The Silences of Home

by The Silences of Home (v5. 0) (epub)

  “No,” Mallesh said, “that was the Queen. I heard that she spoke on top of the gathering pool stone. Other selkesh told me that the fire sprang up with her words.”

  “No,” Leish said, “it wasn’t the Queen. She told him to use his powers, but they weren’t hers. I know this, Mallesh. I found out many things when I was a prisoner in the white city.”

  Mallesh crouched to bring himself closer to the two men. “So if he did do this,” he said slowly, “why has he returned?”

  Leish spat more Queenstongue words at Aldron, who answered without blinking. Leish laughed and dug his knife into Aldron’s flesh, just enough to raise a thin edge of blood. “Apparently he enlisted the new queen’s help and took a ship here from the harbour city. The ship dropped him just inside our waters, since the captain refused to bring him closer. He rowed down the coast until he saw the gathering pool stone, which he remembered.”

  “Yes,” said Mallesh when Leish did not continue, “but that is only how. Why did he return?”

  “He wants—” Leish began, and shook his head as if he would laugh again. “He insists that he has come to try and reverse what he did.”

  Mallesh knew Leish’s expression, though he had never seen it on his brother’s face before. He knew what was within, shaping the expression. “And you don’t want to believe him,” Mallesh said, and was not surprised when Leish twisted around to look at him.

  “Such insight, brother! I never expected you’d have gained so much from our destruction. Now, if only you could speak this murderer’s language, I’d so enjoy listening to the thoughts you’d share.”

  “Leish,” Mallesh said after a time, “let him try.”

  The wind was suddenly damp: rain, not just sea spray. Rain fell every few weeks, smudging the dust and stone with a darkness that did not stay. Aldron’s fingers twitched as the moisture touched them, and Leish raised his face, his mouth open a bit on the water that was so fresh and so fleeting. The wind had already blown it away when he stood up. He slid his knife back into his chest-wrap and walked away from the shore. Mallesh watched him, through the night that was falling. After Leish had ducked into the cave, Mallesh turned back to Aldron.

  “Come,” he said in a language that would not be understood—and then he held out a hand that would.

  Leish sat alone deep within Mallesh’s cave and imagined water. It was water that had carved it out, a branch of the river that had fed the selkesh’s hearth pools, perhaps, though Leish had never seen it when it had lived. In the weak light of his brand, he saw the place now: rounded walls banded with flecks of gold and crystal, rough where the water had thrust at them and smooth where it had simply flowed. He tried to hear its song as it would have been, braided with all the other rocks and waters of Nasranesh—but he heard nothing except the hum of emptiness and, beyond that, the clamour of the sea.

  The footsteps sounded very loud even when they were still far away. Leish listened to them as they descended the sloping river-tunnel. When they had nearly reached him, he drew his spear toward him. The spear had been lying near Mallesh’s tools, in the upper cave, and he had not said anything when Leish had picked it up. Maybe he had not noticed. It was a fine spear with a sharp, shining head and a haft Mallesh must have worked himself, since the original had to have burned. Leish set his hand upon the wood but did not pick it up.

  Aldron sat down several paces away from Leish and sank his own torch into the loose sand. He waved his hand to disperse the smoke that drifted in front of his face. Leish did not; he stared at Aldron with stinging, tearing eyes and would not blink.

  “I left my people,” Aldron said after they had sat awhile in silence, “because they wouldn’t permit me to use my powers.”

  No, Leish thought, don’t speak. Hold onto your voice, as you do with Mallesh—but this was not Mallesh, and Leish had waited so long for words like these. “Don’t talk to me of your people or yourself,” he said, and was amazed at the strength of his voice, which he had hardly used for two years. Strength had grown, it seemed, from all of his prisons.

  Aldron nodded but spoke again, as if he had not heard Leish. “Queen Galha offered me a chance to use my powers in ways I’d never have been able to on my own. I agreed to come here with her because of that.”

