Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
The Revenants (9 page)
She named the male dog Silence, and the female, Sorrow. In Leona there was something which passed for amusement in calling into the icy winds of the Northlands, ‘Come, Silence; come, Sorrow’ – ‘Nai, Mimo; nai, Werem’ in the tongue of the Fales. Since both had attended her for endless days, not having been summoned, and now departed to make way for some new intention, she felt it was well to be reminded of them.
Year 1165
Some way south of the Fenlees, among the scarps above Owbel Bay, the hamlets of the Thanys lay like beads scattered from a broken wristlet. The Thanys were a tight-knit people, suspicious of strangers, made so by the proximity of the Bay and those who held their rites there. The Thanys considered all of themselves, and only themselves, close kin; not outsiders. All children, they said, were savages at birth, but all could be won by love and firmness to an understanding of the duties owed by kin to kin. All, they whispered, except perhaps for the son of the widow at Bald Knob.
Him they regarded with disquiet. He had a face brown and closed as a nut. He had odd, light eyes of so steely a grey as to be almost no colour at all. It says much for the people that they never gave him harsh words. The children avoided him, true, believing him to be responsible for certain injuries to themselves. There was Jerym, once loud and mocking, who spoke only in stuttering whispers. And Willum, whose strong right arm had withered. And Verila, who sat staring endlessly at nothing. These young ones thought the widow’s son had been fathered by a ghost. Indeed, he had been born in a night of howling storm, ten long months after the widow’s husband had died, and none had known her to be generous with her favours. The young ones said the widow’s man had risen from the grave to couple with her; summoned by a spell she wove, some said. Sent by the devil, said others.
When they tried to explain their suspicions to the adults, they met with no belief. The oldsters were unable to believe ill of any Tanyan. All their fears were reserved for those who dwelt below, those who anointed the stones near Owbel Bay.
The boy at Bald Knob was nearly grown. His name was Lithos, and he well knew he was suspected of much ill. He could feel in his own body every cramp and twist in others, could reach into their heads to twist thoughts into an endless, nauseating tangle from which the thinker might emerge hours later, sweating and sick. He had not done this often. Only enough to know that he could.
The widow loved him, helplessly and too well. She never thought of his begetting or his birth, only of his being, her only child, her only company. She forgave him everything, and herself everything in the getting of him. She ignored every insolence, every pang – until the day he told her he intended to leave the scarp.
‘There are things I want to know,’ Lithos said, gesturing indolently at the huddled village beside the fair meadows. ‘You people here are boring.’
‘Where will you go?’ The words came like nuggets of iron, heavy, choking and her heart seemed to stop.
‘Down there. I want to see what they do there, at the Bay.’
‘Oh, my son, my love, no. No, you don’t want to see what it is they do there.
Lithos shrugged her words away indifferently. ‘So you all say. But none of you say why.’ His voice filled the room with a horrid chill which she did not feel, which she had spent his young life learning not to feel.
Instead she struggled to breathe, afraid for him, for herself, tried to put into words what had only been whispered, hinted at of the horrors of Owbel Bay. ‘You could not do that,’ she said. ‘You would be sickened by it. You could not bear it!’
‘What is it again that they do?’ Head cocked, he listened and questioned as she told him again, bile burning in her throat.
‘I think I could do that.’ Lithos smiled. The smile was terrible, lit by gleaming metallic eyes. She fell into that smile as into a maelstrom. He whispered, ‘Let me try…
A neighbour found her later. Those who were summoned buried the remains quickly, surreptitiously. Men of the villages took weapons and went to search for the boy. They did not find him. He had gone to learn what he could at Owbel Bay before going on … to other things.
Year 1167
Jasmine, a woman of a certain reputation, had borne a daughter in the Year of the Owl. In honour of the year, or perhaps in honour of certain night flying habits of her own, Jasmine named the child Hu’ao, which was the name used by the Lakland people for a particularly tiny, insect-earing owl with an ingenuous stare and a habit of blinking sleepily in the light. The child did not eat insects, though it was not for want of trying, as she, like most babies, put anything she could catch into her mouth. In other respects, she was as owl-like as her name implied.
