The Gates of Paradise

by Segoy Sands

  Opening his eyes, he felt her presence lingering on the air, and lay awake, listening, as Hog and Bu breathed in the darkness, their in-breaths and out-breaths like susurrations of the almost drowned, some moment to moment dying into life, broken only by the alien call of owls.

  8 into the entuthon

  Wrapped in a blue-trimmed cerise shawl, the uninvited guest sat by the fire, sipping warm wine. The last traces of the shadow body had faded from her skin. Despite fourteen years, nothing but the dark dilation of her pupils indicated her time in the dark - not a wrinkle, not a gray hair. Returning, both spectre and shade at once, she was ill inclined to speak. Open her mouth, and whose voice would come out, girl or grave’s?

  Lorca sat, giving her company, watching the dangerous comfort of fire, knowing the calm one feels when all has changed. All that mattered for the moment was that, one way or another, her family was safe. The men – Rufus, Cole, Dillan – were involved in male folly. Far from Wren. Far from her. She worried about Cole, mixed up with the Cora. How many rivals would he make, over women, over wine, over words? Dillan, slow and ponderous, she could have kept on the crannog; as luck would have it, he had the one part of Rufus that Cole should have had. The world would make a warrior of him now, and a rebel, whether he willed or no. Boinn, she should have sent to Anve, but it was too late. What was done was done. Or, she sighed regretfully, if it were only so. The past had a way of continuing to make itself present. Our earlier deeds recursed up us as we grew older. If Maege had crossed, the others were near. So they were sitting by the fire, sipping wine, waiting.

  “Sisters,” Maege rasped.

  Lorca kept her gaze on the lambent wraiths before her, now gold now crimson now orange now yellow, that dance of solid and gas, and bright conversion of substance into heat. She did not turn, as long shawls slid across the floor, and the other two crossers, Mihala and Crosia, took seats and poured themselves wine. The first time they came, Wren was eleven weeks old. She had felt them coming nearer for a long time. There had been no way to explain these things Wren. How could she tell him of the bargain she had made, and what good would it be for him to know?

  “It’s done,” Mihala said quietly. Without turning to look at her, she knew she would seem unchanged and lovely as the raven.

  “He survived,” added Crosia. She had always been beautiful, eyes like dark honey, copper curls spread around an angular, waifish face.

  Lorca felt the heat of the fire in her eyes. She closed her eyes and opened her other senses to the dancing wraiths. A’zi spoke to her through the flames, in the language of numbers, in hushed, crackling, nonhuman voices. This night, the flames showed specters that leapt up in threes, casting long shadows. Anathemae. Daughters of Tel. The three tongues of shadow became four.

  She looked up. “Our reunion gives me joy.”

  Maege’s voice was a dry, unhallowed sound from the waste land. “You cannot know with what pain we have crossed, and with what heartache.”

  Mihala and Crosia turned toward their third sister. The spectre had thoughts the shadow never had. They had had time to adjust, to fit their senses to this world, but Maege was newly crossed. For a time, they must watch her.

  In response to their gazes, Maege raised her cup. “And now we rejoice,” she said, her voice like dry twigs scraped together. Four cups were raised, and the fire blazed the higher, though no one felt the more joy. Silence fell, deep as snowfall in the forest at midwinter.

  “It hurts.” Maege looked with pained eyes at Lorca. “In this light, we are wrachs.”

  Lorca rose gracefully. “I am responsible. I have not forgotten you. I will do what I can do.”

  She had led women in battle. She had borne three sons and a daughter. She had helped her husband build a home and bring bounty from the land. Her shoulders solid and round, she was not the slim girl she had once been. She had learned how hard she must work to be a woman. Terrors had surrounded her that were more real than the three that stood around her, hands linked in a circle. Since Wren was born, she had lived in terror.

  The fire leapt.

  Something welled within their circle, where the floorboards should have been, darker than the bog waters of the crannog. She knew she should have recoiled from the ease with which they opened the way to dark, there in the hearth room of her own home, but she accepted it as given, and entered the dark, as if entering a bath drawn by her maidservants. It was deeper than a bath, deep as the sea, deeper still. It was not time but timelessness, and yet she sank in it, as if there could yet be space, distance, interval, and transition where time was not. Three, they quivered above her, greenish distorted faces of sailors seen by the one gone overboard in the storm. They watched her recede, with appalled, fascinated eyes.

