Earthborn

TWELVE - VICTORY

When Edhadeya came to see them after their big public meeting in Jatva, it was Mon who went aside with her to hear what she had to say. "If you've come to persuade me to break ranks with my brothers," he began, but she gave him no chance to finish.

"I know you're already committed to denying everything that was ever noble and good about you, Mon, so I wouldn't waste my time. Father sent me with a message."

Mon felt the tiniest thrill of fear and dread. He often found it hard to believe that Father was letting them get away with all the things they were doing. Oh, he had stopped them from organizing the boycott of digger trade and labor, but of course they got around that by pretending to speak against the boycott-everyone understood the real message. Was Father now taking action against them? And if so, why was there something inside Mon that welcomed it? Was it that victory had come to them too easily, and he wanted some kind of contest?

"Are you listening?" asked Edhadeya.

"Yes," said Mon.

"Father is worried that some of his soldiers might decide that their duty to the king requires them to remove the source of his recent unhappiness. Some chance remarks of his, overheard by others out of context, have given some soldiers the impression that he would welcome this."

"Sounds to me as though he gave an order and changed his mind a little too late." Mon laughed nastily.

"You know that isn't true."

He did, of course. His truthsense rebelled against the idea-but he was getting better and better at suppressing it.

"What does he think we're going to do?" asked Mon. "Go into hiding? Stop speaking publicly? He can forget it. Killing us would only make martyrs of us and make our victory complete. Besides, he didn't raise cowards."

"Fools, yes, liars, yes, but not cowards." Edhadeya smiled grimly. "He knows you won't back down. All he suggested was that you keep your travel plans secret. Don't tell people where you're going next. Don't tell them when you're going to leave."

Mon thought about it for a moment. "All right. I'll tell the others."

"Then I've done my duty." She turned to leave.

"Wait," said Mon. "Is that all? No other messages? Nothing personal from you?"

"Nothing but my loathing, which I freely give to all five of you, but with a special extra dose for you, Mon, since I know that you know that Akma is wrong with every word he says. Akma may be doing most of the talking, but you are the most dishonest one, because you know the truth."

Mon started to explain again about how his childish truthsense was pure illusion designed to win attention for the second son of the king, but before he was well launched into it, she slapped his face.

"Not to me," she said. "You can tell that to anyone else and they can believe it if they want, but never say it to me. The insult is unbearable."

This time when she walked away, melting into the dispersing crowd, he didn't call her back. The stinging of his cheek had brought tears to his eyes, but he wasn't sure if it was just the pain that had done it. He thought back to those wonderful days when he was young and Edhadeya was his dearest friend. He remembered how she trusted him to take her true dream to Father, and because of Arnnha's absolute trust in his truthsense, he had won a hearing and an expedition was launched and the Zenifi were rescued. He had believed in those days that this would be his place in the kingdom, to be Aronha's most trusted counselor because Aronha would know that Mon could not lie. And the time when Bego used him to help translate the Rasulum leaves... .

Funny, now that he thought of it with the sting of Edhadeya's slap still in his face, how Bego didn't believe in the Keeper, but he still used Mon to help him with the translation. Wasn't it Bego, really, who taught them all to disbelieve in the Keeper? But Bego believed. Or at least believed in Mon's gift.

No, no, Akma already explained that. Bego didn't think of it as a gift from the Keeper, he thought of it as an innate talent in Mon himself. That's right, the ability to sense when people really believed what they were saying. It had nothing to do with absolute truth, and everything to do with absolute belief.

But if that's the case, thought Mon, why don't I ever get a sense that a single thing that Akma says is true? I haven't really got the logic of that straight. If my truthsense came from the Keeper, then the Keeper might be trying to turn me against Akma by refusing to confirm anything he says. But then, that would mean there really was a Keeper, so that can't be the reason. At the same time, if Akma is right and my truthsense is merely my own ability to tell when people are certain that they're telling the truth, what does that say about my complete lack of confirmation concerning Akma's words? It means that no matter how convincing he sounds-and don't I get caught up in his speeches the way the crowd does, swept along and utterly persuaded?-my truthsense still says that he's lying. He doesn't believe a word he's saying. Or if he believes it, it's like an opinion, not like a certainty. At the core of him, in his heart, in the deepest places in his mind, he isn't saying these things because he is sure of them.

So what does Akma believe? And why am I denying my truthsense in favor of Akma's uncertainties?

No, no, I already went through this with Akma, and he explained that a truly educated man never believes anything with certainty because he knows that further learning might challenge any or all of his beliefs; therefore I will only get a strong response from my truthsense about people who are ignorant or fanatical.

Ignorant or fanatical... like Edhadeya? Bego?

"Well, what did she want?" asked Aronha.

Mon's reverie had carried him back to where his brothers and Akma were speaking with the leaders of the local Assembly of the Ancient Ways. This was the part of founding a religion that bothered Mon the most. While they got plenty of donations from rich and educated people, the ones who actually were willing to take the time to govern the assembly weren't people that Mon much cared for. A lot of them were former priests who had lost their jobs back at the time of the reforms-an arrogant bunch that thought themselves a sort of wronged aristocracy, full of grievance and conceit. Others, though, were the kind of digger-hating bigots that, in Mon's opinion, were almost certainly the very men who either carried out or ordered the cruel mistreatment of the Kept during the persecutions. It made his skin crawl to have to associate with them. Aronha had privately confessed to Mon that he hated dealing with these people, too. "Whatever else we might say about Akmaro," Aronha commented then, "he certainly attracts a better grade of priest." They could never say this in front of Akma, however, since he still became very upset at any reminder of Luet's marriage to the priest Didul, and to praise the priests of the Kept as a class would surely cause an eruption of Akma's temper.

"She had a warning from Father," said Mon.

"Oh, is he starting to threaten us now?" asked Akma. He had his arm across the shoulder of a young thug who might well have been one of those who broke the bones or tore the wings of children.

