‘They did not… cut…’
‘Not the flesh, no.’ And after that Terascouros brooded and would not talk about it.
Thewson and Leona went out into the world to fetch the dogs, returning a day later. Leona was not one who talked much, and Thewson often did not talk at all. Still, in the long miles they fell into a kind of shared feeling which allowed them to speak and hear one another. Leona asked, and Thewson told of his spear. ‘This blade is an old, old blade. Perhaps my father’s father’s father carried this blade.’
Leona commented bitterly that they had both been given hand-me-downs. It took some time to explain why hand-me-downs, things which Thewson treasured, were despised by the people of the moors. Finally, Thewson said, ‘Wao’su, Leona. Lamazh sofur fanaluzh. That is a saying of my people. “It may be wisdom to look at ancient things.” See how you wear the old circlet they gave you. It was not new-made for you, but you were new-made for it.’
Leona laughed shortly. ‘So were you new-made for your spear, dear warrior. I will think on your wisdom.’
‘Will you tell me why you become the Umarow, the Great Beast? Is it so with all your people?’
‘Perhaps this power is latent in my people. Perhaps only in some. If the sphinx comes again, I will ask her, for it is a great riddle.’
‘No, Lady. Do not have anything to do with that one. Ask no questions of that one. Better to see the basilisk than to question the sphinx. See how my people dare use the skin of the basilisk to bind our blades to the shaft of the spear. We would not dare use the skin of the riddle-maker so.’
‘I did not see the basilisk. It was dark, and I was blinded by the lights in the tower and wild with the pain of the wounds they had dealt me blindly.’
‘Did you find the sleeper, Jaer, where the Keeper said?’
‘I found long corridors and harsh light and the smoke of burning. I found a place where some in red robes cried endlessly in a great hall. I broke their chains and drew out the nails and saw them scrabble across the floor into a yawning pit which mumbled and munched in the very throat of earth. I found treasuries. I found Jaer in a room at the base of the tower, in a cell which I broke, among others which I killed. There were old women there, sleeping, dreaming. I could smell the drug on them. I remember it, but as though it had been a dream. The gryphon is not afraid, Thewson, never afraid, but it grieves. Strange, to be so huge and so grieved. I wonder what it is the gryphon grieves for?’
Thewson wondered as well. It distressed him for long hours to think of the Great Beast, hunted by the youths of the Lion Courts, killed and skinned, somehow grieving. He shook his spear moodily, did not speak for some time, thought seriously of returning to the south.
However, instead he went with Jasmine to glean in a field newly harvested, taking food with them, and new cider. When the other gleaners had gone, they hiked to the top of a long, east-west ridge to the north of the fields and stood there gazing away to the north and east, from which the threat seemed to come. Thewson was not one to talk much, but Jasmine made up for that.
‘Since I was a tiny child, I have wanted to be like Leona. So tall and queenly, with hair like silver gilt. She walks like a queen, too; she would look well in the embroidered gala clothes we wear in Lak Island. Then I think of her as the gryphon and do not know whether I would be like that or not. Yet when we were on the trail, Thewson, and I watched you two together, I thought that you were like the legendary ones, day and night, light and dark, the king of shadow and the queen of dawn.’
Thewson snorted, a kind of laugh which betokened deep amusement. ‘Leona would not be queen to any king, little one. She is lover of women only, and not often that, I think.’
Jasmine was surprised into silence, then suddenly aware that she had known it all along. ‘Well, that is too bad. I was wondering, you know, what kind of children you two might have. It must be hard for you, Thewson, to find women who are as tall and well built as the women in your own land must be. We here in the north are smaller folk. As my people would say, “As is skimpt seeks skimpt, as is fleskt seeks fleskt.” I have seen no woman sizable enough for you except Leona.’
Thewson smiled, lying back against the sun-warmed trunk of a tree. ‘Jasmine. That is the name of a flower. In the Lion Courts we name the women not often for flowers. Our women are given names like “swift fish” or “yellow bird.” Perhaps in our land we would name Leona “stork girl” or “tall tree.’“
Jasmine made a face.
