by Jim Grimsley
Pel guarded the approach to the rocks while most of the syms clambered up. Dekkar was partly stooped, his voice audible at times, a sign of his weakness. For a while he held back the mantises, but Father was close now—Keely could feel the weight and size of him coming near. Dekkar would have to turn to Father soon, to try to stop him.
One of the mantises lunged at Zhengzhou, her shoulder weapons firing at it, plasma packets lighting it in blue haze and flashes of fire; she leapt out of its path, guns tracking it, and Pel turned his guns on it, too, but a pack of chattering things, rats on legs, almost like cartoons, swept over her, nearly knocked her down before her secondary started to pepper them with metal shot. The mantis speared her through the meat of the thigh and lunged at her; she tore her leg free, blood gushing, but the mantis caught her with its beak, opened it wide, shoved her whole into its mouth, reared up, her legs flailing; the throat expanded, crushed her, and Keely made himself watch, the fire still smoldering.
A shriek, almost human, piercing, distant, reached them all.
Around the rocks waited the mantises, too many to count, stopped at the edge of the pool of water. Others took up places behind the rocks out of sight in the dark. When the road lit up like day, Keely pointed them out to Kitra. “See down there,” he said. “They’re waiting.”
“In case we climb down that way.”
Keely felt himself pulled toward the light on the road. Father was close, like a shadow rising over the clearing. Dekkar gathered himself, vanishing from sight, managing, for the moment, to mask his singing.
Zhengzhou was dead. Uncle Figg was dead. Now the only people left were Pel, Kitra, her brother, and a handful of the other syms. Kowon was nowhere on the rocks.
Keely put the headset over his ears and the ache in his head eased.
Father stood at the edge of the clearing.
Dekkar flew toward him. That was the image. They clashed like fire and fire, as the dark sky lit up; after a while Dekkar could no longer hide his voice and Keely could hear every word of his song, clear as water, so fresh it made Keely feel heavy and dull in comparison.
Dekkar began the battle weak from fighting the tree-thing, and Father was far too vast, too strong. He allowed Dekkar to live for a while in order to hear his song; maybe he admired the music as much as Keely did, or maybe he wanted to learn what he could about it. Dekkar hurt him, though, hurt Father, at one point, and the ground shook and all at once it was over.
“They go to light or fire when they die,” Pel said. The flash was over by then. Keely no longer heard the singing or saw the lights. Dekkar’s voice had stopped. Everyone was stunned. Kitra’s eyes overflowed. She was shuddering, hugging Keely against her, but he was seeing nothing in his head other than the light fading, Dekkar going out of the world. Dead he was, like Uncle Figg and Sherry and maybe soon like Kitra, Binam, Pel, and all the rest. Father was angry. He had been kept waiting. But here he came now, darker than the dark.
God’s Holy Love
1.
If the idea of a wizard as a guest makes the ordinary host think twice about her valuables, the notion of providing hospitality to a wizard in the midst of a spiritual crisis might make her think twice and then twice again. On the other hand, if the host need fear no repercussions from failure or even breach of custom—the host-guest relationship being, in many ways, the foundation of all relations, all civilization—the wizard himself might take pause. He will need to understand his place in the local hierarchy. How long has it been since he needed to fear for himself, for his safety? How long since he felt anything like the dread others felt in his presence?
Without Words he felt naked, but he dared not use them.
Thin gave him a room and food, and Coromey had a fresh joint of something dead and sat tearing at it by the fireplace. Jessex stood in the open doors looking onto the stone terrace outside his room. A garden of leafy shrubs and small trees whipped this way and that in the wind, growing in the center of the terrace paving stones, likely elegant in good weather. The same wind gusted through the room, which was equipped to withstand it: the tapestries triple-hung on sturdy frames and lashed at the corners like sails, the tables and surfaces bare except for sturdy, heavy implements like water pitchers and basins, towels anchored by carved stone weights. The fireplace was screened and set at an angle to the terrace windows, heavy iron tools hanging in a rack, a linked-chain screen to pull over the flames. On each side of the fireplace was carved a stag in relief, animate enough that Coromey had a hard time to leave off sniffing them.
