avevale_intelligencer: (Making the Best 2)
[personal profile] avevale_intelligencer
I actually dozed for a while, there in my hiding place, so I missed the furore when Yeesha returned from her walk. The arguments, the accusations, the impassioned pleas. I think I'm relieved, actually.

Of course I had to go and see her again. She would have to know. I waited till dark, and crept to her door again.

She was sitting at her desk, but not writing. I saw the things I had planted, thrown haphazardly into a corner: the inkwell, the pen, the stock of blank Books with Gehn's seal on them.

"Of course," she said lifelessly. "It was you."

"Call out and I will be gone," I said, my hand on the Time Nexus book. "And no-one will believe you."

"They will never follow the path of Leastness now." She was beyond tears. "After all my work, all my struggle...I have failed yet again, and finally."

"You failed because you were wrong," I said. "You can still make a difference."

"Don't taunt me," she said, with an echo of her old fire. "Have a little dignity in your triumph."

"This is no triumph for me," I said. "But it can be for you."

"How could it possibly?" she spat. "My people will never trust me again."

"They will. I may not be as wise as you, but I know people, and you have the gift of leadership. You just need to lead them in the right direction."

"And what direction would that be?" she said. "The way of Ri'Neref? Of Shomat? Of Kadish?"

"The way of Yeesha," I said. "The way that conquers the enemy not by running away, but by engaging with it every moment of every day and never giving in. The way that faces the seducer as an equal, not a victim. The way the Maker truly intended when he gave the D'ni their perilous gifts."

"How can you know what the Maker intends if--" She stifled a sob. "If I do not?"

"I don't," I said. "But I believe the Maker plays fair with his creations. I don't believe he gives a hungry child an apple and forbids her to eat it. I don't believe the Omniverse was made so that we could sit in the middle of it touching nothing for eternity. Your people are on the way to godhood, a good distance ahead of mine. They've hit dead end after dead end...but that's no reason to turn back."

"What are you saying?" She was starting to be interested.

"That there is no easy answer to the problem of power," I said, quoting future-Yeesha back at her. "It's there to be used, and its temptations fought and conquered, every moment of every day. No-one can do it once for everyone, not even you. Each single D'ni, each single human, has to engage with the universe, face its seductions and its traps, and try to finish each day with more victories than defeats. There will be defeats. You're mortal, and fallible. But you know from your own experience that you can wield power and not fall victim to pride. Trust your fellow D'ni to have that strength."

"They will never follow me," she said, but she was weakening, or maybe strengthening.

"Give them time," I said. "And if I may make one suggestion...when they start to Write Ages again..."

"What?"

"Tell them--no matter what you believe--tell them that they are creating new worlds and new people. Tell them that they are, each one of them, solely and ultimately responsible to the Maker, as secondary creators, to see that those worlds and those people live freely and follow their own paths. That all created things are equal, no matter who creates them. Tell them that they matter, that they are significant, and that their actions, good or evil, will have consequences."

She thought about this for a long time. Then she nodded. "I see what you are saying. I will think about it." She looked up at me. "If you are telling the truth..."

"What?"

"If you did come from my future, and if my counsel did have the consequences you claim...then I know what I would have told you to do."

"And?"

"I will not thank you," she said. "Yet. Now go, quickly, before someone sees you."

I linked out, and back to my slowly reviving Myst Island. Something had clicked in my head, and I had to check it out.
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