The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  “He's raving,” said one of the men.

  “He's feverish! No wonder,” said the other. “He's been lying here cold as the north end of nowhere. What have I been thinking of?” Gently he spread his cloak over me.

  “I am not raving!” I cried with all the strength I still had. “If you knew what reasons I have to hate my life— It was not enough to be widowed on my wedding night. No, I was not wretched enough till the bravest and kindest people that ever lived, the Holdouts of Lar-ioneth—a people so much greater-souled than your miserable town that if they had come to Berall, you would have killed them for envy—all of them, down to the most defenseless child, were cast to the bottom of the sea. And for what? To prepare a new day for Berall? For the most accursed of all towns ever built on the slaughtered bodies of saints and innocents? And for this I sailed to the world's end—to come to Berall?”

  “You sailed to the world's end?”

  There was wonder in the man's tone; it defeated me. “Believe that I rave,” I said wearily, “or believe that I speak true. What does it matter? I accomplished nothing there. All in vain, all for nothing. Let me die now. I can offer you no hope.”

  “Gods have mercy,” breathed my would-be rescuer. “What is to be done? You cannot die. You are sent by the gods.”

  “The gods are mad,” I said, “and I am dying.”

  “Hush, now,” he said, and pulled the cloak up where it had fallen from my throat. It alleviated the cold, but not my misery. “Try to rest,” he said. “Askol will be here soon. He will heal you.”

  Too weary even to speak more, I shut my eyes.

  I must have slept, because I was unaware of the healer's arrival until a sudden storm of pain assailed my arm. I cried out, and he stopped what he was doing.

  “Ah—so you're with us, traveler,” he said. “You should have stayed asleep.”

  “I should have died,” I told him. “I was trying to die. If you mean me any kindness, please, kill me.”

  “Gods forbid!” he said.

  “Why save a life that is hateful to me and useless to you?”

  “Hush now,” he said. “Don't speak nonsense. I'll have to finish tying the splint now; it will hurt, but less so if you lie still.” There was a sharp tug at my arm, and for the next minute I was too overcome with pain even to protest. “There now. The worst is over. Let me give you something to make you sleep.”

  “I beg you, please, give me enough so that I never wake.”

  “No,” said the healer. “Should I break the vows of my calling?”

  “Then I'll have none of it, nothing for the pain,” I said. “What are these wounds to the ruin of my world? A curse upon this town! When we came here seeking a livelihood, you would have killed us; now I would die and you force me to live. A curse upon Berall, of all towns most accursed!”

  “He is feverish,” they said to each other nervously as they shifted me onto a litter with trembling hands. When they put a flask of palliative to my lips, I spat it out angrily. As they carried me to town, I cursed them in every language I knew.

  There followed weeks of fever and delirium, when I lived half in dreams. At times I forgot time and place, calling the people who sat by my bed Hwyn, or Harga, or even Mother. At times I ranted to the Hidden Goddess, demanding answers. At times I remembered where I was and what I had suffered. Then I would refuse all nourishment, determined that if I could not drown I would starve. After that the dreams would overtake me again, soothing me with the forms and voices of those I had lost, or tormenting me with old horrors. I found myself again clinging for dear life to a broken scrap of the Sea-Bird, lifting Saeverth's cold body from the sand, hearing Hwyn's last ragged breaths as she died in my arms. At other times, I thought the gods stood over me in a circle, all talking at once, demanding something of me that I couldn't understand. “Speak sense to me, or be quiet!” I shouted at them. “Tell me what to do and I'll do it, but tell me plain; don't keep me spinning in circles trying to hear just one of you right.” The Upside-Down God grinned mockingly; Trenara turned her back. All the while I burned and froze, fever and chills, but it seemed to me to be the fire in the Eye of Night and the frigid Berall seacoast that should never have been a coast. The room spun like a potter's wheel and some ghost played hammer-and-anvil with my head.

