Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  Current turned the boat. Between the gap of deck and rail, Westhill came into view: the slopes hidden now by rolling black smoke. Smashed buildings blocked the lower end of the harbour. A few boats bobbed helplessly in the swell. Dark specks ran on the quay. Dots in the water: the heads of swimmers. A pall of smoke blotted the sky, split by the F90 shuttle’s passing; jath-rai listed in the water and men and women jumped from its sides.

  The ferry stank of blood and excrement. Cries and screams were loud, over the noise of firing. An Earthspeaker crossed the deck, stepping between bodies laid out on the wood; that rolled as the boat rolled. When I turned my head, I saw that the Orthean beside me was white-maned and white-skinned and wearing a dirt-stained meshabi-robe. The early evening sky …

  Pale blue and filled with clarity, as a glass is filled with water or light. To lie and look up is to fall into the sky. And no, not quite evening, not more than the end of afternoon, in the long Orthean day.

  She rises to her feet in one swift movement, all the old swordfighter’s grace still there. She stands in the sunlight, in the Tower garden. This lean, ageing woman, skin like flaked coal; with bare feet, and mane straggling out of a half-crop. That narrow, merry face.

  Makeshift tents of becamil-cloth are drab against the sky. Ortheans walk between them on hurried errands, walking on dry earth trodden bare of mossgrass … I moved slightly, lifting my head; and saw, between the tents that shelter the injured, the wide grasslands that run down to the Oranon River. Acres of flat mossgrass. In the far distance, people trek away from the city against the skyline. Haze blurs distance, the land trembles in this summer day’s heat.

  She speaks as one remembering more than her own memories. Like the sun on the surface of a river: one minute all brilliance, all Ruric; and then the light shifts, and under that surface are depths …

  I heard faint, desultory cracks: the distant sound of projectile fire. The noises here drowned it out. Not far off, someone screamed, another voice sobbed with pain; and I rolled my head to one side and saw an Orthean male bent over one of the wounded, feeding him a liquid – ataile, to ease pain? – and moved restless to look the other way, and saw a human face. A black Pacifican, hair pulled back into a horse-tail; squatting on his haunches beside me, his gaze fixed on the distant city, and it seemed an hour before I could remember his name.

  ‘Lutaya?’

  He glanced at me, then over his shoulder at the camp, and then back at me. ‘The medic’s here somewhere – don’t worry: you’re going to be all right. Lie still.’

  WEBcast equipment cluttered his back, on a knotted makeshift strap. There were dark stains on the knees of his coveralls. Sunlight on his face showed it strained, eyes with a bruised look to them; and though he tried to sound reassuring, his tone was flat.

  Painkillers. I recognize the feeling: that time has slowed or stopped completely … My mouth had a sour taste in it. Without thought, I hitched myself up on to my elbows; dizziness blacked out vision and I thought, It should have been painful and realized I could feel nothing of my right side: numb from shoulder to hip to ankle … The leg of my coverall was cut away. A grey plastiflesh covering encased me from thigh to foot; and I reached down and touched the rigid, warm surface. What damage – no, that’s not important now.

  ‘I found you.’ Lutaya’s voice had a touch of child-like pride. ‘Didn’t know there were any of us caught in the settlement. Thought it was all local wounded here. Came down. Took some good shots. You’re a bonus.’

  He grabbed my arm as I attempted to sit up, and managed it, and all but retched with a sudden nausea, and he was no more troublesome, no more importunate, than one of the kekri-flies that swarmed round. Blue and green and black: kekri-flies clustering on wounds, and on bodies that lay motionless a little way off.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he protested, shocked. Then: ‘Kennaway – over here! She’s hysterical –’

  I smothered laughter with a dirty hand, rocking back and forwards. Someone listened to me, I thought. The becamil blanket that I lay on was large, and its further edge lapped over a still shape: a body of which I could see only one foot and ankle …

  ‘This – is – grotesque –’ And the sun was hot, nauseatingly hot; my face ran with sweat; and all I could do now was roll over, dragging my numb leg with me like dead wood, and reach over to pull the drab becamil-cloth. Then it was nothing grotesque, only her face, and her dark body in filthy shirt and britches, and a darker bruise on the skin over those arched ribs. And that face, sunken in repose. The skin indented down round her eyes, so that the shape of the bone is plain …

  ‘Broken rib through the lung,’ the WEBcaster said, without much interest. ‘Is there a story for the WEB in it, do you think, Representative?’

