It was ac­tu­al­ly only a few min­utes af­ter they walked away from Sis­ter Futi that Ki'el's to­ken pulsed with qi. The three of them had bare­ly be­gun think­ing about what to do next, and Ki'el had be­gun think­ing about the space ring that the three of them shared, which Xam was tak­ing care of, and the only thing with­in it that mat­tered to her: the Aether Sword that Sobon had left her.

But no, she made her apolo­gies and turned back, to find Futi half fac­ing one of the wall glyphs, her eyes glow­ing bright­ly from with­in. She turned as Ki'el ap­peared in the door, that light not dim­ming as she spoke.

"Ah, my apolo­gies, Young Sis­ter Ki'el. As it hap­pens there is a re­quest that you may be well suit­ed for, if you are in­ter­est­ed."

And that is how, half an hour lat­er, Ki'el found her­self in a pond, fetch­ing and wash­ing riv­er stones.

Some­how, when Sis­ter Futi spoke of the task, she made it sound like some­thing no­ble and use­ful. An Out­er Dis­cio­ple had some need for a large num­ber of medi­um sized, plain rocks with min­i­mal qi, and if there should be any qi, it should not be Wind na­tured. There should be min­i­mal or no con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with any­thing else--moss would need to be re­moved, and any­thing more than a thin lay­er of riv­er slime was too much. For their pur­pos­es, it was not ac­cept­able to break a large rock into pieces, and shap­ing the stones with qi would de­feat the pur­pose.

And so a dif­fer­ent out­er dis­ci­ple helped Ki'el bal­ance on a fly­ing stone rod as he took the two of them down far be­low the Moon­stone Is­lands and to a near­by riv­er. This dis­ci­ple spoke only briefly with her, his tone blunt and his eyes dis­tant, his face youth­ful but sug­gest­ing sev­er­al more years than it showed. When Ki'el in­tro­duced her­self, he only glared and did not speak, and Ki'el thought that more than ar­ro­gant, the man's face seemed un­in­tel­li­gent, as though he did not have the room in his mind to hold what­ev­er he was think­ing of and a con­ver­sa­tion at the same time. This dis­ci­ple grudg­ing­ly de­liv­ered her to the ground, promised to fetch her some hours lat­er, and then left, leav­ing Ki'el alone near a for­eign riv­er with only a sect-pro­vid­ed space ring to hold stones in.

It was not a small riv­er, ei­ther, and Ki'el found af­ter some quick div­ing that there were more rocks of the size she was search­ing for deep­er into the riv­er than at the edges, and so she spent her time div­ing and re­turn­ing to the edge, over and over, build­ing up a large pile of rocks. In truth, Ki'el did not find the task ob­jec­tion­able, not at first and not hours lat­er, when she had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed what she deemed to be a good quan­ti­ty of fist-sized riv­er stones. The riv­er wa­ter was not quite the same as sea­wa­ter, but she felt more at home in the riv­er than she had felt even in Sobon's home in Emer­ald Val­ley.

The space ring she was giv­en was more dif­fi­cult to use than she ex­pect­ed, and did not look like the ones by Lai Shi Po, and so in­stead of putting each stone in once she had it, she made a stack of them on the edge of the riv­er, and once the stack was a good size, she set to check­ing them, wash­ing them, and only then putting them away, find­ing that she need­ed to fo­cus in­tent­ly but care­ful­ly on mov­ing each stone in.

She was cu­ri­ous to find that per­haps one in twen­ty of the stones that she had picked up out of the riv­er had what she sus­pect­ed was too much qi for the as­sign­ment, and for now, she sim­ply set those aside. Only once she had col­lect­ed per­haps a hun­dred stones did she look at the pile of qi laden stones and touch them, con­sid­er­ing them with her qi sens­es, or per­haps more cor­rect­ly, her aether sense. She did not know which was which, not ex­act­ly, but as she stud­ied the stones, she felt that the en­er­gy that col­lect­ed in the riv­er stones was not like her aether rings, but it was also not like the en­er­gy in her qi core. In­stead, most of it felt...

Ki'el felt her thoughts in­ter­rupt­ed when at last the gift of her mas­ter Sobon ac­ti­vat­ed in her mind. It was an odd thing, and when it had been of­fered to her, it seemed a dif­fi­cult con­cept for the Tidal Coro­na--a pow­er­ful for­eign thing that Ki'el did not un­der­stand, most­ly--to try to ex­plain. Its best trans­la­tion of the gift was some­thing like an add-to, ar­ti­fi­cial-mind, and now it stirred.

