Sheri S. Tepper

There always has to be someone to see things first.

They were betrayed, Oracle. Ganver tells me there is no anger greater than that of a zealot betrayed.

There was a great mob of the Oracle’s Brotherhood, dancing in their ribbons, chanting and shouting in a zealot’s parody of purpose, a frantic anarchy that could see no farther than the next bit of inflammatory oratory being shouted on every corner.

He rejoices to have done with the dead. The living need our attentions more, he says. Who can argue with that?

We might be able to do something. If we were very lucky, it might even be the right thing.

It went on, “If you accuse, then you must judge.”

“You let your accusers be your judges?” asked Peter, astounded.

“Who else should be satisfied?” it asked. “If one’s accusers cannot be satisfied, what is justice?”

“One’s accusers might be mad,” Peter suggested, very unwisely I thought, considering where we were. “Mad, and incapable of being satisfied.”

Why are we wondering why the world wishes itself dead when we are doing nothing to heal it?

There is a kind of animal frenzy can be whipped up sometimes among fools and children, often using religion as an excuse for it. When it happens, it is wise to be elsewhere.

I’ll tell you, nothing is so dangerous as ambition in a man who cares not who stands in his way.

“And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are.”

I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the tea cup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. “Pain of being as I am? I don’t understand.”

“But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?”

“How is that possible?”

“To a Wizard, anything is possible,” the Dervish said with more than a hint of scorn. “Or so they lead themselves to believe.”

His understanding is not great, but his sense of power and treachery is unfailing.