Radix

By the time Ardent Fang reached the eastern edge of Miramol where the silverwood lodgings of the ne were clut-tered on a walled hill, he had resolved the matter to himself. It's the whorl again, he realized. Sooner or later, even the magnar must become what he is not.
At the end of a blossom-arbored lane, Drift was waiting. Drift was Ardent Fang's personal ne and probably the best seer in the whole Serbota kingdom. Ne were sexless—living divinities who worked as artisans and craftsfolk for the tribe. Telepathically strong and untroubled by sexual cravings, they were ideal hunters and scouts. Their clarity and ancestral memories guided them on the one safe, unmarked route that led through the desert to the star pools and the magnar—the Road.
Drift was small, dark and spindly, and its face, like all ne, was pure mask: slash-lips curled into a permanent meaning-less grin below boomerang-wide cheekbones and a nose that was two arched nostrils.
Drift whistled and coughed in its imitation of a greeting laugh. It liked Ardent Fang because he was a strong man. The energy whirled in his body at an exciting pace. Blue sparks, visible to any seer, crackled off the tips of his mane and flared over his tufted shoulders. But besides being strong, he was also beautiful. He had a considerable amount of face, his yellow eyes were clear, and both of his hands worked. Apart from the pungent brown odor of his sex and the silver scales on his shanks, he was virtually whole.
Drift sensed Ardent Fang's purpose, and because of its telepathy, no conversation was needed. But, for the breeder's sake, it reached into the man's mind and asked psychically: Why are you here, Fang? Did your night in the stables leave you restless?
Ardent Fang smiled spiritlessly. "I'm too much the breeder for the stables to unease me. No, seer—it's the Mothers who have sent me. They say the magnar's scared. Incredible, isn't it? The magnar!" Ardent Fang sat on a bench-log before the moongate that led to the silverwood lodges on the hill. "You're a seer, Drift. Is it true?"
Drift nodded. He, too, had felt the fear humming across the desert, where always before there had been a peace as still and certain as the inside of a jewel. Who is to know the way of the magnar?
"Us, apparently. Though we aren't expected to see the magnar again until after the rains, the Mothers want us to walk the Road now. Can we do it, Drift?"
The ne cocked its dark, round head with uncertainty. The desert is at its hottest now. The Mothers
themselves call this the season of the killing sun, don't they? But if they say you must go, then I will guide you.
"Why is it this way, seer?" Ardent Fang asked, looking up at the green dawn sky where vapors fluffed like tattered masts. "What could scare the magnar when even death can-not touch him?"
Drift clicked with ignorance. How could we know? The magnar is unknowable as the clouds.
Empty-bellied, with Drift guiding him through the des-ert that separated Miramol from the magnar, Ardent Fang turned inward. He tried to keep from thinking about the magnar and focused instead on the purging of his body.
Drift was proud to be with him. Few of even the most joyous Serbota could wander the Road as openly as Ardent Fang. The man had no fear of the scorpions and centipedes that lurked in what little shade there was, and he had found praise even in the adamant heat that was swelling the meat on their bones. Most wonderful of all, he trusted Drift. Ne, even seers, were too often considered other and not worthy of true comradeship by the gendered folk. Ardent Fang was different. He treated all ne as tribesmen, and he was espe-cially deferential to seers. He was one of the most joyous tribal leaders. And, as much as Drift despised them, the Mothers had to be given credit for guiding him well with his inner work.
After the second day on the Road, Ardent Fang was empty of poisons. Wild energies, driven by the stubborn sun, burned through his body and warped his vision, but Drift's slow, peaceful chanting held him together. The seer, in its fluty sad voice, sang of the powerful cer-tainty of the body and its ecstasy at being a child of the sun—
The sun longs to feel
And so we are here . . .
Toward the end of the fourth day they marched out of the filmy veils of rippled air into the shade of a wave of stone, twenty meters high. The coolness was narcotic, and staring back at the sun-dazzled pinnacles and the rock fins folded in the tremulous flow, Drift chanted happily—
Like the long rocks
Bent in the heat waves
We look broken
But we are whole—
We will always be whole!
Drift led Ardent Fang into a small cave where they fol-lowed the lines of force through a honeycomb of tunnels to a vast rock studio at the top of the butte.
At the far end of the bright chamber the magnar was sitting on a straw mat. Blue sky and copper-red mesas were visible behind him, and dust hazed around his body like an aura.
At first he didn't see them. He was gazing intently into a scry crystal, a green brood jewel given to him long ago by voors. The reflected emerald light wavered over his long mule face and made the impressive tangle of his white hair flare like green fire.
The magnar was over twelve hundred years old. Pre-science had far-spaced his thoughts and made most of his feelings creative, so that very little about him was stylized or predictable. Even his memory was wise and thoughtless.
He saw himself clearly, from his impoverished infancy as an ape in a research boro through a thousand years of burn-ing, sanctifying changes that had made him what he was now: light's movement as flesh.
Five hundred years before, the magnar had become consciousness itself, and he had understood with the urine, sweat, and ooze of his body that he was light. Everything was light—all of reality was a star, shining.
Most of his time was spent ecstatically, his body spined with an electric strength streaming up his back and into the sky. The expanding psynergy extended his awareness deeper into the etheric fields of his environment, losing him in the lizards, desert trees, and birds that lifted him away from his human attitude. Sometimes, though, and more often lately, he lost himself to the differences of the world, even to fear. Death was a cold mystery. After twelve hundred years, only light was more strange.
When the magnar finally looked up, his leathery lids drowsy from visions, he stared at the two wanderers in silence, unsure if they were real. Lunes of brilliant light glared off his big face, and as recognition animated his features, a toothy grin widened. He laughed raucously and slapped the animal skins he was wearing for trousers. Billows of dust fumed around him, and the echoes of his laughter filled the
chamber. He held out large gnarled hands: "Ardent Fang!" he boomed in the Serbota dialect of the tribesman's village. "Drift! Heroes of Miramol! Shay!"
Ardent Fang and Drift shambled forward and prostrated themselves before him. "Get up!" He grabbed their shoul-ders and forced them to sit up. "What is this nonsense?" He gazed hard at them with chuckling brown eyes. "I should bow to you. You've journeyed so far and across the most evil land in the world!"
Before either of them could respond, the old man flung himself into the dust and groveled before them with whim-pering laughter. When he looked up, his leering face was furry with sand.
The tribesfolk stared back at him uneasily.
"Why are you so dour?" the magnar asked, bending forward to look deep into their eyes. He smelled of camphor and sage. "Ah, of course! You must be exhausted. Well, my friends, other visitors have brought me rose-hip wine and dried apricots. After that—"