“He hasn’t won,” Surata begged. “Not yet.”
For once, it was Arkady who aligned their Centers of the Subtle Body. “You’re letting him rattle you. Don’t let that happen.” He shifted his position so that they could join more deeply. Pleasure coursed through him and he felt her respond.
“Arkady-champion, more.” She licked his chest and his neck, balancing so that they were both half sitting, her legs straddling his.
“If you must waste your death, then die!” the Bundhi stormed, while the ground shivered and groaned. “Die!”
There was the huge explosive ringing as the boulders separated from the sides of the mountains, rushing down to the river at the depths of the gorge. The sound was impossibly loud, the ground shook.
“Arkady-champion!” she screamed, clinging to him as the avalanche surged over them.
He could say nothing: he held her, taking ultimate consolation in their union. If only they might sustain that, he decided, he would not think that death and the Bundhi had cheated him of everything. “Surata!” he cried, wanting to surround himself with her and his love for her.
“Again, Arkady-champion,” she encouraged him. “Please, again.”
Enormous footsteps trudged down the avalanche with the stones, and something raised its complaint in a voice that mocked all the cannon in the world.
“You, Surata, only you,” Arkady whispered to her.
Burning wings flapped over them. The Bundhi pranced and chanted and crowed in glee.
“Only you, Arkady-champion,” she vowed, pressed to him with a strength and desire she had not known before. The current of the Subtle Bodies moved through them, more inexorable than any previous link they had experienced. Within themselves, within each other, they saw with a Child’s eyes, brightness exceeding every garden in the daily world. The Child scampered with the lights, laughing in utter joy. What had been malignant was changed as the Child came to it; what had been shaped by one will adapted to the Child’s wishes. Effulgent light glowed from the Child, its eyes so intense in their gaze that the shapes and colors drifted toward it to bask in its glance. It held out its hands to everything coming toward it, watching them caper. The Child ran with them, laughing, making that other place into a meadow.
Fanged and clawed shadows pursued the Child, reaching out to snare it, maws gaping, madness in their eyes.
The Child let them catch it, rolled on the grass with them, giggling, hugging the shadows, smiling while they became more and more insubstantial and finally faded away like wisps of clouds on a summer day. The Child toddled on through the meadow, watching for other shadows.
Trees grew ahead: tall, lean birches and willows; squat, green-headed oaks; massive, fuzzy pines. They were lovely and fragrant, plucking the wind like a harp. The Child ran among them, delighted with what it saw. It skipped and twirled, enchanted with all it encountered.
Strange, stinging insects swarmed around the Child, searching for targets on its fresh skin. The Child brushed them off where they settled. One of the bolder insects made straight for the Child’s eyes. A small fist fended the insect off, then caught it gently and studied it where it hovered, iridescent wings glistening. The Child held out a finger for the insect to land on, but the brilliant wings flashed as the insects soared away, fleeing the Child.
The woods grew denser, the trees larger and more imposing. The Child followed the ever-narrowing path, occasionally patting the trunks of the trees in affection. Roots snarled at the base of trunks, branches dipped and made traps for the unwary; the Child bounced over them, playing with them, treating the long, tangled undulations as a puzzle, or an unraveled skein of yarn. It chortled as it followed the most complex convolutions, happily entranced by the curves and knots and gnarls the trees provided.
A keening wind arose, bending the trees, making the more flexible snap and bow before it; the larger, hardier, stolid members of the forest did not fare as well as the wind increased, breaking heavy limbs and leaving maimed trunks behind.
The Child let itself be carried by the wind, riding it as thistledown would, curvetting and dancing, making no resistance to the howling force that ravaged the forest.
The trees were gone. The their place was a broad expanse of rocks and sand, with clumps of fulvous, arid grasses. Everything that could live here did so at the price of something else that lived here. Lizards preyed upon insects and the young of borrowing rodents; the rodents preyed upon insects and the few plants that survived above the ground; snakes hunted the rodents and one another; spiders pursued insects and baby birds; scorpions snared wasps. The Child dropped to the sand near a flat rock, looking around it without alarm, knowing the place well. It got to its feet and began to walk steadily toward the first rise in the distant hills. It did not move quickly, but there was determination in its every step. Neither the hiss of snakes nor the leg-waving threats of spiders distracted it or caused it to turn in fear. High above it, three carrion birds began their ominous circle. The Child waved at them and continued to walk.
