“That is all?”
“He owned Ghaka …” she concluded lamely, and Natil raised an eyebrow bitterly.
“Owned? What word is that? He was Ghaka’s good, but he did not own Ghaka. Ghaka belongs to us, to you and me, the winged and wingless, the people of this earth.” He stamped his foot. “These mountains. We were born here. Where was he born? Where did he come from? What is he? Is he a child of the sun?”
“He is immortal.” She struggled with the words. “He was here on Ghaka before any of us. The W—” Her mouth fought to catch the memory before it passed through her mind and was lost forever. “The Worldmaker made him and the sun together.”
“How do you know that?”
“The ancestors …”
“Have you seen the Worldmaker? Where is the long memory that let you see him talking to the ancestors? Rintar!” He was in haste to make her see, and his urgency made him cruel. “Wherever he is from, whatever he used to be, we can no longer walk in dreams where he was good and beautiful. There may or may not be a Worldmaker. That is not our affair. But there is a being on Ghaka who wishes us evil, who will use us, who is very powerful, who is not one of us. We call Ghakazian ‘he’ and ‘him’ because we have no word to describe what he really is, but one thing I know. He is out to destroy us. Perhaps he was once the soul of Ghaka and demanded nothing of us but that we should exist, but now, today, he is our herdsman, our slaughterer.”
“Why do you talk this way?” Rintar was beside herself with fear. “You do not know these things any more than you know why we have lost our true memories. Yes, Natil! Lost them! I do not believe the past was a dream. I believe in yesterday as it really was!”
“I believe nothing,” he ended, with such ferocity that she lost all desire to argue and slumped back onto the stool. “All I know is that we must run.”
“There is a Gate,” she went on slowly. “There must be, for Ghakazian spoke of it. If we must leave our home, then let us try to pass through the Gate. It does not matter whether Roita exists or not. Better to go through a Gate into the unknown than to stay on Ghaka. If Ghakazian is as you say he is, then to stand against him is futile. I wish,” she finished bitterly, “that I had never been born.”
Silence followed her words. The room seemed to grow colder and gradually, as their eyes roamed it, to be smaller, uglier, than ever before. Across the tiny hall they heard Tagin cry out, but Rintar did not stir. Presently he came to them, hair tousled, feet bare. He saw his father and rushed to him, and like a stiff, unwilling tree branch Natil was forced to bend and lift him up.
“In my sleep Tagar came to me,” the child murmured, “with gray hair and skin as pale as a Trader’s. I do not like him anymore.”
Rintar rose at once, with purpose. “Set a fire, Natil,” she said. “We will eat hot food and drink a little, and then we will go. Night will cover our path to the Gate.” She did not look at him. She went into the hall, and Natil, about to set his son beside the hearth, glanced out the window. Winged ones were circling the valley, thirty, forty of them, wheeling silently and ominously over the fields. He withdrew quickly, knowing he and his family could do nothing until the sun went away and darkness came to hide them from the eyes as keen as a winter wind. When he ventured another look, the sky was empty, but he thought he saw a swiftly moving cloud angle in the direction of the sun-lord’s crag.
8
The four winged ones whom Ghakazian had sent to guard the Gate against those who might try to leave had cheerfully done as they were asked for only Mirak knew his lord’s mind. Mirak himself went home to his cave, pondered what he had read in the Book, and brooded, but Ghakazian left his peak and flapped uneasily to and fro over his peaceful-seeming land. The Trader was still on Ghaka. He could do nothing until the Trader left, for no word of his plans must reach the council, and all that day he wheeled slowly up and down, back and forth, his shadow streaming with him over the sheep-dotted hills and silver-specked streams. Tagar clouded his immortal mind, Tagar who had refused him, Tagar whose essence waited somewhere in the cold damp crannies of rock near the Gate. Tagar had diminished him somehow, but his murder had been necessary. So much that he did not like would be necessary in order to save Shol from certain destruction. The sun beamed down, flowing over him, diffusing through his floating hair, heating his light body, but there was no longer any room for sunlight in his mind.
