It is three thousand light-years to the World of Cleansing. No-one on Ferna has seen that world with the outer eye (though a certain astronomer believes that he has identified its small, yellow sun), but the Lady Zoesh Anteruwe, last and greatest of prophets, has in ecstasy walked upon its surface, and gazed up at the blueness of its sky. It was to her that the message was entrusted; it is she who, these last twenty years, has prepared our people to accept their terrible honor.

A record of her prophecies has been placed in the citadel on Ezuem, along with the other sacred writings, and certain artifacts of our ninety-thousand-year-old culture. It is our Emperor's hope that, someday, another race of men will learn the secret that our Lord kept from us, and, in their travels between the stars, will come across the remains of our system. If Ezuem survives – as her current remoteness from the Sun ought to ensure – they may find the citadel, and profit, in some small way, from the treasures that are stored there.

For it is certain that we, ourselves, can no longer profit thereby. Today is the day that the scholars have foretold; in just under an hour, the Sun will burst her bounds, and all her handmaidens will be reduced to vapor by the burning rage of her self-destruction.

"She seems to strain for it even now, does she not?" says the Lady Zoesh, gazing through the glass ceiling of the arboretum where she has determined that we will spend the world's last day. "Her light trembles and changes color as it has never done before. One might almost imagine her as a restless child, impatient for her sister's wedding to begin that she might spread the humot leaves before her."

Her lovely voice quivers with what I can only believe to be joy, and I avert my eyes and gaze fixedly at the tiled garden path at my feet. Never, since the day when she took me from my parents' orchards and gave me the honor of being her scribe, have I felt the Lady's heart to be so distant from mine. The world of her ancestors is about to perish in agony, and she rejoices at the sight of the evidence.

I cannot hide my thoughts from her, of course; nor do I try. It comes as no surprise, therefore, when I feel her hand on my shoulder, and look up to see her dark, wise eyes gazing down tenderly at me. "Ah, my poor Drendar," she says, in a voice of kindly mockery. "I fear that I am not much help to you in your preparation for the Last Journey."

"It is not my place to differ with Your Ladyship," I reply.

"With your lips, perhaps not," says the Lady. "But your heart is another matter. That must follow the good that it sees – and I fear," she adds with a sigh, "that I am somewhat to blame for your heart's inability to see the good in what is now passing."

"How can that be, Lady?" I say. "It is only your visions that allow us of Ferna to see any good at all in our world's demise. We should all have long since lost faith in the very notion of goodness, had you not come to us with your message of consolation. Indeed, those who have not accepted that message have, it would seem, lost that faith; the licentious words and actions of Huten Radfel and his party are only explicable as stemming from the bestial savagery of despair. How, then, can you be to blame for our lingering discontent?"

The Lady's face grows stern. "Drendar," she says, "remember that you have only a few hours left to you. Do not squander them with evasions and self-deceptions."

I stare at her. "Self-deceptions, Lady?" I repeat. "In what way have I deceived myself?"

"You have used the words 'we' and 'our'," says the Lady. "'We should have lost faith'; 'our lingering discontent'. That way of speaking does not accord with your true thoughts. The doubts in your heart are not those of the people of Ferna – the people to whom I have spent the past twenty years speaking words of comfort and peace. Nor do you wish that they were so. You believe yourself to be exceptional, set apart from the common run of the race – as indeed you are; therefore, you will not be satisfied with the assurances that console your simpler kindred, that Ferna's doom is neither purposeless nor an expression of divine contempt. You have sought within yourself to find more subtle reasons for distress, and you have succeeded so well that all my prophesying has only increased your discontent – for it seems to you that I have willfully ignored the objection that now seems to you so clear. Is it not so?"

I am abashed, and return my gaze to the ground. "It may be so, Lady," I say, knowing, now that she has spoken, that it is.

The Lady nods, and seats herself on the stone bench beside me. "And so," she says, "the proverb-sayers are vindicated once again. They tell us that none is so late to be clothed as the weaver's son; well, I am a weaver after my fashion, and you are my son in all but blood, and now you sit shivering in the cold when all the rest of the world is gaily and warmly clad." She lowers her mouth-tendrils to my cheek and kisses me tenderly. "Forgive me, Drendar."

