“Father!” the young man shouted. “I ran right through the village when they told me! Oh, welcome, welcome!”
So this was Nenan. Danarion freed himself, fighting against the webs of caring and belonging that were beginning to form around him in this place, and took the eager face between his palms. Chilka showed him a gangling stripling of twelve, all dark eyes, but he found himself looking at a broad-shouldered, lithe man of eighteen.
“Nenan, my son,” he said, and a curious thrill went through him. “Six years do not change a man much, but they turn boys into men. You are as tall as I now.”
Nenan twisted away but held to Chilka’s arm in a gesture of delighted disbelief. “You got away! I always knew you would. Ishban won’t hold my father for long, I used to tell myself when the nights were long and cold on the slopes and the game wouldn’t show. I’ve looked after Mother as well as I could.”
“She’s told me.” Danarion found that the lump in Chilka’s throat had been formed by his own strange emotion. “You have done very well.”
Nenan released him. “Mother, there are two rabbits outside, and I’m hungry.” He grinned at his father. “Oh, so hungry! I’ll have some of that stew. Are they hunting you, Father? Do you want to talk, or will it hurt you for a while?”
So he had not heard of the killing. Danarion lowered himself opposite his son and suddenly felt his responsibility for these two mortals, their unearned love, their happy trust rise up to condemn him. What have I to do with them? he tried to tell himself. I am not concerned with the strife of mortals. I am here to secure the Gate, wait for a Messenger, and go home to Danar. He saw his house there, ringed by grass and fragrant blue haeli trees, but the vision was lifeless. Around him Lallin’s large candles flickered, and the smell of the stew was in his nostrils, and Nenan was shaking his head in wonderment and smiling still. Danarion knew real fear then, the fear of dislocation, of irrevocable commitment and change. “I think that tonight I want only peace,” he said slowly.
Nenan nodded agreeably.
“Then I’ll sleep at Sadal’s place. Mother will want you to herself.”
“Is Candar still outside?” Danarion asked.
“Yes, he is. Your return must have given him a shock. He could hardly speak to me as I passed him.” Nenan finished the food and stood. “I’ll go now,” he said, embracing Chilka again, “but I’ll be back early in the morning.” He went out whistling, and Lallin began to clear the table. He watched her deft fingers, her economical movements. She did not look at him. When she had finished, she paused, then came to him and, putting her hands against his neck, kissed him on the mouth.
Danarion’s whole essence cringed. Avenues of intimacy and possession that Chilka’s mind had not shown him before opened under him like a gulf of hot darkness. He was horrified and repulsed, yet under Lallin’s soft lips the body of Chilka responded, and Danarion found he could not forbid it. Presently she drew away, pulling him to his feet, and kissed him again, her arms around him, her own body tight against him. Then she abruptly pushed him away, and her hand found her mouth.
“The moment I heard you speak, I knew you had changed,” she said dully. “Every word and movement spoke to me of six years acting on you like some spell that had twisted you into someone I no longer know. To kiss you is like kissing a stranger. Is there a woman in Ishban, Chilka my husband, who looks for you in vain tonight?” She was struggling to hide the hurt, but to Danarion it was evident. “I will understand,” she said more loudly. “I cannot expect your continence for six long years. You are home, and that is all I must see.”
It was fully dark now. The window no longer gave out onto fields and the blunt peaks of the mountains, but had become a mirror. Danarion, glancing at it, saw her reflection distorted and pale, a long, grotesque face, a misshapen body. Candlelight flickered around the image, and it seemed to him that she was burning with this doubt, this jealousy against which she fought. He turned back to her deliberately, took her hands, and forced her gently into the chair.
“Lallin,” he said quietly, “I must tell you the truth. Candar suspects that I am a two-mind come to spy on you all, and he is right in a way, but to you I owe the whole truth, because you loved Chilka, and he would have died for you—indeed, in a way he did.” Her expression did not change, but a stillness came over her, an inward stiffening against more hurt. He dropped her hands. “I am not Chilka,” he went on heavily. “I use his mouth, his eyes, I dip into his memories so that I may know where to go, what to expect, but the thing you love, your husband’s flame, his essence, is gone.”
