Caroline Spector - Worlds Without End

"I was a bit… difficult," he began.

"No, you were an ass," I said.

"Very well, an ass. You always did get sarcastic when you were upset."

"How insightful of you," I said. "But you've got it a little wrong. I'm not upset. I'm scared. And if you had a bit of sense, you'd be frightened too."

He began to circle my study slowly, gently touch- ing the books, totems, scrolls, and other bits of ar- cana I'd carefully catalogued. Some was only theory, some was practical. I knew he had an im- pressive accumulation of his own, but I also knew that I had been at this longer.

"What's this?" he asked, pulling a thick tome from a shelf.

"That," I said as I walked over and plucked it from his hand arid stuck it back on its shelf, "is none of your concern. I'm certain you have five or six just like it at home."

An annoyed and interested expression crossed his face.

"I don't understand why you're so worried," he 35

said. "You've dealt with him in the past. As I recall, Vistrosh told me the most amazing story about how you vanquished him."

Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I sighed.

"Did he tell what really happened?" I asked. "Or was it turned into some of kind of ridiculous tale? Let me see if I can recount his version: 'And then Aina threw her arms wide to the skies and caused a blast of heavenly fire to consume the monster. The creature gave one last wail of angry despair and van- ished into the void.' "

Caimbeui dropped into my heavy leather wing- back chair and put his feet up on my desk.

"Yes," he said. "It was something like that."

"Well, you know as well as I that that's not exactly how these things happen. Oh, certainly I managed to overcome Ysrthgrathe, but it wasn't the simple matter Vistrosh would have had you believe. It almost killed me and I sacrificed more than you can possibly imagine."

"Like your grimoire?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied. "I unmade myself. You remem- ber what I'd done. All those scars. The years and years of blood magic. Everything. I gave it all up to send him back. To imprison him. And now he's re- turned.

"Then I had so much power. Look at me now. What are you doing?"

He had picked up my grimoire and was leafing through it, making interested noises every few pages. I grabbed it from his hands, shocked at such a breach of etiquette.

"And I don't expect you to be any help," I said. "You're too damn selfish."

"The Enemy was stopped or we'd be dealing with more than one of them now. You're letting some- thing that happened millennia ago affect you now."

"Don't tell me the past has no hold over you, Caimbeui. We both know what a lie that is."

"This is precisely the reason I left you," he snapped. "You pick and pick and pick."

"That's right," I said. "I'm no Sally, or Susan, or whatever-her-name-is-this-decade who fawns over you like you were some sort of demi-god. Doesn't fragging a sycophant lose its appeal after a while?"

He pushed himself up from the table in an angry rush.

"This bickering isn't getting us anywhere," he said. "What are you planning to do?"

Hugging my grimoire close to my body, I walked to the window and pulled back the drapes. It had be- gun to rain, and every so often the craggy land was lit by lightning. Bare country, wild and untamed.

"I've put up some protections, but I'm not sure how effective they'll be. I wish… Well, I might as well wish for the sun to rise in the west. What's that old adage? 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.' "

Caimbeui came up behind me. I could see him re- flected in the window. A flash of lightning; the des- olate land outside. The darkness; Caimbeul's image in the glass.

"I think you should tell the others," he said.

"Why don't you tell them? Your relations with them have always been better than mine."

"Because, Aina, I'm not convinced. You are. You will be more effective. Tell them."

"Tell them what?" I asked. "That I've had dreams and there has been one very strange telecom call?"

"Don't dodge it," he replied. "They'll have to lis- ten to you. The ones who matter will know what it means."

I dropped the curtains and skirted around him. He was close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body.

"Why do you want me to do this?" I asked. "What have you got up your sleeve?"

He shrugged.

"I suppose your reaction has something to do with it," he said. "In all the time I've known you, I've never seen anything unnerve you so much as that call. Your hands are shaking even now. And when you heard that voice I thought you might faint. And, Aina, you're not the fainting type."

I smiled. I couldn't help it. He could still do that to me. Even in the worst moments, he had a knack for pulling it out of me.

"You're forgetting about Dunkelzahn and that an- cient business," I said. "I doubt they're likely to have forgiven me for that."

"Probably not," he replied. "But you must try."

"And where do you suggest I try first?" I asked. "Tir na n6g? Let's see… I have such close rela- tionships with the Elders there. Alachia in particular. 38

Yes, we've become the best of friends since that nasty business with the dragons. Oh, I'm sure she'll help my cause.

"And then there's Tir Tairngire. My relationship with Aithne is particularly strong. After Hebhel and Lily, I doubt he would piss on me were I on fire. Not that I blame him."

"That was a long time ago," he said. "There are more pressing issues than things and people dead and gone."

I made a slow circuit of my study. So many years of keeping track of the wisdom. Anticipating this time. Now that it was here, I was reluctant to act. No, afraid to act.

"Once, a long time ago, someone said to me that memory is all we have. Even as we speak, there is a slight lapse in time between what we hear and what we understand. All our experience is a kind of lag.

"Everything is memory, Caimbeul. Nothing has any meaning without it. 'He who cannot remember the past is condemned to repeat it.' See, even a hu- man philosopher understood it. And he blinked out in a heartbeat.

"Don't kid yourself, Caimbeul. The past is very much with us."

I closed my eyes and let the past wash over me like the sea rushing over the shore.

Three birds are sitting on a branch. They are about to soar into the blue sky when an arrow pierces the hearts of two of them.

The third bird flies away, frightened and lonely. She knows the hunter is after her. Will always be after her.

We have always been a meddlesome race of beings, we Elders.

I suppose it comes from a long time of being priv- ileged. Few have known of us. And none have been able to stop us from doing what we wanted. Oh, well, there was that business with the great worms, but even they must sleep eventually.

What was that amusing little saying from the comix? "Who Watches the Watchmen?" I used to see it scrawled across the bottoms of bridges and on the sides of buildings during the late nineteen-nineties.

So, though we'd been given a thrashing, while the cat's away (or the monstrous serpents), the mice will play. And so we did.

Myself, I have always preferred a low profile. None of the flash that has marked the passage of my fellows. The tales that have floated about me were easily written off as fables. That wasn't by accident, for I have believed for a long time that our presence is more a danger than a boon.

Perhaps had I been more vigilant, certain events of the past wouldn't have come to pass.

I had been traveling to England. Why, I can't re- member now. Although I believe it had something to do with that collection of stones in Wiltshire. There were rumors of power there. Tremendous magical power. It was whispered in the harems and in coun- cil rooms. In market places and among the nomads. There were always places of power and this was one of them.