The Revenants

by Tepper, Sheri S

  THE REVENANTS

  Sheri S. Tepper

  www.sf-gateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

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  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  GATEWAY INTRODUCTION

  CONTENTS

  MAP

  INTRODUCTION

  BOOK I: The Quest

  CHAPTER ONE: JAERA

  CHAPTER TWO: JAER

  CHAPTER THREE: MEDLO

  CHAPTER FOUR: JAER

  CHAPTER FIVE: LEONA

  CHAPTER SIX: MEDLO

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THEWSON

  CHAPTER EIGHT: JAER

  CHAPTER NINE: MEDLO

  CHAPTER TEN: LEONA

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: LITHOS

  CHAPTER TWELVE: JASMINE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THEWSON

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JAER

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE CITY OF CANDOR

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE CITY OF BYSSA

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE RIVER DEL

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE GRYPHON

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: INSIDE MURGIN

  CHAPTER TWENTY: OUTSIDE OF MURGIN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE SISTERHOOD

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE COUNCIL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: MAGISTER

  BOOK II: The Gate

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE AWAKENING

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: KELNER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE NORTHERN WAY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: THE WARTY MEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: PO-BEE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: LITHOS

  CHAPTER THIRTY: THE DOG KING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE ABYSS OF SOULS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: THE SOUTHERN WAY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE EASTERN WAY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: TCHENT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: BEYOND THE CONCEALMENT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: THE STONE CITY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: ORENA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: ORENA ARMED

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: THE TWO CITIES

  CHAPTER FORTY: THE GATE

  WEBSITE

  ALSO BY SHERI S. TEPPER

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDIX

  THE HISTORY OF THE KNOWN WORLD

  THE ROAD OF THE AXE KING

  AUTHOR BIO

  COPYRIGHT

  INTRODUCTION

  This is the story of the Seven Who Presumed – those called the Remnant in Orena-and of Thewson, proud warrior of the southland, driven by gods; and of Leona, Queen of Beasts, whose reign among the animals was stranger than even she knew; and of Jasmine, who loved her child; and of Medlo, prince and outcast, pro-heritor of a kingdom yet unfounded.

  And it is the story of a million anonymous sufferers under the whip of Gahl.

  And of Nathan and Ephraim, whose only frailty was age. And of Terascouros, whose only indiscretion was curiosity.

  And it is the story of Jaer, innocent bearer of a terrible burden.

  But to come to Jaer, we must begin with Jaera.

  BOOK I

  The Quest

  CHAPTER ONE

  JAERA

  Years 1137-1153

  The girl, Jaera, should have been smothered within hours of her birth, but she was not. If the family Widdek had been a little poorer, the birthers might have paid more attention; for it was well known that the poor were capable of anything. If there had been any prior rumour of deviation, any gossip or questions, the child might have lived no longer than her first breath; but the family Widdek was so middling, so ordinary, so meeching in its virtues and so mincing in its faults, as to provoke unconcern amounting almost to boredom. Besides which there were already three Widdek daughters and four Widdek sons. Who looks for deviation among such a herd?

  The Keepers of the Seals of Separation had last visited the village a decade before, and it was thought likely they would not return for a decade more. The cringing old man whom they had appointed as Deputy Observer was now half blind and spent most of his days before his own hearthfire sipping warmed wine and muttering imprecations against old friends long dead.

  So it was that Jaera came into the firelight of a late evening in the month of wings returning, squalled promptly, always a good sign, and suckled strongly when put to the nipple. If she was a bit pale, it was not remarked upon by the birthers. Of course the room was dark. She had a head of good black hair, too, and was as wrinkled as any newborn. The birthers took their silver cheerfully, did not go by the house of the Deputy Observer to report, and were not heard to speak of the baby thereafter in any but ordinary terms. The Deputy Observer neglected to call upon mother and babe, his duty demanding no more in this case than it had done in a half hundred others, equally neglected.

  The black hair must have fallen out very soon for it was recalled later that Jaera had always worn a cap tied over her head. That was not, in itself, unusual. There were always mothers who put caps on the babes to protect their soft little heads from chill. It was recalled later, also, that soon after Jaera’s birth, the Wanderer had returned to the woods surrounding the village, this time, it seemed, to stay. At least she built a small house in a glade not far away and seemed to be there whenever someone went to buy a cure for a fever or a balm for a sprain, not that anyone from the village would approach too closely to her house or do anything to break the Seal. This was the woman they came to call ‘The Woman Who Talks With Birds’ because of the feathered creatures that flocked there in answer to her whistles and in appreciation of her scattered grain.

