The Revenants (11 page)

That day he went through forest and over cliff and by chasm past the whole pantheon of weather gods. He bowed before lightning and thunder and rain and mist and wind and the god-brothers little-wind and great-wind, who were quite different from the God-Of-Wind-Alone. He gave obeisance to dawn and morning and to the Ulum nur wavar somu’nah’aluxufus, the God-Of-When-Trees-Eat-Their-Shadows, that is, the noonday god who sat with his big hat and staff in the sun of the cliffside above the desert. In the desert he burned incense to the god of the sun, to the god of drought, to the god of heat (who brought fevers and could be propitiated with beer and the juice of limes) and to the thorn god, That-One-Who-Prickles.

At the edge of the desert way was the place of flowers and the holy garden where the gods of planted things lived; the blossom goddess and the pollen god and the fruit goddess and the grain god and the Blind-One-Who-Lives-Below responsible for the roots of things, especially potatoes. It was a neat and carefully tended place, full of old men and old women and orphan children and warriors who had been blinded or crippled plus a few young men and women who had taken the flower way. The jewelled birds hung in the air before the massed flowers, the whirr of their wings saying ‘think, think’ as they crossed the sightless gaze of the blind warriors or the limping steps of the lame. Thewson shook his head and compressed his lips, thinking. Then he went into the forest again.

It was growing dark when he came to the grove of the Mysterious-One-Who-Will-Not-Answer. He felt it would be better to sleep there than to go on to the gods of war and death and battle and blood. He feared no message from the Mysterious One, who was not known to give messages at all. The grove stood on a talus slope part way up the high cliffs which he would climb in the morning, the tilted blocks of the cliff looming one above the other, face on face uplifted to the westering sun. The cliff faces were sheeted with water-rock, that kind of rock which could be split into thin, transparent sheets and used in windows or lanterns. Even in the grove, as the boughs moved and tossed in the evening wind, the light flashed from the tilted rock faces, blinking on and off, and on and off, and on and off, and on, and on, and …’

‘_____________________?’

‘I am listening,’ answered Thewson, asleep.

‘_____________________?’

‘I will remember,’ he said.

‘_____________________!’

‘I have never learned of that…’

_____________________!!’

‘That is a very strange thing…said Thewson.

In the morning he had new knowledge of which he was not aware and which he could not have told anyone of. He believed that the Mysterious-One-Who-Will-Not-Answer had not spoken, in which conviction he was, in a way, correct. Thereafter he did not consciously remember any messages given him by the gods.

Now, however, in the world of those who killed for any reason or for no reason, Thewson found himself thinking often of the spear round. Sometimes he would waken in the night to a silent imperative or to a dry whirring, a remembered voice coming from a great distance. So it was that he wakened one night in Dantland, among the dunes which edged the Silent Sea, surrounded by tufts of salt grass and the sound of the never-ending wind, brought to full Wakefulness by that remembered
whirr
. He crawled to the top of the dune to peer down at the shore which stretched its empty length away into darkness beneath a time-eaten moon. There were dark blots on the sand, men coming from the south, carrying nets, with their boots wrapped for silence’s sake. Alone on the sand, beckoning the black-robed men, was a curiously hunched figure moving crabwise. Thewson knew him at once. It was a creature from N’Gollo who had tried to cheat Thewson over the price of Thewson’s trade goods and who had not taken kindly to being summoned before the trader council.

Thewson’s lips curled into a sneer. The hunched creature obviously planned to sell him to the black robes, the Gahlians, the slavers; had tracked him out onto the dunes and then summoned strongarms to take him prisoner. Thewson breathed deeply, working himself into a killing rage which would sweep ten or twenty of the black robes into oblivion. Then, far and quiet, he heard the
whirr
’, the voice, the dry whisper, ‘Go, like the breath of wind….’ Without thinking further, he slipped away, silent as a shadow.

When the slavers found his sleeping place, it was cold. Later Thewson thought deeply about the incident. Had it not been for the whirr of wings, he would now be dead. It was not what a warrior should have done, but it seemed to be what the god of warriors would have Thewson do.

