by Liz Williams
We've seen no evidence of settlement so far, but we plan to start exploring as soon as we're set up. We have a set of fragmented, partial coordinates from the last transmission, and hopefully we may be able to make sense of these once we've got firmer bearings of our location. Dia is keen to begin the work of the mission, hoping that the colonists'descendants (assuming, of course, that anyone's survived) have retained at least some of the principles on which the colony was founded. If they have not—well, Dia says, that will be “our challenge and our duty,” to return them to the Gaian Path.
We don't have the equipment for ReForming or weather control, but we have the specifications for such development, and I know that Dia wants to contact the colonists to find out what, if any, knowledge they still possess. If all the old knowledge has been lost, then Dia and the mission will seek to restore it. Bel tells me that once the equipment has been developed, it should take no more than a hundred years or so for climatic modification to take hold, and another hundred after that for the full process of ReFor-mation. But a lot depends on whether the colonists'descendants still survive, what resources they have, and whether we can locate the settlement from which that last transmission was made. If there's any trace of it left after all this time, it might furnish us with some answers. And perhaps we'll discover why the transmission described this world as cursed.
4. Eleres
We had been traveling for no more than an hour when the pillar which marks the end of the estuary road rose up out of the grass. They are old, these markers, set upon the underground waterways and the currents of the earth. I dismounted and approached the pillar: a column of spotted, mottled agate. A star mark of Telles, the fiercest of the summer constellations, was carved into its flat top; on either side were embossed signs of fresh water, soft-ear grass, and iron. Someone came to stand by my side. When I glanced up, I saw to my surprise that it was Mevennen. She was carrying a bowl of water.
“Mevennen? How are you feeling?”
“The sedative's worn off,” she murmured. “It stops working so well if I take too much … I'm all right.” She clearly was not.
“Well, you still shouldn't be walking about,” I said. “Let me get you back to your mount.” Gently I took her arm.
She gave me an irritated look, brushing her hair from her eyes with a damp hand. “I'm stiff. I wanted some exercise.” Her chin went up, challenging me.
I said, placating her, “I'm just thinking of what's best for you, that's all …” but she turned away abruptly and cracked the bowl over the landmarker in the old ritual gesture to show respect for the land. The water ran in rivulets down the side of the stone, bringing the dappled markings of the agate into bright relief like the sides of a fish. The energy current came up strongly beneath my feet, making the hair at the nape of my neck stand up. I shivered, feeling my senses becoming absorbed into the world until there was no distinction between it and myself. I was part of the land, and it was part of me, and I could sense the more distant presences of Eiru and Sereth—but not my sister, who was standing a foot away from me. It was as though she simply was not there, a blankness where presence should be. But then Mevennen gave a small cry like a bird, suddenly overwhelmed by the confusing energies of the land.
“It's too much,” she whispered. “It's as though it's attacking me …”
She sagged against me and I had to carry her back to her mount. She felt small and frail in my arms, and I once more felt that implacable and greedy longing for blood, conjured by the presence of weakness, beginning to pound behind my eyes. It was the need to kill, and the need for prey, and it was—so my panicking human self informed me—my own beloved sister that I held, not some animal ripe for the slaughter.
“Help me get her into the saddle,” I said brusquely to my somber cousin Eiru. She glanced at me and her eyes narrowed.
“Eleres? Are you all right?”
“I'm fine,” I said, but I lied and Eiru knew it. I looked into her gaunt face and what I saw there mirrored what I felt in my own. She glanced down at Mevennen and I saw her snag her lip under one sharp tooth. Light glittered in her eyes. I caught my breath.
“Help me with my sister, Eiru,” I murmured, saying her name and reminding us both that we were human, whatever dark wishes we might harbor. Eiru took Mevennen's arm without a word and together we lifted my sister into the saddle. The inner lid of membrane slipped across her eyes and she settled back with a sigh. We rode on in silence. Toward twilight we reached the river.