  It might have been recalled, but was not, that when Jaera was about five her mother bought from a neighbour a quantity of black dye, saying that the wool from her one black sheep was insufficient for a certain striped cloak she planned to weave. No such cloak was ever woven, but after that time, Jaera was seen without the cap.

  These later recollections, however, were not to be part of the village tittle-tattle for some years. Jaera grew as did the other children. With them she learned to scratch a few message words, to card and to spin, dye and weave, plant, harvest, preserve and cook. It might have been noticed, from time to time, that Jaera’s sisters seemed to show her little affection. It could have been determined that man Widdek never spoke of her or t
o her. Still, there are families and families. Indeed, there were those who argued that since the Separation love was always risky and unwise. Others claimed that in such places as the village, pure since earliest memory, tender sentiment might be indulged – if carefully.

  The seasons circled uneventfully. The Deputy Observer died and was put to the flame with stingy ceremony. There was no precedent for appointing another to take his place, so the office remained unfilled. There was a brief flurry of concern over a stranger who appeared one evening at the riverward end of the village, leaned awhile on a gate, then passed around the settled area and away up the Eastern Mountain. He was seen climbing the trail to the place the wizard lived. The gate he had leaned upon was burned and a new one built. The farmwife in the nearest house was whipped on general principles, and the matter was allowed to end there.

  The Widdek daughters grew, came to the time of Passage, and put on the maiden bells which advertised them for sale into families as middling as their own. Daughters of those same families were bought in turn for the Widdek sons. Both daughters and sons’ wives paraded big bellies through the square, and only Jaera was left in the house.

  A festival of Passage was held in the fall of the year in which Jaera was twelve. Wife Widdek let it be known that Jaera was not yet a woman. The same the following year. Such delay was not really rare, but still the tongues began to wag. The girl had no breasts yet. She did not bathe with the other girls at the village bath house but went instead to the river with her mother. There was no festival of Passage in the following year, but a great one was planned for the year after. The daughter of the village Speaker was to come to Passage then. One old wife, her tongue sharpened by a lifetime of inconsequent malice, told the Speaker’s daughter that her companion in Passage might well be that Widdek daughter of whom such interesting things were said. The girl cried to her mother. The mother spoke to her man.

  He was not Speaker out of political accident. He was one to move swiftly, decisively though tactfully, in all things. He called to him another old woman, one who had lived in his house in good care for some years, and spoke quietly with her. The woman went out of the house in the evening, to the river, and there for three evenings concealed herself among the reeds until, on the third night, Jaera came to bathe. The old one was somewhat crippled by her years, but her eyes were as keen as in youth. She returned to the Speaker with the information which he sought.

  ‘Speaker, her hands and face are the good colour of our people, and the hair is the colour of our people, but her breast and belly and legs are white, and the hair on her body is not coloured like the hair on her head’

  The Speaker drew in his breath and cautioned himself to go carefully. There had been whispers about others from time to time. The Speaker’s own mother had been lighter than average. ‘Go among the women and the birthers,’ he said. ‘Find if there is cause to believe the laws of Separation broken. The year of that girl’s birth was the year of the great rock fall. Ask if there were strangers here who might have caused the rock fall….’ Even as he spoke, he knew he spoke foolishness. How would any stranger have come and he not known of it?

  Still, the old woman spent a hand of days wandering about the village, helping with weaving here, taking a pot of soup to a Gram there. At the end of that time she returned to say that no stranger had come to the village before the girl was born. ‘The people do not believe that strangers were here. There was the man who came through and leaned on the Blinnet woman’s gate; that was the only stranger. Those last Sealed are in their twenty-fifth year, and no other stranger has been seen in all that time.’

  ‘The wizard?’ hazarded the Speaker. ‘The Woman Who Talks With Birds?’

  ‘The wizard has not been seen in years. His fires only are seen, or his smoke sometimes. The Woman Who Talks With Birds is watched by the young men, Speaker, your own sons among them. Some of the women go there, sometimes, to buy medicine for fevers or the itch. But they do not go near her house. She does not come here.’

  ‘Then, if the laws have not been broken, there is an atavist among us. Go to the wife Widdek and bring her here.’

  The village learned what had happened when the wife Widdek returned from the house of the Speaker. She returned weeping. The man went that night into the fields, and when morning came there was a new hut at the far edge of the fields under the shadows of the forest. There was a goat tethered there, and an old water bucket hung on the doorpost. The gathering drum was sounded for the people, and at that gathering the wife Widdek was whipped for having birthed an atavist, and her man was whipped for having fathered and hidden one, and the Speaker told the people in a calm and reasonable voice that the last daughter Widdek was outcast from the people, probably an atavist, and would live apart from the people until the coming of the Keepers who would judge her to Seal her, which was unlikely, or to let her live her life outcast, or to put her to death.