In the evening he descended his rock flue, dropped to his arched doorway, and walked his dark hall, wings towering above him, chin outflung, fingers absently stroking his hair. All of them, he thought. I must not miss one. I must send winged ones to cover the whole of Ghaka, and even the caves in the north must be searched. I will speak to them and they will understand.
The Trader moved through the deepening twilight, his purchases slung over one narrow shoulder, his eyes contentedly watching the slow passage of rock and hedge that seemed to glide past. Avenues for trade were shrinking in the universe, he reflected, but on Ghaka it was still good to wander from farm to farm exchanging goods and news without anxiety. Steadily, negligently, he watched the mountain loom, thinking of the hot sun of Danar that awaited it, and its imagination was still entangled in the blue shadows of the haeli forests when it came to the foot of the stairs and saw Tagar. For a moment he simply stood and looked, but then he went up to the body and spoke.
“Are you sleeping, mortal?”
There was no answer. Wind stirred the gray-brown hair that curtained the invisible face and fluttered on the still, red-clad breast. After another moment of observation the Trader bent.
“Are you tranced?” he enquired politely, but puzzlement was growing under the reluctance to disturb. He put out one delicate hand, drawing back the thick hair. He could not comprehend what he saw, but a chill sent his body shaking, milky and tremulous, against the rock. Withdrawing his hand, he tightened his scarf, whistled as he turned to scan the twilight, then swiftly squatted, feeling under the hair for the chin. Tagar’s head lolled suddenly back. The hair fell away from the face, and the Trader cried out as he recognized Tagar, but he did not take his fingers away. He looked for a long time at the crushed nose splayed against the cheek, the vacant, sightless eyes, the dry, black blood crusted over the bruises.
“On Ghaka?” he whispered to himself, his thoughts racing. He knew what form of horror he was seeing, and bringing his other hand to rest on the back of the head, he lowered it carefully to lie once more against the chest. “What did you do, Tagar?” he muttered, standing irresolute, while around him night deepened. “Ghakazian must be told of this.” But even as he turned back along the road a shadow came between himself and the strengthening brightness of the stars, moving lazily yet filling the Trader with such foreboding that he stopped and remained still until the sky was clear again. “I must consider,” he told himself, standing in the middle of the deserted road like a thin shaft of moonlight.
Gradually certain things came together in his mind; the emptiness and silence of the countryside throughout the day, the feeling of oppression which had caused him to avoid conversation with the few wingless ones he had seen scurrying north beneath the shade of the sparse trees, and most of all, the sudden need he had felt to blend with grass and stone when he had heard the steady beat of wings disturbing the hot afternoon. A group of winged ones had rushed by him overhead, and he had felt weak. Why? He had decided that it was because he had suffered Ghaka’s uncurtained sun and overrich air for long enough and needed the balance of a drift through deep space, but now he knew better. Ghaka had begun its long, inevitable plunge to the waiting feet of the Unmaker. The Trader shivered. “Unmaker, Unmaker,” he hissed, thinking of the things he had seen on his journeys between the worlds, and then he turned and ran to the Gate stair, veering past Tagar’s indifferent remains.
He began to climb, thinning his body so that he almost floated from step to step, counting them to himself as he went so that he would not think of how Janthis’s face would look when he stood before h
im to give him his news. Ghakazian does not know that Tagar lies at the foot of the mountain, he thought suddenly. If he knew he would not let me go. He paused and looked out and down. Nothing could be seen of Tagar’s body. The earth below was lapped in darkness. The Trader began to run lightly to the last spur of rock and the entrance to the Gate. With relief he at last breasted the short tunnel cave, bracing himself against the constant wind that blew through the opening where the winged ones alighted to approach the Gate. The Gate loomed ahead, a thin arch whose sides were two vast wings sweeping upward to meet over the keystone, and beyond, the Trader could see black space and the steady pricks of white stars.