  Quite calmly, I thought: You’re piqued because I don’t thank you for fetching a medic. Puppet-like, I mouthed suitable words. Now I was sitting up I could see the extent of this temporary refugee-camp. Becamil-cloth draped over sticks, small fires, huddled people; it surrounded me, and desultory groups trailed off towards the Rimon hills, and I had been staring for several moments before I saw that a good half of them wore the meshabi-robes of the Desert Coast, and mixed with the others unharmed, almost unnoticed.

  ‘What …?’

  Lutaya stood up, staring across the valley towards the city. His tone was hard. ‘I’ve sent my reports through, Representative. That’s all that concerns me. If your Company chooses to fire on that settlement, if –’ he broke off. More quietly, he added, ‘The locals don’t seem much bothered now about who’s who. They all ran. Don’t make much difference when you’re under fire, I guess. Here’s Kennaway.’

  A woman in Company coveralls approached. I recognized the black medic I’d spoken to on the orbiter, when I’d called about Douggie. The woman smiled, and said briskly, ‘We’ll have transport here in a minute. How do you feel now?’

  Now? But the painkillers wouldn’t let me feel. I tried to swallow, and she knelt down and held a flask to my lips:

  ‘A sip – that’s enough.’

  The water tasted tepid, antiseptic, wonderful.

  The late afternoon sky …

  Clear and blue and daystarred: and Carrick’s Star an incandescent white light over my right shoulder. Pain pulsed once in my head. I got my left heel and my hands – when did they get bandaged? – braced on the ground, and tried to stand: caught Kennaway and held on to her and stood, while she swore at me: ‘Don’t put weight on that, you’ll damage it even more than it already is! I didn’t go to all this trouble to have you mess it up again –’

  ‘Are communications back?’

  ‘Sit down.’ She lowered me back to the ground. The knee wasn’t painful. No more mine than a block of wood: why should I be careful of damaging it?

  The earth was warm under my bandaged hands: I could feel it through my fingertips. Only the slightest warm breeze blew. It raised the hairs on my bare arms. A stand of kiez scrub blocked off the nearer shelters, and its brown foliage was already spotted with pale blue fruit: summer turning into harvest, into cold days, into the bitter frosts of winter … I stared round at all the nameless faces. Where are my friends who were in the city? Where are the people I know? I can’t ask at every campfire, at every shelter, at every pile of bodies waiting for the funeral burning – ah God I can’t stand never to know! But sheer numbers and time defeat me now.

  ‘Do something for me,’ I asked. ‘I want to – I need them to bring something from Kumiel Island. Is Kumiel still … it doesn’t matter. Tell them I’m bringing – a body back for burial. I want …’

  Some way for her to go home with dignity. Kennaway’s face showed incomprehension, impatience, and with a touch of that same macabre humour I thought, I daresay they’re busy at the moment.

  Manoeuvring my stiff, numb leg so that it didn’t get in my way, I eased myself over to where I could wrap the drab becamil blanket around her cold body, and sit beside her, and wait for them to come.

  Not
long now, I promised. And then I can put my decision into action.

  ‘Now that I’m Hexenmeister,’ Ruric said, I have the memory of your coming here, eight years ago. And I have the memories the then Hexenmeister took from you … I’ve been Lynne de Lisle Christie … I’d been four years in exile from the Hundred Thousand, Orhlandis was broken up, Rodion dead, Suthafiori dead. And because you were here before you went back to Tathcaer, and found out what I’d done, I saw myself through your eyes, as you saw me: a friend.’

  Friend, is it? I put the brightly-coloured memory away; and with a gruesome humour, thought: Last time I was in the Hundred Thousand I thought travelling with a child slowed me down, that’s nothing to travelling with a corpse …

  ‘I’ll give you a shot.’ Kennaway reached for her medic-pak.

  ‘I don’t need anything.’ You can take laughter for hysteria, for battle fatigue, for whatever you like to think of it as: I see it, simply, as fact. She is dead and she is a damn nuisance –

  Kennaway’s voice reached me, muffled: ‘That’s better. You’ll do better to cry; best treatment I know.’

