“Is it time?”

Adim leaned back against the hard veins of the tree. “No,” he said slowly, feeling the life pulsing through the tree as he did so. He looked up briefly, into the golden-green eyes of the Watcher. “I don’t think it is.” Silently, the sunlight glowed through the leaves that intertwined over their heads. There was utter stillness here, in the clearing in the heart of the most ancient forest in Barac.

The Watcher suddenly laughed, joyously, clearly, and then his deep eyes fastened once more on Adim. “There will be truth and beauty,” he said gravely.

“Yes.” For the first time, Adim felt the weight of his choice, unbearably, like a worm gravid with matricidal young. The Five-and-One had said there would be agony in time, and he had not been speaking of the time of waiting.

Adim stood abruptly. “I will return when it is time.” The Watcher, white hair above his boy’s face, smiled. His eyes were like the sun through the leaves in the clearing. Slowly, Adim turned to the golden light that seemed to be life itself, vibrant above the moss-covered forest floor, and walked the light to the City.

He smelled the clean, fresh smell of spring even before he finally arrived. He knew what it would look like — there were golden towers, glass-fragile, piercing the deep azure of the sky, and red and green pennants flowed effortlessly in the slight breeze that was always around somewhere at this time of year. But when he finally stepped out of the light paths, it was to see the white tent and blue sigil of the Five-and-One.

“Truth and beauty, Hema!” exclaimed a man inside, in a gruff voice. “You had better flee while you still can. Adim comes.” Adim almost laughed. It was easy to forget that the Five-and-One had a sense of humor. There was a saying that the more a man was when the Five came upon him, the more he would be a man afterwards. All the same, the balance was delicate.

Adim stepped through the opening, into the simple room within. Sunlight shone through the light walls in a way that reminded him of the forest’s leaves and the Watcher’s eyes. Seated in the only chair was the Five-and-One, his face bearing the strangely grim lines of the Five, and there also, grinning broadly, as he always did, was Hema.

“Welcome, brother prince,” Hema laughed. “I am not yet fled, nor will I. We are brothers bound.” Adim nodded, gravely, concealing the smile waving its way across his thoughts.

“You had best be bound out of here, in that case,” observed the Five-and-One. “We’ve enough to discuss that does not includ you. You know what must be done.” He nodded kindly, as though reassuring a child, but the dismissal was clear.

Hema saluted the Five-and-One, grinning. “By your leave, m’sur Apara,” he said wryly.

Adim watched Hema walk lithely out of the tent and into the arms of the sunlight. His form seemed to shimmer, and then was gone. Hema had always been better at light walking, never needing to think before he began, not even in the most tenuous light. Adim smiled.

“If true balance holds any weight, then in this world there must be a great ugliness infecting some man for Hema to have so much life,” Adim remarked humorously.

The Five-and-One fixed Adim with his gaze. “You are right,” he said at last. “That is the way of things. I am only concerned that the ugliness fouls his own heart and not another man’s.” He shook his head, and a shadow passed over his eyes.

Adim started in surprise. It was against honor to contradict the Five-and-One, but in honor there are many obligations. “Holy Five and now-immortal One,” he began, courteously, “I fear you do Hema great injustice.”

“What concern is it of yours?” the Five-and-One retorted.

“As you must surely know,” Adim said, more sharply than he intended–and he had intended to be rather more sharp than befitted a blood prince of the the land, “we are both your sons, and being so, what greater right of first defense is there?”

There was silence, and then the Five-and-One spoke very softly. “Perhaps his onetime father had such right.”

Adim looked awkwardly at the light wall. There was very little breeze, and so it moved only as a purring cat might, sinuous and imperceptible. From in the silence, Adim heard someone stroking the sides of an ancel, its throaty chords trembling up the hill. A musician began to sing in a clear tenor, and the silence between Adim and the Five-and-One was even more hollow. Under his breath, Adim quoted, “A roundelay so passing fair / That all who heard it wept and smiled.” He had written that, once, thinking himself a poet.

