tmp_48d41530aaad86c106555e2e52630fd9_VLf2O0.fixed.tidied

by Scott Andrews

  I do not explain myself to the people of this warm country, ever, and so I said only, “Lie onto the table, please.”

  “What am I doing here?” he burst out. “Listen, I’ve been waiting for you for hours here and you haven’t even told me your name yet. Last thing I knew they were telling me I was condemned to death for killing that unnatural troll woman—” he did not, this time, add that he had not meant to, “—and when that guard took me out of the judge’s chambers I was damned sure that was it, but now I’m here and what I want to know is why? Not that I’m not grateful, you understand,” he added hastily. “But I need to know what you want of me if I’m going to help you out somehow, if you take my meaning.” He winked at me. It was grotesque.

  “Lie onto the table,” I repeated. “Things to need to be done.”

  He was starting to be afraid again, and the smell of fear made my neck twitch. “You said you weren’t going to hurt me,” he reminded me, though I had not. “You said I wasn’t here to be killed.”

  “You will not die,” I said, which seemed to reassure him. Malu vedu these rich ones lack imagination.

  But all that mattered was that he climbed gingerly onto the table and lay with his face toward the ceiling, as they always do. I have never yet seen one of them try to fight, at the end. Two years and I have not. There is something in their oily blood that makes them dogs, to cringe and lick the hands of power.

  I drew the bronze knife from out of her wards, and began.

  ~ ~ ~

  There should not have been pain. Pain is a thing of the body, and my body was gone; where then did it come from? I am Esh—I was Esh, and we know something of death, but I did not understand this.

  Near me the lights of the living souls shone like guttering candles, fading toward their end. One was almost spent; the other lifted a hand; the knife fell, the light began to fade.

  I reached for him and caught hold of him, not knowing what I did. He curled around me, weeping as only the dead weep. I held him as I have held orphaned lambs, as I once held my little brothers and protected them from thunder and ghosts. In memory it seemed we were all ghosts together, white and small. I longed to stretch out a hand to them; but it was illusion, all, all.

  Eventually he quieted, and drew away from me. The pain that had faded from me now returned with new force, and I felt myself recoil and fade. Not now, I told myself with what pale anger I could muster, not yet, and held on, and stayed.

  —dead, oh God, he’s killed me, I heard as I came back to awareness. Oh God, oh God, he said he wouldn’t, he promised—

  He didn’t mean to, I answered, look— and there above or below us a man whose light was both bright and dark was shouting or cursing in a strange language that nonetheless I understood, and cringed to understand. There is no language in which the words of All-that-is cannot be spoken, so the Esh know, and so every language is beautiful, but this, this—I could not bear to hear it.

  He promised, mumbled the other ghost, and I knew what he meant, knew that the promise had been kept many times in this room, over many years; the shadows of shadows were burnt into the walls, screams of souls made to walk the borderlands between here and there until they were stretched tight like plaited catgut, and thrummed when plucked to sing with power. I can see them, he said like an echo, or I said, maybe. That’s what he would have done to me. Used me for his—for whatever he’s—

  For power, I said, which was all of it, really. Don’t think of it now. Don’t think I saved you, I thought and was not sure if I was silent—because I didn’t, not on purpose, it was only instinct, a drowning man’s grab that pulls his rescuer under. Chance only, that I caught him and severed him from his body, and freed him thereby.

  Oh God, he whimpered, it’s not fair, it’s not, I didn’t mean to, he had no right—

  We will stop him then, I answered, we will do right, for us who have been wronged, for all the shadows. I do not think he understood me, but I knew that he would follow.

  ~ ~ ~

  Well, if I’m a traitor then so be it. You’re not the first to call me so, and though I might wish you’d be the last I don’t believe it’s likely. I will pretend not to care, I will hold my head up in the streets and at the gate and I will ignore their looks and mutterings. I have done what I have done.

  Tansy and Burdock came to me in the Gardens of Memory, barefoot and clad in white robes, to tell me that the war had started. Twins, they were reflections of each other like the frescoes on the walls of our temple, the home of all the Bound: Life and Death, one red-cheeked and joyful, the other pale, with dark hollows under her eyes. I’d known them for years and still couldn’t tell them apart by sight most days, but I knew Tansy would have wept at the news, and Burdock would have danced.

  “Rejoice, Dandelion,” Burdock intoned. “The blasphemous Kuloseppae will soon be swept from the world.”

  “Oh?” I said, pretending disinterest because I knew it would madden her.

  “Our soldiers have crossed the border and begun to burn their towns and fields,” Tansy said. “It is said they will be in Kulosep in less than a week.” She lowered her voice. “It is said the magician aids them.”

  That struck me as nothing else could have, and I sank down onto one of the Garden’s marble benches. The magician. No-one knows where he came from, though he has been coming to Kulosep for as long as anyone remembers, and for the last few years he has stayed here. He is the antithesis of all that the Bound stand for; he is not evil, no more than we are good, but he is unnatural. What he does is against the order of the world. He rarely took a hand in the affairs of our country, keeping to himself and his experiments, and even so the temple trembled sometimes at his work. Small wonder, then, that I was shocked.

