The Pearl of the Soul of the World

"When Winterock to water



falls flooding, foes to drown,



Ravenna's own daughter



shall kindle the crown."



Aeriel stared at the slim white bird upon the swordcase. Its bright, round eye stared back at her. She felt a rush of wild joy and disbelief.



"Heron!" she cried.



Maruha and Collum both stood gaping. Brandl hastily fell back. The heron blinked slowly, her metamorphosis only half complete.



"By rights," she replied woodenly, "in my present form, you should be calling me Scabbird, but I suppose 'heron' will do if it must. Now let be. This is a difficult transformation."



The white bird's long, sharp bill snicked shut. She closed her eye and, flapping mightily, struggled free of the sheath. She gained size as she did so, her feathers losing their silvery gleam, till she stood on the desert sand at last, ruffling her snowy pinions and flexing her long, ungainly legs.



"What magery is this?" Maruha whispered.



"Ravenna's messenger-bird," Aeriel laughed, reaching to stroke the other's white breast feathers, "that I have not seen since Orm."



The heron ruffled and danced away. "I have been about my lady's business," she snapped, "as you had all best be."



Aeriel nodded. She felt buoyed up. She had the rime now! As well as the pearl, and the sword—none of them riddled out as yet, but all of them in her hand. Turning back to the duaroughs, she said, "Tell me, Brandl, have you got the verse?"



The young bard goggled a moment, still gazing at the bird—but then he regained himself and said all three long stanzas of the rime back to her, even the last, almost perfectly on the first try. She nodded, smiling. Perhaps he would make a bard after all, despite Maruha. He had a bard's memory, at least.



"Well, Lady Sorceress," Maruha said at last. "We had best be on our way. The Ancientlord Melkior told us of underpaths not far from here. We must return to our people and tell them all we have learned of our fellows forced to serve the Witch."



"We must march belowground to rescue them!" Brandl added, face flushed with excitement, his eyes bright.



"He's not an Ancient," Collum muttered beneath his breath. "Lord Melkior's a halfling, like the Witch."



"No longer," answered Brandl sobering suddenly. "He's a golam now, all gears and wire— like the starhorse." His voice dropped softer still. "The Ravenna rebuilt him after Oriencor's treachery left him for dead, a thousand years ago. He has served the Ancientlady since."



Maruha hissed at him, impatient to be gone. "We're off," she said, offering her hand to Aeriel in the duaroughish fashion, but Aeriel would not take it. Such a gesture was too formal by far. A sorrow almost as strong as her joy at meeting the heron stole over her now. Kneeling, she embraced the duarough woman.



"Fare well. I am in your debt."



"Debt?" Maruha exclaimed. "Sooth—nonsense, Lady. The removing of the pin was the Ravenna's doing, and if you had not kept the weaselhounds from us, we should all have gone to the Witch."



Brandl, having seemingly conquered his astonishment at last, stood studying the heron intently as she pouted and fluttered in the amber sand, ignoring him. Maruha seized her nephew's arm.



"I'll make a song of you, Lady Sorceress!" he called as his aunt pulled him purposefully away. Only Collum remained, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.



"The luck of all the ways go with you, Lady," he murmured at last.



"And with you, Collum," Aeriel said.



"If you fail," he started, stopped, then charged ahead. "If you fail us, Lady, we are all lost. No Ravenna remains to save us now."



Abruptly Collum turned and strode after the others. Aeriel watched them heading for a low outcropping of rock jutting up from the sand not many paces distant. For a moment, Aeriel's heart grew cold as she considered the truth of Collum's words. All rested upon her now. And on the pearl and the sword and the rime. Rising, she brushed the desert from her knees. The heron returned to stand beside her, shaking the red grit out of her feathers. Reaching the outcropping, the three duaroughs waved. Aeriel raised her own hand in farewell as they disappeared from view.



Aeriel turned from the distant rocks and rested one hand against the City's dark glass Dome. She chafed her arms against the cool breeze and shivered, feeling alone suddenly, despite the heron.



Absently, she ran her fingers through the downy feathers cresting the white bird's hard little skull. The heron tolerated her touch with indifference.



"Do you know the meaning of the rime?" she asked.



"I only carry my lady's messages," the bird replied. "I do not interpret them."



Aeriel sighed, eyeing a little amber scorpion traveling across the sand. The heron darted after it, stabbing in its wake. "Hark," she observed, through a billfull of sand. "Your shadow nears."