The heat grew more intense, pouring unremittingly down on the parched land, making ripples rise from the sands like unheard music.
A long way off, a spot of green appeared, like a smudge in the pale world. At first it seemed unreal, for in the heat it looked to be hovering over the ground. Then it became clear, and the oasis waited, with its panache of palms, promising water and succor from the relentless sun.
The Child walked toward the green haven, alert and curious, as much as anything. Thirst did not bother it, hunger was unknown to it, and for it, there was delight in everything. It shone like the sun as it ambled over the scorching earth.
Under the palms there were tents, most of them festooned with cording and tassels and embroidery. They stood invitingly open, some showing meals spread on sumptuous silk cloths, some revealing couches of soft pillows, some occupied by musicians and dancers, performing sweetly. The Child stood in the middle of the tents and clapped happily. It motioned the musicians and dancers to leave the tent and join it where it stood, but none of them answered the summons.
“We will not hurt you,” the Child said. “But if you will come out, we can bring the food out and share it. Why should you not eat when a feast is waiting? And why should we eat and not have the cheer you provide?”
The dancers hastily closed the flaps of the tent and fell silent.
In disappointment, the Child sat on the grass in the middle of the tents and amused itself with making animal shapes with its fingers. “The Bundhi,” it said to itself in sad revelation, “never shares—never shares anything.”
The tent that had contained the musicians and dancers opened again and out came three armed men, each with his weapons raised. They rushed at the Child, shouting curses and obscenities, prepared to strike.
As the blows fell, the weapons melted away when they neared the Child, playing contentedly in its own luminescence. It raised its head, beaming at the enraged men. It picked up grasses and tossed them at the men, and each was transfixed with arrows.
“They need not be arrows,” the Child said. “I threw grass.”
The three men fell, then faded so that all that remained were heaps of clothes and weapons on the soft, green grass.
When the Child looked around again, all the tents were gone, and the oasis itself was fading. The Child sighed once and got to its feet, starting off once again toward the distant mountains, walking without fatigue or apprehension.
Thorns and brambles tore at its feet, and the rocks and pebbles yielded nothing but sharp edges. The Child never noticed, and its pace remained the same. When sudden, engulfing darkness came, the Child continued on, bearing its own light. The darkness took on a solidity, impeding the progress of the Child, but it did not falter, letting the thickness of the air hold it up through the continuing night.
The air became harder, more obdurate, until it all but imprisoned the Child, binding it as if in a cage.
(“Oh, God, Surata,” Arkady m
uttered, remembering the men hanging in cages.
(“Release it, Arkady. You are held in me and can come to no harm.”
(“Hold me, then.”)
The cloying, binding darkness grew less oppressive, then gave way to morning and a place that was eerily remote, a high plateau of very good size, but which dropped away preciptiously on all sides.
Not far away was the nest of some huge bird, with eggs waiting to hatch. Each egg was nearly as large as the Child, and there were six of them. There were signs that the chicks were about to emerge from their shells, but the parent was nowhere in sight. The Child stood by the nest, watching with interest as the first shells began to crack.
An enormous-beaked head poked out of the broken shell, already gaping for nourishment. Almost at once, there was a second chick, as demanding as the first. Both squeaked and craned their scrawny necks, desperate, ugly, hungry.
When four of the six had fought their way out of their eggs, they began to peck at one another, each trying to gain nourishment and room in the nest. The last two eggs were cracking. In unison, the first four turned on these unhatched eggs and began a steady assault on them with their beaks. From their manner and determination, the Child knew the chicks wanted to destroy the unhatched nestlings.
The Child held out its hands, hoping to separate the baby birds. The birds at once seized on it, grabbing for fingers, for face, for legs and toes, for ambiguous genitals, for any bit of flesh that might end their hunger.
As the beaks tore and snapped at the Child, it did not try to stop them; and almost at once, the huge baby birds changed. The nest was a nest no longer, but a wall of bamboo, and the beaks were the cut ends of staves, pressing the Child’s body, fastening there with the determination of leeches.
“You have come to me at last,” said a voice from the bamboo, a deep, gratified voice that belonged to the Bundhi.
“We never ran from you,” said the Child. “We were always coming to you.”
“Fool!” the Bundhi upbraided it. “What a fool you are!”
The Child sat, folding its legs with soles turned up at the knees, a contented smile on its face. It made no attempt to dislodge the staves.
“I will drain you, fools!” the Bundhi promised.