  Leish rolled his spear against his thigh and pressed it there. The wood was so smooth that he did not think it would splinter even if he dug his nails into it. “And that was all,” he said. “That was why you destroyed my land: to take glory from your own power.” As his words glanced from the stone walls, Leish remembered other words: Mallesh’s, shouted from high above the gathering pool, from a boat on the sea, among jungle trees; Mallesh’s and Baldhron’s, far beneath the sand, in tunnels that gleamed and stank. Leish had cowered as they shouted—he remembered this. He pushed all of it away, himself and his brother and where they had gone. Why they had gone. The only real things now were Aldron and this place that he had killed.

  “And what of your glory?” Leish said when Aldron did not speak. “Was it as satisfying as you’d hoped?”

  Aldron said, “Of course not,” and his voice was tremulous, higher than it had been. Good, thought Leish, and knew how he would hurt Aldron next.

  “So you had no triumph, after all, but at least you have your life. You almost didn’t, I heard. The Queen tried to kill you, I heard—hardly a just reward for your service.”

  Aldron picked up a stone from the ground next to him. It was flat on one side. Aldron touched his finger to it, and Leish knew what it was he touched: bones and fins, a tail twisted in underwater flight. There were many such stones here, littering the ground where all the fish had died in fire and air.

  “She told me, before, that I’d have to be silent about my part in the battle. The glory would have to be a private one. I knew this, and I agreed to it. But yes, she tried. . . . She sank a spear into my chest as I was lying by that tall stone afterward. I was so weak I could hardly see her.” He paused, set the stone down again. “How did you hear of this?” he said slowly, and Leish smiled.

  “Your Alea told us, when she came to confront the Queen” He did not want to wait for Aldron to speak this time, so he continued, faster. “Yes: she came to the Queen’s white city and told the truth of the curse before everyone who was gathered in the chamber. I was there, of course, chained to the Queen’s chair, so I heard it all, even the words Alea said that brought the battle back. For a moment it was there: the fire, the dying things. She was magnificent. And the people did believe her, for a short time after—before Lanara told another story and changed everything again. But what a woman, your Alea, so beautiful—and your daughter too, just like her mother already.”

  Aldron rose. He walked over to Leish and stood above him, and Leish looked up, still smiling. “What happened to them?” Aldron said, so softly that his lips hardly seemed to move. His hands were clenched; Leish felt the air between them and his own skin. He knew that there would be a ripple of wind before Aldron’s fists found him.

  “I will not tell you this,” Leish said. Not even if you could tell me what happened to my own Dallia would I tell you this. He waited. Aldron was so close, and the light was so dim, that Leish could not see his expression, just the line of his cheek and the dark blur of his beard. His eyes shone flat and blank, and Leish was sorry for this; he wanted, needed more. He sat, not steeling himself, not afraid or eager. Aldron had been wounded; Leish did not matter.

  “Tell me,” Aldron whispered at last, and Leish said, “No.” He thought that the pleasure that pierced him was the first clear, true thing he had felt since he had left Nasranesh.

  “You’re lucky,” Aldron said, more loudly, “that I’m not as petty a man as you are. I could refuse to try and heal your land.”

  “And I could kill you,” Leish replied, though this reply made no sense, was simply his desire blurted without thought.

  “Yes,” Aldron said, his body and
even his voice gone very still, “you could.” He turned away a moment later.

  Leish stirred as Aldron tugged his torch free and walked back toward the upper cave. “Do get some rest,” Leish called. “You’ll need to be strong tomorrow.” All his pleasure dissipated, as he spoke. By the time Aldron and his feeble light had vanished up the tunnel, Leish felt only fear again, old and barren as the stone.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The gathering pool stone was loose. Leish had not touched it until now; he had just looked and imagined that, although its colour and shape had changed, its position in the earth had not. But the earth too had changed: it was sand and dirt now, where water and clay had been. And the wind was so strong against the stone, every day, when before the days had been calm, except when storms had blown in from the sea. Whatever the reason, the gathering pool stone shifted a bit as Leish leaned against it, his feet scrambling for purchase on Mallesh’s shoulders.

