The Call of Earth

by Orson Scott Card

  "Why did you weep that day?" his widow demanded.

  "Because I saw him fallen in the street, trampled by a horse."

  "Why didn't you warn him?"

  "The Oversoul showed it to me, mistress, but she forbade me to tell it."

  "Then I hate the Oversoul!" cried the woman. "And I hate you, for your silence!"

  "Please don't punish me, mistress," said Thirsty. "I wanted to tell you, but she wouldn't let me."

  "No," said the widow. "No, I won't punish you for doing what the goddess demanded of you."

  After the master was buried, his widow sold most of the slaves, for she could no longer maintain a fine household in the city, and would have to return to her father's estate. Thirsty she did not sell. Instead she gave her her freedom.

  Her freedom, but nothing else. Thus Thirsty began her time as a wilder, not because she was driven into the desert by the Oversoul, but because she was hungry, and in every town the other beggars drove her away, not because her small appetite would have deprived them of anything, but rather because she was slight and meek and so she was one of the few creatures in the world they had the power to drive away.

  Thus she found herself in the desert, eating locusts and lizards and drinking from the rank pools of water that lingered in the shade and in caves after each rainstorm. Now she lived her name indeed, but in time she became a wilder in fact, and not just in appearance and habits of life. For she was dirty, and she was naked, and she starved in the desert like any proper holy woman- but she raged against the Oversoul in her heart, for she was bitterly angry at the way the Oversoul had answered her prayer. I asked for freedom, she howled at the Oversoul. I never asked you to kill my good master and impoverish my good mistress! I never asked you to drive me out into the desert, where the sun burns my skin except where I've managed to produce enough sweat that the dust will cling to my naked body and protect me. I never asked for visions or prophecies. I asked only to be a free woman, like my mother was. Now I can't even remember her name.

  The Oversoul was not done with her, though, and so she could not yet have peace. When she was only fourteen years old, by her best reckoning, she had a dream of a place that was mountainous and yet so lush with life that even the face of the sheerest cliff was thickly green with foliage. She saw a man in her vision, and the Oversoul told her that this was her true husband. She cared nothing for that news-what she saw was that this man had food in his hand, and a stream of water ran at his feet. So she headed north until she found the green land, and found the stream. She washed herself, and drank and drank and drank. And then one day, clean and satisfied, she saw him leading his horse down to the water.

  Almost she ran away. Almost she fled from the will of the Oversoul, for she didn't want a husband now, and there had been berries enough by the riverbank that she hungered for nothing that he might offer.

  But he saw her, and gazed at her. She covered her breasts with her hands, knowing vaguely that this was what men desired, for that was what they looked at; she had no experience of men, for the Oversoul had protected her from desert wanderers until now.

  "God forbids me to touch you," he said softly. He spoke in the language of Basilica, but with an accent very different from the speech of Seggidugu.

  "That is a lie," she said. "The Oversoul has made me your wife."

  "I have no wife," he answered. "And if I did, I wouldn't take a puny child like you."

  "Good," she said. "Because, 7 don't want you , either. Let the Oversoul find you an old woman if she wants you to have a wife."

  He laughed. "Then we're agreed. You're safe from me."

  He took her home, and clothed her, and fed her, and for the first time in her life she was happy. In a month she fell in love with him, and he with her, and he took her the way a man takes a wife, though without a ceremony. Oddly, though, she was convinced that marrying him was exactly what the Oversoul required of him, while he was convinced that taking her into his bed was pure defiance of the will of God. "I will defy God every chance I get," he said. "But I would never have taken you against your will, even for the sake of defying my enemy."

  "Is God your enemy, too?" she whispered.

  For a month they were together. Then the madness came upon her and she fled into the desert.

  It happened once again, several years later, only this time there was no month of waiting, and she didn't find him in his homeland, but rather in a cold foreign land with pine trees and a trace of snow on the ground, and this time there was no month of chastity before they were together as man and wife. And again, after a month she became god-mad and fled again into the desert.