‘But in our land,’ he went on meditatively, ‘you would be called the name of our flowers – zhuraoli, the little fire, or xufuasua, waterwing, what you call lily. The tall men put lilies in their hair sometimes, you know. Men would rather wear a lily than a stork.’ He laughed.
‘Well, Jasmine is not for wearing,’ she retorted.
‘Is it for always talking?’ He tugged her down onto the ground next to him and drew her close. ‘See where the mist is, there in the valley. And far north is dark, and all around is strangeness and change. It may be I will not see the Lion Courts again.’
Since this sounded like sorrow, Jasmine reacted to comfort him, and when she found it was not really sorrow, it was too late to stop the comforting. They returned late to the hill, both comforted.
And Terascouros went with her own daughter, Teraspelion, to the high ridge above the valley into which the men of the Hill had teased the ghosts. Men had walked near the ghosts with hot torches, enticing the mists over a pass into this pocket where they now seethed in disquiet, growing in strength and substance with each passing day. Since that time the Sisters had watched them, studied them, worried over them with increasing fear.
‘In the name of ten thousand fire imps, Terascouros, what power did you summon up there in Murgin?’
‘I don’t know what it was, Daughter. Leona told me to call on certain powers. I did so.’
‘Earthsoul?’
‘No. And yet… perhaps yes.’
‘It wasn’t something we are forbidden? Not…’
‘No. Certainly not.’ Terascouros was indignant. ‘I would not reach out to touch – that. It wasn’t like that at all. It was earthy, warm, perhaps a little hard, but still yielding, listening, helpful in a stubborn, intransigent way.’
‘Very descriptive,’ said the younger woman drily. ‘Could you control it?’
She snorted. ‘As I could control a hurricane. No. I could not control it. I could ask. It could agree or not agree. In this case it agreed.’
‘Well, the Council has forbidden any further doings of the kind. I hope you had not grown fond of this weapon, Mother. You may not use it again. Not when it leaves these … things behind it.’
‘I know. Old Aunt told me. Not even to save my life, she says, or the lives of others. We must go to the knife before we create more of these. I lie awake in the night wondering whether that which guides Gahl and that which lies behind the Concealment are the same. I wondered if I had done wrong in listening to Leona to cast Murgin down and leave these here. Fo they are growing; they are becoming capable of violence and injury. Soon they will be powerful, but Aunt will not let us destroy them, even though we can.’
‘The Thiene taught that all must return to Earthsoul, that nothing may be everlastingly Separated or destroyed. We can sing these ghosts out of existence, Mother, but that denies what the Thiene taught. To do so diminishes Earthsoul. It may be necessary, but we do not know enough yet. If you call up those same powers to pull down Zales – for there is a city there as bad as Murgin was – we will have more of these. If you do not, the Gahlians will swarm over us and take us away to the last child, away to their surgeries and their knives. Must our choice be only whether we will be killed by live Gahlians or dead ones?’
Terascouros shook her head. Left to herself she thought that she would have sung whatever song was needed to send these wraiths into oblivion. In the mist were darker blots which twined and drew themselves up into shapes of terror. Her throat was dry, and she recognized the
rush of fear with no surprise. Heartsick, she turned away to return with Teraspelion to the Hill. There they learned that the Council had summoned the travellers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE COUNCIL
Year 1169–Late Winter
The Council chamber brooded in silence, weighted with a feeling like woodsmoke, thin, nostalgic, at once bitter and sweet. Eyes stared into distance, searched for memories, past joys, turned over present sorrows in fingers of thought, told lives like beads, took quiet inventories of years. The texture of the chamber was of worn brocade, immensely detailed, yet faded, colours greyed, threadbare in places. As the travellers entered among the Sisters, pictures fled across their minds—not their own memories, but others.
They were escorted to seats at the centre of the chamber, where Terascouros greeted her white-haired aunt with a kiss, was kissed in return and drawn into an embrace. The old woman whispered to them all, ‘We see and do not see. There is among us no doubt at all, and doubt only. We do not know what is so, though we are sure what is not. Our complacency is shattered. Now we need you, your eyes, thoughts, memories, to add to our own.’
