Baran, “how everyone in Jordel’s stories talks exactly like Jordel? Can you imagine Illion screaming ‘that monster’—?”
“Baran’s imagination is not an inexhaustible resource,” Jordel observed, with a shade too much force. “Ah, hello Aloê. How was your ride north?”
After the round of greetings Thea deliberately led Aloê away from the group. It was, perhaps, not so deftly done. It was clear to Aloê that Thea was acting with some sort of purpose in mind. From the expression on Baran’s and Jordel’s faces Aloê guessed that they knew what the purpose was. She herself had no idea, and the matter did not become clearer as Thea engaged her in drifting conversation.
Thea was tall and pale, with long strong limbs and dark hair. Like Jordel, Baran, and Illion, she was a Westholder. She was a great favorite of Jordel’s; they were often together, laughing and joking. But when Aloê asked her how things were between them, Thea looked puzzled.
“What a memory you have, Aloê!” she said, smiling and frowning at once.
“Memory?” said Aloê. “But you were always together, during the Station.”
“What a memory you have,” Thea repeated, and Aloê could not but understand. She became a little angry on Thea’s behalf. She hated the sort of man who chose and discarded women like cut flowers, and Jordel was just that sort of man.
By way of changing the subject she asked when Noreê would be joining them.
“She went to the Healing Wood this morning,” Thea replied. “She didn’t know when she’d be back. ‘The flight must take its course.’”
“So they say,” Aloê agreed. “Is it true? I’ve rarely ascended to rapture, never in solitary flight.”
Thea looked troubled. “It’s difficult to know, much less explain. I’ve only flown through solitary rapture once, and I am still remembering and forgetting things about the experience.”
Soon they were deep in conversation, sharing what they knew about visionary flight and tal. Presently Aloê sensed that Thea was distracted, in the middle of a remark she was making. Glancing around she saw why. Jordel was standing next to them. An expression of earnest intellectual interest lay across his features like a mask.
“You’ll forgive me for saying so, Thain Aloê,” he interposed smoothly, “but I disagree with you. Tal is not wholly nonphysical. It is a metaphysical medium with physical effect. Therefore it is, in some sense, as physical as it is nonphysical. It exists as an instrument for awareness in the physical world.”
“I seem to remember the vocate Noreê saying the same thing,” Aloê remarked, “in somewhat fewer words.” Why had he come over here? Simply to annoy Thea? It irked her.
“Oh, indeed, I learned all I know from Noreê,” conceded Jordel, smiling. “I was her thain-attendant when she and Illion walked against the Dark Seven of Kaen, as you may remember.”
This was the equivalent of a maker modestly admitting that he had been tutored by Merlin Ambrosius, or a swordsman reluctantly conceding he had been trained by Naevros syr Tol. The man was strutting like a rooster. Aloê opened her mouth to speak, but hardly knew what she would say.
Then Naevros himself was there—dark, graceful, somber. His very presence lit up Jordel’s new seriousness as an outrageous affectation. “Yes, Jordel, perhaps,” he allowed. “But your point of view had certain teleological difficulties.”
Jordel’s smile did not change. But in him, the ever-changeable, this was a sign of deep distress. “I don’t see what you mean,” he admitted, finally.
“You imply, when you say ‘instrument,’ that tal is a deliberate creation, an instrument, of awareness—like an idea, or a volitional act, rather than a necessary consequence of, I should have said a necessary condition for, self-aware physical beings. You see the distinction, I’m sure.”
“Not quite.”
“Then. Uncounted beings have lived and died without the knowledge of tal, the link between physical and spiritual planes. They never used tal to experience visionary flight outside the body, as we do. Neither did they exploit a knowledge of it to sustain physical life beyond its natural term, as the Dead Corain are said to do. But tal itself, without their knowledge of it, made possible their lives as physical beings who could think, feel, and know.”
“Yes, yes, I see,” said Jordel, unquestionably irritated. “Is anyone else hungry? I’m hungry. I’m a physical being.”
“Champion Naevros!” Aloê whispered, as they followed the others to the dining hall. “Imagine him trying to inflate himself like a frog in front of Thea!”
Naevros glanced at her and, a measurable moment later, smiled. “Yes. What will irritate him most, when he