Golden Daughter (23 page)

The mortal world was far behind him now.

He saw the embracing trees before him, and through them he could see the Wood and the great Grandmother Tree. The white emptiness was still at his back, but he charged through, passing between the two trees, and then the emptiness was gone.

He stood in the Wood once more.

He took a step and felt himself become a solid presence, as like unto his mortal body as his mind could conceive. He had limbs he could see and feel, had breath in his lungs, and a heart beating in his chest. It was still not as solid as his real body. How could it be? A man cannot have two bodies at once. But it was a strong manifestation, strong enough to be believed. And this body did not have agonizing stripes across its back.

Jovann looked for the wood thrush in the branches of the Grandmother Tree but could not see it. He drew nearer, and he thought the clearing was darker than it had ever been. The Grandmother’s leaves were heavier, thicker perhaps, blocking out more of whatever light source shone up above the Wood, be it sun, moon, or something else entirely. Either way, this small circle of existence was as gloomy as late evening.

And still Jovann could not find the wood thrush. But he heard its voice singing, an enigma of light and sound combined.

Where did the Dara go?

Where did the Dara go?

“Where did the Dara go?” Jovann whispered.

“They are beyond Hulan’s Gate,” said Lady Hariawan.

He knew she stood behind him. The girl of his dreams. He knew without turning, without seeing her face, for his heart beat with so powerful a lurch that he felt its movement even back inside his mortal body lying upon the pallet in the infirmary. For a moment he could not speak, so thick was his throat. Then he whispered, “Umeer’s daughter.”

“I am here. Look at me, Juong-Khla Jovann.”

She did not need to speak his name to command him. He turned willingly and looked again upon her lovely face. And here, in the Wood, there was no evil burn mark to mar the perfection of her skin, to distract from the exquisite proportions of her features.

“I saw you,” Jovann said. “I saw you today. In the waking world. Did you not know me there? Did you not recognize me?”

The golden light and green shadows of the Wood fell softly upon her, swaying gently with each move she made as she approached him. Her hair was long down her back, even as it had been earlier that day, and her robes were once more fine and intricately made. The same pattern of painted flowers and vines decorated her pale skin. One small hand reached out to him, and he shivered with delight and dread as she touched his cheek. The scent of harimau wafted over him, spicy and intoxicating.

“Let us walk together, Jovann, son of Juong-Khla.”

He obeyed without another word. She took his arm and led him, and he walked as she led, once more stepping out of the Grandmother’s protective circle into the enormous reaches of the Wood—reaches so vast that, were he to try to conceive of their hugeness, he knew he would go mad. But he did not worry about that. Lady Hariawan walked beside him, and ahead, in the distance, he could hear the song still singing. And it was as though the song itself created the path opening before them, a path of pale golden dirt which his bare feet trod without crushing so much as a single leaf or blade of grass.

“Where are we going?” Jovann asked.

“To the Dream,” she said.

“Are we very close?”

She looked up at him, and he wondered if it were pity or scorn he saw in her eyes. “This is the Wood Between,” she said. “It lies both near to and far from the Waking World and the Dream. It lies between all worlds. But who can measure it with mortal distances?” She shook her head and continued walking, speaking softly. “The Brethren have long sought it. They have discussed and they have theorized. They have longed. But none of them found it, only you. Not even I could reach it, though I saw it. Not until I heard you calling and this path opened to me. It is a great thing you have done, Juong-Khla Jovann.”

Jovann felt his heart swelling in his breast. He could have burst for the pleasure of pleasing her.

“Now,” she continued, “I want you to take me to the Gardens of the Moon.”

Had someone asked Jovann if he knew the way to Hulan’s Garden, he would have said no at once. But when this girl, this nameless Lady Hariawan, daughter of Umeer, spoke, he heard the wood thrush calling. And it was as though the knowledge grew inside him. He had no room for doubt, only certainty.

He took the girl’s hand, and now he led her. Even as before, the Wood began to fade around them. The endless Wood, the borders of which could not be marked, vanished on all sides, giving way to curling mist.

