The Second Ardath Mayhar Read online

  I went to the path and gave the whistle I used to attract the attention of the gators. But they were not idiots. They were already shuffling back toward the creek, most of them carrying something dead in their teeth but unwilling to stay close to something as alien as fire. When someone came down tomorrow to take part in the family “business” they were going to find something they couldn’t explain. When they found their kin, if they did, those who had been there when the disaster happened couldn’t explain it either.

  The gators had blotted my tracks with their own, I figured, and nobody would ever suspect a mere boy of making this happen. Particularly since I knew very well that my “co-conspirators” would never say a word to anyone.

  I went home and told Mama what happened. She laughed herself to sleep. Even if those four Catletts died in the woods, they were no loss to anyone, including their kinfolk, and the world was better without them.

  I did some laughing myself, before I dozed off.

  FATE HAS THREE FACES

  Creating myth is terrific fun, and sometimes I have an idea that lends itself to such exercises.

  Deirdre, Caster of the Stones:

  In the mortal world I am a gardener, providing food for my family and many others. I take joy in my work and would gladly undertake no other. Yet from time to time, at long intervals, I am called to other work, disturbing tasks outside our reality, which can be of dire importance to the World of Men.

  For I am she who casts the stones that decide the fate of my kind.

  Such a call came to me one gray winter day, when I would far sooner have remained snug in my stone house, planning my plantings for spring. That was not to be, for as the day dwindled the old compulsion rose within me, and I knew that fate was calling me forth to that old and hateful duty.

  Belva, Reader of the Runes:

  I had hoped never to be summoned again to the Casting. Age and infirmity should have excused me from that painful duty, but on a day hardly to be matched for bitterness the call rose within my ancient bones. I set out for the secret destination, wrapped in thick shawls and heavy leggings and shivering despite them all.

  Behind me I left no one who would miss me or care if I froze in the frozen lands, yet I valued my life, painful as it was. The minutiae of living occupied my hands, and the vastness of thought and learning kept my mind active. On this, which must surely be my last calling to duty, I found myself resenting this old obligation. Why, I wondered, and not for the first time, had this been laid upon me who was neither strong nor overly wise?

  Yet I am the one who reads the runes carven onto the stones, and the decision cannot be made without me.

  Mellora, Interpreter of Fate:

  Serenely weaving a figure into my tapestry before the coal fire, I had no forewarning. The summons came with breathtaking force, sweeping me to my feet with its compulsion. Dropping the tapestry onto its frame, I went to the window and stared out into the forbidding day. I shuddered, not only at the thought of facing the cold, but at the reality of the grim duty before me. Always, the casting of the stones required a reading, and that reading showed me the meaning of the problem and the solution to it.

  I turned to prepare my travel pack. After eating a good meal, I donned my fur cloak and boots, took up my bundle, and opened the door. It was a long journey, made longer by the inclement weather. I wondered how old Belva would fare on such a difficult road. Deirdre was strong and able, but Belva had made too many of these difficult and demanding journeys. I wondered who would take her place, when she was gone. Then I reminded myself that over the generations the Caster, the Reader, and the Interpreter had been replaced and performed their tasks without fail. The fate of our world depended upon us.

  * * * *

  Those Who Watched the World sat in their high place, waiting. Once again they had seen the approach of catastrophe. Once again they had called upon those responsible for resolutions to come and decide the fate of a people. Their ways were difficult, beset with perils. If the Watchers had been capable of worry, they would have paid special attention to the oldest of the women, for she faced a terrible journey with too little strength for the task. But it was Deirdre who was in danger.

  Deirdre, Caster of the Stones:

  I started my trek with my usual trepidation. Five times the call had come, and five times I had answered it. Never had my way been easy, but this time there was an added stress, one I could not quite identify. Something waited among the rocks of the hills, a cold, hard presence that sent a chill to my heart.

  Hefting my staff, I strode forward in darkness, feeling my way with the senses that roused only when the call to duty came. A boulder larger than a house loomed before me. Beyond it there was a presence, and I moved toward it, probing with my staff. When the haft went icy in my hand, I knew I had touched the thing that waited. The tingle that always filled me when I cast the stones now quivered in my hand, and I sent that impulse down the shaft into the thing before me.

  Then there was pain enough to make one wish to die. Fear lashed at me from that unseen entity, and weakness enveloped my body and sought to overcome my will and my mind. I bit my lip until the blood ran, held onto the staff with a grip that only death could break, and sent my will along the faithful wood to penetrate the creature it pierced.

  A hiss like the last breath of a serpent sliced through the air. The presence disappeared from my sensing, just as darkness overwhelmed me. Yet I struggled upward from that sea of blackness at last, pulled myself to my feet and found to my great relief that a gray dawn was breaking.

  By day’s end I would stand in the secret place.

