Wizards At War

I don’t know, Ponch said. It felt like something wrong had happened to her. I wanted to make her feel better. I thought maybe if she went for a walk with me, I could take her away from the bad thing that made her sad. But it’s still inside her.

And that’s not all, either, Kit thought. He put an arm around Ponch. “Well, you did right,” he said. “We’re going to try to help her, too.”

Good, Ponch said.

Kit breathed out, closed his eyes.

But what if you can’t?

Kit sighed again. It was hard when there wasn’t even an answer that would make sense to a human. But when it was Ponch involved, sometimes the explanations got more involved rather than less. “It’s like this…,” he said, and trailed off, wondering where to go from there.

You were saying about the things you couldn’t talk about.

I was? Kit thought. No, I wasn’t—

And another voice spoke, both seemingly at a distance and very close.

“There is a story that every Yaldah knows for a short while,” it said. “When she’s very new. But knowing the story makes no difference. The ones who know it die, anyway. And speaking it means you die sooner. The wise thing is to forget.”

I was asleep, Kit thought. He realized that the weight on his chest was gone. But he also realized that once again he’d slipped into the upper reaches of Ponch’s mind, so he lay very still, doing nothing to disturb this state in which he could hear what the dog heard, scent what he scented. Right now, Ponch’s world smelled of warm stone, mineral-flake grit, somewhat sweaty or otherwise ripe-smelling humans, various foodstuffs and food wrappings … and the unique scent of a Yaldiv. It was like a more refined version of the crude-oil scent he’d followed here: a hot plastic sort of smell, shifting slightly from moment to moment, with the emotions of the one who spoke.

Why forget? Ponch said. Remembering things is good.

“Not when they kill you for it.” Memeki’s voice sounded weary. “And it was so long ago. Nothing that happened such a long time ago can matter now; things aren’t that way anymore.”

What way were they? I don’t understand.

Her voice went low, as if even here she was afraid she might be overheard. “When we’re very young,” Memeki said, “the blood inside us speaks for a while. It says that once there wasn’t a City, or even a little hive. Once the world was big enough for everyone to walk wherever they wanted. And there wasn’t just one King. There were many, and each King had just a few chosen ones. There was always enough to eat, and not so much work to do. And there were no Others.” She briefly sounded confused. “Or there were Others who didn’t want to kill us. I said it was a strange story! Then something happened.”

What?

There was a long pause. “No one is sure,” Memeki said. “But in the story, it’s as if there was a bigger King who made everything to be built—the sky, the ground—the way our own King tells us how to build a nest and kill the enemy. There were some who built the Everything that way, the story says. That other King was supposed to have shown them how. Then Yaldiv came to live in what that Great One’s servants had made. They lived there a long time—”

She broke off suddenly. “But that part of the story makes no sense,” Memeki said. “How could anybody build the sky? No one could reach it. It’s got to be true, what the Arch-votary says the King tells him—that the old stories are madness and death made real, a way for our enemies to trick us.”

I know a story like that, Ponch said. I don’t think it’s a trick.

Silence again. “You don’t?”

From Ponch, Kit got a sudden sense of reticence. If your story is like mine, then there’s more to tell.

“Yes,” Memeki said. She sounded subdued. “It’s as if when everything’s made, another Great One appears: another King. That one went about saying that he knew more things than the first Great One, better ways to live. He said that having so many little kings among the Yaldiv was wrong, and that there should be only one—himself. That would make warriors mightier, he said, and workers stronger, and the vessels more fruitful. The little kings and their consorts said they didn’t want his way of living. They started a war with the great King and his vessels. It went on forever. But, finally, the second Great One realized they would never do what he wanted, so he made the sky catch fire. Small suns like Sek fell from the sky on the little kings, and killed them and all their Yaldiv.”