"Let's talk about it when we're alone," said Mon.

"Why, do we have something to hide from our priests?" asked Akma.

"Yes," said Mon coldly.

Akma laughed. "He's joking, of course." But a few minutes later, Akma had managed to get rid of the young man and he and the Motiaki withdrew to a place near the riverbank. "Don't ever do that to me again, please," said Akma. "The day will come when we can use the machinery of state to support our assembly, but for right now we need the help of these people and it doesn't help when you make them feel excluded."

"Sorry," said Mon. "But I didn't trust him."

Akma smiled. "Of course you didn't. He's a contemptible sneak.

But he's a vain contemptible sneak and I had to work pretty hard to keep him from going away angry."

Mon patted Akma's arm. "As long as you bathe after touching him, I'm sure everything will be fine." Then he told them what Edhadeya had said.

"He's obviously trying to hamper us," said Ominer angrily. "Why should we believe anything he says?"

"Because he's the king," said Aronha, "and he wouldn't lie about something like this."

"Why not?" demanded Ominer.

"Because it shames him to admit he may not be able to control his soldiers," said Aronha. "I wish we didn't have to hurt Father so badly. If only he'd understand that we're doing this for the sake of the kingdom."

"We can't change our whole schedule around," said Ominer. "People are expecting us."

"Oh, don't worry about that," said Mon. "We'll draw a crowd whenever and wherever we show up. It might add a bit of mystery, for that matter, no one ever knowing where we'll be speaking next. Add to the excitement."

"It makes us look like cowards," said Ominer.

Khimin piped up. "Not if we announce that we have to do this because we've got good information that some of the king's men are out to kill us!"

"No!" Aronha said firmly. "We will never do that. People would take that as an accusation against the king, and it would be dishonorable for us to accuse him when he was the very one who sent us warning to try to protect us."

Akma clapped Khimin on the back. "There you go, Khimin. When Aronha decides that something is dishonorable, we can't do it even if it would have been a pretty effective ploy."

"Don't make fun of my sense of honor, Akma," said Aronha.

"I wasn't," said Akma. "I admire you for it."

Mon suddenly had an irresistible impulse to make trouble. "That's the way that Aronha most resembles Father. The only reason we've had any success at all is that Father is so honorable."

"Then that makes honor a weakness, doesn't it?" asked Ominer.

Aronha answered him with withering contempt. "In the short run, dishonor gives an advantage; in the long run, a dishonorable king loses the love of his people and ends up the way Nuab did. Dead."

"They tortured him to death with fire, didn't they?" asked Khimin.

"Try not to sound so delighted at the thought of it," said Akma. "It makes other people uneasy."

But what Mon noticed, what disturbed him in all this, was the fact that Akma seemed to draw closer to Ominer the more he said things that should have made a decent person recoil from him. Ominer said that honor was a weakness; now, though he said not a word about it, Akma had his arm around Ominer's shoulders and Ominer was all smiles. This is wrong. There's something seriously wrong. Akma wasn't like this, not even as recently as last year, before all this began. I remember when he would have been adamant about honor and decency as Aronha was. What is it, are the vile people we associate with now beginning to influence him? Or is it simply a natural consequence of having the adulation of so many thousands of people?

Whatever it was that was happening to Akma, Mon hated it. This couldn't be the real Akma emerging; it was more as if Akma were beginning to take on this cynical, amoral posture because he thought it was what he had to become in order to have his victory. Or perhaps it was a true part of Akma that never came out until he began to think that he was so important and powerful that he didn't have to be decent to other people anymore. How much of his bantering with Aronha is really joking these days, Mon wondered, and how much of it is real contempt for Aronha's kingly bearing?

I mustn't think these things, Mon reminded himself. It's the Keeper trying to win me away from my brothers.

No, it's not the Keeper because there is no Keeper... .

Mon excused himself from them because he needed to sleep. The others all took it as a signal. The conversation turned to empty playful chatter as they walked back to the house where they were staying. The place was far too small for five grown men to stay-half the family that lived there had been farmed out to neighbors' houses-but Akma insisted that they couldn't always stay in rich men's houses or the Kept would be able to accuse them of pride. Seeing what the Kept already accused them of, Mon thought the addition of one nib re minor charge would be worth it for a good night's sleep, but as usual Aronha saw things Akma's way and so he was crammed into a space where he couldn't stretch out or roll over without waking somebody up. The poor just don't build big enough houses, he told himself as a nasty little joke. He could never say it out loud, of course, because Akma would tell him that "people won't understand it's just humor."

The next morning, Aronha decided they'd take Father's advice and leave at once instead of staying another day, and instead of going to Fetek, they'd head for Papadur. Oh, excellent, thought Mon, twice the walk, and uphill the whole way instead of down. I'll have to write Father a note thanking him for his suggestion.

On the way, Akma critiqued Khimin's speech of the night before. Mon had to admire the deft way that he did it, always praising right along with his criticisms so that Khimin never felt diminished. It helped, of course, that Khimin held Akma in absolute awe.

"What you said about how our teachers are well-educated and the Kept teachers are all just as ignorant as their students-that was a deft point, and I'm glad you made it."

Khimin smiled. "Thanks."

"There's just a word-choice thing you'll want to think of for next time. I know, it's so frustrating, you have to think of so many things at once, the same thing happens to me, you get one thing right and something else slips. But that's why not everybody can do this."

It was so easy for Mon to see Akma's flattery, how he set Khimin up and won him over. Yet Khimin was oblivious, the poor fool.

Then Mon had the uneasy thought that perhaps Akma adapted his technique to whatever fool he happened to be talking to, and maybe to someone else Mon looked just as oblivious, just as gullible.

"I was thinking, as you talked last night, How can I steal this idea from Khimin and use it in my speech?"