{ Start-up, Phase 2 of 3, is ready to be­gin } a small win­dow in her mind told her. { This start up phase re­quires in­ter­ac­tion and can be de­layed. Do you wish to con­tin­ue? }

Ki'el con­sid­ered, but when she could feel no sign of qi or dan­ger near her, found a place where she could sit with her feet in the riv­er, and fo­cused on the win­dow. [ Con­tin­ue. ]

{ Start-up Phase 2 re­quires you and to un­der­stand sev­er­al terms in or­der to in­ter­act prop­er­ly. The for­eign phrase (aug­ment) you trans­lat­ed as (add-to) is more cor­rect­ly (a thing added in while you re­main whole), specif­i­cal­ly, you will not suf­fer for it be­ing there. The for­eign phrase (aether AI) that you trans­late as (ar­ti­fi­cial-mind) is not in­cor­rect, but specif­i­cal­ly, it is (a com­plete mind with­out pur­pose or ego), specif­i­cal­ly, a mind that does not nat­u­ral­ly re­quire free­dom or in­de­pen­dence. }

Ki'el frowned at those thoughts. They were all very clear in her mind; Ki'el could imag­ine that if she had been asked to ex­plain them to some­one, she might have used sim­i­lar words, but per­haps not quite the same. The flow of its thoughts was very sim­i­lar to her own, but clear­ly not hers. It was not that hard to tell that it was there, now that it was ac­tive, and there was no pain or dis­com­fort. She felt a lit­tle con­fu­sion... but she had known it was there, and ac­cept­ed it.

{ Dur­ing the first phase, I stud­ied your mind in or­der to do no harm while at­tempt­ing to join you. Dur­ing the sec­ond phase, you will need to show how you wish to in­ter­act with me. Un­til you are more com­fort­able, I will do noth­ing un­less you ask, and I will only do what you ask, even if I can do more. I be­lieve this is what you wish. Do you agree? }

Ki'el was tempt­ed to speak out loud to it, but caught that in­stinct be­fore she did much more than breathe in. Both with­in the sect, and be­yond it, she did not want to get caught hav­ing a trea­sure as for­eign as this thing, as she was still wor­ried what oth­ers would think and do about it. So she only took a deep breath, feel­ing the cool wa­ter around her feet and an­kles, and let it out. [ Yes. ]

{ There are sev­er­al re­quests you will be able to make of me. I can help you re­mem­ber the rock and its aether. I can help you re­mem­ber what Sobon said about aether. I can help you vi­su­al­ize things. I can at­tempt to un­der­stand it and tell you what I think. I will not do any of these things un­less you ask. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered. [ How do you think this match­es what Sobon said about aether? ]

{ Sobon spoke of Gen­e­sis and Con­sump­tion aether as pat­terns that ei­ther flowed end­less­ly out or end­less­ly in. These stones show those kind of pat­terns. }

Ki'el had been on the edge of hav­ing the same thought be­fore the... aether AI? in­ter­rupt­ed her. She looked back at the pile of stones, not­ing that there were some of each there, stones that seemed to drink in the lo­cal aether and stones that seemed to leak it, but none of them were strong sen­sa­tions. In­stead, the ones that leaked aether only felt like a small swelling of the world around them, and the ones that drank only seemed to shrink the aether slight­ly.

But... if the nat­ur­al en­er­gy of the stones was aether, and not qi, how did qi users make use of them?

{ Some of those an­swers ex­ist with­in me. You do not rec­og­nize the phrase (data­base), but it is a store of knowl­edge that Sobon left for you. Much of it was giv­en to her by oth­ers, but there are some places where he left her own thoughts. }

That made Ki'el's blood stir. [ I wish to know what Sobon left me. ]

{ Most of Sobon's thoughts are about spe­cif­ic things, and you will hear them when you ask a ques­tion that she can an­swer. But she left you a note. I would have told you when we were done, but I can tell you now. }

Ki'el closed her eyes, feel­ing the wa­ter, and took an­oth­er breath, in and out. [ Tell me now. ]

[ Ki'el. ] Sobon's in­ner voice was there, still with an echo of Alas­si's voice to it. Be­cause Ki'el had known Sobon when he had first land­ed on the world--or, she found out lat­er, not when he first land­ed, but the sec­ond time--and been in the body of a squir­rel, she still did not think of the woman whose body Sobon had lived in re­cent­ly as Sobon's true form, and some part of her did not like hear­ing that woman's voice as part of the mes­sage. Still, she fo­cused on the words, and the feel­ing of the per­son be­hind them.