It was puzzling. It did not cease to be so.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JAER

Year 1168-Early Fall

One conversation that the two old men had during the years that Jaer was with them occurred on a still night in the late summer. They were behind the parapet of the tower, leaning on it as Ephraim smoked his pipe and looked at the stars.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘we ought to give Jaer a quest.’

‘A quest?’

‘You know. A mission. Remember all the old books. There were armoured men on horses going off on quests. And strange creatures to be conquered. There were mysteries to solve, or maidens to save from horrible fates, or lost artifacts to locate. Things like that.’

‘I know the word. I remember the stories. What I don’t understand is why Jaer ought to have one.

‘It would give him something to do.’

‘I thought we were going to suggest that he get to Orena as soon as he’s fully grown?’ They had taken to referring to Jaer as though he/she was a family of children, saying ‘he’ whenever Jaer was a boy and ‘she’ whenever she was a girl.

‘Even so, that’s a long trip and a hard one. It would be nice to have a quest to distract one along the way.’

‘Setting aside that any distraction might mean death, did you have anything special in mind?’

‘Well, I thought maybe the Gate….’

‘That isn’t a quest. It’s a chimera.’

‘A chimera is a mythical animal.’

‘I mean simply that a quest ought to be something do-able, achievable. It’s silly to spend time searching for something that doesn’t exist.’

‘We don’t know that it doesn’t exist.’

‘I know that.’

‘You do, maybe. I don’t.’

‘You just don’t want to.’

‘All right, I don’t want to. I want to believe there’s a Gate to a better world, or maybe back to a better time. I want to believe there are answers. I want to believe that we haven’t found it simply because we haven’t looked in the right places.’

‘People have looked everywhere.’

‘If I believe there’s a Gate, I believe we haven’t looked everywhere.’

‘Well, if you believe there’s a Gate, you can believe anything.’

At that point there was a long silence. Ephraim looked more hurt than sullen, and Nathan was ashamed of himself. After all, what difference did it make?

‘Ephraim, suppose there were such a thing. I’ll just suppose with you that there is. Now, how would you make a quest out of finding it?’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘How would you make a quest of it? There should be signs and wonders, prophesies, maybe a map? At least a few little myths or cryptic verses? Maybe an enchanted steed, at least for part of the way?’

‘Nathan, it isn’t kind of you to mock.’

‘I’m not
mocking
. If you’re serious, let’s be serious. If you’re not, I’ll stop thinking about it.’

‘I’m serious enough. There have been signs and wonders. There were maps, too, many of them.’

‘And all different.’

‘So? There were myths, cryptic verses, all the things you’re asking for.’

‘Then we have a quest, ready made.’

‘No. We would have if I could remember it all, but I can’t. It’s all back in the archives at Orena, buried in the dust I blew off them when I was twenty and eager and ready for a quest of my own.’ He scratched the back of his neck with his pipe-stem. ‘That’s really what I want, I suppose; to go back and be twenty again with a quest of my own, full of hope.’

‘You never told me you’d been on a quest.’

‘I wasn’t. I didn’t. I haven’t been. I had a quest, but I didn’t go.’

There was another long silence while Nathan pondered this. Finally he said, ‘How can you have a quest and not go?’

‘Oh, Nathan, you know how it is in Orena. You get born, and all your parents give you birthing beads and you get your red baby shirt. By the time you get out of your baby shirt you have a whole list of things you want to do. And then, by the time you know enough to be ready to start on them, someone asks you to be a parent for a baby they’re planning. That makes you think of your own parents, so you’re off talking to them, all of them, trying to find out how to be a parent so you can do a good job of it. Then, before that job is even half done, someone asks you again. Then, when that’s done, you find your first child coming to you to learn how to be a parent, and suddenly you’re forty years old and it’s time to go out collecting information for the archives. You put things off, each time saying you’ll make one more trip, and the plans you had gather dust. Just the way the little book with all the legends gathered dust. It’s there, somewhere, with all the legends correlated and the maps organized and the verses with notations. If I had gone back fifteen years ago … even ten …’

‘But you never went.’

