The Echolone Mine by Elaina J Davidson Page B

us.”
    “Particularly
you.” She moved around, her gaze picking out items at random. “I
created it largely to minimise my father’s long-term damage. I
thought to reach people at a subconscious level, instilling in them
the ideal of brotherhood and peace. Perhaps it was too idealistic,
but someone once told me a selfish act can also be an unselfish one
if properly thought out.” She touched Torrullin’s arm as she passed
him.
    “I
remember.”
    “In the
building of first points in a net, I began to understand you,
Torrullin.”
    He grimaced.
“Unfortunately I never gave anything proper thought.”
    She smiled. “I
know. Too impulsive. However, selfish acts led to unselfish result.
My father did not see what you inadvertently did for the Valleur,
but I did, and wanted to do the same for all sentient races.”
    “You
succeeded,” Elianas murmured.
    “I believe I
did, yes.”
    “But?”
Torrullin prompted.
    “You were
meant to use it to greater impact, but you did not feel it.”
    “I had …
amnesia.”
    She eyed him.
“Really?” He nodded. “Long?” He nodded again. Cassy shrugged. “So
that is how you functioned. Sensible. However, you should still
have sensed the underlying network. Let me explain something here.
My father bound the dead to that chamber on Akhavar to grab greater
power at a future date and thought he used me to aid it. I
permitted him to think so in order to stop him. His arrogance would
have had him war on all races. He went into stasis with some
awareness, enough to know the timing of certain events, like the
meeting with the One, but Neolone bound him to the bier, because I
asked him to.
    “Yes, I knew
Neolone. Awareness therefore availed my father nothing. My own
awareness, greater than my father’s, suffered under the long wait.
Every time someone used the Heart of Darkness I thought the time
had come to stand up to him, and then there was nothing. Time after
time I had hope, then disappointment. I thank the Goddess you two
had the wherewithal to deal with his rising, for I completely lost
rational thought.”
    She sighed and
moved on.
    “Something
dampened the net and amnesia would not explain it, and neither does
hiding in a transmuted Throne. Torrullin, the network was meant to
bring you to us in the weeks leading up to the massacre of Orb, to
stop it, to change the future before it actually happened. You
would have the planners of that attack at your beck and call, then,
at the time it was about to happen.”
    He stared at
her. “Gods, Cassy, that would have …”
    “… prevented a
terrible crime, yes.”
    Elianas
whispered, “Instead many ages have passed.”
    Quilla
sighed.
    Torrullin
said, “I shall explain now what we did about Orb, but, Cassy, how
could you know before the fact?”
    “Time loops,
Lord Sorcerer.”
    “ I know
that; how do you?”
    “I looked, I
saw.”
    “Gods, Cassy, how ?”
    “Elianas told
me. In his sleep. It took some doing to find the right chant, and
what I saw was confusing, considering the concept of others was not
yet an accepted thing in our time, but eventually I figured my
father would do something terrible. I could see something of what
was coming, but he could manipulate time, courtesy of Neolone. And
Neolone, cornered one day when my father was in drug-induced
euphoria, told me what would happen in greater detail. I swore
never to reveal I had spoken to him and he swore to bind my father
upon his death.”
    Torrullin
shook his head in bemusement. “You had greater power than your
father, do you know that? You understood .”
    Elianas
glanced at him, his face unreadable.
    Cassy shifted
her gaze there. “Knowledge isn’t everything, Elianas.”
    His lips
thinned, but he did not speak.
    Torrullin did.
“It is now too late for any of that. Elianas and I recently set out
to redress that particular crime …” and he gave her a brief version
of events in the Time realm, “… and thus ended up changing
nothing.”
    “You were