She smiled wryly, and her face fell once more into lines of tense control. “What you are trying to tell me, Chilka, is that I no longer have your heart, that it has gone to some Ishban woman who has cared for you. Is she another slave, a two-mind, perhaps a friend of Yarne?”
“No!” He did not want to see her like this, encased in brittle calmness. “If Chilka had found another love in the city, it would be here”—he tapped the black, untidy head—“in his memories, his brain, his mind’s echo. He loved only you. He was running to you when he died. He escaped twice before, and it was only for you. The soldiers rode after him and caught up with him by one of the lakes and shot him dead with an arrow. Ask Candar or Sadal if this is true.”
“Obviously it is not,” she retorted, still calm, “or you would not be standing there telling me nonsense. Your captivity has turned your brain, Chilka.” Suddenly her face softened. “Oh, my love,” she said gently. “It is not important. You cannot be hurt anymore.”
For answer he lifted his shirt, and the scar was red and raised against the brown skin. “This is where the arrow entered,” he said. “It pierced Chilka’s stomach and nicked his heart.”
For the first time she showed alarm. She put one finger on the scar. “This is new,” she admitted, “but so is the graze on your shoulder.” She lifted his arm, and her fingers found another scar by his armpit, smooth, old, and painless now. “You are Chilka,” she said definitely. “I will have to teach you that you are.”
“Lallin, a moment ago you were suspicious of me. Can the truth be so preposterous that you cannot understand it? I am not Chilka, I am not a Sholan. I am an immortal, a god if you like. I fell from the sky into Chilka’s body and must use it for a while. Your husband is dead.”
She stood. “Slavery does strange things to a man,” she said slowly. “A woman may shrug and accept it, but a man’s dignity, particularly yours, demands immediate escape. Inwards, if it cannot be over the real wall. Your escape has been inwards, to the legends. Chilka, you have gone mad.” Her mouth trembled, and she came to him and put her arms around him again, laying her head against his chest. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. One day you will recover.”
Danarion allowed his arms to respond, but despair filled him. She would believe nothing he might tell her. It was all too farfetched. He thought for a long while of Shol in the days of security, when multitudes poured through the Gate to and from Shon or Sumel, when he and the other sun-lords had mingled with them openly and gladly and the Worldmaker himself had trailed his feet in the ocean. How long ago? he wondered. Ten thousand Shol-years? A hundred thousand? I must go. I cannot stay here. His haste was rooted in fear of Lallin herself and Chilka’s unbreakable ties to her.
He set her away carefully and, taking her face in both hands, he drew from himself what power he could. “Lallin,” he whispered, “I want you to rest now. Go to sleep. I will give you a dream of my world, of Danar, and when you wake, you will not fret that I have gone. I will come back if I can, I swear it. I do not blame you for your disbelief.” Her eyes widened, and she would have spoken, but he willed her mind to blur with a need for sleep.
“Lie me down, Chilka,” she murmured. “I’m so tired. We can talk in the morning.”
He caught her as she fell, laid her on the bed, and covered her. He blew out the candles and let himself out without a sound.
Candar had gone. The riverb
ank lay peaceful and deserted, and the water chattered as it flowed swiftly with starlight caught in its froth. Danarion crept along by the cottages, and soon the village was behind him and he was wading once more through some tall crop that swished against his thighs. As he went he forced Chilka’s mind to yield to him the way down the other side of the mountain, the precipitous route the two-minds took when they came slaving, but only portions of the path were locked in the mortal’s brain. The blanks were full of darkness and fear. Down through the valley, the forest, a short drop to where a waterfall gushed out, then rock and a looming shape on the right that was, Danarion surmised because of Chilka’s terror, the backside of the Mountain of Mourning. Here the memories ceased to flow, and only trickled through again when the plain was reached and the pinnacles of Ishban shivered on the horizon.
