“Greetings, Alea,” he said in a voice that was deeper than it had been before.
“Greetings, Aldron,” Alea said. Just four words between them—but Aldira heard them heavy and warm and living. Telling words. She shivered, as if the wind were not desert-hot and languid.
“How generous of you to join us again, Aldron,” she said. “Aliser was about to Tell birdsong, I believe. Weren’t you, Aliser?” she added, more loudly.
He shifted his eyes from Aldron to her, very slowly. “Yes,” he said in his own deepening voice.
“And then,” she went on, though she knew she should not, not with such keen longing, or such fear, “Aldron may treat us to a display of what he has learned since we last met.”
“Certainly,” he said, and she nodded briskly.
After a moment, Aliser Told the sweet, high notes of woodland birds, rising above the red sand into the silence of the sun.
Two days later, Alea was on a horse again. This time she was flying, squeezing her eyes shut against air that seemed to be buffeting her face into a new shape. She had no breath, though she thought she might be crying out beneath the noise of hoofs and wind.
When the horse slowed and she opened her eyes, there was no camp behind them, no distant palms, not even the towering rock of the leaping place. The river here branched into three, shallower and more slender than the one near the oasis. Alea said, “Where are we?” in a voice she could hardly hear.
“Does it matter?” Aldron was rubbing the horse’s sweat-slick coat with a piece of red cloth. “Or,” he added, glancing at her with one eyebrow raised, “are you afraid?”
“No!” she said, more loudly than she’d intended to. “No,”—more quietly, though it still sounded like a lie. She rose shakily from the sand and laid her hand on the horse’s twitching flank. “You haven’t told me who lent him to you.”
“No one,” He was smiling down at her—enjoying her shock, she knew. “I borrowed him from someone who’s busy. I do that sometimes. No one ever notices. And I know how to take care of horses—better than their owners, mostly. Don’t worry: we’ll return him in time. If you’re better now, I’ll show you the place I told you about.”
“Better?” she repeated, flushing—then turned as he walked away, and fell silent.
There were buildings behind them, clustered together in two wide semicircles. Some were large and others small; all were conical, covered with climbing plants. In the bare patches among the plants, lizards basked, motionless, nearly as golden as the stone. Each building had a black door with a downward-pointing claw set in its centre.
“I found this place at the last Alneth’s Night gathering,” Aldron said. “Come inside with me.”
He led her to the smallest building and pulled the door open, covering the claw with his own fingers. Inside, sunlight shivered on the curved walls and on a staircase that wound into shade. Alea followed him down. The darkness felt like water on her skin.
There was a light ahead of Aldron. A flame, she thought, and was surprised that she had not seen him holding wood or kindling it. Its glow took them along a corridor and into a large round room, where she stood and gaped. The walls around them also stretched up to a conical point; they swam with carved lines and ridges that had no shapes but seemed to. When she looked back at the sand floor, she saw stacked barrels and scattered stools and a low table strewn with dead heartflowers.
“Whose place is this?” she asked, and the walls surrounded them with her voice.
“Was this. No one’s used these buildings for a long time. Maybe they were the Perona’s. Or someone before them. Now they’re mine.”
She touched a stool, brushing fingerprints into the dust. She peered at the marks, in the orange light, and then the light grew white and brighter, and she saw that Aldron was not holding a torch.
“What are you doing?” she said, though it was not the question she wanted to ask.
“Providing light,” he said, mock-solemn, the corners of his mouth quirking.
“But you’re not Telling now: you’re talking to me. And before that you were quiet. How did you Tell this light when you were being quiet?”
“I made it,” he said. She realized she was leaning on the stool now, hardly standing on her own. “I Told it in a whisper at the top of the stairs, and it stayed. It’s real. I’ve been teaching myself, and it works now.” He gestured to the table. “I Told those flowers too, at the last gathering time. But they’re still here.”
He drew his palm over one of the heartflowers. It crumbled immediately. Alea shook her head over and over, as if this would keep her from seeing the flame or the dust that had been petals and leaves.
“No,” she said, “that’s impossible. Alilan Tellers can’t create—they can only show. We can’t—”
“But I can.” He took a step toward her. “The Goddesses have given me a more powerful gift, and I’m learning to use it. I’ll be the strongest Teller ever. I’ll Tell great things: changes, victories. . . .”
“Aldron.” She tipped her head and tried to see his eyes, which flickered away from hers. “You mustn’t Tell these things, even if you can. The Goddesses forbid Tellings that become real. They warned the very first Tellers that such things could destroy us, and so they made it so we couldn’t do this. That’s why we’re warriors as well as Tellers: we have to make our victories with our bodies, not our words.”
“Why,” Aldron said in a low voice, “would they give me this gift if I’m not allowed to use it?”
She swallowed. If I asked him for water, he could Tell it for me. It would be cold. . . . “Does it frighten you?”
His mouth and eyes were very still now. “No,” he said at last, and the flame shuddered as he turned his face away.
FIFTEEN
Alea had no voice. She heard words and felt them in her mouth and knew that they would be swift and true—but she had no voice to Tell them. She stood before the people of all the caravans, in the shadow of the leaping place, and was silent.