  Belva, Reader of the Runes:

  Unfair as it seemed I, the oldest and feeblest of the Called, must face the longest road to the secret place. Though the first span lay across fields and meadows, now they were soggy with wet and slick with ice. Bundled as I was, falling could not damage me much, but it slowed me a great deal, and I made good use of my three-pronged metal stick, which grasped the ice, giving me balance for setting my careful steps. Still, I knew I must arrive last of us three, by a great deal, most like. The appearance of a frost-wolf did not cheer me at all, as the thing leaped from a frozen hedge and made for my throat. Remembering all the times before, I sank to my knees and braced the walking stick, handle downward, just in time to skewer the beast’s throat on its prongs. Fortunately, the wolves encountered before did not live to learn from the experience, for which I was most grateful.

  By the time I came to the foothills, I was happy that I need not scale the mountain itself. My path ran in loops around its toes, where the effort of moving was enough to leave me exhausted. But on the third day I knew that I would arrive at my destination and I prayed that this would be my last journey to this place.

  Mellora, Interpreter of Fate:

  The wind bit viciously at my ears and my fingers, even through their fur wrappings. Before I had gone ten leagues, my feet were numb and my legs were aching, though I paused to eat and to rest as often as needed. Never before had I been called in such weather, and I was unused to battling such cold. Yet I was trained for such duties, and I drove onward, stopping only when I could not move one foot before the other.

  Strangely, on this journey I did not meet any of the animal or spirit opponents I had battled before. Only the weather and my own body seemed determined to stop me, and those I could defeat, though with great difficulty. I found myself wondering how old Belva was progressing, if I, a generation younger, was having such problems. Then I was at the foot of the mountain, faced with climbing to the cliff where lay the secret place.

  By the time I stood on that apron of smooth rock, I knew that this was going to be a unique Calling. Something dire rode the wind and lurked on the horizon. I found myself dreading the casting and the reading and, most of all, my interpretation. At the end, it was I who must save or doom something—or someone. Never before had
this been a thing that I found it painful to do.

  No one was there—I was the first to arrive, and that told me that the others had found impediment upon their roads. I found a niche out of the wind, wrapped my furs closely about me, and set myself to wait.

  Deirdre, Caster of the Stones:

  When I came at last to the mountain and the secret place, I found Mellora waiting. She greeted me and moved aside to let me sit with her in her sheltered spot, and I turned to her and said, “I fear for Belva. She is so frail, and hers is the longest road. “

  Mellora gazed out over the frozen hills and the flatlands beyond. “Never have the three failed to arrive, when Called. Though I am youngest of you all, that I have learned well. Such a summoning as we have demands an answer. Once a Caster came, cast the stones, and died where she knelt, having battled even death for long enough to complete her task. “

  I had heard the tale, I realized, from Mellora’s predecessor. “Not only she,” I said. “Others have fulfilled their duty and perished, but only after their work was done. This is a thing that gives one faith in Those Who Watch the World, I feel.”

  She nodded. Then she took from her pack a strip of dried meat and a flask of wine and handed them to me. We sat in silence, eating that ration and waiting for Belva, who must come, whatever her condition.

  Belva, Reader of the Runes:

  When I pulled myself at last onto the rock floor where the others waited, I was almost done. The last miles had drained me dry, taking what seemed the last of my strength. Still, once I stood erect upon the stone I felt the familiar surge of power that always accompanied this dreadful duty. Deirdre and Mellora rose to stand beside me, and once we touched our hands together, the current linked us and empowered us beyond any ability we possessed as individuals.

  Now the wind died away, as if smoothing the way for our work. Deirdre loosed her hands and took from her pack the stones, six smooth blue-gray pebbles marked with symbols. Mellora and I stepped back a pace, and she knelt and shook the stones in her hands. Then she cast them onto the stony floor, and they rolled with a soft rattle to settle into position.

  Deirdre stepped back and I took her place, kneeling to study the symbols that meant nothing to anyone except at just such times as this. The marks seemed to writhe before my eyes, and I focused closely upon them, calling out each that lay uppermost as it came into my mind.

  “The sigama. The ultine. The makrem. The ellios. The intrimo. The exelem. Those are the symbols I see,” I said to Mellora.

  I stepped back, and she took my place to stare at the symbols, which had again dissolved into their indecipherable state. Now the reason for this summoning would come, along with the solution to whatever problem it showed us.

  Mellora, Interpreter of Fate:

  Never before had I dreaded my task so bitterly. As I knelt on the stone, I felt my heart begin to race, my blood pound in my veins, my limbs quiver. My entire body seemed determined to stop me from interpreting the reading, and I quelled it with utmost effort. Bending forward, I gazed at the swirls of color on the stones.

  Into my mind came the names Belva had called out. The sigama. Plague! That came into my mind with stunning impact. Of all the perils we knew, plague was the most merciless.

  The ultine. I closed my eyes and into my mind came a picture—a village, swaddled in snow, where men bore forth draped bodies toward a distant graveyard. Did this mean an entire village must die?

  The makrem and the intrimo came together, and the meaning was all too clear. A choice must be made. And the exelem—I must choose, on pain of extinction, which of our people must die, an entire clan. It must be that of one of us. I must make the choice, without taking council with my peers.