It was one thing to remind himself that time here had no relation to time in his own world; it was another to leave off impatience and apprehension. While he was resting in comfort a war was being fought. As long as he was in company of the Sisters, while he was in their hand, the passing of real time was irrelevant; he was moving on a timeline at an angle to his own, and when the Sisters chose, they would loop him back to the moment from which he had departed. But he could hardly help but be anxious. He did the prudent thing, changed his clothes, bathed in real water, rested in a real bed, ate solid food of the sort that true-language operators needed after a long journey: savory organ meats of odd animals, bits of steamed or raw vegetable, the odd rancid cheese or bit of salty clay, bites from a variety of these, a little of a lot, as they say, and not a lot of a little. He drank glass after glass of water. On the bed on his back he folded his arms across his chest and waited as if he were dead, as if he were sleeping on a slab in a room under the tower, the sound of the sea in his ears….
The Young Sister came to fetch him when they were ready to talk to him again; he felt as if he had slept and had a clear head at least. Young stood wrapped in a silky robe, panels of cloth flung over each shoulder, shining white fabric of a quality that a north-Erejhen woman would wear for mourning. She waited for Jessex with a small purse of the lips, watching him as if she had never seen him before. “Welcome, traveler.”
He pulled a thick robe over him, wrapped it around his head. The fire had burned low; he had never tended it. The room had the chill of the glacier in it, pleasant to feel on his skin. “Many thanks, Sister.”
“When you are ready,” she said, and bowed her head.
The show of modesty, the restraint, these were far from the Young Sister he remembered. When he was a boy, she had taken him riding in the mountains, showed him his first glimpse of Illaeryn, carried him around the walls of the Hidden City in the old woodland. She had taught him Words for travel, as she had termed them: how to move hidden and how to move fast. Now she stood cold and stiff as though she never knew him, a deliberate distance.
He had removed his gems—now he reached for them, rings and hand-chains, loose gems in a pouch, but before he could touch them, Young said, “You may leave those where they are.”
“Even if I prefer to wear them?”
“We prefer that you do not.”
“Why?”
“As we recall, you were a difficult pupil.”
The words stung him, made his heart sink. He nodded, stiffly, and left the jewels on the bit of yellow lace where they lay.
Leaving Coromey shut up in the room, asleep by the hearth, he followed as she led him, not downstairs but up, several flights, step after step. Galled by what she had said, he noticed little at first, but after the climb had begun he paid more attention. The last flight of stairs rose in a spiral along the outer stone wall of the keep, windows open on the jagged mountain, shaggy with ice and snow, wind pressing the glass, sprays of snowflakes and crystals of ice making a pepper of sound.
At the top of the stairs lay a broad hall, not as big as the entry hall in which Thin had first interviewed him but much taller, three tiers of colonnaded balconies surrounding it. The far end was all glass, opening onto a vista that overlooked the length of the mountain ridge against which the wall of glacier traced its route. The windows were as tall as an oak and as broad, three of them, and there, framed in those windows, the Sisters waited in a nest o
f cushions between three fireplaces, stone flues for which arched overhead to a single chimney. Beyond the windows was nothing except air, a sheer drop as far as the tower rose; before the coming of the glacier, to fall from here would have meant a tumble deep into the valley. Young Sister led him to the windows and they walked along the thick panes of glass. “Under there is the old town beneath the ice,” she said. “On a warm day when the ice melts a bit you can see the old wall.”
Thin waited at the side of Plump, who was sitting on a stool, wrapped in a plain white shawl, her dress and veil of fine brown wool stuff, woven by experts, maybe by Plump herself. Thin wore pale green fabric, almost olive colored, wrapped over a pleated shift and around her head and shoulder. Each of them wore two rings on each hand and many bracelets on each wrist.
