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  “Humans struggle all their lives to achieve such acceptance,” he mused. “And rarely succeed.”

  “I know. When I’m not filled with fury at their destructiveness—or amazement at their stupidity—I sometimes feel sorry for them. Is that what human religions address?”

  “In part.”

  “And yours?”

  “In part.” He shifted his weight so that he was more comfortable. “How well do you understand the fae?”

  “It’s part of us. Like the air we breathe. How can I divorce myself from it enough to answer you?”

  “I meant, how well do you understand what it is to humans?”

  Her lips curled in a scornful smile. “Your brains are a chaotic mess. That makes the fae a chaotic mess when it responds to you. Right?”

  “Damn close,” he muttered. “Look. If a tribe of rakh live in a land where water’s been scarce, if they and their mounts go thirsty, if the plants themselves need rainfall to survive ... what happens?”

  She shrugged. “It rains.”

  “All right. Why? Because living things need, and that need affects the fae, and the fae alters the laws of probability, making rain more likely ... are you with me?”

  She nodded.

  “Now, consider the human brain. Three distinct levels of functioning, myriad separate parts, each with its own way of reasoning—if reasoning it can be called—some by pure instinct, some by intelligence, some by methods so abstract we have no way of even describing them. All interconnected in such a way that a single thought, a single need, can awaken a thousand responses. Is there drought in the land? One part thirsts. One part wishes for rain. One part fears that rain will never come. One part thinks that if death by thirst is close by, it ought to indulge itself in every pleasure it can. One is angry at nature for starving it, and translates that anger into other things. One channels its fear into violence, in the hope that by redirecting its terror it need not face it head on. One is joyful because enemies are dying also, and another feels that death by dehydration is nature’s just reward for some transgression, real or imagined, which it committed. All of that at once, inside one human head. Little wonder your people consider it chaotic. There’s a type of doctor whose only purpose is to help humans wade through that mess and come to terms with who and what they are. An understanding your people take for granted.

  “So the fae responds to us, just like it responds to you. But it doesn’t recognize that all these levels are integral parts of the same being, it just takes the cue nearest at hand and responds to it. At least that’s how we understand it. With some people the response falls into a predictable pattern—they can always control it, they can never control it, the fae responds to fears, or to hopes, or to hates ... but with most people the response is utterly random.

  “We do know that religious images are particularly volatile. So much so that over a hundred gods and messiahs appeared in the first twenty years after the Landing. Those were mere illusions; they had little substance and no power of their own. Reflections of mankind’s need for divine reassurance, no more. But as generation after generation poured their hopes and their fears and their dreams into such images, they gained in strength. They gained in power. They took on the personae that man ascribed to them, and came to believe in their own existence. We know that some of the colonists believed in a god-born messiah who would come and save them. The result was twenty false messiahs, each one more convincing than the last. Each one a construct of the fae, who blindly gave us what we wanted or feared the most. And of course they all fed on us, in one way or another. That’s what constructs do: they feed on their source. That’s why even the pleasant ones are so terribly dangerous.

  “There was a time called the Dark Ages, when terror and havoc reigned. Fortunately, there were still a few men and women with clear enough vision to realize that something must be done ... something to mold the human imagination so that it ceased to be its own worst enemy. Thus the Revival was born, an experiment in rigid social structure based upon traditional Earth-values. It was moderately successful. And the Church was founded. A small movement at first, barely of consequence, which taught that the God of Earth was the only divine creature worthy of worship. Because that one God was a concept so vast, so omnipotent, that not all the fae on Erna could mimic it.

  “And then along came one very gifted man who said, what if we take this concept one step further? What if we mold this faith so that it channels our energies creatively, so that it creates for us the world we want?—You must understand, no one had ever thought on that scale before. No one had ever conceived of manipulating the fae as he planned to do: by manipulating humanity’s collective consciousness, so that the fae was forced to respond. It was a brilliant vision, unparalleled in scope. It’s the cornerstone of my faith.”