  After uncounted days, I regained my senses. Dreams came only with sleep, and all the grief that had driven me over the cliff-edge filled my waking time. I refused food more steadfastly. My stomach cramped and knotted in protest, then gave up. My head throbbed, awake or asleep. I gritted my teeth and waited for death. I didn't know whether to pray to the gods; I didn't know whether they cared. I prayed to Hwyn, my saint, without hope that she existed anywhere anymore; I prayed to Conor, old sinner-saint that he was, and to my brother Saeverth; I prayed to the spirit I'd summoned in Larioneth, Lancar the Horseman, a greater fool than I and happier, more fortunate in his misplaced devotion, for he had only lost his life, while I had lost all hope. Let him pray for me; dear trusting soul, he was always a believer.

  They brought me food, the people who tended me. I shut my eyes and mouth against it. They pleaded with me to eat, but I did not listen and scarcely heard. I slept most of the day, and more with each day's growing weakness.

  But I couldn't shut out the smells of food, which followed me even into sleep, into hungry dreams. At last one morning I awoke half crazed by the fragrance of a simple bowl of porridge left on a bench by my bed. I rubbed my eyes and looked around just long enough to see that no one was with me. No one would know I had weakened. I reached eagerly for the spoon, succeeding only in knocking it off the bench and away across the floor. Too weak to get out of bed and look for it, I dipped my hand into the porridge bowl and scooped some clumsily into my mouth. Then I realized what I'd done: I'd abandoned my resolve, broken faith with the dead, forgotten all my loss, for nothing but an empty belly and the smell of porridge. Sick with shame and weak, weak as a baby—I blush to speak of it—I found myself once again unable to do anything but weep.

  Thus my nurse found me. I turned away from her, but not soon enough. “You're weeping!” she said. “Tell me the trouble.”

  “Don't inquire into my shame,” I said, sounding barely alive, as perhaps I was.

  “No shame,” said the nurse, “Tears are the start of healing, as my mother used to say.”

  My father had had a different saying. “Not for me,” I said. “For me there can be no healing. I should have died by now. I weep for shame to think I am so weak as to try to feed my body, when in a little more time I might have joined all those I loved.”

  “You tried to eat? I knew you would, if I left you! Oh—I'm sorry,” she said, for I covered my face with my hands, overcome by shame. Light fingers encircled my wrist. “Forgive me; I do everything wrong! What can I do for you? How can I help you?”

  “It's not your fault,” I said. “You've done nothing wrong. The fault is mine. But it's hard to die of starvation; my will is too weak for it. At least my arms have healed. If you would only give me a knife, and leave me—”

  “Gods forbid!” she gasped, just as the healer had.

  “Then you cannot help me,” I said.

  I was shocked, then, to hear a stifled sob. I looked up at her for the first time, but now it was she who covered her face, hiding her tears. I propped myself up unsteadily on one arm, reached out carefully to touch her. “Don't cry, please. What am I to you, that you should care what I say? An ungrateful stranger you should have left out in the cold. Why waste your tears—”

  “Don't you know?” she said. “All the elders, the whole town is waiting for your recovery. They thought I might—might make you want to live, so the curse would be lifted from the town—”

  “Is that what worries them?” I laughed. “That I cursed the town when they found me and would not let me die? I doubt the gods heed my curses or blessings, but very well: if any curse settled on this town at my word, I take it back. I take all curses upon myself—wha
t are a few more, that I should notice them? My life ended on the Longest Night. My body just hasn't the sense to die with my heart.”

  My nurse looked me full in the face and I noticed for the first time that she was only a girl, about fifteen, with the clear forthright eyes of youth. “You must live,” she said. “You are our hope, the Hope from the Sea promised by the mad prophet Areyn in the time of the persecution. You are a great saint—”

  At that I had to laugh again. “Your people are sadly mistaken in their saints,” I said. “I am flotsam cast up by the sea, which swallows the grain and leaves the chaff. Tell them to save their reverence for those that didn't return.”

  “And who were they?” said the girl, crouching near me as though not to miss a word, her startling blue eyes all attention.

  “First there was the woman called Hwyn, a great prophet and saint, though unrecognized.”

  “Hwyn—the prophet—she was hanged here, after the Feast of the Turning God, before the Sickness came and the persecution was stopped! No wonder you cursed this town,” the girl said.

