“I killed him,” I whispered to my white, half-opened hands.
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“You killed Mm,” Rarm repeated. “And then you lay down to die under the tower.”
“And when the tribe found me my Power was gone. I could not even understand their tongue, let alone kill their seer.”
“Which was your final punishment against yourself. You had seen yourself achieve Power. You had fulfilled Sekish’s assessment of you. So now you blocked your Powers totally, and let the cruelty of the tribe complete your chastisement. You suffered, but you needed and wanted to suffer. When you were treated as a useless woman, a fool and a slave, it was the action of the princes and princesses under the mountain, beating themselves into miserable humility. You left your child as much because it would hurt you, as because it was expedient. And finally you became an animal in the marshes, shut off from all rational contact with man.”
“Until the black tribe took me in,” I said.
“And the striving began again,” Rarm said. “The peace, and then the Book-one of those diaries of repentance you were given as a child-recalled your quest for the Jade. You went to the ruined cities on the shore, and there you found Karrakaz, as you knew you would, because part of your mind recognized the structure of a tomb, and where the offering cup would be.”
“I tried to destroy myself completely,” I said. “A sleep of death I had willed on myself. It was not a demon I fought, only myself. Yet, so terrible. So real to me. No surprise now that Fethlin was able to save me. The Power was directed only at me-until we reached the valley. Did I cause the earthquake there as at Kee-ool?”
“Yes. You’ve always been able to harness great elemental forces for your own suppression.”
“The dream,” I said, “the dark deserted city, and the red fire on the tongue of land in the bay. A pyre,” I said. “The Plague had come for them too. And then the lizard. And then, on the beach, the shadow of the ship, and the beam of light-”
“You brought us down,” he said, “and you used the computer to kill the lizard. One of your few actions of self preservation.” “Why?”
“Perhaps,” he said, smiling, “perhaps in some way you knew all this would follow. You have, after all, the gift of foreknowledge also.” There was another little silence between us in the room.
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He said, “All your Powers have returned now. For example, we’ve communicated all this time with no trouble.”
“The wrist-band,” I said. But when I looked down the green light did not sparkle. I drew it from my wrist. I said, “I understand now, but I am not complete. I have had one year of life since my childhood. But I made certain that when I was reborn, I would be born dead.”
He rose.
“You’re still dead,” he said to me, and I understood him very well. He came and lifted me until I stood facing him. “You haven’t yet found the Jade.”
I turned away.
“Of that last thing, I am afraid.”
“You know the answer. As a child you knew. As a woman, you made yourself forget. There’s only one way for you to be free.”
With a slight breath of sound, the silvery ice of a mirror slid from the wall in front of us. It stood before me like an invulnerable guard, blocking my last way of escape. In it I saw our reflections, a dark man, a pale woman with a covered emptiness of a face.
“Before I took you to the computer to learn the truth of all this,” he said, “the part of you which you called Karrakaz paralyzed and blinded you to prevent your going. Now you’ve destroyed that assassin, and there’s no longer any way you can hide from’ reality.” He paused. He set me in front of him, before the gleaming cruel mirror. “Take off the mask,” he said.
My hands rose a little way, faltered, fell back.
He held me still.
“Take off the mask.”
My hands moved to my neck, upward to my hairline where the black forehead of the shireen ended. My hands froze and stiffened and would not do anything else.
“I cannot,” I said. “The ugliness-like a beast-”
”The Jade,” he said. “The Jade.”
“Yes,” I said. I screamed at the reflection as if it now were my enemy. I ripped and tore the shireen free of my skin, and my skin breathed, the air struck like snow on the flesh of my face. But I could not bear to look at what gaped before me. I covered my face with my hands.
I was crouching low against the floor, one arm over my head, my chin pressed down against my breasts.
“No,” he said. Kneeling behind me, he peeled my fingers from my face, and when I replaced them with my other
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hand, he took that away also. He held my hands to my sides. His face was against mine as I tried to bury it in my breast. “Look up,” he said. “Look up.” There was something in his voice-part laughter, part bitter sadness. I raised my head a little way, though not far enough to see. “Look up,” he said to me. Gently he put his hand under my chin and lifted it, and now I looked into the mirror.
I saw then what the villagers had seen when I came to after the volcano’s first anger. I saw what Darak had seen by the lake, and later in the half-darkness, and after that through the nights and dawns of our privacy together. I saw what Uasti had seen, what Vazkor had seen and flinched at, what Kotta had visualized in the tent on Snake’s Road. I saw what Rarm saw as he kneeled behind me.
And I saw what it was that made them afraid, or silent, and it was not what I had thought.
It was because I was beautiful. More beautiful than the best of human beauty, more beautiful than a beauty which can be understood, and because it was not a beauty which is of men, though of their planet, the beauty which had been, like Power, the birthright of the Lost.
Slowly, with infinite care, I touched my face, the flawless whiteness, the planes and curves like the map of some undiscovered landscape in a dream. My fingers brushed the mouth, lightly, the forehead, the long, long diamonds of eyes, which are, of all the differences, perhaps the most different from the human. I stared at myself, and felt no hubris at all, because it seemed, will always seem, that this is not my face, I, who was cursed with great ugliness.
“Now you understand.” Rarm said to me. “It was the last cut against yourself to become convinced of your own hideousness. You held to it and nurtured it, and even identified with the devil goddess of Orash in your determination to be accursed. And it never occurred to you that perhaps you saw a false image under the mountain.” With one hand he reached out, and his forefinger lav across my forehead, pointing to that triangle of soft green light above and between my eyes. “And there is your soul-kin, the green Jade. Inserted under the skin, as with all your race, a few hours after birth, when the child sleeps. How hopeless you made your quest, searching your world for what you already carried inside you.” His hand moved away, softly touching my hair. “The third eye of the nameless Princess of the Lost. Who has, after all, a name which she now remembers.”
“Yes,” I said.
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Kneeling before the bowl of offering, I had whispered it as all who knelt there whispered their names, before beginning the chant of contrition. I had whispered it so often there, it had become the symbol of the bowl, and the symbol of all I feared in myself. But no longer fear, and no longer separation.
“I know my name,” I said to him. “My name is Karrakaz.”
6
So, in the black void of space, in the silver star, I let go the shackles and became myself. And knowing now, able to see beyond myself, I saw that I must leave the ship, and begin again to live in the world of men as I knew them. Not for me the technical power and splendor of the planets which had bred men like Rarm Zavid. My own civilization had gone far in its advancement before pride and stupidity and the curse of men had finished it. But it had traveled a different road from the road which had produced the hollow star. There could be a meeting, but no union. There was no link to hold the pieces of our alien lives as one.
He would not tell me what he had risked to help me. Neither would Ciorden speak of it, but I think it had been much. The men of his ship were anxious to see me go, and to be away back to their home worlds, where men of their culture would judge Rarm for what he had done, his interference in the ways of our world, his delay and his involvement. I could do nothing. Except let him go in peace, trusting his own integrity and intelligence, his own knowledge of what he went to.