The Narrator (50 page)

The inscription is a strangely-worded general memorial whose meaning I find difficult to pin down, although it is plainly an official statement of recognition and remembrance. Boilerplate. What do I care what it says? Makemin doesn’t know and Makemin must be made to
believe
. Made to believe—that we tried—but every moment he can be forestalled must be used—just to hold Makemin’s hand, to hold Makemin.

With a crack as abrupt as a pistol shot, a light appears high in the branches of the huge tree above my head. I’m so desperate I hardly notice it, keep reading, and more lights crack on, little starlike lights at the points of gemlike leaves and the tips of green stalks, old boughs. Soon the tree above is sending out arrowlike shafts of piercing but somehow not blinding light in all directions, making a thicket of light over me. There are dark, open doorways flanking the apse the tree stands in, and from these now bursts the groaning of many deep voices, resonating as if they emerged from a huge iron vessel.

I raise my own voice to compete with theirs, groaning long syllables in Lashlache, and the words fill the chamber with a smell like heated metal. I have reached the end of the first tablet and switch to the second. The words are flying from my lips without my understanding any of them; they are being dragged out of me like links in a chain that those other voices are pulling. Something really is happening—I reach the end of the inscription and suddenly I drop on my knees as if my legs had been hooked and dragged down, I feel my eyes jerk up into my head—I put my hands to my face, feel it stretch and work forming long low syllables in Laschlache, feel it hum with those words, and my throat swollen with the veins tendons standing out from it nearly tearing with the bell-like words I shout.

Off to my right and high up I hear two sharp raps, and a series of rapid taps in three different pitches, several playing simultaneously, like a mechanical operation there in the corner, but I can’t pull my eyes down out of my head to see it. The taps seem to follow the droning voices from the doors, from whatever it is that stands behind the apse. The taps stop. A moment later, I hear two knocks off to my left, high up and behind me, and the same series of taps. Before it ends another two knocks far behind me high and to the right, and halfway through what I think is the same sequence another breaks in from my left and another again near the end of that from the right. As the last tap comes, I feel as if a great hand that had been squeezing me suddenly lets me go. I spring forward on my legs, my eyes drop down and I can see again, my voice has stopped my throat raw, everything has stopped. Before me, I see a great white arch—the tree is far away, deep beyond in the space through the arch where I feel a powerful yearning to go, there is darkness, silence. The lights are all out, the sounds have stopped.

I wait. Time passes.

I turn, afraid. Makemin is between me and the faint light of the door.

“Nothing!” he says. The word fills the dark.

“Go see if anything has changed outside.”

Nikhinoch’s shadow goes to the door, vanishes for a moment. The sight of him outside the doors, in daylight, is strange beyond my power to express, as though I saw a living man from the point of view of a dead one.

We wait in silence.

He returns quickly. He stands near Makemin, invisible in the dark, and quietly tells him,

“I see no change.”

Silence. Growing out of the silence ... I hear Makemin’s breathing rasp in his nostrils faster and faster. He is fumbling with something.

Fire erupts in the dark, shining on his face, features as unyielding and hard edged as a stone face; he is setting light to a torch. Match in his right hand, torch in his left, eyes staring blank and white as fog.

“What are you going to do?” Thrushchurl asks. I can see his long face there in the chaotic light of the torch.

Makemin fixes him with that blank look, then points to the nearest coffin, standing between the trees.

“They’re made of wood,” he says hoarsely.

“Oh, but ...” Thrushchurl’s brows contract, he looks stricken. I feel my insides turn to ice and my hands grow numb, my voice bolt up and gag itself in my throat.

“We’ll
make
them listen!” Makemin shouts.

“Oh, but you mustn’t
burn
them!” Thrushchurl explains, afraid, taking Makemin gently by the left arm.

Makemin tears his arm from Thrushchurl’s fingers, draws his pistol aims and shoots Thrushchurl in the chest.

My cry seems to draw the sound of the shot down into my own bosom, and it shrivels in me as I watch Thrushchurl drop to the floor. He lies face down in spreading black.

I take three steps dropping to my knees beside my friend. I touch him blindly and clutch at him.

“Traitor!” Makemin’s voice breaks near me I look up just as he fires.

Nikhinoch’s wan blue face twists in a streak against the dark, and shock, outrage, incomprehension flash out. With a faint noise, like someone tossing a pair of shoes into a corner, he falls forward onto Makemin, who staggers back. Silichieh is rushing in the door and Makemin, still staggering with Nikhinoch sliding down his standing length on the way to the floor, shoots Silichieh.

Silichieh cries out in pain. He rolls to the side as he goes down, diving into the impenetrable shadows around the bases of the pillars. Makemin rushes toward him, lunging around the column gun ready. I see a motion in the dark. Makemin veers back to the near side of the column. Silichieh jerks his rifle one handed from the floor and shoots Makemin in the stomach. The crash of the rifle makes my ears ring, and for a moment it’s as though nothing happens.

Makemin falls. Makemin’s all but unrecognizeable voice groans from the floor. Silichieh, gasping, lies on his stomach, I see now, rifle still extended in one hand, the other, streaked with blood, clasping his injured leg. Makemin is between us, in the streak of light from the open doors, on his right side. Slowly, he tilts over onto his chest and begins to push his upper body off the hexagonal tiles dripping blood. His bare head inches into the air.

Silichieh shoots it. I cry out and throw myself backward—I feel warm droplets on my face and upraised hands.

Makemin’s headless body lies there. Long black tree roots sprout from his neck flat across the floor, dotted here and there with lumps.

