.

.

.

The Daughter of Rosecove

and

Tess

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Quentin led them along a brick path beside a wall on which fruit trees were growing, and then to the left along a mossy path with bushes on each side. Then came a little lawn with a see-saw in the middle of it, and beyond that a path that went up the cliffs. Here they found themselves going up and up a path with the left end bordered by a sharp rock face and the right end with a steep drop into the breakers. After that was a narrower road covered in green grass that was wet, akin to the spring fields, and then toward the lighthouse with a door facing them. At one place, they were going along a path made of single planks.

His environment reminded Bronze of something. Yes, they were going through a large kind of garden, but what kind? The hanging ones atop old Nurian ziggurats that Cypress said had given rise to the idea of Paradise? Or something more quaint, more steeply removed from Bronze's own high roots? It perhaps was like all open, half-wild gardens. He remembered a philosopher that said said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man's point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women's dreams.

Or did they? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way? A sentence rose to his memory. "For this false (something) to desire the desiring of her own beauty was the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the great road that leads to mutual love." Where on earth had he read that? And, incidentally, what frightful nonsense he had been thinking for the last minute or so!

He shook off all these ideas about gardens and determined to pull himself together. A curious feeling that he was now on hostile, or at least alien, ground warned him to keep all his wits about him. At that moment, they suddenly emerged from between plantations of rhododendron and laurel, and found themselves at the end of cliff path, flanked on both sides by a long drop, and before them was the steep lighthouse. Just as the three started forward from there Bronze heard a window slamming shut from the tower's upstairs.

It was a second or two before he realized that there was a host of about a half dozen men moving about the front of the house. This had been hitherto unnoticed, Quentin knew, because of the angles of the sloping hills that conspired to cover the strangers. They were the same kind of black-clad soldiery that Bronze remembered from Brimber. There was also a machine of the same kind that had made a Red Orb, though it seemed larger. The old dread returned to Bronze and immediately both of his Pokemon were released and prowled before him, seeking battle.

...

"Look! It's that boy!" said one of the largest of the mercenaries. "Just when Harry had him skewered, he escaped, remember?"

"No time to get him now," said another. "He can't do anything to spoil this, not if we lads stick together."

"Yes, we can't die of stupidity," said the head. "You've heard what they did to old Harry and his boys when this one snuck out from under his nose. Careful! They might be great warriors on the enemy's side, see here." He looked at the company and said: "And what do you three have to say for yourselves, nosing about these things that don't concern you?"

"Usually the trespassers say who they are," said Quentin. "You are on my property. I could have you all jailed for this meddling. What's your business?"

Bronze conscientiously thought that these were very dangerous men, and only divine intervention, at least sub-divine, had saved him and Jake from annihilation at their last encounter. Certainly it was no coincidence that he had encountered them twice. Would the dark power of the Eclipse Alliance truly confront their little band everywhere they went? Retribution and vindication of their brethren would certainly be on this commander's mind. If Groudon was the godlike aspect in Brimber then Kyogre was the natural deity of Rosecove. He feared that Team Eclipse's purposes would be very similar here. There was, of course, hope that Kyogre could subdue his enemies along. But would the Alliance have learned from its mistake? Or was awakening the goal in itself? What advantage was there in actually controlling Kyogre and Groudon? It was grossly unsubtle. Bronze did not know, and could not conceive, of a reason...unless the motives of the Controllers of the Alliance were entirely different than he had hitherto surmised.

"Are you a member of Team Eclipse or not?" said Bronze. "Yes, I know that you were behind the plot with Groudon. Behave like a man! I address you as Bronze Tercano. That ought to mean something."

"Why should I know that name?" said the head.

"You will soon hear it in every man's mouth and in the flowing of the tides, within the falling of the rain and the whisper of the wind," said Bronze. "Such will be things when I rule."

"Proud words!" said the head. "But dreams are to be encouraged. Dreamers are so good for our cause. I am glad that there are no illusions between us, so that we may speak plainly. I am Eric of the Eclipse Alliance, and I believe that the future is a thing to be shaped. My question is one of power and how it can be used. Power is the one true solid, and I know that in the universe there is an insatiable appetite for matter, and that energy learns. Hear me well: energy becomes power."

"You Eclipse men all seem to believe different things," said Jake.

"That's the brilliance of it," said Eric. "We have no orthodoxy. All schools of thought are accepted, as long as the higher-ups have a use in mind for them. And in my view, you have not been very convincing in demonstrating that you have the power to defeat me."

"I take it you know these men, boys," said Quentin. "How well do they fight?"

"Well enough," said Bronze. "I wish I had never met them." He spoke very quickly. "Quentin, listen to me. If we survive, you are to take your granddaughter and go into hiding. They will find her and torture her. These are no enemies that you have encountered before. You cannot comprehend the scope of their power. Do you understand?"

"He will soon enough," said Eric. His cruel, humorous face had a touch of gaiety. "A granddaughter? So that was what closed the window! We will attend to her soon enough. She'll make a good pet, or an experiment, or whatever we choose."

"Tess would beat you all before you could say knife," shouted Quentin.

"Undoubtedly," said Eric. He returned to Bronze. "Boy, Harry was my brother. Whatever you did in that volcano defeated him, forced him back to us with no Groudon. The Masters have sent him for reprocessing. What do you think I should do to you in return?"