  Besides, he is my father.

  We pretend we have no parents, we Bound, as though we sprang from the same ground as the plants they name us for. Most of the Bound don’t know theirs, it’s true, so perhaps that’s easier. What use, after all, to know that your mother was So-and-so the dyer of Such-and-such Lane, and that she abandoned you in the woods to be found or to die? (Or worse; there are always stories of children raised by trolls or wolves, growing up monsters. I don’t know that I believe them, but it could be true.)

  I was somewhat different. I knew my parents, I remember their faces. My mother was a crusher at the quarry near Stonegate, three hours’ hard ride from Hado-home. My first memories are of dust, dust in everything: the fine yellow dust of the road kicked up by the gravel-wagons, the white dust lying in the lines of my mother’s face. Everyone coughed, all the time. When I came to the city, later, I would lie awake in the dormitory of the Bound children and wonder at the silence.

  When my mother was young and pretty she served awhile in a teahouse in Hado-home, and there she met the magician. I don’t know why he came there then; he never did when I was old enough to hear anything of him. But he was there then and she was pretty, and she bore him a daughter soon.

  I don’t think he ever meant me to live. But his magic is the magic of boundaries and borders, of things confused with each other: dawn, twilight, the breaths of birth and dying. A baby trembles on the edge of possibility, and there’s power there for the taking. My mother had word of this from some friends of hers, sooner or later, and fled with me in her belly, and her friends laid a trail of misdirection that took him five years to unravel. When he found us at last I was a full person and no more use to him.

  He killed her for betraying him, of course, and might have killed me for spite, but when I fled our burning house—stone, but burning anyway—it was into the arms of a caravan of Esh, making pilgrimage to one of their sacred places, and Esh are old, and have their own magic. Somehow they hid me from him, and in due course delivered me up to the Bound, who take in orphans.

  So; and so there I stood in the Garden of Memory with the news of war burning holes in my heart. Tansy was watching me with sympathy, and Burdock with confusion. I forced a smile. “Well, let’s pray
for our soldiers’ safe return, then,” I said.

  “And glory,” Burdock added.

  “Glory will take care of itself,” I said.

  I knew already, then, what needed doing, though not how to do it. I’d long since decided that the magician should die, but I had held off for years, questioning my motives. The Bound teach that right actions proceed only from right thought, and vengeance for my mother’s death, while it may have been justified, could not be called right thought. Not according to our rules, anyway. Now, I had another reason. It would be called treason, to destroy what aided our soldiers in this latest of our series of stupid, pointless wars, but I would not consider that. Let them earn their glory honestly.

  White-robed and hooded I made my way through the streets of Hado-home, and hurrying tradesmen and laborers parted respectfully before me. We Bound are known in the city; I would not be impeded. We are mostly anonymous too, making few friends outside our order, a fact I gave silent thanks for now.

  I headed for the magician’s home, a walled estate near the foot of Gods’ Hill, just inside the eastern gate. It was a short walk, mostly on cobblestones, and I imagined I could feel the ground thrumming under my rope sandals as I neared the profane place. Nerves only; I have no magic.

  The wall was well-built from local limestone, and was easily twice my height. There was one gate, a solid pair of iron doors worked with a tracery of vines and oak leaves. I put my eye to the crack between them, but they were so well fitted that I couldn’t see a thing. The whole construction spoke of understated expense. Hardly surprising, from the rumors I’d heard about what the magician did for money. Even if only a quarter of them were true.

  None of which helped me at the moment. Even if I managed to climb over the wall without being noticed from the street (highly unlikely) it was inconceivable that the magician wouldn’t have spells of some sort protecting his property. I thought briefly of hiding myself in a laundry basket or a vegetable-cart, and other such nonsense, and then stood for awhile, stumped. Finally I decided to return to the temple and ask someone’s help—Tansy, probably, as she was clever and hated him as I did.

  I began to turn and then stopped mid-step as a voice whispered out of the air no, no, wait—

  “Who’s there?” I asked aloud, attracting a curious glance from a passing ribbon-seller.

  Thibo, the voice said after a pause, but hesitantly, as though the speaker wasn’t quite sure and was desperately afraid of being called on it. Thibo. I was—

  We are his dead, a second voice interjected. This one was stronger, surer. You must come. You must stop him.

  “The gate—” I began.

  He will not see you. Come.

  I followed it (followed what, exactly? I don’t know) back to the gate and through it then, the twin portals swinging inward at my touch. The grass beyond was level and unbroken, and lapped at my ankles like a sea. Come, follow, the voice urged, hurry, and led me forward, until suddenly the house appeared before me and had always been there. There was a murmur of approval from the air. Steadfastly I followed the two voices, the strong one and the frightened one, through illusion after illusion, until at last I stood at the bottom of a flight of stairs, facing a copper-sheathed door.

