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What came next was chaos.
But foremost, Zuaren felt terrible blinding agony. . . .
"No!" cried Ierulann, as she felt the weight of minds come slamming down
upon her, the storm of madness breaking free at last, no longer contained by
the poor husk of the ancient King.
Around her, the darkness howled. The assassin bent forward, the blade still
embedded in the dead one, as though suddenly stricken by a direct bond with
his victim,
You must contain it! cried the familiar minds into her own consciousness,-
straining against passion, against abandon that was all around them now,
ready to swallow up the world.
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r r
The outlines of the bedchamber began to grow transparent, to fade in and
out of this plane. Curtains blew open on the great window, letting in weak
moonlight and a screaming wind.
And suddenly, Ierulann saw ghosts of a million cities superimposed like
crystals outside the window.
Transparent towers came into focus and were displaced by tall spires and
walls of violet marble; obelisks sprung up into the marrow of heaven, only to
collapse into sand; structures of pale sandstone and clay spilled and popped
like mushrooms after a rain; ancient gilded domes stood up like bubbles of
water, globules of dew from a distance.
The vision danced, and times were mixing, and madness was upon her. . . .
Guard of Law! cried the voices of her fellow minds from afar, Contain the
destruction! You must do it, for you are the only one close enough to touch it!
And Ierulann knew that if she did not, then the city indeed, the whole
world would collapse around her into a common dream of insanity.
And thus she allowed herself to look forward into the*
future for just an instant longer, using the very clairvoyance of her being to
piece together the fabric of things just behind and just ahead of her.
I am the moment. Nothing exists outside of the moment, and the past and
the future line up to fall in tandem to precede and follow me.
I am the order and the law.
The madness howled around her tiny point of calm. For an instant,
grotesque contorted faces out of hell threw themselves at her, and the walls
around the room were gone, while the floor of what was once the palace sank
and reformed below her feet.
The forms of the man who had killed and the ancient one who had died froze
into stone of timelessness upon the royal bed of firmament which once
contained pillows and silk coverlets, but now was the surface of an ocean.
Contain the chaos, now, or never!
Even the voices of the minds had grown muffled, and were coming from such
a great distance now, receding in the maelstrom.
"How can I?" cried Ierulann desperately in her mind, "How can I hold it and
not be overwhelmed, and not myself go mad?"
And suddenly she saw a second ahead, into the future, and she saw the
assassin before her. She saw him from an odd, tripled perspective present,
past, and future. His body was strong, his mind vital, and he was young. . . .
And seeing him in temporal chorus thus, Ierulann reached out with her
mind, and she drew a part of her being that was cold calm order, and she
forced it to come and wrap around the whole city like a great net.
Inward she pulled the madness, forcing it into her and then directly out into
him.
She moved near him, and took hold of his stilled hand.
His name danced into her mind immediately, with a shock of contact.
Zuaren.
She saw and knew him inside-out, past and present
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r r
and future. She knew what he had been* what he was now, and what he could
be.
And then Ierulann released the river of chaos, letting it flow through her
fingers into his ice-cold palm, into him. . . .
The one who had once been Zuaren shuddered, opening his intense eyes
pale as water upon the world of moonlight and swirling homeless dreams,
and in they rushed to populate him, their new strong vessel.
The night had grown still all around them. Transparent palace walls
thickened and began to solidify, and once again shut out the outside. But this
time there was something solid and definite about their shape, something
very new. . . .
Permanence.
Having dropped both his swords, Zuaren stood looking out, past Ierulann,
past the walls, and past this reality into the dreams that were now forever
anchored within him. And yet, the insane spark was barely contained under
his strong wilful surface.
"What has come to pass?" he said softly, "What am I?"
"You are the new King of this city," said Ierulann, watching his glassy eyes,
"It is your lawful punishment. You who have come in ignorance and death,
now carry the burden of the law which is impassive order and can alone
contain chaos. Now, at long last, we can trust the oblivion of sleep."
"Guard of Law!"
Ierulann turned. She was walking slowly along the King's Road, having gone
automatically to her morning patrol along a fractured carcass of a city that
had somehow stilled, frozen in time for her senses no longer felt a doubling,
a shifting. . . .
The woman from the night before stood a few steps away dejectedly, holding
onto a small sack of belongings.
"Here are all my earthly possessions!" she said, "I've come to deliver them
myself, since no one had come for
them last night, and I want no more punishment. When I woke up, everything
was the same as before! Is it not strange? My children are crying with hunger,
but at least they are at my side!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]