"Some very unpleasant thing, undoubtedly," said Bronze.

"We have an extreme form of punishment in our laboratories," said Eric, sounding very polite but disdainful. "It has never been tested on a human, though sometimes incompetent supernatural agents are subjected to it. The spirits call it the Eternal Howl. Your soul will be disintegrated and flayed to ribbons, with each molecule placed upon the surface of a different Hell. Your consciousness will be taken out of your body with a flaming ladle and poured over hot diamonds. Then you will be endlessly beaten with a titanium rod."

"That seems extreme," said Bronze, "and I would be dead by then. There are some things worse than death, but not that. If I may say this, a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity could not accept that your Masters would be able to make such a punishment for one of Arceus's faithful."

"They really have roped you into Arceanism!" said Eric. "But don't worry. You will see Kyogre very soon."

Quentin turned wildly to charge and found himself gripped by Electabuzz. As he struggled Bronze noticed that the sky had darkened considerably and it was now raining, lightly one moment and then like a spring shower the next. The sea was picking up and he heard an enormous call like a horn from the sea being sent above their heads.

"Don't be a fool," hissed Bronze. "Send out your Pokemon."

Instead of releasing some Water-type creature Quentin instead produced a revolver. Electabuzz struggled to keep him in check, resisting donkey-fashion by planting its legs in the ground. Eric shouted and stepped back. None of the Eclipse men seemed to have firearms themselves. With prodigious strength, Quentin was pushing himself to being able to point the gun and see down its muzzle. While Bronze would not feel too sorry if any enemy of his died in the swirl of combat, but he wanted Quentin to be kept sane.

Charmander had actually already begun the battle, which consisted entirely of destroying the machine. The Solrock that Eric had sent to guard it would have defeated it simply had not the process of Evolution begun. A red-hot light doused the darkening clifftop.

The truth is that Evolution is actually a Pokemon's base desire, much like eating and reproduction are for humans. There is only one real interest in life as far as biology is concerned. All Pokemon are hoping to change their form, and their trainers sometimes with them. Many men spend all their spare time with their Pokemon, concocting every type of program or nostrum they can in hopes of gaining the coveted transformation. Sometimes it is drugs to drink, sometimes powders and plasters for the body, sometimes exotic stones with peculiar radioactive fields, and sometimes incisions and cauterizations. One depends on diet, the other on some kind of exercise.

These men reminded Bronze of nothing so much as of the inveterate gamblers whom one finds living in the neighborhood of any big continental casino, every one with an infallible private recipe for making his fortune. Year after year he heard of young men on whom the caprice of nature had lavished the Evolution succeeding to the seats of power while they themselves grew old amid their experiments. There is no theological explanation for Pokemon Evolution outside that it was periodically considered by the ancient writers that these changes of shape proceeded from within, and were glorious manifestations of the power of Arceus. With the Original One anxious to unite all kindreds of Pokemon in one embrace, eventually, no Pokemon would evolve in Arcean eschatology.

Eric also had an Arbok, a huge black breed, the greatest of the serpents. It had grown huger than any other Pokemon of its same race, having been made long and vicious from the dark experiments in the underground laboratories of the Alliance, with a pair of stunted horns and huge flaming eyes without brows or lashes. Quick as lightning it threw two or three black coils of its loathsome body around Charmeleon. Another loop flew through the air, intending to pinion Charmelon's free right arm to its side.

But Charmeleon was just in time. It raised its clawed arms and got them clear: the living knot only closed about its chest, ready to crack its ribs like firewood when it drew tight. Charmelon caught the creature's neck in its left hand, trying to squeeze till it choked. This held the Arbok's face about five inches from its own. The forked tongue flickered horribly in and out, but could not reach it. With Charmelon's right hand it drew back its claws for the strongest blow it could give.

Meanwhile Jake and Quentin had sent out their Pokemon and rushed to Bronze's aid. All three blows fell at once: Quentin's revolver blast (the bullet did not even pierce the skin and did no good) on the body of the snake below Charmelon's hand, but Charmelon's own blow and Monfero's strike both fell on its neck. Even that did not quite defeat it, though it began to loosen its hold on Charmelon's legs and chest. With repeated blows they hacked off its head. The horrible thing went on coiling and moving like a bit of wire long after it had died, and the ground around it was foul and livid with the Arbok's blood.

Eric shrieked and returned the remains of the Arbok to a Poke Ball. I have heard that Arbok can regenerate from wounds, but Eric never fought with that Arbok again. Whether it healed, nursing its corruption, and in slow months healed itself from within, rebuilding its severed body, till once more with a black hunger it fought for the powers of Darkness nothing can be said.

As the three were in the business of destroying Arbok, Eric withdrew a blue something from the machine. He fled behind a wall of his men to perform whatever needs the ritual of summoning required, coming up to the walls of the lighthouse straight below the largest porthole-window. Bronze never got the same deeply inquisitive look into the Blue Orb as the Red to produce a description, but the reader is advised to conjure an image of a deep trench teeming with bubbles. As the battle went on the rain came down on lashing torrents, colored lightnings shot through the clouds, and the sea-billows crashed well up past the shore. But suddenly, in late noon, the heavens parted to look onto an abnormal night. Bronze watched as the last rags of scurrying clouds hung around the Moon in all her wildness; not the voluptuous moon of a charged southern love songs, but the huntress, the untamable virgin, the spearhead of madness. It was also sapphire blue.

