She shut her eyes. —Meron. The man who leads my people, who demands me back, the man you call “the Smith”: He is my husband.
—Your husband is dead!
—No! Her foot stamped the floor.
—You saw him yourself, broken on the rocks! No man could survive that. He was a coward; he killed himself, he abandoned you to me, and I won’t let you go. I drew a breath, struggling for control. —Your people raid and slaughter mine, and take their heads. You damn our souls—by our beliefs dismembered spirits cannot be freed by cremation. If there’s war, then the Kedonny bring it on themselves!
Etaa drew herself up stiffly. —If you won’t release me, he will come and take me!
I frowned. —If he can rise from the dead, then perhaps he will. But I doubt if even you can expect that of the Mother.
She crossed her arms, her eyes burning.
I left the chamber.
* * * *
She stayed in her rooms from then on, refusing to accompany me anywhere, the drawn look of grief she had first worn returning to her face. When I came to see my son she would sit by the fire and turn her back on me, wordless. Once I came and sat beside her on the cushioned bench, with Alfilere squirming bright-eyed on my knees, wrapped in a fur bunting. I clapped my hands and saw him laugh, and as I offered him ringed fingers to chew on, looked up to see Etaa smile. I took back my fingers and signed, —Who could ask for a handsomer son? But he doesn’t favor his father, I fear, little dark-eyes— I smiled hopefully, but she only looked away, brushing the silver bell at her ear, and tears showed suddenly on her cheeks.
Angry with Willem, at first I had forbidden him to visit her again; but I’d relented, knowing her solitude and sorrow. Not long after, I found him with her, his pale head in her lap, his thin shoulders shaken with sobs. She looked up as I came toward them, her eyes filled with shared pain; but Willem did not, and so she lifted his head from her lavender skirts. He rose unsteadily to make a bow, then sank exhausted onto the wine-red cushions beside her, wiping his face on his sleeve.
But I stood frozen in my place, because I had seen the thin tracks of drying blood that ran down his neck and jaw. Suddenly all his strange, frightened prescience fitted into place, and I realized the truth: my own page was a hearer, and somehow until now his family had managed to keep it a secret. Until now. My stomach twisted: His ears had been put out by the Church.
As though she had followed my thoughts, Etaa signed bitterly, —It was your. Archbishop Shappistre. He hounded Willem for being with me, until he learned that Willem felt the Mother’s touch—and see what he’s done! He persecutes all who have Her blessings, he almost killed my child—he almost killed you! Your own kinsman! How can you let him go free, if you are king; why don’t you challenge him?
I reached to the crooked scar along my back, caught in my own bitter outrage. The archbishop’s open attempt to destroy me had failed, and now he waged a subtler war, spreading rumors, subverting those I trusted, tormenting those I loved. I had the power to strike him down, even in the face of the Gods; but I could not. —Etaa, it’s not that simple. This isn’t some villager’s dispute, I can’t take him out on the mead and thrash him! The royal line is split in two, and with it the loyalties of the nation; I rule a land at peace because I have tried to keep them reconciled. The archbishop is my counterbalance, but he’d upset the scales if he could, with his dreams of a Church-ruled state. He would throw this country into civil war to achieve it; he cares nothing for consequences. If I charged him with treason I’d do the same. He will stop at nothing; but I stop a long way before that.
Etaa stroked Willem’s drooping head. —I don’t understand the needs of nations, Meron . . . and you don’t understand the needs of women and men. Suddenly she looked up at me, her face anguished. —He’ll destroy you, Meron! Don’t let him, don’t . . . Her hands dropped hopelessly into her lap; she rose and turned away, going to the baby’s cradle to comfort her gentle son.
Two days later, Willem was gone. The other pages said he had run away home. But one of Etaa’s earrings, the tiny silver bells that she always wore, was missing too. I asked her where it was, and too carelessly she signed that she had lost it. And so I knew that Willem had gone east to find the Smith.
Slowly, with all the pain of birth, winter gave way at last to spring, while the Kedonny raided on our borders. Etaa mourned in her chambers, and the New Year’s revels on the green were a bright, shallow mockery of the past.