For a moment, it is difficult for me to speak. "I do not blame you, Lady," I say hoarsely. "I could never presume…"

She silences me with a soft gesture. "I know, dear one," she says. "And I do not blame you. This is not a day for blame, but for rectification. So: ask me the question that I have failed, all these years, to answer."

I rise and pace the walkway for a moment, both to gather my thoughts and to bring my emotions into some semblance of order. "There are many things about the Burden of Ferna," I say at length, "that have often inspired questions in my mind. But that is the way of all truth, and I do not object to it on that account. There must always be ignorance mixed with our knowledge, for our minds are finite; it is folly beyond reckoning to demand that nothing be believed unless all its implications be clearly understood."

It is a pointless foam of words, mere truisms uttered for the sake of utterance as I work up the courage to speak my true thoughts. The Lady is well aware of this, but she merely nods as though I have said something deeply profound, and continues to gaze at me with solemn expectancy.

"If, therefore," I continue, "all my doubts of your Ladyship's visions were clearly the products of my own ignorance, I would not hesitate to disregard them and trust in your word, for I have served you long enough to know that you are neither a deceiver nor one to be easily deceived. But there is a kind of doubt that does not spring from ignorance, but from the too-clear recognition that all things cannot be true. If this siirumii is real –" and I reach out and pluck one of its blood-hued blossoms to reassure myself of this "– then it is untrue to say that it is an illusion, however wise he may be who says so."

The Lady nods again.

"And so it is with all things that are proposed for our belief," I say. "If they state or imply anything of which we know the opposite to be true, then, though they be told us by the Spirit of Knowledge itself, we must refuse them credence. It is this that…"

"Yes," says the Lady. "And it seems to you that the Burden of Ferna is thus opposed to the truths you know. Therefore, my preaching of it as truth can only be folly or mendacity. And thus your heart is distressed, for this also seems to oppose the known truth. Is it not so?"

"Lady," I whisper painfully, "I…"

"Speak, Drendar," says the Lady. "The hour of resolution is fixed, and approaches apace. It is not well for a soul to depart life in such a state of confusion. Speak, and do not fear my sorrow."

I swallow back the anguish in my throat, and let the words come. "Then I say to you, Lady, that what you have revealed to us cannot be the plan of the all-wise Creator. The Lord who ordered the galaxies, and set stars and planets in their right relations – who ordained how cells should form living bodies, and set up ecosystems so that all creatures might fittingly live in relation to one another – this Lord would not have so disregarded right order as to needlessly destroy that which is good."

"It is not needless," says the Lady. "That is no part of my message. There is a purpose…"

"But it is a purpose that any star could satisfy," I say. "A star that was no creature's sun, that had no planets, could be substituted for our own this hour, and the Summoning of the Nations would be in no way affected. Is it not so?"

The Lady cocks her head. "Say that it is so," she says. "What then?"

"Then it is clearly unseemly that Ferna be destroyed," I say. "You have said yourself that ours is a world surpassing all others in nobility. And this much of your prophecy seems true, for, looking at the world of Ferna, I find her just such as a world ought to be in which natural virtue had reached its perfection. Our leaders are wise and righteous men who speak soft and gentle words; our scientists are not hungry seekers after power, but loving contemplators of the natural order; our laborers do not fear poverty, but work for the good of the thing to be done; the voices of our poets are like light and water; and there is, I believe, none born of flesh and blood to equal the greatest of our holy ones." (Here I make a gesture of honor towards her; seeing no displeasure in her eyes, I proceed.) "It seems evident that our world has been blessed by her Maker toward some unique end, for which only the noblest of worlds may suffice. Yet you say that her greatest destiny, to which her Lord has shaped her from her beginning in the solar filament, is to be melted like a common meteoroid in the heart of a nova's flames. It is intolerable that a great prophet's lips should speak such folly."

As I speak the final words, my strength suddenly deserts me, and I fall to my knees and bury my face in my hands, wondering how I have dared, even for a moment, to speak thus to her who has been to me so good and so mighty a benefactress. I know that nothing I have said is unsound, but I cannot feel that that excuses me.

I hear the Lady's footsteps on the walkway; she has risen and is walking away from me, and, despite her assurances, I feel certain that she has been filled with anger at my words, and has left me to face my death alone. Nor do I blame her; if it were possible, I would at that moment abandon myself.

