Allie's War Season One (105 page)

TARSI BEGAN FORMALLY. She even told me where to sit.

Accommodating her wishes, I plunked myself down cross-legged on a prayer rug that covered the stone tiles in front of her fireplace. I waited for her to sink to her own prayer mat, accepting a cup from the girl and watching fire eat through a pine log one of them had shoved into the grate.

I am old, Bridge,
Tarsi sent then. .
..I can see some things because I remember them. When I said last night that this thing with the children bothers me, it is partly because it feels the same. The imprints in the Barrier are similar...

“Similar?” I said. “To the last Displacement, you mean?”

She chuckled. “I am not
that
old, Bridge.”

I flushed a little, but she only smiled.

There was another attempt to begin the human Displacement,
she sent.
...in this cycle. That time, the attempt was thwarted. The rise of Syrimne during World War I could very well have precipitated the Displacement early. The danger was averted...mainly by the being himself. It is fortunate that he did.

It took me another few seconds to process her words.

“You mean Syrimne? He stopped it?”

In part, yes.

Relief infused me. “So then we can stop it this time.”

“No.” Tarsi mirrored her words with a finger.
It is dangerous to assume that, Bridge Alyson. The Displacement cannot be kept off forever.

I felt my mouth pull into a frown. “Look. That’s crap, if you don’t mind my saying—”

It is possible to stop it, Bridge Alyson...in the way that anything is always possible. But I do not see signs that indicate any likelihood of that outcome. It is best to prepare to play your usual role in the coming events...

She was starting to remind me of my grandmother a little...who had that edge when she was annoyed, too. It always managed to surprise me because of her little old woman exterior. But the contrast wasn’t all that cute to me now...not while sitting in the dark in the middle of the day, talking about the world ending.

I clenched my hands, looking at my fingers.

“I don’t believe in prophecies,” I said. “Vash convinced me it was better not to argue with you all about this, but that doesn’t change how I feel.” Seeing the old woman’s smile, I let the anger seep through my voice.

“...And I’m not just going to roll over and plan for the end of the world like one of those people who see it all as a big party. I may have been raised among worms, but I’ve seen enough vids to know war is an ugly, pointless horrorshow, and I don’t want any part of it. And I resent like hell the implication that whatever I do is ‘inevitably’ going to bring the end that much faster...”

I understand.
Tarsi broke into my mind easily, with no discernible reaction.
I am not here to persuade you...only to educate you as best I can.

“But why?” I said. “I’ve told you...I don’t believe in your myths. Why not just let me be a figurehead?”

Her eyes grew shrewd...and a little impatient.

Alyson, you have been leading...for months now. Do not play ‘little girl’ with me, and I will not play ‘old woman’ with you...fair?

Feeling my face tighten, I nodded. “Okay. Fair.”

She followed my eyes to the fire.
It will not hurt you to understand the myth. The Bridge is not believed to be evil...no more than Syrimne is evil. In your case, we got to you in time, before you could be made into something truly dark by Galaith or whoever else. Syrimne was not so lucky.

She shrugged a little with one hand.

He is often delegated to the hard path...

I glanced at the girl, wondering what she thought of all our bickering. I motioned with my mug, silently asking for a refill of the dark drink. As she began preparing to make more in the clay teapot, I turned back to Tarsi.

“It’s still a little hard for me to hear good about Syrimne,” I said. “It’s like someone saying Hitler was an okay guy, he just had a rough childhood.”

“No.” Tarsi made a line in the air with one finger, frowning.
He was not a good human at all...not at all. It is not a good comparison, Alyson.

I smiled at this, in spite of myself.

“Okay,” I said. “So what’s the difference? Did Syrimne have a change of heart at the end?”

No.
Her eyes remained flat.
He did not have, as you say, ‘a change of heart.’ His handler, a seer named Menlim, warped the development of his mind and his aleimi to such an extent that we found it nearly impossible to communicate with him. We were the enemy in his eyes...not credible. Syrimne, you see, believed that he was saving the world...

“Great,” I said. “What whack-job doesn’t?”

Alyson,
the old woman’s thoughts grew flint-like.
You have no idea of the reality of seers’ lives back then. We watched hundreds of thousands of our people butchered practically overnight...our children stolen and experimented on. Our most respected artists and religious scholars were enslaved as sideshow entertainment. Our females were systematically raped and sold away from their mates. Do you know that even now, rape of any seer, male or female, is not considered a crime in the human world?

Briefly, I contemplated reminding her that her own people had a pretty liberal view of ‘consent’...then decided I was being pointlessly argumentative. Rising to my feet, I stood by the stone mantle.

“So what now?” I said, my voice subdued. “How do we investigate who did that to the kids in the camp? That’s what we’re supposed to do, right?”