The Realm of Dreams, from whence all dreams of men and beast and Faerie folk are sprung, rose up to claim them. And it was of itself an empty, formless place, waiting to be shaped.

Jovann tightened his grip on Lady Hariawan’s hand. “This way,” he said, and plunged into the mist. He still heard the singing,

Where did the Dara go?

Where did the Dara go?

Following that voice, he watched as the landscape changed before him. He saw mountains, he saw valleys; he saw oceans and rivers and deserts. He crossed them all in a moment, and Lady Hariawan gasped at the strides they made, for even she, in all her power, had never come so far.

Suddenly there was the gate before them—so distant as to appear small, but the only solid, unshifting form in all this realm. The Moon Gate arch, the perfect original of a million mortal copies, and no child of Noorhitam would have failed to recognize it.

Lady Hariawan drew a sharp breath. Jovann turned to her with a smile. “You asked for Hulan’s Gate, my dear Umeer’s daughter?”

Even as he spoke, his voice was drowned out by the boom of chanting.

All around them it resounded, the chorus of many voices raised together in a rolling thunder of strength. He could hear the voices reaching out to each other, supporting each other. Then they reached out toward him.

He looked this way and that. Shadows appeared out of the mist, chanting in time to their own sedate pace. At the sight of them, Lady Hariawan growled without words. She grasped Jovann with both hands. “Hurry,” she said. “We can still beat them.”

They were running the next moment, running on a surface of mist that heated beneath their feet until Jovann knew it was no longer mist but fire-seared smoke. The shadows grew larger, drawing nearer, and with them came the darkness of their voices, pressing in like night. But ahead the stone gate stood tall, and through it Jovann saw a light shining, a guiding, brilliant beacon which not even the chant could suppress. They had only to reach it. They had only to—

“
Hurry!
” Lady Hariawan screamed.

Jovann, without a thought, caught her up in his arms. She was so light, so delicate, so insubstantial. She weighed nothing, and he moved faster carrying her than he did with her clutching his arm. So he cradled her close and ran.

The shadows closed in. They were all around him, behind and on every side except the path to the gate. This they could not seem to penetrate. Their chanting became faster and more erratic.

Then the gate was huge, towering indescribably tall above him. So brilliant was the light falling through it that for a moment Jovann could have believed the gate was the shining moon herself. He could see nothing of what lay beyond. But he did not doubt, and he did not falter.

On the very threshold he heard a rush of great water.

Then, with Lady Hariawan in his arms, he plunged through just as phantom hands snatched at the back of his head and tore away a piece of his hair.

Sairu knelt with her eyes closed and her hands folded. But she did not doze, not for a moment. Every sense was alive with an almost painful clarity. Even the feel of the floor beneath her knees was as sharp as knives, though she never shifted her position.

All was quiet. Not silent, for the mountain night was alive with sounds beyond the infirmary walls. Within, however, there was only Jovann’s deep, sleep-filled breathing, contrasting with her own light breaths. The flame of her lamp burned straight, scarcely daring to flicker.

Nothing changed. No creak, no cry, not even a wind in the door. But suddenly Sairu’s eyes flew open, and she gazed down at the back of Jovann’s sleeping head. Other than that swift movement of her eyelids she held perfectly still for some minutes, staring at what she could not yet see.

Then, slowly, she bent over and looked more closely at the black hair she had tied back with a length of leather cord earlier that day.

“What’s wrong?”

The cat’s voice startled her, but she betrayed none of her surprise. Very coldly she lifted her chin. A feline face watched her from the other side of Jovann’s sleeping mat. His whiskers were ridiculously long and curled at the ends, and she had to fight the urge to reach out and pluck one from his arrogant white muzzle.

“What are you looking at?” the cat persisted, making no effort to keep his voice down.

“Can you not see it?” Sairu replied, her own voice scarcely above a whisper.

The cat twitched an ear irritably. Then he put his nose to the back of Jovann’s head and sniffed. The other ear twitched as well. “I smell a stranger on him. And . . . and smoke.”

Sairu inclined her chin in acknowledgement. And she replied, “A length of his hair is gone.”

