The Revenants

by Tepper, Sheri S

  Jasmine talked of the Girdle of Chu-Namu, singing in a quiet voice the ‘Lamentation’ which was among the notes given her by the Library Sister. Shortly thereafter, Thewson returned to ask if they wanted the black robe brought. ‘Do you want it now?’ he asked, as though he were taking orders for breakfast. ‘Or later?’

  ‘I don’t want one at all,’ murmured Jasmine. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Whenever,’ said Medlo firmly. ‘So that it will be here when Leona returns.’ Yet when Thewson returned with a limp burden over his shoulder and Medlo started to make a gag for it, he turned from it, retching. ‘Take it away, Thewson.’

  ‘Is it dead?’

  ‘No. But it has no tongue. The tongue has been cut out. Leona will need one that can speak.’

  Thewson made an exclamation of disgust, then spoke a litany of some kind in his own language. ‘Ya! Fomun luxufus, ya zhoanu. Ya! Fua Foxomol, sar luxufus.’

  ‘Do you know what he’s saying?’ asked Jasmine.

  ‘It’s a prayer. Something about, “God, if you made people so foolish, it’s your own fault.” I was on a ship once which touched at the Wal Thai delta where that tongue is spoken.’

  They settled into depressed silence, finding it more difficult to speak of anything. Even breathing was too much effort. At last Thewson returned again, this time with a body which struggled and made strangled noises.

  ‘This one talks, all the time. This one is a boss.’

  The Keeper turned to gaze at them, eyes full of a strangeness which Medlo could not identify. It was not precisely anger, nor hate. No, it was a kind of dim, fervid hollowing look, as though the creature had been burned away from the inside, leaving only a speaking shell. Gagged, it stared and burned at them.

  They waited once more, silent except for the long, honing sound as Thewson sharpened his spear blade, a deadly whisper in the tangle. The sun dropped. Darkness gathered. They rose wearily, ready to find a sleeping place in the forest once more. Then they halted, listening to a thin, far crying.

  ‘Haii. Haii. Haii.’

  ‘It’s Terascouros,’ said Jasmine.

  Leaving the Keeper tied in the tangle, they went toward the sound to find Terascouros stumbling along the edge of the trees, pausing to call out from time to time. She was exhausted.

  ‘Well,’ she whispered. ‘So you’re here. Well, so are we, in a manner of speaking. I had to find you first, because – because I had to tell you, Thewson, to give Medlo your spear and let him hide it somewhere. Leona says that. Please, she says.’

  Thewson drew himself taller and said ominously, ‘I do not give my spear. And if Medlo takes it, grandmother, he will be a dead picker of flowers.’

  ‘Just for a little moment, Thewson. She says it is important. For the space of a few breaths, no more. Give him the spear, and let him hide it, then come with me.’

  There was a long, hostile silence, but she looked so tiny and harmless that Thewson shook his head. The poor old grandmother was a pitiful sight; let them get this nonsense over with so that she could sleep. He tossed the spear to Medlo, sneering as Medlo staggered under the weight. He turned his back pointedly, as Medlo carried the spear into the dead forest and put it somewhere out of sight. The old woman turned away along the trees, among stumps and fells, up a little hill beside an outcropping of stone, ochre and dun in the failing light. She stopped, peering ahead, and there at the edge of the trees was the gryphon – huge, brazen, and terrible.

  Thewson cried out, ‘Umarow,’ and again, ‘Great Beast.’ He flung himself forward, searching the ground for something to use as a weapon, and Terascouros tripped him so that he fell sprawling.

  ‘Wait,’ she cried, her shrill old voice like the cry of a hawk. ‘Wait. It’s not your Great Beast, warrior. It is Leona.’

  Thewson sat up stupidly, his usual expression washed away by one of combined greed and wonder. He began to rant a long, complicated tumble of words in his own language, waving his arms. Terascouros sat down beside him, her head hanging with weariness.

