A static flash streaked across her features, body trembling. "What do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean?" She repeated, the lines of blurred grey growing across her visage. The legs, the arm, the face, as though it were a cracked mask of light. Horrific to behold.
"Wait!" Merrin pleaded. "I didn't mean to ask…just forget about it."
Yet the trembling continued, face twisting into a mask of absolute confusion. Questioning. Who am I? What am I? How am I even here?
That posed a question within: Were symbols inherently sentient? No. They were like beasts, nothing but a collection of instincts and ancestral fears. Don't eat this because my father died eating it. Climb this way, because it's faster. Symbols in some form contained that aspect. What happens when a rock gains sentience?
Madness.
What happens when it becomes aware of its own existence, of the error it now embodies?
Total breakdown.
What have I done?! Merrin thought, watching the trembling woman, repeating words, mumbling, twisting. Almighty above!
What is this?
A hand pressed onto the woman. On her shoulders, and she calmed. Face, curling up into a wide smile. Sudden. She said, "Are you okay?"
The abruptness was unnerving.
What just happened?
A figure stepped from behind, tall, radiant. White haired, with a narrow jawline, slender, but draped in a pristine white robe. Godly, somewhat.
Merrin gawked.
Auwale—far grander than the woman, dots of white swaying about his ethereal countenance. Lords, he was tall! "I apologize." He said in that deep baritone. "We can talk now."
"No. No." Merrin jumbled around the words—how small he felt here, before this man. Was that even the correct word? Man. "I didn't mean to do that."
Auwale tilted. "I don't expect a human to know plenty of such things…" He waved away the woman—yes, woman, Merrin had accepted that as the accurate assignation. No mistakes, not now. Another stepped out from his shadow; implied, of course, shadows seldom existed here…About the person, they appeared almost childlike in comparison.
Enavro.
Again in that flat tone. "You increasingly act like the predator."
"A stupid one," Merrin added, "I did not mean to do anything."
"An animal may study the abilities of prey and yet not attack them. Yet, being the keyword."
"WHAT?" Merrin blurted, looked to Auwale. "I didn't mean to do anything."
Auwale took a step, almost affirming. Meant to elicit a feeling of intimacy. Closeness often breeds that. "If I thought you were a predator." He said, "I would have hunted you the moment you awoke."
"Not in my sleep."
"That is the tool of the coward." He heaved, elegant still. "Now, let us discuss why you came to my white city."
White city? A fitting name. Merrin took in the lights' serenity, just a bit of it, enough to quell the internal chaos. One did not exist in a churning state when seeking something. Often, the giver identified this as an act of growing defiance.
Placate them with anything you can find or do.
"I want knowledge," Merrin said, noting Enavro moving to the stone bed, sitting. Somehow, the mind imposed an ocular image of her melding into the stone. Both were of the same, were they not? Would she call it cousin or something?
"Knowledge about what?"
Merrin deliberated…now was a delicate moment. "There is a hunt I must do…A hunt for the people of stone. They have robbed me of something."
He saw the reaction 'that' created in Auwale, a slight curling of the lips. Expected. He was a hunter, and that lot had their own set of rules. This, of course, took a measure of intense mentation—clues acquired from Enavro about the Shaedoran. That and the observed things.
From their first meeting with the Talemir, Auwale had not engaged with the fiery demon—this he grafted to his presence in the battle. To Auwale, the Talemir was Merrin's prey; thus, no interruption was required. A hunter's motto. Then there was the attack in the gold chamber, a different event.
Merrin was weakened—two preys present. Could be shared. That was the driving force of his emergence. A hunter sharing the paired prey. That provided a possibility now. A hunter aiding another when called to it.
He should help me!
Auwale smiled. "Then prove it."
"What?" This wasn't meant to happen.
"Prove to me that you are a hunter." He said, "Hunt something."
"What?"
"The bastard." He said, "Hunt the Bastard."
"The bastard?" Cogitation spun, something familiar beckoning at the edge of his awareness. I've heard that before—Something relevant. He said, "You want me to hunt a bastard?"
"Does it confuse you?" Auwale said, white servs swaying about him. "There is a creature here called the Bastard, hunt it."
"Bastard?"
"Must you repeat?" Enavro muttered, almost sheepishly.
