by Jim Grimsley
Without any sort of ceremony he came to a white place; he was surrounded with whiteness, light, and nothing else, perfect blankness in every direction. Any sense he had of himself began to dissolve in the glare. He was no longer traveling, he had arrived. Where was Young Sister? She had said she would take him to YY, to the place where YY was embodied in this world. But why had he wanted to go? What was his urgency?
For a long while, no telling how long, thoughts spun round in his head; though, indeed, as far as he could determine, he had no head anymore. He was hanging in a white light that washed everything blank, nothing at all around him other than the white emptiness, nothing but his thoughts that chased themselves….All that Young Sisterhad told him drifted through him, all that Plump and Thin had told him….He was a Singular, created out of the Erejhen race…. Primes made a compact to die with the universe when it died, a long time from now, but it had already happened….A Prime was neither individual nor race but something beyond either…. YY had been the first to break the vow, a betrayer like the rest….She claimed she had said the first Word, the Word that started the universe…. Where had Young Sister taken him?
He had arrived, but who was he?
Waiting, with nothing around him, he went over it all again and again.
God was here somewhere. After a long time he became convinced of it. She would come, she would talk to him, if he did what she wanted. But she had all the time in the world, so she insisted he had to discover what she wanted. What could he have done to make her angry, to make her refuse to talk to him when he had come so far?
Maybe years passed. He had no way of knowing. He neither slept nor moved. She could keep him waiting as long as she liked, even if he were lucky enough to discover something he might do, something he might change, that would please her.
If God had a wish of him, what would it be?
A specific moment returned to him. He had been standing on his tower, listening, when he had finally understood what Rao was. For a long time he had been hearing this new voice among all the voices he heard from his tower; for a long time he had been expecting some creature to come who would challenge him; and then Rao made himself understood, declared himself, on Aramen. This was clear, a memory etched in the space around Jessex, tangible as if he were creating it again. He stood outside himself and watched himself.
When he had understood what Rao was, that he was old beyond any point in measuring, that he had traveled here from an incomprehensible distance, that he had come because of the Anilyn Gate, Jessex immediately set off for the mountains and, when he could no longer guard the gate directly, he closed it.
He was sitting in the mountains with the animal, Coromey, feeling Rao begin his war; and he made the decision to close the gate rather than go through it himself to fight the war. The moment echoed, he closed the gate, over and over.
The memory returned to him so clear, and for a moment he remembered his own name again, could hold onto it, while he contemplated this problem, this memory that had come back to him, a few moments of awareness, and then he understood.
She wanted the gate opened again. God she might be, but she could not open his gate.
So, after a while, and maybe a little reluctantly—because his memory of his name would fade again, and he would be lost again—he did what had become so easy for him: he touched that gate he had made, which was no more than a place inside himself, and opened it.
God was pleased, and shone the bounty of her love on him.
4.
He found himself stripped naked in a circular room, a domed roof overhead, a pattern of tile on the floor in green and white, three thin circles of black marble on the floor, columns of black marble ringing the perimeter of the room. Windows on all sides looked onto treetops, as far as the eye could see. In the distance the notched shape of a mountain stood silhouetted against farther peaks; he should know this range by name, but there was something between him and the knowledge. He ought to know this forest, too, but his mind was stripped clean of many nouns. He had come for a good reason, he had been holding onto that thought, but what was the reason? Someone had journeyed with him here, and there had also been an animal on the trip, Coromey. That name was clear. Coromey, a cat-hound, had traveled with him. Maybe someone was letting the animal run about in the park or the forest, among all those trees.
Something felt wrong with the landscape, the when, not the where.
The wind felt like the weeks before winter, fall sharpness growing fierce, a pinching cold; but the trees were green as summer. He closed the window and fastened the frame again, his skin flushed, gone to bumps. He was sure he had been wearing clothes but on the other hand he was certainly naked now. Maybe he would have been less concerned with his state of dress except that he had also lost his name somewhere and that concerned him more. He had the name again for a while and lost it again. He possessed several names, in fact, and had misplaced them all.
She kept him in the room for a long time in order to make him forget himself and everything else; she did this to prepare him for something, to kill him, maybe; she had told him she might. God kept him here in the windy room in the icy nakedness of his body, she kept him here to wash him clean of everything he had come to say.
“I believe he’s ready,” said a voice, a woman’s voice.
She was waiting at the center of the room. Near her was a bright light that moved at odd moments; her figure was silhouetted in the light, sometimes distinct, most often merely outlined. She might have been young or not. The shape was a woman’s but he could not pinpoint why he thought so, perhaps the lower set of the hips, or the waist, or the suggestion of curves in the outline. When he tried to come nearer to her he found himself instead beside one of the windows again, and had to make his way back to the edge of the black columns.
His voice sounded weak, thin. “Who’s here?”
“Who, he asks. Who. He might ask, whom did I come to see? Seeking whom did I walk across the ice and snow?” She appeared to be sitting now. More than one light glared at him, obscuring her, sometimes illuminating a part of her, as, at this moment, her hand, skin silky brown, covered with rings, bangles on the wrist, hand-chains and finger-chains studded with gems, nails pierced with tiny stones. The whole hand glittered, encrusted, fingertips painted ochre. “Here you are.”