Danarion walked on. The valley began to narrow, and the dark, fuzzed blur of a forest loomed. He left the fields and struck into the trees, following a faint but distinct track. Danarion was conscious of the body’s extreme weariness. It had been under much stress since morning and needed rest to face the perpendicular horror of the mountain. Reluctantly he turned off the little path and curled into a nest of moss and last year’s leaves. He closed Chilka’s eyes. For a while his thoughts were wandering and chaotic, with no purpose. He remembered the feel of Lallin’s lips against his own. Then there was nothing to remember or forget.
21
He came to himself with a start. Where have I been? he thought anxiously. I was on Danar with Storn, but that was eons ago, for Storn has long since gone with a Messenger. Is that sleep? Are Chilka’s cells absorbing me and conquering? With a shudder he sat up to see the first indifferent light of dawn bathing the mist around him and a man kneeling beside him. He exclaimed, still in a strange, foreign fog of sluggish thought and heaviness, and saw that the man was Nenan.
“I’ve been watching you for two hours,” Nenan said huskily. “You babble strange things in your sleep, Father. Why did you run away?” His voice was strained, and Danarion saw Nenan choke in the effort to control himself.
“How did you know I had run away?”
“Sadal and I had been to see Candar in his house and were walking back when I heard the bells. They rang as you passed them. Sadal did not hear, but I know the note. I followed you, not believing. Where are you going? What did you say to Mother?”
Tears were not far away, Danarion could see that. Oh, let me go! he thought suddenly. I am tormented in this body, I only want to do the task set to me and then spend a thousand years sheltering and healing in my sun. Wearily he stood, brushing leaves from his clothes and hair.
“I am going to Ishban,” he said curtly. “Don’t worry about your mother. I put her to sleep, and when she wakes, she will be at peace. I am not your father, Nenan.”
The young man hissed, a sigh of speculation but not surprise. “So Candar was right,” he said loudly. “I know the story. He told me. He and Sadal argued for most of the night about you, and then Sadal said that Mother would know and we only had to wait until morning. I was ashamed of Candar, and angry with him also. Now I don’t know what to do. I should try and kill you, I suppose …” His voice trailed off, thick with tears, and he turned his head away.
“You could not kill me, Nenan, even if you tried,” Danarion said more gently. “You could pierce this body, your father’s body, but I would knit it together again and go on. Do not do it more hurt, I beg you. I need it. It has become a home to me, and your father’s memories are my friends.”
“You’re a two-mind!” Nenan’s head was still averted.
“No,” Danarion said patiently. “I come from the stars. I am on Shol to perform a task. I could not travel through space in my own body, so when I arrived, I was put into your father’s.”
“The two-minds talk that way when the madness is on them,” Nenan retorted grimly. “They believe they’ve fallen from the stars and don’t belong on Shol. I remember your telling Lallin so, the first time you escaped. Prove to me that you are not one of them!”
Danarion thought, Why should I? It would serve no purpose. If he will not believe my words even though he sees and hears that I am not Chilka, then he will not believe anything that I show him. His acceptance or rejection is nothing to me, and I am wasting time. But something of the love he had felt for Nenan when he had first seen him came back to him. My son.
“I have little power away from my sun,” he said slowly. “I cannot ask Shol’s sun to rise more quickly for you. But perhaps I can show you myself in your father’s flesh.”
“You had better not be less than a god,” Nenan choked, tears flooding his eyes, making them even larger and more luminous than they already were. “Only a god will do. If you fail to appease me, then I shall back my … my father into such tiny pieces that they will never knit again, and bury them all!”
Danarion was not tempted to laugh at this mortal’s impudent defiance. He was learning a respect for them, these complex, prideful beings. “Then I should have to find another body, and you would have done your father a grave insult,” he said. “Watch, Nenan.”
