He wanted to speak and ask something for himself; wanted to ask a question, a dozen—but they were all questions he really didn’t want to know the answers to, honestly—

If I did, I’d be trying to tame that Gift of mine and make it serve me predictably.

The Writ said that the future was mutable and unknowable, until one passed through it and it became the past. That was why the Writ spoke against the witch-powers of those who tried to predict the future—not because the attempt to know the future was wrong in itself, but because being told a future closed some people’s minds to the possibility of any other and they focused all their attention, their hopes, and their fears, on that future to the exclusion of other possibilities… which defeated the entire Prime Principle of Free Will upon which all of the Sunlord’s Writ was based.

All this flashed through Alberich’s mind in the time it took for the cup to slip out of Geri’s fingers and drop to the table with a clatter.

“Botheration!” Geri was back, startled, seizing a cloth and blotting at the spill before it escaped to make an even bigger mess. “Look at me—woolgathering! I’m sorry, Alberich.”

“No matter.” The hairs on the back of Alberich’s neck had settled, but not the uneasy feeling that something had wanted him to know more than he should about the future. A future.

Except that we know there is going to be a final battle. We’re planning for that already. And if I had taken thought about it, I would immediately have known that Selenay would never consider her own safety under battlefield conditions. I haven’t been told anything I couldn’t have figured out for myself. Have I?

“I should be going. My day starts early, and yours, even earlier,” he said, trying not to show any of his unease.

“True enough; good thing for me that I’m a real lark-of-the-morning,” Geri said cheerfully as he walked Alberich to the door. “Come by here more often, won’t you?”

Alberich almost, almost, prevaricated. Then he hesitated.

Because the Writ also said that when Vkandis wished the future to be revealed—or steered—He would find a way to do so.

“I will,” he promised, and went back out into the cold, dark, and the rain—ordinary things.

Ordinary things.

He didn’t think he was going to sleep well tonight. Probably not for many more nights to come.

Part Three: The Last Battle

PART THREE

THE LAST BATTLE

12

12