Khimin laughed. So did Ominer, who was listening in-and who definitely could use some help with his speeches, too, since, while he never stammered or fumbled as Khimin did, he was also never for a moment entertaining.

"Here's how I would have said it," Akma offered. " ‘My father, in his compassion, has established a religion in which the ignorant teach the ignorant, and the poor minister to the poor. This is a noble enterprise; let no man interfere with it. But for humans and angels, for people of education and manners, there is no reason to pretend we need the primitive doctrines and coarse company of Akmaro's so-called Kept.' "

"What do you mean, ‘Let no man interfere with it'?" asked Khimin. "I thought that's what we were doing!"

"Of course that's what we're doing, and the audience knows it. But you see what the effect of that is? It makes it seem like we're not anybody's enemy. We're not opposing them, we're meeting the needs of the better sort of people while the Kept meet the needs of the poor and ignorant. Now, how many people in our audiences think of themselves as poor and ignorant?"

"Most of them!" Ominer said snidely.

"Most of them are poor, compared to someone who grew up in the king's house," said Akma, with only a hint of sarcasm. "But how do they think of themselves? Everybody thinks he's one of the more educated, refined people-or if he isn't, he's certainly going to do everything he can to make sure other people think he is. So now- which assembly is he going to go to? The one that will make him seem to be one of the educated and refined. You see? Nobody can accuse us of name-calling or abusing the Kept-and yet, the more we praise them, the more we make people want to stay as far away from them as possible."

Khimin laughed with delight. "It's like-you take what you want to say, and then you find a way to say the opposite, but so that it will have the effect you want."

"Not quite the opposite," said Akma. "But you're getting it, you're getting it!"

Mon's truthsense suddenly erupted inside him, rejecting what he had just heard with such violence that he felt like he might throw up. He stopped walking and, without meaning to, sank to his knees.

"Mon?" asked Aronha.

At that moment there was a loud noise, and all of them looked up to see a huge object, grey as granite, whirling as it plummeted toward them. Smoke poured out of it as if it were on fire, and the roaring sound was deafening. Mon covered his ears with his hands and saw that his brothers were doing the same. At the last moment the huge grey stone veered off and fell toward the ground not a dozen paces from them, the smoke and dust blinding them. ‘At that moment the earth shook, throwing them from their feet like punted dolls. Yet there was no crashing sound, or if there was, it was swallowed up in the roar of the fallen stone and the rumbling of the earth.

As the smoke and dust cleared, they saw someone standing in front of the stone, but what he looked like they couldn't guess, for he shone so brightly from every part of his body that their eyes could not see anything but the human shape of him. The reason there had been no crashing sound now became clear, for the great grey object hovered in the air perhaps half a meter from the ground. It was impossible. It was irrational.

The man of light spoke, but they couldn't hear him; his voice was lost in the other noise.

The stone suddenly fell silent. The rumbling of the earthquake faded. Mon raised himself onto his arms and looked at the man of light.

"Akma," said the man. "Stand up."

The voice was hardly human; it was like five voices at once, five different pitches that set up painful vibrations in Mon's head. He was glad that it was Akma's name that was called, not his; and though he was immediately ashamed of his cowardice, he was still glad.

Akma struggled to his feet.

"Akma, why are you persecuting the people of the Keeper? For the Keeper of Earth has said, These are my people, these are the Kept. I will establish them in this land, and nothing but their own evil choices will be allowed to overthrow them!"

Mon was overwhelmed with shame. All these months of denying his truthsense, and it had been right all along. Akma's arguments proving that there was no Keeper now seemed so thin and meaningless- how could Mon have believed him for an instant, when he had the truthsense within him telling him otherwise all along? What have I done? What have I done?

"The Keeper has heard the pleas of the Kept, and also the plea of your father, the true servant of the Keeper. He has begged the Keeper for years to bring you to understand the truth, but the Keeper knew that you already understood the truth. Now you father begs the Keeper to stop you from harming the innocent children of earth."

The earth rumbled under them again; Akma was knocked to his knees, and Mon fell, his face striking the damp soil of the road.

"Can you claim any more that the Keeper has no power? Are you deaf to my voice? Blind to the light that shines from my body? Can't you feel the earth shake beneath you? Is there no Keeper?"

Mon cried out in fear, "Yes! There is! I knew it all along! Forgive me for my lies!" He could hear his brothers also crying out, pleading for mercy; only Akma remained silent.

"Akma, remember your captivity in the land of Chelem. Remember how the Keeper delivered you from bondage. Now you are the oppressor of the Kept, and the Keeper will deliver them from you. Go your way, Akma, and seek no more to destroy the Assembly of the Kept. Their pleas will be answered, whether you choose to destroy yourself or not."

With those words, the light coming from the messenger's body seemed to increase in brightness and intensity-something Mon would have thought impossible, since he was already nearly blinded when he looked at him. Yet he was able to see that the man of light extended his arm and a bolt of lightning crackled in the air between his finger and Akma's head. Akma seemed to dance in the air for a moment like an ash suspended over a fire; then he fell in a heap. The huge stone roared again, and again dust and smoke arose to blind them all. When it cleared, the stone was gone, the messenger also, and the earth was still.

Khimin was weeping. "Father!" he cried out. "Mother! I don't want to die!"

Mon might have scoffed, but the same feelings were coursing through his own heart.

"Akma," said Aronha.

Of course, thought Mon. It's my older brother who has the decency to remember our friend instead of thinking of himself. Mon was filled with new shame. He got up and staggered to where Akma lay unconscious.

"There is a Keeper," Ominer was intoning. "I know there's a Keeper, I know it now, I know it, I know it."

"Shut up, Ominer," said Mon. "Help us get Akma into the sunlight, onto the grass."

They carried him then, his body limp.

"He's dead," said Khimin.

"If the man of light meant to kill him," said Mon, "why would he tell him to stop interfering with the Kept? You don't have to give instructions to dead men."

