“How would your followers react to the news that you who preach the need for perfect relationships rejoiced at your budder’s death, or to being told how you broke your apprentice’s pledge? Or to learning how you, who boast of saving the sanity of others, have become so senile as to confuse me with Byra, may she rest in peace? She too was silly enough to assume that city-bosses who call themselves Jingfired actually are so. But they’re not. If your memory isn’t totally wrecked, if you have any shred of conscience left, you’ll recall my telling you when you pleaded to become my apprentice that it’s no use trying to guess who the Jingfired actually are. You have to know.”
After that she fully expected the bodyguards to close on her and drag her away. But they hesitated; an aura of uncertainty was exuding from their master.
At long last he said, not looking at her, but towards the sky where the rain of meteors had now redoubled, “So it’s come to this. A voice has spoken from my past which I can neither challenge nor deny.”
Hope leapt up in her pith. For an instant she thought she had already won.
But the hope was dashed when he relaxed with a sigh, and continued: “Such a long-lasting and intractable psychosis is probably beyond even my methods, which normally prove so successful. Still, for old friendship’s sake I can at least attempt to show you where you went astray.”
He added to the attendants, “Scholar Thilling will be my guest at dinner. Apologize to those who have prior claims on my time, but meeting someone from one’s younghood is a rare event. And perhaps good may come of it in the long run.”
X
If there was one thing Thilling could reluctantly admire about Awb now, it was his skill in keeping up appearances. He closed the gap between them and by embracing her contrived to transfer some of the pheromone-masking perfumes he wore on his torso, leaving the bodyguards confused.
Then he led her along the branchways to a bower where the city’s finest foods were lovingly tended by experts who—so he told her— claimed to inherit their knowledge from someone who had studied under Gveest.
But if he expected to impress her by boasting, he was wrong. Nothing could more have firmed her determination than this display of the luxury Awb had attained through corrupting the minds of the younger generation. Had she not needed food to power the argument she foresaw as inescapable, she would have voiced her contempt of his tactics; as it was, she resignedly filled her maw and, confident that even yet he would never have been trained in the Jingfired’s techniques of dark-use, waited until he chose to speak again.
Eventually, replete, he let himself slump on his branch and said, “So you thought you could threaten me by raking up my past, did you? That must be because you envy the course my life has taken.”
“On the contrary!” she snapped. “Thanks to the images I made on that dam banked with yellow mud, I went on to share in some of the most notable discoveries of this or any age. Have you no faintest notion what marvels lie in the secret pith of matter? Because of my skills, I was close at claw when Eupril first separated the heavy elements which break up of their own accord. I was there when Lesh—”
“It hasn’t made amends for being sterile,” he cut in.
“Oh, because it was an obsession with Phrallet you think everything can be reduced to whether or not one has budded!” retorted Thilling. “Let me remind you—”
He raised a claw. “If you’re going to quote Jinglore at me, be warned that others have tried without effect.”
“I have no intention of it. I was about to say that in your attempts to atone for hating Phrallet, you saw no alternative but to outdo Jing and Yockerbow and Tenthag and the other heroes of the past. You’re not equipped to.”
Awb had had much practice at appearing resignedly wise. Adopting the appropriate expression, he said, “If each age is to surpass its forepadders, then some individual must respond to its unique and particular challenge. In the present epoch … Well, you see the truth all around you.”