Jinian Stareye

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘There is no book,’ he said stupidly, staring at me as though to memorize me. ‘No book to sing from.’

  ‘They have Mavin,’ I retorted. ‘Ask them to sing Mavin’s song. She will be their book.’

  I think he knew it would hurt me if he argued, so he didn’t. I saw him holding on to his self-control as though with both hands. He left me there. Halfway down the hill he turned and stared, remembering to wave, trying not to weep, remembering at last to Shift some clothing for himself, and then he was gone.

  My own clothes lay on the grasses. For this occasion I had decked myself. My gown was blue, girdled and cloaked in green and violet. They were colors Peter liked. I had worn them for him, and for myself. If I must meet death, then it would be well clad, not as some scruffy wanderer. So, these silken, lovely things. I put them on, drawing my hair high and pinning it there with jeweled combs. They had been among Mavin’s things, and Himaggery had wept when he saw them. He had given them to her long ago, before Peter was born. He had told me to take them and wear them in her memory. So I did, saying her name as I slipped them into my hair.

  Then, only then, I laid out the materials for a summons. It was a simple thing. I had barely finished when I heard a trill from among the trees.

  ‘Jinian,’ it said. ‘Here is Proom and Proom’s people for the singing.’

  So much for the art. Why had I assumed Proom would not be perfectly aware of what was going on? He had always turned up fortuitously in the past. Why not this time?

  ‘Will you sing Mavin’s song in the ruined Tower, Proom?’

  ‘That one. Yes. And another we have, also of Mavin, and of Jinian and Peter, and of Ganver, too.’

  ‘There is no book in the tower.’

  ‘I have brought the book,’ he said, stepping forward into the glade where I stood with my shoes in the grass beside me and all the Wize-ardly stuff spread around. He held it, a book almost too big for him, clutched to his chest. ‘We took it when the Tower fell. We have had it always.’

  He started away down the hillside, others emerging from the trees to follow him. He turned. ‘Where are you going in your ceremonial dress, Jinian Star-eye?’

  I gestured behind me. He shook his head sadly. ‘We will sing your song, too, Jinian. We will sing your song.’

  Then they were gone, light as leafy shade on the grass, and I was alone with my shoes lying in the grass and my Wize-ard’s pouch and the Dagger on my thigh and Murzemire’s words in my heart.

  ‘I have Seen,’ she had said brokenly. ‘The Oracle and all his followers. They will come there!’ And she had pointed to a low saddle of the mountain where the rocks lay bare and the soil ashen as though burned by an acid flame.

  I put on my shoes and went to that place.

  It was dusk when I arrived there. The place was littered with stones, great skull-shaped boulders on which the lichen had died, leaving gray scrofulous patches, like dead skin. Soon after I arrived, I saw the Oracle emerge far down the opposite slope. It stood quietly as I mounted one of the great stones. This time there was no mockery. Their ribbons were black and indigo, death colors. The shadows lay behind them in drifts, unmoving. There would be no play tonight. Nor would I have time to prepare or worry, or grieve. It saw me standing on the boulder and moved upward, toward me, its many followers behind it in a fluttering tide. Tonight they led the shadow.

  I had the Dagger in my hand, the Daggerhawk blade, the wings of it curving beneath my fingers, the jewels of it glittering. Cold, so cold that blade, and coming toward me the great, gross bulk of the Oracle. Its original Eesty shape had long been overlaid with pretense and guile. The ribbons it had worn as mimicry were a part of it now. The hands it had imaged were now real; the face it had painted had become its own face. It had begun out of mockery at us pathetic human shapes; it had gone on out of stubborn, relentless anger; it had ended by losing everything it could ever have cared about, and even now it would not make an end.

  ‘Jinian,’ it called to me. ‘Jinian Footseer. Dervish Daughter. Does it still wear the star-eye on its little bosom? My sign, human. Mine. The sign of me.’

  ‘No,’ I said, so softly it might not have heard. ‘No, Oracle. It is my sign. I’ve earned it.’