Hearing voices, he halted. Four winged ones waited between himself and his freedom, talking quietly together, lit dimly by such sunlight as Ghakazian had given them to illumine the cave. But it was not their presence that caused the Trader to quiver like strung pearls. Another consciousness permeated the shadows, and the Trader felt the wash of a terrible rage and an impotent power tug at him. For a moment he was afraid; then he turned to quest the darkness. “Who is there?” he called softly. “Who angers?” The rage disappeared, and then little flurries of sadness, pleas for help probed him. The winged ones chattered on, oblivious, but because the Trader was not a mortal, it was in his power to divine partially the hearts of essence and star, immortal and the Law, and he suddenly knew what waited, trapped, before the Gate. Tagar. The name echoed in his mind as though the man himself had spoken it, the voice anguished and full of betrayal. “I know,” the Trader whispered back. “I will go to Danar. I will tell them, Tagar.” Something moved in the black stillness, a flick of gray instantly gone, and the Trader shrugged his load of wool higher on his shoulders and walked boldly forward. The winged ones’ conversation ceased, and they sprang to block the Gate as he emerged into the light, but when they saw the transparent body, the voluminous blue scarf wrapping the bald head, they relaxed.
“What do you take from Ghaka?” one of them asked him curiously, and he glanced from one to the other, seeing the smiles, the warm, friendly eyes. These young men were still whole. “I have wool for Shol, just a little, and a woven carpet for Storn of Danar to sleep on in the winter,” he answered politely. “Now let me pass.”
“Ghakazian said that none might pass,” another said anxiously in a low voice, and the smiles left their faces to be replaced by an embarrassed indecision. The Trader took a firm step and spoke loudly, aware of the time it had taken him to look at Tagar and climb the stair, aware also that other eyes must find the body and tell the sun-lord where it lay.
“I am a Trader,” he said firmly, pointing to his scarf with one twig-thin, shimmering arm. “I am not bound to obey any sun-lord as long as I obey the Law. Ghakazian’s pronouncements have nothing to do with me.”
They consulted together, their whispers rising sibilant to feather out against the rough rock ceiling, and the Trader waited calmly, humming one of his tuneless songs. He knew that he could slip through their hands without effort if they chose to detain him, but he also knew that he was forbidden to do so. Presently they turned to him.
“We are sure that the sun-lord would not want us to detain a Trader,” one of them said, a twinkle in his eye, “and in any case you could never be held by such as us. Go to the Gate.”
The Trader bobbed his head and strode past them, passing under the arch and out to where floor and ceiling suddenly fled and his world waited to claim him. Lightly he stepped away from Ghaka. He knew that he would never set foot on it again.
With a curt word to his wife Mirak left his cave and dropped into Ghaka’s night, unfurling his wings and swinging west to where Ghakazian’s slim peak reared black and sharp against the lighter dimness of the sky. He flew steadily, roads meeting and parting like spiders’ webs far below, until at last, allowing the uprush of air near the crag to pull him over the crest, he folded his wings and came to rest with supple grace on the inner ledge. Ghakazian was not there. Mirak leaned into the chill breath of the mountain, glided down to the archway, and passing through, walked across the dais. At the far end of the hall there was a glimmer of pale light, feeble as starlight on a moth’s wing, and in it Ghakazian stood, one elbow in the palm of a hand, the other hand curved about his chin. His wings were unfurled and draped loosely around him, an untidy huddle of trailing feathers, and he was muttering quietly to himself. He did not hear Mirak approach until the other came into the fitful glow of light around him; then he started and whirled. Caught off guard, made anxious for the first time by the dark corners of his own domain, he shouted at Mirak, “What do you want?” Immediately he recovered himself and walked forward smiling warmly, reaching for Mirak’s shoulders. “I did not mean to raise my voice to you,” he said. “I was deep in thought, and I was expecting no one. Perhaps I should seal my funnel as well as my door.”
Mirak drew away, hurt. “Would you close yourself off from me, sun-lord?” he said. “The Book states …”
“I know what the Book states!” Ghakazian snapped. “Do not forget just who you are, Mirak. I have deigned to take you into my confidence, but that does not mean you may regard yourself as my equal. I have no equal.”
Warily Mirak’s eyes traveled Ghakazian. There was peevishness in the set of the wide mouth, a sullen caprice evident in the shrug of a brown shoulder and the way the eyes slid sharply to meet his own.