  Thereafter it was noted that the man Widdek and the wife Widdek never spoke to one another again, and that the men of the daughters Widdek stayed apart from them and that the daughters who had been sold to the Widdek sons wept often. Still, they had already borne children, and the children were as brown and ruddy as any in the village. After a time, the Speaker gathered the people again and showed these children to them so that they could see there was no fault. The children stood naked and shivering in the centre of the square. One of the boys began to bawl and make puddles, and at that the people began to laugh. The sons and daughters Widdek bore more children thereafter, and the taint was forgotten. As for Jaera, alone in the hut at the edge of the forest, the people did not speak of her at all.

  She lived as outcasts must live, from the leavings of the people. She collected the wool and hair which the sheep and goats left on thorns and fences. She skinned the animals which died or were killed by other animals, if she could get to them before the owners did. She crept into the orchards in the deep night, and took seed from gardens to make a garden of her own. She milked the goat which wife Widdek had insisted she be given and took it at night to the edge of the herd for mating. No villager would venture out in the light of the moon, which was known to bring madness and death, so it was in the moonlight that Jaera moved about her world of shadow, bathing in the river, setting her fishtraps, stealing what was left for her to steal. She went little into the sunlight, and the skin of her face and arms grew as pale as the creamy pearl of her breast. Her hair grew out, a strange, deep copper, and fell wildly about her shoulders. She wove clothes of mixed white and grey wool and then steeped the cloth in a brew of leaves and roots which turned it the grey-green of lichen. She began to go, by moonlight, to the house of the Woman Who Talks with Birds.

  Some thought the Woman was mute. It was certain that she did not speak, though none knew whether it was that she could not or chose not. She did not speak to Jaera. Still, she was company of a sort, and it was a change to sit before the Woman’s fire in the Woman’s house, listening to the shifting of feathered bodies in the rafters, smelling die dark smells which came from the little pots on the fire, hearing the Woman whistling or calling to her tenants, going always with some small gift, a feather, a flute cut from willow, a ring carved from bone.

  She came to womanhood alone. It happened at midsummer, a night when she stayed close to the hut, for the valley was filled with roaming maidens and youths playing midsummer pranks and running screaming through the dusk. They would avoid the hut through habit, she knew, but she did not know what they might chance to do if they found her alone in the night. Moonrise came at midnight, and long before the light sifted over the Eastern Mountain and the wizard’s tower, the young of the valley were safe inside their homes. Then, with the light swelling upward in the east, she became filled with a devil of mockery and went running through the village with the willow flute at her lips sending her music up through barred shutters. She paused longest outside the Speakerhouse, making the lost sound of the stranger bird, but then fled away panting and hal
f sobbing on the forest path which led to the Woman’s house to fall at last on the Woman’s doorstep.

  When the door was opened to let the firelight out, Jaera saw the bloodstains on her clothes. The Woman saw them, too, and brought her inside and held her fast in her arms a long time before the fire, brooding soundlessly over her until Jaera’s sobbing stilled. Then she gave Jaera a soft leather garment and some of the soft moss which the women of that valley use for cleanliness’ sake. Before dawn the Woman sent her away, and Jaera saw on the Woman’s face an expression of great sadness.

  The devil of mockery had been a devil of error, as well. The song of the stranger bird had not gone unheard. The next day but one, after a day of council, the Speaker came to the Woman’s house with several men and burned the house to the ground. It may be that the Woman was warned, or it may be that she was away in the forest, but her body was not found among the ashes. That night, after moonrise, when Jaera came to the place she found only ashes and charred wood – except that on the stone which had been the doorstep there lay three green feathers and a flute carved from stone or, perhaps, ancient wood. Upon the shaft of the flute were scratched the symbols of Jaera’s name, the three feathers which are jae, the symbol for the third month, that of wings returning, and die water jug, raha, which is a symbol for life. The jug scratched on the flute was drawn as broken, but Jaera did not notice that. She took up the feathers and the flute and returned to her I hut, silent as the moonlight itself.

  Thereafter the stranger bird haunted the village. It sang only in the moonlight, when none might hunt or follow. It may be that none thought of Jaera; it was the habit not to think of her. It may be that all were sure that the Woman Who Talks With Birds came now to express her anger to the people. For whatever reason, Jaera was left alone. The song she made upon the flute was such a song as spirits might sing if trapped forever away from others of their kind, such a song as prisoners might make if prisoners had the voices of birds. It was a song to keep the villagers wakeful and weeping, and it was a song to waken other things and summon them to heal loneliness. It sang during all the moontime of midsummer month, during the moon-time of the month of shearing, during the moontime of leafturn. In the moontime of the month of harvest, the song was answered.