‘No, I never went. I’ve only been back to Orena, and out again, and back to Orena, and out again.’

Nathan shook his head and finally said gently, ‘If I ever get back to Orena, I’ll look up your quest book, Ephraim. Did you file it any special place?’

‘I suppose I did. I can’t remember, though. Under Q, maybe, in the general archives. A little brown book with my name on it and a stained cover.’

‘I’ll look for it.’

Nathan had quite a bit of time on his hands. He didn’t want to leave Ephraim alone more than was necessary, which meant that any extended trips had to be postponed. Jaer was old enough at fourteen to look after Jaer, but not quite old enough to look after Ephraim. Or so Nathan thought.

So he milked the goats, dried the fruits of the orchard, made cheese, helped Jaer hunt for meat and then smoke it. They kept a good store of food, just in case. Everything about the village had long since been recorded. Ephraim seemed to sleep a lot.

More as a joke, an amusement, than anything else, Nathan began to recreate Ephraim’s quest book. He didn’t tell Ephraim about it, or Jaer, perhaps because he was a little ashamed of the time he spent on it and the amusement he got out of it. He went to Ephraim from time to time, digging out bits and pieces that the old man remembered. Most of it came from the dust-furred documents stored in the ancient cellars of the place. He put in a few cryptic verses to supplement Ephraim’s memory. He included some old maps. He put in a few bits of prophesy which he remembered from other sources and some of the legends he had learned as a child or collected since. Then he did a few pages of scholarly interpretation of the parts he had already written, only a little tongue in cheek. He had fun with it.

Then one morning he went out to shoot a deer and was killed instantly when an overhanging ledge let go to dump several tons of stone on the place he stood. Jaer, who had lagged behind to watch a wood nymph which Nathan did not seem to see, dug down only far enough to learn that Nathan was once and forever dead. Jaer knew well enough what death was. She went to tell Ephraim.

Ephraim tried to get up and got to the place. He rose, took a step or two, and then folded onto the stones as simply as a leaf falling from a tree. He did not get up again. It was well that Jaer knew what death was, for there was suddenly a good deal of it around.

Somehow the body of Nathan was uncovered little by little and dragged back to the tower. Somehow the slight, feathery body of Ephraim was carried down the stairs. Somehow a woodpile was restacked into a pyre and set alight to send streamers of knotted, shuddering smoke on the wind which carried the ashes of the old men to a grave as vast as the earth. Jaer lay upon the sun-warmed steps of the courtyard where they three had often sat together, and alone she prayed to die, hoped to pass into some deathly peace so that the pain might end. She could not breathe,

On the labyrinthine isle of Cholder creatures of the darkness pricked up their ears. In Murgin and in Jowr heads turned toward the Outer Islands. In Tachob, and in Gaunt, and in Obnor Gahl silence fell and ears twitched, listening. Here and there creatures turned toward the unsound of her weeping and intentions moved relentlessly toward Jaer.

Beneath the haunted ruins of Tchent, a practitioner of Gahl had been busy with torch and sacrificial knife, now and again leaving off to lap thirstily at the puddled blood upon the stones. A mother left dead in the Thanys might have recognized the zeal with which the sacrifice was made. Even she would not have recognized the face, now most horribly changed.

Smoke rose from the twitching body of the victim to press against the massive stones of one wall, as though sucked there by something beyond. On previous occasions, Lithos had spent long hours before this wall, waiting for the stone to crystalize into glassy translucence in which blots moved, perhaps coalesced into a form. Today he did not wait. Terrible shadows rose within the wall, like great fish rising inexorably in murky water, and a voice enveloped him:

‘Hear! Find! Bring ME!’

His body jerked in a hideous spasm of comprehension, thrashing ecstatically upon the floor as the shadow vanished, leaving behind only that far, thin crying toward which Lithos turned as a snake turns toward warmth – by using a peculiar sense other, less venomous creatures were not given.

On the tower steps, Jaer Suddenly remembered what she had been taught and coiled into herself. Across the world most of those who had turned toward her stopped, confused. Except for a few. These continued in the direction they had gone. Unaware of this, or of anything, Jaer wept.