"But the Storehouse, the Hagoshrin ...""All vulnerable, as the sauromicians proved during their uprising."
"Then She knew it all would happen."
He nodded. "And so she laid the bit of cheese"-he produced the false Pearl again-"in the center of her trap."
"Then The Pearl-the real Pearl exists?"
Asir said, "Miina created The Pearl for the Dar Sala-at. Therefore, The Pearl exists."
"Where is it?"
"Until a moment ago I had no idea." He lifted an arm, pointed to her memory palace. "Remember I said that in everything that has happened to you I see the hand of Miina? Even the avalanche, you losing your memory-they were all part of Her plan, for it was during the time when you were unconscious that she seeded The Pearl. Your loss of memory was a by-product of the seeding."
Riane stood rooted to the spot, stunned. "I don"t understand." But that was not entirely true. For the first time she could feel the hand of the Great G.o.ddess guiding her, past and present. She remembered how an owl-one of Miina"s messengers-had led to Riane"s discovery after her fall. She remembered the gyreagle whose talon had been ripped off inside her-the talon that had led her as Annon to the Door of the Storehouse. Most of all she remembered the Khagggun pursuit of Annon and Giyan that had made Giyan take refuge in Stone Border, and how that pursuit had forced Giyan to perform the dangerous rite that had migrated Annon"s life force into the dying Riane. For the first time, she began to see the grand design of Miina"s plan. "You see, Riane, The Pearl is not a thing, it is not something you can hold and look into. It is not, as you so accurately put it, a conjuror"s trick. The Pearl is a storehouse of knowledge.
It is information, pure and simple. Information with the potential for power so vast, so sweeping, that Miina knew it must be for the Dar Sala-at alone. There must be no possibility whatsoever that it could fall into enemy hands. The consequences of that are too catastrophic to contemplate."
Riane looked with awe and wonder at the edifice she herself had constructed. "You mean it"s there?"
"Where safer to store The Pearl than in the eidetic memory of the Dar Sala-at? Especially since she herself would be ignorant of the fact until she was experienced enough and strong enough to know how to use the knowledge. This information is for you alone, Riane. No one else may see it or read it. You will be our guide, our prophet, our oracle. In this way you will deliver us from the bondage of the V"ornn."
Riane turned, staring in wonder at her palace of memory, at the high wall with its basalt gate bound in incised bronze, the pink gravel of the treeless courtyard raked into its perfect wave pattern, the black-basalt path that ran straight down the middle to the front steps of the symmetrical building, and the two carved-stone fountains on either side. As she did so, the word oblivion vanished from the basin of the fountain on the left, and she knew that when she went inside it would be gone from the doors behind which lay a treasure trove beyond any imagining.
Riane, on the pebbled path to her memory palace, watched by her parents, took her first momentous steps through the thunderous silence of past-present-future toward her destiny, toward the center of herself. Toward The Pearl.