  “I must go up there,” Aldron had said to Leish when Leish had found him outside the cave after dawn. Aldron did not look at him once—not then, not a few hours later, when the light was stronger and Aldron had said, “I’m ready.” He had nodded at Mallesh, who had nodded back. A Queensfolk gesture, Leish had thought bitterly. Mallesh has no idea what it is he does now. Leish tried to catch Aldron’s eye when they were all standing at the foot of the stone, but he still would not glance at him. Leish was ashamed of his need to see Aldron’s eyes on him—and he was not sure how he himself would look, or what he would say, if Aldron did turn to him. But he did not. He waited for Leish to heave himself onto Mallesh’s shoulders, and then he climbed, his arms and legs placed carefully, almost lightly.

  Leish did not think that Aldron would reach the top: the stone was too high and too smooth. Leish grunted beneath his weight, once Aldron was standing fully on his shoulders—and very soon there was no weight, and Leish looked slowly up. Aldron was above him, inching along the stone, finding foot- and handholds where there did not seem to be any. “Down,” Leish gasped, and Mallesh let go of his ankles and let him slip free.

  They walked away from the stone, back toward the cave. “We shouldn’t be too close,” Mallesh said, “just in case the power is very strong, where he is.” Leish swallowed and shifted his feet in the dust. The power, he thought, and shuddered. “But we shouldn’t worry if he doesn’t succeed,” Mallesh went on, squinting at the stone and the man who was crouching atop it. “This land will heal itself in time. I think the water is already a bit cleaner than it was.”

  Leish swallowed again, his throat too tight and dry for any water, no matter how clear, to soothe. “No, Mallesh, this land will never heal. That’s part of what Aldron did: he brought fire and death, and he brought it for all time. Our water will never be clean again, and the water of other lands will kill us if we seek it out. This is the curse, and I’ve seen it work. I’ve seen selkesh die. . . .”

  Mallesh’s mouth was open. Leish had longed to force emotion and words from him; now that he had he felt no triumph. “No,” Mallesh said, and Leish prepared for him to become his brother again. Perhaps he would run to the stone, or get a dagger; Leish would have to restrain him. But Mallesh did not look at the man on the stone as he spoke again, loudly, the words grating in his throat. “How could you not tell me this? Our people are searching even now for healthy places, for life elsewhere—and all this time you’ve known about the curse? You knew and you said nothing to me.”

  “You’ve hardly been eager to rejoin our people,” Leish said. “Or to talk to me.” Everything was wrong—still, after so long. After a life here and away; now here again, and still wrong. His mother had always comforted him when Mallesh hurt him. Leish remembered her hands on his face, touching him because he could never look at her when she was being so kind to him.

  “If this man doesn’t succeed,” Mallesh said, his voice rough and low again as always, “we must find our people somehow, and tell them of their danger.”

  Leish could not answer—but he did not have to, for Aldron stood just then, and raised his arms into the sky.

  He was so high above the world. The open sky, the sand, the stone: he was standing on the rock of the leaping place again, watching the Perona scattering his people in distant blood and screaming. But that had been destruction—that and the other, here. Now was reversal. One more change—the last, truly. He felt the finality of it even as he felt the words beginning.

  They would know: the Goddesses, and Alea, and Alnissa. All the sea folk and all the Alilan would know his heart, when this eastern land was reborn. He would draw roots from nothingness, and earth from rock. He would fill the water by the shore with fish. He would sing this Telling, and at its end would be a heartflower. He had saved all his words for this song; he had not Told once since he had stood here before, at the foot of the stone. But now his voice was welling in him as it had when he was a boy on the plain, a boy in the desert, everything too large for him and him too foolish to know it. Only now did he know, and he welcomed the knowledge as he would welcome the silence that waited for him when this final Telling was done.

  He raised his arms. He had to, to keep his body steady in the wind—but he also wanted to. Alnila and Alneth would see him, and although he would look tiny to them, they would understand his supplication. He spread his fingers apart. His mouth opened, and his voice is silence. All the words of power and beauty hover in his throat and on his tongue, and then they curl away like bark in fire. The dust rises from the rock and he feels it in his mouth, smothering, clotting.