"If he's alive," said Aronha, "then why isn't he breathing? Why can't I find a pulse or hear a heartbeat?"

"I tell you he is alive," said Mon.

"How can you know that?" demanded Ominer. "You haven't even checked him."

"Because my truthsense affirms it. Yes, he lives."

"Suddenly your truthsense is back again?" asked Aronha ironically.

"It never left. I denied it, I ignored it, I fought against it, but it never left." It hurt to say these words. And yet it was also a relief.

"This whole time your truthsense has been telling you that the things we taught were lies?" asked Aronha.

Aronha's tone was a slap in the face. "Akma told me that my truth-sense was a lie! Self-deception! I was ashamed to talk about it." He could see contempt on Aronha's face. "Are you going to blame this on me, Aronha? Is that the kind of man you are? It's all Mon's fault that you were doing this? The Keeper sends us a being of light to tell us that we were lying, destroying something that mattered, and you're going to point the finger at me?"

It was Aronha's turn to look ashamed. "I made my own choice, I know it. I kept thinking, if Mon says it's right, it must be right-only I knew it was wrong, and I was using my reliance on you as an excuse. The younger boys, now, they can hardly be held responsible. You and I and Akma put a lot of pressure on them and-"

"I made my own choices too!" Khimin shouted. "The messenger didn't come to stop you. He came to stop us all." Mon realized that Khimin was proud that he had been visited by a messenger from the Keeper. That had to be better than a true dream. Examining his own heart, Mon realized that he had such feelings, too.

"The messenger may have come to stop us all," Ominer said, "but he only spoke to Akma. Because the truth is that we were all following Akma from the beginning."

"Oh, aren't you the brave one, blaming it on him," said Khimin. "It's all the fault of the one who's lying there like a dead man."

"I'm not saying that to excuse us," said Ominer. "As far as I'm concerned, that should make us even more ashamed. We're the sons of the king! And we let someone talk us into defying and shaming our father and everything he had taught us."

"It was my fault," said Aronha. He managed to hold his voice steady, but he dared not look them in the eye. "I may have half-believed some of Akma's ideas, but when it came to starting our own religion, restoring the old order of the state-I knew it was wrong. I knew the people we were working with were contemptible opportunists. I knew that the diggers we were driving out of Darakemba were better people than our supposed friends. And I'm the one who was raised to be king. I don't deserve it. I forbid you to call me Ha-Aron anymore. I'm just Aron."

Mon couldn't contain his frustration any longer. "Don't you see what you're doing, even now? We followed Akma because he flattered us and fed our pride. We loved it while we were doing it, too. We loved being important and powerful. We loved making Father back down before us, we loved changing the world, we loved thinking we were smarter than everybody else and having people admire us and treat us like we were important. It was pride that kept us going. And now what are we doing? Khimin's wetting himself because we were so important that the Keeper sent a man of light to stop us-don't argue with me, Khimin, I was feeling the same thing myself. And Aronha here wants to take all the blame himself, because he's the one who should have known better and don't you see? It's still pride! It's still the same thing that got us into trouble in the first place!"

"I'm not proud," said Aronha, and now his voice was trembling. "I can't stand the thought of facing anybody."

"But we will," said Mon. "Because we have to let them see what a miserable bunch we are."

"Isn't that a kind of pride, too?" asked Ominer nastily.

"Maybe it is, Ominer! But you want to know the one thing I'm really proud of? The one thing that makes me glad that you're my brothers, that I'm one of you?"

"What?" said Aronha.

"That not one of you suggested that we go on fighting the Keeper," said Mon. "That it didn't cross your minds that maybe we could remain a part of the Assembly of tne Ancient Ways."

"That doesn't mean we're good, or anything," said Ominer. "It might just mean we're terrified."

"We could only rebel when we could fool ourselves into thinking that we believed there was no Keeper. Now we know better. We've seen things that we never imagined, things that happened only in the time of the Heroes. But remember those stories? Elemak and Meb-bekew saw things every bit as strong as this! And yet they kept rebelling, right to the end of their lives. Not us! Our rebellion is over."

Aronha nodded. "I still meant what I said about being Aron now."

Mon shot back at once, "You'll stay Aronha until Father tells you otherwise! He didn't take away the honorific the whole time you were shaming him."

Aronha nodded again.

"This will kill Mother," Khimin said, weeping.

Mon put his arm around his youngest brother and held him. "I don't know if we can decently ask Father to take us back. But we have to go to him, if only so he can have the victory of turning us away."

"Father will take us back," said Aronha. "That's the kind of man he is. The question is whether we can undo any of the harm we've caused."

"No," said Ominer. "The question is, will Akma live or not? We have to get him back to Darakemba. Do we keep him here and hope that he'll revive? Or search for help to carry him back?"

"There are four of us," said Khimin. "We can carry him."

"I've heard that Shedemei the schoolmaster is a healer," said Mon.

"Now we need help from a woman we referred to as a criminal mixer of species," said Aronha bitterly. "In our time of need, it doesn't cross our minds to turn to our own Assembly of the Ancient Ways. We know, we always knew, that the only help we can count on will be found among the Kept."

Shame tasted foul in their mouths as they made a litter for Akma out of their coats and staves, then lifted the staves to their shoulders to carry him. As they neared more settled country, people ran out to see them, these four men carrying what seemed to be a corpse on their shoulders, as if to take him to be buried.

"Go," Aronha said to them-said to everyone who came out to meet them. "Go and tell everyone that the Keeper sent a messenger to strike down the Motiaki and stop them from telling their lies. We are the sons of Motiak, and we return in shame to our father. Go and tell everyone that Akma, the son of Akmaro, has been struck down by the messenger of the Keeper, and whether he will live or die no one can say!"