In the falling rain he was reminded of the words of Draconids, a poem sketched on the margins of an ancient manuscript in thin, spider penmanship, showing the writer's relief for the weather preventing a Logarian raid:

...

Bitter is the wind tonight,

It tosses the ocean's white hair.

Tonight I fear not the fierce warriors of Southernesse

Coursing on the Summer Sea.

...

A second, much louder and less articulate noise broke from the sea. Bronze swore he saw a faint glow below the waves. Pokemon tripped and men slipped on the wet grass as the winds buffeted them like chaff. Eric was speaking words in some forgotten tongue for the ocean to arise and rend the land, or something like that. He was also performing a series of acts and gestures so obscene that, even after the experiences Bronze had already had, he could hardly believe his eyes. If you had seen a mentally deficient street-urchin doing the same things at the back of a warehouse in the Undella City docks, with a grin on his face, you would have shuddered. But the peculiar horror of the bearer of the new Blue Orb was that he did them with perfect gravity and ritual solemnity and all the time he looked, or seemed to look, unblinkingly at the three.

As soon as an actual tremor shook the cliffs and the air became so saturated with rain that Bronze thought he could swim up to the clouds, the battle was over. The Pokemon were held in shock and the men were as well. It was dark and loud and howling wind was all around. The baleful moonlight covered the hills and the city in a sickly glow like the pallor of a corpse. The lighthouse stood in a lightning flash, for a moment, like the very pinnacle of the mountain of madness. Quentin shouted, and suddenly fired his revolver not at an Eclipse grunt but into the water. Bronze saw why at the same moment.

...

A line of foam like the track of a torpedo, but at least ten times wider, was speeding towards them, and in the midst of it some large, shining beast. Now a huge roar, like the kind that issues from the mouths of the largest carnivores, and not a murmured, half-mournful sound, assailed their eardrums. A man shrieked a curse, slipped and collapsed into the grass. Bronze saw a snapping jaw at the very base of the cliffs, and heard the deafening noise of Quentin's revolver again and again beside him and, almost as loud, the clamor of the monster below them, who seemed to be trying to speak.

Kyogre was visible through a wall of foam, they caught the bluish, somewhat metallic glint of the creature's sides. Bronze wondered how furiously the god had swam from gis undersea lair to reach them so quickly. Bronze saw the great black pit of his mouth twice open and twice shut with its snap of sharklike teeth. But the real effect was the aura. Now more than ever before Bronze had the uncomfortable sense that the sea was not staying reserved to the great basins of the earth, and was drawing him in with a compulsion. Perhaps he should jump into the great darkness and be done with war and trouble. The sea was quiet and the sea was clean.

But Bronze knew a little psychology and had heard of the hunted man's irrational instinct to give himself up; indeed, he had felt it himself in dreams. It was some such trick, he thought, that his nerves were now playing him. Kyogre was clearly the hunter. Already the huge difference between the type of rational power that Groudon exuded and this antediluvian monstrosity had led Bronze to a misguided conclusion that Groudon was rational, sapient, possessed among the two the power of clear speech, and could interact with humans on a beneficial level, while Kyogre was more pure animal.

This was disastrously wrong. Kyogre was in fact speaking, asking who had called him and for what purpose. But he was speaking a dialect of the Old Language, the one spoken in the Garden before the Fall, and so it was known by none but the sea creatures. Groudon's voice was loud, but Kyogre's speech is as deep as the deeps of the ocean which he only has seen. When Kyogre opened his eyes they were like undersea floodlights, so that all the breakers were awash in sea-green light.

Kyogre is the Lord of Waters, and he is alone. He dwells nowhere long, at least to his reckoning, but moves as he will in all the deep waters about the Earth or under the Earth. He is next in might to Groudon, and before the world was made he was closest to him in friendship; but thereafter he was corrupted and estranged against his former brother, and would not side with Groudon unless great matters were being disputed by the Enemy. For he keeps all the Earth in thought, and he has no need of any final resting place. Moreover he does not love to walk upon land, and will seldom clothe himself in a body after the manner of his peers, unless Arceus bids it. If the Children of Arceus beheld him in the form of a warrior and not a whale they would be filled with a great dread, for the arising of the King of the Sea is terrible, as a mounting wave that strides to the land, with dark helm foam-crested and raiment of mail shimmering from silver down into shadows of green.

Nonetheless Kyogre loves both Men and Pokemon, and never abandoned them, not even when they lay under the wrath of Arceus. At times he will come unseen to the shores of Earth, or pass far inland up firths of the sea, and there make music upon his great horns that are wrought of white shells; and those to whom that music comes hear it ever after in their hearts, and longing for the sea never leaves them again. But mostly Kyogre speaks to those who dwell in Earth with voices that are heard only as the music of water. For all seas, lakes, rivers, fountains and springs are in his government; so that the Hisuians and Logarians say that the spirit of Kyogre runs in all the veins of the world. Thus news comes to Kyogre, even in the deeps, of all the needs and griefs of Earth, which otherwise would be hidden from even Rayquaza.