  “You’re talking about your Prophet.”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Gerald Tarrant.”

  He winced. “In his life—his natural life—that’s what he was to us. He took our prayers and rewrote them, until every word served his purpose. Every phrase. He redesigned every rite and every symbol—even dictated the relative lack of symbology which is the hallmark of our faith—so that with every prayer they voiced, with every breath they drew, the worshipers of the One God would reinforce the power of that vision. If there were enough believers, he taught, and if their faith were strong enough, the very nature of this world could be altered, in accordance with his vision.”

  “Which was?”

  He paused for a moment, arranging his thoughts. How long had it been since he had tried to explain his faith in language so simple? And yet if she were to travel safely among them she must have that knowledge. Toshida’s manner had made that clear.

  “The goal was threefold,” he said at last. “One: To unify man’s faith, so that millions of souls might impress the fae with the same image in unison. Two: To alter man’s perception of the fae—to distance him from that power—thus weakening the link which permitted it to respond to him so easily. This meant a god who wouldn’t make appearances on demand, nor provide easy miracles. It meant hardship and it meant sacrifice. But he believed that in the end it would save us, and permit us to regain our technological heritage. Three: To safeguard man’s spirit while all this was taking place, so that when at last we cast off the shackles of this planet and rejoined our kin among the stars, we wouldn’t discover that in the process we had become something other than human. Something less than we would want to be.” He paused, considering. “I think in some ways that last one’s the hardest part. But I believe it’s the most important.”

  “So what happened?” she pressed.

  “Humankind learned the lesson too well. Because if man could make a true God in his image, why couldn’t he create an obliging godling with even less effort? What you worship shall come to exist, the Prophet wrote. The power of your faith will give your dreams substance. And so it was. A thousand selfish men designed their own prayers and their own psalms and gave birth to a thousand godlings, each with its own petty domain, each feeding on man while serving his earthly desires. Even as the Church grew in strength, this trend continued, until there were over a hundred tiny states with their own pet deities, their own claim to power. So we went to war: man’s final recourse when diplomacy fails him. It was a disaster. Oh, if it had been a clean and glorious conflict, filled with images of faith and capped by a clear-cut victory, it might have stirred men’s hearts and won them to our side. It wasn’t. It was a bloody mess that spanned three centuries, and it ended only when we bit off more than we could chew and tried to do battle with the fae itself—or rather, with the evil the fae had spawned. Our power base destroyed, our precious image sullied, we crept back to our churches and our pews to lick our wounds in private.”

  “And now?”

  He shut his eyes. “We do what we can, Hesseth. We still serve the same dream, but defeat has taught us patience. We no longer see the Prophet’s vision as
the end of a neat progression that’ll be consummated in our lifetimes, but as an ideal state that may not be realized for centuries yet. For tens of centuries. Except here,” he whispered, and he glanced toward Toshida’s ship. “Isolated, unified, devout ... they may have accomplished what the west failed to do. By establishing a state free of pagan influence, by raising their children in unquestioning faith .... what power, Hesseth! It could alter the world. It may already have begun to.”

  “And Tarrant?”

  He stiffened at the sound of the name. “Cast out by his own creation,” he said sharply. “The Church knew that it would never alter the fae’s response to man until it had done away with private sorcery ... and he couldn’t give that up. Not even to save his own soul.” He drew in a deep breath of cool night air, exhaled it slowly. “He tried to do away with Hell, you know. Excess philosophical baggage, he called it. Detrimental to our cause. He erased it from all the texts, expunged it from the liturgy. They put it back. The habits of Earth were too deeply ingrained, the image of divine judgment too comforting for the righteous. In the end he lost that battle.” And so much more....

  “And does he still believe in your Church?”

  “He claims he still serves it. I fail to see how. I think that in the end he’s unwilling to let go of what he created, or admit that it defeated him. He’s vain, Hesseth, very vain, and the Church was his ultimate masterpiece. Sheer ego won’t let him abandon it, even when it damns him with all its strength. Which is part and parcel of his madness.”