And while I slept that night and dreamed of happier times, Etaa and my son disappeared.
Frantic with loss, I had the countryside searched and searched again, but there was no sign of them. There was no rumor, no clue; it was almost as if they had never been. I could get no rest, and my own lords said openly that I looked like a man possessed. The archbishop, smiling, said that perhaps the Earth had swallowed them up—and I almost came to believe him. But I learned my coachman had disappeared on the same night as Etaa, and some said they thought my carriage had gone in the night, and come back carrying no one. And so I wondered if the truth lay not in the Earth but in the sky…and the Gods had taken their revenge on me.
But the Kedonny ate deeper into my lands, and finally I was forced to abandon my search. I planned to raise a full army and put them to rout; but as I sent out calls to gather men, I discovered how well my archbishop had done his ungodly work. His rumors of my bewitchment had taken hold: My own people believed the Black Witch had snared me in a spell and addled my mind, then disappeared like the accursed thing she was, stealing even my son to be put to some terrible blasphemous use. They believed I would betray them to the Kedonny in battle, and that the Gods themselves had abandoned me.
Even lords who were always loyal to my father’s line have deserted me for the archbishop, and those who still support me get little support themselves for the raising of an army. The word is abroad in the land that it is suicide to ride with me to war—that if I am denied, and destroyed, then the forces of Right will be served, and the Gods will save them from the pagan hordes. Damn the Church! The Gods have never intervened in a war of men; I doubt they’ll do it now.
And so I leave today, with what forces I can gather, to go and save my kingdom myself, if I can. Perhaps then this new storm of ignorance will pass, and not inundate us all. Perhaps. Or perhaps it is already too late. . . .
If so, then maybe it is best that Etaa has gone, and taken my son. I only pray, to whatever true Gods may be, that they are safe, and that some day her son will return to claim his throne, and be the greatest of our kings. If she chose to leave me, I cannot blame her, for I never had the right to take her as I did. But I loved her, and I pray she will remember that too, and forgive me a little.
I often wonder if she ever loved me. If so, it was more than I deserved. But sometimes there was a look, or a sign— The hands of the summer wind are as warm and light as your touch, Etaa; it may be that your Mother has stolen you home after all. Watch over my son, and forgive his father. Give him your blessings, as you gave them to me. Etaa ... I think I will not see you again.
But come, my lords; the Godseye keeps watch on us, and the sun is already high. They say a smith may look at a king: Then let it be the last thing he ever sees!
* * * *
Part 3: The God
I understand that I’m speaking today because you wondered how a “naive kid” in the Colonial Service was inspired to solve the Human Problem. The answer is simple—I loved Etaa, and Etaa was the mother of Alfilere.
You probably all remember the situation at the time. The Colonial Service had come upon the Humans not long before: an intelligent life form based on carbon rather than silicon, but oxygen breathers and compatible with roughly the same temperature range that we are. That made them another competitor, but only marginally; and if they were anything else but Humans, we could have expected to coexist with them. But our studies of their ongoing culture, and the scanty records of their past, indicated they were the mo
st unrelentingly and irrationally aggressive species we’d ever encountered. Combined with a high technology, it would have made them the most dangerous, too. We’d live in peace with them willingly enough, under the circumstances, but the question I’d always heard was whether they would live in peace with us. The majority Conservative opinion was that it wasn’t likely, and so our sector council ordered us to intervene, and stall their cultural progress. The Liberal faction in the Service objected, doing their best to prod the Human status quo, and that was how the trouble started.
