Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Of course,” she said, giving him an anxious look. “I will do it, Aufors Leys. That wound needs attention.”

  “I’ll attend to it when I figure out how to get away.”

  Since the few captive Mahahmbi refused to have a malghaste imprisoned among them, Aufors was taken out onto the sands and chained to a metal ring set in the side of a hastily erected sentry hut. Something about the site bothered him. He was not far outside the malghaste gate through which he had entered the city. He stared at the gate and at the desert for some time before realizing that the much-guarded building he had seen through his glasses was gone. No, certainly not gone, though as certainly invisible. A great flow of sand had covered it.

  Until this moment, he had assumed that the building would have been discovered by the Aresians, who would therefore also have discovered at least a few hardened Old Friends. Some of them must have accumulated over the years. Since they had not found P’naki in the palace, it stood to reason the Shah must have kept the stuff in the guarded building. If the building had been covered at the first alarm, however, then the Aresians had neither found the store of P’naki, nor had they seen what happened to Old Friends.

  Aufors was not positive what had been given to the Old Friends, but he had a hunch he had some of it in his breast pocket: the lichen he had allowed to eat his own, male blood during his hike across the desert to Mahahm-qum. Though the guards had patted him down, the packet of lichen powder was so thin they had not felt it.

  The sentries changed their post in early evening. Obrang, the same soldier who had beaten Aufors over the head previously, was the one assigned to the post where he was chained. Aufors showed no recognition. In the evening, both he and the guard were provided with a meal. The guard gave Aufors a sneering look while taking half of Aufors’s ration to add to his own. He ate greedily, with much lip smacking aimed in Aufors’s direction, then began gaping almost as soon as the meal was over, his normally torpid wits damped further by too hearty a meal.

  Interrupting Obrang’s yawn, Aufors said softly, as though talking to himself, “My woman is in south. I would give much to rejoin my woman, my children.”

  The guard stopped gaping and grinned. “Yeah. And what much might you have to give, shit-toter?”

  “Everyone here is looking for long-life stuff, very rare, very valuable. I have some. I would give that.”

  The guard’s grin vanished. He came nearer Aufors and knelt down. “Yeah? And where would that be?”

  “Not here. I will show where, if you let me go.”

  The guard stared at him for a moment, his dull wits struggling with the dimly recognized possibilities.

  “I can search you,” blustered the guard.

  “I don’t have it here. But close.”

  “Tell you what,” the guard said after some time had passed. “I put a shackle on you. I lock the other end to me. You take me to the place, if the stuff is there, I let you go.”

  “You have to use it right away,” murmured Aufors. “It’s already more’n two days old, and it’s only good for three days. I had more, but your commander took it.”

  Obrang’s eyes swiveled. “The Prince? Terceth? Him?”

  Aufors nodded.

  The guard dithered. Terceth was known to be a good deal smarter than the average Aresian. Besides, he was the Chieftain’s son. Keeping his voice affable with some difficulty, Obrang said, “All right. You show me where.”

  “Bring water,” murmured Aufors. “You have to use it right away.”

  The guard fetched his water bottle, giving Aufors a chance to take the packet from his pocket and hide it up his sleeve. The guard shackled Aufors to him, pocketing the key, and they moved away from the guard post to the nearest dune that hid them from the city. There Aufors pretended to look for landmarks, finally settling on a dead bonebush, where he fell on his knees and dug into the sand at its root to come up with the packet.

  The guard tried to snatch it, but Aufors turned away.

  “I’m not fightin’ over it,” said the guard, with an evil grin. “We go back and I lock you to your post again. Then I’ll just take it.”

  “You try, I yell,” said Aufors. “Guards come running. They’ll take that away from you. This is too valuable for me to give for nothing. You let me go first.”

  The guard took a moment to arrive at a conclusion in which Dunnel and General Terceth both figured prominently. “All right,” he said with false geniality. “But I’ll use it first, then I’ll unlock you.”

  “Pour water into cup,” said Aufors, waiting until the guard had complied to lean forward and sprinkle half the powder.