  “Hanged here?” I said in momentary confusion—then remembered Hwyn the Weaver. “Oh. That was an impostor, a woman who took her place to save her life. Another great saint dead. Another crime on Var's bloody hands. They are both dead, then—both the women called Hwyn, both saints rejected by this town's wisdom.”

  “We will repent it,” the girl said gravely. “Do not abandon us. We need you.”

  I studied her face, young, earnest, strained with the weight of the message entrusted to her. I noticed at last, life-weary as I was, that the girl was strikingly beautiful, her elegantly tapered face framed by glossy golden-brown hair, her lips rose-petals, her body graceful. “Child, why was it left to you to persuade me?” I said, suddenly suspicious.

  She blushed—beautifully—under my scrutiny, so that I dropped my eyes not to give her more discomfort. “They said—” she began haltingly, “they thought I might make you want to live. The elders thought so, I mean. They said if—if you took a bride of this town, you might be appeased with us, and remain. So they gave me to you—”

  “What a hideous idea!” I exclaimed without thinking. “Gods! What hateful men this town breeds! Who—” Then I stopped, seeing the girl had shrunk back, hiding her face. “I'm sorry, lass, I—my anger's not at you. It's for your sake. Even if I were not just widowed and still in mourning, I could never accept it. Why—to bind a lovely young girl like you to a bitter old wreck like me—it's monstrous! How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” she said.

  “Do you realize I am more than twice your age?” When she showed no surprise, I added, “I suppose after what I've been through, I look even older.” Suddenly I realized that it wasn't only moral revulsion I was feeling: the mouthful of porridge I'd taken had hit my stomach, which, unused to the intrusion, rebelled. “Excuse me,” I managed to mutter before turning to the opposite side of the bed, hanging my head over the edge, and losing what little I'd eaten. There was a taste of blood in my mouth.

  Without flinching, the girl got a wet rag and reached out with it to wipe my face. I caught her hand, took the cloth, and did it myself. “I'm sorry,” I said. “You shouldn't have to see this.”

  “Do you think I've never seen the like before?” she snapped. “Did you think they sent me to you only for an ornament? I had to watch my whole family die of the Winter Sickness. If I have to watch one more, well, I will outlive it!” She was cleaning the floor with a vengeance as she spoke. Her face was turned to the floor, but I could almost feel the reflected sparks from her eyes. It was her first show of temper, and healthier for both of us than all her earlier forced gentleness. I was properly chastened. By the time she stormed back to me, after meticulously cleaning the soiled rags and her hands, I'd come to my senses.

  “Forgive me,” I said. “I've been acting selfishly, as though no one had ever known loss but me.”

  “I didn't mean—”

  “Yes you did,” I said, “and it was the best thing you've said since I awoke. And it tells me we have something in common: we are both sole survivors.”

  “Was the Winter Sickness in your land too, then?”

  “Not sickness,” I said. “My family's merchant vessel was shipwrecked years ago; they all drowned but me. And now that Larioneth is sunk under the ocean, I am the sole survivor again.”

  “I couldn't survive a second time,” the girl said with sudden heat. “I'd die with the rest. I couldn't bear it.” Suddenly she seemed to grasp what she herself was saying, to see it anew. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “That's what you were trying to do.”

  “Yes. But I was wrong,” I said. “I forgot a promise I made to the dead—or rather, not forgot, but judged wrongly that their death had released me from the promise.”

  “What did you promise?”

  “To try to live,” I said, “to do what needed to be done. You were right to be angry with me: I had no right to die while I still might do something.”

  “Then you will help us!” the girl said eagerly.

  “Don't pin too much hope on me.” I smiled ruefully. “But I'll do what I can.” I tried to sit up; my head responded with a sharp stab of pain, and I rubbed it a while. “What's your name?”

  “Renn daughter of Rebarrin.”

  “Mine is Jereth son of Garmund. I am a merchant's son, sometime shipwright's apprentice, sometime novice in the Tarvon Order, sometime minstrel, field hand, and beggar. I have been a failure at everything, even suicide. I'm at your service, if you are foolish or desperate enough to want it.”