  ‘Oh, I know. Yes. I know. I was there when she changed. Went into the north, we did. Found a place by a stream with the moon on the edge of the world. Stripped, she did. Told me to hold her clothes. There I was beside her, one moment she was there, the next moment she was gone. I was close enough to touch her, but I couldn’t see her. She kept calling. “Look at me,” but I couldn’t see her. I felt the wing knock me over like a great wind, and then I knew – I knew I needed a seeing spell, and I cried out to the Air-Spirit. I needed a spell, you know, to convince my eyes to see. I had to convince myself that there was something there. Too many years spent learning there’s nothing there, then suddenly having to learn there is something there after all…. But you, you saw her at once. Strange. Perhaps because you are all young. Well, I can see her now.’

  The gryphon paced slowly forward into the waning light, huge beak opening and tongue vibrating with a metallic call, the call of a bell struck with a padded mallet, softly resonant dwindling to a hum. They stared and went on staring. The light dimmed as the tableau continued. At last Thewson rose.

  ‘It is Leona. Where are the dogs?’

  ‘She left them behind. Couldn’t carry all three of us through the sky. They’ll hunt; they’ll be all right. She’ll get them later.’

  ‘I need my spear.’

  ‘You’re not going to try to –’

  ‘No.’ He shook his massive head, the tails of his bound hair whipping the air in negation. ‘You say it is Leona. I know it is. We will do something now, and if we do something, I need my spear.’

  Medlo went for the spear, grateful for the chance to move away alone. He saw, but did not believe what he saw. He believed, but did not know how he could believe. ‘Too much,’ he said. ‘Too much changing. Things happening. Strangeness.’ But he could not dwell on that, for the others came after him to pick up the black-robed one, bound and gagged as it was, and carry it back to the forest camp.

  Later, none of them could make words to remember what happened then. They could recall only pictures of shapes and shadows.

  There was firelight which was orange and amber, lighting and hiding, disclosing and shading. There was rock gleaming like metal, then as if furred with lichen. Trees, giving back the light from leaves in reflected fragments, then taking the light up into velvet darkness. All shifting, all wavering. Hard and soft, sharp and dull, real and imaginary, one following the other, one after the other, endless images.

  There was the Keeper, or acolyte, or whatever it was or had been or titled itself. There was no hair on the Keeper anywhere. All the hair had been cut away. Only scars were there, thick and stiff, like the wax of candles poured layer on layer, angry red, as though the cutting had been done many times. It had no sex, only a roughness between the legs where the scars were, and a roughness on the chest where more scars were. No eyebrows. No hair beneath the arms. Only scars.

  It could not say whether it was a woman or man, or had been girl or boy. It did not know. It knew only that the pain would end when it had been paid in kind, by another. When this one could ‘recruit’ another to suffer equally, then this one would be allowed to die, to go to that place it had been promised. But the account seemed never to be paid. It cried that it had brought others, more than one, many. Still the account was not balanced. They did not suffer enough. They had not yet lived long enough with the pain. So, this one said, it would go on bringing others – recruiting others – to Murgin.

  At last the gryphon reached out and separated it from life with one great claw, and quiet came.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  INSIDE MURGIN

  Year 1168-Winter

  Jaer was drugged during most of the trip to Murgin. She came to herself from time to time to see the trunks of trees plunging past or to see firelight or to hear the clatter of hooves over stone. No one spoke to her. During most of the journey she dreamed.

  She had come, she dreamed, with Medlo and Terascouros – there may have be
en others, shadowy at the edge of her vision, but it was hard to see—to a place near a great sea; a city, not ruined but old, placid, sun-warmed, and so quiet that the sound of voices was an interruption. There was a broad river, a bridge, and at the end of the bridge a domed building where Jaer stood and watched as figures moved in and out of a wide hall. The floor of it sloped down on every side to centre on a pit filled with flashing lights and metallic gleaming.

  Jaer could see high, narrow tables among the flickering lights – six, seven. Men and women moved among them, speaking to one another with laughter and excitement.

  ‘Audilla, will you care for me still?’

  ‘Talurion, don’t act the fool at a time like this!’

  Beside Jaer – and those other shadowy ones – stood a man and a woman, not looking at one another, their faces blanked with a kind of melancholy which Jaer, even in the dream, thought strange and out of place. The man was speaking in a soft tenor voice, not so high as to seem effeminate and yet with delicacy, Taniel, why won’t you join us?’