  Obrang sniffed it, then gulped it down, grinned his evil grin, and started to move away.

  “Be still,” said Aufors. “You have to be still for minute, let it work. Otherwise no good.”

  The guard sat, staring ominously at Aufors and jingling the chain between them like a threat. Aufors hummed in time to the jingling. First an impatient quick time march. Chink chink chink chink. Then an adagio: chinkle … chinkle … Then a dirge: clunk … silence … clunk … silence …

  Aufors leaned forward and took the key from the guard’s pocket. The guard’s eyes followed him, though slowly. Aufors unlocked and removed the shackles and replaced the key. He took the guard’s weapon, then took both cup and bottle back to the guard post where he rinsed the cup, then emptied Obrang’s water into his own water bottle before replacing the guard’s cup and locking one end of the shackle to the hut.

  Darkness was falling as he walked away from the city, feeling, so he told himself, perfectly all right, though he staggered as he walked. The night winds wiped out his wavering footprints as he went, a single intention in his addled mind: somehow to get back to his boat, and then … then … find Genevieve.

  Deep in the caverns beneath Havenor, beings had awakened. Some were small and some large. All were what the malghaste might once have defined as harbingers of then-respective worlds; all were from worlds no longer living. It was not chance that had brought them to Haven, any more than it had been chance that brought them to these protecting caverns. Vast and wondrous spirits had chosen that the harbingers come here, to await their future in a place better suited to their needs. They had come to a refuge in chrysalises of fiber and metal made by men, the chrysalises had been broken, and now was time to leave this dark place and move on.

  The beings left their cartons and moved into the dusty aisles, noses smelling, eyes seeing, tongues tasting the air. Their senses led them to the food nearby, purchased long ago and stored for their eventual benefit. Latigern and betivor, chamaris and thalliar, bruk and bralt, they among a hundred others wakened and fed and turned unfalteringly toward a desired exit, one southward under the mountains, one that led far from this place but much nearer the place they would go.

  Swift as the sailing moon they went, hoofed and taloned, many-legged and legless, winged and finned, armored or furred or feathered, the larger carrying the smaller, away down dusty aisles, past towers of treasured artifacts and precipices of coveted devices, all, all fallen into ruin.

  In a far nook, curled like a worm in a nut, lay the Lord Paramount. He had sucked up all but a tiny bit of the P’naki he had brought with him from the elevator, more than he had ever had all at once before, and he had been thinking about finding his way back to his elevator to fetch some more. As the creatures went by, their wild flight made him lose track of these thoughts, and he sat up to watch. There were his pets, his lovely zoo, his curiosities, his specimens, his amusements, his possessions. There they were, moving, running, going past. He lifted one little hand to wave. Byedy-bye to all that marvel, byedy-bye to all that wonder, byedy-bye, see them go, all gone. He began to hum to himself, a buzzing little hum, like a sleepy bee, musing over all those lovely creatures. Though he could not remember ordering some of them, surely he had. And quite right. They belonged here. He was quite certain they belonged here.

  The creatures saw him as they pa
ssed, though they disregarded him as a function now obsolete, an actor whose sole act was done. They went from his view into tunnels no man had ever traveled, where they fled past underground rivers, slaking their thirst on dark waters that had never seen the sun. In time, sooner than anyone on the planet would have considered possible, they emerged from the seacliffs south of Bliggen, west of Frangia, near the Stone Trail. The separating seas meant nothing to them. Those who could not swim would be carried by those who could, and creatures of this world were already coming from the sea to offer assistance.

  However they chose to go, they would end on Mahahm, Mahahm, which had been meant for them, from the time the first one of them was stricken down by the weapons of mankind.

  The seven supply sleds were driven by Joncaster, Enid, and Melanie, plus three men from the marae: Jorub, Etain and Gilber; and one woman, Ithil. Genevieve was the only passenger as they worked their way slowly southwest, stopping each night at one of the refuges and moving on each morning. When the refuges had been resupplied, the sleds would go on to Galul for safekeeping. They were too hard come by to leave behind.