At first the roar of water was so enormous that it overwhelmed all else, and Jovann wondered if he and his beautiful lady would drown in the very sound.

Then the roar retreated, dying back to a gentle murmur. They sat where they had fallen through the gate, holding each other, her arms tight around his neck, his arms tight around her waist, their eyes squeezed shut.

And their ears were filled with a song which in turn filled their hearts with visions.

Jovann could never say afterwards if he opened his eyes. It did not matter one way or the other. His mortal body was far from here, and this phantom existence did not need eyes to see that which was sung straight into his spirit. But perhaps out of pure force of habit he blinked and raised his head, tried to look around.

The light, which had been unbearably blinding as he’d plunged through the gate, was now remote and yet simultaneously all-consuming. He saw the vast world around him, every inch of it, illuminated in that glow. Yet it was too far, too distant for comprehension, and the song too passionate for understanding.

He did not need to understand.

His mind, ready to burst with the inconceivable, forced the song and the vastness into images he recognized. He found that he and Lady Hariawan knelt on the shore of an ocean. Or perhaps not an ocean. Maybe a river, but so huge, so far-stretching, so full of Forever that it could hold all the oceans of all the worlds in its heart and cradle them there.

White surf broke just at his knees and pulled at the edges of Lady Hariawan’s robes. Where it broke, it shattered into a hundred thousand colored hues, most of which Jovann could not see, so his mind interpreted them merely as brilliant, sparkling crystals of water. But the waves pulled those crystals back, and they dissolved into the deep black of the endless water, glimmering beneath the surface in reflection of . . .

Oh! in reflection of the Garden!

Jovann felt his heart thundering in his phantom breast as he tilted his gaze up and up and upward still. It was just as well that heartbeats did not matter here, or he would have died trying to take in that which spread before his vision.

The Moon’s Garden was full of flowers: enormous, spreading, clustering flowers of light, of night, of half-light. They shimmered, they spread, they twined through the sky, brilliant tendrils of living, glowing beauty, and a single petal would have been enough to cover all of Daramuti and the Khir Mountains. A blossom would encompass a kingdom.

They spread across the eternal sky. And they bloomed before Jovann’s desperate gaze, then faded, then bloomed again.

At first the flowers were all he could see. He might have sat for an age or two of mortal worlds, just trying to look with all the fullness of his heart, trying to see them as he knew they must be seen, but as he could not see. The enormous Song rained down upon him, and he wept without knowing that he did so.

Then he realized that the Song did not come from the blossoms themselves. His vision cleared a little more, and suddenly he saw the Dara.

His mind had no possible foundation of understanding to encompass the living form of even a single star. But his upbringing, his childhood, stepped in where his reason could not and supplied him with a form he could comprehend, however unlikely and otherworldly that form might be.

He saw the Dara as his mother had told them they were: Shining beings on four delicate legs ending in tiny cloven hooves that could, with a single stamp, crush the heads of tigers. Sweeping manes shining like waterfalls of starlight.

And a coiled horn, sharp as life itself, protruding from each forehead.

They sang not with their mouths but with their whole beings. A million songs and more, all unique, all joined together in one tremendous chorus. These linked like threads in a tapestry, individual and yet only complete when joined together.

A single moment of that Song as sung by the Dara would have killed Jovann in his mortal body. But once more his heart took in only what it could, expressing it in forms just barely within the realm of imagining, and he survived. He survived and gloried in what he saw, what he heard, what he tasted.

He realized—after what may have been a hundred years of frozen listening—that Lady Hariawan’s grip on his neck had not loosened. Though it caused him physical pain to avert his eyes from the splendor above, he looked down upon her. The lights of the Garden highlighted her black hair in many beautiful colors. But her face he could not see, for it was buried in his neck and shoulder like some terrified child’s.

“My darling,” he said, for he could call her nothing else while under the Song of the Dara. “My darling, look. We are safe here. No evil shadows could pass through that Gate or dare to step foot in this place. We are safe. We are whole. Look and see!”