  Clouds cast their shadows on the sea, and on the hills below, and Carrick’s Star shone white on these cumulus, gliding east away from the sun. The waves soughed: a constant hiss on the shingle. Light caught their green crests as they rolled over and exploded into surf. The rock jolted my leg as I was lowered down from the ’thopter. Pain stabbed my hip: the knee had no sensation at all. Kennaway gripped my arm, signalling to the ’thopter pilot, and the craft soared up again, rotors raising dust from the dry earth of Kumiel Island. I heard a distant sound like sheet metal being shaken. The crags of the island blocked my view of the mainland, across the straits to the city … I stared up at the evening sky: pitch-black with rising smoke. No wind blew to bring the smell of burning.

  ‘Representative, I’d better get you to the shuttle.’

  I glanced at Kennaway, tightened my grip on the metal strut that, tucked under one armpit, made a makeshift crutch, and then realized that two of the young officers who’d travelled in the ’thopter were going ahead now. They carried a heavy, cloth-shrouded bundle between them; treading carefully on the earth tracks of this rocky islet. The sun sent their shadows long and dark before them.

  I dug the strut into the earth with every step, swinging my immobilized leg; and the pain in that hip began to sicken me. The setting sun brought sweat out on my forehead. I reached the top of the slight rise.

  Two F90 shuttles stood on the landing field, their crews clustered round the ramps; and I looked past their sunlit hulls to the dome of the comlink-centre, saw a distant figure which must be Lutaya rushing to put out another ’cast – the Company representative found – and then two or three more people came out of the dome, and one pointed in my direction. Even at this distance, I knew him. I was conscious of no joy. I could only think, I’ve nothing to say to you now.

  I stood still, waiting, as they crossed the hundred yards between us.

  ‘Shuttle?’

  Kennaway said, ‘Most base personnel have already been evacuated up to the orbiter. Excuse me, Representative; I’m just going to contact the medic team up there.’ She turned and strode towards the dome, calling a few words as she passed those approaching.

  A fair-haired Peace Force officer: Otto way. Another officer that I didn’t know, who broke step to speak with the body-carriers, and looked across at me with a frown on his face. Behind them, Douglas Clifford.

  ‘Oh, my dear.’ He put his arms round me, and I felt him shake. Then he stood back, and the level sun caught his face, and showed exhaustion on those prim features: there was dirt on his grizzled hair, and the plastiflesh dressing on his eye. His gaze went past me to the shrouded body. ‘Who –?’

  Douggie, is there any part of you that for one moment thinks – hopes – it’s Blaize? But that’s not important now. I dug the strut firmly into the trodden-down earth of the landing field.

  ‘Put her in the shuttle,’ I ordered. ‘Keep it powered up; and I want a pilot.’

  ‘Lynne, for God’s sake, who is it?’

  ‘Ruric,’ I said, and saw the beginning of a stupefied shock on his face; turned my head and watched them carry her across the field so that I wouldn’t have to see Douggie. What can I say to you? Nothing, I thought.

  The pain gave me energy now. I said sharply, ‘Where’s Commander Mendez?’

  A slow flush spread under Ottoway’s fair skin. The stocky man opened his mouth to speak, shut it again, and then burst out: ‘What else could we do? It was three hours before we knocked that transmission-blocker out! We had to fire on them before they got in with the friendly forces or else it would have been indiscriminate massacre –!’

  Indiscriminate. I felt a laugh catch in my throat.

  ‘“Friendly” forces! Did you hear that Ortheans fired on that ’thopter when it picked me up – oh yes, only winchbows in the camp, but they fired!’

  ‘We didn’t attack first –’

  I shifted, and a stab of pain made me gasp. Doug, with a concerned expression on his face, moved to take my arm; I waved him away. He stared intently at me. Nothing to hear now but the distant surf, the distant roar of engines; the sun is warm on my cheek.

  ‘I don’t want to know about it,’ I said. ‘Where’s Cory?’

  Otto way shrugged. ‘The Rimnith-Keverilde area.’

  ‘Melkathi? What –’ Incredulous, I turned to Doug.

