"There's no higher payment that can be made."

[Fairy Hedgehog]

Surely, dying for someone else is 'lifeprice'. And the mystery is that there is a higher price that can be paid - but we're not told what it is.

[Lamarquise]

<span class="ev_code_PURPLE">AHHH! This line in the book had never bothered me until I read this. Now it's going to drive me insane!</span>

[eveningstar]

I agree with Boomer11. That line never bothered me. Until now. Now I'm getting the goosebumps. I think maybe it is losing your partner. (Forgive me if this has already been posted.) Maybe Carl has lost his own partner or something... Oh I'm rambling. Don't listen to my gloomy prophecies.

[Ling]

So this has been bothering me for over a year... and I've come to a conclusion somewhere near Lamarquise.

What if the higher price, unable to be paid by humans, is the life price of a Power?

[Caitlin]

Mabye the higher price is the loss of your wizardry- but retaining the knowledge of wizards (sort of like Millman, but not quite).
Instead of becoming oblivious when you lose your wizardry (like if Nita had reniged on the whole "Silent One" thingus), but losing the ability to do it but remaining aware of the existance of it. To me, that seems like a much higher price than just a lifeprice. Actually, that would make life (quite literally) a living hell. ...but then again, I don't think the Powers are quite that vengeful.

I'm betting that Carl knew someone who paid the "higher price". Although I don't think that the price is the death (or equivalent of) a power. That would be a bit too much for the Worlds to handle. I think that the loss of a power would be this catastrophic event that would tear the universes apart and wreak about the same effect as (for those who haven't read the WAW excerpt) <span class="ev_code_WHITE">what is apparantly going ot happen in WAW, with the dark matter and other such thinguses.</span>

vv

[seabiscuit1009]

Wow...losing your wizardry but still knowing that it exists? That would really really stink. I'd have to agree with Caitlin on this one.

Higher price: If a Power was killed, wouldn't something weird happen, because all of the different "shadows" of the Power's self? If a Power's life price were needed...that would be something...

-seabiscuit, a.k.a. hungry
Haha, this is my 100th post! Yeah!

[Peter Murray]

I had a couple of thoughts on this.

1) The price would be not just your life, but your entire existence, back to your conception. You would never have existed; no monuments to your sacrifice, as nobody would remember you. (Which goes against Caitlin's theory that Carl knows someone who paid this price, as he wouldn't remember them, unless his Manual told him.)

2) Not quite as drastic: You pay with your life, and with your "soul" or whatever goes to Timeheart. That doesn't fit with the "that which is loved" aspect, though. So people would remember you, but you wouldn't be seen in Timeheart, ever.

[Caitlin]

...But doesn't it say in DW that Kit would still know/remember Nita, but Nita wouldn't remember him? ::is aggravated that copy of DW is currently out on loan:: I'm not totally positive (it's been awhile since I read DW) but I think that while Nita's talking to Carl on the beach, he explains how the whole process works. Which means he must know something about it.

::edit:: Of course he knows something about it, he's a Senior. He knows a lot of things most people don't know. But do you get my drift?

[Peter Murray]

Yes, it does say that. But we were speculating about the higher price that Carl referred to. Nita wasn't asked to pay that higher price, so we can't get any clues from what Carl said then.

Carl does explain Nita's alternatives (my copy of DW is about three feet above my computer, and very handy for checking). The bit about Kit remembering all the things they'd done together, while Nita forgot it all, would have been the penalty for refusing to pay life-price.

[Lamarquise]

KsSk8er - I hear you. Kit was as responsible as...if not more responsible than...Nita for the blank check Moebius wizardry, but someone must have ignored that little factor. Kit suggested the Moebius spell in the first place and talked the Eldest into it. He was going to do it on his own if necessary and Nita had to convince him to let her in on it. But there's a lot about Kit that still hasn't been explained, including the wizardry leakage at his house.

Ed did pay the price in Nita's place. Maybe only he could have, since she gave him her wizardry at that moment.

As for the higher price Carl mentioned? I can think of something much worse than death, but I'm not sure it fits with Duane's version of morality and metaphysics. Consciousness in nothingness. Total hatred and evil and awareness of guilt festering in powerless nothingness and its own bitter stew. Simply sealing a person who is draining the energy of the universe into it's own little bubble where it can't do anything anymore and has no power.

