He laughed. "Krinata, this instrument hasn't survived all these millennia by being sensitive to the weather!"

Here the roar of the falls was muted. They piled soft foliage into seats around their fire, and he played.

The whule was a simple stringed, resonating chambered instrument, not amplified. Yet he drew such shapes of sound out of it, weaving them with silences flooded with waterfall and the echoes of the small canyon, that the darkness had texture and the firelight danced in eternal rhythms.

Spellbound, she dismissed the nagging thought that Frey had warned her to keep away from Jindigar, She forgot being a Zavaronne, forgot her short, ephemeral life, and became one with Dushau eternity as if it were native to her identity.

Gradually his music changed, not to a dirge but to a paean to life, acknowledging pain of loss as an essential part of what made things real. He poured his deferred grieving for Rinperee and the other Dushau who'd died in the crash, for Arlai, and Truth, and all they'd known together into his music, and she cried with him, opening depths of herself she'd never suspected, finding pain she'd never known she harbored, hearing within his music the chattering voices of all those lost to them.

The music, familiar yet strange, cathartic, intimate, personal, took her on a journey through soul to confront her God at the gates of death-and-life, to confess weakness and secret failures, and to be accepted, anyway. Hours passed as she sat huddled in her cloak, oblivious to the dying fire, experiencing and wanting only to experience.

As the sun was rising she became aware of a lightness, an inner healing. The grayness of predawn revealed the small waterfall of their alcove filling her vision. The music described every plume, every eddy, every lacy spume tracing rainbows that hadn't been born yet.

To her the waterfall was the power of life, of all creation. Tingling currents of power swept down through her own body. She could not stop it. She dared not try, for it was eternal and infinite. She was caught within it, and was of it, for all time—as if she'd achieved Dushau Completion.

Once before she'd glimpsed this infinitude where all was lashing energies—once before when Jindigar, summoning his role as Aliom Priest, had shown her the symbol of Aliom—a branched lighting flash, power whipping up and down along carved channels faster than the mind could comprehend—she had known but had been unable to encompass. Now she saw the lightning and the waterfall, and knew them for the same power. It was the power that carried her to a decision-action so fast that she didn't think or feel. It was what Aliom called a "strike" and Jindigar admired in her.

She could feel his admiration, as if she were Center of an Oliat and he merely an Outreach trainee impressed with her feats of Aliom art. She gathered him in close, and with the illogic of dream, they became a duad, sharing deep resonances of the peace of Completion at the brink of death.

Into the placid euphoria billowed black clouds of fear. Suddenly she was falling, out of control, bewildered by the forces acting on her. No! she screamed out with every shred of her being. But it had no effect. Cruelly battered and buffeted, she careened into emptiness.

No. Jindigar was there—within her and without. His arms circled her, his eyes filled her vision, his perception echoed in her: the granite cliffs, the hives of native life, the networks of plants like protohives, and in the distance, the intruders' camp like a sore on the land, but over all, the smooth human warmth; tangy odor; silky strands of hair; inefficient ears; hidden, secret eyes.

"No!"

The familiar brick wall shimmered between them. She could almost count the stones mat formed it. "No," she gasped. "Not the stones, not a wall. No, don't..."

He pushed away, large hands swallowing her shoulders as he shook her, and the wall solidified. His voice echoed off it, bat it was a groan ripped from him: "Stop!"

The penetrating awareness faded. She fought double vision and disorientation as be pulled his hands away. Just as his fingers trailed over the back of her hand, his soft nap sending shivers through her, she glimpsed the ecstasy evaporating from his expression, as if he'd firmly closed a sensory door. As she caught her breath, he sat back on his heels, chest heaving. His voice made her throat ache as he said, "Such a precious gift—how could a human—no, of course, you're closer than I, and I—I'm sorry, Krinata, but sometimes it happens. It doesn't mean anything."

She had no idea what he meant, merely felt his gratitude for something she'd given him, and shame he hadn't responded properly. The duad resonance faded even as he spoke, the wall becoming so huge, she couldn't even sense it. "I could live with anything you do except that wall!"

"Wall?" He cocked his head aside, Emulating human body language like a cloaking disguise.

"When you cut me off," she explained, recounting how her whole being had clutched at the euphoria his music brought, "I'd have done anything to get back there, because I thought for a minute I'd begun to understand what you are. But I guess I overstepped somehow and touched your duad, evoking Desdinda—the wall is better than Desdinda, Jindigar. For a moment, I felt–clean—of her. But I guess I'm not."

He listened intently, then commented, "Frey was not involved. I doubt he could have survived that. But he and I perceive our duad barrier as a gulf, not a wall. I don't understand. The Loop is stronger than ever, yet I'm sure you grieved with me. Didn't you?"

"I thought that's what it might have been." If so, perhaps she now knew how to rid herself of the Loop, though the experience was already fading to a memory of a memory. "You grieved Desdinda?"

"I began when we slipped into duad. It was a strike,

Krinata. I wasn't thinking. If I had, I'd have known better, for all I managed was to evoke Desdinda while I was too—" There was that flicker of ecstasy. "That's not a good state to approach a tricky plexus like this Loop, though I don't usually strike wild. I don't understand. Tell me again about this wall."

She described how it built, sounded, looked, felt.

"And when Desdinda threw us into the Archive?"

She described the void, panic, falling, and he was amazed at the processes of the human mind. "When I see a walled structure, you see a void, when I see void, you see a wall. You fear void and Desdinda, and equate them? But Desdinda isn't the Archive, and she's not the void."

She shuddered, awareness of the dead woman heightened. "Jindigar, what did you mean, there are no Dushau ghosts?" If ever anyone was haunted–

"Ephemerals reincarnate, but we do not. If we die before completing a life, we simply dissolve. But if we succeed before death, we exist eternally without need to reincarnate. Madness such as Desdinda suffered can only end in dissolution, as she did. That is a true void."

She'd read that theory in Arlai's library but had passed over it without interest. Now it suddenly seemed like the fallacy underlying Aliom philosophy. "But, if she's really gone, why is she still here?" Not that I really believe in ghosts.

"I don't know, but the clue must lie in your void. Perhaps if I'd ever served as Center in Oliat, I'd see it."

"Frey said you'd been qualified to be Center since he was born, and I know even Dushau consider that unusual." It was a personal question she'd never dared ask before, but she needed to get away from talk of Desdinda.

"One can be Center only once. For the many who've not chosen priesthood, it's the end of Oliat training, and they then seek other paths to Completion. For a vowed priest, dedicated to achieving Completion only via the Aliom path, it's a supreme test. Those who succeed become Observing Priests; those who fail go to dissolution/death. Success often means remaining Center for centuries, so a Priest takes an Oliat only just after Renewal, for Renewal terminates Oliat. Twice now I've avoided taking Center because events during Renewal rendered me unstable. Now I'm facing Renewal again. Perhaps that's Desdinda's hold on me, for her death could so easily be mine." He looked at her bleakly. "I feel panic when she clutches at you."