by Sylvia Kelso
And under its magnificence comes that tiny, crawling shape.
Still nothing touches Tellurith. Not when she understands Azo and Verrith are near incoherent, that Zuri may actually have begun to pray. Not even when she hears Desis mutter, “You ever see him on a horse?” And Zuri, clipped to brusqueness, “No.”
The rider dips in a hollow. Climbs again. A black horse, she sees now, incurious. It is as if, since that other morning, nothing can touch her. As if she is in a shell where no feeling can reach.
And the rider, under a straw hat disreputable enough for Averion, has—his?—right arm in a sling.
Zuri has, indubitably, begun to pray.
“Let him get in range.” Is that really her voice? “Then tell him to halt.”
Four hundred yards. Three hundred. In the quiet, broken only by the burring whisper of late cicadas, they can hear the horse.
Then Desis’ hail. “You there! Stop!”
The horse checks immediately. No panic, so far as she can see, no guilt. Merely alacrity. And considerable control.
“Get down!”
Readily, if clumsily, she is obeyed.
Desis looks at her Head. Who, in her shell of torpor, wonders what is wrong with them. Is that excitement in Azo’s face?
Zuri pulls her pony back. Leans down to grip her shoulder. Says in that soft metal-rasp, “Want me to finish it?”
“Finish,” says Tellurith blankly, “what?”
“I could do it for you. One shot.”
Verrith makes a low, small noise. Azo’s answer grates.
“He wouldn’t even suffer. Not enough.”
Tellurith’s jaw drops. She gapes at her troublecrew. Realizing that flush, that glitter, that shortened breath is not excitement, not hope’s fulfilled ecstasy. It is the arousal, almost beyond control, of hate.
Because they think they know who it is. And they want to kill him. For her sake. Because they are sure that she, even more brutally than Amberlight, has been betrayed.
“No!”
It is out before she thinks. Not reason, simply that they must not murder an innocent.
Because this man cannot be anything else.
“He’s alone. Injured. Go down and get him. Search him if you want. Then bring him here.”
Tellurith has never seen her troublecrew’s Head go so near mutiny in her life. But then Zuri slams the pony forward, the others on her heels.
They reach, surround, crowd the waiting traveler. Tellurith opens her mouth to shout, “Cut that out!” But Zuri, apparently, has telepathy. The jostling pony is reined back. Zuri leaps off.
They propel the rider clear of his beast. Azo grabs his good arm. Zuri, with the refined viciousness of hostile troublecrew, pulls the other from the sling. By the wrist.
Tellurith sees the victim sway. Even at that distance, can make out the greyness of his face.
But he holds his good arm clear. Lets Azo pat down his sides, and Verrith, none too decently, slap his trouser-thighs. And Zuri, suspicious beyond cruelty, feel up and down that arm.
Which is splinted, and bandaged heavily as well.
Broken, somewhere below the elbow. Three times, under Zuri’s ministrations, she sees its owner flinch.
Then they are moving. The arm re-slung, Zuri’s grip above the elbow, Azo clenching his other wrist. Verrith brings the beasts.
Two hundred yards. Fifty yards. And now, at last, she can make out features, under the shade of the hat.
Black, black beard stubble on the long sharp jaw, around the fine-cut mouth. Black, black eyes, through the bruise that tars half the side of his face. Haggard, gaunt, hag-ridden. Nightmare’s apogee looks back at her, from that black stare.
They reach her. They have halted. Reeling before the impossible, she says the only words she can find.
“What in the Mother’s name are you doing here?”
* * * *
There is another hiatus, all time, no time, before he speaks.
“I took them—into the mine.”
Hoarse with exhaustion. With mistreatment? With far worse than that?
“Dinda. His officers. Quizir. The rest of—the high command.”
The brows knit. The eyes look somewhere far beyond her. “Especially,” the eyes clench, the onset of pain, “my staff.”
He stops and looks, as if exhausted, at Tellurith.
Who says, hearing it echo as from another’s throat, “But how—in the Mother’s name, how are you here?”
He makes to move his good arm. Discovers Azo, and is still.
“When we saw the—the qherrique—Dinda pulled rank.” He forgets and makes to move again. “He wanted—to make the cut.”
For a moment Tellurith shuts her eyes. Feels her whole body scream as at a physical rape. Men, a multitude of men, in the mine, in the qherrique’s heart. Not during Alkho, unable to menstruate. Not knowing even how to ask consent.
Let alone having a light-beam to take the slab.
“I did ask!” Sharp now, with memory. With despair. “I did ask! And I swear to you, it answered me.”
Tellurith’s eyes fly open in sheer disbelief.
“It answered—” her hair stands up. “Did you touch—did you put your hand on it?”
Baffled, he stares.
“No, I—Dinda interrupted. But it did answer. It started to glow . . .”
Glow. She has ado not to put a hand over her mouth. She feels physically sick. “Then how in the Mother’s name—”
“When he got hold of the chisel,” Tellurith does clap the hand to her mouth, “I started feeling—I can’t explain—like cramps in the gut. I said something about an announcement—Dinda thought I was vexed. That smirk . . . I started off down the passage—” suddenly his face is wet with sweat. “It kept saying, Go, hurry, run, run—! I ran like a hare. I could see the entrance door—”
Azo has let go of him. The women are all staring. It is not every day one meets the survivor of a holocaust face to face.
