Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)

by Jim Grimsley

  The sleep that followed was peaceful and no dreams came to me, pleasant or unpleasant. I slept for a long time, and my body did heal some in that interval but the fever did not abate. When I finally woke it was night. My teeth were chattering with the cold but I felt hot to the touch and moist with sweat. My hair was damp. No lamps were burning, so I knew it was late. With shock I remembered Kithilunen and wondered who had lit the evening lamp, who had sung? and I felt ashamed, too, that I had failed to do these things myself in the shrine entrusted to me.

  With shock, I saw Uncle Sivisal asleep on cushions near the bed that had been laid for me.

  When I said his name he woke up at once. The change was visible on his face when he realized what had wakened him. “Jessex, praise the Eye, you’re awake.”

  “The doctor gave me something to drink.”

  He lay his hand on my forehead. “Yes, I know. But that was days ago. You’re still so hot.”

  His hand was cold to me. “I’m tired,” I said.

  “You should eat something.” He stood, still groggy, and walked outside. Presently I heard a runner heading away toward camp, and Uncle Sivisal returned. Light was at his back, I could not see his face. “What happened?” he asked.

  “I was in the storm and felt sickness come on me. I was riding in Raelonyii, near Hyvurgren Field. Lightning struck close to us and Nixva reared up, and afterward I felt dizzy and got sick.”

  “Did you eat anything, or drink creek water?”

  “No, nothing.” I stirred, still shivering, pulling furs and blankets around my neck. “I’m cold.”

  He knelt close to me, stroking my forehead. In a few moments I was asleep again.

  When I woke Mordwen and Uncle Sivisal were sitting by the open tent flap, talking in hushed voices. With surprise I understood Kirith Kirin was there as well. I did not know if it were the same night or not, but night it clearly was, and again no lamps were burning. Finally I called them, my voice hoarse but loud enough to reach them.

  Uncle Sivisal heard me and called someone outside to fetch the doctor. Kirith Kirin bounded across the dark tent to my cushions. “Are you awake again?”

  “Yes, sir. How long have I been asleep?”

  He started to answer, then shook his head. “A while.”

  Mordwen knelt so that I could see him, and smiled in a gentle way that let me know I was very sick indeed. “I’m thirsty,” I said and he helped me swallow water. By the time I had drunk as much as he would allow, the doctor had come into the tent.

  She knelt over me and touched my brow. “The fever’s the same,” she said presently. “Are you cold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you could eat?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you want to sleep again?”

  “No,” I said, but I could hardly hold my eyes open. The doctor was frowning, and a little nervous too. I felt sorry for her. At the height of the fever… I remembered the word I was supposed to remember, and I said, “I would like unufru tea.”

  “What did you say?” She bent closer.

  “Unufru. For the fever.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “Do you know what unufru is?” she asked, ignoring the Prince.

  “Yes,” I said, and I found, despite everything, that I did know. “A root. You grind it and dry it and make a tea from it.”

  “It helps some bowel conditions,” the doctor said, “but never anything like a fever.”

  Mordwen studied me intently. “Do it.”

  Kirith Kirin watched me strangely too. “Witches give unufru to cure the victims of love charms. They go through a fever purge, and sleep for a long time. I’ve seen it done.”

  “How do you know about unufru?” the doctor asked me. “Do you have an alchemist for a relative?”

  “My mother knew herbs,” Uncle Sivisal said. “She taught him.”

  The doctor had to send to camp for the root, and someone had to be wakened to make the tea, so I had some time to wait. Uncle Sivisal sat close by, talking to me quietly to keep me from falling asleep again. Kirith Kirin sat behind him.

  “Who’s been lighting the lamps?” I asked.

  “Mordwen,” the Prince answered. “Trysvyn sings the hymn. I like her voice but it’s not like yours.”

  “Is someone feeding Axfel?”

  “Yes,” Uncle Sivisal answered. “He’s a good dog. I have him at my tent right now. Do you want to see him?”

  “Not in here. He might break something.”

  “Nixva’s missing you too,” Kirith Kirin said. “Thruil’s been riding him some. Open your eyes, sleepy. Stay awake till your medicine gets here.”

  A sweat broke from me worse than ever, but at the same time I was so cold my teeth were chattering. The doctor returned only a moment later with a closed cup in her hand, and Sivisal made way for her. The unufru smelled like vanilla. I had no trouble drinking it.

  When I finished it the doctor asked if I thought I could keep it down. I felt no sickness and told her so. Aside from the sensation of having something in my stomach I could feel no difference.

  Kirith Kirin watched from behind the doctor. She tested my forehead presently and said, “The fever’s still the same.”

  I stayed awake long enough to say hello to Kiril Karsten. She came to the tent fresh from sleep, wrapped in a brown robe lined with white viis-cloth. Watching her sit beside my uncle and Kirith Kirin, I could think of no lovelier sight, and I would have fought sleep longer if I could. But I felt like a white wasteland, blasted clean. I fell asleep with the image of the lake women floating before me and dreamed I was walking along the lakeshore, breezes blowing across the glassy surface. Commyna was speaking quietly in a language that seemed easy to learn, to remember, such beautiful words, like silver flowing on my tongue. She was telling me what to do to help my body. She was saying such simple things I was sure I could learn.