Silichieh rolls on his back, arm flung out, rifle resting on the ground. I can see the outline of his chest rise and fall, hear his breathing. I look down, and see faint light glint on Thrushchurl’s upper teeth. I lower my head to his face, I feel for life in his throat. I lay him down again. I go to Silichieh, keeping close to the dark wall behind the pillars, calling his name softly. I come round to him and crouch by his head.

Silichieh’s upside-down eyes flicker up to me.

“What happened?” he asks.

Makemin’s bullet perforated his thigh through the muscle on the outside. I work smoothly for a while, feeling weightless.

“Listen,” he says. “Saskia sent me ...”

Only now do I begin to notice the sound of shooting.

“They’re here,” I say.

He nods.

“Do we have a chance?”

“Maybe. They are nearly as few as we ... and they haven’t got Saskia. I think they could be low on ammunition. They shoot sparingly.”

“Do you think they have any help?”

Silichieh just breathes, looking up.

“I don’t think so ... Did you ...?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. It didn’t work.”

From far off come shots, cries.

“He didn’t get you, right?”

Thrushchurl, he killed.

“I’m not shot,” I say. “Any better?”

“Yes, thank you,” he says.

I sit by him.

“We should get back,” he says.

“You wouldn’t get there,” I say. “I’m not going to just leave you here.”

I put his pistol in my empty holster. I look up at the open doors, thinking I should shut them.

“We never should have come,” Silichieh says to himself.

Nikhinoch lies on his face across from me. Silichieh is resting.

I go over to Nikhinoch and turn him over onto his back. The look of suprise is still there. I try to lay him out with some dignity. It reminds me of the mortuary college, my friends. I start gasping, and I stagger away from Nikhinoch. My eye falls on Makemin’s body. I go over to it and stand, looking down.

I can’t hold my body steady—my hands shake, my legs sway, my head swivels on my neck, my breathing catches. I swallow thick saliva with effort.

“You idiot ...” I say.

I shout at abuse at him, and I kick his corpse, hearing only echoes of my own disjointed words as I jump on him with both my heels, stumble off balance from his body then jump again. I pick him up and throw him, his body collapsing a foot or so from me where I seize him up again and throw him down, take him and run with him, fling him up against a pillar. His body tumbles back to the ground hands slapping the floor.

Thrushchurl lies where left him, on his back, his spine curving off to one side. I go round to where I can face the door and straighten him out. I fold his hands on his chest, but then I take back the right one, and hold it.

Rattling—Saskia stops short in the doorway, bending over Silichieh.

“Where’s Makemin?” she asks, her voice ragged.

I haven’t heard any shooting for a while, it seems.

“He’s there,” I say, indicating with my head.

Saskia jerks at the sound of my voice, peers and sees me—“Who’s that? Low?”

I come forward.

“He’s there,” I repeat my words and gesture.

She straightens and takes two steps. Silence. Saskia whips off her helmet and dashes it to the ground. I can see half her shadow there in the strip of light from the door, see the helmet roll.

“Thrushchurl gone, too?” she asks.

I can’t see where she looks. It wasn’t a question. I hear the scrape of her boots as she turns in place—“His secretary?”

Silichieh’s voice is weak, “Makemin killed them both, for no reason. I came with your message, and he shoots me too. If Nikhinoch hadn’t been falling all over him just then, I’d be dead ... and Low as well.”

Although I can’t see her, I know Saskia is looking at me.

“You shot him?”

Silichieh answers—“He was coming to kill me. What else could I do?”

I hear her head swing to listen to him, then, again she addresses me.

“Why—did he shoot ...?”

“There’s no help here,” I say.

“That’s impossible. We’re in the right.”

“What does this look like to you?” I ask, spreading my hands, still clasping Thrushchurl’s in my left.

“They wouldn’t help?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything, even if they heard us or noticed us. What about the others?”

“We’ve lost. We must retreat.”

Saskia crosses slowly to retrieve her helmet. I see her put it back on.

“Let’s get him out of here. Hurry.”

She points to the bodies with a sweep of her finger.

“Take their rations.”

We lift Silichieh between us and carry him outside, hastening down to lower ground almost headlong. Saskia tosses her head to the left and we begin to make our way through the side streets. A plume of smoke comes from the direction of the prominence.

“The others?” I ask jerkily, Silichieh’s arm around my neck, looking across his shoulders to Saskia. She does not take her eyes from the path.

“... There are no others.”

We go as fast as we can. Over us, the sky is growing darker.

“We were overrun. The survivors fell back. I made a sortie alone and lived. The traitors sent a group in behind me I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop them. I got back, and a few were still living. They drove off the enemy, made them regroup. Everyone was wounded, then they all died. The enemy is still regrouping on the other side.”

“How many? How many?”

“Fifty. I’d say. At most. No more than that. No more.”

The clouds are denser still. I see the outer wall coming near. We draw close. I hear sounds off in the distance, a few shots, raised voices.

“They’re at the prominence.”

“I thought you said everyone was dead ...”

“They are—I don’t know why they shoot.”

We’re through the first gate.

“Can they see the gate from there?”

“Yes. If they look.”

Second gate goes by, and the third. I startle to one side wildly as a bullet clangs off the brass wall a dozen yards away. We break in to a run, Silichieh hopping on his free leg in wild discoordination, another bullet bangs into the brass closer to us and we veer to one side passing through the last gap into the open, putting the wall between us and the enemy. Breathing hard, we run for the trees.

*

Deeper into the woods now, out of sight of the walls. Silichieh drops swooning to the ground as we let up—his face is grey. I check his bandage—soaked through with blood—his wound torn open by our flight. His breathing is weak.