Was she embarrassed by me?
"This Bastard." Merrin regarded Auwale. "What is it?"
"It is a curious creature…Too small for me to hunt, but perfect for you. It's elusive, and has a thing about darkness…be careful about that."
In an entire place of blackness? Merrin quelled the growing quib.
Auwale continued. "It's a new addition to this place…barely, a hundred years old."
"Wrong," Enavro said, suddenly, gaining the stare of the Shaedoran.
"I am wrong?"
Enavro said simply, "The Bastard has been here for more than a thousand years."
Auwale smiled. "Youngster, I have barely been here for 200, and I know everything here…He is far younger than that."
Enavro went silent, staring out at the white, bleached walls. A certain air of forced nonchalance venting out of her. What did she know? That was the thought—obvious in its inevitable formation. Even outside the gathered data, the stele hinted at a certain ancientness to the Shaedoran. Surely not merely 200 years.
Improbable.
The Common Era was older than that, and no acknowledgment of Shaedorans existed. There were the Patrons of the Orders, whom Auwale seemed among. Part of the greyJustciairs, according to Ivory. Yet that was historic.
The orders—casters were not a modern creation.
So who was mistaken?
There was a need to accept the Shaedoran as the authentic source—being ancient and all that, but…Enavro. The second Generation Aelmiren demonstrated a certain restricted erudition. Was she the correct one?
Auwale isn't necessarily Auwale. The words returned to the immediate mentation. Was an answer present in them? Or a question?
Questions can often lead to the formation of answers—no, not often, always.
What was the question?
What was the Answer?
Merrin said, "You want me to hunt a monster?"
"Always redundant." Enavro leaned back, hand pressing as pillars against the stone bed. How annoying she was! The constant interruption had a mind-halting effect. Can't she see that this is my method?
A moment of silence.
"Will you grant me the knowledge after the hunt?"
"Might not." He said, "The hunt is to prove that you are a hunter…as you claim to be."
"I helped you in killing the Talemir!" Surprising, how brash he sounded.
"Did you truly?" Auwale tilted, skin still aglow with that silent whiteness. "Consider the battle. No insult to a hunter, as you claim, but without you, the hunt would have stayed the same."
"You are undermining my usefulness."
A slight frown. "I do no such thing." He said, "But it is good to administer the accurate corrections. That is all I do."
Merrin said, "Then I will hunt it." I will hunt an Innocent creature that has done nothing to me.
But it has done something to someone else—the inner self.
Debatable, the logic was.
Did the actions done to another without a direct ripple effect on oneself constitute an avenging exercise? Sporadically. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. That, in the end, was a matter of perspective. Merrin considered the actions of the Ashmen of old against the Theocracy. The war had no direct effect on his existence, yet did it give him any right to war over it?
No.
Yet men often did so.
I'm getting absent-minded.
Finally, a response, Auwale said, "Good, when you have returned, we will discuss why you want to learn the whereabouts of the Seal."
Merrin gawked. "How?"
"I am a caster." He said simply, leaving the room.
A sufficiently enhanced mind is often indistinguishable from the prescient one. That, I think, is the effect of the caster. Replicated thus in the deadEyes—Author, the Chronicler.
Merrin regarded Enavro, still slanting on the bed, and said, "Did you tell him?"
"How fast you jump into heedless conclusions," Enavro said, taunting. "He might not be the Truth, but he still Auwale. More of the great Rider, perhaps."
"Those words make no sense."
"It would if you had the prior information."
"Information that you have refused to give." Merrin asked, "What must I do, beg? Bow? Kneel? Kiss your feet?"
"Why would you do that?" Was that disgust he heard in her tones?
"I hear lowlanders sometimes do that; the kissing of the feet."
"By Lowlanders, you mean here?"
"No." Merrin waved. "People below the mountain."
She shrugged. "I suppose it's my time to be baffled."
Should I explain? He thought, sighed. No time.
Instead. "Do you know anything else about this Bastard?"
"From the Other Memory." That was what she often called Orvane's memories within her. "He arrived injured—must have been in battle."
"Does it remain injured?" Bootless to ask, but still.
"No." Enavro stared with a vacant look. "This was thousands of years ago."
"Just asking."