“Is it such a stain, Lord Septarch?”

“To foul the Covenant? To corrupt the innocent—your bondsister among the victims? What have you been doing, Kinnall? What have you been doing?”

A terrible fatigue came over me, and I closed my eyes, for I scarcely knew where to begin explaining. After a moment I found strength. I reached toward him, smiling, taking his hand, and said, “I love you, Stirron.”

“How sick you are!”

“To talk of love? But we came out of the same womb! Am I not to love you?”

“Is this how you talk now, only in filth?”

“I talk as my heart commands me.”

“You are not only sick but sickening,” said Stirron. He turned away and spat on the sandy floor. He seemed a remote medieval figure to me, trapped behind his dour kingly face, imprisoned in his jewels of office and his robes of state, speaking in gruff, distant tones. How could I reach him?

I said, “Stirron, take the Sumaran drug with me. I have a little left. I’ll mix it for us, and we’ll drink it together, and in an hour or two our souls will be one, and you’ll understand. I swear, you’ll understand. Will you do it? Kill me afterward, if you still want to, but take the drug first.” I began to bustle about, making ready the potion. Stirron caught my wrist and halted me. He shook his head with the slow, heavy gesture of one who feels an infinite sadness. “No,” he said. “Impossible.”

“Why?”

“You will not fuddle the mind of the prime septarch.”

“I’m interested in reaching the mind of my brother Stirron!”

“As your brother, one wishes only that you may be healed. As prime septarch, one must avoid harm, for one belongs to one’s people.”

“The drug is harmless, Stirron.”

“Was it harmless for Halum Helalam?”

“Are you a frightened virgin?” I asked. “I’ve given the drug to scores of people. Halum is the only one who reacted badly—Noim too, I suppose, but he got over it. And—”

“The two people in the world closest to you,” said Stirron, “and the drug harmed them both. Now you offer it to your brother?”

It was hopeless. I asked him again, several times, to risk an experiment with the drug, but of course he would not touch it. And if he had, would it have availed me anything? I would have found only iron in his soul.

I said, “What will happen to me now?”

“A fair trial, followed by an honest sentence.”

“Which will be what? Execution? Imprisonment for life? Exile?”

Stirron shrugged. “It is for the court to decide. Do you take one for a tyrant?”

“Stirron, why does the drug frighten you so? Do you know what it does? Can I make you see that it brings only love and understanding? There’s no need for us to live as strangers to each other, with blankets around our souls. We can speak ourselves out. We can reach forth. We can say “I,” Stirron, and not have to apologize for having selves. I. I. I. We can tell each other what gives us pain, and help each other to escape that pain.” His face darkened; I think he was sure I was mad. I went past him, to the place where I had put down the drug, and quickly mixed it, and offered a flask to him. He shook his head. I drank, impulsively gulping it, and offered the flask again to him. “Go on,” I said. “Drink. Drink! It won’t begin for a while. Take it now, so we’ll be open at the same time. Please, Stirron!”

“I could kill you myself,” he said, “without waiting for the court to act.”

“Yes! Say it, Stirron! I! Myself! Say it again!”

“Miserable selfbarer. My father’s son! If I talk to you in ‘I,’ Kinnall, it’s because you deserve no better than filth from me.”

“It doesn’t need to be filth. Drink, and understand.”

“Never.”

“Why do you oppose it, Stirron? What frightens you?”

“The Covenant is sacred,” he said. “To question the Covenant is to question the whole social order. Turn this drug of yours loose in the land and all reason collapses, all stability is lost. Do you think our forefathers were villains? Do you think they were fools? Kinnall, they understood how to create a lasting society. Where are the cities of Sumara Borthan? Why do they still live in jungle huts, while we have built what we have built? You’d put us on their road, Kinnall. You’d break down the distinctions between right and wrong, so that in a short while law itself would be washed away, and every man’s hand would be lifted against his fellow, and where would be your love and universal understanding then? No, Kinnall. Keep your drug. One still prefers the Covenant.”

“Stirron—”

“Enough. The heat is intolerable. You are arrested; now let us go.”

74

Because the drug was in me, Stirron agreed to let me have a few hours alone, before we began the journey back to Salla, so that I would not have to travel while my soul was vulnerable to external sensations. A small mercy from the lord septarch: he posted two men as guards outside my cabin, and went off with the others to hunt hornfowl until the coming of dusk.

Never had I taken the drug without a sharer. So the strangenesses came upon me and I was alone with them, to hear the throbbings and the whinings and the rushings, and then, as the walls fell away from my soul, there was no one for me to enter, and no one to enter me. Yet I could detect the souls of my guards—hard, closed, metallic—and I felt that with some effort I could reach even into them. But I did not, for as I sat by myself I was launched on a miraculous voyage, my self expanding and soaring until I encompassed this our entire planet, and all the souls of mankind were merged into mine. And a wondrous vision came upon me. I saw my bondbrother Noim making copies of my memoir, and distributing them to those he could trust, and other copies were made from those, to circulate through the provinces of Velada Borthan. And out of the southern land now came shiploads of the white powder, sought not merely by an elite, not only by the Duke of Sumar and the Marquis of Woyn, but by thousands of ordinary citizens, by people hungry for love, by those who found the Covenant turning to ashes, those who wished to reach one another’s souls. And though the guardians of the old order did what they could to halt the movement, it could not be stopped, for the former Covenant had run its course, and now it was clear that love and gladness could no longer be suppressed. Until at last a network of communication existed, shining filaments of sensory perception linking one to one to one to all. Until at last even the septarchs and the justiciars were swept up in the tide of liberation, and all the world joined in joyous communion, each of us open to all, and the time of changes was complete; the new Covenant was established. I saw all this from my shabby cabin in the Burnt Lowlands. I saw the bright glow encompassing the world, shimmering, flickering, gaining power, deepening in hue. I saw walls crumbling. I saw the brilliant red blaze of universal love. I saw new faces, changed and exultant. Hands touching hands. Selves touching selves. This vision blazed in my soul for half a day, filling me with joy such as I had never experienced at any time, and my soaring spirit wandered in realms of dream. And only as the drug began to ebb from me did I realize that it was nothing but a fantasy. Perhaps it will not always be a fantasy. Perhaps Noim will find readers for what I have written, and perhaps others will be persuaded to follow my path, until there are enough like me, and the changes become irreversible and universal. It has happened before. I will disappear, I the forerunner, I the anticipator, I the martyred prophet. But what I have written will live, and through me you will be changed. It may yet be that this is no idle dream.

This final page has been set down as twilight descends. The sun hastens toward the Huishtors. Soon, as Stirron’s prisoner, I will follow it. I will take this little manuscript with me, hidden somewhere about me, and if I have good fortune I will find some way of giving it to Noim, so that it can be joined to the pages he has already had from me. I cannot say if I will succeed, nor do I know what will become of me and of my book. And you who read this are unknown to me. But I can say this: If the two parts have become one, and you read me complete, you may be sure that I have begun to prevail. Out of that joining can come only changes for Velada Borthan, changes for all of you. If you have read this far, you must be with me in soul. So I say to you, my unknown reader, that I love you and reach my hand toward you, I who was Kinnall Darival, I who have opened the way, I who promised to tell you all about myself, and who now can say that the promise has been fulfilled. Go and seek. Go and touch. Go and love. Go and be open. Go and be healed.