  I sank forward onto my elbows, my face in my hands, moaning with anguish. Deirdre and Belva came to my side and lifted me to my feet. “What do you see, Mellora?” they asked, their voices anxious, but I could not reply. I must make my choice before I spoke again.

  Deirdre’s clan was valuable, filled with master gardeners, talented sculptors, gifted teachers. Belva’s was old and wise, possessing more wisdom than any other I knew. Mine was—young, enthusiastic. Not learned. Not talented, particularly. Not of irreplaceable value to our kind. I must choose to doom my own people, myself included, that the others might live.

  The choice was clear. Once it was made, I spoke. “I have pronounced death upon my own clan and myself. Plague will come, and it will take the villages of my people, but yours will be safe, along with all the others in our land.

  “Go home, my sisters, and rejoice that your people will survive. I return to my place, my family, my kin and friends and prepare to battle the plague, though I know that will be useless.” I felt tears behind my eyes, in my throat, but I went with them from the mountain and camped with them for the night. Rest we must, before undertaking the return journey.

  In the morning we embraced for the last time. “I am taking Belva home with me,” Deirdre told me. “She must rest and be cared for before going to her lonely house. We will not forget you, Mellora. We will tell all about this Casting. We send our love and grief with you.”

  When they went away, I turned toward my own place, and if I had come in bitter cold, I returned in worse bitterness. To be forced to destroy my own was a cruel, a terrible doom.

  * * * *

  The Ones Who Watched the World turned their gazes to another place, another time, another set of people. There were always disasters to show to those who must deal with them, though few were as sad as this one had been.

  MINDBEND

  One of my worst nightmares involves having my mind trapped in a totally uncontrollable body. How much worse if that body is not even human!

  The noises in my head are chattering away, rousing me from my long sleep. Chuckles of static and shrieks of interference interrupt my thoughts. I wish I could recall what it is I am supposed to be doing, but I can see just from surveying the landscape that a catastrophe has happened here. I have been injured, I think, probably badly impaired.

  I have tried checking over my body, but that is not as easy as I thought it should be. Instead of the anatomy I remember, I seem to be much larger, with layerings of unfamiliar materials. Instead of four limbs and a rounded receptacle for sensory apparatus, I seem to have one large, barrel-shaped area on treads. The “arms” are of metal, with grasping clamps at their ends.

  Everything I can access tells me that I should inhabit a human being, and yet all the specifications in my files deny that. At the moment, I am a metallic object with a rational mind, and how I became so I cannot understand or even guess.

  The place in which I have come to rest is not a good one, though I have seen nothing that would qualify as “good” since I became conscious. A wide desert of pebbles and sand and arid soil stretches away from horizon to horizon. The light is a strange orange-gray, filtered through dirty mats of reddish cloud; it makes everything look dead.

  I have seen no living tree or bush, not even a blade of grass, since I woke in a little cup of eroded soil some kilometers to the south. Insects evidently no longer exist, although it is possible that my altered hearing range might not pick up their shrill squeaks. No bird has crossed that forbidding sky, and no animal or even serpent has moved before my treads as I trundle northward.

  There is no purpose served by remaining here. I will go forward, though to what I cannot imagine. There is no sun or moon or star visible to guide me, and only some inbuilt sense of this mechanical body orients me toward my goal. If there is no other sentient being left on this arid little world, what point is there in continuing?

  No point, but it is less painful than pausing to wait for whatever doom can befall a creature like me. Or endlessness, which is far worse.

  The swells of the desert are growing more abrupt, topped by ragged teeth of rock. Once I almost wept, thinking I saw a city rising on the hor
izon, but it was only such another formation, mocking the neat buildings I have reviewed in my memory banks.

  Heaving up and down the long swells, I find myself growing desperately lonely, and for relief I am going through the computer files available in my system. In an orderly fashion, I am trying to find what and where I am...and why.

  * * * *

  “He’s dead, Ambrose. There’s no use in trying to revive him now. Let him go peacefully.” Sharon was looking down into my face, and, strangely, I could see both from slightly above and behind her. The crisp cap tilted as she bent to draw the sheet over my cyanosed features.

  Ambrose Fenton straightened, his face crumpling with grief. I felt sudden empathy, for I would have wanted to weep if I had stood at his death bed. We had been friends since boyhood, and this was a sudden and painful parting.

  What happened to me? Hovering there in the still room, I retraced the events leading to this point, but all I could find was overwhelming pain. The arm, the chest, nausea, a terrible jolt, and then the drifting that had ended here just beneath the ceiling. I died of a heart attack. Being an army doctor, I had seen relatively few such deaths, but the symptoms were there.

  * * * *

  Shocked, I paused, my treads digging themselves into a spot of soft soil. If I am dead, then what am I doing here? What is this thing in which I ride, using its sensors and, to a large extent, its memory?

  I must dig further into the files, learn what has been done to me.

  * * * * * * *

  It was like being reeled in at the end of a line, an unlikely fish caught out of the peaceful stream of death. I resisted, but I had no substance with which to hold myself in place; the essential “I” went where it was compelled, and once it came into range of the things in the laboratory, I understood what was happening.