The Ordinary

by Jim Grimsley

  When she felt the familiar withdrawal, the retreat of her consciousness that was the effect of the ring, she could hear a strain of music. She pictured herself touching the ring, fingertips to the stone; the music came from there and she listened and the pain became as if it were something walled away from her.

  Panic, then. Something panicked and tried to hurt her more, and at first she felt it, every racking of her body, and she tasted blood in her mouth and realized she was digging her own teeth into her cheeks and lips; and then she heard the music and went back into that safer space, from which she could watch her body as a distant object, one whose hurts were not so personal. She stayed there and waited for the taste of blood in her mouth to grow less and waited till the pain itself subsided.

  The sound of something dripping, water, pinging a distance onto stone. She listened through the layers of consciousness that the ring provided. The ring itself had vanished from her finger altogether, though the inner part of herself could sense its presence at times, so that she knew it was not lost. To remove the ring she would only have to want that, not even to will it but to want it, truly; at the moment she could hardly conceive of that. She was in a space, a room, now. She had been moved somewhere, time had passed since the storm. Had Arvith come back, too? What had happened to the putter, and to the others?

  When she opened her eyes a figure faced her, tall and slim, robed in dark reds and golds. She knew the figure even from behind. “Welcome,” Irion said. “You’re awake.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know where you are?”

  She shook her head.

  “But you know who I am?”

  She gave him a long look. She would have known anyway, she would have guessed. So she simply nodded. “You’re the one called Irion. You’re the master of this place.”

  His face was cold and still. His eyes sharpened on her for a moment, and she felt the chill of him, the harshness. Not even a moment of pleasure or triumph, not a hint of fear. “You do know me. Very good. You are wearing a ring. You must take it off and give it to me.”

  She shook her head. If he were able to get it off himself, he’d have taken her finger with it by now. “I’m not wearing anything.”

  “I shall touch you with my bare hand if you disobey me. Take off the ring and give it to me, this instant.”

  She shook her head. He reached for her.

  He merely took her hands, and she started to scream. He examined every part of her hands and the pain wracked her and wracked her, nothing could stop it. He laid fingers through the ring and still could not find it. His hands moved through her flesh, through her hands, and she felt tearing all through her tendons and screamed and screamed.

  Was she making a sound?

  She was coming to pieces in his hands. She could give him the ring and end this. It was what he wanted, but why? He wanted to be the real one? This Irion? Wanted to do away with the other one, and so he was taking Jedda to pieces in his bare hands to find the ring because it came from the real one. His eyes were burning. Jedda looked down at herself. How could she be alive and see her own heart beating in his hand like that, how could she feel her insides torn open like this and still be alive? She was gasping, looking at him, hating him, and knowing she had only to wish and she could give him what he wanted, and just as she was about to say the words, make the wish, he grew frustrated and stopped. A change, something on his face. A look of distraction, and then of effort. About the same time she heard the singing in the distance, the low thread of it.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Irion said, and dissolved into what looked like liquid shadow.

  Leaving like that, pieces of her in a room. Sobbing, the pain like fire through her hands, her legs, her gut, but easing now as she let the sound of the singing fill her. Closing her eyes, she felt the music take her, becoming a separation from her body. She had only to relax. Could she learn to stay here, safely at this distance from her pain, even when he touched her?

  He had traveled. She was realizing this as she stood there. He had traveled in the way that Jessex had traveled. Kinisthal. Meaning he was near a tower. Unless he was only hiding himself? But no, it looked the same.

  Was she still in the tower, then, the one over the Winter House?

  There was a tower over Arroth and a tower over Cunevadrim, too, she thought. She was less certain of the second, but it was a stronghold that had been used against Irion in the Long War; if she remembered the history. Meaning it most likely had a high place.

  She was near a tower, and now she probably knew which one. She had her eyes open looking up at the ceiling, afraid to look at herself, afraid to look for windows in case she could accidentally catch a glimpse of herself, and for a moment the pain came back and she could feel herself gasp but with the most sickening wetness in the sound. There was no question of moving. She could feel her arms or legs but they felt as if they had been taken off her body, as if she might see them across the room; she felt as if she were going mad.

  She concentrated on her surroundings and found she could see a lot without moving her eyes very much. She was studying the patches of light and dark stone, the careful workmanship, seams perfectly joined without a trace of mortar, that marked Tervan stonework from any other. She had learned that from Arvith during her tour of the house in Telyar. A fact could be such a comforting thing. She thought of the ring on her hand and her mood brightened, in spite of the ache in all her joints and the fire in her hands, and she gave a little laugh at the absurdity. Truly, to have such thoughts.

  Were the pain not so vivid, she might have begun to wonder at her sanity as well; could she be hallucinating at this point? She remembered the days in Inniscaudra clearly but did that mean they were real?