[ I'm sure I didn't say much lead­ing up to when I had to leave. This is per­haps the only way I could pos­si­bly tell you the truth, and I'm not sure you're ready for it all yet. For cer­tain, you will not find many of the se­crets use­ful for many years, if you ever do. ]

[ I need to tell you one im­por­tant thing, Ki'el, and that is that you have been more im­por­tant... to me, per­son­al­ly, than any­one else I've met on this plan­et. I was alone on a vi­o­lent world. Be­fore any­one else found me or did any­thing mean­ing­ful to help me, you gave me hope that there was any­thing at all on this damned world worth fight­ing for. What­ev­er hap­pens, if I can do some­thing to save you, I will. Liv­ing with­out some­thing to fight for is not liv­ing, Ki'el. ]

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With­in the mes­sage, Ki'el could feel buried thoughts and feel­ings, ones not un­like the things Lui had man­aged to pry from Sobon by the end. Ki'el knew that she was still too in­ex­pe­ri­enced to know much, but these buried thoughts were clear­ly things that were heavy on Sobon's mind.

[ But more than that, ] Sobon's men­tal voice cleared, but it was not as though a fog lift­ed, but more like it was placed be­hind walls, caged. [ I wor­ry that the world may need you. It's un­kind of me to ask, but I hope that you will find a way to be­come tru­ly strong. Strong enough to face the strongest peo­ple in this world, by my side or with­out me. I be­lieve that you can do it, and if you are will­ing, I will do every­thing I can to teach you. ]

Ki'el could not de­scribe the feel­ing that went through her at that thought. It was like watch­ing a beau­ti­ful thing hap­pen in the dis­tance--a wa­ter­fall, a bird div­ing and catch­ing a fish, a leap­ing dol­phin--but it rolled through her, crash­ing through her in ways she would nev­er have ex­pect­ed some­thing could. She found her bare feet clench­ing in the riv­er mud, and her fin­gers caught on the edges of the rock she sat on. It seemed a very wild thing for Sobon to say she want­ed, and wilder still for her to tru­ly be­lieve.

And Ki'el could not im­me­di­ate­ly find it in her to ques­tion Sobon. If her mas­ter be­lieved she could reach the same heights that Sobon could, then Ki'el im­me­di­ate­ly thought it must be so, even if it made no sense to her at all. And if Sobon said that she should...

Ki'el felt her heart beat­ing heav­i­ly, felt the sun-warmed rocks on her hands and the cool wa­ter on her feet, and lis­tened to the rest of the mes­sage while hold­ing her breath.

[ I... could tell you why now, but I think I'd bet­ter wait. If I'm wrong, you'll prob­a­bly know by now, but if I'm right, it's a se­cret you'll have to keep close, and per­haps it's just bet­ter not to be think­ing about it. So fo­cus for now on learn­ing and grow­ing, and just know that I'm wait­ing for you. As­sum­ing I'm still out there, when you're ready to hear the se­crets, just ask the Coro­na to con­tact me. We'll prob­a­bly talk by re­lay be­fore then, but I don't think we'll meet in per­son for a long time. And we prob­a­bly won't even do that for a while, even if I'm right. ]

[ There are com­pli­cat­ed things go­ing on, but leave those to me for now. Take care of your­self, Ki'el, and I hope you nev­er feel alone. ]

Ki'el only let out her breath and sucked in an­oth­er when the pain in her chest got to be too much. I hope you nev­er feel alone, she heard in her mind, and she un­der­stood what her mas­ter was re­al­ly say­ing. I know that pain, and I hope you do not feel it.

She looked up at the sky, at the Moon­stone Is­land sect in the dis­tance, and al­though she prob­a­bly could have found a way to send Sobon a mes­sage, in­stead she sim­ply whis­pered, "I hope you do not feel it ei­ther."

----------------------------------------

Over the next hour, Ki'els "aug­ment", or "aether AI," con­tin­ued to demon­strate what it could do a lit­tle bit at a time, com­mu­ni­cat­ing only through the lit­tle box in her mind, and then all at once, it sim­ply switched to say­ing some­thing else, a larg­er box ap­pear­ing all at once.