  Both times she conceived a child. Both times she longed to take her daughter to him, and lay the babe at his feet, and claim her right as his wife. But the Over-soul forbade it, and instead she brought the baby into the city of women, into Basilica, to the house that the Oversold had shown her in a dream, and both times she gave her child into the arms of a woman that the Over-soul truly loved.

  Thirsty envied that woman so much, for when you have the love of the Oversoul, you are given a house, and freedom, and happiness, and you are surrounded by daughters and friends. But Thirsty had only the hatred of the Oversoul, and so she lived alone in the desert.

  Until, at last, ten years ago, the madness left her for good-or so she thought. She came down out of the desert then, into the land of Potokgavan, where kind strangers took her in. She was not beautiful or desirable, but she was striking in a strange way, and a good plain farmer with a strong house that stood on thick stilts asked for her to be his wife. She said yes, and together they had seven children.

  But she never forgot her days as a holy woman, when the Oversoul hated her, and she never forgot the two daughters she bore to the strange man who was the husband the Oversoul gave her. The elder daughter she had named Hushidh, which was also the name of a desert flower which smelled sweet, but often held the larvae of the poisonous saberfly. The younger daughter she had named Luet, after the lyuty plant, whose leaves were ground up and soaked to make the sacred tea that helped the women who worshipped the Oversoul to enter a trance that sometimes, they said, gave them true visions. She never forgot her daughters, and prayed for them every morning, though she never told her husband or their children about the two she had been compelled to give into the hands of another.

  Then one night she dreamed again, a god-mad dream. She saw herself once again walking into the presence of the husband the Oversoul had given her, the father of her first two daughters. Only now he was older, and his face was terrible and sad. In the dream he had his two daughters, the younger one beside him, the elder kneeling before him, and Thirsty saw herself walk to him and take him by the hand and say, "Husband, now that you have claimed your daughters, will I be your Wife in the eyes of men, as well as in the eyes of the Oversoul?"

  She hated this dream. Hated it deeply, for it denied the husband she had now, and repudiated the children they had together. Why did you set me free to have this life in Potokgavan, O cruel Oversoul, if you meant to tear me away from them? And if you meant me to be with my first two daughters, why couldn't you have let me keep them from the start? You are too cruel to me, Oversoul! I will not obey you!

  But every night she dreamed the same dream. Again and again, all night long, until she thought she would go mad with it. Yet still she did not go.

  Then, on one morning, at the end of the same relentless vision, there came something new into her dream. A sweet high keening sound. And in her dream she looked around and saw a furred creature flying through the air, and she knew that the sweet high song was this angel's song. The angel came to her in the dream, and landed on her shoulder, and clung to her, wrapping his leathery wings around her and his song was piercing and brilliant in her ear.

  "What should I do, sweet angel?" she asked him in the dream.

  In answer, the angel threw himself backward onto the ground before her, and lay there in the dust. And as he lay there, expose
d and helpless, his wings useless and vulnerable and slack, there came creatures that at first seemed to be baboons, from their size, but then seemed to be rats, from their teeth and eyes and snout. They came to the angel, and sniffed at him, and when he did not move or fly, they began to gnaw at him. Oh, it was terrible indeed, and all the time his eyes looked at Thirsty, so sadly.

  I must save him, thought Thirsty. I must shoo away these terrible enemies. Yet in the dream she could not save him. She could not act at all.

  When the fell creatures finally left, the angel was not dead. But his wings had been chewed away, and in their place were left only two spindly, fragile arms, with barely a fringe under them to show where once the wings had been. She knelt by him, then, and cradled him up into her arms, and wept for him. Wept and wept and wept.

  "Mother," said her middle son. "Mother, you're weeping from a dream, I think. Wake up."

  She woke up.

  "What was it?" asked the boy. He was a good boy, and she did not want to leave him.

  "I must take a journey," she said.

  "Where?"

  "To a far place, but I'll come home, if the Oversoul will let me."