  ‘You?’ It laughed. I had heard a laugh like that once before in the fortress of Zale, a high chirp of mirthless sound, like a dreaming bird. Birds, who have no bao, may dream of souls? Why not. So the Oracle might dream now of what it had lost - or never had.

  ‘I, Oracle.’

  ‘You pity me, girl?’

  ‘I pity you, Oracle.’ I didn’t know what I said. It was too late for anything but truth, and truth is what I told.

  Then came light in those painted eyes. Oh, Gamelords and all the old gods. Light in those eyes. An evil joy. A monstrous peace. And I knew why, for the Dagger seemed to tremble in my hands. The Daggerhawk blade, which would kill by a touch only when used in anger. And I had no anger left against this thing. Only pity. Impotent pity. Which could do nothing with the Dagger, nothing at all.

  It came toward me. Behind it the others, a shuffling multitude of them. Behind me, below me in the city, softened by distance, I heard the cries of the workmen struggling to hang the Bell. Hang it and ring it in order that all might be restored. I could hold these pathetic monsters off perhaps a minute or two, pretending an answer I did not feel, but my heart was lost in me. The light we had spun into the lamp of the Tower would be the world’s light, but not our own. Not Peter’s and mine. The effort we had put into the Bell would be the world’s cure, perhaps, but not ours.

  ‘Have you thought,’ I called to the Oracle, ‘that even now it is not too late?’

  ‘Too late? Why, human girl, Dervish Daughter, it is not early enough. I should have killed you there in the Forest of Chimmerdong, long and long ago. I should have taken you myself and fed you to the monstrous

  Pig-‘

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because we foresaw this end, Footseer. Foresaw the Dagger in your hand and you unable to use it. Because we thought it unnecessary. All your kind are so useless! We knew in the end it would come to this. More fun to play the Game out, you see. More fun to let it go on. . . .’

  ‘But didn’t you also see the world’s death? And the death of all? Of every one of you? Of all your Brotherhood?’

  Silence. As though I had uttered a curse upon them. Silence, with the Oracle dancing from side to side, laughing at me, the laugh a hollow one which the

  others did not echo, falling into silence as it became aware of their silence.

  ‘We will not die!’ The cry came from behind the Oracle, from that close pack that shuffled toward me. ‘You lie, Footseer. We must not die.’

  I wanted to laugh, to laugh and cry all at the same time. ‘Oh, foolish children,’ I called, forgetting they were not my children, ‘You will die. All the Brotherhood will die. I, too, perhaps, but you certainly. This, too, has been Seen!’

  A wailing, then, like an angered ghost. Among those who shuffled along after the Oracle an eddy moved, a circling, as though some within that throng chose to move another way. Looking down on them, I was reminded of water as it breaks over a submerged stone, whirling darkly and without visible purpose. The Oracle had been at the front of this mob, but now it seemed to be behind the foremost rank, pulled sideways as though caught by that strange undertow.

  ‘The Riddler told us the world died but that we would live, masters of all!’ It was the same voice, complaining bitterly. ‘Our bao would conquer everything!’

  Pity again. So foolish, so childish, so damned. ‘What did you think you would do to live when the world died? When the world was only a sphere of cold stone? When there were no seas, no plants? How did you think you would live?’ I called out to them, receiving no answer. ‘And since you have no bao, how would it conquer?’ The mob was pushing against the stone I stood upon, and it rocked. I turned to leap to the safety of the hill behind me, only to find a tentacle of the throng had
moved between me and that place. They pushed, and I rocked once more, staggering to keep my balance.

  ‘You did not say we would die!’ the voice was crying. Somewhere in that mass of ribboned forms, the Oracle was moving. I could not telt where. ‘Riddler, you did not say we would die.’

  The stone heaved, twisted, and I dropped to all fours, frantically snatching at the stone, dropping the Dagger as I did it, heedless, unthinking. It flew from my hands like a spark from the fire, gems glittering upon its hilt and at the top of the blade. The silvery wings shone, sparkling, drawing eyes upward. It ricocheted from the stone I teetered on, flashing outward above the mob. A hand reached up to snatch it from the air.