It’s because of the pain, she thought. The pain of limbs and belly, all her muscles and all her skin, everything burning and bruised. She had walked to her wagon afterward. She had wept as she drew off her leggings, had hardly been able to step into her skirt. Her woman’s skirt, stitched by herself and her mother, kept carefully folded until this day—and Alea had shuddered in its clean folds and cried as blood snaked down her legs.
She was still dizzy from the long fall and the longer ride that had followed. She did not remember holding onto the horse’s mane, but she had, somehow; she had clutched so desperately that her fingers still ached. She had not lifted her head, not even when her body was balanced and steady. She had kept her eyes lowered and stared at her hands and the golden mane. When the horse turned to gallop back to the oasis, it was not because she had urged it to, with words or pressure from her legs or arms; it was simply following all the horses of its herd that were also turning that way, directed by their new riders.
And now she could not Tell. My woman’s skirt, my first dagger, my horse standing beyond the fires, Aliser and Aldron beside me . . . She felt tears again and swallowed furiously until they thinned away. Aliser had held her hand as they walked to the leaping place, and he had caught her when she slid from her horse’s back after that first ride. “We are warriors now,” he had said, his lips warm against her neck. She had leaned into him, wrapped her torn arms around him so that she would not fall.
Aldron had appeared only moments before all the Tellers rose on the sand ridge. He had not spoken to anyone, and he was so tall that his raised eyes did not even seem to graze the assembly in front of them. Alea had looked up at him and willed him to turn to her, to smile or make a silly face, to lighten the heaviness of her body and the night with scorn or humour. But he had stood straight and quiet, alone among them.
Four Tellers had already begun, one at a time, weaving images of Alneth to
wering above the desert with sand and palm fronds and water streaming from her outstretched hands. Aliser, to Alea’s left, had joined them, Telling roots and the burrows of animals beneath the earth. And now it was her turn. She opened her mouth, as if the words would burst forth on their own—but of course they did not, and she closed her eyes so that she would not have to see the confusion and pity on the faces of her family.
The air is thin atop the leaping place, and the sun is too bright. The colours of the horses blur and change. You stand and grip the rock with your bare toes, and then the pounding is directly below you, and you step out into the sky—
Aldira forced her body out of the Telling. She heard herself whimper as she angled her head, so slowly, to look at Aldron.
It should have been Alea; she was next, directly after Aliser. She had not begun at the correct time, and the others had spun out their own words to cover her silence. They could have done this for longer, waiting for her to summon courage, but her voice had never come. Aldron’s had instead, and the others had faltered and died. The image of the Goddess shuddered into darkness; plants and water, her gifts, twisted in brief confusion and vanished. Aldira saw Aldron’s face clearly for a moment, before his Telling gripped her again and she saw only sunlight.
Your body falls slowly, though the wind is fast, reaching into your ears and nose and open mouth, and wrenching out your breath. You are falling slowly, but the ground is surging up toward you—the ground that is heaving with the backs of horses. You try to find your legs and hands because you will need them, even if only to die—
Aldira screamed his name, or hoped she had. Stop, stop—her own words were minuscule and colourless beneath his. Not permitted, this next Telling—the joining never, ever Told: too sacred, too full of anguish, left to silence, always. Young Tellers knew this, knew to Tell only the first fall and then the first ride—but Aldron was not slowing or changing the course of his words.
Your head snaps and you are blind and your bones separate from their sockets in fire and blood. Blood in your mouth, your teeth sunk into your tongue, grinding flesh—
Aldron’s words ended in a cry. Aliser’s, Aldira knew as she rocked on her knees in the sand and retched. When she could raise her head, she saw Aliser standing above Aldron, who was curled on the ground like a sleeping child. Aliser was staring down at his fist, which was cradled in his other hand. Alea was sitting with her hands over her mouth, looking at no one.
It should have been me, Aldira thought. I should have been the one to stop the Telling—but I was helpless. I am old, Goddesses, just as they all say. . . .
She heard a child wail. A man shouted, and another, and the crowd rustled and began to move.
“Wait!” Aldira cried as she rose, and they did. They looked at her, as did the other Tellers. She saw their fear, felt it like rising water against her skin. “Do not come closer. We must wait and be calm. When he wakes, we will speak to him. Remember that he is young, and the young do not know well enough how to channel their power—”
“Please, old woman,” said Aldron, each word steadier than the last, “do not embarrass me, or yourself.” He was standing with Aliser and Alea behind him; he must have taken a pace or two forward as Aldira spoke.
“Let us sit together,” she said, her own words unwavering, “and talk about this thing you have done.”
He laughed. “Why not speak as plainly as you usually do, old one? This forbidden thing. This forbidden thing I have unwisely done.” He walked toward her.
She drew herself up and stared back at him. “Forbidden and unwise, yes. You have sat more often by my fire than your own, and you should know what is right—what we Alilan hold dear or reject, and why. Your power has always been great—I know this, and now so do all of us. But power must be borne with wisdom—”
“Complacency,” he said, directly in front of her, speaking very quietly. “Surely you mean borne with complacency and obedience. Wisdom is something you have never taught me.”
