Chapter 11 — War Thing Secrets

IF YOU’RE NEW HERE, YOU ARE LATE TO THE SAGA OF A TALE OF TWO TIMES. BUT, NO PROBLEM, THE PREVIOUS VOLUMES ARE AVAILABLE IN EBOOK OR PRINT FORMAT OR SOON WILL BE. (OF COURSE, FOR A PAID SUBSCRIPTION, YOU CAN DIG THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS OUT OF THE SUBSTACK ARCHIVE.)

TO START AT THE BEGINNING, THE FIRST VOLUME, THE MENACE OF THE ANCIENT FOE CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING THE BUTTON:

*****

~ 1 ~ “Hans,” said Ricardo a few days after returning from his visit to the Abbey Estate in Germany “I want to share something with you that is extremely secret.”

“Is this another matter about which even Yohanna must not be told, Ricardo?”

“Yes, and there are some secrets that are known by only her and Rhoda. Such Secrets are special War Secrets. This is one, too.”

Hans smiled, “I once would have thought that quite an insane notion, Ricardo.” The two men were sitting in two chairs on the veranda of Cliff Rancho, overlooking the hazy lights of Los Angels spread out below them. Each was sipping on a bottle of beer from a small brewery that Victor had recommended.

Hans could sense that their Powers were active about them; when he was with Ricardo he could sense their presence especially well. He understood that to their Powers, the relationship of their friendship was more visible and solid—in the way that such things are “visible” and “solid” to gods—than the appearance of each man to the other through his sight and hearing. Ricardo had once told him that the Niche of a relationship of true friendship extended from, “the beginning to the end.”

“Of what, Ricardo," Hans had asked.

“Of Earth’s Province, of course.”

Sipping on his beer and looking at Hans, Ricardo said, "Our friendship is the Keep of what I must tell you, Hans."

"Must you tell me? I do not like secrets that must be kept from everyone."

"Not even reports of foolish, or maybe, wicked deeds that you've done?"

“Well, perhaps there are exceptions, Ricardo." Hans sipped on his beer and looked out toward the city recalling a few exceptions.

Ricardo nodded. "This concerns a most wicked deed and a very important matter which a very good person has vowed to keep secret. To learn about it, I've had to second the vow, and you must agree to the same vow of secrecy before I can disclose it to you. I foresee, at least I hope, that you'll act upon this matter most decisively in the future, but how or when that may be, I don't know."

Hans was silent. Then he asked, "Will I feel right about doing this future deed, if it comes to pass?"

"Yes, if you keep it secret.”

"If I don’t learn this secret will I know the difference from not knowing and not acting, Ricardo?" Hans looked him in the eye.

"You will experience the consequences of not having done the deed, but not the knowledge of what might have been, had you known the secret and acted."

"I suppose that that goes without saying, if this concerns a true matter, Ricardo."

Ricardo sipped on his beer and looked away thoughtfully over the city and then at the beer bottle. "Victor does have good taste in beers."

"Okay, Ricardo, I'm in, but first tell me, who else is party to this secret?"

"That's an excellent question, Hans. That's practically half of the matter. Besides us, the others who know are the Foe, Ingundis the Fair and Witteric."

Hans put down his beer, his mind swirling about which question to ask next. Presently he asked, "Do you mean the Witteric Hemming with whom Yohanna and Leo are dealing at Quinceañera Beach?"

“That's the man."

"Ricardo, is this some business between the Foe and Witteric?"

“It's exactly that, Hans."

"It must be that this business is what Ingundis the Fair vowed to keep secret. She must be the good person whom you have mentioned."

“That's so, Hans. Yohanna says that you are Heart Keen.”

Hans let the compliment pass. "I've read deeply into Ingundis the Fair's journal regarding Animas. It must be that she and Witteric were contemporaries, but I've never read anything about Witteric in her journal or in Thorismund's journal, while both Thorismund and Ingundis the Fair speak of each other and other contemporary Makers."

"She began her career as a primitive Maker in Witteric's company, before journals were given their present form and incorporated into the Workshop system.”

“Witteric is a primitive Maker?”