On another note, Manaphy is a vassal of Kyogre, and he is master of the seas that wash the shores of Earth. He does not go in the deeps, but loves the coasts and the isles, and rejoices in the winds of Rayquaza; for in storm he delights, and laughs amid the roaring of the waves. But the delight in violence has never wholly departed from him, and at times he will rage in his wilfulness without any command from Kyogre his lord. Therefore those who dwell by the sea or go up in ships may love him, but they do not trust him. His spouse is Phione, the Lady of the Seas, whose hair lies spread through all waters under sky. All creatures she loves that live in the salt streams, and all weeds that grow there; to her mariners cry, for she can lay calm upon the waves, restraining the wildness of Manaphy. The Logarians lived long in her protection, and held her in reverence equal to Xerneas.

Eric threw a Master Ball and missed. As his first device smote the water his second was already in the air. This time it must have touched Kygore. He wheeled right out of the current. Some of the mercenaries began to throw orb after orb into the great cavern of the gaping angel's mouth. Now Kyogre was trying to wallow back to the sea. It was inevitable that they should catch him. With every pound of its strength Electabuzz was shooting sparks down at Kyogre, trying to antagonize him to release all his wrath. Bronze considered that Kyogre might kill them all; the waves were now so high that he felt some moisture, not from the rain, but from the extraordinary convulsions in the water.

Then all became confused. At that moment a heavy shining thing came hurtling down from the lighthouse window. It glanced off the side of the tower, and passing close to Eric's head it smote his leg. The bone rang and snapped. The leg cracked and bent horribly. Eric was then wallowing on the ground, bubbling out blood, turning the grass red and stank. But the ball was unharmed: it rolled on down the slight incline that the hill was positioned at, a globe of crystal, dark, but glowing with a heart of fire.

The Blue Orb had fallen from Eric's hands. As he writhed it rolled off the cliff, and caught aloft for a moment on a huge upswell of sea-foam. The push on the Orb dispersed, and it fell as if attracted into Kyogre's jaws. The huge maw snapped shut. There came a great light, and Bronze was flung off his feet, rolled head over heels, stones, earth, grass, and so much water, which poured over him and round him in a riotous confusion. It was as when a great wave overtakes a ship but this wave was wilder than any Bronze had yet known. He pleaded to Kyogre for the maelstrom to stop, and the god answered him in fury. He tried to get to his feet and was heaved over and over again.

.

.

.

The many waters cleared away, the rain stopped, and Kyogre was nowhere to be seen. When Bronze recollected himself Quentin and Jake were all on the ground, wet, steaming, trembling with exertion and looking around for enemies. They found none. Kyogre's blasts had fallen most greatly upon the Eclipse mercenaries. They were nowhere to be seen, presumably washed away; he saw a few black caps, and, curiously, there was a little pile of raised earth in front of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast. It was Eric's.

Charmeleon kicked the thing over the cliff. Bronze did not care. He embraced Quentin and Jake. Their struggles were one. Any difficulties between all of them seemed to be overcome. They were all men, men who had stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of a great enemy, and now their pasts or views no longer mattered. None of them had come through the ordeal disgraced.

Jake ran toward the strange object that had struck Eric's leg and picked it up. He came back, slowly, his arms in a farmer's carry, as if bearing a great weight. "Here, lad, I'll take that!" said Quentin, turning sharply. He went to meet him and hastily took the dark globe from Jake, holding it in his arms. "I will take this. It is not a thing that I would have wished to be cast away." Bronze cast an eye up toward the lighthouse, which was glistening wet in the sun. Indeed, who had thrown it?

"Perhaps the thrower could not find another thing to cast," said Bronze. "Eric should have stayed out of stone's throw, at least. And Quentin, if those revolver blasts had really hurg Kyogre, then I doubt you would still be alive. What were you thinking?"

"I wasn't," said Quentin.

"Is this the end?" said Jake. "What do we do now?"

"It is the end," said Quentin. "As far as our original purpose was concerned, you still need to meet my granddaughter. We do we not go inside?"

"I doubt we will make a good impression in these wet clothes," said Bronze.

"She won't care," said Quentin. "But now, since the danger seems to have passed, we must find her and tell her how things have gone. No, you cannot change or wait to dry. Tess is likely watching us now. What would she think if we went traipsing down back to the city after all that horror so you could put on fresh clothes? Bad form in front of girls. Ah! She's opening the door. Be courteous, or I shall roast you both."

.

.

.

Tess had been watching the entire time. She had thought the men were guests waiting on Quentin for an hour, but when they glimpsed her and then broke the door's lock, she had decided that they were unfriendly. When Quentin and two others began to fight, she did the only thing possible by throwing the stone. It missed Eric's head and struck his leg, but the blow had the same end. That was enough. In thinking back she said that sending out her Gabite through the window would have also been possible, but the winds then were so harsh that the Poke Ball could have been carried anyway, and she could not give it orders in a battle if it was without the lighthouse and she was within.

It was a solid twenty seconds before Quentin realized that the rattling sound that would normally precede the door opening was in fact Tess working away at the shattered bolts and yelling for someone to open the door. He sprang to the handle and found that it could not be opened. Monferno blasted a hole through the lock, and then accidently wrenched the whole thing of its hinges. The door was a total loss. Twenty years later Tess would find the money for the repairs at her doorstep, straight from Bronze's vast treasury.

