The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  The sun was sinking low before Hwyn reappeared.

  “Did you find it?” I whispered frantically as soon as I could decently end my chant.

  “That idiot Klem!” she hissed. “That ignorant, meddlesome bundle of lead-brained piety! He got it all wrong. A Speaking Stone, indeed!”

  “You mean you didn't find it? Then what was the power you sensed?”

  “Oh, it's there, all right,” she said. “And I suppose in a manner of thinking, it's a speaking stone. It doesn't speak when you touch it. It has writing carved in it. What the power's for, I don't know, but it's not for speech.”

  “What does the writing say?” I pressed.

  “How should I know?” said Hwyn.

  “Why, can't you read?” I said.

  “Of course I can't! What did you think I was—a priestess?”

  “Priestess of the Hidden Wisdom, I guessed,” I said. “You haven't told me a thing about yourself. But if you can't read—”

  “You can!” Hwyn suddenly gripped my arm with hard, wiry fingers. “Come with me. Come on!”

  Just then the door creaked—the northern door, the one to the hall. We froze: the secret passage was still open for all to see. I moved frantically to shut it; it proved heavier than I expected. My heart almost burst before I saw that the intruder was only Trenara. “I missed you,” she said to Hwyn. “Are you well?”

  “Fine, Trenara,” Hwyn said softly. “Would you like to come and explore with us? You'll have to be very quiet.”

  Trenara nodded silently.

  There was nothing for it, then, but for the three of us to go down the tunnel. Hwyn led the way, Trenara crowded after her, and I brought up the rear, shutting the door most of the way behind us. For the first several yards I had to crawl, holding Trenara's skirt for guidance. Then the path sloped sharply downward into a big, echoing corridor. There was no light; Hwyn skimmed the wall with one hand, Trenara held her other arm, and I held Trenara's.

  “We're almost there,” Hwyn said at last. “Here: the secret altar. The stone. We're here.” In the deep gloom of an underground chamber, she found my hand and placed it on a pillar of stone. Whatever power might be in it, I could not feel it; I did feel the carvings, but that was not enough. “Hwyn, you didn't tell me it was in a dungeon. There's not even moonlight here; it's as if my eyes were shut. I haven't got a candle. I'll have to go back for one,” I said. This, I thought, is what happens when you let a blind guide lead you.

  “Can't you feel the writing?” she asked.

  “I'm not used to reading by touch,” I said. “It's not intelligible to me. I need light.”

  “Wait: how about this?” I saw a soft glow as she drew the Eye of Night from her pocket. As she held it up before the Speaking Stone, the light grew, illuminating the stone and the inscription on it.

  “It might be enough,” I said. “There: I can make some of it out. It's in the Old Tongue. Move the Eye to the left; I can't see the beginning.”

  She moved it, but as she did so, smoke began to rise from the stone, blurring my sight. “What's that?” I grumbled, and fanned the smoke away. It took me a few tries to realize that the words were fading, turning to dust under the light. “Wait! Stop!” I cried foolishly, as though the stone or the light might obey me. “Oh, Sky-Raven's Bones!” I cursed as Hwyn had, for darkness ceased to be the problem: flames burst from the Speaking Stone. Hwyn pocketed the Eye of Night as quickly as possible, muttering imprecations, and smothered the fire—as I later found, with a curtain hanging at the altar's side—but it was too late. I ran my fingers over the hot stone: smooth as a new-laid egg. “Nothing. The writing's gone.”

  “Dear gods! I destroyed it,” Hwyn said.

  “Let's go,” Trenara whimpered.

  “Trenara, I think you're right,” I said. All the way back up the corridor my heart was in my mouth, and I could feel Hwyn's hand shaking as she pulled me along. The soft scraping of our feet along the floor echoed against the walls till it sounded like pursuing footsteps. My awkward crouching posture, an annoyance on the way down, became a torment, a knife in the back. By the time Hwyn opened the secret door, I was sure we were about to be caught. I was so relieved when we emerged into an empty chapel that I didn't notice anything wrong. “Empty!” I whispered ecstatically, forcing the door closed with all my might. “Thank the gods! It's all behind us now.”

