The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [166]
“Water of a sort. But now it’s my turn for the question. You came to ask questions, but why do you think I have answers?”
“Because of that apple. In my own country there’s a tree that marks a borderland. One half of it is always green and in full leaf, while the other half is dead and blazes with fire. I don’t know why, but the apple seems to me to be the same sort of thing.”
“Very good. You’re quite right.”
“I think me that I’m a canal myself, when it comes to maintaining my lands.”
“It could well be.”
“Can you tell me how these canals work?”
“Power comes from the astral plane, meets a pattern, and fills it, like water will run down a canal and fill up a pond. Do you know what I mean by the astral plane?”
“I’ve heard the word before, truly. So the power runs through me to my lands?”
“I’d suppose so.” The old man suddenly laughed. “I’ve never seen you at work.”
“Ah. Well, I’m the master of the green lands over there.” Evandar waved in their direction. “I created them for my people by pulling down energy and braiding it into forms. This was all a long time ago, of course. We wandered among the stars, but we grew weary.”
“Ah, so you don’t come from the world of matter.”
That word again, matter! Evandar considered it one of the three greatest riddles, along with Death and Time.
“I don’t, good sir,” Evandar said. “Could you be so kind as to answer me this? When I’m in residence in my lands, I can create anything I wish, just by picturing it, but the thing refuses to stay. If I don’t keep bringing water down the canal, as it were, then the pond dries up. How can I stop this?”
“You can’t. That’s the very nature of the etheric plane at work. Nothing persists there unless you keep building it anew.”
Evandar swore with a few oaths he’d learned from Rhodry. The old man made a wry face.
“You may ask me a question now, sir,” Evandar said. “It’s your turn.”
“Oh, I don’t have any more. I’ll save them in case I need to ask you somewhat later.”
“Fair enough. Then I’ll give you another question to hold in store. When I go to the world of men and elves, nothing I imagine gets itself born. Why?”
“That’s the nature of the world of matter. It’s extremely difficult to create there, but what you create takes great effort to destroy. In the etheric world, what you create with great ease fades away easily.”
Evandar sighed and considered this, while the old man kept peeling the apple and eating what he sliced away.
“I think I begin to understand,” Evandar said at last. “Do you mean to tell me that unless I’ve been born, unless I’ve subjected myself to flesh and stench and death, that nothing I do will remain?”
“Oh, it’s not quite as bad as all that. Close, but not quite. Well-loved images remain as images, though imperfect ones. In some worlds bards already sing about your country, though they have all sorts of wrong names for it.”
“So if I should lose it, it won’t be completely gone?”
“Not as long as the bard songs get themselves sung and men and elves are willing to hear them. But in the end, every song falls silent.”
“Then I’m doomed to lose it for once and all.”
“Not truly. If you lose it, you’ll find it again. If you hoard it, you’ll lose it.”
This made no sense whatsoever, but Evandar had no time to puzzle it out. He rose and bowed.
“My thanks, good sir. If ever I can be of aid to you, I will.”
“You’ve got the answers you need, then?”
“I do, though I like them not.”
Evandar flung his arms into the air and leapt back in to the red hawk form. He screeched once in farewell, then flew off, fast and steadily, for his own country and the mothers of all roads.
Far, far to the south of Bardek, so far that in those days very few human beings knew they existed, lie a handful of islands, scattered across the sea by the Goddess of Fire, some say, in aeons past. Be that as it may, they’d offered a refuge to elven folk who’d fled the destruction of the Seven Cities by ship, back at the time when Deverry men first rode in Annwn. The name of the largest of them is Linalantava,