{ Start-up phase 3 is now ready. Dur­ing this phase, I need you to trust me, as I will at­tempt to put thoughts into your mind. I will not put in any­thing you do not ask me for, and I will do it very care­ful­ly. If you wish to wait be­fore try­ing this, we can. Do you wish to con­tin­ue? }

Ki'el had gone from sit­ting on the rock to wad­ing fur­ther into the riv­er, but not so far that she was swim­ming, not now. She paused and turned her head, frown­ing. She... did not like things in­trud­ing into her mind, but she had al­ready ac­cept­ed this aug­ment, and she trust­ed Sobon com­plete­ly. [ Yes. ]

Al­though it took a mo­ment and there was a first at­tempt that did not quite work, af­ter only a mo­ment, Ki'el found her­self pic­tur­ing a young Il­lan girl much like her­self, and she un­der­stood from the im­age that it was the aug­ment. The girl held out a hand, and in the hand was a thought, an in­tent, and Ki'el knew that she could name the aug­ment if she wished. And then the girl closed one hand and opened the oth­er, and in it was a short, con­nect­ed se­ries of thoughts, sug­gest­ing that she could choose to have an an­swer giv­en to her as a whole thought if she wished, but it would not be done un­til she was ready.

A mo­ment lat­er, the girl dis­ap­peared, and Ki'el let out her breath in a dis­ori­ent­ed huff, squeez­ing her eyes shut. The im­age had giv­en her a slight headache; it was not more than that, but she didn't like the sen­sa­tion. It was... not so strong that she hat­ed it, not yet, but she def­i­nite­ly did not feel like this was some­thing she want­ed right now. "Do not do that," she said out loud, tak­ing an­oth­er breath.

{ I will not do it un­til and un­less you ask. Some things are more eas­i­ly ex­plained with a whole thought, but it will nev­er be the only pos­si­ble way. }

Ki'el took an­oth­er breath and let it out. She shook her head. "I think that is enough for now."

{ I will not do any­thing more un­til you ask for me again. } A mo­ment af­ter Ki'el had read the last mes­sage, the men­tal box dis­ap­peared, and Ki'el felt... more or less nor­mal.

Still, she stood there for a long mo­ment in the riv­er, and when it was clear that the aug­ment was in­deed not com­ing back, she turned back to the small pile of nat­u­ral­ly aether-in­fused stones by the riv­er. Al­though she did not know what to do with the stones, or even if there was any­thing re­mote­ly use­ful to do with them, she went over and sat by them. Al­though some part of her was dis­pleased that some­thing else touched her mind--and was still there, though it did noth­ing--Ki'el forced those thoughts from her mind, try­ing to think of what she would have done, what she would have thought, if the whole con­ver­sa­tion had not hap­pened.

Sobon had talked of the end­less flows out and in as only an­oth­er kind of cy­cle, like her left and right pow­er cy­cle rings, but it did not make sense, not ex­act­ly. It felt odd to her that she could find ex­am­ples so eas­i­ly in na­ture of things that showed the same out­ward and in­ward flows, but when she sim­ply sat and touched the stones for a time, con­tem­plat­ing them, she could sense some­thing.

It was like a mem­o­ry in the stones, only, a mem­o­ry with­out self. If Ki'el put one out-stone and one in-stone next to each oth­er, the mem­o­ry of the two was the same--the end­less flow of the riv­er, some­times pulling at the stones, some­times push­ing at the stones. Only, the two stones had to­geth­er split that one mem­o­ry, so that one stone re­mem­bered the push­ing, and one stone re­mem­bered the pulling.

The two to­geth­er form some­thing more, Ki'el mused, re­leas­ing the stones, and feel­ing her stom­ach rum­ble. She looked up at the sky, re­al­iz­ing that it had some­how got­ten much lat­er in the day than she had ex­pect­ed, but there was no sign of the sect Out­er Dis­ci­ple who said he would re­turn to get her.

So Ki'el pulled out her sect to­ken and at­tempt­ed to fo­cus on Sis­ter Futi, puls­ing a sim­ple mes­sage with in­tent when she thought she was touch­ing the oth­er woman's spir­it. [ Not picked up yet? ]

There was only a heart­beat be­fore an ir­ri­tat­ed qi pulse came in re­ply, and with­in only a few min­utes, an­oth­er out­er dis­ci­ple ap­peared, this one a some­what more adult-look­ing woman who had shaved her head clean ex­cept, for a long pony­tail at the back. This woman was rid­ing what looked like a wo­ven mat made from a sin­gle liv­ing tree sapling, with its roots in a soil ball at the cen­ter. As she ap­proached, Ki'el no­ticed a rock hov­er­ing above her palm. "You are Ki'el?"

