Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  The ashirenin turns now to face us, to the tens of thousands that watch kir; and ke stands, mane woven with flowers, tunic ragged and earth-stained. Kir eyes are clear as spring water.

  ‘Hear me,’ ke says, ’for I have been marked for Her, in the secret places of the earth, and I have drunk from the Wells of Her wisdom, and I see, I know – for our love of Her, we have only this reward: to carry the burden of Her preservation, and that burden we may not set down. You have loosed a death upon the world, but it will not ravage all. I see, I know –’

  It is the last word of the ashirenin. Our bodies surge forward and overwhelm kir, we cry out as ke falls, and then there is a sound of bone wrenched from bone and flesh … A stain upon the chiruzeth, spilled blood; no other sign remaining.

  And Santhendor’lin-sandru looks down upon us from his high place, and speaks:

  ‘Let the Dance again begin!’

  The stars move in their ritual patterns, and this earth turns towards the dawn.

  Pain breaks it.

  I felt the metal strut slip on the uneven floor; then my cased leg slid out from under me and I fell, twisting sideways; the leg without any sensation at all – but the red agony that ripped through my side and hip! I struggled, got one leg under me; felt my grazed hands on the floor. And then two hands gripped my shoulders, and I froze: aware of the candlelight flickering on the walls, shimmering on the surface of the Well. And saw, as she knelt down by the low wall, the face of Santhendor’lin-sandru’s child.

  I opened my mouth to cry out and she said gently, in that language that only the Imperial bloodline have ever spoken:

  ‘—————’

  Be silent, now.

  My voice dried in my throat.

  The brick floor was painful under me. Her face, close to mine, shone with a light that seemed to come from beneath her own skin. Santhendor’lin-sandru. Zilkezra of the Golden. And I have seen through those eyes –

  Incredulous, I thought, That’s no Tower-memory; how did she –? and remembered a shared vision, outside Kel Harantish.

  ‘This is Our city’s festival,’ she said, ‘and this is the last night. That ancient light will dawn upon us, in an hour and an hour and an hour. And you have seen that great city; and you have seen the fall of the Golden Empire.’

  Her yellow eyes unveiled, clear as water; held me in some fascination or some moment out of Time. Pain throbbed, my mouth was dry; and I saw her simultaneously, Calil bel-Rioch of some dirtwater settlement in a desert, and Calil bel-Rioch who is the last of that ancient race, the Golden Witchbreed.

  And why should she not be answered? Ruric left me a legacy of the past, of the Tower; I can answer her now.

  ‘No –’ Speech an effort: I forced myself. ‘If that’s a true memory, what does it matter now? The world didn’t end with the passing of the Empire.’

  I have the memory in me of those who have been Hexenmeister. With those intent eyes on me, I spoke at last with the full knowledge of that. As if I exist on two levels: this human body, dirty and pain-ridden and weary with grief, that will one day be only another’s memory; and the mind that sees, in her face, the past-memories of the Golden …

  ‘The secret of its making is lost,’ I said, ‘and you cannot recover it. If I could not, in all my lives in the Tower, then you in your handful of years cannot expect to search out the secret heart of it, no more than Rashid Akida could. You do not have that weapon to threaten us with, Calil bel-Rioch. No matter that your memory of it is clear after three thousand years.’

  She said, ‘Do you think that We do not know what you do, what you hope?’

  Her thin hands knot in the cloth of my coverall; bitten claw-nails scratch the skin. There is a sour stink of dirt about her; her copper belt stains her robe green. And all of this exists with that hawk-gold face, those shining eyes.

  ‘“You may even stave it off for a time, you in the south, with your Tower, and your memories that are of the mind and not of the blood …”’ Calil speaking words that are not hers. ‘“But you cannot prevent it forever. We can wait the millennia that are only moments. It will come.”’

  Now she stood, and I could no longer see her face; and it was Calil’s own voice that went on:

  ‘There is a Bright Realm that they speak of in the Wellhouse here. The Goddess’s fire, that is the sun’s fire; and do they know, I wonder, that you built a Tower that holds the sun in its grip; that it is only the sun’s radiance holds back the disease of earth, holds back ancient light from their cities and their fields … Do they know, or do they choose to forget, or did they never know? Tell me, S’aranth.’