  Ah, I said to myself. So it was you, Jinian, meant to die by the Dagger all along. You meant to die at the anger of these rebellious stars. And I crouched theie, waiting, remembering how the Basilisks had died, some long ago, one only recently, almost it had seemed without pain, and I was thankful for that. Since that time upon the battlement at the fortress of Zale, I had wakened sometimes in the night, mouth dry, fearing pain. So I crouched, eyes not shut but not watching, mouth dry still, merely waiting. In a moment the Dagger would touch me, and that would be an end to it all. At the end, I would think of Peter. He might never know of it, but it would comfort me at least.

  So I waited, seeing without seeing how the dagger spun into the mob, as though it lived, as though it flew by those carved wings.

  Within that throng came a clearing. A vacancy. A troubled space where the shifting bodies of the Brotherhood had twirled away. At the edge of this space the Dagger spun. I could see it in the hands of one of them. Which one? The Oracle itself? I thought at first yes, then no, for the creature spun, spun, screaming as it spun, ‘You did not tell us we would die!’

  It spun with the Dagger in one hand, a wheel of flame, and as it spun the beribboned Eesties fell before it like grain before the scythe. Was one of them the Oracle? Cautiously, as one who has just escaped the attack of some great, sly beast, I raised my head and shoulders to see what was there. Those who had been in the crevasse behind me had poured forth once more.

  The shallow ditch was empty. I stepped across it to the hilltop, sinking once more to a crouch, watching.

  And still they fell, by the tens, by the hundreds. Their forms littered the hillside, changing now, losing their mock-human forms, turning to Eesty shape once more, starlike upon the grass, fading as I watched, becoming mere shades of themselves which melted into the herbage and were gone. I stepped from the stones to the dried, brittle grass. Still the voice cried, or another voice like it; still the Dagger spun, and those who were left living began to flee. The Dagger did not remain behind. It pursued them yet in the hand of one of their own kind, and with anger and frustrated purpose, furious at betrayal.

  And only two were left living in that place - Jinian and one other. The Oracle.

  It was shrunken. Eesty-like. The painted eyes were only painted and the bony hands mere sketches of light and shadow at the ends of its points. It had no face, and yet I knew it. I knew it no matter what guise it took, and I spoke to it at last.

  ‘You did not think of their anger, Oracle.’

  ‘No,’ it replied. The voice was an Eesty voice, and yet it hurt me like a file across my bones in its horrid intensity. ‘I did not think of their anger. I made the Dagger. I set it where you found it. I foresaw much. I knew you could not use it against me. I never thought of them.’

  ‘They were betrayed, Oracle. Ganver tells me there is no anger greater than that of a zealot betrayed. Where is your strength now, Oracle?’

  ‘So it would seem.’ It hummed, like a hive of warnets. ‘And yet, Dervish Daughter, I have strength enough to deal with you still.’

  My eyes dropped. The Eesty was larger than I, and older by far. I had no weapon. Any magics the Wize-ards knew had been known to this older race. It was true. It could deal with me still. I stroked my breast where the star-eye had lain, wishing for it. I would say what the star-eye required, whether I would die or not, crying out in a voice unlike my own.

  ‘No. You have no strength at all, Oracle. Hear the message of the star-eye:

  ‘A soul does not dwell in your shape, Eesty! A soul does not live in your seed. Mercy will not allow you to live. And yet, you are part of the whole, Oracle, and I may not destroy you.’

  ‘What is my punishment?’ It laughed at me, a final, bitter mockery. ‘What do you think you can do? Those like me will always prey on those like you, Footseer! Until you learn mercy toward us! Until you learn that not-being is more merciful than being for one like me! Where there is no belonging, no way, why do those like you always think it merciful to make us go on living?’

  I started to answer, but the answer did not come. I could have told it why it had been allowed to live so long, but I did not. Instead I cried with all my heart into the silence, ‘Ganver! I know why you did not act in the past! I know your love for that which you gave life. But bao demands that this creature die, Ganver, and I may not take our bao. This is your duty. This is your own child!’