“The blast threw me—clean out the adit.” He draws a careful, shaky breath. “It wrapped me round a pine—” Gingerly, he touches his right side. “I’ve got three broken ribs.”
“Then,” quite gently, “the hill came down.”
The hill came down. On his armored body, thanks be, on his helmeted head. Though how he was not incinerated when the qherrique discharged, when the entire mother-face became a light-gun that ripped its setting apart . . .
“You are lucky,” Tellurith hears herself say, “to be alive.”
The grimace is not mirth.
“But what,” far more vehemently, “are you doing here?”
He eases his arm in the sling, his forehead creased, his whole face tense. Summons the dregs of reserve from more than physical exhaustion. And goes on.
“I was knocked cold—till sometime that night. I crawled down the hill . . . The first men I met ran like lunatics. They thought,” a humorless twist of the mouth, “I was a ghost.”
So, Tellurith wants to say, did I.
“The army . . . the city—it was a shambles. I tied this in somebody’s cloak. Then I worked all night.”
Mother aid, Tellurith wants to cry. With probable concussion, and three broken ribs as well.
“By the time we cleared the city, they said you’d gone.” He straightens the tiniest fraction, and for a moment those black eyes hold black humor’s ghost. “I think I was grateful for that.”
Having, she does not have to be told, afflictions enough.
“But—what are you doing here?”
He turns his head aside. She has time to notice that clay color, before he says huskily, “Can I—” and without waiting Azo’s permission takes a sidestep to get his arm over the horse’s neck.
“Blight and blast—” Tellurith comes belatedly
to her wits. “Zuri, call for Caitha. Alkhes—sit!”
And she has said the name. And it has been no more than a reflex, an unconsidered normality. Not even a dagger in her mouth.
“No, I can stand—” Fending Azo off, more than determinedly. Needing, she realizes, to tell her this. And to tell it on his feet.
“Dinda—had the Cataract troops up nearest the mine. There wasn’t much left. Dhasdein—lost most of a brigade. I promoted a fair sort of a captain. Then I sent them home.”
Tellurith feels her jaw sag. The siege, the garrison, the conqueror conquered. Amberlight released.
He sways a little. But his eyes never move.
“I wrote a letter for—Antastes. I said there was, unfortunately, no chance to change the trade. The—qherrique—was gone. I recommended he set the Cataract border south of the timber-fief. That there’d hardly be trouble up there for some time. But it would be worth his while—to let people re-settle Amberlight.”
Our city, rebuilt, reclaimed.
“As a sovereign state.”
We could have all we lost.
No, thinks Tellurith. Never. Our Amberlight is gone.
He is still watching her. That skewed black stare is full of suppressed pain.
“It could be a river-city. There’s plenty of trade.”
And too much history, and too many memories.
“I didn’t tell Antastes—but without the qherrique, the colonies will keep him too busy to meddle beyond Verrain. And Verrain’ll never get the Oases, either. And—perhaps—after a while, they’ll stop taking colonies. Because there’ll be no more need.”
And the balance will settle, Tellurith thinks, between nations, including Amberlight, in a world that may see war and rivalry; but with nothing distorted, nothing unnatural.
As there was with the qherrique.
“Then I told Antastes—I was unhappy with my handling of the campaign—and I resigned.”
The horse shakes its neck and rolls its eyes longingly at the lanky roadside grass. He catches his breath, and Azo, with a suddenly very different expression, shoves a shoulder in his armpit and hauls his arm over her back. He tries to pull away, once.
What, wonders Tellurith, am I, are we doing? Standing here like a folk enspelled, with a man among us out on his feet.
“Where is Caitha?” And before she has thought, it seems natural to add, “Zuri, signal to Iatha: Move.”
Some change has come over Desis’, Verrith’s, even Zuri’s face. She waves to Desis, Signal. Without looking away.
But it is Tellurith who wants to say, You could have gone anywhere. You are a top-price, top-flight mercenary. How can you be . . . She finishes it aloud. “But still—what are you doing here?”
He pulls himself upright over Azo’s arm. The eyes flare, for a moment, with their old deadly fire.
“I came for one thing, Tellurith. To ask you—why?”
Echo of all those other duels. Time replaying dizzily, so she can only repeat yet again, “Why what?”
On his good arm, an imperious twitch. Azo demurs, but yields. He catches his horse’s bridle, takes a step. They are all but face to face.
“You showed me how to wake it. It did wake! It answered me . . . And then it blew, the whole hill blew. Just explain, Tellurith—what happened? Why?”
The restraint is gone, now. There is no ban to forbid her. Only an emptiness located physically behind her breastbone, where the qherrique’s presence will never be again.
“Because,” she yells, “I told you! Men can’t work qherrique!”
He is too stunned to do more than gape.