  But the fabric held together; when she looked around the room, it was always the same, nothing in it changed, including the feeling that she was trapped, that no effort of hers to move herself would do her any good. Something stood between her mind and her body. Always the same, consistent pain, nothing sliding into anything else, no dreamlike effects, simply pain and a dark stone room with a feeling of a vault overhead. A breath of air stirred, the scent of sewage. She moved her thoughts to the ring again and sought more distance; let time pass over me, she thought, and heard the faint sounds of music again.

  He was here again, she could feel him.

  He hardly looked like Irion at all. She was not at first sure she could focus her eyes on him, because the pain was wracking her again, and it consumed her and she tried to scream and made a kind of gurgling sound that frightened her more. “Give it to me and this ends,” he said, and she shook her head, and the pain grew worse, and she could feel the wish coming out of her body in spite of herself, she could feel the ring slipping off her finger, and she caught a glimpse of herself, dismembered, gutted, strewn over tables, nerves stretched out like the strings of some ghastly instrument; she made the gurgling sound again and wept, felt the wetness on her eyes and cheeks and he took the ring and held it, his eyes darkening to hollows.

  She had no idea what language he was speaking. The effect was odd, like mentext but more audible. It was as if she received some pure stream of intent or meaning from him that resonated in all sorts of words from languages and dialects she knew.

  A feeling of despair came over her, cold and persistent, and she felt with dread that she could not take any more, that this would have to end now. He had what he wanted.

  A woman stood behind him. She was very bent, and very old, clothed in grays and browns, a long skirt and loose blouse, a shawl and a stick to prop on. The man, Irion, straightened from Jedda and turned.

  At this new presence, Jedda sensed Irion’s deep disturbance, and a sense of his menace that was absolute. He turned again to Jedda and lunged at her with those red hands and at once he was gone, completely dissolved and gone.

  The woman looked at Jedda. She was old but in no obvious way, her streaked hair tied back, her face gentle and radiant. She walk
ed step by step across the room and Jedda became whole again, could feel herself in one piece, and the pain eased and ebbed and vanished by the time the woman lay her hand on Jedda’s brow. A feeling of well-being, of perfection, flooded Jedda as she watched the old woman, her beautiful gray eyes; the woman leaned down and kissed Jedda on the lips, pressing the ring into Jedda’s palm. Such a feeling of gentleness flooded Jedda that she was shivering.

  Then, with no transition, instead of the woman, Jessex stood where she had been.

  He wore the gray robe in which she had first seen him, embroidery on the hems and along panels in front, the rich color that was warm and cool at once. “It’s all right now,” he said. “It’s over.”

  Jedda had no voice. He passed his hand along her and must have felt that her pain was gone. He looked very tired, as if he were hardly able to stand. The wind was tearing through the tower.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, his voice gentle. “I want to put you to sleep for a while.”

  “Am I all right?” Her voice felt like a croak coming out.

  “Yes.” He touched her cheek. “You need to rest, and I need to get you down from here, to where Malin is. Do you trust me to do this?”

  She nodded. He blew a breath over her. She smelled something like a garden full of flowers and fell asleep.

  27

  When she woke, the first thing she saw was the pillow, edged in blue thread, a precise, neat stitch clearly done by hand; next she saw the window, a dark sky that looked like the end of day, though it might have been dark from clouds. The wind pressed at the window as if the weather were rising. A tall shadow moved from there to the bed and Malin bent over Jedda, her white hair falling across Jedda’s face. “You’re here,” Malin said, and they watched each other eye to eye.

  This time Jedda could see the woman she knew, the one she had known, only a few days ago in her memory, in that bed in the north of Irion. For Jedda, the separation had been no more than that, just enough time to cross a lake of fire, for instance, or to be slowly flayed alive. Whereas for Malin the wait had been a long one, and it took awhile for that old Malin to surface.

  “Am I very different?” she asked.

  “You look a bit more wary,” Jedda said. She swallowed, reached for Malin’s hand, half afraid her own body would refuse her. She felt no pain now, but the memory of it was intense, and she ought to be sore.

  “You missed the fighting,” Malin said. “After I got the letter and understood. After I came to get you away from him.”

  The letter was on the table, as it turned out, the one Jessex had written long ago. Malin picked it up so Jedda could see. “But you’d already met me,” Jedda said. “So what did the letter tell you?”

  “That you’d met me. That this was the moment I was waiting for.”

  Her voice made Jedda shiver. She lay back on the bed, arm over her eyes. “You’ve known this was coming all along.”

  “Yes. The same way you knew what was coming the night of the dinner. Does that bother you?”

  After a while Jedda said, “No.” The placement of her arm muffled her voice and made her feel oddly apart from Malin, till Malin stretched along the bed, leaning her weight carefully onto Jedda.

  “I’m glad.”

  They lay silently together, their bodies warming, Jedda’s breath gathering against Malin’s collarbone. She wondered whether she ought to feel afraid, or crazy, or uncertain; she wondered whether this was really sane, to feel so safe with this woman. But she would not deny the feeling.

