Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time

by Darrell Schweitzer

  Talnaco fled. For a time he lost his way in a dark forest, but still his beloved seemed to be with him. For days and nights he travelled, resting little. When he finally emerged from the forest, the river was before him again. Once more an imperial drontha crawled against the current on the legs of its oars. Once more the rivermen sang as they poled their barge.

  He made his way to Ai Hanlo, entering through the Sunrise Gate. He followed streets he knew until he stood before his own door. The key was in the pocket of his apron. He went inside. The place was filled with dust and cobwebs. At once he set to work cleaning it, making it ready for the practice of his craft.

  So again a young Zabortashi lantern maker established himself in Ai Hanlo, He labored long and hard, selling excellent lanterns to the best clients. In each lantern, somewhere among the intricacies of the design, he carved the image of Mirithemne, all the while sensing her nearness. She became more evident every day. He found his bed rumpled when he had not slept in it. His cupboard was left open when he had closed it. He heard footsteps. He heard shutters and doors opening and closing, but when he went to see, no one was there.

  One day he found a woman’s comb on a chair. There were long, yellow hairs in it. Mirithemne’s hair was like that. Then he found her mirror, and when he looked into it, he saw someone staring over his shoulder.

  He turned. The carpet on the floor moved slightly, but he was alone in the room.

  At last, as he sat in his workshop in the upper room of the house, just below the loft, there were gentle footsteps on the stairway outside, followed by a light rapping at the door.

  “Enter,” he said.

  The door opened slowly, but no one entered: He got up, and found Mirithemne’s lantern on the threshold.

  The sign was very clear.

  Therefore Talnaco Ramat bore the lantern into a courtyard he knew. It was sunset, in the autumn of the year. High above the city, a soldier blew on a curving horn. The light of the golden dome faded, while the light of the lantern grew brighter.

  The door of the lantern opened. His eyes were dazzled. He fell to his knees.

  And when he could see again, Mirithemne stood before him, holding the lantern, as graceful and as beautiful as he had remembered her. She smiled at him, and, reaching down, took his hand in hers and lifted him to his feet. Then she danced to music he could not hear, her long dress whirling, the leaves whirling, the golden shapes projected by the lantern whirling over the walls, the trees, the ground, over Talnaco himself as she danced, the lantern in hand.

  He could never imagine her more perfect than she was at that moment.

  Later, she was in his arms and they spoke words of love. Later still he sat with his memories, and it seemed he had lived out his life with her, in the shop at the end of the narrow lane, in the city, and that he had grown old. Still Mirithemne was with him. He vaguely remembered how it had been otherwise, but he was not sure of it, and this troubled him.

  He vaguely remembered that he had a son called Venda. He was old. He was getting confused. He would ask Mirithemne.

  * * * *

  In the darkness, in the night, Venda made his way up a narrow, sloping street that ended in a stairway, climbed the stairway, and came to the wall which separates the lower, or outer part of Ai Hanlo from the inner city, where dwell the Guardian of the Bones of the Goddess, his priests, his courtiers, and his soldiers. Venda could not go beyond the wall, but he could open a certain door, and slide into an unlighted room no larger than a closet, closing the door behind him.

  He dropped a coin into a bowl and rang a bell. A window slid open in front of him. He could see nothing, but he heard a priest breathing.

  “The power of the Goddess fades like an echo in a cave,” the priest said, “but perhaps enough lingers to comfort you.”

  “I don’t come for myself,” Venda said, and he explained how he had watched his father go into a courtyard with an old lantern and vanish in a flash of light.

  The priest came out and went with him. He saw that the priest was very young, little more than a boy, and he wondered if he would be able to do anything. But he said nothing, out of respect. Then he realized that this was a certain Tamliade, something of a prodigy, already renowned for his visions.

  They came to the courtyard and found the lantern, still glowing brightly. The priest opened its door. The light was dazzling. For a time Venda could see nothing. For a time they seemed to walk on pathways of light, through forests of frozen fire.