  "Why must you go?"

  "I don't know," she said. "The Oversoul has called me, and I don't know why. Your father is already working in the fields. Don't tell him until he comes home for his noon meal. By then I'll be gone too far for him to pursue me. Tell him that I love him and that PI1 return to him. If he wants to punish me when I come back, then I will submit to his punishment gladly. For I would rather be here with him, and with our children, than to be a queen in any other country."

  "Mama," said the boy, "I've known for a month that you would go."

  "How did you know?" she asked. And for a moment she feared that he, too, might be cursed with the voice of the Oversoul in his heart.

  But it was no god-madness the boy had-instead it was common sense. "You kept looking to the northwest, and Father tells us sometimes that that was where you came from. I thought I saw you wishing to go home."

  "No," she said. "Not wishing to go home, because I am home, right here. But there's an errand I must tend to, and then I'll come back to you."

  "If the Oversoul will let you."

  She nodded. Then, taking a small bundle of food and a leather bottle filled with water, she set out on foot.

  I had no intention of obeying you, Oversoul, she said. But when I saw that angel, with his wings torn away because I did nothing to help him in his moment of need, I did not know if that angel represented my daughters or the man who gave them to me, or even perhaps yourself-I only knew that I could not stand in my place and let some terrible thing happen, though I don't know what the terrible thing will be, or what I must do to stop it. All I know is that I will go where you lead me, and when I get there I will try to do good. If that ends up serving your purpose, Oversold, I will do it anyway.

  But when it's done, please, oh! Please, let me go home.

  IN BASILICA, AND NOT IN A DREAM

  It had come now to getting permission from Rasa, and Elemak was by no means certain she would grant it. Word throughout the house was that she had come home from her meeting with the Gorayni general in a foul humor, and no one could miss the fact that there were Gorayni soldiers in the street outside the house. Yet no matter what happened in Basilica, Elemak would not go back into the desert without a wife. And since she was willing, it would be Eiadh, with or without Rasa's permission.

  But better with her permission. Better if Rasa herself performed the ceremony.

  "This is an inauspicious time," said Rasa.

  "Don't speak like an old woman, please, Aunt Rasa," said Eiadh. Her voice was so soft and sweet that Rasa showed no sign of being offended at what could only be regarded as sauciness. "Remember that young women are not timid. We marry most readily when our men are about to go to war, or when times are hard."

  "You know nothing of desert life."

  "But you have gone out into the desert with Wetchik, from time to time."

  "Twice, and the second time was because I failed to trust my memory of how much I loathed the first time. I can promise you that after a week in the desert you'd be willing to come back to Basilica as a bondservant, just so you could come back."

  "My lady Rasa," began Elemak.

  "If you speak again, dear Elemak, I will send you from the room," said Rasa, in her gentlest tones. "I'm trying to talk sense to your beloved. But you needn't worry. Eiadh is so besotted with love of-what, your strength? I suspect she has visions of perfect manhood in her heart, and you fulfill all those fantasies,"

  Eiadh blushed. It was all Elemak could do to keep from smiling. He had hoped this from the start-that Eiadh was not a girl who looked for wealth or position, but rather one who looked for courage and strength. It would be boldness, not ostentation, that would win her heart: So Elemak had determined at the outset of his wooing, and so it had turned out in the end. Rasa herself confirmed it. Elemak had chosen a girl who, instead of loving him as the Wetchik's heir, would love him for those very virtues that were most evident in Elemak out in the desert-his ability to command, to make quick, bold decisions; his physical stamina; his wisdom about desert life.

  "Whatever dreams she has in her heart," Elemak said, "I will do my best to make them all come true."

  "Be careful what you promise," said Rasa. "Eiadh is quite capable of sucking the life out of a man with her adoration."

  "Aunt Rasa!" said Eiadh, genuinely horrified.

  "Lady Rasa," said Elemak, "I can't imagine what cruel intent you must have, to say such a thing about this woman."