They sat down, all but Terascouros apprehensive. She smiled comfortingly at them, patted Jasmine’s hand. ‘Just sit quietly,’ she said. ‘Listen to the singing. You needn’t do anything.’
The silence in the chamber was full of currents and eddies which they could feel brushing them. There was in one place a tension, a tightness which drew in. Elsewhere was a looseness, a letting go. One balanced against the other so that the chamber seemed to rock. The singing had been going on for some time before they realized it, and when they realized it they were already part of it, inextricably bound up in it, held and carried. To Leona it was an electrical feeling, an attraction to which she fled as if she went home. To Medlo it was as if he were a note in the song, drawn to his own place in it, sung by it and singing. Jasmine swam in it, as a fish in water, endlessly against the flow. And Thewson found himself flying in the air, suddenly winged, soaring above an earth green and glorious beneath an endless sky.
Then they were drawn in to the wholeness of the mind which the Sisterhood sent outward, becoming only a part of a greater whole, a single, curving edge of searching thought.
The mind moved over the saddle of the Hill, into the little valley where the mists swirled, narrowed itself into a fine blade of thought and moved to cut away one swirl of mist, one bit of circling shadow. Into that bit the mind looked, questioned: ‘What are you? Who are you?’ and heard the agonized whisper in answer.
‘I am … I am … My name is … Give me … I need … I am…’
Reluctantly the mind turned from this swirl of mist to another, again questioned, again heard. ‘I am … Let me … I need …’ That was all.
Though the mind questioned again and again, it was answered only by a hollow, hungering, inexpressible need without identity. The mind withdrew, saddened. It gathered itself and fled away to the west like a cloud before wind, swiftly. It rested above the castle garth of Rhees, searching downward through fleecy clouds, knowing through Medlo’s intelligence what was seen.
Riders came from the gates of the castle. Medlo’s mother, the lady Mellisa, her brother, courtiers, the Master of Hawks, several gorgeously gowned ladies, three grooms, and a meaty, lumpish boy of eight or nine who glanced at the world from the back of a small horse, all swept out into an afternoon beautiful with blossom and sun. They were waved farewell by a stout, bearded man, the erstwhile Lord Hardel of the Marches, and he watched them long as they rode away, a curious look, part satisfaction, part regret.
On the heights above the road a half-completed temple towered, and the troop clattered past long lines of sweating black robes hitched to sledges loaded with dressed stone as they tugged them upward in endless procession to the heights. At one time an ancient keep of the Drossynian house had stood there. Now a Temple of Separation reared toward completion. The troop, to its last and youngest member, looked pointedly elsewhere. The mind could hear the thoughts of the Lady Mellisa as though she spoke aloud. There had been certain threats by the Keepers of the Seals. The Lord Hardel has negotiated. In return for being allowed to build the Temple without hindrance, and to take a levy of the common people into their group, the black-robed Gahlians had agreed to leave the lady and the lord in possession of their lands, titles, and enjoyments.
The lady mused that it would not have happened in the days of the High King at Methyl-Dain, but Methyl-Dain was in ruins and the High King survived only in certain esoteric references to oaths and guarantees formerly exchanged among the duchies of the kingdom. They would be exchanged no more. All the duchies had been ‘Separated’ as the Keepers put it.
Knowing all this, the troop made no reference to it. They spurred their horses into a clatter of rising dust and swept by, away to the riverside for an afternoon of fishing, hawking, and dalliance. The hovering mind followed their journey. As they neared the river meadows, one of the grooms fell back, his horse limping. The others went on to confront two iron wagons on the verge of the road. Two red-robed ones stood nearby. As the troop drew up, doubtfully, one of the Keepers raised his hand as if in greeting, and something round and shiny as a bubble flew from the raised hand to burst in the dust at the lady’s feet. She smelled something unpleasant, started to say something….
The lagging groom had seen the wagons from the curve of the road and had prudently dismounted, tugging his horse into a screening copse. He watched, round-eyed, until the wagons were gone, then returned in all haste to the castle. There, he learned that a council of black robes had been installed as the governing body of Rhees. The consort, Lord Hardel, was stating the doctrine of the Gahlians as though it had been his own. It was being said that the Lady Mellisa and her brother, Pellon, had gone to visit her sister in the lower reaches of Methyl-lees, by the sea. The groom, more sensible than many twice his age, changed his clothing for something less conspicuous and left Rhees by the straightest road. What the groom had seen and heard, the mind knew, having watched and listened long into the night hours.