Over and over he said these things, and every time that the words were said to one of the Kept, the response was the same: not rejoicing, not gloating, not condemnation, but tears and embraces and then, inevitably, the most unbearable thing of all: "Can we help you? Can we carry Akma for a little way? Oh, his father and mother will weep to see him like this! We will pray to the Keeper to let them see their son alive again! Let us help you!" They brought water to them, brought them food, and not once did any of the Kept reprove them. Others were not so kind. Men and women who had no doubt cheered for Akma and the sons of Motiak during their speeches now shouted bitter denunciations, calling them liars, frauds, heretics. "Arondi! Mondi! Ominerdi! Khimindi!" How bitter it was that while they really were rebelling against their father, no one dared to put the term for traitor in their names; but now that they had ended their rebellion and confessed their wrongdoing, the epithet was heaped upon them.

"It's what we deserve," Mon said, when Ominer began to point out the hypocrisy of their accusers.

And then, gallingly, they had to watch and listen as the Kept took the shouters aside and rebuked them. "Don't you see that they're filled with grief? Can't you see that Akma is nearly dead? They're doing you no harm now, let them pass, give them peace."

Thus the Kept became their protectors on their journey. And many of them were diggers. Mon was not content to let Aronha's speeches be all they heard. To the diggers, Mon added his own message. "Please, go and find the earth people who are on the road, leaving Darakemba. Tell them that we beg them to come home. Tell them that they are better citizens of Darakemba than the sons of Motiak. Don't let them leave."

They slept beside Akma that night on the road, and late the next day they reached Darakemba. Word had gone ahead of them, and when they got to Akma's house, a huge crowd parted to let them through, and Akmaro and Chebeya stood in the doorway to receive the almost-living body of their son. Inside the house the king their father waited, and their sister Edhadeya, and they wept at how lovingly their father and sister embraced them, and wept again as Akmaro and Chebeya knelt over the ruins of their son.

On the road, the being of light appeared. The earth trembled. Akma should have been surprised but he was not. It was the strangest thing, that it did not feel strange to him. As the messenger spoke, what kept running through Akma's mind was the thought, What took you so long?

As soon as he noticed his own lack of surprise, he wondered at it. He couldn't have been expecting anything like this. He didn't know that any being like this existed. Certainly in his scholarship he had never come up with any such thing. Besides, experience proved nothing. This could be nothing more than a hallucination shared by a group of five men who were in desperate need of some affirmation of their importance to the universe. Instead of proving that there really was a Keeper of Earth, this experience might prove nothing more than the inescapable unconscious power of childhood belief, even over men who thought they had outgrown it.

But as the messenger kept speaking (and how can I hear every word and still have time to think all these thoughts? What extraordinary clarity of mind. I'd like to tell Bego about this phenomenon. What did the king end up doing to Bego, anyway? Look at this-I go off on a tangent, wondering about Bego, and yet I haven't missed a word of the message) Akma knew that this was not a shared hallucination, or that if it was, it was a hallucination induced by the Keeper of Earth, because this was definitely sent from outside himself. Why did he know that? It was as Edhadeya said, you simply know the difference when it has happened to you. Only it isn't the being of light that's doing it. No, that's just a show, just a spectacle. It isn't having my eyes dazzled or the earth shaking under my feet or great roaring noises or smoke or a strange-sounding voice that makes me sure. I simply... know.

And then he thought: I always knew.

He remembered back to the time when he was in the greatest terror of his life-when the sons of Pabulog first threw him down and began to torture him and humiliate him. He couldn't have put it into words at the time, but underneath the fear for his life, there was shame at his helplessness; and underneath that there was steely courage that made him try not to beg for mercy, that sustained him through it all and allowed him to walk, naked and smeared with mud and filth and ruined food, back to his people. He knew at the time what that strength was-it was the absolute certainty of the love of his parents (and the memory of it stabbed him; I had their love, I still have their love, it was as firm as I believed even as a little boy, my faith was not misplaced, and look what I've done to them), a sense of the unbreakable cords that bound them together, almost as if he had the raveling skill of his mother without ever having noticed it consciously.

And yet underneath that there was something else. A sense that someone was watching everything that happened, watching and saying, What these boys are doing to you is wrong. The love your parents have for you is right. Your weeping, your shame, they are not flaws in you, you can't help it. Your effort at courage is worthy. It is right for you to go back to your people. A constant judge, assessing the moral value of what he was doing. How could he now remember something that he hadn't noticed at the time? And yet he knew without doubt that this watcher had been there at the time, and that he had loved this voice inside him, because when he did well it said so.

The messenger was saying, "The Keeper has heard the pleas of the Kept, and also the plea of your father, the true servant of the Keeper." How long had the speech gone on? Not long at all; it was barely begun, really, he could tell. It was as if he knew every word the messenger would say and how long was allotted to each part of the message, so that his mind could divide its attention between little slices required to hear and understand the words, and great long passages of time between those slices in which he could search out this mystery, this observer that he had had within him all these years and never noticed.

He saw himself sitting on a hillside watching Father teach the Pa-bulogi. He felt the rage inside his boyish heart, heard himself vowing revenge. But on whom? Now he could see what he had not seen then: What he was raging at was not the Pabulogi at all, and not even his father for teaching them. No, the betrayal that stung him to the heart was against all of them and none of them-it was asainst the Keeper of Earth for daring to save the people without using Akma as his instrument.

And what was that secret inner watcher saying then? Nothing. Nothing at all. It had withdrawn. It was silent within him while his heart was filled with rage at not having been chosen.

I drove it away. I was empty then.

But no, not completely empty, for now he could sense it like the softest possible sound, the tiniest possible mark, the dimmest possible star that could still be seen at all. The watcher was still there, and it was quietly saying, It was not your time, it was not your time, be patient, the plan is larger than you, I needed others this time, your time will come... .

So the watcher was there, but had no effect on him, because his own rage drowned it out.

