She looked down at her from an unimaginable height, seeing clearly at last the nature of Her chosen tool, touching her existence as if She toyed with a child’s puzzle. And as She saw clearly the desperation of Her other fragile, solitary self, She was filled with compassion. She embraced her mind with the fluid motion of an omnipresent sea; She was the gratitude and the tenderness in that touch… .
And Moon saw, like a flower opening in the depth of her soul, that she had always been the Lady’s vessel, Her willing servant, just as the traditions of her people had promised she would be. The Lady existed, the Lady watched over Her chosen world; those who peopled its lands and seas and kept Her peace were truly Her beloved children. And among them all She had chosen Moon Dawntreader as Her eyes, Her hands, Her champion; to be guided, to be relied on, to help Her in Her need. They were one, and their needs were bound together, as they had been from the beginning of her life.
And she realized that there were secrets here in this shifting eternal now that She had never revealed to those who sought Her with their questions. Even the innermost circles of hidden Survey, all of them sibyls, who named themselves Her servants and protectors, had never known where the ultimate circle lay, or whom to trust completely. Because at the heart of Survey lay the sibyl mind itself, whose secrets only Moon Dawntreader, out of all the people since the days of its creators, had seen and shared: she who had had the strength and the resourcefulness of a sibyl, the heritage of her world behind her, and no ties binding her to the secret web of Survey, which had become both a blessing and a curse to the system it protected.
She had given her life to the sibyl mind, done its work, done everything in her power to bring about its renaissance and the survival of the mers—willingly, although she had had no choice. And still she had no choice but to go on, because she saw suddenly, that the struggle was still not over. The net’s deterioration had been reversed, but the mers still were not safe, and without them, everything that She had caused to be done would become meaningless. But now, here, while she was for this eternal moment She, Her mind was infinite, filled with knowledge that even Survey could not possess; and She knew that somewhere here lay the answer to all Her questions, all Her trials.
She searched the reaches of the galaxy … seeing where every cluster of luminous pearls, each pearl marking the mind of a sibyl, charted the farflung worlds that were still inhabited by survivors of the Old Empire. She studied the starmap that She had never made accessible to humankind for as long as humans had failed to learn the lessons of time and of the Old Empire’s fall; for as long as they had gone on hunting the mers. And, guided by a perception that was at last both clear enough and human enough to realize that even She must risk something in order to gain something, She saw that She had always possessed both a threat and a promise sufficient to Her needs… .
She reached out, seeing the pearls of individual human minds like foam on the crest of a standing wave… . She reached through, to touch the mind that lay at the other end of one of those umbilicals of shining energy, the mind of KR Aspundh. She drew him up, into the sea of light, calling to him with the voice of the woman he had once known.
(KR …)
(Moon—?) She felt his stunned surprise ripple upward through the luminous strand of contact. (What is it? What has happened?)
(I have the key, KR. The key to saving the mers … to helping BZ. The key to unlock the universe.)
(By all my ancestors—) His thoughts sang with light. (Then what must we do?)
(You must take this key, and turn it in Survey’s lock. Take this information from me, to those you know and trust in the Inner Circles. They must pass it on in turn to the Golden Mean… . Tell them that unless the mer hunts stop, the sibyl net will cease to function. This genocide must end, or all the sibyls will die, all their choosing places will be destroyed—)
(Is this true?) Aspundh thought, his mind strobing with disbelief. (It can’t be—)
(The errors, the seizures, the failures in the net that they experienced were a warning: the data is there, just as the truth about the mers is. Let them look at it and see!) She touched him with the truth, gently, but it was enough: His sudden terror was like heat lightning. (And promise them this … as evidence of good will …) she murmured, letting his fear diminish. (If the hunts cease, they will be given the location coordinates of one world of the Old Empire, relatively near in space to a world of the Hegemony, enabling them to reestablish contact. Over time, if their contact with this world proves peaceful and mutually beneficial—and as long as the mers are protected—other coordinates will be revealed to them. If they agree, they can pursue their empire dreams. If they do not, they will having nothing—less than nothing.)
(Gods …) he thought, the word shimmering through her vision. (You can do that?)
(Yes,) she answered.
(Yes …) he echoed, (yes, I will tell them, immediately—)
(KR—)
(What is it, Moon?)
(Where is BZ? How is he—?)
(We think he is on Big Blue. As to how he is … I don’t know. Surviving, I pray.)
She made no answer, feeling the pressure of the emotion inside her expand, until at last, unable to hold back her anger, she demanded, (Why haven’t you helped him? , You, and those he trusted?)
(We tried, but we could not—)
(Then what good are you?) she thought, her bitterness flowing like acid, burning her, burning him. (All of you—forcing him to do what he must, then leaving him to suffer alone, while you hide and mutter your secret words like the sanctimonious cowards you are—) She began to withdraw her contact, letting the static grow into r blinding waves of gold-blackness.
(Moon—) he called after her, his anguish strobing. (For gods’ sakes, I’m an old ‘man!)
She pushed toward him through the filament of light again, strengthening her contact for the fleeting moment it took to form the words. (You tell them Gundhalinu will have his honor restored. He will come back to Tiamat as Chief Justice, or by the All there will be no new worlds, as long as I exist—) not certain now even if it was only she who spoke the promise, or She. (And nothing at all, if I die.) She felt the power of her own words on fire with truth; felt him recoil from it before she broke contact.
Alone in the limitless sea, she was suddenly aware again of the souldeep need still calling her back to her own timebound reality. Somewhere time still flowed forward, carrying her with it, and her body’s strength was waning, its need growing irresistible. But she expanded her vision, once more, for the final time, searching frantically across the thousand thousand radiant droplets of sentience in Her singular sea, each one with a name, a mind, a soul of its own… .
(BZ …) She sank through the mirroring brightness into the warm heart of his lifeforce, her relief and joy at finding him safe flaming around her like the energies of a star. (BZ,) she called again, softly, inside his thoughts.
She felt his mind move restlessly, buffeting her with random colors as something somewhere deep inside it struggled to wake and respond. To wake … He slept, she realized—a sleep so deep and exhausted that she could not penetrate it. (Sleep, my beloved,) she thought, and the tenderness she felt was a song of surpassing beauty. (Soon,) she whispered, seeing her promise spread in golden ripples through the restive currents of his brain, (soonsoonsoon….)
She let him go, slipping back into the music and light, the embrace of the Lady, still and eternally waiting, for her, for all of humanity, the sibyls that were Her own flesh and blood, the minds that She served and shaped, both created and creator in the Great Game of human survival. And within Her mind she set one last, small wheel in motion.