I’m a xenobiologist, and at the time I was just beginning my career; I was also too inexperienced to question policy then, and so I blindly supported the majority’s stand on Humans. Especially since I’d had to live among Humans, to study (and watch) them, as the “coachman” for the God-hating king of Tramaine. When the Libs gave restricted records to the king, and then openly incited the neighboring Kotaane to war, we Conservatives retaliated by kidnapping Etaa, the king’s Kotaane mistress, and her son, his heir. I was chosen to do the actual deed, because of my strategic position— and, frankly, my naiveté. All I had to do was keep the pair safely out of the way, they told me, and at the same time I could experience my first change-study of an unknown world. ... All I had to do was spend an eternity alone, I discovered, on a desolate abandoned world with no one for company but a superstitious alien woman and a squalling alien brat. I didn’t know whether to feel honored by the responsibility, or ashamed of being used. But I did my duty, and stole her away to the outer moon.
I sent Etaa drugged wine, and shuttered all the ports; she never knew what had happened, even when I brought the shuttle down near the ruins of the dead colony and opened the lock. I watched her on the screens as she stepped outside, waiting while the first rush of stunned dismay took her. She stumbled back, clutching her child protectively against her as the cold wind gusted, swirling the drab rust-brown grit into stinging clouds. Beyond us the naked, stony slope swept upward toward the ruins of the Human town, fangs of bitterness snapping at the clouds. I’d seen it once before, but never like this, knowing I couldn’t leave it. My own eyes burned with the bleakness and the memory of the stinging wind. It would be hard to learn the unity of this world ... it was easy to see why the Humans had failed to.
I don’t know what thoughts were in Etaa’s mind then; only that they probably weren’t the ones I expected. But confusion and despair were on her face as she started down the ramp, the wind tugging at her long cape and stiff, ungainly skirts. Her baby had begun to cry, wailing with the wind. For the first time she was real for me, touching my emotions and stirring—pity. This was the stolen woman, used by a ruthless king, whose misery I seemed to be tied to from the start, when I’d piloted the king’s carriage in her capture. She was only another victim of the cruel and senseless schisms that divided these wretched Humans, and she’d suffer more now and never understand why, because of them, and because of us…I felt unease pull down pity: Did I have the right—? But she’d been a pawn, she would be a pawn; maybe that was her destiny, and this was mine.
I left the controls at last, bracing myself to deliver the final horror to her. I’d gotten rid of my Human makeup, and knew my form would be starting to slip after the stress of the flight. And no Human had ever seen a “God” unmasked, even a God who passed for a coachman. Avoiding the velvet cushions on the floor, I went to stand at the lock.
—Meron—? She turned with a gasp to stare up at me, her hands asking the question. I remembered she was a Kotaane priestess, and could hear; the speculation was that the king had taken her precisely because she could, out of his hatred for tradition. Her eyes had brightened with hope and something more as she turned. It froze into terror as she saw me, and she backed away, her fingers stiffening out in a sign to ward off evil. It was too much like an obscenity popular with the king’s retainers; I almost laughed. That would have been the final cruelty. I caught it in time and only spread my hands in a peace gesture. I signed, —I will not harm you, Lady Etaa. Have no fear. She shook her head, keeping her distance. I wondered what I must look like to her—a mockery of a Human made of bread dough, or clay. I ducked back into the king’s “carriage” to get my hooded jacket, thinking the more I covered the better. But as I disappeared I heard her startled cry and footsteps behind me on the ramp. She appeared at the lock in a swirl of dust, and dropped to her knees at my feet. —Oh, please, don’t leave me here! The baby whimpered as her signing jostled him, inside her cape. I stared down at her, stunned; but seeing my face again she faltered, as if she saw her own doom instead. Looking away, she placed her wriggling child tenderly on a red velvet cushion, then forced her eyes back to mine, signing, —Then have mercy on my child. Take him with you, he’s no harm to anyone! He is a prince, return him to—to his father, King Meron. You’ll be rewarded! Give him to anyone . . . but let him live—
I bent down and picked up the child; he gazed at me in fascination, and suddenly he began to laugh. Inexplicably delighted, I held him close; then, slowly, I passed him back to his mother’s arms. Hope shattered on her face, and she flinched when I touched her.
I stepped back. —Etaa, you aren’t being abandoned in this godforsaken place. I am your guardian; I’ll stay with you here, to look after you and your child. You’ve been . . . exiled, and it will be a hard life for us both. But it won’t last forever, only until—certain matters are settled in Tramaine. But it has to be this way until then; you have no choice. This is your new home.