  It was a second before he answered, that intent gaze still on me, and when he did, it was to say absently, There’s been fighting in several areas, not just Tathcaer. I believe it’s still going on.’ He stepped to the right, pointing; and I limped across and stared out to sea, following his gaze. ‘And there’s that …’

  The still blue surface of the sea was darker on the horizon, as if it had soaked up ink. Specks reflected back the light of the setting sun, where they cruised far out to sea; and they were metal-sailed, and though I couldn’t see properly at this distance I knew them for jath and jath-rai.

  ‘Are they waiting?’

  ‘Scared to come in – and too badly provisioned to go home,’ Doug guessed.

  All along that panorama of the sea: dozens of the tiny craft … I turned my back on them. That, also, is not now my concern. It hit me again: that face of hers, forgotten for whole minutes at a time, so clear in my mind’s eye: Ruric Hexenmeister.

  ‘Representative?’ Ottoway said cautiously. I looked at him; his expectancy, and shook my head. Did I want to ask you questions? I thought. Did I really? Why?

  ‘See to the shuttle for the Representative,’ Doug ordered; and Ottoway shrugged at the dismissal, and walked away across the landing field; and I watched him go without really seeing him.

  ‘I think you’re in shock.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, you realize that this has finished Corazon Mendez’s career. The WEBcasters are cutting her to pieces. In twelve days there won’t be a Pacifican on Earth who doesn’t know her name and revile it.’ He watched me narrowly.

  ‘And my name?’ That made me smile.

  ‘Yours too, yes, but please don’t be concerned. Lynne, I’m certain that it can be put right.’ He waited. Then he sighed. ‘You haven’t the slightest interest in that now, have you? It’s hardly surprising. Lynne, you must rest for a short time; even if it’s only a few minutes – please.’

  A dizzy inconsequentiality touched me. What does it matter what I do now? In a short time – a very short time – it won’t matter at all.

  ‘Where do you want me to go, Douggie?’

  He frowned, and looked me up and down in the sunlight.

  I must present a figure like some WEBcast refugee; hair thick with dirt, coveralls ripped, leg bound rigid in plastiflesh-cast; hands bandaged, and a crutch to walk with … And suddenly there was a pulse of pain; the world snapped into focus.

  ‘Christ, yes, let me sit down!’

  ‘Sit down before you fall down,’ he
advised, the humour no more than reflex; and hovered beside me as I limped across towards the comlink-dome. It towered white in the sunlight. I was almost at the port when I registered torn cables, shattered plastiglas; and realized I was staring at a twelve-foot hole in the side of it. They did attack Kumiel, then. I thought the hiyeks wouldn’t pass us by. I entered, and faces turned towards me, and I eased down into the nearest seat, leg jutting out in front of me.

  ‘Representative, what –?’ One of the young officers stood up.

  ‘The Representative needs medical care,’ Doug interposed.

  I leaned back, shutting my eyes and letting it pass me by.

  The vast dome of the sky arches over me webbed with light, flowering with the brilliance of Orthe’s summer stars. In this Tower garden the scent of kazsis-nightflower and arniac are chokingly strong …

  Doug’s hands were warm around mine; he clasped them very lightly through the bandages. I opened my eyes. He sat leaning towards me, all the urbanity gone from his manner; and I could see (as one rarely sees with friends) how he comes to be a government envoy.

  ‘I must be sure I have this right. Lynne, you’re telling me Ruric is dead? The Hexenmeister? That was her body they were carrying to the shuttle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Tower garden, the cold siir in ceramic bowls; the night winds blowing from the city, Kasabaarde. And, distant, blotting out stars, the first chiruzeth spire of the Rasrhe-y-Meluur …

  ‘You know it,’ Ruric said softly. ‘Ancient light can’t be destroyed. Not once it’s created. All we could do was hold it back. We are still holding it back.’

  Douggie swore: his hands tightened on mine so that I winced.

  ‘Lynne, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –’ His voice was too quiet to be heard at the half-dismantled line of holotanks and comlink consoles; still, he leaned closer to me. ‘I never knew her as you did. All I can think is, all that knowledge lost – the Tower Archives must be priceless; and with her gone, who can understand them?’

  ‘It isn’t quite like that, Douggie.’