The river was low and the ford road in good repair; fortunate, since the sand flats could be treacherous. As we crossed, the road became lit by little sailing lights, night insects drawn by the warmth of the beasts. They followed us as far as the boundaries of the summer tower's defense, then floated off into the branches of the trees. In Gehent they call them spirits, and they made me shiver. It was almost dark now, and the brightening stars hung over the valley. Standing before the tower, we could see the defense shimmering like a heat haze; it prickled across my skin. Sereth and Eiru and I stood before it, sinking our awareness into our land senses and allowing ourselves to connect to the defense. It felt like the waves of warmth that drift up from the ground in summer. Inside my mind I felt something fit together, as though we were the key and the defense was a lock, as if it recognized us in some way. A moment later, it melted back into the ground and was gone.
Once the defense was down, we settled the murai in the old stable stalls at the far end of the inner courtyard and Sereth helped Mevennen inside while I saw to the mounts. Vevey appeared unflatteringly pleased to have me down from her back. I stayed for a while, brushed her coat clean of dust and insects and gave her meat for the night; she could hunt when the little herd went up into the highlands.
Then I went back into the hall: a long gallery, dark-paneled. It smelled of age and dust, but it was not as bad as I'd feared. I knew that clan members sometimes used the place as a waystation; my brother had been here in the spring and had said that the hall and the rooms above were livable. There would have been little point in bringing Mevennen here, otherwise. It could do with some cleaning, though. There was an appalling rush of soot and smoke from the hearth at the far end of the room as a bird's nest came down the flue and landed in an untidy heap of twigs in the grate.
Coughing ensued and Sereth reappeared, smudged with soot.
“Well,” she said, when she could speak. “It could be worse, I suppose. I told you there was a leak in the defense. A bird must have got through. Never mind. I'm going to have a bath as soon the water heats up. Eiru's lighting the fires. She thinks the stoves should still be in working order, though I don't suppose they've been lit much since the old days.”
“Where's Mevennen?”
“I've put her in one of the upstairs rooms and made sure she's as comfortable as possible with the blankets we brought. Eleres,” she added, putting a hand on my arm, “do you think it really will help her if she stays here for a while? I know it's quite a way from the sea, but even so …”
I looked down at Sereth's hand, automatically noting her long, elegant fingers and the tattooed symbols of her name around her thumb, and sighed. “I don't know, Ser. But we have to try something.”
“No one's ever been cured of being a ghost.”
“Yes they have. What about the lover of Yr En Lai? She was landblind, just like Mevennen, and he took her to Out-reven and she was healed.”
“That's just a legend, Eleres. A story about people who might not have even existed and a place that isn't real.”
“But who knows for certain that Outreven isn't real? None of the migration routes go through the Great Eastern Waste, do they, unless the mehed follow the landlines into the wilderness.” At the mention of the mehed, a lost, blank look came over Sereth's face. I reached out and cupped her pointed chin in my hands. “Sereth? Are you all right?”
“I'm just tired, that's all,” she said, suddenly dismissive. “I need to get some rest.” Her face was close
d, the proud gaze concealed behind shuttered lids and her mouth down-turned. I parted from her on the landing, swaying with fatigue.
But when I finally reached my bed—blankets slung over one of the dusty frames—I could not get to sleep. Once again my senses drifted, trying to accommodate to the new place in which I found myself. This valley was gentler country than my home, but the tug and pull of the sea was so much a part of me that I missed it. It was like trying to sleep on a bed that was too soft, when you're used to a harder mattress. Eventually I must have dropped off. I dreamed fitfully of Mevennen: shadowy dreams filled with horror and blood, in which I walked through an endless maze of streets, searching for my sister. There was no one else to be seen and the stones of the buildings around me were darkened and soot-stained, as if a fire had raged through them. The air smelled dead and cold, but worst of all, my usual senses had gone. I could not feel the water that ran beneath the streets, nor sense the energy lines under the land. Nothing made sense any more. I was entirely separate from the world, just as effectively as if I had been struck deaf and blind. I had become a ghost.