As soon as the child was weaned, Jasmine put Hu’ao in the care of the Sisters of the Temple of the Goddess, Lady of the Perpetual Seas, Daughter of the Eternal Waters, and suchlike nomenclature. The Lakland people said ‘Goddess’ and meant all of that. From those austere surroundings, Hu’ao was taken by Jasmine at intervals for a day’s outing or a two-day holiday to the herb farm where Jasmine had grown up and where her sister now lived with stout, red-faced Uncle Hahd, or to the parks, or to the theatre to sit wide-eyed among the scene shifters and dancers who were Jasmine’s friends. Between these times, Jasmine plied her trade as sometime dancer, sometime actress, sometime companion, well liked and not ill thought of by those who knew her. Jasmine and Hu’ao lovea one another, were happy with one another, drew great satisfaction from their times together with which to endure those times they were apart. It should be noted that the good Sisters did not care for Hu’ao out of charity. Jasmine paid them well for their trouble, and during the four years that Hu’ao stayed with the Sisters, the money was never late, never diminished, never refused.
Ill fortune fell, however, as it must. Jasmine fell ill of a disease, not serious but enervating. Her usual activities were greatly curtailed, both from want of vigour and want of custom. She was at first late in the payment to the Sisters; then she ceased to pay at all. The matter was brought to the attention of the Eldest Sister, a title denoting responsibility rather than age, who asked that Hu’ao be brought before her. The child was pretty, with Jasmine’s slight darkness, her tilted eyes, and flowing, smoke-coloured hair. Something woke in the Eldest Sister which had been long repressed. As a holy virgin, dedicated to the Goddess, she did not regret her virginity, but she found herself much regretting her childlessness. She determined upon that moment that Jasmine could not be a fit mother for the child and that Hu’ao should be adopted by the Sisters and raised to become one of their Order.
Thus it was that Jasmine, when she was recovered and went to the Temple with a partial back payment and a longing to have Hu’ao in her arms, was met by a stern-faced, stick-dry old woman who told her she was not to see Hu’ao again. The woman told her this after taking the money, and Jasmine pleaded with her in vain.
Jasmine had friends among the people of Lak City. There was the tall watchman who knew the plump tavern-keeper, Linn-oh, and Linn-oh had introduced her to the music master of the Theater Phenomenal, who in turn had taken her to dinner with the dark young clerk of the Bureau of Boats, whose sisters, both giggly and pretty, had slightly crossed eyes. It was the younger one, Zillba (was it Zillba? Or Thilna? Well, one or the other) who had invited her to the Water Festival where they met the magistrate. He had become a good friend. They were all good friends, and they all rallied, cooing or thundering, in accordance with their natures, at the injustice and monstrous arrogance of the Eldest Sister. The magistrate was quick, privately, to assure Jasmine that he would soon set the matter right.
So it was arranged that Jasmine should have a hearing before the Magistrate Official (in robes, in chambers) to test whether the sisters or Jasmine had the right to Hu’ao. When the Eldest Sister was informed of this development, she spent long hours in thought and other long hours in the library. The night before the hearing she spent in the Temple proper, and it was said that she lay on the floor of the sanctuary beside the holy pool waiting the Goddess’s guidance.
At the hearing, after Jasmine had made her plea and had brought tears to the magistrate’s eyes and to the eyes of those in the court, the Eldest Sister rose to make her statement.
‘Sir Official,’ she said, ‘you know as do we all that the black-robed ones, the acolytes of Gahl, have built a temple to their foul doctrines in Tiles which was called by the ancients Labat Ochor. South, on the River Del, they are building. Here in Lakland we are still at peace with one another, but the armies of darkness surround us. Even on Lak Island, even in the Temple garth, I have seen their black-robed spies and scouts. Long have I been troubled over this.
‘And, Sir Official, when the child, Hu’ao, was brought to me that I might see that she was well cared for, well fed and clothed, I looked into her eyes. When I looked into the child’s eyes, Sir Magistrate, I saw the Goddess peering at me from within. For is it not written that the purposes of the Holy shall appear in the eyes of children?’
There was a general murmur in the court, and the magistrate threw a quick, embarrassed glance at Jasmine. Visions were notoriously tricky things to prove – or disprove. The magistrate had a premonition that he would be outmanoeuvred.
Eldest Sister went on unperturbed. ‘Later, when I was alone, the Goddess came to me again. She told me that the child’s mother had sinned against Her…
‘I never did,’ said Jasmine, indignantly, only to be shushed by the magistrate.