She watched rigidly, the need to ask a hundred questions struggling against the certainty that she didn’t need to ask, but only accept, and endure, this new trial. She looked down at last, and I saw the trembling lines of her face grow quiet with resolve; she would adapt. I felt relieved, and somehow surprised.
—Who has ordered this? Not ... not the king? Her dark eyes flickered up again with a kind of urgency.
—No. I reassured her, thinking how she must hate the man, and not wanting the truth to seem any harsher than it was. —It—is the will of the Gods, Etaa.
Her flush of relief turned to a sudden frown, and she looked hard at me for a moment. But she pulled back into her silence, and signed nothing more, waiting for me.
I gave her a clingsuit and boots like my own to replace her awkward gown, then waited outside the craft in the wind, knowing the preoccupation with bodily shame that these heterosexuals had. She appeared at last, with her hair bound up and her child slung at her back in the folds of her cape. The heavy jacket flapped around her like a tent, but I could see that the suit had adapted to her well enough to keep her warm. I sealed the clasps on her jacket while she watched me, intent and suspicious. Then I unloaded supplies, and sealed the hatch behind us. The lifeboat rose silently; the king’s carriage would be home before he missed it. I wished we could have been, too.
We struggled up the hill toward the ruined town, battered by blowing grit and dead, unidentifiable vegetation. The ragged maze of the tree-eaten ruins broke the back of the wind as we reached the summit; we stood panting and rubbing our burning eyes while the wind moaned and clattered in frustration overhead. I led Etaa through the rubble to a shelter that stood intact, a prefabricated box that still had its roof. As we stumbled along the street she watched with awe, but without the sickly dread Tramanians had for the cities of their dead past. I wondered if she had ever seen a pre-plague Human city even on her own world, not knowing she didn’t understand that this wasn’t her own world.
The Humans had colonized the inner, major moon of a gas giant they had named Cyclops, which circled the yellow star Mehel. This outer, barely smaller moon was just marginally habitable, and they had only tried to establish a colony here to escape from the disease that decimated them at home. They had failed, and all that remained was this town, under skies that were endlessly gray with clouds. Etaa never saw the change in the heavens, and never knew there had been one because she never asked a question: We communicated as little as possible, a
nd often I caught her staring at me, her eyes somewhere between fear and speculation.
But once she insisted that she needed to gather healthful herbs for the baby, and when I tried to tell her that our supplies had everything she would need, she gathered him up protectively inside her jacket and slipped out the door. I went after her, armed, because I still wasn’t sure exactly what else was making its home in this dead city. For over an hour I watched her search for a trace of the life she knew, but nothing had survived the departure of the Humans. At last, shivering and defeated, she brushed past me without meeting my eyes, and returned to the shelter. After that she communicated less than ever, only glaring at me as if this terrible strangeness were somehow my doing too. She never ventured outside again by choice, and never left her son alone with me.
* * * *
I spent most of my time outside, struggling with equipment in the bitter wind as I tried to gather background data for my ecological change-study. The deserted Human town crouched like a tethered beast on the rim of the plateau, waiting with un-Human patience for the return of its masters while time and the gnarled hands of the tree-shrubs worried it toward oblivion. Beyond the plateau’s rim eons of sediment from some murky forgotten sea lapped away to grim distant peaks. But closer in, the stone had been shattered by countless faultings, eroded by the winter rains and the sand-sweeping wind until a network of twisting sheer-walled canyons had been eaten into its undulating plain. The eternal wind sang through the maze, whipping the iron-reddened dust of the washes, where flashing water roared and passed with every drowning downpour. The wind was a bully, tumbling the slow, heavy clouds, breaking them open for a sudden glimpse of burnished heaven and shutting them again before you found it. Land and sky merged at the dusky horizon, and everywhere the colors repeated, shadow-violet and rust, burnt orange and fragile lavender, all merging toward gray in the somber light.
Orbit 16 - [Anthology] Page 6