And now, looking inside himself, he realized that the watcher was still inside him, still speaking, like a voice behind the voice of his mind, offering perpetual commentary on every conscious thought but always fleeing from consciousness itself whenever he tried to seize the elusive wisdom. Even now he could only remember the comment that had just passed, not hear the one that was happening right now.

Now you know me, the watcher had just said. You knew me all along, but now you know that you know me.

Yes, said Akma silently in reply. You are the Keeper of Earth, and you have been part of me all along. You have been like a spark kept alive inside me no matter how I tried to put that fire out, no matter how often I denied you, there you were.

"Their pleas will be answered," the messenger was saying, "whether you choose to destroy yourself or not." And with that the message ended. The bright arm reached out to point to him. The finger crackled and hissed and a terrible pain touched every nerve in his body at once, he was entirely on fire, and in that moment of exquisite agony he could remember what the watcher, what the Keeper, had just... finished... saying... .

Now you know me, Akma. And now I'm gone.

Until that moment, Akma could not have imagined a more terrible pain than the suffering of his body as the messenger's bolt of power touched all his nerves at once. But now that pain had ended and Akma's body lay crumpled on the ground, and he understood that the pain of his body was nothing, it hadn't even touched him, it was almost a pleasure compared to. ...

Compared to perfect solitude.

He was connected to nothing. He had no name because there was no one to know him, no place because he was connected to nothing, no power because there was nothing on which he could act. Yet he knew that once he had had these things and now they were torn from him; he was lost and would never be anything or anyone again; he was lost because no one knew him. Where is the one who watches? Where is the one who knows me? Where is the one who names me? I only just found him inside me, didn't I? How could he have left me now?

There was no pain compared to this loss. He wouldn't mind being restored to the agonized body he had been connected to only a few moments ago, because it was better to feel that pain, with the watcher judging him, than to feel this utter lack of pain, with no one watching him. When I felt the pain I was part of something; now I am part of nothing.

Didn't I want this? To be only myself, responsible to no one, un-commanded, uncontrolled, unexpected, free? I didn't know what it meant till now, to owe nothing to anyone, to have no duty because I had no power to act. I didn't realize that utter independence was the most terrible punishment.

All my life the Keeper was inside me, judging me. But now the judging is over. I was not fit to be part of the Keeper's world.

As he knew this, the reasons for his knowledge began to come into his mind. Images that he had refused to imagine before now came to him with perfect reality. An old digger woman being set upon and beaten by human men, tall and terrifying; and because Akma was inside her, all her memories flooded over him and he knew all the meanings of this moment. When his comprehension of the old woman's suffering was complete, he suddenly passed into the mind of one of the thugs, and now he was no longer a thug, but a man, sickened by his own action yet still hot-blooded from violence, not daring to voice his own self-contempt because then he would be shamed in front of. ...

And in that moment Akma was inside the man whose admiration the thug had treasured, and saw his sense of pride and power at having set in motion the dark events that terrorized the Kept. He was hungry for power, and loved having it now, for now they would have to think of him when they wanted something done, they would respect him... .

And now the "they" in the plotter's mind took on a shape, several shapes, rich old men who had once been influential in the kingdom but now were only important in Darakemba, for the kingdom had outgrown their petty reach. When Aronha is king, he'll know that my influence is valuable. I can accomplish the things that are too dark for him to do with his own hands. I will not be despised, when the new king comes.

It took no further explanation for Akma to understand, for wasn't he the one who captured the hearts and minds of the sons of Motiak, who united them against the policies of his own father and the king? The certainty in his mind was unassailable: This old woman would not have been beaten if I had not deliberately given others cause to think that they would gain some advantage through cruelty to the Kept. The chain of cause was long, but it was not false, and the worst thing was that Akma knew that he had known it all along, that in his hatred and envy of the Keeper's power he had, in fact, longed for violent and cruel action and, instead of doing it with his own hands, had flung his power out into the world and caused other hands to do what he wanted done.

This is what the Keeper does, to accomplish his good works: casts his influence out into the world and gives people encouragement for their good impulses. The watcher that was present in me is present in every living soul; no one is alone; everyone is touched by those gentle words of affirmation when they do what the Keeper asks: Well done, my good child, my faithful friend, my willing servant. My own power was but a small part of what the Keeper has, a dim shadow of his influence-but instead of using it to make other people a bit more happy, a bit more free, I used it to kindle the avarice and envy in some hearts, who then fanned the flames of violence in others. I was inside their hearts when they struck, and my voice, even though they didn't know it was my voice, was saying, Break, tear, hurt, destroy. She is not part of the world that we are building; drive her out. Those I used as my hands in this dirty business were also responsible for their own actions, but that does not absolve me. For those who do good, do it with the Keeper inside them, urging them on, praising them for their kindness-yet the Keeper does not make them do it. The good works are their own, and also they are the Keeper's. So also were the cruelties of these dark-hearted men their own, and yet mine as well. Mine.

No sooner had he understood his own role in the beating of that one old woman than a new cruelty came into his mind, a child who cried out in hunger and had nothing to eat because his father had lost his income in the boycott; Akma saw through the child's eyes, and then through the father's, feeling his shame and despair at being unable to give his child relief, and then Akma was the mother in her impotent rage and her complaints against the Keeper and the Kept for having brought this down upon them, and again he followed the chain of suffering and evil-the merchants who once had bought the father's goods, who now refused to buy, some out of fear of reprisal, some out of a personal bias against diggers that now had become respectable-no, patriotic!-because Akma had stood before a crowd and told them that they must all obey the law and not boycott anybody and the audience had laughed because they understood what Akma wanted... .

He wanted the child to weep and the father's pride to break and the mother's loyalty to the Kept to burn out in helpless fury. He wanted this because he had to punish the Keeper for not choosing him back when he was a child desperate to save his little sister from the lash.

