02 The Wizard by Wolfe Gene

Author:Wolfe, Gene [Wolfe, Gene]
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2010-04-10T22:35:56.186000+00:00

"Years have passed. I am no longer beautiful, and soon the Khimairae will eat me. I have caught Setr's poison in a cup. I write with it, and with a feather of the great bird. When I have written to the end, I will put this scroll in the vase, and stop it, and drink. None will touch my poisoned flesh for fear."

I asked whether I might take her scroll to read to my brother. She said that nothing I took from this place would remain when I left it, and cast her scroll into the waves. After that we sat long on the beach, naked together, and talked of the lives we had led, what it was to live and what it was to die. "I was taken by the Aelf," I told her, "to be playmate to the queen, for the Aelf live on, but few children come to them and any child born to them is a queen or king, as if every Aelf of the clan were mother or father." "You were a king to me," she said, "and to your father and your brother also." "We played games in a garden wider than the world, and I sat at lessons with her, and talked of love and magic and a thousand other things, for she was very wise and her advisors wiser. At last they sent me into Mythgarthr. All memory of Disiri and her garden left me. Only now has it returned." "You loved them." I nodded. "Mother, you are wise. I knew I would not find Disiri here, for my love for her has not been lost. But those were lostas lost as your scroll." "Which is not lost. It remains on the Isle, where you found it." She took up the green glass tube that had held it as she spoke, and removed the stopper. "Do you want to see it again? It is in here." The tube was empty; and yet it seemed to me that there remained something at its bottom, some scrap, perhaps, of paper, a pebble or a shell. I tried to reach in, although it was large enough to admit only two fingers. My whole hand entered, and as it sought the bottom, my arm. I found myself drawn into a tunnel whose sides were green glass. At once I turned and began to run back the way I had come, troubled (until I caught and held her) by Eterne, whose weighty scabbard slapped my leg. Soon I found a pale door. I opened it, and had no more stepped through than I was followed by Lynnet and Mani. "I thought you would stay in there a while, Mama," Etela said. Lynnet only smiled and stroked her hair. Thiazi said, "None of you need tell me what you saw. Should you wish to, however, you will find me an attentive listener." None of us spoke. Toug said, "Everybody got to ask questions before you went in, or anyhow that was what it seemed like.

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