  They found Talnaco Ramat sitting in the mouth of a cave, with the lantern before him, its door open, the light from within brilliant.

  “Father, return with us,” Venda said.

  “Go away. I am with my beloved.”

  Venda saw no one but himself, his father, and the priest, but before he could say anything, his father reached out and snapped the door of the lantern shut.

  The scene vanished, like a reflection in a pool shattered by a stone.

  * * * *

  They found themselves in the courtyard, standing before the lantern, which rested on the bench. Again the priest opened the little door, and the light was blinding. The priest led Venda by the hand. When he could see again, they were walking after his father, up the road to the Sunrise Gate of Ai Hanlo. His father hurried with long strides, bearing the lantern. Its door was open. The light was less brilliant than before.

  “Father—”

  “Sir,” said the boy priest. “Come away.”

  Talnaco stopped suddenly and turned to the priest. “What do you know of the ways of love, young man?”

  “Why—why, nothing.”

  “Then you will not understand why I won’t go with you.”

  “Father,” said Venda softly.

  Talnaco snapped the door of the lantern shut.

  * * * *

  “If you want to get another priest, do so, but it won’t do any good,” the boy Tamliade said.

  They stood in the courtyard, in the darkness, in the night. “It’s not that,” Venda said. “What do we do now?”

  “We merely follow him to where he is going. He has gone far already.”

  The priest opened the door of the lantern. The light was dim. It seemed to flow out, like the waters of the river, splashing over the ground and between the trees.

  Again they stood by the riverbank. An imperial drontha went by. Boatmen poled a barge.

  Venda followed the priest. They came to a cave, where lay the blackened, shriveled corpse of an anchorite. They passed through the dark forest and eventually into Ai Hanlo, along a narrow street, until they came to the shop with the wooden sign over its door.

  The door was unlocked. The two of them went quietly inside, then up the stairs until they stood before the door to Talnaco Ramat’s workroom.

  Venda rapped gently.

  “Enter,” came the voice from within. They entered, and saw Talnaco seated at his workbench, polishing a lantern. He looked older and more tired than Venda had ever seen him before.

  “Father, you are in a dream.”

  His father smiled and said gently, “You are a true son. I am glad that you care about me.”

  “None of this is real,” the priest said, gesturing with a sweep of his hand.

  “Do you think I don’t know that? I have lived out my life suspended in a single, golden moment of time. It doesn’t make any difference. Mirithemne is with me.”

  He glanced at the empty air as if he were looking at someone.

  “This thing you think is your beloved,” the priest said, “is in truth some spirit or Power, some fragment of the Goddess which has entered your mind through the lantern, like a moth drawn to a random flame. It is without form or intelligence. Your longing gives it a certain semblance of a shape, but it loves you no more than do the wind and the rain.”

  “Perhaps I am in love with the mere memory of being in love. Perhaps…in my memory now, I remember two lives. In one my wife was called Kachelle, in the other Mirithemne. In both, I had
a son, Venda. Both are in my memory now. How shall I weigh them and know which is the more true?”

  Venda looked helplessly at the priest, whose face was expressionless.

  “I am tired,” said Talnaco Ramat. He rose, taking the lantern, and walked slowly out of the room. The light was very faint now. They followed him to the courtyard. By the time he set the lantern down on the bench, the light had gone out.

  The priest snapped the metal door shut. Then he and Venda led Talnaco home. He was delirious with fever.

  “He is burned by the spirit,” the priest said. “There is little we can do.”

  They sat by Talnaco’s bedside, as he lay dying. Venda wept. Toward the very end, the old man was lucid.

  “Do not weep, son,” he said. “I have known great happiness in both of my lives.”

  “Father, was there ever someone called Mirithemne, or did you imagine her?”

  “She is real enough. She’s probably old and ugly now. I don’t think she ever knew my name.”

  Venda wept.

  At the very end, his father said, “I have found the greatest treasure. It was worth the struggle.”