Tess regarded both Bronze and Jake when she first saw them with a little uneasiness. They were looking wretched, with Jake's white face having been burned and tanned by the wind and sun, and dripping with perspiration. Bronze was fine-looking objectively, but the sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the nights without sleep, the fear, the dust, added I know not what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole. She saw that his hair was growing out; it had not been cut for some time. For an instant they both looked coarse and brutal.

To Bronze she was the opposite of his preconceptions. To Jake she was lovely beyond belief. As Tess ran out to hug Quentin all of Bronze's images that he had previously conceived were smashed like a blacksmith's hammer to cold iron. She was as severe as Lily and was dressed properly to Bronze's eye in jeans, a striped shirt, military jacket, and a plum scarf. Covering her dark hair was a cotton bucket cap. She was an example of the Galarian (not the word that would be used at the time) look in all its foreign showings. But her face was more experienced, more heedless, and bearing the flower of honesty that survives the first fall in women. Beneath the absence of any feminine adornments Bronze divined a woman, and in that woman a soul.

Tessa Woodhall was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this girl, through the transparency of her great recklessness, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the sea was thoroughbred. She was beautiful in two ways: style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.

Previously Bronze had mostly ignored girls. He was too busy, his thought went, too chaste, too honorable to get caught up in flings. At his worst he thought the local women vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter fools. What a brute he had been, he thought. The evil of those past thoughts stank and scalded his very mind. She was the first of the female sex that he had ever seen the worth of. Early on he though that this was less because of any special quality in Tess and rather because his character had changed admirably over the past month. In fact it was because Tess's light and greenness had for a moment swallowed him up.

As for our little representative of evil that must provide essential duality, I suppose that Emrett, or a man like Emrett, would say: "So! They have found a girl, and the worst possible one. She makes me vomit. It drives me mad, the way the world has worsened. We'd have had her to the gladiator's arena in the old days. That's what her sort is made for. Not that she'd do much good there, either. A two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she'd faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile. A cheat in every way. Looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who'd find ME funny! Filthy insipid little prude, and yet ready to fall into these boy's arms like any other breeding animal. Why doesn't Arceus blast her for it, if He's so moonstruck by virginity, instead of looking on there, grinning? The unfairness of it all!"

Because, regarding the dark powers, what is good to them must be considered evil, and what is bad for them saints preach daily hourly, such a description would put Tess in good favor with Arceus, who in the end is the only opinion-bearer that matters. There are no natural opinions that are high or low, in themselves. Then are holy when Arceus is in control. They go bad when they set themselves up alone as false gods. In Hell there is no culture

For Jake, this one female body was a portion of eternity too great for his eye to bear. To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, made Jake remain a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade of difference that separates Psyche from Venus. To Jake, Tess had the long, white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Her face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gaiety become so suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her chin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance results; in the very characteristic interval that separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold, a mysterious sign of chastity.

Tess, as we will soon have ample opportunity to see, was not innocence floating high over fault. The most wholesome, at times, is one of the wisest. She was also a practicing agnostic who had lost her belief in Arceus as God in her childhood, along with her beliefs in faeries and boogymen. Now she did not believe in it at all.

That was what made her first words the more terrible:

"In Arceus's name! When I saw you coming back with these two I knew some trouble was up. If only I had broken down the door! Gabite would have squashed those men before any of you could. That's flat. And why shouldn't I have had a gun?"

Bronze flinched as if he had been struck. "The words of Groudon," he thought. "The first to call upon Arceus, now? Those were the words. Go out into the shadow war again, with this girl? Suicide! What am I to do?" It was a dreadful question. What had been the use of promising the god that they would on any account try to convince some especially pious teenage girl to join their band, if they were now not going to do so the first time a girl happened to call upon some name they really cared about? On the other hand, what had been the use of remembering the command if they weren't going to obey them? The words were not from a wise man or even a god speaking alone. They were the words of Arceus through His representative. Yet could Arceus have really meant them to enlist anyone, even a female (he was thinking clinically) who exclaimed something in His name? Could it be a mere accident? Was it in jest, a revelation of impiety through the violation of the Third Commandment? Or what if the evil spirits had made Tess say the name just to trick and entrap them? But then, supposing this was the real sign, they dare not ruin it.

"I think we know now," whispered Bronze to Jake.

"Do you mean she is supposed to come along?" whispered Jake back.

"Likely, but I don't know about that," said Bronze. "Arceus would not doom to journey to disaster. The dark angels might have only told her what to say. This girl will be the death of us once she's with us, I shouldn't wonder. But that doesn't let us off following the edict."

It was a sickening moment. Tess's speaking knocked them back to earth. "You two are looking lovely," she said. "But who are you?"

"I'm Bronze," he said with a slight bow. "Charmed to meet you safe and whole, considering the circumstances. The other one is Jake. The two of us are traveling for the Rorian League. We met your grandfather earlier today."

"He swam out and got me back to shore after the fishing boat keeled over," said Quentin. "Ah! Not Jake. It was the good-looking Logarian."

"Then I'll take it that I'm not good-looking, thank you," said Jake. "But that was a good throw. If it had come a little later all might have been lost."

