Aeriel saw a young girl barely in womanhood, with the same proud cheeks and high forehead as her mother, her hair the same jet black. Her nose was thinner than Ravenna's, though, the chin more pointed, her complexion paler, the eyes slanted and green.
"Oriencor," Ravenna breathed. "O my daughter, Oriencor."
A space of silence. At last Ravenna roused.
"Then came the news. We had all been recalled. A great disaster upon our home world: war—a thing not known in centuries. Some of my colleagues had prompted wars among you here, upon your world, that they might study them, but that our own world might one day be engulfed in such a conflict, none ever dreamed.
"Most of us sped home at once. My daughter was eager to be off, to join the fight and unleash against those of our own people who had become our foes the Ancient skills which I had taught her. But I demurred. Nor would I allow her to go without me. No one wanted her, anyway: I was the only one who considered her human. At last, I confessed her ancestry to her."
Ravenna's words grew low and halting.
"She went mad. Cursing me, she fled and vanished into the wild marches at desert's edge. When the last chariots departed, I remained behind, searching, but I could find no trace. In the end, in despair, I concluded she must have perished."
In her mind's eye, Aeriel saw the Ancient chariots leaping away on plumes of fire into the black, starry sky. Ravenna's daughter screaming after them as she fled the City. Her mother searching, combing the planet in vain. Aeriel could have wept for the dark-haired halfling girl. When the Ancient spoke again, her tone had flattened into exhaustion.
"Those few of us left upon this world had to decide what to do. Messages from our home world had ceased. Only silence answered our hails. All of our chariots were gone. Some urged the building of new chariots, but we had neither time now nor the means. Already this world had begun to die. Artificial from the first, it had never been intended as self-sustaining. A handful of us, cut off from our mother planet, could never hope to maintain this daughter world as before. We resolved to let it decline gradually and see if we could find a balance-point. We decided to try to salvage the world."
With the aid of the pearl, Aeriel envisioned the world's atmosphere thinning and spinning away into space, whole species of plants and animals dying, people over the generations growing thinner, smaller, hardier.
"And we succeeded," Ravenna said, a trace of animation returning to her voice. "Over the years, we bred new species of vegetation that could survive without our care. We trained the duaroughs to maintain the subterranean machinery that manufactures water and air. Now that the atmosphere had thinned, we could no longer pass outside the Domes without masks to help us breathe. Bit by bit, we withdrew from your people, allowing you to evolve as you would."
The beadwork landscape woven in Aeriel's mind by the pearl became more recognizable, dotted with the herbs and beasts and peoples she knew. Ravenna sighed.
"A point of stasis was reached at last, the entropy halted—or so we thought. Then the Witch appeared, upsetting our delicate equilibrium only subtly at first: wells tainted, dams undermined, cisterns breached. The scarcity of water was always our weakest point. We repaired the damage as best we could. But soon she grew bolder, flaunting her handiwork, spreading drought. As our numbers dwindled, she seized every scrap of technology she could, ransacking the darkened Cities for tools. In time she learned all our most unspeakable arts, with which she means to ravage this world as surely as my race have ravaged Oceanus."
Aeriel gazed at nothing, the images in her mind grown dark.
"And yet," the Ancient whispered, "she is my daughter still."
Aeriel sat in silence, not knowing what to say. "What happened there," she ventured at last, "on Oceanus?"
Ravenna started. An explosion of colors leapt suddenly into Aeriel's thoughts. She shrank from the scenes forming there.
"Plagues," the Ancientlady choked. "Weapons of unimaginable ferocity, horrors unleashed to last a thousand thousand years beyond the lifetimes of their creators and victims alike. Oceanus destroyed itself. That is why it glows in heaven with such a cold and spectral light: quick with the poison that never ends. Nothing is left alive there. This is the only world that remains: this my daughter's only birthright. If Oriencor would but listen! If I could but persuade her to renounce this mad vengeance, repair the world, and come to NuRavenna to reign after me—"
The Ancient halted, half turned away. Aeriel gazed at her.
"How can I help you, Lady?" she asked finally.
The Ancient turned on her. "Crush the Witch's army," she answered, with such fierceness that Aeriel flinched. "Destroy her darkangels. And lay the pearl of the world in her hand."
Aeriel stared, amazed at what Ravenna seemed to be asking. Was she, Aeriel, to convert the lorelei as once she had rescued a darkangel? But the Witch was infinitely more powerful—and more wicked—than her unfinished darkangel "son" had been. What if Oriencor did not wish to be saved?
What if she used the sorcery of the pearl to further her own evil ends?
Yet Ravenna seemed so certain that Aeriel dared not question her. She was an Ancient, after all, with knowledge far superior to Aeriel's own. I am but the bearer, the pale girl told herself. Perhaps it is not necessary that I understand. The Ancient lady paced, moving restlessly.
"What does the future hold, Aeriel—do you know?"
Aeriel shook her head. Ravenna sighed.
"Nor do I. Many possibilities exist. An infinity: destiny isn't fixed, you know."
Aeriel nodded, trying desperately to comprehend. So Talb the Mage had told her once, many daymonths past. She thought of the Lady Syllva's army, poised on the desert's edge ready to march—or was it already marching by now? How long had she been wandering with the Witch's pin in her head and how long healing here under Ravenna's care? The other returned to her, reaching once more to touch the pearl, and again Aeriel felt the strange, glancing thrill of the Ancientlady's power.
"This jewel on which I have shown you the past," she said, "can also scan ahead in time. I have other such jewels here in the City. And I have sat with them countless hours on end, searching, hoping for a means to undo my daughter's madness."
"What have you seen?" Aeriel asked.
"Many things."
Images stirred once more in the pale girl's mind.
"I have seen your army overthrown and Oriencor triumphant. I have seen Irrylath putting the Blade Adamantine into my daughter's heart. I have seen him killed——"
"No!" Aeriel cried involuntarily, as the scene loomed before her—even though these images of possible futures had a shifting, half-finished look. They were not fixed and vivid as the actual past. Still she recoiled. Ravenna nodded.
"Your husband, yes," she said, "that served my daughter once."
Pain and rage and jealousy swept through Aeriel at the thought of Irrylath. Desperately, she tried to clear her mind, to banish the frightening image that the pearl now wove there: Irrylath falling from the back of the Avarclon, hurtling headfirst through empty air toward a great turbulence below. The vision refused to fade. She shuddered. A tear, hot and salty, spilled down her cheek.
"Say it will not happen," she whispered. "Say that Irrylath will not be killed."
The Ancient, her great, dusky hand so much larger than Aeriel's, brushed the tear from the pale girl's lips.
"I cannot promise you that," she said sadly. "Would that I could. But I have also seen him alive at the end of the war. You killed. You all killed. The possibilities are numberless, and no one is any more likely than another."
She touched the girl's cheek lightly, and Aeriel smelled myrrh. The pearl's horrific speculations vanished now. She sighed in relief.
"That is why I made the rime," Ravenna told her, "to try to guide you and the Ions—all of history—toward that one best future I have glimpsed among the rest."
The Ancientlady eyed her very sadly now.
"Have you ever treasured something, child," she asked, "a thing so dear you thought you could never give it up—then learned you must?"
Cold terror returned to Aeriel. No. Never— not Irrylath! She shook her head.
Ravenna sighed. "Soon I must do so—give up what I love best for the good of the world. Come, child. Gird on your sword. The time has come for me to spell you the end of the rime and put my gift into the pearl."
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."