A presence drifted out of nowhere and I heard a voice in my ear: This, at last, is Outreven. And I woke with a start, to find that it was just after dawn. Shivering, I rose and washed my face in cold water, rinsing the dream away and persuad-ing myself that I was human still. Then I went from my room. The house was quiet and I wandered out into the damp courtyard. Beyond the gate, a light mist hung over the river valley. Past the northern wall, a narrow winding path led down the cliff face to the river and I took this, carefully stepping sideways on the slippery stone. I did not want to face anyone until I had shaken the dream away.
The name echoed in my head: Outreven. First place of all—the birthplace, they called it, though no one knew why. The word didn't even mean anything, not in any language I knew.
“Yes, and I've been to Outreven,” northerners would say sarcastically, in response to being spun some fantastic tale. Presumably it had been some ancient settlement out in the wastes somewhere, and only the name remained as the setting for all the legends and stories: myths have to happen somewhere, after all. I knew all the legends. Like all of us, I'd spent my adult life listening in the firelit nights as someone whispered the old tales—not only ofYr En Lai and his lover but others, too: the flying boats; the halls that sang to themselves; the first satahrach of all who had come from another star, who stole new bodies for himself and lived for a thousand years. Luta's favorite tale had been the one about the demons Mora and Ei, who had quarreled with their elders and sought refuge in the mountains of a moon; she'd told it so often that it had become my favorite story, too … The future cannot be seen; it stretches behind us and we can only catch glimpses of it over our shoulders, but the past lies before us. As I gazed with my mind's eye out across its expanse, Outreven remained too distant, lying over the horizon of time, a good place for legends. But after my dream, even in the sunlight, the thought of it still made me shiver.
By the time that I reached the edge of the water, the mist had lifted and the day lay pale before me. The track led down onto the sand flats, shining in the morning light, dappled by the shallow, running water. I walked along the river shore. The air above the river was full of birds and the flocks rose up in a flurry as I neared. From downriver flew ailets, sailing pearl-winged on the summer wind, close enough for me to see the long silvery eye and the webbed feet tucked beneath the feathers as the birds turned to catch the breeze. The pair floated down the estuary and out of sight; the third shortly followed, a younger bird still bearing its gray infant down. They reminded me of Sereth.
I crouched at the edge of the river and spent a patient hour catching sandfish; my bloodmind senses tracked them as they glided under the mud. When I had finished, the light on the estuary was rising, illuminating water and air with a flaming haze. Already I could see reflections broken into crimson fragments across the rippling water as the sun rose over the nearby hills. Soon it would become too bright to see properly. I put the sandfish, each hooked through the soft brain, into the bag and turned toward the wild orchards which flanked the tower. The small fruit-bearing simmet hung over the water, the red blossoms falling like the petals of the sun. The peace of the scene drove my dream away at last and I thought: I was right. This was a good place to bring Mevennen. Even I, water sensitive, could barely sense the fierce pull of the sea tides; the long estuary held them at bay, diminishing their force.
Then, from my vantage point on the bank, I saw something moving among the black branches of the fruit trees: a dark shape, half glimpsed. I thought perhaps someone had let one of the riding mur out to hunt, but they were highland animals by nature and this low, rich country was not appealing to them.
It was moving quickly, brushing through the branches. I knew that hill predators sometimes came down into the valleys if the hunting was poor. I watched for a few minutes, but could see nothing more. I ran swiftly down to the trees and melted into the shadows beneath the branches with my sword drawn, watching, but nothing moved.
The bloodmind senses twitched within me, turning me to predator. This time, unlike the moments when my senses ambushed me in the presence of Mevennen's weakness, I did not struggle to keep the bloodmind back. My senses searched out for another presence and found it. Suddenly, it was as though I were standing next to it. I knew where it was, now, but I could not yet tell what it might be. I could smell its flesh: a rank, pungent odor. I could almost taste its blood in my mouth as I listened for the small, betraying sounds it made. My fingers twitched. I glided through the trees, slipping around the fallen branches toward it until I reached the edge of the orchard. The sense of another presence vanished abruptly, but the skin crawled at the nape of my neck. I turned. There was nothing there.
