The Pearl of the Soul of the World

"Aeriel," Irrylath insisted. "Come to me. I'll take you away!"



Aeriel looked at him in surprise, at the desperation on his face, the sweat running down from his temples even as his breath burned and steamed like a dragon's in the freezing air. The pearl glowed in her hand.



"It's my inheritance," Oriencor was muttering. "I'll take it with me when I go to Oceanus."



"Aeriel," Irrylath called urgently, leaning once more through the battered window. "Come—answer me!"



If he leans any farther, she thought fearfully, he'll fall. His arm stretched out to her, hand open, palm up. A wild longing filled her suddenly as she realized she could go with him. If she went now, she wouldn't die. She could keep the pearl, all its strange sorcery and light—keep it for herself. Irrylath would pluck her away, and they would escape.



"Why do you hesitate?" Oriencor demanded sharply. "Put it into my hand."



Aeriel stared at her, shaking. The Witch was already defeated, all her minions put to flight. But she has not been redeemed. a voice rising unbidden within her prodded. She has not been persuaded that what you say is true. Go with Irrylath, and you will have won a hollow victory. The world will not be healed. The Witch will soon rebuild her power— till you must fight this same battle all over again. Bitterly, Aeriel realized that she must fulfill Ravenna's task, no matter what the cost.



"Come—Aeriel!" her husband cried.



The pearl burned bright as Solstar in her palm.



Much as she longed to, she could not go with Irrylath. Shaking her head, she whispered, "Fare well."



Oriencor had begun to laugh. Aeriel saw Irrylath gazing at her in desperate incomprehension. Above the other's laughter, the rasp of his own breathing and Avarclon's, the thrash of the starhorse's wings and the clatter of his hooves, surely the prince could not have heard her words. But she saw from his expression that he had read the frame of her lips, the shake of her head.



Too late, he cried out, "No!" as Aeriel tore her eyes away from his, and turned to put the pearl in the White Witch's hand.



14



Flood



The White Witch screamed. Aeriel stood frozen, still touching the pearl. She felt something running out of it and into Oriencor, who stood like a statue, immobile, her mouth fallen open to keen one long, high note that went on and on. Those in barges below and on the battlefield beyond stood halted, turned, staring at the keep. Images had begun to play across the surface of the pearl: pestilence and fire—Oceanus destroying itself.



"Dead?" the White Witch screamed. " Dead? How can that be? Not dead. Not dead! Poisoned?



Plague? How could they destroy themselves?"



Aeriel could not move, could not take her gaze or her hand away from the pearl. Neither, it seemed, could Oriencor, whose chilling cries continued. Dazed, Aeriel realized that though the pearl was imparting certain knowledge of the Ancients' fate, Ravenna's daughter was denying it, refusing to believe. Aeriel shook her head. Her ears rang with the Witch's protests. It had never occurred to her that Oriencor might refuse the gift.



"It was only we, only we they caused to war for their pleasure. They can't—they can't be dead! It isn't possible…"



Aeriel felt a stab of sudden fear. She herself had never refused any knowledge she had received through the pearl. She had no idea what would happen to anyone who tried. She had no idea what was happening to Oriencor now. The Witch seemed to be striving to thrust the pearl back into Aeriel's hand.



The aroma of Ancient flowers came to her suddenly as a new image gathered itself within the pearl, that of a dusky lady with indigo eyes.



"Daughter," she said quietly, "believe."



Aeriel stared. This image was no misty construct of the future, no vivid memory of the past—it reflected the present: tangible, alive. A living Ravenna gazed at the White Witch from the surface of the pearl.



"No!" the lorelei gasped, recoiling. "I saw your funeral fire—" The Ancientlady shook her head. "That was only my body, child. Some arts of the Ancients you never learned. My inner essence has been translated, that my messenger might bear me to you. All my being is contained within this pearl. The whole of my magic, my very soul—yours, if you will but accept!"



The White Witch's cries rose to shrills and then to shrieks.



"Never!"



Aeriel would have fled, flung her hands over her ears if only she could have moved. The coldness of the Witch swept over and through her as never before, for the pearl no longer gave her any warmth.



Ravenna's image watched her daughter with horror and pain.



"Take it back!" shrieked the Witch. "I do not want your sorcery! I have my own sorcery now…"



Fractures appeared in the winterock around them. By means of the pearl, Aeriel felt the hair-thin cracks running the length of the palace, down below the waterline, below even the bottom of the Mere.



She glimpsed the figures trapped in the walls of Winterock stirring, awakening, opening their eyes. The whole keep shifted, shuddering, with a low rumbling that rolled under the high, terrible piercing of the Witch's screams.