  “And what about your own sorcery? How does that fit in?”

  He shut his eyes. Isn’t that the question? How would Toshida answer it, I wonder? “Everything I do is done in the name of God, drawing on that Power for strength. Our Church—the Western Matriarchy—believes that such a Working is compatible with our faith. Others disagree. And here....”

  Here that issue never came up. Here they didn’t have to compromise . It was a sobering thought indeed. And he felt a delicate chill run down his spine at the thought. I’ve never drawn on the fae in my own name, or used it for my private benefit. But will that matter to these people? Will they recognize such fine distinctions?

  “We’ll have to wait and see,” he whispered. Looking out at the foreign ship once more. Wondering about the land that had spawned it. The faith that drove it. Wondering ... and worrying.

  “You know,” Hesseth said quietly, “I don’t envy your species.”

  Yeah, he thought. Doesn’t that say it all?

  They placed bets on the nature of Mercia: where it was, how large it was, how important it was in the scheme of things. Jones Hast made a crude copy of Tarrant’s survey map and pinned it to the outer wall of the cabin section, along with a sharpened pencil. Passengers and crew were invited to mark their guesses and—for ten Faraday dollars or its equivalent—register them with the captain. Two dozen sets of initials now marked the crude reproduction, most of them clustered about the mouth of the inland sea, or fringing the two rivers that emptied their waters into it. Where was Toshida’s capital city most likely to be located? With as little information as they had it was hard to say. He sought out Rasya’s mark, found it sketched in darkly some miles south of a vast delta. The location seemed a little strange to him, but he knew Rasya well enough to suspect that her guess was founded on a sound understanding of what that shoreline was and what it might become. He even put ten dollars of his own on the line, betting that she was right.

  As he handed his coinage to the captain, he remarked, “I’m surprised you let yourself be put in charge of this.”

  Rozca shrugged. “They’ve got to work off their tension somehow, right? Might as well let it be harmless.” As he tucked the bills in his pocket, he added, “I’ve seen worse than this, coming into an unknown shore. Much worse.”

  Aye, Damien thought, I’ll bet you have.

  And then at last the lead ships turned east, heading toward land. Those whose wager marks adorned that portion of the map grinned and exulted as Rasya fought to make out some sign of land in the distance. At intervals she had a small pail let down to catch up a sample of water, which she tasted. Most of the time she spit her mouthful back into the sea with a frown that indicated she was searching for some clue in particular and not finding it. But then, on the fourth day of their escorted voyage, her ritual taste received a different response.

  Damien and Captain Rozca were with her on the bridge; she handed the bucket to them and smiled. Damien did as the captain did, cupping his hand and scooping up a mouthful of water which he clumsily spilled into his mouth and tasted. Even as he spit it out the captain grinned and slapped Rasya on the back. “Damned good call,” he congratulated her. “Within ten miles, if I remember right. For my book you could smell out the currents in all ten hells and still have time for breakfast.”

  Rasya turned to Damien, her blue eyes beaming. “Well?” she demanded.

  The water was cool and slightly murky but not unpleasant to the taste. Damien rolled the moist remnants of it about on his tongue, trying to sift it of meaning. But to him it was water, plain and simple. He swallowed the last few drops in silence, noting that the last few stages of the swallowing process were no more informative than the first.

  “Tastes like seawater,” he said at last.

  “The hell it does,” the captain swore. “What, can’t you tell at all?”

  “No sea sense,” Rasya informed him smugly.

  “There’s no salt in it, man!” the captain informed him. “Or vulkin‘ little, at any rate. That means a river nearby, and a damned big one. Water like that won’t mix with the sea right out if the fresh current’s strong enough. Hell, you can taste the river Vivia nearly a hundred miles out from its mouth; that’s how they found it in the first place, you know.” His hands on his hips, he studied Damien, “When you go into strange waters, you’d better be prepared to do so without a guide and without good charts, and that means learning to read the sea like a book. Gods know, the signs are all there for the seeing—or the tasting,” he amended with a grin. “Rasya and I, we figure practice never hurts. Right?” When Damien said nothing he cocked his head, studying him. “What’s the matter, Reverend? Something’s on your mind, I can see that. Speak up.”