  Taniel. Jaer remembered that name from lessons with Ephraim and Nathan. It was an important name, but Jaer could not remember why.

  She who answered was slender, tall, dark hair gently curved around her ears and across level brows. She made a gesture of frustration. ‘Urlasthes, you have asked and asked, and I have said and said …’

  His lips mocked a smile. Taniel of the Two Loves, is that it? Omburan, again?’

  ‘Omburan, still. You know how he feels about this!’

  ‘You know, my dear, eventually you must choose between us.’

  ‘You know, my dear, that I will not. That’s why I won’t take part in this … this thing you’re doing. I don’t want to be … so changed.’

  ‘Not even for the better?’ Urlasthes watched her face closely, reached out to stroke her hair. ‘No, I see you are not moved by the possibility of betterment. Well, when you have seen – perhaps?’

  ‘When I have seen. Perhaps, when he has seen, even Omburan…’

  The other laughed, harshly. ‘I will be above jealousy soon, Taniel. Beyond it. At this moment, however, I can still feel it enough to resent that.’

  ‘If you will be above jealousy, Urlasthes, perhaps … you will be above love as well.’ She clung to him, and he calmed her as he might a child.

  ‘Nonsense. We will be able to love more. Well, now is not the time to argue it. They are ready. See, Audilla is beckoning. Wait for me here. I will see you … after.’

  He joined those who were stretching themselves upon the high tables. Others moved around them, speaking quietly, as though in a ritual, a litany of numbers and lights. To one side was a vast tube or jar, bound around with hoops of shining metal and connected to the wiry tangle. The place fell silent. Still. One tiny movement by one of the attending figures, a small lever moving in a slot from one side to the other, and then a hum, as though something living had wakened deep in the earth.

  Those who lay upon the tables began to shine, glowing from within. In the great jar darkness gathered, a grey mist, rolling, thickening, curdling upon itself as a storm cloud curdles. On the tables the figures shone brighter, beautiful in their shining, and more beautiful still until it hurt to look at them.

  Still the darkness gathered. The jar filled, became black and horrible.

  Upon the tables the figures stirred, rose in godlike glory, faces radiant. As one they turned toward the contained darkness, contemplating it for a moment with deep satisfaction. Then into each deific face came a frightened comprehension, and a growing horror.

  As they approached Murgin, Jaer’s captors gave her less of whatever drug it had been; she woke from her dreaming to feel the pain of bound limbs, of hunger and thirst, the beginning of apprehension not yet strong enough to be terror.

  They came to a place of dead trees, a mile or more of grey trunks set in dun earth with no leaf or green among them and only the vultures and kites circling far overhead to show that anything still lived in this place. Then came the place where the trees had been felled, and they went as if between the horrid knuckles of ancient giants. Finally the hooves of the animals pounded across the black pave, mile on jarring mile, harsh ringing of hoof on stone until the animals arrived at last, blown and shivering, before the gates of Murgin. One of the company made a wordless cawing, as from a tongueless throat, and the gates grated open into broad, bare corridors lit with acid light, floored with stone, roofed with stone, into which no light of the sun ever came nor light of the moon ever peered.

  They rode along bare corridors which twisted and branched deep into the mount of the city. Those they passed stood silent and bowed against the walls. The beat of hoof on stone was the beat of hammer on metal, an anvil struck relentlessly. They wound their way upward, the horses labouring, stopping at last outside an iron door set with bloodstones in the great Seal of Separation. These doors opened silently, and Jaer was dragged across an expanse of black floor to be flung down before a high dais with three carved thrones on which red-robed figures crouched beneath the weight of high iron crowns.

  The robed one who had carried her threw itself before the thrones, prostrate and trembling. A gasping whisper came from the dais, so freighted with age, agony and exhaustion that it might evoke pity, but it breathed with such obscene gloating that the pity turned upon itself, became an instinctive revulsion. An image formed in Jaer’s mind of a serpent, crippled and maimed, yet with all its venom and malice intact, crawling relentlessly after a tiring prey. The voice was made more terrible by a second voice, as like to the first as an echo, the two whispering together, interrogating the messenger who had brought Jaer and answering that interrogation while the messenger itself trembled and was silent.