  They left the marae in the early morning of the sixth day after Genevieve had fled from Mahahm-qum, spending all that day and the two following along tortuous trails. Each morning they started well before sunrise and stopped at some shaded place midmorning for food and rest while the sun was at its zenith. During these stops, Genevieve usually fell asleep, for though she felt exhausted by the end of each day, she lay half awake in the night silences, haunted by sounds and visions that seemed always to stay just beyond her understanding.

  So, this morning, when she fell into a doze, the others moved around her quietly, letting her sleep, only to be startled half out of their wits as she sat up suddenly and screamed. It was an enormous cry, one that went out of her like a visible thing, like a great wing of sound, reverberating among the rocky cliffs, propagating as it soared over the desert, going away among its own echoes still sounding, plangent as an enormous bell.

  This was followed by a profound hush, during which her companions scarcely breathed. Thus, silenced within silence, they heard from afar an answering sound, lower, and yet alike, a sound that did not diminish but went on and on, like the endless vibrations of a tuning fork.

  Genevieve staggered to her feet in one panicky motion, and the others shook off their immobility and surrounded her, as she glared with wide eyes into the cliff face that sheltered them as though it were a door into some other world.

  “I see,” she cried. “Oh, I see.”

  “What,” urged Joncaster, coming to place his hand on her shoulder. “What do you see?”

  “They said call upon them on the sea,” she whispered, eyes focused on something they could not see. “We must get to the sea. There is a place by the shore where a pillar of stone rests on a black pedestal. I see a great stone serpent, a horned serpent …”

  “We know the place,” said Gilber. “It marks on offshore deep …”

  “A ship is coming there.”

  “What … Who … told you?” asked Melanie.

  Genevieve laughed, almost hysterically. “Your spirit, I suppose. The one you’re so determined to convince me of!”

  “Te wairua taiao?”

  “The one you say you’ve never seen.” She put her head in her hands, shuddering. “Oh, Aufors, Aufors … Please, someone, help him! He’s … he’s wounded. He’s sick. He needs help.”

  “Where?” cried Joncaster. “How?”

  “I see a red cliff with a black layer in it, like a wide stripe. I see him moving … moving bodies. Moving women’s bodies away from the lichen, so they won’t be found there. He is wounded, the wound is infected. He’s delirious. I don’t know if he lives … ah, Aufors … I see a red cliff and I see rocks covered with birds, along the shore …”

  “You’ve seen three separate places,” muttered Joncaster.

  “Aufors at the red cliff or the bird rocks,” Genevieve cried. “The serpent rock is something else …”

  “We’ll empty two sleds at the refuge tonight,” offered Enid, “and send one to the bird rocks and one to red cliff …”

  “No,” said Joncaster. “We’ve seen proof of her visions already, Enid. We’ve seen that delay is a mistake. We’ve already reduced the loads by half, so we’ll unload two of them onto the other five. If her man is there and wounded, best we find him while he’s still alive.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Genevieve muttered. “Take care. Oh, Joncaster, that’s why Aufors was moving bodies! I said they would come! They have come! The Aresians! Mahahm-qum is taken. Havenor is taken. The Lord Paramount, oh, see him go down, down. Oh, now he lies deep, deep in the tunnels below Havenor. The Shah is no more. Oh …” She put her hands to her head, her eyes wide, unseeing. “More. Animals? From below Havenor? I told Veswees … it wasn’t supposed to be animals …”

  “What do you mean, wasn’t supposed?”

  “I’d seen something else moving from Havenor. No matter, no matter, it will have to wait. My father. He’s up there behind us, following us. He has murder in his eyes. There is danger …”

  “What else?” murmured Melanie, with a shocked look at the others.

  She started to speak, started to scream, then held it in, clamped down upon it. “Nothing,” she murmured. “Nothing. Only the sea, the waves of the sea, the surf breaking on the serpent rock. You must bring Aufors there …”

  Joncaster shared a look with Melanie, half awe, half skepticism. “You’ve seen enough to keep us all busy, Genevieve,” he said at last. “The rest of you head for the standing stone. Jorub and I know where both the other places are.”