  Venda did not answer, but the priest leaned forward, and whispered, “What is it?”

  “A smile. A touch. Whirling leaves. A single moment frozen in time.”

  HOLY FIRE

  The master said: “What is the nature of a vision?”

  The student said: “As you have taught us, it is an opening of a window, through which we see things that are hidden.”

  The master said: “When that window is open, what may come in out of the darkness? What if you can’t shut the window?”

  —Telechronos of Hesh,

  The Wind from the Grave of the Goddess

  I.

  The door opened slowly. His father came in. Tamliade sat up in bed, peering into the darkness. He was five years old that summer.

  His father was a big man, broad-shouldered, his arms muscled, his hands gnarled. As he crossed the room, a shaft of moonlight caught his face through an unshuttered window, and his beard seemed to be made of gold.

  The boy slid to the floor, his bare feet rustling straw.

  “Sh-sh. Don’t wake your mother.”

  Tamliade glanced across the room to where his mother slept, a mere mound against a wall where the moonlight did not touch.

  “What is it?”

  “Be quiet and come with me.”

  He groped around for a robe, didn’t find one, and went outside with his father, wearing only his nightgown. He stood by his father’s side, shivering beneath the bright stars. He could make out the rooftops of the houses of the village, his father’s smithy gaping black and empty, and moonlight gleaming on the Endless River. To the north, there was a line of trees that looked like a ridge in the darkness, where the forests of Hesh ended and the grasslands began. To the west, the moon nearly touched the horizon. To the east, there was a faint glow, presaging dawn, and above it a plume of light swept across the sky.

  His father pointed.

  “I wanted you to see that. Do you know what it is?”

  “A feathered star.”

  “I met a…a wise man today. He came from Zabortash. That’s a country where everyone is learned, and most of them are magicians. He said, the wise man, that this thing is a fragment of the Goddess, who has died. It drifts across the sky, burning with holiness. Finally it settles, and touches someone, and burns them too, but inside, with holiness. That’s what he said. I didn’t understand all of it.”

  Tamliade didn’t understand either. He didn’t understand why his father was showing him this. But there was something in his father’s manner which made him pay close attention. His father stood there, staring at the feathered star, or whatever it was, his mouth half open, as if there were something he wanted to say but could not find the words. He could tell that his father was a little bit afraid, and he was too. He could tell that to his father this was a premonition of something, and his father was groping for the shape of the thing, but it always eluded him.

  And Tamliade wondered if it meant that he would die soon. It was the first time he had ever thought of death. It was very strange.

  Then he felt a little ashamed, as if his father were trying to show him something rare and beautiful, and it was his own fault that he couldn’t appreciate it.

  He felt very close to his father that night, as they stood beneath the stars. It was a rare thing that his father had any time for him. This was a special night.

  They stood there for what seemed a long time, until the sky brightened and the fragment of the Goddess was no longer visible.

  “Let’s go in,” his father said.

  * * * *

  He tried to cling to the memory of that night, in later years. It was a delicate treasure, as fragile as a perfect image reflected in an unrippled pool. But visions drove him away. He saw cities of fire and crystal in waking dreams. Spirits spoke to him, and entered him, wrenching and twisting. He shrieked in his dreams as the spirits filled him, as he felt his soul moving in the frigid depths beyond the world, far, far from his body, from his own time, from everything he had ever known or cared about.

  Once a caravan passed through their village. In addition to the usual pack animals and wagons, there was a long line of slaves linked together with chains attached to their collars.

  He stood with his mother in the market place, watching. He was ten years old then.

  “Who are they?”

  “Captives in some war. It doesn’t matter.”

  He looked at them closely. Some of them were very strange, their skins dark, their faces flat and round, their hair tied in little braids. Some wore the remnants of costumes like nothing he had seen before. Some had tattooed faces. But others could have been men and women and children from his own village. They could have been people he knew. All of them had one thing in common: he saw in their faces a longing for their scattered homes, for the lives they had been dragged away from.

