The Tale of Gurion Thricebound
an excerpt

The truth of the past is awake within me, restless and agitated, demanding liberation before my memories will lie quiet and allow me peace. I have already recounted the events of my life, in the volume I entitled History, as a companion volume to the Law the Mother instructed me to write. But in that account I merely recorded the dry facts, the surface level of the momentous changes I was a part of, so that future generations here in this new land the Mother has given us will not forget their origins, the shame and glory of their past. But now that I have set down my pen from that work, and by all rights should rest content that my task is done, I find I cannot be easy. I have grown accustomed to the daily routine of scratching out my thoughts on the crisp white sheets that the Papermaker’s Guild has finally managed to perfect, finding native materials suitable to replace the papyrus that was so plentiful in Ravanet, but does not grow here. I find myself constantly dwelling on bits of the story I left out, either because I forgot, or because I intentionally did not include them. There was no need, in an historical document, to ramble on about my personal emotions, or the private details of my family that could be of no interest to any but myself. But those are the elements that loom large in my thoughts these days, as my life draws toward its close, that even the power of the Mother will not be able to delay indefinitely.

I have decided, therefore, to continue the habit I have developed of writing each day, that I may continue to enjoy the calm focus it brings to my thoughts. I will go back and detail all the minutiae I left out of the formal account, for my own personal edification. Perhaps at some point I will share these words with others of the Wizard’s Guild. Yaven will be Guildmaster after me, already is in all but name, if truth be told. I wish she would allow me to give up the title as well, and fade into the dignified retirement I have more than earned, but she insists that the people still venerate me too much, and I cannot bring myself to argue the point overmuch with her. Most wizards of my age have long since set down the burden of active service, usually upon the death of a familiar. My Rainbow must be of an extraordinarily long-lived species, for she is still as bright of eye and brilliant of feather as the day she fluttered, a half-fledged chick, in through my window. More than thirty years ago now, that was. Many a Mother-touched animal has been born, bonded, grown old, and died in that time, but she thrives still, and I treasure that gift, for I have lost so much else to the relentless passage of time.

Look, now, my thoughts have rambled and I have wandered far from my point. Ah, well, I will not go back and change what I have written. I am old; I have earned the right to ramble if I choose. If I do decide to share these pages with others, they will just have to put up with whatever tangents my words take, for I have no desire to hold myself to the strict discipline with which I wrote my History. Now, what did I intend to say? Oh, yes. Yaven might well profit from what I intend to reveal. Perhaps a few others. But only those within the Wizard’s Guild, for I will not be bothered to take pains to phrase everything with careful ambiguity, as I did in my History, so that it could be freely distributed without any danger that the secrets the Guild must conceal would be betrayed.

Rainbow regards me from her perch in the corner, picking seeds one by one from the cup the apprentices keep filled, prising them open with the great curved beak that can both deal such damage and act with such delicacy, guiding the kernels into her throat with her thick black tongue. She would prefer to be down in the Hall, working alongside the others to heal and help and show truth, as the Mother has called us both to do, but she is tolerant of an old man’s frailty. I no longer have the energy I once did, ready to be spent so profligately in service. I gladly answer the need, when the Hall grows busy and they call me down to add my strength, such as it is, to theirs, but I am just as glad when they shoo me away on quiet afternoons such as this, up to my office with its wide windows that give me a view of the flashing green sea. The sea that carried us here, that forms an impenetrably vast wall to protect our fragile new land from the dangers we left behind.

I look out across that sea, and reach out to Rainbow for comfort. She flies to my arm, and I stroke the brilliant red feathers on her head and back. She is the third Mother-touched animal I have been bound to. She has been with me far longer than either of the others. We may not share quite the intense closeness that characterized my relationship with Barley, and she might not hear the Mother’s voice with the clarity that Whitecap always could, but she knows me inside and out in a way neither of them did. Thricebound, they named me, when first she and I mingled our blood and the Mother forged our bond. No other wizard had even bonded with their second familiar yet, at that point. The name stuck, and persists, even though many other wizards have outlived two or three or even more familiars since.

It is just as well, I suppose, for although I would prefer they call me simply Gurion Wizardkin Wizard, as my name should be in this new system of guildnames we have established, so long as they no longer call me Elero, I am content. Let that name vanish into history along with the corruption of the system that it symbolizes. It means nothing anymore, thank the Mother, that I am descended from one of the original thousand wizards, even though that fact shaped the first forty-eight years of my life far more than any other.

I remember the last day I was truly Gurion Elero, exalted Chosen of the Thousand Families, member of the Council of Wizards, one of the wealthy and powerful there in Miarban, on the banks of the Irkolis. I can envision our villa, as clear and sharp as if I left there only yesterday. The white marble of the walls, bright in the brilliant desert sun, the cool green shade of the palms and laurels in the atrium, the vivid magenta of the bougainvillea twining over the walls. Fia loved those flowers; she was painting them that day, standing at her easel, dipping the hair-fine tip of her brush into the pots of paint, tracing an exquisitely graceful line on the stretched canvas.

Ah, Fia. If we had known that day what awaited us, all the grief and pain and regrets that would be ours in the days to come, would we have chosen differently? Would we have refused to walk the path the Mother laid out before us, even though I firmly believe, must believe, it was the only one that could lead to this place, where at last there is hope that the Mother’s people will survive?

There is certainly much I would have changed of my actions, many things I am ashamed to remember now. But there were times I chose rightly, as well, that perhaps would have been much harder, or even impossible, if had known what those choices would cost me. How would my life have been different, how would the world be different, if I could have seen into the future, that day our youngest son, Jashon, came of age…