  “You were a minstrel?” Renn seized on the phrase. “You played at the Feast of the Turning God?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You remember me?”

  “I thought I recognized you! Your voice, that is; you sometimes sang in your fever-dreams. The elders said I was mistaken,” she said gleefully. “I heard you at the festival. I listened for hours. You sang harmony with a funny-looking, cross-eyed little woman. There was another woman with you too, dark and quiet and very lovely.” She added more softly, “Was that your wife—the one you mourn for?”

  “No: the other one,” I said, and winced in anticipation of a tactless adolescent response.

  The girl raised her eyebrows, blushed deeply, and was silent for a few heartbeats. When she spoke, her voice was calm and quiet and serious. “She must have been extraordinary.”

  “That she was,” I said.

  “No wonder you were so shocked when I told you about— what the elders planned for you and me.”

  “Don't tell me you would have accepted it,” I said. “Tied for life to a ruin like me!”

  Renn shrugged coolly. “You are a saint. I might have liked being married to a saint—almost like being a priestess.”

  “But you are already a priestess,” I said without thinking, and then realized that I knew it was true as certainly as I'd known the names of the ghosts who escaped from the Eye of Night. “That is your true work, your true self, Renn daughter of Rebarrin. You don't need to marry holiness. You surely don't need to look to me for it. If the elders of Berall had any sense, they'd turn to you for answers—never to me. You are their priestess; I am refuse cast back by the sea.”

  “How do you know?” she cried, hopeful, perplexed, and then, almost angry. “If you are nothing, refuse, as you say, how do you know what I am?”

  “The Gift of Naming,” I said. “I was in the Tarvon Order once. It no more makes me a saint than having been a merchant once makes me rich now. But I am not wrong about you, Renn. And if the elders insist on seeing me as a creature of legend, then tell them—tell them I consent to live, and to live here, for your sake only, not for theirs.”

  “I can't tell them that,” she said. “Think how it would sound!”

  “Then I'll tell them myself,” I said. I swung my feet out of bed and tried to stand, only to find myself in a heap on the floor. For several seconds I could only hold my head, waiting for the room to st
op spinning. Renn silently helped me up; it mortified me to discover how heavily I had to lean on her. I noticed for the first time how bony I was. “Gods,” I said, “I'm a corpse.”

  “You haven't eaten in weeks,” Renn said sharply. “What did you expect?”

  I didn't answer. I was shaking, and I could see that my weakness frightened her, for all her cross words.

  “What's the use?” she grumbled, setting me back in bed with practiced gestures. “You starve yourself till you can't eat, and now you'll probably die anyway and leave us in this fix—oh, gods, what am I saying? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “What you say may be true. But I doubt it. I've sailed to the world's end and back alive. I was alone and unconscious on a damaged boat and didn't drown. I dove off the sea-cliff and broke both arms but not my neck. I washed up on the shore, just hurt enough not to be able to throw myself back in the ocean. It would be an odd joke of the gods if I died the moment I stopped pursuing death.”

  “You think the gods have been keeping you alive?”

  “Someone or something has,” I said. “Either they're not through having their sport with me, or there's something I'm meant to do.”

  “You have a task here,” Renn said. “I know it. Rest now; I'll thin out the porridge so you can eat. I'll return soon.”

  I thanked her, then lay back in bed, looking up at the ceiling—and broke suddenly into helpless laughter at what I saw there.

  Renn spun back to stare at me in alarm. “What—what—” she sputtered, then oddly, “Who are you?”

  “That's a strange question,” I said. “My name is Jereth, as I told you. I rather thought you'd ask why I was laughing.”

  “Why were you laughing, then?”

  I gestured at the ceiling. “Night after night I dreamed the gods crowded around me, scolding me. And there they are— painted on the ceiling!” They were marvelously lifelike, and the Hidden Goddess, her back turned as always, could almost have been modeled on Trenara, the arc of her spine graceful as a young tree. “So much for the notion of inspired dreams: I was only making the most of my surroundings. I'm in the temple?”