Nenan stood stiffly rebellious and looked at Chilka. Six years had put more lines around the mouth and the dark eyes than he had remembered, he thought with an ache, and the skin was coarser. The black beard was new, and the length of the hair. Chilka was thinner, more used up, somehow, battered and old. A protective love flooded Nenan. He wanted to take this deranged being, his father, and lead him home by the hand like a blind man and tell him that all would be well. He had opened his mouth to speak when Chilka seemed to loosen. A peace like death stole over him. Nenan found himself looking into mild golden eyes set in a face more beautiful than any he had ever seen. The hair that framed it was a deeper gold, alive and lifting with some unseen, hot wind. The body was straight, the limbs youthful and vigorous. Under the skin a white light pulsed, filling the morning coolness of the forest with heat and a delirious, heady odor that made Nenan want to laugh aloud and dance about. A necklet of gold and blue went around the dazzling throat. Nenan, blinded and yet seeing more clearly than ever before in his life, fell to his knees. “Are you the essence of a two-mind?” he faltered, the old doubt and fear still hovering.
The voice that spoke to him was deep and strong. “The two-minds have two essences, and one of those essences has wings. Am I winged, mortal?”
“No.” Nenan covered his eyes. Instantly the fire and light died, and his father’s voice said kindly, “I am here to harm no one. You have a choice now, Nenan. You can go home to your mother and tell her what you have seen, or you can come with me.”
Nenan looked up, and Chilka’s dark eyes smiled into his own. “A god,” he whispered. “So the legends are true.”
“They are—that is, they contain much of the truth. I am not a god, Nenan. I am made, as you are. But I live forever, until my sun burns out, and my gifts are the gifts of a sun. Yours are the gifts of the earth, from which you are made. I have to go to Ishban.” He rose and extended a hand to Nenan. “I must go by way of the Mountain of Mourning because there is something in your father’s memories I must see for myself. You know the way. You can show me those parts of the climb that your father refuses to remember.”
Nenan shivered. “They would take me for a slave,” he said, troubled, “like … like Chilka. He is really dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is. Will you come? I will let nothing harm you in Ishban.”
“If, as you say, my mother will suffer no grief, then I will come.” Nenan took his hand and rose. “I know the way. It is very terrible. But with you I will be safe, I think.”
Danarion was suddenly glad of the inexplicable urge that had prompted him to ask for Nenan’s company. “You will be safe. I would like to be on the plains by sunset, so we must move on. The forest is waiting.”
By noon they had come to the edge of the forest and out under a hot sun, where they began to pick their way toward the waterfall that they had heard l
ong before they saw it, a ceaseless rumble that trembled in the ground under their feet. They stood on its brink, and Nenan pointed. “We go down there!” he shouted over the noise of the water, “and hope we do not meet soldiers coming up! Will you pick me up and fly with me?”
Danarion laughed. “No. We must climb.” He scanned the almost vertical drop to the river below and saw a slim, winding track zigzagging along the side of the cliff. “The two-minds have no fear of heights,” Nenan shouted again, “particularly at night.”
Danarion nodded. “I will go first,” he shouted back and stepped gingerly over the edge, bracing himself with hands and taut calves. Nenan followed with less confidence. Once on the slope Danarion found it to be less steep than it had appeared. The danger lay in the wetness of the rock, the drenching spray, and the unvarying noise of the waterfall, a tremor under the feet and a threat to balance. But within the hour he and Nenan stood beside the swirling white water, grinning at each other.
“That was easy,” Nenan said. “The hard part is only beginning. I have never been farther than this and only I know the way, but you have been along the whole route.” He flushed and bit his lip, and Danarion shook his head.
“Your father blotted it out,” he said. “There are no memories.”
Nenan made no response. He turned abruptly. There was a crude wooden bridge, logs rolled together and a rope for hands, through which the water sloshed up to wet the feet of the travelers.
“Why have you never broken this bridge?” Danarion asked curiously. Nenan replied without turning around, “Because we do not want them to find another route into the valleys. This one is the quickest and most dangerous, even for them. We can kill many this way.”
Danarion joined him on the farther bank. There, hardly visible in the black shadow of a crease in the rock, was an opening. Nenan hesitated, and Danarion caught a gleam of challenge in his eyes. “The tunnel is not long, or so the older men say, but it is very rough and completely dark. I have no light. You are a sun-god. Can you give us light?”
Stargate Page 30