  She was a village dreamer, daughter of a village dreamer. She was the daughter of an aksa. She was the sealed child hunted by the Calyx. Some things she knew by instinct, others by experience, others by clear sight. She knew about drowning. In the morning, all earthlings drowned in the thin air. Little wonder they threw themselves by action or inaction into selfish schemes of betterment that were, in truth, insane. They hoped to profit in the face of a darkness that made all things profitless. How vast they were, how little they made themselves. How narrow, secretive, and poisonous they grew, telling themselves that the darkness pressing within and around them was negation.

  There were tasks by day. Milk the goats. Tend the garden. Fetch water. Split wood. Home was modest - simple foods, simple furnishings, a smell of hearth and herb and bread. Mother was so elegant that few luxuries could impress her. She valued simple things above rarities. Men came and went with her moods. When they thought Reese was not watching, some of those men, often the kind-seeming ones, tried to grope Lorca. A little squeeze. Like testing the firmness of a peach. But Reese was always watching. Once there was an outbreak of fever. She remembered their neighbor, a wealthy and fastidious woman, overthrown from within her own body, sunken eyed, slack cheeked, tousle-haired, soaked in reeking sweat. Reese sat at her bedside, soothingly repeating the old litany, líf draumur dauði hurð, life a dream, death a door. Slowly, it came to Lorca that the woman’s idea of a real and solid world was making her terribly afraid. She had never guessed a grown woman of means might not know the vanity of clinging.

  But cling people did, even in that beautiful place, Ojeida, in the Ovidian Hills, where grapes, olives, figs and peaches grew plenteous and sweet. That rich woman, their dying neighbor, had been Graelish, and called Aina Livia Aurland. The Grael had brought with them a great greed and impatience, which they called industry, and had set at once to building cities and fortresses. The more inspired Ojeidan villas and manses were summer homes for Grael aristocracy, families of long lineage that for centuries had arrayed themselves, in quietly scheming factions, around the House of Alcieri, who were darker skinned than other Grael and traced their lineage back to one of the most ancient peoples of Sanskra. Duke Duenne Alcieri had been an overtly mocking challenger to Renard’s throne, and dared to call himself first in the line of Sun Kings. He built the cold and militant Cube Fortress that loomed over Rune, but also built Tercera, as if in counter-balance, his Ojeidan summer palace, with its marble halls and arches, colonnades and porticos, steam baths and moon-crescent plush divans, its particolored cushions and water pipes, a place of art, philosophy, mathematics, and, above all, lovemaking.

  When the Grael prince, Ruard, died taking the Cube from jeering Duenne, Renard, having lost his heir apparent, gave both the fortress and Tercera to the Bootlicker. Perhaps the gift was deserved. Xander, everyone knew, had saved Ruard’s boy Risard, the next in line, and had been instrumental in the taking of the keep. No one but Xander could have turned the outrage of Ruard’s assassination to the advantage of the throne. Assassins had found their way into Ruard’s guard. Only Xander’s quick blade protected young Risard from the three murderers, who tried to butcher them at dinner in their tent. One assassin lived long enough for Xander to extract the tr
uth. They were members of the Cora, who hoped to cause the Grael King such dismay that the various opportunistic Orroch chieftains would suspend mutual mistrust long enough to seize the chance to drive the Grael out of Aina Livia.

  Another Graelish leader would have been blind with anger, but the Bootlicker was cold blooded, and that day his dispassionate heart counseled him well. He let Duenne’s spies catch wind of the reports that Renard’s sons were slain, then turned the bulk of his force away from the siege, to chase the rumor of Joggen and his men encamped outside the city on the Tourmaline. Duenne could not resist the chance to lead an attack out of his gates, to capitalize on the confusion in the loyalist ranks. The self-styled Sun King loved himself, and the promise of glory, too much to see it for a ruse, and so his own blood ran on the cobblestones under the shadow of the Cube. So the Bootlicker ruled in Rune and Ojeida, like a Grael lord born and bred.

  Graced by the sun king’s palace, Ojeida was a place of such pleasure and plenty that over time it had become a social crime to be in want there. To be old was to be rich and well and industrious, to look back on a successful life, to walk in flowing robes and drink fine wine and praise the air with poetry. To be sick, even for a noble, was a shameful and unmentionable lapse. Ojeida was no place for a humble village dreamer like Reese, except that the rich would give more than handsome payment to anyone who could keep them well.