But Duane doesn't seem to believe in total evil, even on the Lone Power's part. And in that context, Carl is probably talking about repayment for a debt of wizardry, not a punishment for ultimate wrongdoing. But I can think of a number of wizard's debts that couldn't be paid with the life of the wizard, and in all of those scenarios, no net repayment could be made. The universe just loses energy. But this is part of Duane's metaphysics that has always confused me. None of us can...on the whole...repay what has been given to us. It was the Powers' (so to speak) before we came into this life and can only, at the most, be offered back in their service. And we can't repay what's lost when we make mistakes and do the wrong thing. It took the sacrifice of a Power in his own right to free us from the ultimate consequences of our bad choices and make it possible to change course. But then, in some ways I think Duane has an ambivilent view of Christianity and I don't. Fair enough, I suppose.

[Caitlin]

Originally posted by Peter Murray:
Yes, it does say that. But we were speculating about the higher price that Carl referred to. Nita wasn't asked to pay that higher price, so we can't get any clues from what Carl said then.

Actually, we can. We know that the higher price is summat more...substantial that the simple price, I guess.

And thanks for clarifying.

[illiriam]

Substituted Lifeprice

I really liked the post a guest posted. About how in order to repay the used energy, you lost your wizardry and lose the potential energy you could have used. That makes sense in a way.
But I really think that the higher price would be for someone else to take your place in the sacrifice and to watch them and know that they are dying because of you. Carl gets that look in his eyes, like it happened to him, and this is the only way it could have happened to him; like if he made a mistake, and someone else, a loved one maybe, stepped in to repay the debt. Like if Nita willingly let Kit take her place, or asked him or someone else to, and had to watch the song, and then had to return to her normal life without him. Not only is a lifeprice paid, but a person who didn't rack up the debt paid it themselves, and the person who did owe the debt let them so that they could live instead. I think that would be unbearable, because everyone dies, but being the cause of someone's death.... I can't even imagine.
And others have saved Nita, but she was always willing to die if it benefited the greater good, and never asked another to take her place, which makes it different.

And this is an afterthought... but what if the lifeprice made by the person with the debt didn't cover the price? Like if Nita had died, but then another had to die with her in order to really cover it? I don't know if that is possible, but it just popped into my head as my cursor lingered over the submit button. That would be pretty bad too, because it combines the two highest prices...

[SpacePen]

greater than human lifeprice

What if the thing that is greater than the lifeprice a human might be able to pay is the lifeprice of a species that has made a different Choice? If in the first place you were not subject to dying, ever, (or at least so long as the universe endures), then if you gave all your energy in a wizardry so as to die before the end of the universe, would you not, in fact, be paying a higher price than a wizard who is already scheduled to die SOMETIME or other in the indeterminate future?

You could say that the original Silent One payed this price; everyone who did so afterwards was only echoing it. Except, perhaps, Ed, whose lifespan was apparently at least as long as life itself in the ocean is ancient -

I daresay Nita, if she's ever in the position of advising a younger wizard, might show an expression similar to Carl's on her face when she thinks of what was payed for her by Ed; possibly by Fred; and by (well that's a spoiler in case anyone hasn't read past DW yet!)

[Jacq]

I don't think the Powers think that way, to judge one group more or less highly because of their choice. Even if they did, there would be so many other aspects of "worth" to take into account...

• A wizard's individual potential. Not necessarily what they've achieved already or their current power level, but what they may do in the future.
• The ripple effects of Entropy upon their death - a president versus a hobo without a family, for example. How many people will be affected negatively by their death versus the positive results. Another example here is someone like Rhiow, or S'ree. S'ree is already it in terms of seniority, anybody appointed below her if she dies would not be experienced or competent enough to manage the seas.
• Redundancy. I'm thinking of the Mobiles here specifically. They lack a level of individuality that non-hive-mind species enjoy.
• Other aspects of a species' Choice. I wouldn't think Nita's aliens in Wizard's Holiday would have a greater lifeprice than a human, all things considered.

That ripple effect I mentioned above is really interesting when you consider what could be the "higher price" than lifeprice. Most of the things I could consider a "fate-worse-than-death" would actually, in the long run, contribute to the entropic heatdeath. If one lost their wizardry but was still aware of it in the world and know they are no longer able to stop it, the temptation to become bitter and actually aid Entropy's process would be huge - and knowing you lack any real control would just make it worse, I think.

^ That is also known as Aesop's "Sour Grapes" law of karma.