But then I hear her return, and feel something cool and smooth being pressed against my head. I lift my eyes, and the Lady is before me, anointing me with an oil-leaf that she has taken from a nearby kalbet bush.

"Dearest Drendar," she says with a smile. "Your parents and their servants told me there was bravery in you. I wonder whether they knew how much."

I cannot speak. I have called the Lady a fool and a deceiver, and she is anointing me with kalbet oil as though I were a great warrior returned from the battlefield. Her soul is lofty beyond my power to fathom.

She continues to rub, tenderly and patiently, until the leaf is dry; then she tosses it aside and sits beside me on the paving-stone. "And now," she says, "will you hear the reply to your objection?"

I nod.

"Then tell me this, my beloved one," says the Lady. "For you know that you are beloved of me, do you not?"

"I do," I say. And, indeed, at this moment above all, I should not dream of doubting it.

"And how is it that you know this?"

The question is unexpected, but requires little reflection for me to answer. "I have known what it is to love," I say. (As I speak, I think of Aseer Shabeun, and wonder what she is doing on this last of days.) "I have known what it is to treasure another being without any thought of profit – to wish no more from some fellow creature but that it remain itself, purely and without admixture. And when I reflect on how I should wish to conduct myself toward such a being, I find that I could do no better than to do to it as you have done to me."

The Lady nods. "It is well," she says. "But it is not enough, I think. What of the tale of Cadoumair and Lagaum? Do we not learn from that great tragedy that he who cares nothing for another, but yet wishes to gain from that other all the benefits he may, will behave as though he were the other's most devoted friend?"

I admit that we do – with some amusement, for I know the Lady to be no great admirer of the tragedy-cycles of Keefaun (or of the theater in general), while she, in turn, knows how highly I regard that great poet's work.

"It seems, then," says the Lady, "that what you have said is no sure sign that I love you, but only that, if I do not, I am at least as wise as Cadoumair. Or must we quarrel with the insights of our race's most distinguished dramaturge?"

I laugh – truly laugh, for the first time in many days. "Indeed, that would be a lamentable necessity, Lady," I say. "Yet I think we may avoid it. For Cadoumair's solicitude for Lagaum, as you doubtless recall, did not extend to all things, but only to what was necessary for his own profit. Does not every schoolchild know the lines?" I leap to my feet, extend a hand, and begin to declaim: "'Indeed I love Lagaum, as one may love the surrenil in springtime, when its juice brings sweetness and contentment to the soul, its incense sweet bewitchment to the air. What does the lover of the surrenil, if not to pierce its flesh and drain it dry, and then to throw the rind upon the fire? So do I to Lagaum; let no-one say that this is…'"

The Lady gestures, and I fall silent. "Thank you, Drendar," she says. "It is enough. As you say, the lines are well-known – as well they may be, for they express a great truth. Indeed, when one speaks of loving the surrenil, it is generally the pleasure brought by the surrenil that is truly loved. And so one sacrifices the surrenil itself for the sake of the pleasure – which is right and proper, for it is for this that the surrenil was made. But to love one's fellow is another matter. Only one who knows nothing of love would sacrifice his friend for the sake of his pleasure in his friend; true love would sooner sacrifice the pleasure."

"Just so, Lady," I say.

The Lady raises her eyes again to the throbbing sun, and her voice, when she speaks again, seems to come from a great distance. "And so," she says, "this is the mark of love: to be prodigal in goodness, to bestow profit and honor upon another not as one might who lost nothing by doing so, but at the cost of that which one treasures truly – though less, of course, than one treasures the beloved."

"Indeed, Lady," I say. "And so you have done to me many times, and thus I know that your love for me is true. But what has this to do with the Burden of Ferna?"

And the Lady fixes me with her gaze, and her eyes are filled with such joy that I can hardly feel their tender scorn. "Reflect, Drendar," she said. "Of all the loves that are, which is the greatest?"

"That of God," I reply at once.

"For what?"

"For…" I hesitate, thinking of all the things that God must love. It seems that His love for all must be infinite, and therefore equal – yet I have just agreed that love, of its nature, must be hierarchical, that what is dear may be freely sacrificed for the sake of what is dearer yet. There is, then, inequality in the love of God – but how can this be, and yet God remain God?