She shrugged with one hand.
It is ironic, given your aversion.
Her eyes flickered up.
I thought we would start with the last critical incident, see if we could map comparisons...to what happened in Sikkim.

“The last critical incident?” I thought about this, then felt the blood leave my face. “You mean Syrimne? We’re going to look at Syrimne?”

She gestured to the right and up, a seer’s yes.

“But what would that prove?” I said. “Syrimne died almost a century ago.”

Tarsi slurped her tea.
Think of it in terms of strategy...which the Rooks have, in abundance. This is a strategic moment for them. It is good to look at their first attempt to alter the game in their favor...even if it failed.

The idea made me a little sick, actually...sick enough to wonder why I was taking this all so personally. But I did take it personally, and not only the death of those kids. Symbols of the sword and sun decorated half the walls in Seertown. I’d always wondered why this, the symbol for Syrimne—who had personally murdered hundreds if not thousands of humans and suspected “traitor” seers—decorated an entire wall in Vash’s temple. The same symbol was spray-painted all over alleys in Asia, the United States and Europe.

To me, it was like having swastikas all over your living room.

Maybe Tarsi was right; maybe being raised human caused the reaction, and having that symbol beaten into my head as a proxy for death and fanaticism. But it still struck me as more than a little morbid.

Maygar had the same mark tattooed in blue and white ink on his bicep.

He’d called it the mark of a ‘real’ terrorist.

“He is alive, that one?” Tarsi said politely. “You did not kill him?”

It took me a second to understand what she was talking about. Then I frowned.

“He’s alive,” I acknowledged.

“You must be relieved.”

I didn’t answer, but found myself thinking about Maygar anyway.

Was I relieved? I guessed I was. I couldn’t exactly wish for his death, even apart from my being responsible for it. Anyway, I still wanted to know why he’d done it. I couldn’t believe he’d rape me just to jab at Revik. Despite all of his barbs, he’d been almost protective of me when it came to Revik. He’d acted like he didn’t think Revik was good enough, especially after he learned of his infidelity.

What was it he’d said? Something about how he would be a good husband to me. Or at least, better than Revik...

A sudden, sharp pain slid through my chest, strong enough to make me gasp. It felt like anger, but enough lay behind it that I stopped breathing.

When I recovered, I realized I knew the presence.

Christ. How long had he been there? And why hadn’t he said anything?

Even as I thought it, he evaporated from my light.

Turning when the girl offered me a steaming mug, I took it from her more abruptly than I should have, biting my lip.

It is easier to show you,
Tarsi sent, causing me to turn.

She had gotten up so quietly I hadn’t heard her, and now she stood behind me. If she’d noticed anything, no hint was visible in her clear eyes.

May I?
she sent.

I hesitated only a second. “Sure.”

You should sit down again, Bridge.

I sank back to the prayer rug, scooting closer to the fire with my feet. The girl immediately knelt behind me, holding a hairbrush in one hand. She held it up, indicating shyly towards my hair. Sighing internally, I nodded. I’d slept on it wet, so now it probably looked like two cats were mating on my head.

“Okay,” I told Tarsi, as the girl began carefully detangling my hair with her fingers and brushing it out. “I’m ready.”

As soon as I said it, everything went dark.

I had never before been brought into the Barrier so quickly, so completely without warning or transition...

...and I am still trying to breathe as I stare into the pitch black that surrounds me. Part of my disorientation is that this isn’t the usual deep-clouded purple sky I associate with arriving in the Barrier commons. I hang motionless in the black of 3am on a moonless night in a pit. I stand, sit or fall...

No stars live here, no embers or remnants of fire.

I can’t see myself, in my light form or in the flesh.

I exist...in the deepest, most silent nothing I’ve ever known.

Then light implodes, in the center of that dark.

It paralyzes me.

The shocking white ring draws inwards, then...after a moment where time stops...explodes outward again. The fountain is so brilliant I am unable to look away. I watch it plume up and out in rising crescendos of light.

Color pours into the black.

It looks like a volcano from orbit, a sparkler on a starless ocean.

I glance to where Tarsi floats beside me.

Her outline is vivid, filled with so many rotating geometries and thinner-than-hair structures that I have trouble not losing myself. I think at first that her appearance is part of the light show, too...then realize this is simply her aleimi, the way she looks in the Barrier.

The fountain spins outwards, expanding clouds of energy and form.

After some time, molten chunks fly past us in the dark. I flinch as the cloud continues to grow, fed by whatever implodes at its core.

Buffeted by giant expulsions of gas and their aleimic counterparts, we begin to spin outwards with all else, moving through space without breath...

...and after I have forgotten the meaning of these things, I see the sparks forming into denser pools. Spirals turn to smaller clocks, moving in distinct rhythms. I watch hundreds of these spirals form, thousands. A kind of wonder breaks through the events of the past days and weeks and months, and I know why Tarsi starts here.