  They began to bustle, unloading and reloading the sleds, while Genevieve sat with her head down, concentrating. The last of the dream. After she had seen the serpent rock. She was there with Aufors and the baby. Someone … someone was threatening her. Someone said, “Genevieve knows, she’s such a clever, clever girl …” and then someone else pursued her, and she climbed onto that horned rock, with Dovidi. Oh, Dovidi. She climbed that rock, carrying the baby and then … then …

  She looked up, shuddering.

  Joncaster put his hand upon her shoulder. “What is it, Genevieve? Something else we should know?”

  Her eyes focused and she took control of herself. She would not speak of the stone. Not yet. “My father wants to kill you, and then he will give me to the Prince.”

  “Gilber can circle behind your father to keep him off you. Jorub will go to the bird rocks, and I’m taking Etain with me,” said Joncaster, nodding toward the men from the marae. “If your husband is at red cliff, he’s still near where the bodies are, and if he hasn’t moved them all, perhaps we can finish the job. The Aresians mustn’t find out what they’re there for …”

  “I’ll circle out behind your father,” said Gilber. “You’re sure he’s out there alone.”

  “Yes,” said Genevieve, positively, almost pityingly. “He’s always been alone.”

  From a rocky height some distance to the west, the Marshal peered down at a straggling and almost invisible track leading toward the rocky wilderness along the coast. He had followed the track all day, even catching recurrent glimpses of the travelers. Once he had seen a line of sleds sliding over the top of a dune and had counted the people on them: seven drivers, plus one.

  The one was surely Genevieve. He had not believed she had gone elsewhere, no matter what Y’bon Saelan had said. Genevieve had inherited her mother’s unwarranted cleverness, her mother’s ability to gather information she should not have any inkling of and put it together to draw a conclusion that was always and infuriatingly correct. Women were quite bad enough when they were as stupid as they were expected to be. When they were intelligent, perceptive, when they saw through each courteous evasion to the facts one would prefer not to discuss …

  Why should a man be labeled a monster by laying his motives out in that way when a few harmless evasions would allow his reputation t
o be unstained and his family to be comfortable? Genevieve’s mother could not have been comfortable in paradise! The questions she used to ask! The way she worried at things! The answers she came up with! She had probably known all about P’naki years before he did. He was certain of it. He remembered her looking at him almost pityingly, with those strange, all seeing eyes….

  The previous afternoon, when he had sneaked close to the ones he was following, downwind of them, he had heard his wife’s voice, coming over the sands. He had actually looked up, expecting to see her, before realizing it was not wife but daughter he heard. Genevieve was like her, so like her, with that same voice, that same cleverness. Oh, depend upon it. She knew! She knew all about it.

  Women were not supposed to know the truth! They had their youth, their comforts, their purity of soul to guarantee them an eternity fluttering like butterflies among the flowers of paradise. So the Invigilator had said. Being butterflies wasn’t an immortality a man would want, but no doubt it served for women. Thank heaven Genevieve’s mother had died. Knowing what he knew now … he was glad she had died.

  And what a fool he had been not to have known sooner! Of course, his own father had died young, in battle, while he, the Marshal, was only a boy. There were no other male relatives. So, it had been left to Rongor, though the fool had given him as much misinformation as fact! Rongor had intimated the Prince was in charge of the P’naki matter. Perhaps Rongor had merely inferred this from the Prince’s lordly manner, but in any case, he had been mistaken. It was the Shah who controlled P’naki, and the Shah had no high regard for the Prince. Idiot Rongor, who had worshipped the Prince and who had not known the truth until it was too late….

  And he, himself! He had tried to expedite the delivery of his daughter into the hands of the Mahahmbi! He had left the doors open, so they could come in and get her, and he had gone to the palace to announce that fact. Instead of being congratulated for solicitous behavior, he had been taken prisoner and his guards had been slain before his eyes. Even then, perhaps, things could have been differently managed if he had known the Shah’s true feelings.