  ‘Did it go to Byssa?’ breathed the first voice, ‘to Byssa to meet the one we had been told would come there? The one the old women saw in the dreaming dark? Had the old women heard it first on the sea? And then near Delmoth? And then by the River Del, coming toward Byssa?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ responded the second voice. ‘The old women saw it in the dreaming dark, coming toward Byssa. A strange one. Power all around it. Did our messenger go to Byssa to meet it? To find it? To catch it?’

  ‘No,’ breathed the first. ‘No. Our messenger was tricked, was delayed, was unwise. Our messenger knew the will of that but did not do the will of that. Is this not so?’

  The prostrate figure trembled, trembled and was silent. A sigh came from the dais. Almost, for a moment, Jaer might have believed that sigh. For a moment.

  ‘Where was the one we sought? The old women were given drugs, potent drugs, the drugs of dreaming. What did they see? The far places of Anisfale, Far, too far. This was not the one we sought near Byssa. Again the dream. The town of Yenner-po-Tau. Far, too far. Ah, but wait. One old woman speaks. She says, “No, not Yenner-po-Tau. The forests instead. The forests of Ban Morrish!” ‘

  ‘Where was our messenger? Oh, our messenger had not dared to fail again, our messenger had been wise, so wise. Our messenger had gone with dogs through the canyon of the River Del, had found a trail, had followed it into the forests.’ The voice tittered. Jaer wanted to vomit. Her head swam with the residue of the drug they had given her. The voices reciting to one another what was obviously already known went on, dizzyingly. She could not understand the obscene laughter in the voices, the sense of anticipation. Of what?

  ‘Then the old woman spoke of the forests of Ban Morrish. Then we sent word to our messenger. “Search,” we said. “Seek, find, for the one we seek is near you in the forest of Ban Morrish.” Did our messenger hear? Lo, one is now brought before us. But was this one alone? Where is the one of power, the strange one, the one sought? This does not look like the one we sought. Were there not others? Where are those others? Did our messenger not bring them? This is a sad and dreadful thing.’

  ‘Sad and dreadful,’ echoed the other voice. ‘Our messenger has failed.’

  ‘Nooo,’ moaned the figure on the floor. ‘
Nooo. I have brought the one you sought. Even when the dreamers could not find it, Lithos found it. Even when the directions failed, Lithos did not fail. Lithos found it. Lithos sent me with it. Lithos says it is the one. It is here!’

  ‘Oh, no,’ tittered both voices. ‘The messenger has failed. Let the messenger look on the reward. The reward our messenger may not receive.’

  At the side of the dais a huge stone moved, pivoted upward to stand like some massive monument at the end of a black pit. From the depths came a low mutter, a kind of growling as of some malign conversation among unthinkable creatures. The messenger had risen to struggle toward this pit, fighting against two other robed figures, lunging nearer and nearer to the opening. It was allowed to approach almost to the edge before one of the red-clad figures upon the dais gestured. The stone fell with a hideous finality to the sound of the messenger’s sobbing.

  ‘It wanted its reward,’ tittered the voice. ‘It wanted to go into the pit, to fall, to come to the end. But that is the reward for those who do not fail. This messenger failed. This messenger must try again.’

  The sobbing figure was dragged away. Jaer stood up, swaying. None of what had happened was at all real, and she brushed it away as she would a foolish dream. The falseness persisted, the red figures on the carved thrones were still there, each weighted by its iron crown. The play was evidently over. From the thrones they bent toward her, eyes intent upon her, the viscid voices winding into another interrogation. They desired to know about Jaer, her birth, life, her companions, destinations, purposes. In her dreaming confusion she said one thing and its opposite. She had been born, she said, in Lak Island, or perhaps in Rhees. She had grown up in Anisfale, except for travel in Xulanuzh to the south. There were lions in the south. Her mouth grew dry and then she said nothing. The guards gave her water with something acrid mixed into it, and the room hardened into clarity.

  ‘Once again,’ said one of the multiple voices. ‘Tell us where you are going. Who travels with you? Where are they now?’