“Yes, Hans, that’s correct.”

“Leo had told me that of the persons he knows to be Shades, Witteric is the least Shade-like; he has also mentioned that, compared to Herbert Schooner, Witteric does not seem like a Maker.”

Ricardo nodded, interested in what Hans had learned from Leo, but more pleased that he had become a good listener with an instinct for matters important to the War Thing.

“I will explain, Hans. After Ingundis the Fair had broken off her relationship with Witteric over this business, which is our secret, she had vowed to him that she would tell no one of it, in order, she told him, that he himself would be free, without compulsion, to renounce it. Having fled from Witteric, she had eventually sought out Thiuderieks's camp, and so her name appears in the Chronicles as the second apprentice of Thiuderieks after Thorismund. Of Witteric and most primitive Makers there is no record except what I have now read in the original First Chronicles which are not incorporated into the Chronicles of the Keen Makers.”

Hans knew some of this from the ancient history lesson he and the others heard over a year ago at Home Ranch. Hans recalled the soaking rainstorm which had begun that day, and pensively he sipped on his beer. The beer was getting warm. “Did Witteric also become a modern Maker, Ricardo.”

“I believe that he did not.”

“Ricardo, Isabel and I have studied the phenomena of fractionation in meta time domains which, we understand, had led to the shattering of Devices or even work places of the primitive Makers. After we understood this better, Isabel discovered that by making a new high-level assumption in the theory—that boundary conditions cannot be closed—there could be perplex solutions that led to fractionation, but in the form of the theory, with which Scott and Het are now happy, the possibility of fractionation does not occur.”

“Yes. It’s the scientists' false comfort in smooth mathematical theory and exact predictions, so, even today, many scientists like Het, seek to find a way around the not so exact predictions of quantum physics."

"Ricardo, Isabel and I learned that exact predictions imply closed boundary conditions around smoothly oscillating events."

“Right, and that boils down to denial of the fact that the outcomes of all events, even something so prosaic as measurements made in a physics laboratory depend upon the intentions of all the Self Things involved. And this means the intention of Self Things as far apart as physicists and electrons."

"So Ricardo, the secret you are telling me involves knowing the intentions of the Foe, Witteric and Ingundis the Fair in this matter."

"Hans, I’m not telling you the secret in that way. I’m giving it to you in the form of the original First Chronicles of the Keen Makers. It’s ironic that the Preamble, the First Histories and the original Design of the Soma have all been sought after by us and the Circle of the Foe, but it’s the original First Chronicles that holds the greatest secret. Of course, their existence was only rumored.

“And, Hans, you have to learn about this matter from original sources, without my direct involvement, and I must, in fact, not know what you learn. As far as possible, I must act as if I did not know even what I do know. But, it’s not yet time for you to read the original First Chronicles. It’s Powers will accompany you as the sole guardian and executor of the matter that the First Chronicles contains, once you have possession of the journal. Hans, you will know when the time is ripe to read the single velum sheet that I will give you. It contains a journal’s worth of information.”

“How soon do you expect before the time will be ripe, Ricardo?”

“Not soon; I think that it will be many years.”

“Oh.” Hans took another swig of his beer. “Hurry up and wait.”

“Well, Hans, since you will be walking with the Powers known only to primitive Makers, you’ve an opportunity to learn what you can of their arts from other sources while you wait. For instance, consider that the primitive Maker, his satchel and his pair of personal Calipers constituted a kind of three Armed roving Workshop Device. Of course, the implicit perplex theory of this Device was was hardly closed, and so sudden fractionations were an ever-present risk.”

“Ah, Ricardo! So the Workshop system behaves almost like the meta time perplex theory which assumes closure of boundary conditions, because Design pretty much eliminates fractionation in Devices, and the essential differential span between the Workshop’s Front Gate and Back Gate, makes it possible for fractionation-free fabrication. …And, because ownership is consistent with Design, Device fractionation does not happen in Earth’s Province. Thiuderieks was a brilliant man to see how to make that work!”

“Yes he is. And Het’s practical experience now makes him confident in the form of his theory upon which both he and Hebert Schooner now rely.”