  “What's that smell of smoke?” Hwyn said.

  “It must have clung to us from the cellar,” I said, but then my eyes adjusted to the light, and I saw. “Hidden Goddess!” I gasped. “The icons! What happened to them?” We stood among the smoldering ruins of Lady Goldifer's holy things. Even the gems, which by nature should not have burned, were ashes.

  “Burnt,” Hwyn breathed.

  “Did the lamp flare up? No, that's absurd,” I babbled, “nothing else is burnt. What in the gods' names happened here?”

  Trenara pointed at the northeast alcove of the temple. “Black bird,” she said. Sure enough, just where the gaudiest of the jeweled icons had been was a smoke-stain in the shape of a bird.

  Hwyn put a hand over the pocket where she carried the Eye of Night. “When the true appears, the false will pass away,” she murmured—another verse of the Revelations of St. Ligaiya.

  “Well, we'd better pass away from this place before anyone comes looking for us,” I said.

  “But how can we leave here? This treasure-trove must be well guarded.” Hwyn bit her knuckle, thinking.

  I considered the problem a moment. “At least the guards would be thinking to keep thieves out, not in.”

  Hwyn shook her head. “Do you think she trusts her servants so well?”

  For a moment my mind was filled with the image of the sort of treatment that might make the servants heed Lady Goldifer's least gesture. But this was no time for such speculations. Instead I considered the layout of the room. “We'll never get to those windows,” I said, craning up at them far above us.

  “Just as well,” Hwyn said. “Once we got out of them, we'd have a real tumbler's trick to do to get down—at least until the guards thoughtfully brought us down with arrows. It's either the west door or the hall door.”

  “The west door, surely,” I said.

  “Yes—no,” said Hwyn. “That's where they'd expect a thief to come out. And besides, there's the wall around the courtyard—”

  “But the hall door?” I put to her, incredulous.

  Trenara broke in to whimper, “We must go.”

  “We know,” I said soothingly, then fretted to Hwyn, “If only she could tell that to Her Resplendence.”

  “At this hour?” Hwyn said, for it had been dark for long. “And yet—oh, gods be with us, it's our only hope. Goldifer trusts her. Trenara,” she took the lady's arm and spoke gravely, “You are right. We must go. We must go now. Can you tell that to them? Can you lead us out, and tell them all that we must go?”

  Trenara did not answer, but seemed cheered by Hwyn's words. She straightened, walked to the hall door, and waited, her head regally high, for Hwyn to open it for her. Hwyn turned to show me her slack-jawed fool's face for an instant before opening the door and holding it wide for the lady and her chaplain. I took up a torch and, taking my cue from Hwyn, assumed an expression of preoccupied piety, my role in our little pageant. I did not need to pretend to be praying; I'd been at sea in tempests that scared me less than this walk through the corridors—perhaps because then, at least, I could do something to fend off death, mend sails or pump water, but now my life and Hwyn's rested in Trenara's hands. My heart was in my mouth when we reached the great door of the hall and a sentry demanded, “Who goes there?”

  “I am the Lady Trenara of Larioneth,” she chimed in her usual tones.

  “Good Lady, you must be lost in the corridors. We will call a servant to guide you to a bedchamber.”

  “No. We must go,” Trenara said.

  “What?” the guard said, bewildered. “Have you already taken leave of Her Resplendence, th
en?”

  “Tell her. We must go now,” Trenara said. “We must.”

  There was a silent pause, when I could only imagine the look of profound knowledge she bound him with. At last the sentry called out, “Gerd!” A servant sprang into being, it seemed, from some nook unseen. “See if Her Resplendence will receive her guest now, so she can take leave of her.”