She did not move. He feared she might be dead, and this fear brought such a surge of mortality coursing through his spirit that one of the Dara stopped singing and looked down upon him where he knelt on the shore.

The star shook its mane and gazed with puzzled interest. Then it stepped from the sky, passing by the glorious blossoms without a glance, until it stood just above Jovann, its feet near, but not touching, the great water.

Who are you?
it asked.

The voice flattened Jovann to his face. He clutched Lady Hariawan to his breast and lay gasping in agony, and the waves washed over his head.

The star blinked slowly. Then it said,
Forgive me. Of course, you are mortal.

Then it shook itself with an effort, and light and glory fell from its being. Or rather it seemed to take on a covering, a shroud, blocking out the full truth of itself, containing it in a form no less beautiful but much less complex. When it spoke again, its voice no longer rang with the Song of its millions of brothers and sisters but was singular. It was a voice that could move to tears but not kill.

“Who are you, mortal, to have entered my Mother’s realm?”

Jovann shuddered. Then he propped himself up on one elbow and, summoning all the courage of his being, gazed at the Dara once more. To his surprise—and to his horror—he saw it clothed in a form of flesh. Skin encased its majesty, and softest fur of silvery blue. He thought if he reached out and touched that horn, it would prick his finger and draw blood.

“Dara,” he gasped, “you should not look at me. I am unworthy.”

The unicorn seemed to consider this. Then it tossed its head. “It does not matter. If you came through the Gate then there is reason for your coming, and worth has nothing to do with it.”

It took another step, inclining its head so that its horn was now mere inches from Jovann’s face. It studied him with eyes of deep, midnight blue in which the light of its star-glory still shone.

“What is your name?” the Dara asked again.

“Juong-Khla Jovann,” Jovann replied at once.

But the unicorn shook its head. “I asked your name, not what you are called. Never mind. It is difficult for me to see through these eyes, but I see enough. You are welcome, Juong-Khla Jovann. I have sung of your coming before now. And who is this with you?”

“I . . . I do not know,” Jovann replied. He pushed himself upright again with some difficulty. Lady Hariawan, however, lay upon the shore, her hands clenched into such tight fists that had she been in her mortal body her nails would have cut her palms. She still did not move, did not raise her head. “She is dear to me,” Jovann said, putting out his hands to help her, and finding her whole body resistant to his touch. “She has long sought Hulan’s Garden. I helped her.”

The unicorn regarded her beneath its unfathomable gaze. It said, “She has never sought the Gardens.”

It turned then and started walking through the air above the water. The waves lashed at its feet but did not quite reach. “Come,” it called back over its shoulder. “Walk with me.”

For a moment Jovann could not make the words fit into his brain. After all, one does not expect to be invited to walk with a star. But when he understood, he leapt to his feet at once and, with renewed strength, hauled Lady Hariawan to her feet as well. She rose and swayed where she stood, her head bowed so that her hair covered her face. She would not look up at the sky.

“My darling,” Jovann said, putting an arm around her shoulders to support her as they took the first steps, “please look around you. I would hate for you to miss what you have so long sought.”

She said nothing. She kept pace with him, however, and she did not fall.

For the first many steps Jovann did not stop to consider that there was only ocean before them. He simply followed the star as he was bidden. But he frowned suddenly and looked down at his feet, wondering if he walked on the surface of the water itself. Instead he found that just beneath the water a strand of silvery sand supported his feet. Whether that strand had always been there, disguised by the waves, or whether it had grown up suddenly in order to offer him safe passage, he could not say. It did not matter.

The star did not walk on the water or the strand, but kept to the sky, pacing in the darkness beneath the Garden blooming above. Other Dara turned and watched their progress, singing as though to prophesy each step before it was taken. They were too much for Jovann, so he focused on the silvery-blue flanks of the incarnate unicorn, which, while not exactly comfortable, fit better into his reason.

“Do you want to know what I am called?” the Dara asked as they progressed across the ocean, farther and farther from the gate.

“Yes,” Jovann said. “I would like to know.”

“I am called Cé Imral,” said the star. “I believe you would know me as
Chiev
. I shine in the northern sky.”