  He was nothing. The wind should lift him; he would draw apart, empty flesh from empty bone, with no flames to mark his passing. They had all known he would end this way: Aliser, Old Aldira, even Alea, though she, at least, had loved him. No Alilan rites, and no one to watch except the two sea folk and their heavy, colourless sky.

  But the sky is not colourless. There may be no fire within him, but there is fire outside, drawing closer over the sea. No sounds in him to Tell, but sounds around him, still distant: a spitting of flame and a great, rolling rumble. The fire is orange and red at its edges, and white at its heart, which is a form so vast he can hardly focus on it—but it is moving very quickly, and soon he does see. Hair and arms, eyes like deep-buried coals, a body that is flame without a source, for it is the source.

  He would not fall—not to his knees and not to the ground. He held himself tall: an Alilan man again, at the last.

  As his lips make the name of the burning sister-goddess, the other appears beneath her. The rumbling ends in a sound that is both splinter and rush, and the sea convulses. Rock rises, and coral, and clay studded with scurrying crabs and anemones that reach and stroke. Hair of seagreen and eels, and a deep black mouth breathing smoke and lava that hardens as it touches the air. This sister gathers up fish and plants, snails, flowering moss, worms. They trail and cling as she spins toward Aldron, beneath Alnila’s fire.

  They stop above the rock of the sea folk’s cave. The Goddesses are still apart from Aldron, but they are entireties, all sky and all land, and he feels their breath sting his skin with scattered sparks and earth. He cannot shape their names now; there are no more words for him. Only his body remains, small and straight and ready. His eyes are filled with flame and writhing colours—but he sees something dark beneath it all. Something dark, as small as he is, that stands, then slips away and back again. A man with a spear; a man whose eyes course with the fire and green of the Goddesses above him. Aldron looks into his eyes, across all the space that separates them. He does not look away, not even when the fire and the earth and the spear come singing, together into his silence.

  Aldron fell with a heavy sound that reverberated long after his body had settled into the dust behind the gathering pool stone. Mallesh looked down at Leish when the air was quiet again. He waited for Leish to look back at him, but he did not; he squatted beside the black pool and stared at nothing. After a moment Mallesh began to walk alone
to the place where Aldron had fallen—for there were things to do now, and they were as clear to him as the shapes that waited for him beneath layers of rock.

  Aldron was lying on his side. This surprised Mallesh; he had expected to find Aldron’s arms and legs splayed, or perhaps crushed beneath him. But his knees were drawn up and his arms were bent: he was curled like a baby around the spear in his chest. Mallesh knelt and rolled him over, thinking, He lives, and he will try again to heal my land, when I have healed him—but Aldron’s eyes were black and staring, and his mouth breathed only bloody spittle. When Mallesh wrenched the spear free, the spittle thickened and gushed. Aldron’s beard soaked flat, and the dirt beneath his head was stained. Mallesh did not wipe the liquid away from Aldron’s skin. He cleaned the spearhead on the earth and rose and saw that Leish had not moved.

  Mallesh had not seen Leish leave his side during Aldron’s attempt at Telling. Mallesh had been staring at Aldron: at the working of his mouth and the wildness of his eyes, which leapt from the sea to the sky. Mallesh had not looked around him; he had not needed to. Nothing was changing. The dust still blew, and the wind still smelled of old fires. Aldron’s lips had stopped forming words after a time. He had stood very tall, reaching with his fingers and arms and his raised-up head—and even though he had looked so strong, Mallesh had seen his defeat. Perhaps he should have turned to Leish then and said, “Let’s decide what we should do now—all three of us, together.” But he could not move his eyes from Aldron’s—not until Aldron’s shifted to Leish, and stayed there. Only then did Mallesh turn—and the spear was already flying, arcing gently up despite the wind. So straight, Mallesh had thought. Leish could never throw like that before—but what was “before,” for any of them, now that they were here?