  We were led through corridor after corridor and passed from servant to servant till a perfumed and silk-clad bower-maid bade Hwyn and me wait outside the chamber of Lady Goldifer. We never heard Trenara's leave-taking, but whatever she said and whatever Lady Goldifer read into it must have sufficed, because we were given our packs, full water-skins, and torches and led out through the great gate.

  We stayed silent and let Trenara lead until we were far enough from the great hall to discreetly douse our torches and disappear into the night.

  “Thank the gods the city's not walled,” Hwyn said. “We can slip out through the fields at the edge of town and be gone by the time they see the chapel.”

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “North,” Hwyn said firmly. “It's the way they'll least suspect. And it's the way we're headed, in the end.”

  It was also the way to the Hills of Penmorrin, rising eastward in a long swath till they joined the impassable mountains of eastern Swevnalond on the Magyan border, the Wall of Magya. It was known far and wide as cruelly hard traveling land, beside which a sea-journey to Magya was a stroll in the garden. But I said nothing, knowing Hwyn was right: the northern paths would be least watched.

  We turned northward and crept through the silent streets, ever alert for signs of another waking footstep. Twice sounds in the street sent us scuttling for alleys—an old beggar and a stray dog, as it turned out. At length the houses thinned and we broke and ran between rows of crops until these, too, gave way to low hills and woody downs. We wound northeast to skirt a hill, hoping its bulk would hide us a while.

  A sliver of sun squeezed over the rugged horizon. “They'll be finding out now,” Hwyn said.

  I nodded and kept going. So did the sun, relentless pursuer, stealing the cover of night from our escape.

  Threading a copse, Hwyn stumbled and caught herself with one hand against a thick gray trunk. She hung there a while, panting. “I can't go much farther.”

  “We've gotten a head start, at least,” I said, relieved that she had yielded before I was forced to beg a rest. “Can you go on as far as that ridge?” I pointed to a line of garish yellow gorse on a green hill ahead of us.

  “Where?” Hwyn squinted.

  “Halfway up the next rise ahead of us there's a row of bushes on an outcropping. It would shelter us, but not so I couldn't keep watch on the land below.”

  “Lead on. You're my eyes,” she said.

  I put an arm across her shoulders, got her moving again. We climbed the slope almost on hands and knees till we found the perfect spot, well hidden from below unless we chose to peer over the bushes. It was a hard, sloping bed with thorns to one side and rocks to the other—but we were in no mood to quarrel with it. We threw ourselves down, breathing heavily as though we'd forgotten to breathe till then. “Oh,” I gasped, “my feet.”

  “My stomach,” Hwyn groaned. “I scarcely had time to eat, serving at table. They told me to fill my pockets for later.” She pulled out her small takings, fried hearth-cakes, odd scraps of cheese and meat from the cutting-board, and the best bit, a squashed cheese-filled roll that she broke in half to share with me, Trenara being already asleep.

  I waved it away, though the scent of it teased me. “If you didn't have a chance to eat at the hall, you should have it all. Keep your strength up.”

  “Please,” she said, so I took half and thanked her for it.

  “Don't mention it,” she said. “I'm so sorry I brought you here—both of you.” She turned to include the oblivious Trenara. “I could have gotten us all killed—and all for nothing! So stupid of me!”

  “It's all right,” I said. “But please tell me something. If you can't read, how on earth do you know the Revelations so well?”

  “Easy,” she said. “I've heard them recited in the temple often enough. But honestly, can you really have thought me a priestess? Scrubbing tavern floors and stealing cakes? What order would that be, my good priest?”

  “The Priestesses of the Hidden Wisdom often have interesting interpretations of the vow of poverty,” I said, “which might stretch to condone theft. Scrubbing tavern floors, certainly— they might elevate that to a sacred rite of humility. They take no vows of obedience or chastity. I've met a few, but not many. They make most Tarvons nervous.”

  “But not you,” Hwyn laughed. Then, anxiously, she asked the question I'd been dreading: “Did you read any of the inscription before it burned away?”

