Act V — First Fire

Page 37 — Who's Seventh?

By the fire there are six seats, and one of them is kept for the one who is not here.

The seat is by the hearth, set a little back from the light. I want to be exact about the back-from-the-light, because the found will come into the light, and a seat in the light is a seat the world can see, and a seat the world can see is a seat the world can fill with its own. A seat back from the light is a seat the world cannot see. I have sat in a hundred halls in the old world, and I have never kept a seat for a person the world had not seen. The kept seat is the first seat the new world has kept for us, and we set the kept seat back from the light on the third morning, and the setting-back has not once moved since.

We do not keep the seat as a mystery. We know the seat is for Uuaellaen — the one who fell through the Veil, the one the white took and did not give back. The white took six, and the white gave back five, and we have kept the six in the count, and in the kept place, and in the fire, since the third morning on the broken coast. I have kept the name since the third morning, and the seat is the place the name is kept in, and the two have not once gone apart since. The world does not know the seat is his, and the world does not ask, and the world does not need to know, because the seat is back from the light, and the back-from-the-light is the keeping the world cannot reach.

The seat is not a grave. A grave is a keeping the world does let go of, and the keeping that will not let go is what the guild was built on. We keep the seat as we keep everything the world has given us — in the count, and in the kept place, and in the fire, and without letting it go. The seat holds the wood, and the wood has not once burned for the world, and the wood has burned only for the found.

We say it the way we say things at the fire — plain, and once. No one is beyond the finding again.

The Seventh is not the seat. We do not keep the seat for The Seventh; we keep the seat for the found, and the found is Uuaellaen. The Seventh is the next the guild will find — the next the guild was built to find, and the next the guild has not yet met. The guild keeps the name of the found in the seat, and the guild keeps the name of the next in the fire, and the two keepings have not once asked the other for the keeping. When the guild finds The Seventh, the guild will set the seventh seat by the fire, and the seventh seat will be in the light, and the seventh seat will be the world's to see, because the next is not the lost, and the next is the world's to meet.

The guild does not write its law about the seat on the rock, because the rock is what the world can weather. The law is: the seat is kept until the found sits in it. The law does not say when the found will come; the law does not say what the found will say when the found sits. The law says only the sitting, and the sitting is what the found gives the seat, and the seat gives the sitting to the fire, and the fire gives the sitting to the guild, and the guild gives the sitting to the found, and the giving goes round and comes back to the found.

We ask the question of the seat more times than I will put here, but we do not ask who the seat is for. We ask when. The question is not whose the seat is; the question is when the found will sit. We keep the seat, and we keep the when, and the when we do not have is what we keep with the keeping.

Rumzuck asks it with his hands folded over the grip, and he asks it once, and he does not ask it again, because the ogre does not ask a thing he has already kept. Smackage asks it with his palm flat on the sand, and the ground keeps the answer without saying it. Wreckreate asks it at the water's edge, and the water keeps the answer in the flat. Zahlia asks it with her hands a little raised, and the air around them goes thin, and the Veil keeps the answer without putting it in the fire. And I, the archmage, am asked the question the way the archmage is asked things, and I keep my silence the way the archmage keeps it, since the first night on the broken coast. I do not keep the silence because we do not know. I keep it because the seat is ours, and we know the seat is Uuaellaen's, and we do not owe the world the when.

The seat is for the one who is not here. The seat is by the hearth, back from the light. The seat is kept, and the keeping is ours since the third morning. The found will come into the light, and the found will sit in the seat. And when the found sits in the seat, the guild will say the thing the guild has kept since the first night on the broken coast: the seat was yours, and the seat is yours, and the seat is not the world's to take.