  The door was slick and cold to the touch, and as I opened it a sudden reddish light poured over me, and I knew with sick certainty that all that had come before was a trap, that I was betrayed and had now been lost. I froze in place, terrified. Then my sight shifted, and I realized that the light was only sunset, filtered through leaded glass windows set high in the heavy walls, and that the magician sat motionless on the floor of this his workroom, eyes closed and unaware.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered, my lips barely moving.

  We do not cooperate, the strong voice answered, sounding strained. He tries to make us. The other was whimpering: oh God oh God it hurts make it stop I shouldn’t be here I didn’t do it stop—

  I had to hurry, but I couldn’t think what to do. My eyes fell on a bronze-bladed knife, lying on a table near me. Kill him, then, I thought, and reached for it, but was stopped by a sharp No! from the strong voice, now tight with agony. No, he’ll—just—his power is— It broke off with a peculiar kind of grunt, and was silent.

  Magic, I thought despairingly, what do I know about magic? The magician’s shoulders were tight and his fists clenched as he bent all his energy to the control of his unruly spirits. Any moment now it would all be over. Time was slipping away from me. If I couldn’t just kill him—and I did understand what the ghost had been trying to say; if the magician’s power came from boundaries and borders, liminal spaces, then how much stronger would the nearness of his own death make him?—then what was I to do? I knew nothing about magic. I had spent almost my entire life in the temple, and there was no magic of his kind on holy ground.

  Holy ground—

  Cautiously, I bent down and laid my hands on the stone floor. There was no warning from the ghost this time, so either I was doing the right thing or he had been wholly subdued. I began to speak the holy words and I think it was only then that the magician noticed me, as I began to try to consecrate the earth on which I stood. I would make it pure and holy; I doubted few things could be more anathema to a practitioner of border magic than that. I don’t claim the supremacy of God in this; had I known a way to make it entirely unholy, that probably would have worked just as well.

  He sent his shadows against me like a swarm of biting insects, like a cloud of darkness, and in their whining voices I could hear the strong one and the frightened one, two notes in the chorus, under his control again at last. They still fought against him, though, and that blunted their attacks, and I was able to continue with the prayers and the rituals and all the rest of what makes a place pleasing to God. I kept one eye on the magician, whenever I was not blinded, but he never moved. I don’t know why. Maybe the magic prevented him, or the ghosts; I don’t understand magic and I don’t intend to. I will never be in such a place again if I can help it.

  The ghosts were fighting him as much as me, and that was all that allowed me to keep going, that and the sheer familiarity of the rituals that had been part of my life since I was given to the Bound and that I probably could have recited sleeping or dead. As a child I had chafed at the endless rounds of prayers and resented the other children who had never known anything different and so didn’t mind, but now the words flowed from me like water and I was grateful.

  It was dark outside when I finished and so the light that poured through the room, dark gold and thick like maple syrup, was all the more shocking. I had not been ready to expect a miracle. The magician lifted his head and for the first time stared at me, his face twisted with terror. His mouth shaped words I couldn’t read, and then he stiffened and collapsed forward, his face striking the stone. Blood seeped out around him, only a little.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  He had to choose a side, the strong voice whispered, now barely more than a flutter of the air. You cannot be both alive and dead in a holy place, and we—we chose for him, dragged him with us. The light was fading, thinning. Tell my family, Priestess, if you would. I was called Tekel, before. They are Esh, near Stonegate on the Kulosep highway. Tell them what happened. Please.

  As though in a trance I stood and went out from that place. The house was quiet now in the center of its green lawn and its walls, only an ordinary house. I would come back, I decided. I would go to the Esh family and give them the news of their son (brother? husband?) and then I would return, and build a chapel here, and spend my life in contemplation of this miracle.

  Or, more probably, I would be denied entrance to Hado-home, or arrested as a traitor. Life is strange, I thought, but I was more willing now to put it in the hands of God than I would ever have been before. I looked back over my shoulder one last time, and then headed for the city gate.

  ~ ~ ~

  strange cub is gone. howl, weep, cry to the hills and stones, they
have taken strange cub away. followed them, followed them far, but when they left the woods, safe trees broken by scar of road, stayed. weep alone now, weep alone forever.

  dark now and under hill silence of small things, small fears running from tree to tree. hunger, blood smell. could chase but why? not enough now.

  down scar in backbone of hills one comes riding. no smell of fear. only ones with claws of iron smell brave and calm as she smells brave and calm. but she is alone and no smell of metal. do not understand.

  do not understand, should pass her by. should stay in trees, find small wet delicious, fill belly, sleep. but strange cub gone, last cub. others long dead, dead on riverbank or by claws of iron or belly-tearing sickness. wander alone until strange cub crying under tree. not food. iron claws never good to eat. iron claw woman die near once, find strange cub soon after.