Hans took the last sip of his beer and set down the bottle.

Ricardo said, “But, Hans, not all aspects of the primitive Making art risked fractionation and physical shattering. For instance, the art of inscription is a primitive Maker’s art. Inscription is safe to practice in Earth’s Province. It was Ingundis herself who devised the art of inscription while she was a primitive Maker living in Thersa’s camp, where she inscribed the original First Chronicles. And her art is necessary to the Workshop system, but she saw to it that her use of her art prior to the Workshop system was established is invisible in all of the affairs which have flowed from it.”

Hans shook his head, trying to grasp all that Ricardo was telling him. He felt himself to be less hemmed in mentally than Het was, but still hemmed in by things he could know only vaguely "for many years".

~ 2 ~ Fr. Sigurd's office door was always open; he had just returned from the Ranch School chapel by way of the tunnel under the ridge, and was nearly rested up from the walk. It was only a month since he had buried Winfred Wahl. That visit to Germany, reviewing Winfred’s old love letters with Gabrielle, had stirred his memories of those early days in his tragic homeland more that his present concerns about the War Thing, in which, he sensed, that events were building toward a climax—events in which he would have little more to do, even if he lived long enough. In the days in which those letters had been written he had only met Winfred once or twice. Sigurd had been a young man pushing ardently for a revival of Clan culture, not the elderly religious whom he had become.

Ah! He remembered vividly himself as a young a boy exploring with other boys the Krüger’s Rhineland vineyard. Escaping from adult talk, he, Max Schroeder and some other boys had spotted a low medieval lookout tower set on a height in the vineyard, and they headed out to it with the excitement of young explorers. He and Max discovered that the tower had a basement, and they descended the well-worn circling stone steps down to it, the other boys, sensing danger, held back at the entrance. At the base of the stairway, light streamed from a narrow wooden door set ajar. Sigurd experienced a strange prickly feeling at the sight, and with cautious excitement he pushed ahead of Max who was feeling the uncanny atmosphere which the boys lingering at the entrance above them felt.

Cautiously, Sigurd peered into the room. It was a library not a wine cellar! At a small table, with a large oil lantern placed upon it, sat an old man dressed as a peasant on holiday. Looking past the man’s back, Sigurd could see that the large open book was written in a scrip that he did not recognize. It was neither the old Germanic nor the Latin which he had just begun to learn. Then he heard his father calling his name. He was coming down the turret stairs and asking Max about Sigurd’s whereabouts. The impatient tone in his father’s voice gave Sigurd a sinking feeling. Suddenly, his father had grabbed little Sigurd’s hand, jerking him away from the beguiling vision. “My business is done here, Sigurd, we must leave at once with your mother to catch the train or I will lose another day! You should not peer into the Krüger’s wine cellars; it is their business, not yours.”

“But, father, it is a library, not a cellar. There is a man reading, who looked like a Polish peasant. And…”

“So much the more! We must we leave this unprofitable place; you will become an accountant like me. It is an honest trade which I will teach you when you have learned to read and have mastered your numbers.”

Fr. Sigurd remembered that, as they had crossed the vineyard, his father had gone into a tirade against the “Clan practices” of the Krüger family, as he had done for a few other families who also seemed to be distant relations. His accountant father had started his own business and was seeking new clients among those relations without success. Accountant Krull, was too distant from his Clan relations, to have known that his lack of success to enlist them as customers was the consequence of his lack of familiarity with Guild practices. Guild families had for centuries kept their own accounting records perfectly well.

However, the more negative comments about the Clan which the young Sigurd had heard from his father, the more eager he had become to learn more about it.

Two years later, the door to the Clan had been opened by the death of Sigurd’s mother from the disease people called consumption and, at the same time, the failure of accountant Krull’s business. Accountant Krull's love of practical numeric accuracy did not translate into business sense, even when he had good clients. Sigurd had gone to spend the summer with Baron Schroeder’s family.