  2

  While I slept the unufru root took hold and the fever broke. Even this much was a long time coming. The untrained body does not return easily from fourth-level sleep, as I was to learn when the lake women began my training in earnest. When Commyna touched the jewel to my forehead she had sent my spirit out of the body into a realm that only a trained magician should enter, and I was lost there till she found me. My body was not prepared for a separation of this kind; the shock of my reentry was added to the shock of my departure. Often in such cases the physical mind will reject the new presence of the spirit and a fever will ensue like the one that I had. It would have been easy for the lake women to have prevented this fever by the arts they knew, but in so doing they would have crippled a part of me I would need when my training began. Without the proper remedy, the result of such an illness is often deeply unpleasant, death or permanent insanity or the loss of wits. The inflammation heals but what is left is different than what was there before.

  These were facts I learned later at Illyn Water. At the time I only knew I had never been sicker in my life.

  My body healed through rest and good dreams and soon I was able to keep down food and feel some warmth again. The mind purges itself through sleep and the spirit knits itself to the flesh again. I had slept through most of seven days. Most everyone had given me up for dead by the end of that time, remembering what had happened to the last kyyvi. I’m told the doctor believed I was a hopeless case and by the time I called for unufru she had tried most remedies that are commonly used to treat brain fevers. No wonder she was so willing to try whatever I suggested. She had run out of remedies by then and had begun to fear for her future.

  The first morning I could stand, I took the ritual bath again, and sang Velunen in the shrine. I had lain down so long I felt weak standing, but it was good to move around, to breathe the last moments of night air, to rub the soft felva on my skin, to feel clean again. When I walked to the shrine I felt like myself, and when the muuren changed I went to the altar. At the correct moment I snuffed out the lamp, and a beam of sunlight
broke through the trees. I sang Velunen.

  My voice was weak and hoarse, I thought. But I was happy, singing.

  I resumed my duties in the shrine after that, though Mordwen would not allow me to move back into the tent yet. During the day I did a lot of lying around and studied High Speech with a vengeance, till in a short time I left off speaking Upcountry altogether. For practice Kraele read me books and asked questions to make sure I understood what she was reading. A lot of it was ancient history, stories of the Twelve Who Lived, the reign of Falamar; tales of Drii; though the Venladrii do not talk much about their history before crossing the mountains. Kraele read me one book on the origins of the southern Peoples, the various races that settled along the shore of Aeryn at the end of the first age of the Jisraegen, after Falamar disbanded the Praeven and made himself King. The southerners were called “Anynae,” which means nothing, really, “people of Anyn”, which is the name of the southern bay, into which they sailed long ago from countries across the sea. They’ve taken our name for them and have forgotten their own. The Anynae built cities and carved farms out of the wilderness in the southern part of Aeryn, and for a time it seemed the Jisraegen would let them live in peace. But a Jisraegen war party was ambushed by the southerners through a misunderstanding or through design, and in the course of the skirmish that followed, Itheil Coorbahl, one of the Jhinuuserret, was killed. He was one of the Twelve Who Lived, and he became the first of the immortals to die.

  One morning Kraele read me the words to one of the most famous songs from that age, “Falin Uthys,” “Last Ride,” which tells the story of Itheil Coorbahl’s death and of all that befell the Jisraegen afterward. The lay begins in the days after Falamar was made strong in his magic by YY, when the Praeven sang the song that nearly brought about the end of the world. Word had come to the city that a new people had appeared on the southern coast, and some of the Jisraegen were curious and wanted to meet these strangers. A party of them headed south, lead by Itheil. But at the time neither people had learned how to communicate with the other, the Anynae thought the Jisraegen were attacking them and killed the whole party. It was the death of Itheil and these others that Falamar set out to avenge. Itheil had been Falamar’s lover off and on for many lifetimes, and Falamar mustered an army in Cunuduerum, asking for help from Jurel Durassa and the Jisraegen who lived in the mountains, in Montajhena, who had never been part of the unhappiness in Cunuduerum. Jurel refused to ally with Falamar against the southerners, and so Falamar made war on the Anyn people with his own army alone. What followed is most often known as the Age of Blasphemies. Falamar led the Woodsfolk to a bloody victory against the poorly armed people in the south, and he himself attacked them with all the power of his magic. Many of the Anyn escaped north to Vyddn, where Jurel protected them. The rest were left to fend for themselves. By the end of the war, the Anyn males and females of fighting age were mostly dead, the females slaughtered even though in those early days the women did not fight alongside the men. The rest were parceled out among the victors as slaves. The Arthen Nivri divided up the southern land, giving the bulk of it to Falamar. Falamar was named King of Arthen and Aeryn and returned to Cunuduerum with two titles, having merely styled himself King of Cunuduerum in the past.

  His rule in both countries was generally unchallenged for generations, and he nearly conquered the Venladrii and the Svyssn, except that Jurel Durassa prevented him from bringing his armies north through the passes, and kept him out of the north. It was at this time that King Evynar swore loyalty to Jurel, and the Drii became vassals of a Jisraegen King.