"Though I had hoped you would not have thrown one of the Augur Stones, Tess," said Quentin. "If it had broken one of the last, if not the last, of the ancient Seeing-orbs would have been lost."

"Seeing-orbs?" said Bronze. "Augur Stones? You do not mean the old Logarian ones?"

In better days the ancient Logarians had made ten sacred stones, which replied to each other and allowed the user to cast his gaze over many lands. All those in Logaria were ever open to the view of the Emperors. One of the stones was brought by the exiles to Rosecove City after they fled from the ruin of Logaria, and so there in the lighthouse it remained. But this one alone could do nothing but see small images of things far off and days remote. Very useful it was to Quentin in predicting the arrivals of storms and the migrations of sea-birds. Indeed this was the only one not lost; the others had been drowned, or broken, or stolen, or lost in the Downfall of the South. Bronze would discover that those with great power could bend the stones to see nearly any part of the world.

Now that the Enemy had returned he was looking through the stones, and any devices of ancient power that would increase his dwindled power or find his weakening cage that still held most of his dark soul. Further and further abroad he gazed, and sooner or later even Quentin would have accidentally cast his eye on the Dark Lord. Then he would be caught. The safety of his mind was one of the purposes of Arceus in bringing Bronze to him; though the Enemy had lost much of his strength, he was still very strong. If Quentin had stumbled upon the roving will of the Dark Lord, he would have become like his other slaves in Men, only weaker and under their command. He would be a soul under the dominion of the Enemy.

"Why, yes," said Tess in surprise. "How did you know?"

"I have learned the lore of the South and know how things are with the histories."

"How fantastic!" said Tess. "Here's to the historian." She thought: "That indeed is the question. How did he know!" She intended to say "But why did you come here," but inexplicably, to her great annoyance, she found that she was very near crying. And then, for a moment, Quentin became simply an adult as adults had been when one was a very small child: large, warm, soft objects to whom one ran with bruised knees or broken toys. When she thought of her childhood, Tess usually remembered those occasions on which the voluminous embrace of her mother, or father when the other had been unwelcome and resisted as an insult to one's maturity; now, for the moment, she was back in those forgotten, yet infrequent, times when fear or misery induced a willing surrender and surrender brought comfort. Not to detest being petted and pawed was contrary to her whole theory of life; yet she was a bit depressed from the horror, and had been feeling very much alone, now saved from a nightmare.

She had swallowed that depression but the action already had produced a noticeable pause. This did not matter because Jake had already gone on to explain why they had come with Quentin. Tess realized that since Bronze was the one who asked to meet her it was he who had something to tell her, or even ask of her. But already Bronze had gone on another train of thought about what Quentin should do now, disconcertingly, so that the problem of "Quentin's granddaughter" was shouldered aside. The telling of some other problems seemed serious, though what it was she could not image. Perhaps the men, or others like them would return.

"Extraordinary thing, most extraordinary," Quentin kept on muttering. "I hope we'll be able to give off a false scent, like you two have been doing. Team Eclipse is up to this?"

"Very likely. They are not so benign as the public believes," said Bronze. He was certain of this now. Emrett's gospel had all but confirmed the organization's domineering goals and Eric's revelation, whether it was true or not, added to his firm belief. "Hopefully they will not harm you. Certainly they will watch you. If we are to decide your fate we must do so today. The news of the discomfiture of their operatives has not yet reached the Alliance's High Command, unless their messengers can fly swifter than the wind. But you may find more unfriendly visitors this week."

"Yes, yes," said Quentin. "We must leave. Here! Take this badge. You have done enough battle." He forced a badge with a heart of sea-blue into Bronze's hands. "I must find a replacement for the League, see, and go south. Tess must come with me, of course. Thank you for your help. We must get packing."

It had been Tess's desire for some time to leave Rosecove for other cities, motivated by an internal rebellion against restriction that is common at a certain age, and also the more progressive and secular philosophy that character development is gained by interactions among cultures. Nevermind that Tess could go a hundred miles over land in every direction, only to find the same Rorian nationalism in the hearts of the common man, with small pockets of bureaucratic technocracy around the administrative centers and the occasional Eclipse-sympathizing book club. Quentin had discouraged this (the "why" will be seen), and also the pressures of economics, low wages combined with high inflation, had made buying a personal vehicle unfeasible, even an old gasoline model, and she had actually failed her driving test three months ago and was waiting to attempt it again. She had lived mostly in Rosecove with southward trips as far as Brimber, while Bronze had been all the way to Alola before.

"Wait!" said Jake. "We have other things to talk about, you know. I didn't think you would leave immediately."

"Grandpa," said Tess, "these boys held their own. If there is a Great Danger coming after us then I don't want to run in the face of it."

"Don't be dull," said Quentin. "Didn't you hear them? Our enemy is too big to fight. Even this one battle was a terrible narrow shave, so to speak. You saw them and they saw you. We need to leave. There are spirits and demons after us."

"Oh, rubbish!" cried Tess. "Imagine spirits haunting us! I suppose you think they are hiding under the bed. Mrs. Audrey said that the spiritual was invented by ancient people to explain Pokemon and diseases. You shouldn't talk about them in modern times."