  The Oracle heard me and was shocked to stillness. At least, so I thought later. Perhaps the Eesties do not know parents as we know them; perhaps they do not know who gives them life. Perhaps as the ages pass, they forget. So, perhaps, the Oracle had not known or did not remember. It had no time to remember then, for a great rolling wheel came out of the trees and the cloud, something more huge than could be imagined, more inexorable. It spun, and when it had spun away, the Oracle was gone. Ganver had found strength to do the merciful thing at last.

  Then, only then, the sound came. Below me, in the valley, they were ringing the Daylight Bell.

  The sound surged like a tide, washing over me, then retreating, coming forward once again, higher each time, touching the burned earth, the scabbed stone, upward into the air, into the tree branches that angled stark and graceless against the sky, upward still until tree and stone and earth lay beneath that tide, like creatures of a shore pool dried from the sun, now laved, soothed, lifted. . . .

  Where the shadow lay the light came, and the great bank of shadow raised itself and fled.

  I dropped to the earth, floated to the earth, sat there, hands drifting to and fro above the surface of it. My hair flowed before my face, then back, before my face again in the wind of that ringing. It was good to sit down, inexpressibly good. I gripped the grass where I sat, holding it as though to hold myself in place upon the world or the world in place beneath me.

  A shudder then, like distant thunder, felt rather than heard. As though something monstrously large had clapped its hands. I was buffeted by the silent blow, touched all over. Before me on the ash-gray soil a blade of green pushed upward, shivered, split itself into several leaves, and thrust outward at the world a cluster of buds that broke into silvery bloom.

  A tree rat came out onto a branch and chattered at me. I did not understand a word. Too tired, I told myself. Too tired to listen, tree rat. Sorry. Sorry.

  It took enormous effort to get to my feet. The silent blow bruised me, not visibly, and yet I could feel it in my flesh. Something had struck me. It seemed a punishment after all I had been through, and weary tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. The tree rat chattered once more, but I could not take time to figure out what it was saying. Below, in the city, those I loved must be told their efforts had succeeded. The Oracle and all its followers were gone.

  I staggered down toward the city. Around me came small popping sounds, like pods of shatter-grass breaking open, as the gray trees burst into leaf all at once. The soil beneath me writhed with grass, coil after coil of fern sprang up like zeller, leaping into frond. Blossom happened. I walked on a meadow of bloom and green. The world rejoiced. The sound of the Bell fell away to silence.

  And from below me, in the city, came a wail, a cry, a heartbroken lament. I stopped, unable to believe it, thinking perhaps the Oracle had done some dreadful thing there in the city before its life had e
nded. The lament went on, flowing toward me, coming from a clot of people clustered at the nearest gate. I stopped, confused. There was something wrong with my head. A blurry feeling.

  Peter was there at the gate. I called out, a harsh, grating cry from a dry throat. He raised his head, saw me, didn’t move, just stood there, his face empty. Then he raised his hand and came up the hill toward me. I waited, unwilling to go closer, afraid.

  Even at the distance, I could see his face was wet and he walked as though crippled, haltingly. Behind him those at the city gate went into the city, their voices raised in sorrow, joining another lament by other voices. I began to run, stumbling, as halting as Peter. I was sore, hurt. He, too.

  He caught me in his arms.

  Always, always when Peter held me, the flesh of his arms Shifted, only a little, becoming warmer and wider, as though to touch as much of me as he could. The first time he had ever really held me, long ago, oh - longer ago than seems possible and yet only a year or two, only that. He had held me then as he did now, and I had felt that Shifting, that softening, as though his arms would cushion me against all the threats and pains of the world. And always when he had held me, it had been like that.

  Yet now he held me in his arms and they were only arms. ‘Wizardry?’ he mumbled into my ear. ‘Some Wizardry, Jinian? Lost. All of us. Our Talents. All. Gone.’

  I stared at him stupidly, not hearing him. What idiocy was he talking? I couldn’t understand what he meant. His Talent gone due to some Wizardry? Whose? Who was left?

  Over his shoulder I could see a small figure behind him, toiling up the hill. Proom. The Shadowman, looking at me out of great, haunted eyes. He came close to me, stared into my face, took my hand into his own soft, long-fingered one, and spoke to me. I could not understand him.