“Hema has abandoned the Defense,” the Five-and-One said, his voice grating painfully. “We must fail–even if he left me a choice, I would rather we fail. He is the younger of you, so he must inherit the land. He would destroy this place more thoroughly than our Enemy, for he would be its rightful king.”

Adim clenched his teeth, and his visage was fearsome. “I will not forswear my brother.” He did not look at the Five-and-One, who grimaced. The light walls flickered briefly to blue, and then to red. Adim had heard it said once that they showed the mind of the Five to those who could see.

“Let the drums of our defeat begin to sound,” the Five-and-One said wearily. “You know your choice, and you are custodian of the power of Barac.”

Adim turned away to look through the tent opening. The grasses across the hills were green, and rippled in the golden sun and the soft wind. Bright red and purple flowers glowed like tiny jewels. To the side, the City stood beautiful and delicate.

“Barac my land before all,” he said aloud, musing, and turned back to the Five-and-One, once his father, now immortal head of the Defenders of Barac. He shook his head, for some reason no longer angry. “Betrayal is never an option,” he said, his mouth filled with dust.

His father looked appraisingly at him. “Is it so honorable to betray your land for your brother?” he asked, but his eyes were more observant than derisive.

Abruptly, Adim turned away again, and looked at the green hills through the opening. This was not a matter of honor.

The Five-and-One said nothing, and they thought together in silence. The hours fell beside them, and the twisting of the light was there to be seen. The sun dipped in the sky, blinding them, and fell further until it was hidden in the foothills in the west. The sky was red, and streaks of purple cloud were cast across it.

Adim stepped slowly out of his meditation, and saw his father still wrapped therein. “My will in this has not faltered, and I will not suffer Hema to be betrayed,” he said, knowing that the Five-and-One would recall it when he was willing to wake again, and left the room faster than his shadow, which quivered emptily on the light wall for the space of a thought.

Unable to light-walk in the twilight of the land, he had made his way to the border of the forest on foot, and there it came to him that it was time. He had set himself on his course, and there was no stopping his will now. It seemed to him that the sky, red and troubled, flickered with that knowledge, and he could feel the evil weight of the Enemy against the defense of Barac, like a screeching above hearing, tearing and rending all goodness. All time was now grown big with destruction; this battle would be like those others that had stretched from the foundations of the world, but that was no cause for ease.

He bent his head, and opened that inmost part of himself that was his birthright. Hema had surely been among the Defenders, speaking to them of the war, for Adim could feel them questing for his open link. Power and raw strength began to pour into him, and he tried to keep it away from himself, to keep from feeling the glory that would soon be lost to him. It was life and health and imagination and memory that was pouring in. He could half-see in his mind the huge, translucent walls of far-off Amayra under their red sky, and the endless pit of Daar that would be the world’s end. All times seemed to merge, and he thought could see all things and how they would work together.

Fighting for the coherence of his mind, he sensed barely that the power was enough, and he turned the light of his thought toward the land. He could feel the righteousness that underlay it, and for a brief thought, he knew its perfection. And then, somehow, it was too late. He felt withdrawn, suddenly untouched by the glories of Barac, as though the very earth had been removed from his feet, and he were in the emptiness of the kingdom of the dead. Suddenly, his brief vision of the depths of the pit of Daar seemed an evil omen.

The power that had been put in him was fighting to be free from the confinement he had put it in. It would not rest until it had been made a part of him, or until he could thrust it into the land’s strength. Dimly he was aware of himself, outside the great forest, his fists in front of him, grasping at nothing, white with strain.

And then all the light in the world crashed into his
eyes, and darkness that held his sight began to beckon insidiously to him. But still he held on, vaguely thinking that that his first wavering would kill him and destroy his land.

In his ears he could hear a huge crashing sound, but he could see nothing through his blinded eyes. A roaring arose, and an immense force seemed to pick him up. He felt, rather than saw, a vision of light, and felt an immense longing for it, but suddenly he could no longer breathe. His head was throbbing in the most acute pain he had ever felt.

“Truth and beauty!” his mind screamed into the nothingness that was beginning to envelop him.