“I came to ask—” He said that much and stopped.
“Go on. I’ve come to hear you.”
“I can’t remember.” He did remember, though, that he was naked, and he was ashamed and covered himself. “Where are my clothes?”
“We took them. What do you need them for?”
“I’m cold.”
“You don’t need to be. You know ways to manage cold, you’ve done so before.”
He thought about it, knew it was true. He knew a lot of things, he could do a lot of things that other people couldn’t. At the moment, though, he failed to name a single one, and the only thing he knew how to do was to shiver. “I can’t anymore,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
“You don’t?”
“Someone must have done something to me.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“Why?”
She was smiling now. He could see her teeth, her red lips, her chin. A gem pierced the flesh beneath the center of her lower lip; it gleamed bright as a star. He closed his eyes. She said, “Perhaps you’ve failed someone who holds you very dear. Do you think you might have?”
“Failed?”
“Yes. You.”
“What did I do?”
“It’s what you didn’t do. You came here, when you should have gone somewhere else. You came to see me, when you should have gone somewhere else, to fight and die for me. Do you understand?”
“I did that.”
“Yes.”
“Whom was I supposed to fight?”
“Rao.”
The name had a familiar sound. He formed it in his mouth. “He killed a lot of people.”
“Yes. You were supposed to fight him.”
“But I couldn’t.”
“But you were supposed to anyway. Impossible odds and all that. Never stopped you before. But this time, instead, you came to seek me out.”
He was watching her closely and carefully again. What she was saying was all true, and, as she spoke, windows of himself were opened and he glimpsed what he ought to remember. Awful, the picture that formed. Doubt, ignorance, laughable pride. But he refused to feel any shame. “Because I don’t know—”
For a moment he almost touched the thought, almost found it.
“Don’t know what?”
“Who you are.”
There. He had said it. He smiled, clapped his hands, naked as he was; he knelt onto the floor, lay his cheek on the cool stone.
“I don’t know who you are,” he said again. “Tell me.”
“You know very well who I am. You’ve known since you were a child.”
“What you are. That part.” He spoke dreamily, eyes cold, smelling the cold stone.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. What I am. You want to know what I am.”
He laughed, a perfectly delighted, childish sound. “Not just me. Everybody wants to know.”
The lights dimmed and darkened; the room, without any warning, but what was more peculiar, without any change, became larger, the dome of the roof reaching high, the light less, the colors dulled. The column of light in which she stood or sat or waited imposed itself, was taller, more daunting. Now he could see the hand again, or maybe the other hand, blue tracery over the fingers, blue stones in the rings on the fingers, a fine blue netting adhering to the skin, graceful as a swan, the hand. “You’re very clever.” She spoke with a sullen tone. “Then tell me this. Why am I angry with you?”
“What? I don’t—”
“Come. You really must answer all my questions. What has made me angry with you?”
“Confused,” he said, but he was standing up, onto his feet.
“Never mind that. You were confused before but you found your question.”
“You never answered.”
“But I am. I am in the process. Tell me. Why am I angry with you, what is my reason?”
“Because I came here.”
“No. No. I realize I said that, but really, I’m not angry about that, not in the least. You had no choice but to come here sooner or later.”
The voice had become quite kindly. She was seated in a chair. Gripping each arm with the gem-encrusted hands, the painted hands, she watched him and calculated what his answers would be. The image was so vivid he could see it.
“What is true language?” she asked. “Who invented the term?”
“Words.” He was breathless, freezing, his feet a blue that looked unnatural, his legs trembling so much he went to his knees. He should have known how to pass this sensation through him to some other place, should have known how to keep the warmth of his body protected even in the cold.
“Words that do what?”
“Make things happen.” Ringing sounded in his ears; he pressed his hands against them.
“Make what things happen? How does true language work?”
He was making inarticulate sounds, hissing, reaching for a word with a hissing sound.
“Be careful,” she said.
He said, “Science.”
He slammed to the stone, face forward to it, and felt bone break in his face. Stunned, wheezing, spouting blood from the wreck of his nose, he flooded with pain, his front teeth aching, his lip torn through, tasting salty. He lay there, sweating in the cold, his body trembling. Struggling to his knees, he steadied himself on a hand, rose on weak ankles.
“I won’t call it magic,” he said, flooded with fury and pain.
That time he slammed into a wall, and then a column. Because the room had grown so big he reached a high velocity. Broken in more places than he could feel, he crumbled to the base of the black marble, lay there trembling. His jaw was broken badly, his tongue bitten in half. So when she spoke to him now, there was no longer any option of talking back.
“That statement raises a question as to your faith,” she said.
Two jeweled feet appeared where he could see them, gold chains, gold chimes, gold bangles, gold filigree, the skin delicately painted with tracery of dusky red. She lay her toe gently against his broken nostril. She smelled like flowers.
“Who I am, well enough, that’s clear. You said that very well, I thought. But what I am. That is my secret.”
She drew back the foot and kicked him in the face, viciously, blood spraying over the marble and over her chains and bangles.
“Thanks for asking,” she said.