  “Two words,” I said, “and without knowing the rest, I can only guess what they mean.”

  “And what is it you guess?”

  I hesitated. “Sith morum,” I said. “If it's the Golden Age dialect, it would mean ‘journey by sea.’ ”

  “And if it isn't?” Hwyn pressed.

  I hesitated again.

  “Tell me. It can't hurt me more known than unknown,” she said.

  “If it's Silver Age dialect,” I said, “it might mean ‘journey to death.’ ”

  She bowed her head. “Thank you. For being honest, I mean. And for not reproaching me for the whole misadventure. I did wrong to bring us here. I should have known better.”

  “Why should I reproach you?” I said. “It was all for your quest, wasn't it?”

  “No,” she said. “It was for my fear. I know what I have to do. But I hoped I'd find out what will happen to me. I shouldn't have staked so much on finding out. Why should I want to know for certain what I already feared? It's too late to look back now, come what may.”

  “If it's a journey by sea,” I said, “at least you've got a competent sailor with you.”

  “It may not be,” she sighed. “But mean what it may, this prophecy was not for my knowing, and I should not have pried into it. I took this quest upon myself, unurged, alone; the time to wonder about consequences is past. The burden was my own choice, and it's mine to bear, to whatever end it takes me.”

  I almost wished I'd lied about what I'd read on the stone. I did not know how to comfort her. But silence seemed too cruel, so I filled it as best I could. “For what it's worth,” I stammered, “I will be with you. Whatever we journey toward.”

  She did not speak, but pressed my hand so hard that I felt it to my heart.

  6

  THE SMALL END OF THE CHISEL

  I kept vigil while Hwyn dropped off to sleep sitting up. Her head lolled against me till I eased it into my lap with a familiarity that might have seemed awkward when she was awake, but that felt natural in the half-real world of guarding a sleeper.

  With her small body curled against me, her face turned away, she looked like a child. I saw again my little brother, twenty years before, curled up like that, worn from playing, the rhythm of his sleeping breaths as steady as the sea below our window. A wave of fear came over me, as though that moment's resemblance to my dead brother had proven the futility of all my efforts to protect anyone I cared for. Thrusting away these thoughts, I stirred myself to do the one thing I could do at the moment. Cradling Hwyn's head cautiously so as not to wake her, I raised myself a little to peer through the brambles at the land below. All was still.

  I settled myself again; Hwyn stirred in her sleep but did not wake. It would be easy to fall asleep myself, leaving us all unguarded. I began to mouth the Dawn Chant to the Rising God for vigilance and awareness, hoping he would not take it amiss if I meant it more literally than strict theology might countenance. When I reached the end, I began again.

  The sun rose higher, and my eyes stung and watered. I wondered whether, in time, I might steal a bit of sleep in safety, letting the other two watch; Trenara could see, and Hwyn could hear and interpret, tho
ugh inevitably something would be lost when no one could both see the land below and plan a route of escape. Eventually, I thought, there would be no avoiding it. But before the sun neared its zenith, I peered over the fringe of brambles to see movement on the road below.

  I rubbed Hwyn's head till her eyes opened. “Hwyn, they're coming.”

  “What?”

  “Four riders in the valley below, headed this way. I see spears glinting at the horses' sides. It's too far to tell if they have bows, as well.”

  “Sky-Raven's Bones!” she cursed softly. Trenara opened a sleepy eye, saw the two of us in anxious conference, and seemed to catch our mood of vigilance, rising to sit on her heels.

  “There seems to be more cover to the east of this hill,” I said. “We might circle round and down into the wooded vale without showing ourselves. It seems to go on a long way to the east, into the cleft of the hills.”

  “Very well,” said Hwyn, “you lead the way.”

  We crept along the brushy slope on hands and knees lest the riders see our heads above the gorse. At last our path dropped low and the greenway rose on either side, aspen trees raising a silver-green canopy over us, flowering thorns now blocking our path, now sheltering it. Secure from detection for the moment, we quickened our pace.