"Accept, or you are lost!" Ravenna cried urgently. "Use my gift to heal this world…"



Her image reached out to Oriencor, hands outstretched in appeal. Aeriel was aware of Syllva in her Istern barge below sounding her warhorn, signaling retreat. The dark islanders fled the palace terrace to their skiffs and stroked for the far shore. Erin grasped Pendarlon's mane as he leapt away across the Mere, which had begun to lose its dark opacity. The Witch's creatures writhed and struggled in the lightening waters.



"Believe me, daughter," Ravenna besought her. "My Ancient race and their world are no more."



But Oriencor fought the knowledge of the pearl even now. The palace shuddered again, the floor beneath Aeriel's feet tilting. She heard crashes, like slabs of crystal plunging and shattering.



"It's a lie. A lie—I won't believe it! They can't be dead!"



"Stop," Aeriel tried to tell her. "Stop screaming, or the whole palace will fall."



The other paid her no heed, fingers tightening on the pearl as though she meant to crush it.



"Daughter, turn back—" Ravenna called desperately.



Then the pearl shattered against Aeriel's hand, and the Ancient's image shattered with it, scattering, vanishing. The Witch's webbed fingers bore down upon Aeriel's. She felt the shards of corundum biting into her flesh. A white mist billowed from the broken shell, cloudlike and full of sparkling fire. It filled the room, enveloping them both. Oriencor wrenched around as if trying to tear free of the pearl, batting at the mist and colored sparks as though they ate at her. Aeriel felt nothing but a slight glimmer, an almost-pleasant glow.



She had cut her thumb upon the broken edge of the pearl. Some portion of the billowing light was running into her through the wound. She breathed it in. It alighted on her skin and entered her pores, crept under her fingernails, filled her ears and hair. She felt it, fiercely hot, like burning silver in her blood.



She, too, cried out then, not with pain, but with surprise.



"You," Oriencor gasped, turning back to her now. Her tone was a rasp, as though the misty light had seared her lungs. "You! Little sorceress. I curse the day that Irrylath first carried you away, and I curse the hour that ever you came to this keep with your message and your poisonous gift. Undone! All my sorcery undone! By you, my mother's catspaw. Your very innocence your shield."



The White Witch was dying, Aeriel realized. For those who could not accept, the knowledge in the pearl was deadly. Even now, her creatures thrashed, perishing in the disenchanted waters below. Aeriel had never dreamed, not for a moment, that the pearl could harm as well as heal.



"I never meant you ill in giving you the pearl," she cried. Nor could she believe that Ravenna had meant her daughter any harm. "I meant only to show you, to…"



"To make me see?" Oriencor grated, her beautiful bell-like voice now turned to potsherds grinding, to silk rending and metal twisting. "To change me back from what I am into what I was before, a mortal, halfling, Ancient's daughter? Don't you understand?"



Winterock shuddered again, and the floor dropped a quarter of an ell before catching itself. The dead creatures in the lake below were dissolving into noxious mist. The palace shook like something struggling to awake. Both Oriencor and Aeriel staggered, but neither could release the broken, billowing pearl.



"Don't you see?" Oriencor shrilled. "I am no more redeemable than one of my darkangels—one of my true darkangels. For I am not incomplete, as Irrylath was when you rescued him. I have eaten hearts and drunk blood and drunk souls. My heart is dust. I could not return to what I was even if I wished—



and I do not wish it! I want to walk among my peers—I want the Ancients alive on Oceanus, and I curse you for taking the hope of that—my only purpose—away."



Her last words were a scream that rent the palace from tower to base. The shock threw Aeriel to her knees. By means of the pearl, she was aware of the now-transparent waters of the Mere pouring into the breaches. She thought of the duaroughs held prisoner in the depths of the palace below and hoped desperately for their deliverance.



"Aeriel! Aeriel!"



Above the din, someone was crying her name, had been crying her name frantically for some time.



She turned to see Avarclon bearing Irrylath away from the crumbling palace. Great chunks of winterock sheared off and hurtled down. The prince sat helpless, unable to turn his unbridled steed. Without bit or reins, Irrylath could not compel the Avarclon to wheel and bear him back to Aeriel.



A snarl brought her sharp around. Oriencor was still on her feet, though barely. Her gown was in tatters, her once-white skin, now ashen, was flaking and falling away like curls of burnt paper. Her hair, a nest of tiny, filamentthin snakes, streamed and billowed in a wind Aeriel could not feel. Aeriel shrieked and shrank back even as the Witch's green eyes pinned her.