  “I was only thinking,” he said slowly, “that maybe now I understand why my contacts in Faraday claimed you were the only two who could manage these waters.”

  “The only two crazy enough,” Rasya agreed, and the captain grinned. “Damn right,” he declared, displaying a cracked tooth. “Damn right!”

  And I’m also thinking that this watery realm is as alien to me as outer space would be, and that I don’t like the taste of my own helplessness. Whatever course we choose once we reach Mercia, it’ll have to be overland. Unless there’s no alternative.

  Tarrant’ll like that, he thought grimly. And he lifted the slender telescope the man had given him, to resume the search for land.

  The great eastern river spilled its water into the sea with considerable vehemence, along with tons of mud that it had scoured from higher ground. The result was a vast delta of low-lying mud bars, some overgrown with reeds and marsh-brush, some nakedly transient. It was the kind of land that would slow down a tsunami, Damien noted, wearing the great wave down as it crossed mile after mile of shallows, until by the time it hit shore proper there would be little left to devastate man’s settlements. Hell, he thought cynically, it’d be no more than thirty or forty feet high by then. A baby. He preferred the tangible safety of a cliffside perch himself, preferably above the two-hundred-foot mark. That, or a hundred miles of dry land between him and the shore. Or more.

  Face it, priest. You just hate the sea.

  They could see tiny shadows in the distance, dark spots drifting between the mottled islets. Maybe boats, the captain had ventured, set out to harvest something from the marshland. He’d seen that once in the far west. And Damien watched as vast flocks of birds wheeled and dove and came up sputtering with f
ish in their beaks, while the captain described in vivid detail the hallucinogenic marsh-grass one could buy in Denastia City.

  The breeze held steady. The guide-ships led them steadily northeast, skirting the freshwater current. Mile after mile of muddy green landscape passed by them on the port side, teeming with the life of the sea marshes. The smell of it was so thick on the breeze that it overwhelmed all their senses, so that even their hurried lunch of dried meat and grain cakes tasted of swamp grass and guano. Damien swallowed it quickly and moved to the bow, chewing on a bitter shoot he’d plucked from one of the garden boxes atop the wheelhouse. God willing there’d be real fruit soon, and greens that weren’t watered by sea spray; this stuff might have saved them all from Sailor’s Rot, but he’d welcome the day he never had to touch the stuff again.

  Yet another joy of the sea, he thought dryly. He leaned on the bow rail and squinted into the sun, searching for land. The Core was just starting to rise, which was no help at all; between it and the sun he could hardly see.

  And then something flickered on the surface of the water, which was neither marsh-grass nor land. He blinked, trying to focus. A jagged shape silhouetted against the rising sun—no, two—long and low to the water, with peaks that shimmered gold and white in the morning light.

  I’ll be damned, he thought, as he realized what they were. Other ships.

  There were two of them, with more soon to follow: frigates and clippers and at least a dozen other types whose names he didn’t know, who swept by the Glory’s starboard side with no more than a brief flash of red flags in greeting. All bore the same standard, that of the interlinked circles-and-continents, but some flew a lesser pennant beneath it. He counted them as they passed by, awed by the sheer number of them. Granted, the complex tides might favor travel at this hour—he knew they affected shipping schedules, wasn’t quite sure of all the details—but to have such traffic in one place, all linked (he assumed) to one port ... it spoke of considerably more sea travel than he was accustomed to, and he had been around. Was it possible that these people had found a safe harbor—a truly safe harbor—and that there were enough similar ports throughout this land that real sea trade was possible? The concept staggered his imagination. He was accustomed to the sea being regarded as an enemy, unpredictable at best, so that even a simple journey was fraught with peril. But here? He gazed at the great ships in amazement, noting that more‘ than a few spewed the thick smoke of steam power from their central stacks. This was ... this was....