The Baron’s son Max had been the boy who had been playing with Sigurd when he had found the library in the vineyard turret. The two boys had hit it off and had become pen pals. From his son’s correspondence, Max's father, the Baron, had learned of Accountant Krull’s plight and had heard enough concerning his severe character to know that his distant relation, Accountant Krull, would need time to sort out his affairs, and that having his son at a distance would make life easier for both Accountant Krull and his only child, Sigurd. And besides, his own son Max was enthusiastic about having a boy his age at the Baron’s Sudetenland Abbey Estate. Sigurd had found their correspondence fascinating because from Max he had learned a little more about the Clan, and that the place where Max lived had once been a great center of Clan culture.

~ ~ ~

Sighing, Fr. Sigurd blissfully recalled that day when, beginning his summer visiting Max, the thrill of a thing wonderful and mysterious, of which somehow he was a living part, had stirred his heart to its roots: The young Sigurd had held in his hand the ancient copy of the Touchstone. As he wondered at the strange and flowing Goth script—the same which for a moment had beguiled him in the turret library two years earlier, Max’s father, the Baron, had leaned over his shoulder and read to him the beginning lines of the Touchstone in the Goth tongue.

In Sigurd’s memory, that scene now flowed into a memory of over a decade later when, in the late evening, Sigurd had reached the Wahl Abbey Estate on bicycle. He had understood that Winfred had inherited all of the property and wealth of his parents who had died in an airplane accident, and he sought to recruit Winfred’s support for the revival in Clan culture that he and Max had begun as the apprentices of Gertrude Kaster, with whose death many years later, Ottilie Krüger's War Thing had begun.

Sigurd knew Winfred to be a young man who had been studying to be a graphic artist, before he had become an engineer to please his, now deceased, parents. Perhaps he would support the revival.

And, several years earlier than Sigurd’s bicycle expedition to the Wahl Abbey Estate, Emily Wahl been a student of the Goth Sword art at a summer camp which Sigurd and Max had hosted, but Sigurd had long forgotten about her.

He was sitting in on the entry stairs of the Abbey Estate’s manor house, intently reading a Goth journal in the new electric light which illuminated the stairs. That outside seat was as close as Franz, the officious butler, would allow Sigurd to venture, while he went to inquire if Sigurd Krull would be received in the manor. Franz was uneasy over the brother and sister who had inherited their parents estate, because their manner was not that of their ambitions parents, who had much appreciated Franz’s officiousness.

Winfred and Emily were finishing a late meal at which they had been teasing each other about possible romantic interests, and could they even find someone—now—who would not love to marry either for their wealth. “Who would not know we are rich?” Winfred had been asking, when Franz appeared and announced that a rather unsuitable young man, calling himself Sigurd Krull wished to see Winfred.

“Oh, I know Sigurd Krull, Winfred! Let’s give him a surprise, “ Emily said as she quietly opened the entrance door and saw the young man’s back hunched over a book, and his bicycle, barely visible, laying carelessly on the lawn.

“Sigurd comes from a poor family, Emily,” whispered Winfred with a wink. Emily dismissed Franz with a gesture, and brother and sister stealthily crept out and sat down quietly, one on each side of Sigurd who, engrossed in his reading, did not notice them. He was muttering to himself, “The Death of Sleep? What can that mean?”

Emily suddenly kissed him on the cheek, and spoke to him in Old Goth, “Wake up, from your own sleep, Sigurd!” He turned and stared at her. In that instant, Emily flowed from and renewed in him the first thrill of hearing the first verse of the Touchstone Goth read to him in Old Goth by the old Baron: “Pay heed my children to the words of your Heat Shield, inscribed in that tongue suitable for converse between gods and humans.” In that instant, Emily, felt again the thrill of how good Sigurd had looked in Goth Sword competition at Max’s summer camp.

~ ~ ~

Fr. Sigurd retrieved his very thin wallet in which he had carried a photograph of Emily from those days She had convinced him that she was nearly as poor as he—a white lie that he had believed until the day that Herr Stoll had died seven years later. He had not looked at the photograph in decades.

It was very worn. As he was indulging in what-might-have-been, Ricardo gave his usual knock at the open doorway and entered. Fr. Sigurd blushed and turned Emily’s picture over.

