The Ordinary (27 page)

“Me, too,” Father said. “We'll be with you for a long time, for as long as a normal person's life.”

Something about the phrase stuck with her but she was paying attention to other details. To the silky sound of Father's voice. He was still speaking. “So we have to try to help Uncle Jessex and the King. They're very sad.”

“Uncle Jessex isn't going?”

“No,” Mother answered. “He's not. He'll always be here with you.”

“But he has to leave, sometime.”

Father shook his head. “No. He has to stay. That's what God made him for. To wait here.”

“For what?”

He shook his head. “That's enough for one night, Mallie.”

So he went away and left her alone, the hollow of her sadness complete.

This was the moment of loss she remembered through all that came afterward, the burning ache of the King's leaving, the whole world mourning his passing. The last moment in Inniscaudra, the grand house lit, glittering, a pageant to end the age, as it was called, the assembly of Finru and Nivri nobles from all over Aeryn, the visit of the Tervan Empress and the Svyssn Wife, each with their retinues, a delegation from the Orloc and even the Untherverthen, who had not been seen above ground in some time. King Kirith saying good-bye, vanishing into that doorway that had not been opened since the Long War ended. The shape of the Crone soon appeared there, God herself come to meet the King and lead him to the land of the dead. She came to open the door as she always had, and walked in the room where everybody had come to say good-bye. God had walked in Malin's presence, in the presence of many others, and no one in those days had any doubt that it was really she.

The King left a note for Malin, very short and simple, which she kept among her possessions that were always to be close at hand:

He left late in the month of Khan, having lingered into spring, for one last celebration of Uncle Jessex's birthday at Aneseveroth. Only a half month later, at Inniscaudra, the great doors swung closed and the King vanished, leaving Malin with an ache of absence that she knew would remain. Always, she thought at the time. Meaning, all her mortal life.

“There are many kinds of always,” Uncle Jessex told her. This was much later, when Mother was dying, with Father already across the mountains. “When your mother says she will love you always, even beyond the mountains, she means she'll love you for all the time we know will ever come.”

“It's so hard to see her weak like this.”

They sat in the palace Kvorthen in Drii, with the whole city in mourning. Uncle Jessex had ridden from Ivyssa as soon as Mother sent for him. He had been waiting for this news, as everyone had, ever since Malin's father set out across the mountains on his own, choosing at the last moment to make the journey himself rather than to suffer death. Mother chose to take the mortal path, and Malin understood the choice was made so that she could remain with her daughter to the last moment. Malin was still numb from the first loss and here was the next.

“It's hard to think of all of them gone.” His voice. Echoing.

She looked at him. An expression on his face, nearly terror, Uncle Jessex. Could he be afraid? She moved beside him, suddenly afraid herself. His grip on her waist was tight, insistent. On the bed, Mother murmured, opened her eyes very slowly.

She saw Uncle Jessex and smiled. Weakly reached a hand. Her face lined, the skin beginning to soften, flesh slackening against the bones of her skull, bringing it into relief. She looked old and tired. Uncle Jessex sat on the bed, took her hand. “Don't be sad,” she whispered.

“I'm trying not to be,” he said, but a tear was draining down his cheek. Malin felt her own tears begin to swell and knelt beside him, laid her hands along Mother's arm.

“You'll both be here together for a long time,” Mother said, “you'll have each other.”

“We know that,” Uncle Jessex swallowing.

“Malin doesn't know it, do you, Malin?”

She had trouble finding her voice. “Know what, Mother?”

A soft hand reached for Malin's cheek. “You'll see,” Mother said, and then, for a moment, her eyes glazed, a pain wracked her chest. Malin leaned over her, kissed her forehead. Mother's breath eased after a moment, looked at Uncle Jessex. “It's time. I want to go now. Will you release me?”

He could barely speak. “If that's your wish.”

She nodded, turned to Malin, looked deeply into her eyes. Malin was transfixed, understanding the moment had come. “Good-bye for now, my dear.”

“I'll see you soon,” Malin said, “when I cross the mountains myself.”

“I'll see you then, but it won't be soon,” Mother answered, and closed her eyes, kissed Malin quietly, and Uncle Jessex untied the cord that wrapped Mother's soul to time and let the soul slip free.

Mother's words echoed afterward, and Malin received them into herself completely, asking no questions of Uncle Jessex, who had his own problems. She lived quietly in Drii for some years, Queen of the people of Drii, aware that the city was not so comfortable with her rule, the fact that she was only half Drii, aware that she was too tall even for a Drii, aware that her lack of femininity, her gangly arms and legs, her shocking eyes, which sometimes flashed from green to gold and back, made others wary of her; glad of any chance to escape to Aneseveroth, where she and Anli had become lovers years ago, Anli growing into a lissome sprite, slender and provocative, living year-round on the estate, anxious for times when Malin could come to her, but no more anxious than Malin was herself. At those times, at rest in Anli's arms, or on the occasions when Uncle Jessex invited them both to Inniscaudra, Malin felt herself at peace, growing into a peaceful maturity, happy with herself and with what she understood of her fate.

When she reached her eightieth birthday, the full maturity of a Drii, she made a trip to Inniscaudra to speak to Uncle Jessex about abdicating, about how to manage it. By then it was common for a person to live to be 140 or more, and she had no intention of spending the rest of her years as anything but herself.

“I've spoken in private to the Venyari families.” They had walked onto one of the roof gardens, under three stone arches, the place verdant with the green of summer, duris trees casting cool shade over the stone path. “They've been wanting me to take this step for some time. They think that with Father gone, the time of kings and queens has passed.”

“I can't argue with them,” Jessex said. “The word's not very useful.”

“Is that why you never took the title for yourself?” she asked.