Over and over, time after time, scene after scene, he saw all the pain he had caused. How long did it last? It could have been a single minute; it could have been a dozen lifetimes. How could he measure it, having no connection to reality, no sense of time? He saw it all, however long it took; and yet each moment of it was also eternal, because his understanding was so complete.

If he could have made a sound, it would have been an endless scream. It was unbearable to be alone; and worst of all was that in his solitude he had to be with himself, with all his loathsome, contemptible actions.

Long before the parade of crimes was over, Akma was finished. He no longer saw himself leading the parade of conquering soldiers sweeping through the Elemaki lands. He could not bear the thought of anyone ever seeing him again, for now he knew what he truly was and could never hide it from himself or anyone else again. The shame was too great. He no longer wished to be restored to all the things that he had lost. Now all he wanted was to be blotted out. Don't make me face anyone again. Don't make me face myself. Don't make me face even you, Keeper. I can't bear to exist.

Yet each time that he thought he had reached bottom and could suffer no more deeply than at this moment, another image would spring into his mind, another person whose suffering he had caused, and... yes ... he could feel more shame and pain than he had felt only a moment ago, when it had already seemed infinite and unbearable.

Shedemei made her way through the quiet house, where so many people quietly came and went, carrying out their tasks. She saw four young men and recognized them as the sons of Motiak; they didn't recognize her, of course, since all they had seen on the road was un-watchable brightness in a human shape. And in a way she didn't recognize them either, for the strutting, laughing, boastful boys that she had first met were gone; and also gone were the cowering, terrified children who trembled before her and winced at every word she spoke-spoke, of course, into a tiny microphone so that the translation equipment could amplify and distort her voice to make it as painful as possible.

What she saw now were four humans who actually had some hint of manhood about them. It was clear from their ravaged faces that they had shed many tears, but they were making no show of grief and remorse now. Instead, as people came to them-many of them diggers, though most were not-they received them graciously. "All we hope for now is that the Keeper will decide to spare Akma's life, so that he can join us in going about trying to undo the terrible harm we caused. Yes, I know that you forgive me; you're more generous than I deserve, but I accept your forgiveness and I vow to you that for the rest of my life I will do all that I can to earn what you've given me freely. But for now we wait and watch with Akma's family. The Keeper struck him down because loyal and obedient Kept like you pleaded for relief. The Keeper hears you. We beg you to plead again with him for the life and forgiveness of our friend." Their words were not always so clear, but the meaning was the same: We will try to undo the harm we caused; we beg you to plead with the Keeper to save our friend.

Shedemei had no particular wish to speak to them-she knew from the Oversoul that they were sincere, that their true natures had once again emerged, wiser now, with painful memories, but committed to lives of decency. What business did she have with them, then? It was Akma that she came to see.

Chebeya met her at the door to Akma's bedchamber. The room was small and sparse-Akmaro and Chebeya really did live modestly. "Shedemei," Chebeya said. "I'm so glad you got word and came. We were a day's walk from the capital when word reached us that the Keeper had struck down our boy. We got home only a few hours before Motiak's boys brought him here. We kept expecting to pass you on the road."

"I went another way," said Shedemei. "I had some botanical specimens to tend to, among other things." She knelt beside Akma's inert body. He certainly did look dead.

Brain activity? asked Shedemei silently.

Well, what is the feeling?

I'm certainly not going to tell his parents that.

No prognosis.

It certainly makes me suspect that Sherem didn't just die of a stroke in the midst of his argument with Oykib. ,

was a stroke. It was just a convenient one. For all we know, the Keeper can make people keel over whenever she wants.>

Good thing that people don't have powers like that. I have enough of a temper that my path would be strewn with corpses all the day long.

Sighing, Shedemei arose from the floor. "He's completely stable. But it's impossible to predict when or whether he will awaken."

"But he's not dying," said Chebeya.

"You're the raveler," said Shedemei. "Is he still bound to this world?"

Chebeya put her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. "No. He's connected to nothing. It's as if he isn't there, as if there isn't anyone at all." Then she did break down and cry, clinging to Akmaro.

"Well, his body isn't dead and it isn't deteriorating, either," said Shedemei, knowing she sounded brusque but unable to think of any gentler way to say what needed saying. "It's in the hands of the Keeper now."

Chebeya nodded.

"Thank you, Shedemei," said Akmaro. "We didn't think that it was something that you could heal, but we had to be sure. You... rumor has it that you can sometimes do remarkable things."

"Nothing as remarkable as what the Keeper can do."

She embraced them both and went her way, back to her students. All the way home, she argued with the Oversoul about what this all meant, what they should have done differently, what might be going on with Akma, if anything.

I wonder, said Shedemei silently, whether the Keeper simply gave him the same dream she gave me-showed him her plan for the world, possessed him with her love, and he was so filled with hate that the experience consumed him.

Don't you sometimes wish that we were like ordinary people, without any unusual sources of information? We might be hearing about these events as nothing more than gossip about famous people.

Neither have I, said Shedemei silently, realizing for the first time that she truly was satisfied with her life and glad of the part that the Keeper had given her in the plan of life. With that thought she suddenly laughed out loud, earning her strange looks from a couple of children passing by. She made a face at them; they shrieked and ran away, but soon stopped running and resumed their laughter and chattering. That's the plan, thought Shedemei. The Keeper only wants us to live with the simplicity and innocence of these little ones. Why is it so hard?

At last Akma's entire life had been unwound before his eyes, every bit of harm that he had caused had been remembered. And the complete memory remained with him, every bit of it, none of it fading into merciful forgetfulness. He understood many things now that he had not understood before, but he could not bear to understand them. He knew that his guilt for the pain suffered by the Kept who were beaten, by the earth people who were driven from their homes, was slight indeed compared to the guilt of having induced so many men and women to do things that drove the Keeper almost completely out of their hearts. To cause a good man pain was a terrible thing; to persuade a man to do evil was far worse.