So far as he could tell, none of them were touching him with their Words; but they would work without letting it show, while he had no capacity to hide from them and dared not try. He was in their hands, there was nothing he could do. He had hoped for a kinder reception—at one point the Sisters had appeared fond of him—but a long time had passed since then, in his terms; in their terms, who could gauge how long?
Plump said, “Well, he does look older, doesn’t he?” She studied Jessex over, head to toe. Her face had grown more florid but less expressive, as if the cheeks and jowls had stiffened. She wore the face as if it were a costume, and he wondered whether it might be. “The years do pass, after all, more and more of them. Especially when you’re in our business.”
“Trouble everywhere,” Thin said, pinching a grape from a cluster on a table near her, gesturing to Jessex to come and pour tea for himself. “Help yourself. We’ve no servants here, we don’t like them.”
“Pesky. Troublesome. Irksome, often.” Plump folded her hands in her lap. Her cup of tea hovered nearby, awaiting her. This startled Jessex; the Sisters were never given to display, or never had been. She sipped the tea and let it hang, watching him. “Servants are apt to be spies. Friends, in fact, are apt to be spies. Strangers are nearly always spies.” She refolded her hands and waited.
“What she wants to know,” Young said, taking a seat on a cushion behind him, so he had to turn, “is which kind of spy are you?”
“What did you come to learn from us, in other words?” Plump was smiling, a bit toothy, as if she thought he might be tasty.
“Answer carefully,” said Young. “She’s anxious to trick you if she can.”
He took his own tea and sat with it in his lap, pulling the wrap from round his head. It shimmered and caught the light, and, as he had hoped, Thin saw the cloth and her eyes softened.
“Sisters—”
“Oh, my,” said Plump, blushing to the roots of her white hair.
Young had stepped up from her easy lounging near the fire and had taken the edge of fabric between her hands.
They watched him a long time. In the room was a tinkling sound, like glass chimes.
“We made this,” said Plump, “we gave you this.” She spoke as if she barely remembered.
“You’ve changed the shape,” said Thin.
“Many times over.” He kept his voice quiet, stroking the fabric with his palms.
Young was watching it as if she would have liked to take it from him, shake color into it till it went white, and use it for her mourning.
Thin gave him a sour look, veiny hands folded in front of her.
Plump looked pleased and vexed at the same time, as if she could not decide which to feel. “You kept our gift.”
“You kept it well.”
“We should never have given it in the first place,” Young said.
“You’re bitter,” said Plump. She took a bite of muffin, chewed it, swallowed it, pinched off another bite, threatened to stuff it into her mouth. “Why blame him for that?”
“We wove it for him and we gave it to him,” said Thin, shrugging and turning her back, which was hung with a thick rope of pearls and gold weighed down in the fabric of her wrap.
“But I want it back,” said Young.
“You can’t have it,” said Plump, “it’s given.”
“You’ll be cursed,” agreed Thin. “You’ll be more cursed than you already are.”
As quick as that, a touch long since prepared, Jessex put the fabric out of sight, finger to the center of his palm. He bowed his head, earnestly studying the griffon pattern of the carpet.
“You needn’t think she couldn’t find it if she wanted it,” said Plump. “There’s only one way to keep it safe, if she decides to steal it from you.”
“What would that be?”
“Pleasing us,” said Thin.
“Yes,” agreed Plump, and added more. “Pleasing us, and living through this conversation.”
“That would be essential.” Thin was standing by the fireplace, arms folded.
In Wyyvisar Plump said, “Speak in our speech, little brother.”
“That way we can tell if you’re trying to lie.” Young had sprawled on one of the cushions near the third fireplace, a posture more like what Jessex remembered from long ago, as if she had come in from a ride and flung herself down for a rest. After a moment the pose became more demure and the brittleness closed over her face again. She was watching him keenly, he could feel it.