“I don't want to be a king. Let the Yneset squabble on its own, take its own course. I'll manage what I need to manage in my own way.”

He needed to state no reason for his feelings, nor would anyone, including Malin, have wondered why he should be so indifferent. By then she had seen what Uncle Jessex could do when challenged. She had learned to fear him a bit herself. He looked no older now than when she was a girl, a man in his early twenties, slim and erect, with skin as smooth and fine as any she had ever seen. Odd, she thought, anyone in the world who didn't know us would think me his elder.

He touched her brow with his fingertips, closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he said, “It's time you learned about the rest of your life, anyway. I don't like to see you looking so old.”

“I am old,” she said, “I should look old. Anli doesn't mind.”

“Anli is a good woman.” He hesitated a moment. “But you, Malin. You can be renewed, the same way I can.”

Silence. She was replaying the words in her head, to learn their secret meaning, the surface seemed too large. He simply waited. “Tell me what you mean,” she said.

“I believe you understand me. I believe you understood what your mother was telling you when she asked me to release her from her body. You're not quite mortal like the rest, Malin. Your birth was special.”

“Go on.”

He took a moment, looked up, as he often did, to the top of his tower, Ellebren Height, where he did his work. “You've studied enough of history to know that the Twice-Named were never permitted to bear children except under exceptional circumstances. Your mother was never bothered by a menstrual cycle for all the years I knew her.”

“Ten or twenty thousand years of that would drive a person mad,” Malin said.

He simply smiled. “She was older than that, I think.”

“Do you know how old?”

He shook his head.

“Do you know how old any of them were?”

“No. It's the one subject we never broached. They'd never have answered. Maybe they didn't keep count. Our history is so long and detailed, and we've never been very good with calendars.” He sighed. “At any rate, God made you to live a long time, Malin, and I can prove that to you anytime you like.”

“How?”

“By taking you into the Deeps, here, to the bath in the rock where Twice-Named go to renew themselves.”

“It will work for me?”

“Yes.”

She lifted her head to the wind. “But Mother taught me the God-name was no longer to be given.”

“This is a different gift,” he answered.

“Why am I special? What have I to do?” An instant's intuition, a breath of wind, her eyes moving to the summit of Ellebren, which, when she was a girl, had seemed to her the center point of the world. “You're going to teach me magic.”

“You'll study with the Prin, first. Then, later, I'll teach you myself.”

“You've known this was coming.”

“Yes.”

“But Mother and Father never wanted me to be trained this way, when I was a girl—”

“We all wanted you to have a normal lifetime,” he answered, suddenly somber. “Your mother insisted, and I agreed.”

“Do I have to start this now?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“Anli,” Malin said. Feeling the catch in her voice at the mention of Anli's name. The feeling so strong even after all these years. “I can't leave her behind.”

“Then we'll wait till she's gone,” he said.

Till she's dead, you mean, Malin thought, and was flooded with sadness, though in the oddest contrast, already within her was a spark of indifference, too. As if her body had already known she would not die soon.

The question that had yet to form in her head, or, perhaps, the question that had taken the form of a cloud, pervading her life in an insubstantial way, finally crystallized for her in her second lifetime, after she had lain down in the pool on the rock and risen again, a tall, somber woman in her thirties, by all appearances, and not feeling much different, except that her body was younger. One day in the Winter House, while reading the Book of Curaeth, it occurred to her that there must have been prophets since Curaeth. So, when she was with Uncle Jessex the next time, she asked, point blank, “Who made the record of what God told you about me? About the future?”

His attention suddenly sharpened on her. She had the sense he was letting go of many activities of which she had been unaware. “What God told us when?”

“At the end of the Long War.” She used the common word,
Halihiriva,
not the historian's name,
Shors Piruniviriva,
which meant, “Third War of the Sorcerers.” “God spoke to you all. She talked about my birth. Someone wrote it down.”

He assented with the slightest nod of the head. He had been waiting for this question, by now she knew him well enough to read the tiny change of expression. “Kirith Kirin made a book of what she told him.”

“The King himself?”

“He wanted no fuss about it. Whatever she said was said to him. There are two copies, one mine, and one that belonged to your father. In your old library in Drii, if I'm not mistaken.”

“Mine, now.”

He nodded. “It's called the King's Book. Your father would have kept it locked up, I expect. I made him a nice chest to keep the book secure.” His mood had become somber. “Be sure of what you're doing before you ask to read it.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at her a moment. “Kirith Kirin didn't write in riddles, like Curaeth. He wrote very plainly. That's why we kept his book under lock and key. Once you read it, you can't unlearn it. I can't touch your mind in that way, no matter how it troubles you.”

“Troubles?”

The heavy mood of the present moment slid with a click, like perfect gears, into the pattern of heaviness that had become a part of his nature, a shadow that had settled on him when the King went away. “You didn't think we'd had our full share of trouble yet, did you?”

“Tell me.”

He shook his head. “I can't. Even after you read the book, I won't talk to you about it.”

“Why not? Surely I'm old enough by now—”

He silenced her simply by lifting a brow, the slightest shift. “I know far more than there is in the book. Far more than you need to know.” The look softened some. “I only mean, go slowly. You have a lot of time. You're going to live a long life. What YY-Mother told King Kirith reaches very far ahead of us all. It concerns her nature, and the nature of her kind, as well as of our own. So be careful, don't try to learn everything today.”

It had been a while since he had said so much. She went away to think.

At least she could find the book. She sent a message through the Prin network to her private steward in Drii, who duly searched her father's library and sent to her a carved wooden box, locked, delivered by a rider who worked in her household. A note from the steward said, “This item is listed as ‘The King's Book of Our Days,' and was kept in the sealed archives along with your father's most private papers. There is no way to open the case that I can find, but I believe the book inside is the one you seek.”