When the Keeper had first left him, he had longed for his return. Now, though, having seen the terrible consequences of his pride, he couldn't bear the thought of anyone looking at him again, least of all the Keeper of Earth. The only relief he could hope for was to be extinguished, and that was what he longed for. He could not bear to return to the world that he had befouled so badly; he could not bear to stay as he was, utterly alone. If he could only find some road leading to obliteration, he would run to it, hurl himself into oblivion.

One of his memories was that terrible last meeting with his father and mother and the king-he had, of course, felt the anguish of these good people who, even as they faced the likelihood of his destroying all that they had tried to create, still worried more about him than about themselves. Yet as a part of that memory, there was something. His father had... . said something... .

And there it was, the words flowing back into his mind as if his father were only just now speaking them. "When you are at the point of despair, my son, when you see destruction as the only desirable choice, then remember this: The Keeper loves us. Loves us all. Values each life, each mind, each heart. All are precious to him. Even yours."

Impossible. His life had been devoted to undoing the Keeper's work. How could the Keeper possibly love him?

"His love for you is the one constant, Akma. He knows that you have believed in him all along. He knows that you have rebelled against him because you thought you knew how to shape this world more wisely than he. He knows that you have lied to everyone, over and over again, including yourself, especially yourself-and I tell you again that even knowing all of this, if you will only turn to him, he will bring you back."

Could it be the truth? That even now, the Keeper might bring him back? Free him of this terrible exile? Accept him once again, and dwell within him, and whisper to him constantly?

But even if it is true, he thought, do I want to? Shamed in front of the world, guilty of innumerable crimes, won't returning to such a life be more than I can stand?

At once there came to his mind an image of himself, humiliated, smeared by his enemies, returning bravely to his people.

No, that's a false image. Then I was innocent, made naked and filthy by others. Now I'm far more filthy and my nakedness is far more shameful, and it was done entirely by myself.

Yet the courage to return, that was still the same, even if the shame had a far different cause. I must return, if only so that others can see me, not strutting in my glory, but filthy in my shame. I owe it to all those that I have hurt. I would only injure them again if, like a coward, I hid my shame from them.

Oh, Keeper of Earth, he cried out in his solitude. I beg you to have mercy on me. I have poisoned myself with bitterness, I am bound by chains of death that I forged myself and I can't find my way out without your help.

In the instant that he made this plea for help, this recognition of his desperate helplessness, he felt the watcher return to him. It was a simple thing, so easy, so minute an action, as if the Keeper had been poised on the very verge of his heart, ready to touch him the moment he asked. And at this touch, the vast omnipresent memory of all his crimes suddenly was gone. He knew that he had committed them, but they no longer stared him in the face wherever he looked. It was the lifting of a terrible burden; he had never felt so light, so free. And now, even though he still had not regained the use of his body, his solitude was over. He was named, he was known, he was part of something larger than himself, and instead of feeling resentful and wanting to break anything that he could not control, he found himself filled with joy, for now his existence had a meaning. He had a future, because he was part of a world that had a future, and instead of wanting to decide for himself and determine that future for everyone else, he knew that he would be glad just to touch some small part of it. To marry and give happiness to his wife. To have a child and give it the same love that his parents had given him. To have a friend and ease his burden now and then. To have a skill or a secret and teach it to a student whose life might be changed a little by what he learned. Why had he dreamed of leading armies, which would accomplish nothing, when he could do these miraculous small things and change the world?

As Akma realized this, there suddenly flooded into him a clear understanding of all the cords of love that bound him. Everyone who cared for him, who wanted his happiness; everyone that he had ever loved or helped in any way. They were now as present and clear in his mind as, only a few moments ago, his crimes had been. Father. Mother. Luet. Edhadeya. Each one, bound to him by a thousand memories. Mon. Bego. Aronha. Ominer. Khimin. Where once his crimes against them had harrowed up his soul, now their love for him and his for them filled him with joy. Didul and Pabul and their brothers, who once had stood before him in pain because he denied them the forgiveness that they craved from him, now dwelt in his mind because of their love for his father and mother and sister, for the kingdom and the Kept and the world of the Keeper, and most particularly they loved him, they longed for his happiness, they yearned to do anything that was in their power to heal him. How could he have turned them away for so long? These were not the boys who hated him. These were sons of the Keeper, his brothers.

And others, and others; many of those whose pain he had caused now caused him joy solely by wanting him to be joyful. And behind them, within them, shining like light out of their eyes, out of their whole bodies, was the Keeper, wearing all their faces, touching him with all their hands. I know you, he said to them all. You were inside my heart from the earliest moment of my childhood. Your love was with me all along.

His mouth was flooded with the taste of a perfect white fruit, and his body was filled with it, shone with it. He, too, was as bright and shining now as all the others. As exquisite and bitter as his pain had been a moment ago, exactly that exquisite and sweet was his present joy. Then, in a moment, the overwhelming awareness of how he was loved slipped away. It was replaced by the almost forgotten feeling of his own body, stiff and painful-but so sweet, the tang of it, the sharpness of his returning senses. There was light against his eyelids. Something moved; a shadow passed across him, and then light again. He was not alone. And he was alive.

Chebeya cried out, a soft sharp O of happiness. Those who had been dozing awoke; Akmaro, who had been talking with Didul and Luet, strode at once to Chebeya's side.

"His eyes moved under the eyelids," she said.

They both knelt, touched his hand. "Akma," said Akmaro. "Akma, come home to us, my son."

His eyes opened then. He blinked against the light. He turned his head, ever so slightly, and looked at them. "Father," he whispered. "Mother. Forgive me."

"Already," said Chebeya.

"Before you asked," said Akmaro.

"I have so much to do." Then he closed his eyes again and slept, this time a natural sleep, a healing sleep. His father and mother knelt over him, held his hands, stroked his face, wept for joy. The Keeper had been merciful and brought their son back home to them again.