Words she chanted. Some he knew, others were of the Hidden Speech, sounds to evoke answers from powers beyond their ken.
Up from the Mirror came a mist, not a surging as it had been when the water overflowed. It formed a tongue to lick down the presumptuous, to wipe out those who would demand an answer. All fear Ayyar held in memory from both his lives was as nothing to what he knew now. For the fear one holds for an enemy is naught to the fear which comes when that which one believes to be a strong protector turns against one, and there is no refuge left.
Yet none of them broke and fled that ledge as the tongue of fear swept closer to them. And now Jarvas chanted also, as if Illylle’s words had unlocked his own past priesthood.
The tongue did not lick them from the stone as Ayyar thought it might. It curled higher in the air, menaced—but it did not strike. And then Illylle moved her hands as one who sows seed, and the tongue began to swing in the same way, following her gestures. While from Ayyar fear passed, leaving only awe. They were accepted. In the midst of a great and abiding anger such as his kind could not measure, the force that found focus in Thanth recognized and accepted them.
The tongue of mist withdrew, and they were alone. But a chill which was not of winter was about them. Shivering, Illylle spoke though she did not look to them, staring instead into the Mirror.
“I have said—we are ready. Now we must wait to see what task shall be laid upon us.”
What is time? In the life of men a numbering of sunrises and sunsets, of days, years, seasons, plantings and reapings. Man makes times, dividing it into narrower and narrower portions as he needs it for living which becomes more and more complex in its demands. Naill Renfro was space born; thus time had not laid so tight a bond upon him as upon most other men. And when he had become Ayyar he had walked into a time that was reckoned by seasons, by growth and winter sleep. Now he was caught up in another time in which his body was nothing, in which he was only to wait. And how long was this time he could not afterwards have told, nor did he remember it clearly.
There came a moment when the mist below lay quiet, collapsed into water. But now the water was not a smooth, set mirror. Through it ran ripples of blue and green which thinned and paled into silver, and these formed lines and patterns which were not normal for any water, if the Mirror of Thanth was, or had ever been, mere water.
Illylle and Jarvas chanted together—the girl’s lighter voice rising, the man’s making a lower, stronger note, yet both fitting, one to the other. And again the words were not to be translated but were meant to be sounds in which the meaning lay only in the melody.
The silver lines moved back and forth, tracing the fantastic pictures one could almost understand, but never entirely. Now the whole of the flood lapped higher about the walls of the crater, as it had on the day when it had spilled over to cleanse the wilderness about and to challenge That with storm and flood.
From it arose another tongue, this not of mist but of substance, lifting higher and higher into the air as it circled the wall, thinner and thinner, until it could have been a vine of the Forest. And into that writhing, curling vine of water poured all the silver, so that it was alight throughout its length, although the gleaming brilliance of it did not strike harshly on Iftin eyes.
It approached in its round the ledge on which the Iftin stood, and its tip was star bright, curling down over their heads. It quivered, swinging back and forth, lingered for a moment above each in turn, sometimes for only a second, sometimes longer. Twice did it so quest, and then it struck at Illylle. Down over her head and body ran the coruscating silver, beading shoulders, limbs—
Then it raised again, and once more swung out over the rest of their small company, seeking—seeking—
Ayyar started. He was the target this time. He did not feel the touch of the water as it chose him, rather a tingling through flesh and bone and blood, as if the silver flood had entered into him. Then that was gone, as was the tongue itself, fallen back into the Mirror.
And the turbulence of the Mirror died away so that they looked down into a calm surface. Ayyar knew that what had dwelt there for a space had now withdrawn into the place which was its own, and that a door between was closed.
But the reason for what had just passed was what he must know. He looked down at his arms, his shoulders, his body where that river of silver had run. He was warm, and the hunger, the thirst he had known, was gone. Instead he was alive as he had been after his draught of sap, filled with energy, with the need for action. But what action? In the answer to that lay the importance of all that had happened here.
Illylle turned away from the edge of the ledge and came to him.
“Thus has it been ordained. As it was with Kymon, the Oath Giver, so is it now with us. We go to where That abides, that we may be the vessels through which what lies in Thanth may loose wrath upon the Enemy.”
And the choice had not been his at all, was Ayyar’s first thought. No, that was not the truth either. By coming here he had indeed offered himself for battle. Now he could not protest when he had been accepted. But why? He was no Mirrormaster; he was only a warrior who had once fought in a lost cause against this same Enemy. But—Kymon also had been a warrior—if Kymon ever truly was, inside the wrapping of legend and hero worship. And there was no denying that the choice had been made.
He turned to Illylle. “We go now—?”
“Now.”
“Take this.” Kelemark drew off his baldric, pushed it and the sheathed sword it supported into Ayyar’s hands. It would seem the others accepted the fact of their out-faring.
Jarvas drew his cloak closer about his shoulders. “What can be done here is done. We must not linger.”
“Then where?” asked Illylle.
“To the bay at the shore, if fortune allows us to win there. If the brothren come overseas we shall meet them.” He paused and looked for a time-stretching moment into her eyes and then into Ayyar’s.
“I know not what you face, save that it is peril indeed. And one which none can share with you, no matter how much they wish it. What good fortune may come from willing and from our desires shall march to your right and left, but whether that can arm or defend you”—he shrugged. “Can any man tell? This has been laid upon you to do—the best with it—and you!”
They crossed into the Waste where the road walls were waist high. Day sky was above but there were clouds; by so much did the weather favor them. But—where were they to go? Venture without plan into That’s stronghold?
“Where we go, that I can guess,” Ayyar said. “But what we do there, that is another thing.”
“We shall know that also when the hour is come,” she replied.
Her confidence grated against his doubt. “To run blindly into That’s hold is to perhaps throw away every defense we have.”
Illylle looked at him over her shoulder. “Defense? Is it ‘once a warrior, always a warrior,’ Captain of the First Ring of Iftcan that was? There may be other ways of fighting than with blade—”
“Yes,” he told her grimly, “with blaster and flamer! Have you forgotten what army has drawn ahead of us into this land? You say we are weapons in ourselves, carrying in us some potent force to meet that which the Enemy can muster. But it is in my mind that we must do as the songs says Kymon did, win directly to That, face to face. And in so doing we must pass any defenses It has set. Do you not remember how it was when that space suit took us so easily prisoner? And that may be the least of the dangers now ranged against us.”
“So, what then is your answer? We have no time to creep and lurk, seeking out some unknown safe path—”
“Can we not? I say we have to or be finished before we are fairly begun. This is no Forest hunt, this is in a land the Enemy has made. There is one way—” He had been thinking, fast, clearly, more clearly, it seemed, than he had for some time.