Perhaps it was only a wandering child, but it unsettled me, nonetheless. Uneasily I went back to the tower and cleaned the fish. I felt their spirits leap beneath my hands, slipping down to the estuary waters. The scaly flesh was cold against my fingers; dun colored and dappled with light. I took the heads and guts out to the stables and fed them to the murai. On the stairs, I met Sereth, who said, “Mevennen still isn't well. I told her to sit out in the orchard this afternoon and see if she feels any better. She shouldn't stay mewed up in the house.”
Her voice was disapproving and I smiled. Sereth, uncomfortable with sickness, always thought that it could be cured by strength of will, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.
As the day rose I climbed up to the long covered gallery which runs along the top of the tower. From here, one could see for many ei, up and down the estuary. Far across the river mouth, the lowlands of the steppe climbed in stages, purple in the distance, and beyond them my home of Ulleet and the Zheray Empty country, all of it, apart from the fertile river valleys and the fort settlements clinging to the coast. A rainstorm was building to the north, and in the distance I could feel the great energy ley of the Ottara Path humming through the air.Anxiety flickered across my mind like lightning. I thought of the mehedin and his prophecies, of a star falling from the evening skies, and then of a shape moving purposefully through the orchard.The mehedin saw death, Eleres. Mine. And despite the mildness of the day I felt as though winter had reached down the year and touched me with its breath.
5. The mission
Shu Gho craned her neck, trying to see as far as she could before the aircar sailed once more into the clouds, but the uncertain sunlight was reflecting from the laminated flex-glass and all she could see for the moment was her own face, framed in the dark green curves of the viewport. Shu frowned at the round, familiar visage, with its small chin and tilted eyes beneath the coil of black hair, fancying that she could see a few more lines, a blurring around the curve of her jaw. Well, she thought philosophically, for sixty-eight— plus the hundred-odd years that she'd spent in cold sleep on the way here—her face was entitled to sag a bit.
The sun went behind a cloud and the landscape below was revea
led: gray and ocher and mauve, very different from the lush greenness of Irie St Syre. Faced with the harsh contours unfolding themselves below, Shu couldn't help wondering how her homeworld had changed in the years of their passage, how customs had altered. Did folk still send one another the little golden starpine cones to mark the beginning of Irie's gentle winters? Did they still gather at the lakeshores of the Ummerat to send the paper lanterns sailing out to the islands in spring? Were her descendants still living in the sprawling house above the rushing torrents of the river? Questions tumbled through her mind, and she sighed. This was the closest she had come to regretting her decision to accompany the mission; perhaps she'd been deluding herself all along and she was really too old and staid for adventure. At this unpalatable thought, Shu winced. Her ancestors would be ashamed of her. Hadn't they made a similar voyage, on one of those first colony ships setting out from Canada or Austral, to their new home of Irie? And she'd vowed never to have regrets, even though she knew how unrealistic that was.
She glanced at Bel Zhur Ushorn, frowning down at the controls of the aircar, and sighed again. Did Bel share her current regrets, she wondered, or was Bel sustained by her religion and ancestors of her own? Shu had never met Bel's mother in person, but she had seen newscasts of Ghened Zhur Ushorn, in full oratorical flow with a younger Bel at her side, and the physical resemblance between mother and daughter had been striking. They had the same wide cheekbones and determined jaw, the same amber-gold hair, but whether they both possessed an identical capacity for benign, if autocratic, rule remained to be seen. Bel's mother had been the driving force behind her own particular sect, sweeping in and organizing it from a loose affiliation of religious houses to a united, forward-looking movement which sought to extend its ideals of matriarchal harmony from Irie St Syre to the rest of the Core worlds and beyond. It must have been hard for Ghened Zhur Ushorn to see her own daughter involved in the scandal of Eve Cheng's death, and Shu thought now that Bel had been the sacrificial lamb, her mother dispatching her troubled daughter into the future to bring other lost flocks into the fold.