"Yes," she said, gath­er­ing her­self up. "You are--"

"I'll bring you back." She low­ered the mat all the way un­til Ki'el could sim­ply step on it, and then it lift­ed off very quick­ly and eas­i­ly back to­wards the Is­lands. "Apolo­gies. Broth­er Zhon is very bad about hold­ing to promis­es like that, but keeps ac­cept­ing re­quests that he should not. What did they ask you to do here?"

"Gath­er­ing riv­er stones, with­out qi."

"Ah." She looked up. "Don't re­sent the work. Some­day you too will find just how nice it is to be able to ask peo­ple to do some­thing ab­surd, so that you can con­tin­ue your work. You can call me Sis­ter Pin." The woman, stand­ing on the mat, clasped her hands and made a half bow, turn­ing her head down­wards, and Ki'el matched the woman's pos­ture re­spect­ful­ly.

"Sis­ter Pin. A plea­sure." Ki'el straight­ened, and the oth­er woman did so as well, im­me­di­ate­ly. "Thank you. Is this float­ing tree yours?"

"Yes." Pin knelt down and gen­tly touched the soil ball at the cen­ter. "I have raised it for the last three years, but only re­cent­ly have I been able to chan­nel my own qi through it. It is tricky, be­cause it was not a spir­it plant to be­gin with, but that is my Way. Now it is able to com­mu­ni­cate with me, a lit­tle."

Ki'el could sense that, in­deed, the plant had some­thing like a spir­it through it, but most­ly what she felt was Sis­ter Pin push­ing her own qi through her feet and into the tree, where it ac­ti­vat­ed some kind of ar­ray stone with­in the root ball. That stone, plus the arrange­ment of the plant's wo­ven and twist­ed trunk, seemed re­spon­si­ble for the fly­ing ef­fect. "It is im­pres­sive work."

"When I was still in the Less­er House, I thought so too, but in truth they ex­pect every­one to make use of the Fly­ing Stones. The ar­ti­fi­cial merid­i­ans with­in the tree are not a good match for it, I think. We're here."

Ki'el had been split­ting her at­ten­tion be­tween the tree mat and the ap­proach­ing is­land, and was not tak­en by sur­prise when Sis­ter Pin came up right next to the Less­er House. She stepped off and bowed, match­ing Pin's ear­li­er ges­ture. "Thank you very much, Sis­ter Pin."

"You seem to have a good soul, Sis­ter Ki'el," Pin re­turned the ges­ture. "Good for­tune to you, and don't let the Less­er House up­set you. We all had to go through it."

Ki'el nod­ded and straight­ened, turn­ing away, and by the time she had reached the door, Sis­ter Pin was long gone.

Ki'el, when she turned in her space ring of stones, was only told by Sis­ter Futi that she had re­ceived sect points for her work, and then was im­me­di­ate­ly of­fered an­oth­er job weed­ing an herb gar­den, which she took with a bit of con­fu­sion. Rather than be­ing picked up by an­oth­er out­er dis­ci­ple, she was di­rect­ed down a se­ries of paths through the trees. When she fol­lowed the di­rec­tions, she found her­self sur­prised to emerge into a small clear­ing, still on the same small is­land that con­tained the Less­er House, where a clear­ly not-young man was sit­ting on a box, smok­ing a pipe in front of a small hut. He did not have a clas­sic Djang look, but one that Ki'el did not quite rec­og­nize.

All around the hut, in every di­rec­tion, were rows and rows of low plants, all shad­ed by the for­est around them.

"You are Sis­ter Ki'el. A plea­sure to meet you, I think." The sect broth­er who was smok­ing there seemed to put his pipe out with less than a ges­ture, and tucked it into an in­ner pock­et of his vest. "Sis­ter Futi does not warm up to peo­ple quick­ly, but she doesn't hate you, and she sent you here, so she thinks you can be trust­ed not to screw this up. I am Both­er Arex."

"Most­ly, what I ex­pect you to do is no harm. If you have even a mo­ment's ques­tion as to whether some­thing is a weed, do not pick it. Some of these herbs have been grow­ing for years and still look like sin­gle half-grown blades of grass or pop­py leaves. Don't weed an area un­til I point out which plants are sup­posed to be in it, and if there is any ques­tion at all, ask first. Is that clear?"

Ki'el nod­ded, and got to work, won­der­ing just what oth­er tasks she would end up do­ing, and when ex­act­ly she would have the time to be­gin to com­pre­hend the com­plex­i­ties of qi and aether, and the mys­te­ri­ous aug­ment that her mas­ter had left her.