  The only movement I can make is to shake my head.

  ‘Do they know,’ says Calil bel-Rioch, Empress-in-Exile, in that Wellhouse room that is cold with night and silence, ‘that their only protection, for millennia, has been the Tower? And do they know that when the Tower falls, all else falls?’

  And she says, ‘Call a festival, for this is the last night of my people –’

  But the Dance is ended.

  Dawn comes through the great arches, and I walk towards them. These have been windows opening into depths and darkness, the view from a height, and now – dawn. Warmth falls on my face as I approach, leaving the shadows. The cool of chiruzeth halls is replaced by fragile heat. The sun glows azure and aquamarine in the edges of the chiruzeth arch, a great open archway, and beyond it –

  It is early morning. Pale haze is fading with the sun’s rise. I look down, down on terraces of chiruzeth that fall away below me like cliffs. And all the terraces are crowded with my people.

  Their skins like milk in the morning light, their manes like clouds; and they stand at balustrades carved with vines, all their faces turned towards the east, the east where the sun rises through the mist into a pale blue sky skeined with daystars.

  They look. O they look, my people, and there is no space in that intense gaze for speech. I see how we stand together, arms interlinked, hands clasped, in embrace.

  And as I watch, that pale yellow sunlight is tinged on far eastern hills, with a harsh silver –

  Archonys of the Six Lakes, great beyond all cities, your towers in the morning sun, your great halls, your ziggurats and terraces –!

  Now all eastern-facing walls are crowded with the city’s people, come out to see this last dawn. Come out to stand in warm air that smells of leaves and city dust, come out to stretch in the heat of the morning sun; their faces turning up like flowers towards the light –

  On eastern hills: a line of light that is silver, older than Time, bright and deadly.

  I walk out on to the terrace, chiruzeth cool under my bare feet. I hear the soft clash of the metalmesh robe as I lift it from me and let it fall: stand naked to the gold eye of the sun.

  And from here to the eastern hills, all is Archonys; is that great city. And on terraces that face the east, they stand, my people.

  Casting aside their metalmesh robes, and raising long-fingered hands to tear their manes, to scratch their cheeks and lacerate their eyes, to raise up their voices in lamentation, to stand naked to the morning that is the last morning that this great city will ever see –

  Crying their agony, the long agony of regret, for night passed that will not pass again, for day come that must soon die; for all the years that now will not come to aKirrik and Simmerath, to the City Over The Inland Sea; agony for this heart of empire that beats no more, for Archonys that is fallen, fallen; and for all the days and years and centuries that now we shall not have –

  Do I weep the tears of the Golden, the world vanishing in splintered light? Do I see those sunwarmed terraces transmute to silver-crystal death?

  Ah, there is no time: no time for regret that pierces sharp as a sword. We have loved the darkness and the light; and now the face of the Sun is turned from us, She has left us, earth’s children, now we fade into a dream of ancient time, into a past that holds greater Empires than ours, but no greater death –

  �
�—_————_’

  ‘—_——’

  ‘——————’

  Give praise, O praise us; and weep for us who loved that bright shadow, and wept too late; and will not see again sunlight and noon –

  ‘————_’

  Weep for Us, and praise the light!

  ‘– Do they know,’ Calil bel-Rioch says, ‘that when the Tower falls, all else falls?’

  Her face is weary and exalted and incandescent; as if she has found at last something that will assuage that desire. The shadow of Santhendor’lin-sandru’s joy (and, yes, his grief) is in her eyes. And in that ancient tongue she says:

  ‘Did your people tell you, it cannot be created now? Ah, that’s true; but it is already there and waiting. And we made our plans long ago for this, and now the Tower falls, and all barriers with it. I could not halt it now, even if that were my desire –’

  A moment’s aching regret, and then her voice continues:

  ‘– all barriers fall. And we have loosed that ancient light, to dawn upon the world.’

  40

  Carrick V

  Whatever I would do, she said, there are a hundred Harantish who will do the same.