  "Forgive me," said Rasa. She looked genuinely sorry. "I thought my words would be taken as teasing, but I haven't the heart for levity right now, and so it became an insult. I didn't intend it that way."

  "Lady Rasa," said Elemak, "all things are forgiven when Wethead soldiers stand watch in the street outside your house."

  "Do you think I care about that?" said Rasa. "When I have a raveler and a waterseer in my house? The soldiers are nothing. It's my city that I fear for."

  "The soldiers are not nothing," said Elemak. "I've been told how Hushidh unbound poor Rashgallivak's soldiers from their loyalty to him, but you must remember that Rashgallivak was a weak man, newly come into my brother's place."

  "Your father's place, too," said Rasa.

  "Usurping both," said Elemak. "And the soldiers that Shuya unbound were mercenaries. General Moozh is said to be the greatest general in a thousand years, and his soldiers love and trust him beyond understanding. Shuya wouldn't find it easy to unweave those bonds."

  "Suddenly you're an expert on the Gorayni?"

  "I'm an expert on how men love and trust a strong leader," said Elemak. "I know how the men of my caravans felt about me. True, they all knew they would be paid. But they also knew that I wouldn't risk their lives unnecessarily, and that if they followed me in all things they would live to spend that money at journey's end. I loved my men, and they loved me, yet from what I hear of General Moozh, his soldiers love him ten times more than that. He has made them the strongest army of the Western Shore."

  "And masters of Basilica, without one of them being killed," said Rasa.

  "He hasn't mastered Basilica yet," said Elemak. "And with you as his enemy, Lady Rasa, I don't know if he ever will."

  Rasa laughed bitterly. "Oh, indeed, he removed me as a threat from the start."

  "What about our marriage?" asked Eiadh. "That is what we're meeting about, isn't it?"

  Rasa looked at her with-what, pity? Yes, thought Elemak. She hasn't a very high opinion of this -niece of hers. That remark she let slip, that insult, it was no joke. Suck the life out of a man with her adoration-what did that mean? Am I making a mistake? All my thought was to make Eiadh desire me; I never questioned my desire for her.

  "Yes, my dear," said Rasa. "You may marry this man. You may take him as your first husband."

  "Technically," said Elemak, "it wasn't
permission we were seeking, since she's of age."

  "And I will perform the ceremony," said Rasa wearily. "But it will have to be in this house, for obvious reasons, and the guest list will have to consist of all those who find themselves in residence here. We must all pray that Gorayni soldiers do not also choose to attend the ceremony."

  "When?" asked Eiadh.

  "Tonight," said Rasa. "Tonight will be soon enough, won't it? Or does your clothing itch so much you want it to come off at noon?"

  Again, an insult beyond bearing, and yet Rasa plainly did not see that she was being crude. Instead she arose and walked from the room, leaving Eiadh flushed and angry on the bench where she sat.

  "No, my Edhya," said Elemak. "Don't be angry. Your Aunt Rasa has lost much today, and she can't help being a little mean about also losing you."

  "It sounds as though she'd be glad to get rid of me, she must hate me so," said Eiadh. And a tear slipped from Eiadh's eye and dropped, twinkling for a moment in the air, onto her lap.

  Elemak took her in his arms then, and held her; she clung to him as if she longed to become a part of him forever. This is love, he thought. This is the kind of love that songs and stories are made of. She will follow me into the desert and with her beside me I will fashion a tribe, a kingdom for her to be the queen. For whatever this General Moozh can do, I can do. I am a truer husband than any Wethead could ever be. Eiadh hungers for a man of mastery. I am that man.

  Bitanke was not happy with all that had happened in Basilica these past few days. Especially because he could not get free of the feeling that perhaps it was all his fault. Not that he had had much choice in those moments at the gate. His men had fought valiantly, but they were too few, and the mob of Palwashantu mercenaries was bound to win. What hope, then, would he have had, standing against the Gorayni soldiers who came out of nowhere and promised alliance with him?