  Even as a child, Lorca had sensed how, in their small home more than two thirds up the winding, stately High Road, they fit in poorly with the grandees and the patricians. Yemes came to Ojeida, sometimes, in gilded coaches with silken drapes sewn with the seven-fold spiral. Praising the mountain air after the rank and dusty streets of Rune, they were received as honored guests at Tercera, taking tea on marble-railed balustrades overlooking fragrant fruit groves, of all kinds and cultivars, loading the hillside with birds, bees, butterflies, and, unique to Ojeida, the long-limbed black and white striped ringtails whose plaintive cries rang out like birdcalls. An audience with a yeme might be arranged, if one could afford the customary offering.

  Back then, the Alcierins and other noble families competed for the favor of the yemes, though of course it was a game to them. To have a yeme as a house guest was fashionable. Far from spurning Orroch customs, the Alcierins wanted, in some amused, languid way, to be intimate with everything, to make it part of their fantasy of sophisticated taste and natural privilege. They hadn’t lived in Rune and Ojeida thirty years before they spouted legends about the men and women of their court, of their valour, their beauty, their virtue, their love of the people. They turned their parents into exemplars but were themselves, as she remembered, haughty, ostentatious, stingy, judgmental and vituperative. Common people would seek her mother, coming afoot up the winding switchbacks. Reese greeted them like old friends, but the highbred made little secret of their disgust at the gray-headed farmers and square village wives, the smelly ‘garlic eaters’ and dirty ‘rag folk’ (though in fact they ate a great many things besides garlic, and their clothes were always clean and well-mended) from Vregge and Undua.

  She still remembered hiding behind her mother’s skirts when they came to visit: kind and patient, whatever the affliction - bodily or mental - that led them to a healer, smiling through the creases of broad faces that had known sun and wind. They brought good things: blankets, cheese, olives, dried fish, honey cakes, apricots, figs, and wine. Of these, Lorca would keep only what they could use. The rest she gave to whoever visited next, with a liberal hand. The gift, Reese used to tell her, ran strong in their line, but was for giving not gain.

  “You’ll go in the sior, as will your children.”

  “Is that what yemes do?” she’d asked.

  “No,” her mother answered slowly. “Yemes travel la narañanye, seeking egress from the Tar Mundane. But the sior is here, in the Erwon. It’s like your navel, where you were attached to me once. If you forget, you don’t have to look far to be reminded. You can close your eyes and sense it, because the navel of the world is everywhere.”

  “I’ll have three sons,” Lorca informed her.

  “Oh, then!” Reese laughed. “You saw?”

  She shook her head. “Opo said.”

  Her mother raised an insinuating eyebrow. “Ah, well, from what I hear, the Traveler’s no reliable character. He takes little children, turns them into ragamuffins and vagabonds, and hides them in the currents of the wind so even their own parents wouldn’t recognize them face to face in a narrow street. Children who make friends with him think of nothing but delight, and learn nothing practical at all. They dress in filthy tattered rags, and let their hair go to tangles.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she pouted. “Opo doesn’t wear rags. And his hair’s soft and white.”

  “Well, that’d be his fur,” Reese winked. “Think he ever gets hungry or cold? It’s all well and good for him, but you’re a human child.”

  “I know I am.”

  One night, the white moth woman came to her, the lumen pouring from her arms, wings, and breasts. White moth woman reached out a long finger and touched a dark spot in Lorca’s transparent body, drawing a long thread of some amber, honeyed stuff out of her, which grew and rippled in the warping air, so that Lorca saw visions of Renard’s army riding into Rune. The moon in the sky passed through half its phases, and then the crown prince Ruard, and his young son Risard, led an army of many mounted men, foot soldiers, and siege engines to Rune. Lorca told her mother the dream, and then watched the moon anxiously, as it waxed toward the full.

  One summer day, in Ojeida, people fancied they saw a grey haze in the mountain air, or that they smelled burning and rotting, or felt small shakings of the earth. Life went on as usual, except that nearly everyone barred their doors and windows that night. There would be thieves, crimes. Men caught the disease of violence from one another.