Aeriel frowned, not understanding. She fingered the sword pommel a moment, remembering Ravenna's words—but she had no shadow, had had none since Orm. No shade now trailed her by any light. Sighing in frustration, she let her eyes stray to the far horizon. The Witch's Mere lay direcdy ahead.



She understood this somehow without having to think about it. The downy light of the pearl pervaded her senses.



Then something stirred among the shadows of the dunes, something dark as a Shadow itself, black as the night. Aeriel beheld a figure coming toward her across the swells of sand. Even so distant and by starlight, she recognized it at once: that which, like a second self, had shadowed her since desert's edge, the one she had dreaded and fled so desperately—because to have turned and faced her follower would have reminded her intolerably of her own identity and of all the other memories that the pin had banned.



She felt no fear now as the dark form approached.



"So you have found me at last," the pale girl said. "I'm glad."



"You led me a merry chase," the other snapped. "When I had no light to track you belowground, I thought you lost—until the heron found me."



Aeriel gazed at the one halted before her. Erin stood as tall as she herself did now. The dark girl wore a blue shift, sleeveless with great open armholes for ventilation. If she had carried a desert walking stick, Aeriel might almost have taken her for one of the Ma'ambai. Barefoot and sandy, the dark islander looked weathered thin, her skin still black as a starless sky. Erin cast a reproachful glance at the white bird.



"She led me within sight of the City's beacon before abandoning me, hours since."



The heron fluffed. "And why should I do more?" she inquired. "You are a demanding shadow."



Having lost her scorpion in the sand, she stalked haughtily away.



"Are you well?" Aeriel asked.



Erin reached to touch her hand, as if to assure herself the other was real. She nodded. "And you?



You look strange somehow—unweathered. The heron told me what befell you, of the black bird and the pin."



Aeriel shook off the odd, lingering feeling of newness and drew the dark girl near. "Yes, I am well,"



she said. "Ravenna tended me." When Erin released her at last, she continued, "But I have had no news of Irrylath and the army in daymonths."



The dark girl shook her head, laughing a little with fatigue and relief. "Nor I, since I left them two daymonths ago."



Aeriel touched the other's cheek, remembering the distant bustle of the camp and the sigh of tents.



Two daymonths—had it really been so long? "Tell me what happened when first you discovered me gone."



Erin leaned wearily against the Dome. "A furious uproar and a fruitless search ensued. Of course your disappearance was all my fault—so your husband would have it, as I was the last who had been with you." The dark girl's voice grew guarded, tight. "At last a sentry confessed to having glimpsed you striding off across the dunes, and your fine prince Irrylath almost ran him through."



Listening, Aeriel closed her eyes. The pearl strung all Erin described before her mind's eye in moving beads of fire.



"Your tracks beyond camp's edge were found at last, ending in a moldering scatter of stinking feathers. Irrylath grew wild at the sight of them, choking out something about the lorelei building the wings of her darkangels from such."



A dozen paces away from them, the heron preened. The stars above burned bright and cold, little pinpricks of light. Aeriel eyed the constellation called the Maidens' Dance.



"And then?"



"When it was concluded you must have been plucked away by icari, taken hostage by the Witch, the camp fell into turmoil."



Aeriel flinched, her mind on fire with the other's words.



"What of Irrylath?" she insisted. Every news of him was precious to her.



Erin's voice grew tighter still. "Great protestations of grief! He should have appointed you bodyguards; he should have warned you against walking unescorted abroad—small help all this contrition after the fact," she scoffed. "His mother the Lady Syllva spoke of taking the Edge Adamantine away from him lest he do himself or others harm."



The pale girl bowed her head, appalled. "And when you departed to follow, to find me," she managed, "was he yet wild with this grief?"



Said Erin acidly, "His cousin Sabr comforted him."



White jealousy flared in Aeriel then, hot as a flame. She felt the dark girl's hand tighten upon her own.



Erin muttered, "I'll put a dagger in his heart when next I see him."



"You'll not," Aeriel exclaimed, her eyes flying open now. Erin tried to pull away, but the pale girl held her. "He's mine. If you love me, you'll leave him to me."



Erin said nothing for a long moment. At last she asked, "So you do love him still—even now?"



Aeriel sighed and could not answer. What she felt was rage and pain and longing—a fierce, unquenched longing for Irrylath's love. The dark girl looked at her.