”You can't take your ease yet, Father," Ricardo said in a tone both light and serious, ”you must climb the tower stairs with me.”

Ricardo and Rhoda had made some tectonic modifications in the Home Maze in the Ranch house where Martin's office was located—the site of Rhoda’s challenge to her father—so that Matin's office and Fr. Sigurd's study had the same window view, and neither room opened into the Great Maze. Instead, the interior door of each room opened into an always-skylit corridor, in which were entrances to the Tower, to the Head Family quarters, to the ranchhouse parlor and to the Relics’ Vault Library and the School Tunnel. Through this last entrance, Fr Sigurd had recently come. There was also one doorway, usually not visible and not consistently in the same place, to the Great Maze, through which Ricardo had just come.

"I'll give you a hand, Father," said Ricardo as Fr. Sigurd rose obediently from his comfortable seat. Taking his arm, Ricardo steered the older man toward the entrance to the Tower. The Tower was still used for astronomy students as a night observatory. Evening was getting on for the sun had just set, nevertheless, the corridor’s skylights always glowed with the Airs’ light of the Commons. The pair proceeded slowly toward the spiral staircase, along the walls of which were murals depicting the history of astronomy which Rhoda had painted when she was a young girl.

As Fr. Sigurd, assisted by Ricardo’s, arm was setting his foot on the first step of the Observatory Tower's spiral staircase, Hans hailed them from down the corridor. “What strange garb you have on, Ricardo!" Hans exclaimed, coming up to them in a hurry. “Yohanna wanted me ask if you and Rhoda are going riding with us tomorrow, after first breakfast?”

“Yes, God willing, we’re planning on it. Are you ready for a horse race, Hans?”

“No. I’m happy to stay on and get the animal to go where I want most of the time, but I’m getting better at it.”

“Father, would you like to come with us?” asked Ricardo.

“I would love to, although my old age aches and pains have kept me from riding the last few years, but, Ricardo, I will make first breakfast anyway. Perhaps I will feel up to it, and I will race Hans.”

~ ~ ~

Hans and Yohanna had spent the day riding over Home Ranch visiting Gardenlands, so that they were familiar with all of them. Hans had become a decent rider at last, and Dimples had given up trying to toss him off, but he was as yet wary of trusting her, or himself, at a gallop. When Hans and Yohanna had reached the stables, Yohanna had cried out, "Oh Hans, I forgot to ask Ricardo if he and Rhoda still want to go riding tomorrow. I don’t know where she is, but Ricardo should be in Fr. Sigurd’s office, or in the Observatory Tower on War Thing business. You and I had such a lovely day, we lingered for too long in the sunset, and I need to talk with Martha right now for a minute. Will you, please, ask Ricardo about riding tomorrow?”

~ ~ ~

Hans reported to Yohanna that maybe even Fr. Sigurd might join them.

“It would please me very much if his old bones will let him. I saw him on horseback in Nigeria when I was a girl. He was a good equestrian; he and Aretta went riding—ancient though she was then.”

“Oh, before I forget, dear,” said Hans, “Ricardo was dressed in a strange robe when I found him and Fr. Sigurd at the foot of the Tower stairs,”

“Truly? What did it look like?”

“It’s, strangely, hard to remember; I had the impression of gold and lots of complicated embroidery. Ricardo said that the robe was for a full dress-rehearsal, but that the play was a secret, and I wasn’t to tell anyone about it but you.”

~ ~ ~

Fr. Sigurd ascended the Tower's stairs with Ricardo's aid. Oddly, Ricardo was whistling a tune that Fr. Sigurd recognized as Eckhart's Song of the Bride. He had heard Judith play it on her violin—which Ottilie had made for her—at the Ranch Music Thing. Judith had played it as a very moving lament, but Ricardo's rendition was joyous, maybe lilting, yet Fr. Sigurd also heard Judith's violin within Ricardo's vocalization, which he realized was not an idle hum, but a chant in Old Goth. Am I still orbiting Ottilie, my dark star as she told me and Martin that day?