The mind turned to flow southward, over the Outer Sea and the clustered islands, across beaches glimmering under starlight, over vast brown deserts, and into the jungles which edged the land of the Lion Courts. In the deeps of this jungle a clearing flowed beneath the mind, in the clearing one tree, a tree which seemed to brush the sky, xoxa-auwal, sky gatherer, Tree of Forever, looming and eternal, at its roots a tiny rock shrine which was being dismantled stone by stone by black-robed acolytes who worked by glaring torchlight while others plied axes against the giant trunk. An aged man tottered into the clearing, waving a leafy branch, crying out in remonstration. An axeman stepped forward, almost casually, and cut him down. Thewson’s perception allowed the mind to grieve for the shaman, faithful to the forest gods, dead.
The mind seemed to hear within itself a plangent, metallic call, a turning of the will toward the north. It drifted to the dark moors of Anisfale, grey in the early dawn, to hang there above ruins of ancient houses and crofts. A temple was being built on the site of the ancestral graveyard at Gaunt. The gravestones were set into the walls of the temple. A Gahlian minion hacked with chisel and mallet at one of them, smoothing away the words: ‘Fabla, widow of Linnos. Too long dying. Too young dead.’
The mind raged, drew itself into fury, spat fire. ‘Fabla,’ raged the mind. ‘Cannot even her marker lie in peace on the moors of Anisfale?’ The mind recoiled, shocked, flowed around its own rage, isolated the anger, cushioned it and bound it, carried it away toward the east, toward Lak Island. It went into the dawn, over wooded valleys and down the long river courses to the endless freshwater lakes of the eastern plains. The city of the island lay quiet in the dawn, the primeval bulk of the convent and Temple dark and tenantless, the city walling itself into enclaves with walls half built, the sound of bell and drum from a newly built Temple of Separation filling the streets as water fills a bowl. Deep under the convent, in the
immemorial cellars, at a door so old that its hinges fell away in reddened dust, the mind found several women in the garb of nuns stealing away from the city, under the walls, down long root-dangled muddy tunnels to the distant countryside. With them went a child.
On the floor of the sanctuary, white and still in a pool of clotted blood, lay Eldest Sister, true to her vision of the Goddess, cut down by the robed ones who now searched the maze-like corridors for other life. There was none. Behind the fleeing women in the tunnels, dirt fell in a tiny avalanche, hiding their footprints. ‘Hu’oa,’ the mind breathed gently. ‘Flee swiftly. Get away.’
The mind came up from Lakland, peered south and east, toward the city of Tchent and the lands beyond the Concealment, encountering a wall of stubborn darkness, of amorphous shadow, of quilted mist, layer on layer, impenetrable. From this hidden place flowed malice, evil intent, a kind of horrid hunger as though something licked at their souls with a loathsomely coated tongue and breathed on them with a rotting, leprous breath. The mind retreated, burned as by a corrosive acid, and fled swiftly so that the towering, watchful darkness in the east should not follow them back into the Council chamber.
Medlo and Jasmine wept, the one for a loved land lost, the other for a child endangered. Thewson’s jaw was clenched tight and his eyes blazed. He had not loved the old shaman, but he had honoured him and had honoured the great tree. Leona’s pale gaze was fixed on the far wall of the cavern, expressionless and hard.
Out of the silence came the whispery voice of the Old Aunt who had called peace upon the Council.
‘You have seen, travellers, and we with you. In our previous search we saw the city of Murgin fall. Some of us saw the creatures you described. Some of us saw – other things. All of us now know that forces, powers, something came at your call, something we do not know, have not learned of, do not recognize. Long have we served the True Powers, these thousands of years. Long have we been true to Taniel who began our order. Long have we served those who guard and guide, those Masters of our earth; in metaphor, in symbol we have served. Now, we see symbols walking, metaphors sprung to life and moving upon cities.
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