Time we all of us were gone."

She veered away then, but Aeriel reached to catch her wing.

"Wait, heron. Where are you bound?"

The Ancient's messenger indignantly shook herself free.

"I have my own part still in Ravenna's task" was all she would say before gliding away across the crests of sand. The desert air lifted her up, soaring. Within the Dome, the beacon fire blazed higher, brighter still. Aeriel and Erin watched the white bird dwindle in the distance and disappear. The dark girl shouldered her pack and water bag and embraced Aeriel again. At last she lifted her hand in farewell as she started away. Aeriel raised her own in reply before the other disappeared among the dunes. A moment later, she herself strode off in another direction across the sand.