  “It’s like that with me,” he said suddenly. “I’m like them.”

  “You say such strange things sometimes,” his mother said, leading him away.

  * * * *

  He struggled to get back, to be himself, to keep his life for himself. But the visions drove him on.

  He was useless as a helper to his father. He would fall into fits of distraction while working the bellows, or let an iron drop in the dirt and wander off, following things no one else could see. His father’s temper was short, and repeated attempts to “beat some sense” into him only frightened him.

  Then a prophet came, a wild-looking, half-naked man who wore a headband from which tiny icons dangled. He proclaimed to all who would listen how the Goddess who had died, in the aftermath of whose death signs and wonders multiplied, had been a mortal woman once. She had not asked for what had happened to her. Divinity had settled in her like a drifting spark, then flared into a raging fire, consuming whatever she might have originally been. She was helpless to stop it.

  This would happen again, the prophet said, very soon.

  Tamliade’s terror mounted.

  Still the visions possessed him. His mother wept. His father cursed. After his mother had died, when he was eleven, his father turned him out of the house to wander the world in pursuit of his vision, or find his fortune, or perish, or whatever. And the spirits dragged him and pulled him, like herdboys with a reluctant cow; and voices howled in his ears at night, and he saw things invisible to those around him, and wandered, and worked wonders, and begged at roadsides. People came to him to be touched and healed of their afflictions.

  “What good is my touch?” he would say, “when I cannot heal myself.”

  But still they came, and there were those who fell down and worshipped him as the divinity reborn, which can be either male or female, a god or a goddess. But every time they gathered around him, he eluded them, led by flickering shapes into desolate places, sometimes seeming to remember in dreams regio
ns he had not yet come to.

  He only wanted to be himself, to live his own life, but the choice was not his. In time he fell among bandits and was sold as a slave, and an old slave he met explained to him that the remark he’d made to his mother in the market place was a prophecy, a sure manifestation of the divine.

  Later, he was apprenticed to Emdo Wesa, a mighty magician and maker of dadars, whose flesh diminished each time he created another projection of himself. Tamliade saw himself as a kind of dadar, no more able to fathom the purpose to which he was directed than could one of Emdo Wesa’s creations. Indeed, at first, the magician saw him only as a useful instrument, like a perspective glass or a forceps, but humanity grew within him, and, very briefly, he became the kind of father Tamliade could barely preserve in his memory.

  Then Emdo Wesa diminished, and Tamliade was free to wander again.

  * * * *

  A ragged man came to him once, as he lay awake by a campfire in the ruin of a city a million years old. The man stood in the middle of the fire, taking shape out of the smoke. His eyes were two stars.

  “Tamliade,” he said. “I speak to you because you alone can hear me. Listen: I was Tueset anil-Gitan, which means Master of the Bowl of Night. I was the greatest magician of my time. I could bind the moon to my will. But I had an enemy, who, through cunning and treachery, gained power over me. So I thought to trick him. It was a splendid stratagem: I seemed to bow to his spells. Each year, on an appointed day, I fell into a certain stream, floated against the current, until I came to the place where my enemy was waiting. There he made a banquet of my flesh in darkest holiness. In the last years I went into seclusion, for I was hideous to behold. At last, when he made a soup from my ground bones, and drank it, I spoke to him out of a reflection in the bottom of the pot. ‘You are conquered from within,’ I told him. ‘My flesh is the substance of your body.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I have long since been consumed by my magic. There is nothing left of me. You are master of an empty house.’ And it was so. Here I am, the ghost of a ghost.

  “Tamliade, I have come to you because I am real only to you, because there is no other person in the world who is as sensitive to things of the spirit as you. I had hoped to possess you, to walk in your flesh beneath the sun again. But you are nearly consumed. You are like a tattered flag in the wind that blows from the grave of the Goddess. We are already too much alike. What am I to do?”