"I do not agree with your grandfather's decision," said Bronze to Tess. He was so changed from cordiality to deep seriousness that it caught her a little off guard. "I would like to discuss something with him. But I would also like to say something to you. Hear me well: there are gods and spirits. Not all of them are good. But do not think, just because spirits are strange and hard for us to understand, that we are hard for them to understand. Those gods, fallen and unfallen, who haunt Earth have been here since it formed. They have seen the origins of life and vertebrates and mammals and humans. You have had only a few years to learn about humanity (albeit from the inside); any one angel has had all the time in the world, quite literally, and is smarter than any of us to start with. They understand us far too well for our comfort."

"You're in on it too!" said Tess. "It is marvelous that you have envisioned a species of cosmic voyeurs as being real."

"Come now!" said Bronze. "On the other hand, just to keep you off balance, you cannot simply assume that the spirits know everything. They don't. Especially not in a war zone, such as Earth, where both sides spend a deal of effort hiding things from each other, and, for that matter, there are third parties anxious to hide from both. Jake, you ought to tell her more about who we are and what exactly we are doing. I need to speak with Quentin."

...

Tess would rather have been with Bronze because she did not want to be excluded from the debate, but the two were already inside before she could do anything to dispute the point. Jake began speaking, and she listened for a while, but eventually the whole conversation devolved into a talk about whether Team Elcipse was really trying to dominate the world with demons, and both sides came out of it feeling exactly the same way as before.

The following conversation was one of the most painful in Bronze's life. In the living room of the lighthouse he felt as though the soul of world was being laid like the Sinner's Burden on his back. He was trying to convince Quentin to let Tess go with them, even before she knew of their intentions. Quentin began the whole thing by saying with unconcealed disappointment: "She is not going with you, understand?"

In response Bronze told him about Groudon's words, and who he was, tracing his lineage back to the old Emperor's child Tar-Silmathrim who survived the ruin of the ancient world. He spoke of the remnant Logarians that dwelt in the southern wilds and explained his title of Southstar, the heir to Logaria. Robert was the current Cheiftan of Logaria-in-exile, but since he was captured by the Enemy Bronze ruled in his place. He tried to press Quentin into ceding his daughter, almost like a bride, for Arceus's favor. The old Gym Leader was doing the Lord's work. How could it be refused? Bronze thought that he had the other clamped between his own authority and Arceus's commands.

"I will not let her go," said Quentin. "She will die. You are being hunted by an organization ruled over by aliens or super-intelligent energy beings. And I can't take my choices too seriously. The Evil Djinn fell through force of gravity, no?"

"I do not think that would be something that Arceus would say," said Bronze. "Since Arceus is the one who has all dominion, I must mention Him. He might seem invisible but that is because all his workings are in everything."

"Well, then when will I be allowed to see Him?" said Quentin with not a little scorn. "Then will I understand His demands?"

"There's no question of being allowed, Quentin. As soon as it's possible for you to see Him, you will. You need to be wisened up a bit. I am not lying, so why do you doubt me? Arceus is going to test you by taking away your daughter to where you cannot follow. Together you and her have had good things, so now you will have bad things for a little while. He giveth and taketh away. Blessed be He."

"How can I be wisened?" The words were hard.

"It's only a little germ of desire for Arceus that will start the process. Don't say to love Him more than Tess. You're treating Him only as a means to keeping her. But the whole greater knowledge consists in learning to want Arceus for His own sake, so you know what is really wanted of you."

"You wouldn't talk like that if you were her grandfather."

"You mean, if I were only a grandfather. But there is no such thing as being only a grandfather. You exist as Tess's grandfather only because you first exist as Arceus's creature. That relation is older and closer. No, listen, Quentin! He also loves. He also has suffered. He also has waited a long time. You must obey Him because He has deserved obedience more than I."

"I have done everything for Tess and kept her happy," said Quentin.

"Human beings can't make one another really happy for long. And secondly, for your sake, Arceus wants her away from you. He wants your merely instinctive love for your grandchild (tigresses share that, you know) to turn into something better. He wants you to love Tess as He understands love. You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love Arceus. Sometimes this conversion can be done while the instinctive love is still gratified. But there is, it seems, no chance of that in your case. The instinct is uncontrolled and fierce and monomaniac. The only remedy is to take away its object. It was a case for surgery. When that first kind of love was thwarted, then there is just a chance that in the loneliness, in the silence, something else will begin to grow."

"My love for Tess would never have gone bad. Not if we'd lived together for millions of years."

"You are mistaken. And you ought to know. Haven't you read books about parents who have their children with them in the House Below? In Hell? Does their love make them happy?"

"How could anyone love Tess more than I do? Haven't I lived only for her all these years?"

"That was rather a mistake to say that, Quentin. In your heart of hearts you know it was."

"What mistake was that?"

"That is the wrong way to deal with the sorrow of having to do something you don't want to do. You are, I am afraid to say, very slowly and steadily going down the road to the House Below. Soon that will be all you have."

"I don't believe in an Arceus that wants to keep Tess and me apart. I believe in a God of Love. No one has a right to come between me and Tess. Not even Arceus. Tell Him that to His face. I want Tess, and I mean to have her. She is mine, do you understand?"