Fr Sigurd had not been up the tower stairs in several years, but the climb was not as tiring as he had expected. That seemed as strange as Ricardo’s chant. "Ricardo, the direction of this spiral is reversed. I'm sure that it used to be a right handed turn and now it's a left handed turn."

"You have a Sword master's sense of direction and a good memory, Father.”

“Until recently, I practiced Goth swordsmanship at the school with some of the better students, who are willing to pace an old man, Ricardo. So, I presume that the Tower is a Maze branch, not a terminus as everyone thinks."

“Yes. These stairs are a branch to the Great Maze, and now you know, along with only Rhoda and myself, about them. I have brought you here, Father, to learn of a most crucial and secret move of the War Thing—in which you will have a part because of our friendship, your discretion and your office."

"My office, Ricardo?"

"Yes, as a witness. You will understand shortly.” Fr Sigurd studied Ricardo’s ‘strange garb’ as Hans had called Ricardo’s robe. He himself had not noticed it, before Hans’s remark. It was the attire of an ancient festive robe of some sort, and Ricardo even was wearing woven straw sandals.

"If you lived in a different age and place, Ricardo, I’d say that your destination was a banquet, perhaps a wedding banquet, not some encounter of the War Thing.”

"It is both a festive occasion and a dangerous throw,” Ricardo replied as they continued to ascend the stairs. "However, I should tell you that the robe was made for me by my mother. She does rather good work, don't you think?"

So it is a wedding robe! But their wedding is supposed to be in Mexico City in the first spring after the ban of Swords is reinstated.

The stairway ended in a large hall-like landing, the walls of which were cut stone set between large wooden posts. To their left a large window set elegantly in the cut stone looked out upon snow-covered mountains. Fr Sigurd stopped and looked out in wonder, touching the window with both hands. The pane was icy cold. Ricardo put his hand on Fr Sigurd's shoulder and said, "Father, you are looking into a Province of the Commons. We are standing in a Corridor drawn out of Earth's Province. Those mountains ring the Makers’ Province; the Back Gates of our Workshops open among them. You are now numbered among the few Word Wise who have beheld them."

"I have long ceased to doubt that the Commons existed, Ricardo, I am indebted to you for the sight of it. Those mountains seem both real and other-worldly. Am I looking into the higher Airs? Its animating light is keener than that of the corridor we have now left behind."

“Yes, you are looking into the higher Airs. For you, Father, this view of the Commons has the virtue of leaving a very vivid memory that you can recall, in order to study the sight of things out there in your field of view, and beyond your current power of resolution.”

They continued to stand looking out the window in silence. "But, Ricardo, you have not brought me here to witness the Commons," Fr Sigurd said, now looking more carefully at Ricardo and seeing behind him a large door which opened in the middle of the hall. He was beginning to suspect why he had been brought here.

"I'm asking you to witness an ancient and common ceremony, which will take only a minute," replied Ricardo who stepped over to the door across from the window.

Fr. Sigurd remained at the window, stirred by the emotion of an old memory: He was a young boy who had woken up on his first morning at the Baron's House in the far-away and long-ago Sudetenland. He was looking out of an open upper window at a glorious sunrise. Max, the Baron’s son, his boyhood friend was dead asleep on the other side of the room. As Sigurd looked in wonder at the vineyards mounting up to the forested low mountains, where he had been told, an ancient Abbey was located, its bells began to peel, calling him into the beauty of his vision. That was the day when the Baron had placed into the young Sigurd’s hands an original manuscript of the Touchstone and had read and translated its opening lines to him, and by the end of that day he had become Gertrude Kaster’s apprentice. As his reverie ended, he recalled the English phrase he had leaned since then: “Red morn, sailors take warn; red night sailor’s delight.” It is both night and morning here! He felt young again.

“Father, it is only the exchange of words which I ask you to witness, and then to keep it as a Secret of the War Thing."

“I will do so.”

With a perplexing smile, Ricardo stood in front of the carved door. Fr Sigurd came up next to him and waited while his robed companion seemed to be studying the figures carved in the door. Fr Sigurd looked at them too; it was a scene of children at play; he decided it might be a game of hide and seek. Then he realized that carved figures were in motion, and when they suddenly became stationary, Ricardo knocked. “And please, Father, stay on this side of the door, do not step over the threshold. And speak of this moment to no one, even me or Rhoda.”