The answer must lie in the nature of the things loved. That which is great receives love greatly; that which is slight, slightly. Yet each is loved entirely according to its nature – just as a baclume and the Dashjunbar Basin may both be entirely filled with water, though the former holds an ounce and the latter a million gallons. What the Lady asks, then, is simply this: what is the greatest of all the things that are loved by God?

No sooner have I framed the question thus than I recall the sacred mystery that lies at the heart of the Lady's teaching – a mystery that I have never truly grasped, but whose formula I have accepted as a truth of revelation. I see at once that here the answer must lie, and with quiet pride (for I have never been able so to apply the Lady's doctrine before) I reply, "For the other persons of the Godhead."

"Yes," says the Lady.

Is there, with that word, a brief flash of sorrow mixed with the joy that shines from her? Does she betray, for the duration of a thambur's heartbeat, a wistful regret of her creaturehood, which keeps her from sharing in the ultimate immensity of which love is capable? Or is it merely that I, being mildly offended by the thought of a perfection of love that leaves my mistress outside, imagine that I see in her face what my own heart cannot help but feel?

However that be, it is past in a moment; as she continues to speak, her voice betrays only contentment with what is. "It must be so, must it not?" she says. "The love of Father for Son, of Son for Spirit, of Spirit for Father, must be mighty beyond anything our frailty can know. It is intolerable to suppose any weakness or paucity in Their communion – and, when this love enters the created order, and produces effects in time and space, it is likewise intolerable (saving the mystery of mortal freedom) to suppose any paucity in those effects."

She turns her eyes upon me in a significant manner, as though this word must surely have made all clear, and nothing remains to be said but the Doxology. I, however, am no more enlightened than I was, and, frustrated by her subtlety, I grow brusque. "I admit all this, Lady," I say, "but what is it to the purpose? Must we die because God is great?"

And here, for the first time, a flicker of impatience appears in the Lady's eyes, as though she suspects me of being willfully obtuse. "Yes, Drendar," she says. "If you like to put it so, we must die because God is great. Ours is the lot of all mortal things, which, lacking the fullness of life, can do nothing more than offer their deaths to the Almighty – with this great difference, that our offering heralds the act by which the Almighty will in turn offer His death to us, and by His sacrifice will make ours potent at last."

I stare at her in bewilderment, and she sighs. "Have you no understanding, Drendar?" she said. "Do you not know what the message is that you have recorded all these years? You who have passed judgment on the Burden of Ferna, and pronounced it inadequate to console – can it be that you have never heard it at all?"

"I have heard the Burden, Lady," I say, nettled.

The Lady cocks her head, and her eyes gleam with challenge. "Then tell it to me," she says.

I hesitate for a moment, wondering whether so odd a demand may not be one of the Lady's occasional jests. But there is no hint of frivolity in her manner, and so I nod in obedience. "Very well, Lady," I say. "I cannot promise to replicate the verses precisely, but…"

"I do not want the verses," says the Lady. "Tell me the Burden in your own words. Speak as though the message had newly come to you, and you wished me to know its essence before the coming of our eschaton."

I nod again, and take a moment to gather my thoughts. The task is more difficult than I should have thought; the Lady's verse, and even the Lady's voice, are so much a part of the Burden to me that I cannot easily separate them from the essential message. But, at length, I feel confident to begin.

"Here is the Burden of Ferna, Lady," I say. "We are told that our world must perish in the fullest flower of its splendor, and so it must. But some would have us believe that this proves the universe purposeless, or its Maker indifferent to us, and this is not so. The true reason is as follows: There is a world, so far distant from ours that our sun is not visible to its people, nor theirs to us. This world, though like all others, is yet like none of them and more glorious than all, for the Wisdom of God (which, through the mystery of divine perfection, is likewise a Person and God) has chosen it as Her dwelling and inheritance. It shall come to pass, in the fullness of time, that She (who is She among the Persons of God, but to us, being God and Life-Giver, is He) shall take a mortal nature from among the rational animals of this world, and shall be born as the Son of a woman who breathes its air. He shall live among its people, and so ennoble life; He shall accept death at their hands, and so transfigure death; He shall rise from the dead and return bodily to His Father, and so impart ultimate glory to the whole corporeal creation. The cosmos in which we live, broken by the ancestral sins of a million races, shall find its healing in this incarnation of God, and all peoples on all worlds shall see the mercy of the Word who became flesh and dwelt among them.