  I got to my feet somehow. At the arched doorway, I stopped; one of Cory’s officers glanced at me with concern, and looked past me into the Wellhouse room.

  ‘Do you want her moved, Representative, or kept here?’

  That small figure is seated on the stone rim of the well, looking down into black water; and one thin hand holds a metal jug with which she scoops up water and pours it out again, in an endless repeating cycle … starlight lays a mist of silver above the Well; and her whitefire mane falls down on to her filthy robe; and that hawk-face looks down into the Goddess’s Well.

  And now the Tower falls.

  What I said to the officer I don’t know. The Wellhouse’s claustrophobic domed rooms passed by in a dream: I limped, and pushed my way between Ortheans clad in priests’ robes, and the wounded who lay blanket-wrapped on the floor.

  And then the world came back into focus.

  ‘Cory –’

  Two or three young officers already occupied the room where she was: clustered round a field-comlink. Their voices had a note of hopeless urgency. Ignoring the thin crackle of reports coming in from the F90 and YV9 shuttles overflying the telestres, I braced my stick on the floor and limped across to where Corazon Mendez sat.

  She sprawled on a couch-chair, legs stretched out before her. That sleek hair was now slicked to her forehead, pale against her liver-spotted skin; and she stared up at me with blurred eyes, and a face looking ten years older.

  ‘You’ve heard what she says, then? Brought her in an hour ago, and then suddenly she claims …’

  ‘What have you done?’

  Cory Mendez swung her feet down, and stood up; her silver-ringed hands brushing at her coveralls, and with a touch of her old sharpness, said, ‘What do you take me for, Lynne? I’ve had round-the-clock satellite surveillance on that place, since we were informed how vital it is. There hasn’t been a minute in the last few days when I haven’t had a sensor reading of the Kasabaarde settlement available.’

  And I completely forgot to … But relief was swallowed up by apprehension: ‘Have you got any shuttles there now?’

  ‘No.’ The Pacifican woman’s face relapsed into lines of age. ‘With what’s been happening here? I ordered two F90s out an hour ago, from Kumiel, but they have to repower … The Kasabaarde settlement’s quiet; nothing’s happening!’

  ‘What are we worrying about? She can’t destroy the Tower.’ But a dread was growing in me. I thought: No matter how long ago it was thought of … what arms; what technology … but didn’t someone say to me once: Anything can be a weapon?

  Corazon Mendez said, ‘There’s enough dangerous equipment on that continent to destroy a dozen settlements. It isn’t the arms trading I’m thinking of. Representative Rachel had Trade&Aid programmes underway. If you check the records you’ll see earth-blasters, automatic deep-mine construction equipment – which T&A trains the local population to use. And that could have been moved. If this has been a long-term plan –’

  Outside, the heathland is dark under the Heart Stars’ radiance; and a few miles to the south, the sea laps on the Melkathi sandflats; and over the ocean, south and west, lies a desert shore: there is Kasabaarde, there is the broken and deserted inner city, that home of violence and vision; there is the Tower. If will could move me, I would stand there now.

  ‘I’m taking the shuttle,’ I said. ‘You?’

  The woman looked over at the young officers round the field-comlink. Her face was blank with bereavement. Stripped momentarily of her role as Security Officer, Company officer; she now turned her face to me, and we both stood in silence. If we had only known becomes too late in the tick of a clock. She smiled vaguely, painfully; said, ‘Yes. I should be there.’

  As she left with me, she turned back and ordered one of her junior officers: ‘See that government envoy Clifford is informed about where we’ve gone. I’ll contact him from the shuttle. Tell him it’s a matter of –’ Corazon paused, expression fully conscious of irony. How to make words encompass this? She said bitterly, ‘– a matter of the utmost urgency.’

  The hull of the F90 shuttle curved against the stars, the light bright enough to show the fire-stains on it; and as I limped awkwardly up the ramp, I smelled in the night air the scent of crushed mossgrass. Cool dew fell. I looked back once at the domes of the Wellhouse, and the flickering yellow light. A rashaku cried, invisible in the night air, disturbed by the noise the wounded made. Hill and heathland stretched silver-grey under starlight, and far to the east there were pinpricks of orange light that might be fire.