“As the Sister wishes,” he said, bowing his head.
“As the Sisters wish,” corrected Thin.
“Remember there are three of us,” said Plump. “That’s what she means.”
“Thank you very much, all of you, for the correction,” he said.
“How very self-effacing.”
“Entirely agreeable.” Plump folded her arms over her bosom, pinching up her many necklaces of gold and silver.
Young made an unpleasant noise, scuffing one white boot onto one another, as if they chafed.
“So,” Thin advanced toward him, taller or appearing taller, or else having rearranged the folds of her green mantle, “you are here to learn the story of creation.”
“Am I?”
Plump nodded. “We’re quite sure it’s time.”
He paused, breathing calmly. One of them had brushed him, touched him, in the quiet, with Words. Likely they were making sure he was saying no Words of his own, after the trick with the cloth. His heart was pounding. “Then tell me the story.”
“The story begins at the end of time. Once upon a time,” said Thin.
“So it begins,” said Plump.
“One dark and stormy night,” said Young.
“A Word formed the universe, and since that Word was uttered the first time, it has never again been said.” This voice he failed to recognize, since by then he could no longer move and the discovery disconcerted him; one of them had stilled him; the actor was easy to mask, now that they were all speaking Hidden Speech.
Their voices blended; he was only intermittently aware of the speaker from that point.
“After the universe started, it ran itself pretty well.”
“Your friends, the scientists, they’ve figured it out exactly, in fact.”
“They’re telling you the truth, that’s the way things work.”
But life was far more rare than it should have been and nobody knew why. Worlds that could sustain life on their own, with no intervention, were few and far between, and nobody ever understood what happened. There should have been many more than there were.
Even so, there were still quite a lot of sentient races, and they grew, and some of them became so advanced they could make themselves increasingly intelligent, and so they did, and merged to the point that they could no longer be spoken of as a race of individuals. Some of them developed technology that took them beyond physical limitations. In some of them, all their technology collapsed to pure information, to language; a single Word became a complex machine.
He no longer heard the Sisters’ voices—he simply understood, as he was held in their hands, what they wanted him to know. Still, sometimes, the words came as speech.
“A long time passed,” Plump said.
“The end of the universe came.”
“Some of the races, the most advanced, had survived and were still alive,” said Thin.
“They had agreed to die,” said Young. “All of them. But in the end, none of them wanted it, none of them cared to come to an end.”
You see, there was all that empty time in the past. All those worlds on which no one had ever lived. Like a new green country into which they could go, all that emptiness awaited them. They had vowed, each of them, never to tamper with the past, and, in fact, it took them nearly till the end of time to learn how to do it. They had vowed to die when the universe died, to end with it, gracefully, like a light fading at the end of day, like a star dwindling to dark. But there was all that past, empty, in which they could still live, and all they had to do was go back.
“So they are coming back,” said Thin. “Or they have come back already, depending on your point of view.”
“Rao is one of them.”
“There are many, many others.”
“She wants them here,” said Young, and he was looking in her eyes, and saw she was angry. “She wants to bring them here. As many as possible.”
He became more present in the room, aware of them, talking to them, no longer sharing in that mind-space created by the Wyyvisar. He was stilled, breathing calmly. Whichever of the Sisters had been holding him had let him go. How long since anyone had managed him so easily? He felt small again, like the boy he had been when they gave him the cloth they had woven, when they named him Yron and taught him Hidden Words.
“So my gates are the bait to bring them,” he said.
“A good trick you learned. But for most of these creatures, she herself is the bait.” Plump was reaching for her cup again, looking down at him with ruddy cheeks and chubby hands.
“YY-mother?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Is she one of them? Are you?”
Thin answered, pouring herself tea again. “Are we Primes? No, indeed not. My sisters and I are Singulars. As you are. We are individuals who have been trained to transcendance. True Primes are much larger than us. They are nearly like her herself.”