Helpless to move now, he lay flat on the freezing stone, the sound of his breath a broken rasp.
Her robes, her chains, her gems, hung over him, moving as she moved. Pulling him flat onto his stomach, she spread out his wrecked arms. She brought a firepot, set it on the floor. She moved carefully and allowed him to be aware of her, in his mind’s eye, since his own eyes were crushed. From her waist she drew a long, thin dagger. In the fire she heated the needle-sharp tip. He could feel the movement of her clothing, the weight of her gold chains, her pearls, her gems, on his back; but he could hear no breathing, no heartbeat, no other sound. Silent, careful, she burned signs, runes, onto his back, the pain relentless. She covered him slowly from head to toe. He screamed like a child, slobbered like a child, and would have thrashed except she held him still; soon enough he weakened, made less sound until she turned him over and the raw burns pressed onto the marble. He screamed again, hoarse, his voice broken. She carved on his front, working patiently, the knife red-hot. She stopped at times to heat the tip in the firepot, as if she needed the fire. By then he was fading. His face was so broken that when she had turned him to write on his front he could no longer breathe, had no steady airway, feeling only the agony of her markings, and even less and less of that as he died.
Near the end he glimpsed someone else in the room, a woman in a white robe like someone in mourning. The pain had brought his memories back: he knew his name; he knew who it was carving signs in his skin; he knew where he had come, and why. Young Sister had brought him here. She was watching as he died, a bright piece of cloth folded over her arm.
When his breathing stopped, YY straightened over him a last time. She was a crone now, wearing only simple stuff, a shift and a long fabric panel to wrap around her head. She arranged it carefully over her gray-brown hair. “Are your Sisters coming?”
“Yes.” Young Sister had drawn her own hood over her face. “It’s done then? He’s gone?”
“Yes.” Her hands, the hem of her skirt, were covered in blood. “You’re sure they’re coming?”
“They were following me the whole way here.”
“Good,” said God. She gestured to Jessex, corpse broken and sprawled on the floor. “Bring the body, then. It’s to come with us.”
Last Word
1. Vekant
When Vekant was a child he had wanted so badly to become Prin, he had no memory of any other ambition. He had heard the music the local choir made in the town where he lived, Arsk, where there was a cloister of monks and nuns. His father took him to the cloister to listen from the time he could walk. The celebrants sang for themselves at all hours but no one could hear that music except them; they sang for the public on holidays and Vekant listened, the first time clinging to his father’s skirts, enthralled by the fullness of the sound.
Later he volunteered to be a novice, attended the long sessions of singing open only to acolytes, and learned he had a gift for the Malei, the language of chant.
This was a scrap of memory left to him, as a child listening to the Weather Chorus from the Cloister of Saint Cuthru son of None, his father beside him, fat and warm. The memory remained only because of the accident of what had been eaten away from Vekant and what had not, back when the Eater transformed him.
For a long time
he had been riding the Eaten around the base of the tower as the creature touched the rock so carefully and patiently, thinking itself to have all the time in the world.
When the gate to the tower blew open, Vekant thought the Eaten had won, that it would now begin to climb the winding stair to the top one step at a time.
He could feel the concussion against his face, the blast of heat and wind, as liquid metal splattered toward him from the overheated frame. Where there had been stone was a blasted place, part of a metal gate glowing, twisted on a hinge.
The Eaten was surprised; Vekant could feel the creature’s reaction.
After that was something else, fear escalating to terror.
Figures walked out of the tower; the Eaten could feel them before he could see them. Women, three of them, leading a pack animal, ears like a mule, with a bundle across its back.
“Bring the tower down, Sister,” said the plump one, who pulled on the mule’s rein. “We won’t be going back this way.”
“Consider it done,” said the tall one, and Vekant heard a crack, sharp and clear.
“Shall I kill this thing?” asked the young one, gesturing to the Eaten.
“The tower will blow in a moment and that will be that,” said the plump one. “Anything hereabouts will be dead. We need to be moving.”
“Well enough,” said the young one, and they vanished, including the mule.
A moment later, shattering the quiet, Cueredon Tower broke apart in a ball of fire, to the momentary but tremendous surprise of the Eaten; and even then, to the last millisecond, Vekant felt no fear at all.
2. Keely
Father was a putrid child, a little girl with a rotted face. Even Keely’s green face was nicer. After Dekkar was dead, Keely could see Father a long way off, riding on something immense, a huge creature, though the creature Keely could not so clearly see. First into the willow-wait were mantises, followed by flocks of the dark birds, some of which swirled in columns over the mantises, while others formed into the creatures like the one that tried to eat Uncle Figg on the farm, or like the Nerva-thing that sprayed stuff into Keely. There was never any question that the creatures would harm Keely’s friends after Dekkar was gone. Keely decided he would be angry if this happened, and Father gave in. Tall, with folded arms, the needle-mouths stood as if they had clothing and as if they had faces, arms, and legs; now that Keely could see better, now that he was more used to thinking within the river of numbers, he could see that they were each one creature in fact, even when the creature took the form of a cloud. But at the same time, each of the shadow bird components of the cloud had awareness of its own.