  “What happened?” Jedda asked.

  “The letter was my signal to move on the tower here at Cunevadrim. It was my job to beat the impostor, the part of my uncle who was here, who wanted to stay independent. My uncle had another task, joining himself back together out of all his pieces.”

  “It was the woman who did it,” Jedda said. “She was the one who stopped Irion when he took the ring.”

  “The woman?” Malin shook her head, touched her lips to Jedda’s forehead. “No, that was my uncle. He didn’t kill it. He only took it back into himself where it came from.”

  “There was a woman in the room,” Jedda said, leaning up with some effort, looking down at Malin. “Your uncle saw her, and was afraid of her, and she killed him, or at least that’s what it looked like. And she touched me and I was all right. And the next moment Jessex was there, in the same clothes as when I met him. And then he was gone.”

  Malin was very quiet a moment, looking at Jedda soberly. She touched Jedda’s brow. “You really mean it. A woman?”

  “Yes. Very old. Walking with a stick.”

  “Oh my,” Malin said, and would not say anything else. Sometime during that silence Jedda fell asleep again, and Malin lay quietly beside her.

  28

  “So now you’ve seen her, too,” Malin said.

  They were on the deck of a ship in the arc of the Eseveren Gate, riding the roll of the waves, hearing the singing of Prin choirs mingled with the ocean wind, a choir of Krii.

  Jedda had never heard such music, and to think it was no more than voices and the wind. Ships full of Prin, some choirs on hovercraft bought from the Hormling, a few on steamships, on sailing vessels straining to hold place, the wind ripping at the riggings on the masts. A motley fleet spread across the waves, the bright sun shining.

  She had met her friends yesterday, clasped Opit to her shoulder, shaken hands with Himmer and Vitter, seen the edge of fear in Brun’s eye. They were all here somewhere, on one of the ships. When she was with them she felt most keenly the change in herself. I don’t know who I am anymore, she thought. What a pleasant prospect, at my age. “What’s left to do?”

  “You tell me,” Malin said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s time for you to decide.” Malin walked to the ship’s railing, stood there silhouetted against the waves. “Do we open the gate again, or not?”

  Jedda followed. “I thought that’s why we came here.”

  “You have to say.” They were close now, and eye to eye.

  Jedda’s heart was pounding. “Why does it have to be me? Why is it my choice?”

  Malin shrugged. “God kissed you. Not me.”

  “But you don’t even think she is God.”

  Malin smiled. “But you do.”

  Was it true? She felt as if Malin had engulfed her in some way, or as if the old woman had, or both. It was the most wonderful feeling she could remember, to be so taken. She waited till she felt calmer to answer, and even then she hardly knew what she would say, since she was tempted both ways. “Yes,” she said at last. “I want to open the gate again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think it’s what she wants. And because I want her to be out there, too. In my world.”

  They stood there quietly. “All right,” Malin answered. The wind rose, ruffling all the sails, and a light grew sudden and strong through the clouds. “Touch the ring when you’re ready.”

  She had been wearing it lately; for a while after she recovered she could never stand to have it in sight. The stone had grown warm in the sun. She touched her finger to it. Far in the north in his tower, Irion felt her wish. Jedda looked for a change in the stone arch but saw only the waves and wind beating against it. Malin signaled for the fleet to sail and the Prin began to sing as the ships moved through the arch, across the little patch of sea, and into the new world.

  Notes from the Author

  Readers of my earlier novel Kirith Kirin will understand that the world of The Ordinary is the same world as that older Aeryn, changed by time. While a few of the characters from Kirith Kirin appear in this book briefly, the story is not a sequel to that book, nor is it the second volume in a series of books that tell, or attempt to tell, some single larger story. Threads of a larger story are there, of course, but are not vital to the novel. The universe shared by the Erejhen and the Hormling is one about which I intend to write more, on all sides of the time line. The Ordinary se
rves as the story of the place where the Hormling and Erejhen meet, literally and figuratively. I repeat information about Erejhen religion, history, and other subjects only to the degree that it illuminates the current story. Readers wishing to learn more about the long past of these people will want to turn to Kirith Kirin. Readers who are curious about the Hormling will want to read the stories I’ve published in Asimov’s Science Fiction over the last few years.

  I call this present book “science fiction” in spite of the fact that it is the successor to a fantasy novel and in spite of the fact that it uses the word magic. I am exploring the interface between a culture that believes in magic and one that believes in science, and I ultimately wish to explore the kinds of doubts that arise in each world as a result of the presence of the other. The book presumes that science will eventually explain magic, and thus my own belief that the science fiction designation is earned, if more softly than hardly.

  Also by Jim Grimsley

  Winter Birds

  Dream Boy

  My Drowning

  Mr. Universe and Other Plays

  Comfort and Joy

  Boulevard

  Kirith Kirin

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  THE ORDINARY

  Copyright © 2004 by Jim Grimsley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC