Issola (4 page)

"Good," I said. "I wouldn't want it to be too easy."

"No, Vlad. Wrong response. You should say, 'How can I help?' "

I snorted. "If I say that, you're liable to tell me."

"There's that danger," she admitted.

"What do you think happened?"

"I have no idea."

"Don't lie to me, Sethra."

"Vlad!" said Sethra and Teldra together, in entirely different tones.

"Oh, stop it. Sethra, my whole lifetime has been less than the flap of a wing to you, but to me, I've known you for a long time. You wouldn't have sent for me without knowing something, or at least having a strong suspicion."

"Vlad—"

"No, Sethra. Don't even. Morrolan used to pull that stuff on me. Go, do this, but I'm not going to tell you any of the reasons behind it. My bosses in the Jhereg were experts at it: Kill this guy, you don't need to know what he did. I'm done with that sort of rubbish. Where are Morrolan and Aliera, why are they missing, and what is all the other stuff you aren't telling me?"

Lady Teldra opened her mouth, but I cut her off. "No," I said. "I won't go into it like this. I want to know."

"Do you, then?" said Sethra, almost whispering. There was something in her voice I had never heard before: something chilling, and powerful, and very dark. I was in the presence of the Enchantress of Dzur Mountain, and I was daring to question her. For one of the few times since I'd known her, I felt the power of legend bearing down on me; I sat there, silent, and took it; I could say nothing, but I didn't crumble, either. She said, "Do you really want to know, Vladimir Taltos, Easterner, Jhereg, and renegade?"

"Yes," I said, though it took considerable effort; and even more effort to keep my voice level.

"And if I don't tell you, what then? You'll leave Morrolan e'Drien and Aliera e'Kieron to their fate? Is that what you're telling me?"

I looked into her eyes, which I discovered I had been avoiding. They were black and went on far past forever; the focus on me was terrible. I controlled my breathing as if I were fencing, or reaching the climax of a spell. "Are you going to make this a test of wills, Sethra? Is that it? You will threaten to leave them to their fate if I won't help, or I must threaten if you won't answer my questions? Is that how you want to play this game?"

"I don't want to make it a game, Vladimir Taltos."

Looking into her eyes, I saw again Aliera's face as I returned to life after the Sword and the Dagger of the Jhereg had taken me down; and I saw Morrolan in his Great Hall defending me from the Sorceress in Green, and, I recalled faces, incidents, and conversations that I didn't want to remember. Then I cursed. "All right," I said. "If you push it, you'll win. You're right. I owe them both too much. If one of us needs to back down, I will - I'll go run your Verrabe-damned errand for you, like a two-orb street Orca hired to bust heads. But—"

"Then I'll answer your questions," said Sethra, and I shut my mouth before I made things worse. "I'll answer you," said Sethra, "because you're right, you deserve to know. But I will speak of matters I have no wish to reveal so, damn you, be grateful."

"I'll be grateful," I said.

Teldra stood abruptly. "I shall be in the library," she said, "in case you—"

"Please," said Sethra. "I wish you to stay."

"I... very well," said Lady Teldra, and sat down again.

Tukko emerged, and I realized that my klava had gotten cold. He replaced it, freshened Teldra's, and left.

"Where should I begin?" she mused. I held my tongue in check and waited.

"Perhaps," she said, "I should ask: Who are the gods? No, I've already taken a false step. That is not the question: Ask, rather,
What
are the gods? What freaks of chance, what hidden talents, what cataclysmic events combined to produce those whom your people worship, and mine strive to emulate? What are they, why are they, what do they do? Is their power acquired only because there are those who worship them? Is their power, in fact, imaginary?

There are no simple answers to the question you have asked, because everything is tied to everything else." I drank klava, and listened.

"Part of the answer to the question I have posed is this: The gods are beings who are able to manifest in at least two places at once, and yet who are not subject to the forcible control of any other being; this latter marking the difference between a god and a demon." That much, actually, I knew already, but I let her continue. "An interesting ability, and one that implies many others. The Jenoine, for all their talents and skills, cannot be in two places at once. Many of the gods, of course, can be in many, many places at once. I don't understand entirely how it works; I am neither god nor demon."

"I don't think I've ever met a demon," I said. "Unless a certain Jhereg who goes by that name means it more literally than I think he does."

"You have," said Sethra. "The Necromancer."

I stared. "She's a demon?"

"Yes. But I suggest you don't try to control her; she is liable to take it wrong."

"I'll take that advice to heart."

She nodded and continued. "As I say, this one skill implies many others. How did they acquire this skill? Some of the younger ones have been taught by some of the older ones; I was once offered godhood. But this still begs the question: Whence came the oldest of the gods, and how did they acquire their abilities?

"We must go back a long way, Vlad. A long way even to me. Before the Empire, and even before the thirty-one tribes that became the Empire."

"Wait. Thirty-one?"

"Yes."

"Uh . . . why thirty-one? I mean, is the number significant of anything?"

"Not as far as I know. It's just the number of tribes there happened to be then. And please don't interrupt; this is difficult enough."

"I'll try."

She nodded. "Your people came first, my good Easterner. I imagine that doesn't startle you, perhaps you guessed it, or were told something of the kind by Aliera, who indulges in much enlightened speculation. Well, I tell you now what is no guess: Your people predate mine. How they came here, I do not know, but I know they arrived, they were not produced by Nature, as were the dragon, the dzur, the jhereg, and the Serioli. Yet even these were changed by - but no, all things in their proper time.

"Your people were here, though in what state I cannot say, and the animals, and were found here by others, by those we call the Jenoine. I don't know what they call themselves, and I don't know where they're from, except that it isn't here. They came here, as your people came here, only later."

Yes, I had known some of this before, too.

"There is so much we don't know, Vlad; that we can't know. I have said nothing of what I saw, what I later learned, what I have since deduced, because of all that I don't know. Were those who came here representative of all Jenoine? Were their actions typical? What were their motives when they arrived, and how did these motives change?

Is the word 'motive,' as we understand it, even meaningful when discussing them?" That was a rhetorical question if I'd ever heard one, so I didn't answer it.

"You have met Verra, her you call the Demon Goddess. That name - but never mind that now. She is of yet another species, and was brought to this world as a servant of the Jenoine. She was there when they began their experiments with the plants and the trees, and then with the animals, and then with the people who came to be called Easterners: changing some of them a little, some of them a great deal, some of them not at all. Improving, in certain cases, upon them: extending their lifespans and the abilities of their minds, and making into them the people who came to be called Human. Yes, Vlad, our beings and even our languages come from your people, and you can take whatever pride in that you care to. Aliera, of course, refuses to believe it, but it is true." I had a pleasant moment imagining taunting Aliera about that, but Sethra was still speaking.

"From what Verra has said, I would guess that they were, in their own minds, benevolent; but one must sift her words to discover this, for she hates them. She was their servant, and they were not kind to her. For that matter, she was not kind to them, either. Of this, I know only what hints she has dropped, and a few words from Barlen, her consort, but it is clear that it was Verra, and a few others, who sabotaged their work, who created the Great Sea of Amorphia, who unleashed upon the world that which we call sorcery, who themselves became the first of those we know as gods, and who destroyed all of the Jenoine who then lived on this world.

"I have lived through Adron's Disaster, in which those same powers were unleashed a second time upon the world, and the Lesser Sea was created. The Great Sea, in area, is seven times that of the Lesser Sea; I cannot, in my own mind, imagine the cataclysm of the moment when it came into being, that instant when for the first time the Unknowable took form."

This was something I didn't care to imagine.

"But," continued Sethra before I had to mentally go there, "the Unknowable is, by definition, formlessness: the totality of content, with nonexistence of form. What happens when the Unknowable takes form? One answer is, it ceases to be unknowable. As soon as there was a Sea of Amorphia, there had, sooner or later, to be a Goddess named Verra to codify and define the Elder Sorcery that could manipulate it; and a Serioli named Clylng Fr'ngtha that made the Elder Sorcery tangible by embodying it in objects blurring the distinction between animate and inanimate; and a Human" - she meant a Dragaeran - "named Zerika to craft an Orb that would make this power subject to any mind that could discipline itself to learn the patterns and codes by which the Orb translated the raw power of amorphia into the fingers that shape reality. Now the Unknowable is knowable again, and it is a power such as exists, so far as I know and so far as the Necromancer has been able to discover, nowhere else in the universe - in any universe, for there is more than one, as the Necromancer has demonstrated." I had some trouble with this, but just sort of mentally stored it away for future consideration, and kept listening.

"So in our world, thanks to the gods, there exists this power, and, somewhere, are the Jenoine, filled with lust for the power, and hatred for those who destroyed their brethren - or so I believe we might think of their feelings and not be too far from the truth.

"Who is it, Vlad, who might protect us from this jealous and angry species, who see us all as the rebellious objects of science - as test subjects placed in a maze who not only escaped it, but killed the observers and now in their arrogance operate the maze as they please and will not let those who built it so much as observe? Who might protect us from the Jenoine?"

I guessed what the answer was going to be, and I was right, but I didn't interrupt.

"The gods," said Sethra. "Above all else, that is their task.

"The place we call the Paths of the Dead sits, as I think you know better than most, both in and out of our world, and at its heart is the place we call the Halls of Judgment, because our legends tell us that this is where we go upon death to have our lives judged. And, as far as it goes, this is the truth. I know how your mind works by now, Vlad, and I see the glimmer of understanding in your eyes; I suspect that you begin to glimpse the true purpose of the Halls of Judgment."

I swallowed. She was right, I was getting a glimmering.

"Yes," she said. "It is there that the gods sift souls as a Serioli sifts for gold in a mountain stream. The gods search for those who can be useful to them in their long war. It is in the Halls of Judgment that they sometimes glimpse pieces of what to us is the future, and try to interpret these glimpses, and prepare to meet each threat as it develops. And as they sit those who are considered worthy are brought to them, upon death, for this reason. It is a way of building the forces to protect their world."

"Their world?" I said, catching significance in that.

She nodded. "Yes. Their world, not ours."

"I see."

"Yes. As they review the dead, some they have no use for; these are allowed to reincarnate, or are taken to be servants in the Paths of the Dead - those who wear the Purple Robes. Others have skills that might someday be useful, and those are held in the Paths of the Dead against that use, or reincarnated into circumstances where their skills can develop. A few study for the Godhood themselves, and a tiny number are sent out once more, as Undead, because their usefulness in the world has not expired with their lives. I became one of these latter some years ago." I nodded. "Okay, I think I'm starting to get it."

"Yes? But here is where it starts becoming complicated."

I rolled my eyes.

"Stop it," she said. "That expression is not your most endearing. Listen and try to understand." I sighed. "All right."

She nodded. "I have told you about the gods and the Jenoine, but there are other factors, and chief of these are the Serioli. You have never met one, but - You have? I didn't know or have forgotten. But I am sure you know little about them. I know little about them, though I have had more to do with them than any other human being in the world.

"The Serioli are native to the world, which neither your people nor mine are. In some measure, perhaps they resent us both, though most of them recognize that we are not responsible for what has been done to us. But above all, they resent the gods, because the gods, in a very real way, rule the world. The Serioli did not evolve as a people to be ruled - who would so evolve?

"It was the gods who sent the dreams that inspired Kieron the Conqueror to gather the tribes and move east, and the visions that led Zerika to create the Orb; thus it was the gods who created the Empire that drove the Serioli from their homes, that destroyed much of their culture, killed many of them in battles. They - and while it is hard to speak of a whole people as if they had a single voice, here I think I am not too wrong - they hate the gods. This does not always make them friends of the Jenoine, but it does make them the enemies of the gods. Do you see?"

"I think so," I said slowly.