‘… had sinned against Her in Her attribute as Divine Virgin …’
‘That’s not the attribute I worship,’ cried Jasmine, stung.
‘… and that the mother’s love for the child should be her sanctification, for she should be sent upon a quest for the Girdle of Chu-Namu, the Girdle of Binding, that Lak Island and all of Lakland may be bound safe from the darkness. The Goddess told me that the woman, Jasmine, would do this for the love of her child, and the child will remain with us until that sanctification is complete.’
‘This doesn’t make sense!’ interjected Jasmine.
‘In what way?’ asked the magistrate, biting his underlip.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. If I were chaste as these old sticks I’d sin against the Goddess in her attribute as Divine Wanton. If I’m not chaste, I sin against her attribute as Divine Virgin. If I never get pregnant, I sin against her as Divine Mother. I mean, you can’t be a woman in Lakland and not sin against the Goddess some way. For heaven’s sake, that’s why we pay Temple fees….’
The Eldest Sister went on calmly, ‘This is the mystery of the Goddess upon which we in the Order meditate each day. It has nothing to do with the command of the Goddess that we take the child Hu’ao and that I tell the mother of that child of a quest which the Goddess commands. There is only one issue here. Shall the mother of Hu’ao obey the Goddess? We in the Order will obey the Goddess. What will the Magistrate Official do?’
The magistrate knew at that moment that there was no way out. If it were nosed about town that a male official had ruled against a command of the Goddess, there would be a general uproar. The High Administrators did not appreciate uproar. There would soon be a new magistrate in Lak Island. He waited only long enough to let it appear that he had weighed the arguments and to plead with Jasmine to understand his position, then he ruled. Jasmine, bereft, went among her friends. They were all her friends, still her friends, but helpless. She reached for them, and they melted between her fingers, running out of her hands in chill drops. ‘The Goddess, Jasmine. If it is the will of the Goddess…’ Jasmine went home and wept for hours. Then in the evening there was a knock on the door. The person standing on the doorstep was wearing the long, blue robes of the Order, and out of the sheltering hood peered a round, rather frightened face. There was something furtive about the half-crouched figure, and Jasmine stood aside to let her enter.
There was much nervous hand twisting. ‘We didn’t want you to think we were all – well, we wanted you to know that many of us are sympathetic. Eldest Sister is responsible for recruitment, you know. It isn’t everyone who wants to be a Sister. Lots of us didn’t. We get sold into it, or we get convinced when we’re too young to know any better. Well, we wanted you to know that some of us want you to go on the quest very quickly and find the silly thing and get back here to Hu’ao. She’s such a little love….’ The robed woman rubbed at her eyes with a crumpled kerchief.
‘You mean Eldest Sister is doing this in order, to get Hu’ao as a candidate? She wants Hu’ao to be a Sister?’
The woman wiped at the tears which were making unattractive runnels down the sides of her nose. ‘And we think you should go on the quest. If you stay here, she’ll say you’re defying the Goddess, and you’ll never get Hu’ao back.’
‘Please stop crying,’ Jasmine was torn between fury and pity. ‘I know you want to help, but you’re just making me very angry. I don’t have any idea how to go on a quest. I don’t even know what the Girdle of Chu-Namu is. I never heard of it until this morning.’
‘We know. We’re trying to help. The Library Sister is finding out everything about the Girdle. We’re putting it all in a book. With maps. And some things for you that you’ll need. If you’ll come to the little gate in the east wall of the Temple Garden tomorrow, at sunset, we’ll have it ready for you. That’s what they want me to tell you. And now I have to get back before Eldest Sister finds out I’m gone.’ She turned to flee into the night, leaving Jasmine’s door swinging slowly to and fro.
The next day Jasmine went to the gate in the Temple wall, though she had decided nothing. It seemed rude not to go if there were some trying to help her – still, she had not decided. Not at all. She was met with conspiratorial whispers, led through the gate and swiftly across the dusky garden into a half-hidden doorway burrowed through a swollen buttress to a flight of stone stairs cupped deeply by centuries of footfall. They went down into darkness broken only by dim lanterns between walls incredibly massive, walls a giant might have built in a forgotten age. Above her the ceilings vanished in vaulted gloom, and the sound of their feet echoed away into troubled silences. At last she was drawn into a tiny chamber crowded with robed, whispering forms.