"She will be, Quentin. Everything will be yours. Arceus Himself will be yours. But not that way. Nothing can be yours by nature."

"Oh, I see!" laughed Quentin. "That's the trouble, isn't it? The idea of you being hurt because you can't have what you want?"

"Lord love you!" said Bronze with a great laugh. "You needn't bother about that! Don't you know that you can't hurt me with words?"

Quentin was silent and open-mouthed for a moment; more wilted, Bronze thought, by this reassurance than by anything else that had been said. He felt something within, not in his mind but in the body, which is often the tool of Arceus and not the Devil, telling him to press the advantage. If he had lost his head again and attempted a defense by earthly logic it would have all been undone. He made the suggestion that following Arceus was more important than following his own desires, and that since his love had grown into a possessive thing, it would show more courage and real graciousness to let Tess go free, if she desired it. "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." Those were the words of Our Lord in another Darkened World, and here Bronze tried to get them across so that Tess was what he considered his own life, but was actually separate, and Arceus wanted all this to happen.

This blew the spark of true love for Tess that was still inside Quentin into a flame. He asked if his natural feelings toward her were really better than Arceus's judgment. Bronze said no. "As for the feelings themselves, some are better and worse. There's something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it that makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what you call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil."

"I don't know that I dare repeat this, Bronze," said Quentin. "They'd say I was inhuman: they'd say I believed in total depravity: they'd say I was attacking the best and the holiest things. They'd call me..."

"It might do you no harm if they did," said Bronze.

"This doing might be too hard for me. It could break my mind."

"Maybe. I do not think so, but that's no office for me to have the final say in. You have some will in this matter. Free will does not violate essential sovereignty. It would be just as cruel for you not to do it. Most that could tell you are too afraid to speak. That is why sorrows that used to purify have grown to fester. Understand, then, that you have the choice to set her free or not, and you may not, but it will not give to your joy or hers. The day will come when both you and she will look back and said it would have been better for her to either die or live free."

"Then it is good for me to give my blessing?"

"You and I must be clear. There is but one good; that is Arceus. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It's not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion. But look! Here you are at the brink of doing what the Original One really wants you to do. You are going to make the right choice."

And Quentin could say nothing, for tears choked him and he gave up all hopes of saving Tess's life, even though he did not understand all of the danger he was fearing, but at the same time he knew that Bronze was saying what would happen, and that there might be things more terrible even than losing someone you love by death.

"All right," said Quentin. "Do what you will. Don't think bad of me, would you? It was an excess of love that was the trouble."

"Excess of love, did you say? There was no excess, there was defect. You loved Tess too little, not too much. If you loved her more there'd be no difficulty. I do not know how your affair would have ended. But it may well be that you would demand to have her down with you in Hell. Quentin, I am being rough. Some men, sometimes, are perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love into endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it."

That hurt the man, not so much to make him weep harder, but it did tear his soul. "I thought you would be kinder," he laughed.

"I never said I wouldn't hurt you. I never even said this advice wouldn't kill you. But Tess cannot go with us against your will. It is impossible. Even if I knew she wished it, but you made a ban, then we would have to fight you. We would either win and turn her against us or lose. Even if we did escape, under your nose, and Tess agreed that it was the best choice, there would be another Person we would forget to ask. I guess that Arceus does not want us to commit sins for the greater good. That is what our enemies are doing."

"It's good that you went directly to me, then," said Quentin.

"Have I your permission to pursue this matter with Tess?" said Bronze. "She will not agree to come with us, regardless of what she wants, if you hate us."

"I know this is going to kill me."

"It probably won't. But supposing it did?"

"You're right. It would be better for me to be dead than keep being the wretched creature I've become."

"Then I may?"

Quentin heard something chattering to him inside his head, so loud that even Bronze could pick up the words through bare intuition. "Be careful," it said. "He can do what he says! He will kill her. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you'll be without her forever and ever. It's not natural. How could you live? You'd be only a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now. He doesn't understand. He's only a cold, bloodless abstract thing, an old man in the body of a boy. It may be natural for him to go without family, but it isn't for you. Yes, yes. I know there are no real pleasures from Tess's company now, only dreams. But aren't they better than nothing? And it'll be so good. I admit I've sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won't do it again. I'll give you nothing but really nice dreams, sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say, quite innocent..."

"Spirit, in Arceus's name get out and never return," said Bronze sharply.

Quentin's eyes exploded into the image of something that was more or less equestrian in shape but larger than a man, and so bright that he could hardly look at at. His presence smote on his eyes and on his body too, for there was heat coming from him as well as light, like the morning sun at the beginning of a tyrannous summer day. Next moment he heard a scream of agony such as he never heard on Earth. Cobalion closed his golden grip on Quentin's head, twisted it, while something in there bit and writhed, and then shriveled up into brokenness.

"Ow! That's done for me," gasped Quentin, reeling backwards. "Say what you like. She can go with you if she wants."

Quentin then got up and went to get some water. Bronze began to tremble in his chair, his hands trembling. He gripped the armrests in a vice. As sweat poured down his head he finally collapsed totally, content in having won a spiritual struggle and debating with more faith than he would have believed himself capable. His strength faded, and he was very weak, but with an agonizing effort he smiled like a wild hillman, wanting to howl in victory. Then his consciousness faded for the second time in a week.