“You thought it was just prejudice—We learnt it the hard way, seven hundred years ago! A woman found the seed-bed, and it was so pretty she touched, and it woke. But when the men tried it burnt them, in the end it struck one dead. Out of the face, it bites women sometimes, but men it won’t tolerate at all. And at the mother-face—You nincompoop, the only cutter who can touch that is a woman. With a light-blade! In her month’s dark! At the dark of the moon!”
“And,” she bawls into his astounded stare, “not always then!”
The final secret. The real secret, the thing at the heart of Amberlight that House girls learn in their infant clothes. That in seven hundred years, has never been betrayed.
“But—” The eyes are glazed. Then he swallows. Get his jaw up. Tears the good hand back through his filthy hair.
“But—why—why didn’t you tell me? Why—at the end, for the gods’ love—Tel, why didn’t you say?”
She takes a deep breath. Feeling the shards of history, ritual, custom, ingrained secrecy crack away from her. Because even this does not matter any more.
“Because if they’d known—if they’d really known—the River would have destroyed us outright. Because they’ve tried and tried to take over the qherrique—but if they ever succeeded, all your Outland societies would find they had turned into Amberlight. Because the women would rise, just as ours did, into the places of power.”
Now his eyes are well and truly glazed.
“And can you see women allowed to rule Cataract? Or Dhasdein?”
She stares back into that mute, midnight stare and watches him understand. At last.
“No. Never.” She says it for him. “And once they understood that . . . What they couldn’t have by any road—they would have destroyed.”
As his lips moves mutely, she goes on. A perverse pleasure, in telling it all.
“But if they thought they could use the qherrique, they’d just keep on trying. And when we beat them, they’d remember for a while, before they tried again. So long as we could win—”
And we took good care always to win. I told you that. She sees the memory, resurrected in that stare.
“It’s what I never told you. We couldn’t accept your terms—no matter how we wanted.” His eyes speak back to her how desperately that wanting revives in her own. “Because to have men try to work the qherrique—was the one thing we couldn’t give.”
Down the road, to a lowing of cattle and squeak of axles and various shouts, the column begins to move.
He shudders and clenches his eyes shut as if to bring the vision clear, before he speaks.
“But—” it is a whisper, “it did let me—It did answer. It did speak—to me.”
“You were in tune with me, I was House-head. Of course it let you touch it! Of course—”
She stops dead.
“It spoke to you? You heard it? Later? You asked something? And it understood?”
“I asked in the House. Put my hand on it and asked: Shall I try to cut? Should I break the taboo? And it said, Yes.”
Tellurith opens her mouth to scream, Liar, Hallucinator, Imbecile. And shuts it on a gulp. As her mind reels, staggers broadside, to a possibility beyond any imagining.
They are all staring. Zuri and Azo look ready, now, to sustain her.
“Did you,” she can just whisper, “ask it—at the face?”
The glare is conscious, defiant. “Yes!”
Tellurith holds her head. While through her bludgeoned mind runs Ciruil’s question: Why tell you to fight, and then give in? Why, her own wits howl, tell him to cut, and then bring down the hill?
And still get him out?
What reason, what impossible unreason, could make sense of that?
Daughter, be blessed.
When I, protest her staggering wits, had brought destruction, brought him, the agent of that destruction, into Amberlight. Had given him the knowledge, and the access, to cause that fall—to bring about its end. To smash, wholly and forever, the qherrique.
Daughter, be blessed.
When it told me he mattered, on Exchange Square, that first night.
When it assented, after I refused the contract for Verrain.
When it accepted his touch. When, just possibly, it healed his memory. When, if this is true, it did what has never been done before. When a man heard it speak. To him.
Daughter, be blessed.
“Ruand, are you all right?”
She is laughing, wildly, crazily, holding her head before its top flies off and blows away.
It spoke to him, it spoke to me. Two conflicting messages, two conflicting aims. Joined at one irreversible end. Whatever it said to us, it had its own reasons, its own purpose. And it didn’t have to make sense to us.
Because it meant to remove the qherrique, forever, from human abuse, and human distortion. To do what we could not. To destroy Amberlight.
And by its ruin, that I truly brought there, save itself.
Daughter, be blessed.
I thought it was Zhee. A last vision of a Head who was my mother in all but flesh. But was it only Zhee?
Or was it Someone, greater than the very qherrique?
Tellurith lifts her hands to heaven as the women of Amberlight do to pray: Mother, if I did Your work, now may I indeed be blessed.
* * * *
Then she looks back to her ragged, dirty, battered outlander, swaying, bewildered and pain-bedeviled, on his feet.
“It—spoke—to me. It told me to save you—that first night. It told me not to tell you—who could cut it. It told you—to cut.”
He is goggling, beyond speech.
“Because,” says Tellurith gently, “it wanted what you wanted. No more trade. No more abuse. No more,” somehow, it is easier to say than she expected, “Amberlight.”
Daughter, be blessed. Why, she wonders, could She not have said that to him?
And understands, the last flare of vision, that she has indeed been blessed.
“Mother blast it, where is Caitha, Zuri, get him on that horse . . .”
The column’s motion has almost reached them. Blindly, he shrugs Zuri away. Before them, the orphans heave up their hand-cart. Behind them Verrith’s charges shuffle, willing to be off.