  Jurel Durassa was a wizard much stronger than Falamar at the time and remained firmly in power in Montajhena and in all of Aeryn north of Arthen. Falamar turned his armies on Jurel after years of enmity over the presence of free Anynae within Jurel’s holdings. But Edenna Morthul opposed Falamar as well, from her seats of power in Inniscaudra and in Genfynnel. Falamar harassed them with armies whenever he could spare troops but otherwise was occupied with problems in Arthen. In time his own people grew tired of the yoke he laid on them, and some of them turned to Montajhena and the remaining Twelve for aid. Then Falamar built a Tower in Cunuduerum, a High Place from which he could see a long way over the trees, and in the Tower he made many magical devices and means to amplify his strength. He drew on the One whom we do not name, and he did magic from the Tower, using its power to hurl storm and suffering against Montajhena, and for the first time Jurel could not stop him.

  Winter came in summer in those years and wolves and snow lions and many other creatures prowled in the forest around Montajhena, the city in the mountains. Hideous creatures roamed in the night, dead-walking drinkers of blood. At last Jurel Durassa built a tower of his own, of rough granite, bringing Orloc masons to work in the dead of winter storms, Jurel walking among them stoking the fires that kept them warm. Further, the Tervan gave him a large muuren, a priceless treasure, and he had it worked into a sphere, and then himself blessed it and carved the YYmoc onto its face, and by magic made it perfectly white and full of light, and embedded it in the top of his High Place, which he named Yrunvurst, “Hand of God.” So Falamar invented the High Place but Jurel was first to focus the power of it through a muuren stone.

  After that the battle went in Jurel’s favor again, and for many years he held Falamar inside Arthen, and the land between Cunuduerum and Montajhena was scorched with magic. Falamar gathered an army from every part of the world, buying it with gold or compelling it by plain bullying. A long war was fought in the mountains and on the Kellyxan plain. At one point Jurel Durassa, having found a way to bind Seumren to his own Tower, making it useless to Falamar, sacked Cunuduerum, causing the river to flood the city afterward. But Falamar repopulated Cunuduerum and raised another army from Antelek and Karns to lay siege to Montajhena. His strength in magic had increased as he studied the books his father Cunavastar had left for him. He built the Tower Yruminast over Cunevadrim and, using it, was able to take control of Seumren again. He had grown as great as Jurel in power but could never control the magic of that level and when he fought with Jurel and broke Yrunvurst, Falamar died as well.

  The lyrics for “Last Ride” encompass this whole cycle of legend, and a person who can hear it without emotion is without a heart. My grandmother had known snatches of these tales but not the whole cycle. I listened in awe, as if the words were burning out of my own bones.

  With all this in my head I did not die of boredom, and soon my body healed to the point that I was becoming impatient to ride. I had been out of bed a week before I broached the subject with Mordwen, but he put me off. “When we’re sure you’ve got your wind back, you can get on a horse again. You’re still too skinny, boy.”

  We had become friends by then, a morsel at a time, and I ignored his gruffness. I believe he was lonely and glad of my company. At the time I only noticed that his age was bothering him some, I never wondered why. Though I knew he was Jhinuuserret and age should not have bothered him at all.

  Some days passed. My uncle visited every day, though I was conscious of his discomfort in the tent. I ate, rested, walked about camp, visiting Nixva, visiting Axfel once, outside Uncle Sivisal’s tent while he was on patrol. Axfel was glad to see me, licking my hands till they were spotlessly clean, and I scratched his ears and the back part of his jaw the way I always did, the big beast closing his eyes and rumbling like a cat.

  Nixva was glad to see me too. He gave me a good looking over, and as much as told me to be on the lookout for him. The message shocked me with its clarity, and a wave of excitement ran through me, remembering the lake women, the golden meadow, the promise of something extraordinary. Get ready, Nixva was saying, as if he knew.

  One morning when I had sung Velunen and put away the lamp, I walked out the back of the tent and Nixva was there. He stepped toward me silently, with an eerie purposefulness to his expression, and I moved toward him entranced, leaping to his bare back, gripping his thick mane with my hands. Just as we w
ere about to ride away I heard a voice calling me from the tent, and I turned to see Thruil, breathless, who said, “He got away from us. I thought he would come here.”

  “Yes. Tell Mordwen we’re riding. I’ll be back.”

  He watched me helplessly. I signaled Nixva to go before anyone else tried to stop us, and we cantered away down the road to camp, soon departing from it for forest country.

  Nixva was jubilant at the chance to gallop again, but he was not playful. He traveled at a steady pace in a purposeful way. The thought of where we were going made me catch my breath. Nixva splashed across a shallow creek and headed between two broad hills, I felt a change, a fluttering in my stomach, and there we were, riding across a bright meadow, the clean blue water of Lake Illyn before us, one lone duraelaryn rising like a tower. Horses were grazing under the lower branches, and a red cart sat in the high grass, tilted backward so its tongue jutted high into the air. The lake women were in the grass, Commyna working a large loom while Vissyn and Vella spun thread on wooden spinning wheels.