“You may try,” said the Child. “But there are two of us, and we have the strength of each, as well as the strength of both together. You will be surfeited long before we are empty.” Its smile became a beatific grin, and the light of it grew brighter.
More staves bent toward the Child, fastening their wooden mouths wherever there was open space on the little body. Only the Subtle Centers and the head were untouched as the staves fed and fed.
“You will be nothing! You are nothing! You are mine!” the Bundhi gloated.
“No, you are ours,” the Child corrected him. “You have always given your staves your own fear for fodder. We do not fear.”
“You must!” the Bundhi demanded.
“Why? Because you do?” the Child responded. “What have we to fear from you?”
“You will die!” the Bundhi thundered at the Child. “You will be nothing.”
“Not even eternity endures forever,” said the Child, watching as the first few staves dropped away from it, leaving nothing more than a small red mark on its skin. “They will all fade,” said the Child. “Including your portal, and all that you have called through it will have to gain strength from you or vanish. You have brought too much to do your bidding—you cannot give sustenance to them all.”
More than half the staves had fallen from the Child’s arms and body; they lay, small, pale twigs, scattered on the plateau, light enough to be carried away on the afternoon breeze.
“They will grow again,” The Bundhi promised.
“We will be here when they do,” said the Child, rising from its place, nothing attached to it any longer.
The Bundhi began to chant, but he stopped almost at once. “Why don’t they answer?”
“Because we fed them, not you, and they cannot hear you now,” the Child said, a bit sadly. “The portal is failing.”
“It cannot!” the Bundhi shrieked.
The Child put its hand on the last of the staves and watched as they shrank to little sprouts. “Your high redoubt is gone, O Bundhi.”
There was no answer. Only the wind sighed over the plateau.
Slowly the Child walked to the edge of the plateau, then deliberately stepped off into the ecstatically entwined bodies of Arkady Sól and Surata.
Epilogue
A confused old man sat beside the trail, his hands uselessly joined in his lap. He scowled at the tall young man leading the blind woman up the swath of the recent avalanches. As the two approached him, he crawled away, mewling in terror.
The sun stood high over the gorge; Arkady shaded his eyes to look up at it. “Well?” he said to Surata at last.
“Well?” she repeated.
“Where do we go now?”
She smiled. “Where would you like to go? What would you like to do?”
“I don’t know,” he answered after a moment. “What does a man who used to be a soldier do?”
“You…could return to your homeland,” she suggested without enthusiasm.
“And do what? I am disgraced, I have no one waiting for me. Where are you going?” There was a stronger light in his eyes. “Where are you going, Surata?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Perhaps Gora Čimtarga.”
At that name, the old man cried out from his hiding place.
“Gora Čimtarga? Why?” Arkady asked, looking up the narrow, rocky trail.
“It’s a place to begin. It’s empty. Of everything. There is no Right Hand Path or Left Hand Path there. I can make my own way.” She held out her hand to him, grateful when he took her fingers in his.
“You’ll never get there on your own,” he pointed out.
She said nothing; tears stood in her blighted eyes.
“What will you do there?” He brushed a stray lock of hair off her face.
She shrugged. “Study.”
“You need two to do it properly,” he said, wishing she could see his grin. “Are you going to make me ask?” he demanded after a moment.
“Are you going to make me?” she countered, the tears spilling at last.
He took her into his arms, laughing though his throat was tight. “God, Surata, I was so afraid…”
She kissed him. “Haven’t you learned yet that when you fear something, go toward it?”
He said nothing. Gently he wiped her tears from her cheeks. “Right. We go to Gora Čimtarga.”
She held him more tightly. “And then?”
“Who knows? First we have to get there.”
“Arkady…”
“Not ‘immai’? Not ‘champion’? Just Arkady?” he teased her kindly.
“How can I call you that when you are so many more things to me?” She was very serious now, her unseeing eyes directed at his.
“Do you think we could ever do that again?” He could not tell her what had happened to him because of their victory.
“We have accomplished it once,” she pointed out. “My father and my uncles never achieved that.”
“But we could,” he said with growing hope.
Her smile was splendid. “Yes, it’s possible, if that is what we truly want to do.”
Arkady lifted her hands to his lips. “Then perhaps I should call you Child.”
“Child,” she said with him, making the word a pledge.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies
, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
ISBN 978-1-4804-9487-9
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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To the High Redoubt Page 38
