Diane Duane - The Book of Night with Moon

“Don’t get any ideas, you… the post is purely ceremonial. —Lone Power, Old Serpent, for these murders, now We pronounce your fate—”

“No, wait a minute, lam first,” said sa’Rrahh suddenly.

Slowly, very slowly, Haath had begun backing away as he first caught sight of his Lord and Master beginning to unwrap Itself from the Tree. By the time Queen Iau had begun to raise Her dead, Haath was already running away across that great dark expanse at the best speed a tyrannosaur could manage, which was considerable. Now, though, the Queen looked after him… and suddenly Haath appeared directly in front of them again, and fell on his face with the suddenness of his translocation.

“Haath, Child of the Serpent,” said Rhiow and the Queen as he struggled to his feet, “ you have brought your fate upon you: but still it lieth with you to save yourself, if you will. Renounce your false Master, and you may rejoin your kind, though your wizardry, not coming from the One, is confiscate. ”

Haath crouched, his head low, and looked from the blazing, terrible forms before him to the dark radiance still in the process of slowly, slowly slipping from around the Tree. “I…” he said. “My Master … perhaps I was deluded in thinking…”

Allow Me to save you this crisis of conscience, said a huge, soft voice, by first renouncing you.

Haath looked up in horror, already feeling the changes in his body. Rhiow knew, as Iau knew, that the Lone One had not told Haath the whole truth about his immortality: that even for the gods, death comes eventually, and mortals who try repeatedly to put it off may succeed for a while, but not forever. With his master’s renunciation, all of Haath’s deaths simply caught up with him at once. All that could be seen of the process was the look of shock and rage and betrayal on his face, those twelve claws lifted for one last wizardry … but there was no time for anything else, either action or reaction. Suddenly, he simply was not there; and if there was even a little dust left, the wind blowing through the darkness swept it unregarded into the River of Fire.

The Serpent’s cool eyes dwelt on this, unmoved. And then another voice spoke. “Great One,” it said, “Lord—”

The Four turned their attention to the source of the voice. It was Ith. He stood now, gazing at the Serpent with an odd intensity.

Ah, my son, said the Old Serpent’s voice. Now that the other is gone, we may speak freely, you and I.

This should be fun, said Aaurh silently to the others.

Pay no heed to the strange violence you have seen done here, said the Old Serpent softly. These creatures are our ancient enemies, and need have nothing further to do with our kind or our power. Our kind have different needs, different desires.

“Lord,” Ith said, “the Sun. The world above…”

None of our kind can live in that light without My help, said the Old Serpent, slow, persuasive, reasonable. It is fair, but it kills. Nor would they, would you, be able to find food enough for all. You will die there unless you are ruled by one who is wise, who knows time and the worlds. Long I have ruled you, to your advantage. It shall be so again. And you shall be My Sixth Claw, this time. You have won the right. You have proven Haath flawed, and that flaw would sooner or later have done your people, My people, great harm. Now you shall rule in his stead, and order all things for Me.

Ith swayed, looking up into the great, dark, wise, forgiving eyes. The others watched him.

They will bow before you like a god, a true god… not like these upstarts. But you must in turn surrender yourself to Me, to be filled with the power. This you must see and do.

A pause.

“… No.”

The Lone One’s eyes suddenly went much darker. “But this I do see,” Ith said, and paced slowly over to stand straight and still beside sa’Rrahh, or Arhu in her shape, now flowing with fire both dark and bright. “Our kinship with these others is greater than You claim. He came into my heart, the one You say is my enemy, and tried to save me. And I saw into his heart, and his mind. He had pain like mine, loneliness like mine, and anger. But he rose up again, through them, and tried. Death and hunger came to him, but he did not give in to them, did not cast himself in the fire. His clutchmates all died, but he lived, and kept living, though the pain pierced like a claw. And when we met, he felt pain for me, and did not run away, but bore it This is his Gift. To try again. We tried once and failed… and never tried again, for You told us that trying was no use. But gifts can be passed on to others who need them, even when the others are old enemies; and choices can be remade. They can be remade!”

It was a roar, and slowly the Mountain began to shake with it, a huge sympathetic tremor, like fear in a heart finally decided.

“I choose!” Ith said. “7 choose for my people! We will walk with the light, in the sun, in the free sun that You cannot control; we will walk with these others who struck us down only when there was need, rather than for pleasure or for power. And if we die of the light, of our own hunger freely found, then that was still worthwhile. For we would have owned ourselves for that little time, and an hour’s freedom in our own bodies, our own lives, under the sun, is worth a thousand years as slaves, even pampered slaves, in the dark under the ground, or killing other beings under strange stars!”

The Old Serpent was hissing softly to Itself now, while still slowly unwrapping Itself from around the Tree. Fool, it said—again that soft voice, the anger never overt— fool of a race of fools: too true it is that you have overstayed your time in this world. You shall not overstay it much longer—

“Too late for that, Old Serpent,” said Rhiow, said Iau. “ The Choice is made.”

And already things were shifting. The landscape looked less rocky; the catenary looked less like a restlessly bound energy flow, but more than ever like a river, and one in which fire flowed like water. Rhiow, within Iau, rejoiced at the sight of it, for now she saw that this was where the River of Fire belonged— at the roots of the Tree: at the scene of the battle, where the souls of all felinity would at one time or another pass through the place of Choice, of the Fight, the gaming-ground that was the mother of all bouts of hauissh. All would see it and remember, or be reminded between lives, of the incomplete Choice, of the business still to be attended to, not in the depths of time behind them, but in the depths of time yet to come. Except that time was not as deep as it had been, anymore…

“The Change is upon them now,” said Aaurh, moving slowly forward. “ You might destroy this whole race, and still they would find possibilities they would never have known otherwise because of this their Son, their Father, Who Chose them a different path. They will go their own way now.”

They will die! the Old Serpent hissed.

“And whose fault is that? They will pass,” said sa’Rrahh, “ but to what, You will not know for aeons yet. And meantime You have a passage of Your own to deal with.”

“Old Serpent,” cried Iau then, “ stand You to battle; this is Your last day… until we fight again!”

The Serpent reared away from the Tree, and Rhiow realized belatedly that Its withdrawal had been strategic only. Now It threw Itself at them, Its whole terrible mass coming down at them like a falling tree, lightnings flailing about it—