  The shuttle thrummed into life, and I let the port close, and leaned heavily on my stick as I walked down the cabin and sat by the holotank. Soft green light illuminated the consoles. The pilot, a Pacifican man in his forties, looked queryingly at Corazon Mendez: she leaned over his shoulder to key in a course.

  I reached down, lifting my plastiflesh-cased leg and trying to ease it into a comfortable position. Pain throbbed, held back by tabs; and, lightheaded, I thought, Here am I in a shuttlecraft of the PanOceania multicorporate Company, on telestre land in Melkathi – And not far inland of us now is the place where Orhlandis telestre burned, one summer, eight years ago.

  If you had seen this then, amari Ruric, what would you have done?

  The cabin floor vibrated as the shuttle rose. I reached to key in a holotank image. The comlink crackled with transmissions from other shuttles – refuelled at Kumiel, and gone out again? – flying surveillance over the Hundred Thousand: Melkathi and Rimon and Ymir, the city Tathcaer and the Oranon River valley …

  Land is burning, now. The white city is burning, its pale plaster-walled buildings smashed open; and Citadel crag is smashed; and what dead lie in the wreckage, and what hurt and unrescued –? If we had generations, it might heal.

  Corazon Mendez leaned over to key out the volume of the comlink transmission, and I said, ‘Leave it.’

  Comprehension came. She didn’t speak, and the pilot was silent as he swung the big craft round and set a course to the south-west; and the quiet of the cabin was broken only by the comlink’s crackle and hiss: thick with interference.

  Don’t let it clear.

  If that goes, it will be the first intimation that the Tower no longer functions; and that the barriers against the spread of ancient light have been broken down.

  And the hours of the night pass, this ship racing above the ocean, as the dawn line races at our heels. The stars move in their ritual patterns, and this earth turns towards the morning –

  I sat at the holotank, watching the images of night and the bitter sea.

  Nothing has happened, nothing is happening –

  The seat was uncomfortable, the cabin hot. Cory Mendez sat by the pilot, saying nothing. I leaned back from the holotank, rubbing at my hip.r />
  Half a year … Impossible, I thought. Six months ago I stepped on to Orthean soil, outside that city without walls; and Molly with me; what did we think we were going to do? Aid the starving and win profits for the Company? Ah, it seems incredible. How could we have guessed, then, that it would lead to this?

  My mouth was sour and dry. I manoeuvred myself up to get a pain-tab and a drink from the console, pausing to listen to the comlink. No words distinguishable now, only the hiss and spark of a radiant interference: counter-radiation, a suppressor …

  I didn’t go to the cabin at the rear of the shuttlecraft, where her body lies.

  As I sat down, staring into a holotank that showed only blackness, I thought, But it was inevitable.

  Once such destructive power is created, it will be used. No matter that years pass, and millennia; that is only a hiatus. The universe is older than comprehension and time is infinite. In time, it has been only a tick of the clock since that great Empire fell: this was implicit from the beginning …

  I thought of Calil’s face, drained of all vision. I want something I had, or saw, or heard of, long ago … I have sensed it sometimes in the way light and haze and shadow fall. And then: That desire wouldn’t be assuaged now by the having of it … it awakens the real desire, of which that is only a shadow and a memory.

  And my head is full of visions, hers and mine and history’s: the face of Santhendor’lin-sandru, and that great city, and the slave race that gave into their hands the power to destroy a world, and which came first? The power to consume all earth in annihilation, or the desire for that bright shadow?

  For a moment I believe that I felt it, that same triumph that Calil bel-Rioch dreams in one of the Goddess’s houses, a continent away to the north; and then I had a sudden memory of how, all one long afternoon, we had played ochmir in the great square under the Citadel, Haltern and Blaize and I; how Ruric and her child Rodion waited with us, waiting to hear, at Midsummer-Tenyear, the name of the new Crown of the Hundred Thousand – which will never happen again. That is true, whatever happens now. And –