Fr. Sigurd realized Ricardo’s words were a command of the War Thing’s Head. “Yes! I will kept this secret, Ricardo.”

The door opened slowly. Fr Sigurd discerned nothing in the space behind the door, neither light nor darkness. Then, darkness and out of the darkness, Rhoda appeared suddenly, also clad in robe and sandals. Both robes were tied at the waist. He had never seen her looking so lovely. His mind rushed back to the day he and Fr Exner had beheld Ottilie—springing up the stairs to the Treasure Keep at the Abby Estate—suddenly revealed as a lovely young lady, and now, as then, he quickly looked down at his own leather-sandaled feet. Rhoda was revealed to him as a bride in all her glory.

~ ~ ~

When the door closed, Fr Sigurd was left alone, and he turned toward the stairway. At first, he could see nothing ahead of him. Then, the window out of which he had seen the Commons appeared suddenly, as Rhoda had just now appeared to him out of nothing. The vista had changed; it looked as if a storm were threatening, the sky was similar to that over Home Ranch, when a violent thunderstorm threatened, and there was little time to seek shelter. So, there was weather in the Commons!

His mind went back to the image of Ottilie springing up the stairs to the Treasure Keep, just before she had destroyed the false crown of Liuva. Then an earlier memory of Ottilie filled his mind; she was an adolescent, wise beyond her years—telling him and Martin that she was their dark star around which they would orbit. She did not mean it only personally. She meant that she was the personification of the War Thing, and around it our lives would orbit, regardless of our personal distance from her! With this insight—unaccountably—Katerina, Mortimer Kane’s efficient secretary came next to his mind. Oh, dear God, that woman is Gabrielle von Klopstock! Why am I sometimes so blind to these things? Fr. Sigurd sighed, with both palms again pressed against the window pane separating him and the gathering storm. The window pane was now warm, and the storm gave way to the view of a raging sea of animate waves, like large snapping jaws.

Decades and decades ago, Fr. Sigurd had heard Winfred Wahl’s confession. Fr. Sigurd typically managed to forget what he had heard under the seal of the confessional, by the practice of turning his mind to a prayer immediately whenever any memory of someone’s confession came to him. There was only one such memory that would not stay forgotten. In fact, it haunted him. It was the circumstance of a particular confession of Winfred’s, when Winfred was a young man. Winfred had felt that what happened might be his own failing; the event which he related to Fr. Sigurd had driven Winfred into a precipitate change of his life’s direction.

Winfred’s confession concerned the evening on which Winfred had planned to propose to Gabrielle. The expensive engagement ring had been in his pocket. As he had approached her, she was chatting merrily with a group of her friends, and eyeing him with expectation. As he approached her, he had suddenly experienced a horrible and gruesome Vision. It had transfixed him for a long moment, then he had turned and fled. The thought of touching her flesh—of embracing her in wedlock now repulsed him and remained with him ever after. “I saw her naked with a dagger in each hand. She was leaning over a very young girl child lashed to a board. With delight she was lacerating it, as it screamed. The board and her hands were covered with her victim’s blood.”

Every few years the memory of Winfred’s words returned to Fr. Sigurd. Now Fr. Sigurd realized—with a shock—that he could not have heard Winfred’s confession, because he had not become a priest until years after Winfred had broken off his relationship with Gabrielle! As he stood before the Commons grappling with this confusion, another vision came to him, which he knew to be that which Winfred had seen. But it was also different. His mature Word Wise mind understood that he was beholding a Partial Vision which was progressing along the Edge of Doing. Now in his vision, instead of daggers, Gabrielle’s arms were enclosed in a pair of red Maker’s Calipers with which she reached out, not to lacerate a girl child, but to scar with Refining Fire the back of a naked young woman who stood unknowingly before her. Was it Ottilie? Fr. Sigurd wanted to cry out an alarm, but the vision vanished.