  She insisted to her mother that they leave. Others were staying put out of habit, like dumb cows chewing their cud. It was stupid. Troops would be coming to every village.

  “We run,” Reese said, quietly working her potter’s wheel, “only to find the thing we fled waiting at the other end of the road.”

  But Reese heeded her. They sold what they could. They even sold the little house to a rotund little merchant fool enough to think the loyalists would never come take it from him. He’d given them a fortnight to make their arrangements, and near the end of that fortnight Reese came home with a dusty old farmer. Only, he wasn’t old at all, and beneath his faded clothes he seemed sprightly, with a gay gleam in his eye. Asked by a young girl why he was different, he scooped her up in his arms and said he was Joggen Glim’an himself, come in disguise so that no one could accused her and her mother of high treason.

  “Are you here to help King Duenne?”

  “Help?” he grinned, setting her down. “We’ll vex both sides, with equal love. But Renard will have his victory, as you’ve seen, eh, little lady?”

  “You don’t look very dangerous,” she studied him. He was medium height with a drooping mustache and limp greasy hair.

  “Well, that’s the truth,” he winked, as Reese set food on the table. “I’m practical and tactical,” he tapped his head. “Not posh and pulchritudinous like some gallant good-for-nothing,” he barked in a ridiculous brogue. “But clever.” He sprang up with a flourish, unsheathing as if from nowhere a long thin blade with a sweeping hilt. “Young lady, allow me to introduce you to the spada. Like you, ‘tis a rare beauty of uncertain parentage, taken off an Alcierin, or possibly Graelish, blademaster.” He disarmed and dispatched an invisible but deft opponent, then sat back down to his soup.

  “Are you and mommy going to bed?”

  He leaned back in his chair so that it teetered on two legs, cocking an avuncular eye at her, “Is that what most of them do?” he asked.

  “Only the ones she likes.”

  “You think she likes me?” he half-whispered, loud enough for Reese to hear.

  “I like you,” she shrug
ged.

  “Well, I’ll sleep with you, then.”

  “Me!” her nose crinkled.

  “I’m scared of the dark,” he pouted. “I can’t sleep alone.”

  “I don’t want to make weird moany dying sounds,” Lorca frowned.

  “Please don’t.” Joggen wrung his hand, anxiously. “That would frighten me terribly.”

  Reese fell into a chair laughing. Lorca waited for her to stop.

  *

  A few days later Joggen came back to their door with a tall man, a Nesso. Lorca had never met one up close before. He had dark eyes, bronze skin, salt in his braided black hair, and a name that sounded like a mouthful of rocks. Skaena. People said Nesso were demons and dark arcanists, but Reese invited him in warmly, and gave him wine. Seated at the table, relaxed in their company, he explained that he was on his way to Nessere and would escort them west, as far as need be, as a favor to his friend, Joggen.

  “There’s things on the road these day,” Joggen explained. “You’ll go with a caravan the first stretch, but even then you’ll want a good blade.”

  Reese watched her guest. “He warned you?”

  Skaena nodded.

  “You owe him so large a favor?”

  “For those who seek knowledge of the blade,” Skaena said modestly, “there is debt to a teacher.”

  “This particular debt runs both ways,” Joggen smiled, “and quite a bit deeper on my side.”

  “Are you better than Joggen?” Lorca asked, though she knew her mother would roll her eyes.

  “Joggen is a master,” he replied. “He knows that he is the lowest person in the room.”

  “Well, there’s a two-edged complement!” Joggen guffawed. “But sweet little Lorca here’s the lowest person in this room,” he said, pinching her cheek.

  That very evening they joined a merchant train bearing barrels of wine, cheese, apricots, and olives to the markets at Welen and Vico. Joggen gave them hooded cloaks to wear, as if that would keep folks from noticing the dreamer and her daughter leaving with a Nesso escort. On the second night of travel, a short middle-aged merchant came from the conviviality of the main fire to share their quiet circle, with an offering of wine, figs, olives, and brine cheese. As they passed around the wineskin, he began to talk. “Hard times, these,” he rubbed his knees and looked at Reese. “I see you leaving Ojeida, with this good man.” He chewed an olive pit, spat, then looked at Lorca, asleep in Reese’s lap, by the warm fire. “That’s the right thing, taking her out of this.”