Ghakazian shook back his hair. “Why did you come, Mirak? I would have sent for you if I had needed you.”
“I could stay in the cave no longer,” Mirak confessed. “My mind was too full of all that I had read and heard. Why do we wait?”
Ghakazian opened his mouth, then checked himself. No. To tell Mirak about the Trader who still wandered somewhere over Ghaka’s night-dusted roads would be to admit to him that he was afraid of the judgment of the council. Pah! he thought derisively. The council can council from now until the end of the universe and still do nothing but waste breath. Only I dare to perform, to do. He said gently, “Mirak, I want you to fly to the Gate and ask your brothers there whether any traveler has attempted to leave. Traveler, mind you,” he emphasized, holding up an admonitory finger. “Bring me word as soon as you know. Watch the roads as you go, and tell me also who moves along them and why.”
“But lord, I thought perhaps …”
“Do not argue!” Ghakazian felt his temples swell with the effort to remain reasonable and calm, and he looked at Mirak feeling a faint contempt not visible on his face. “Time is growing short. You must learn to do as you are told.” Ghakazian turned his back and began to pace again, head down, feathers trailing the smooth floor of the stone hall with a swish.
Miserably Mirak left him, leaping into the darkness. He has much to occupy his mind, he thought determinedly to himself as he left the high black sky and sought the lower, more turbulent air so that he could watch the roads. Time is growing short. How is it that time can now move faster? I do not understand these things, I can only obey him, trust him. There is a great work for us to do together.
Effortlessly he adjusted his flight to the constant eddies of night wind which played over fields and rushed through the clefts in the broken, serried feet of the mountains, soon turning toward the Gate crag far ahead, a spear of blackness. His eyes scanned the ground below him. Nothing stirred. No lights blinked up at him, no snatches of night song came to his ears. The wingless are silent tonight, he thought. Sulking perhaps, because of the once-wise Tagar and the closing of the Gate against them. I pity them, the mud-walkers, the sheep-herders. A rush of intoxication flushed warm through his limbs, and he smiled to himself, turning his head for a moment to watch the rhythmic rise and fall of his wings. When he looked back, he thought he saw a bulky shadow move on the crossroad below, where the road that snaked up into the widest valley met the larger thoroughfare that ran straight to the Gate stair. He darted low, veered, then came around again more slowly, almost grazing the earth. With head turned to scan the hedge he saw a shadow with more solidit
y than the streamers of darkness that tangled in the undergrowth. His feet found the road as he folded his wings, and he stood gleefully with arms outflung.
“I see you,” he called. “Come onto the road.”
Natil grimaced in bitterness. Rintar grasped his arm with a sudden convulsion of fear.
But Tagin crawled out immediately and sprang to his feet.
“Oh, it is you, Mirak!” he said. “Were you looking for us? We …” But he did not finish, for Natil scrambled after him and swept him into his arms.
“Why were you hiding in the hedge,” Mirak demanded disdainfully, “in the middle of the night? Where were you going?”
Mirak saw fear on Natil’s face and a fleeting indecision. Then Natil pointed down the road.
“We are going to my brother’s house, there beside the Gate mountain. Not that it is any of your business, Mirak. We mourn for Tagar. We are lonely.”
“Indeed,” Mirak sneered, but doubt clouded his features. “The Gate is closed to you, Natil.”
“But my brother’s door is open, and you know perfectly well where he lives,” Natil replied patiently. “I must take the Gate road to reach his farm. Or would you have me drag my family across the fields just so that I may not be thought to be traveling to the Gate? This is all foolishness, Mirak. Why may we not go through to Roita in any case if we choose? Ghakazian can find us just as easily there as on Ghaka.”
Mirak’s newfound compulsion to mock and bully swiftly ebbed. “He is not to be questioned,” he said lamely. “I know where your brother lives, of course I know. I took him into the sky once so that he could see his fields laid out before him, and he was grateful.” His smile came back, but this time it was rueful and engaging. “It is not my business to detain anyone,” he went on. “Oh, go on your way, Natil! I was curious, that is all.”
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