"To signify this, the Father of the Son has ordained that, upon the Son's birth on this favored world, a new star shall shine in its sky, and certain men from distant nations shall be inspired by the sight of it to travel to the Son's birthplace, where they will be the first men not of His mother's blood to acclaim Him Lord and Master. This star is the light of our sun, brightened a millionfold by the energy of her self-destruction, and visible at last to the unaided eye three thousand light-years hence. And thus our death is not purposeless or ignoble, for by it we herald the advent of the cosmic Redeemer, and show forth the love that His Father bears him."

And, as the last words escape my mouth, I stop short, and my eyes widen in wonder. By "him", I had meant to indicate the cosmos (which is masculine in the language that the Lady and I are speaking), but the sentence as I have spoken it seems to mean something else – something equally true, but hitherto unconsidered by me. And I see that the Lady must have foreseen this, for, as I reflect on this new truth that I have unwittingly revealed to myself, I see that it is this that she has been waiting for me to understand.

"The love that His Father bears Him," I repeat, in a barely audible whisper. "The Star is a sign of love for the Son."

The Lady smiles radiantly. "Indeed it is," she said. "It is the first of three great signs by which the Father shall testify to His pleasure with the incarnate Image of His goodness. And therefore it must be made from the noblest of all stars – a star that has illuminated ninety thousand years of prayer and song and story, of wise counsel and worthy deeds, of laughter as sweet as surren and tears as precious as crystal. Ferna indeed surpasses all other worlds in virtue, Drendar; she is the one blemishless kaumarr in our Lord's celestial herd. And so He has chosen her, this day, as His sacrificial gift to One who is dearer to Him than all the works of His hands. Can we conceivably wish it otherwise?"

I shake my head, unable to speak for shame at my folly. So many months spent flirting with existential despair – so many opportunities for joy buried beneath a slag-heap of accidie – and all because I failed to see, and was too proud to suspect, this thing that now stands out before me as starkly as the Harut Pinnacle. I had conceived the Incarnation occurring for the sake of the universe – as though God were a mere renovator of artifacts, scouring an ancient dwelling at the owner's behest, and worthy to be scolded if He damaged a valued engraving or fresco. The lowliest merchant might have seen more clearly – as I must suppose that most of Ferna's merchants have, since they have taken the consolation from the Lady's words that I have denied myself till now.

The Lady rises to take my hand, and seats me upon the stone bench once more. "Let us rejoice, then," she says, "and praise the Lord who gives and takes away. For His giving is love, and His taking away is love; blessed, then, be He."

And so, by our lips, He is; for nearly an hour, as we await the moment of fulfillment, we speak to each other of the goodness and beauty of our Lord. In that hour, the Lady reveals many things to me, some of them deep and essential mysteries of Creation, others mere delightful trifles of her pre-prophetic girlhood. I, in turn, share what little of my own life the Lady does not yet know, and some of the fancies with which I have amused myself during our travels about the world. Thus humbly do we prepare each other for the vision that awaits us.

Then, unexpectedly, the Lady turns her head, and lifts her gaze to the sky. "It is time," she says, trembling. "Pray for me, Drendar. Pray for us all."

I nod, and lift my gaze in turn. I can see nothing different in the sun's throes, nor do I expect to; I know well enough that the nova, when it comes, will be visible only for an instant before it consumes our world. I wonder, for a moment, how much forewarning the Spirit has given the Lady; then I dismiss the thought as irrelevant, and focus my mind on the prayers to which the Lady has bidden me.

The Lady opens her mouth again, and words come forth in an unknown tongue; what they mean, I do not know, but I recognize that they are her own prayer, and the seal by which God has ordained that all Ferna's speech shall cease.

O peoples of the universe, and especially you of the chosen World of Cleansing, remember this day, and this world, given as a token of praise. Though we be unworthy of Him whom we glorify, yet let not our offering be forgotten; when you speak of the God-Made-Mortal, and of the wise ones who came to worship Him, speak also of the Star that spent itself for their enlightening. Record it in your sacred chronicles, sing of it at your festivals; thus shall we of Ferna rest in peace, knowing that we have gained due glory for our Lord.

And so, farewell.

Star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.