He turned and walked away from her, down the gentle slope and into the crowd, which parted for him. When he had disappeared among the wagons, there was a brief stillness. A great held breath, Aldira thought as she herself tried to draw one—and then people were stirring and milling and calling to one another.
Someone grasped her arm. Before she turned, Aldira saw Alea pushing her way toward the wagons. Aliser took a few running steps after her, but when she too slipped out of sight, he stood still.
“. . . can we do? Does his caravan have any. . . .” Aldira brushed at her companion’s words as if they had been sandflies. She watched Aliser’s face and the tiny movements of his body, and she felt a dread so keen it was almost desire.
Alea bent low over Ralan’s neck. She urged him to a gallop, and he bore her east, beside the rain-swollen river.
The moon was high by the time she reached the clay buildings. She saw them very clearly, and the horse that was standing among them. Her own horse reared when she started to slip off his back. She stroked him and murmured in his ear and waited until he was calm before she went to the door with the claw at its centre.
Her feet found the way even in the complete darkness. She had descended these steps many times since Aldron had first brought her here, sometimes running to keep up with him, sometimes walking carefully, quietly, in case he was already working in his carved chamber. She had watched him Tell a dagger, a loaf of bread, a goblet, into being, and also, each time, a heartflower, which he would bestow upon her with a grin or mock solemnity. But the first thing he always Told was light; she would see it spilling into the corridor and follow it to him.
There was no light tonight. She dragged her fingers along the wall until they found the entrance to the chamber. She stopped and listened but heard only pulsing silence. She felt her way into the chamber and along the wall to her right, her bare feet scuffing the packed earthen floor. The carven shapes were cool. She recognized them, even though she could not see them. This wave-form was halfway round the chamber—and this triangular bump was on the other side, high up, nearly back at the entrance—
Her hand touched skin. She stood motionless with her fingertips on the line of his jaw and her thumb on his chin. She felt his fingers slide along the inside of her arm and twine with hers, lightly, shiver-touches on her knuckles and palm. She stepped forward so that her forehead was against his chest. Still only the slightest touch: his hips, the tops of his thighs, his cheek whispering over her hair as he bent his head to find her in the darkness. They turned, struggling out of clothing, trying not to leave each other’s skin as they did so. She was against the wall now. He put his hands under her thighs and held them apart and thrust up into her—and he cried out, once, before he began to move again. The stone ridges pressed against her flesh, and all her bruises and her bones echoed with pain, and she felt a new tearing over the others that had already opened wide that day. But she held him with her legs and her arms, with every ragged muscle, and was silent.
“Don’t tell Aliser,” Aldron said later, when they were lying among their clothes. “And make sure to get a bleeding draught from your Healer as soon as you can.”
Alea dragged herself up until she was sitting. “Make a light,” she said. “Now. I need to see your face when you say things like that.”
He did nothing, for a moment. “What colour do you like best?” he asked at last, not mocking, no smile in his voice.
She eased herself back against the wall, very gently, so that the carvings would not dig. She pulled her skirt with her and held it against her breasts. “Blue,” she said.
She did not hear the beginning, but she saw it: a shimmer in the dark, a flutter like a falling leaf. His words grew louder and the blue grew brighter and she turned to him as he Told her light.
“There,” he said when he was finished and the chamber was rippling around them. “Can you see my face well enough now?” He crawled over to her
and kissed her once on the mouth. He drew the skirt out of her hands and down and kissed her on each breast.
“Your Telling frightened everyone,” she said when he had settled himself with his head in her lap. “Even Old Aldira—she talked to you so quietly afterward. She’s never quiet.”
He blew a slow stream of air against the skin of her belly, and she wriggled and laughed, even though she did not want to. “And were you frightened?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking, No, that’s not the word for what I felt. You Told the fall and the joining and I felt more pain than I had when those things happened to me. It was slower and brighter and more real than anything I’d experienced myself. . . .
“But not enough.” He looked up at her without blinking, his eyes black beneath the blue glow. “You came after me anyway.”
She sank her fingers into his hair and felt the bone beneath, and tears rose in her eyes.
“I’m surprised,” he said after a moment, “that Aliser didn’t come after me as well. He’s far too earnest, but he’s no coward.”
“And that’s why you don’t think I should tell him? About . . . this?” She tried to straighten her legs—they were numb, leaden—but he did not move his head.
“Yes,” Aldron said. “I’m sure he’d use his new dagger on me even more quickly than he did his fist. Anyway,” he went on, “you and I will be travelling soon. Separately. And you’re with him, aren’t you?”
There was no scorn or jealousy in his words, only a lazy sort of disinterest, but she turned her head and lowered it so that her hair hung between them. “Yes, but I don’t love him.”
Aldron took her hair in his fist and moved it away from her face. “I recommend,” he said as he pulled her down to him, slowly, his knuckles white, “that you avoid loving anyone.”
The Silences of Home Page 12
