The Revenants (15 page)

A night or two later, Jaer changed sex in the midst of a strange dream in which a distance voice demanded,
‘Tell me where you are.’
Jasmine shook him awake under the cold moon of autumn, and he clung to her, trembling, then aware of a strangeness between his body and hers. Jasmine grew aware of it, too, and held him not so closely. They slept the rest of the night so, and in the morning Jaer was troubled by the way they looked at him, both with a new kind of tension and forced cheer. Medlo was calling him ‘youngun’ again, instead of ‘birdling.’

Perhaps it had been simply that Nathan and Ephraim had been quite old at the time Jaer was born, or perhaps they had simply been unable to deal with the subject, but the question of sexual feelings had never been discussed. Oh, they had talked anatomy and biology fully, rather more fully than Jaer’s interest had warranted, but never feelings. And then, too, Jaer had reached puberty in fits and starts, at one time a boy child, the next day a girl-woman, then a boy child again. Jaer was intimately aware of the physical sexual differences; of the fact that they made little difference; and of the fact that he now felt very strange.

He had liked being cuddled next to Jasmine in the cold night, liked the softness of her breath on his neck and the firmness of her arms around him. Now, with morning, she had drawn away from him, had caught Medlo’s eyes on her and flushed, had seen Medlo flush in his turn as though he, too, was embarrassed at his own thoughts. Jaer ate his breakfast, chewed and thought, swallowed and thought, decided that his current body was possibly not unattractive to both Jasmine and Medlo, and then considered the implications of that for a while. He could imagine doing several things, all of them highly original (for Jaer), all ending in increased embarrassment. At last he dug out of his memory one more of Nathan’s aphorisms. ‘If you don’t know what to do next, consider doing nothing.’ He decided he would have to go on feeling strange, hoping it was not an illness, until something happened or someone said something which would make everything simpler.

But it had been nice to be held in the cold night. He wondered whether it was nice for only some bodies, or for all bodies, and whether Medlo would find it pleasant also, and whether Nathan and Ephraim would have found it pleasant at one time.

As for Jasmine and Medlo, both were acutely uncomfortable – Medlo because Jaer looked so much as Alan had sometimes looked, faintly puzzled and waiting for something to happen which would resolve the puzzlement. A host of memories came with this. And Jasmine, thinking in the night that this body she held was not unlike the body of a lover in Lak Island, woke to see that Jaer’s face was not unlike Hu’ao’s face, childlike and wondering. She felt vaguely indecent, as though she had attempted to seduce a toddler, and yet Jaer was not a toddler. Both Medlo and Jasmine struggled to identify this youth, this boy-man, this separate person as distinct from yesterday’s person – and yet this person was the same person. So that, if Jasmine were to take this person as a lover, today, that person might be, tomorrow, someone else. Or only different. The idea was confusing and unpleasant enough to make her turn away from it into a kind of forced jocularity, a cheery parentalism which matched Medlo’s manner and was equally false.

Jaer felt the falsity, felt repulsed, felt forced into some construction or compartment he had not occupied before. ‘As though,’ he said to himself, ‘I were mythical. As though they did not believe in me.’

He went on eating, but the day had dimmed into resentment. The night’s comfort could not be rebuilt. He could only go on doing what he had sworn to do, for they had rejected him at some level he had never understood or cared about, though he thought he might have cared about it if they had only …

Never mind. They went on up the river, complicating their feelings by sleeping too little and eating too little, so that they came into Byssa tired, angry at nothing, and after Medlo had told them of the city, afraid.

The city was covered with mist except during the hottest days, and the mist covered what went on there as well. There was no law or safety in Byssa. In the mornings the wagons of the furriers went through the streets to gather up ‘Byssa meat,’ the corpses of those who had been murdered in the night. A body not quite dead when it went into the wagon would be dead when it was dumped out at the fur farms on the hills above the city. The skins would be brought down through Byssa for shipment, and so it was said of those who died in Byssa that ‘they would go through Byssa again.’

It was a trade city, having only a few small enclaves. The Temple ran the city, meting out punishment without justice. As in all Temple cities there was much arbitrary rule making and rule enforcement, with particular regard to the persons and bodies of women. Medlo told Jaer to pray that he stayed male, and he spent hours making Jasmine up to look like an old; old woman with stringy grey hair and a hump.

‘The only safety near the city is in the caravansary, and we have to get through the city to get to it,’ he muttered at them. ‘Only in the caravansary will we find any group moving east, and we need to find such a group quickly.’

‘Can’t we just go on by ourselves?’ asked Jaer. ‘Is the road so dangerous?’

‘The road is very good. But the tribes who live in the canyon are known to eat human flesh whenever they can get it.’ Jaer stopped arguing.

It was Medlo’s intention to enter the city at noon, at the hottest time of the day, because the heat made the guards and Keepers less vigilant. When they straggled in they were dust-covered and as inconspicuous as possible, Jasmine huddled like an ancient crone, Jaer loose-mouthed, a shambling carrier of baggage. Medlo led them, cringing, past the guards, up the long streets, nodding and bowing humbly, making pious gestures of Separation at the sound of each peal from the high black tower. Jaer watched him out of the corner of his eyes. This was no longer the musician, Medlo; this was a stranger, an old, cowardly peddler with nothing in his packs worth stealing.

They were stopped only twice. Each time Jaer did as he had been instructed, slobbered and wiped his nose on his sleeves while Jasmine leaned against the nearest wall in a picture of senile collapse. Each time Medlo groveled a bit and then led them on. There were cages on the walls. Some held bones, some held things which looked like bones but which still struggled feebly in the sun. After a time, Jaer stopped looking around him and concentrated on his boots, step after step. It took over an hour to cross the city and come to the walled acre of the caravansary. There they found a corner where they could get their backs to the wall and settled into the dust.

Jasmine asked about the occupants of the cages. ‘Why are they there?’ What have they done?’

‘Anything,’ said Medlo quietly. ‘Or nothing. The guards put them there for lack of obedience, for lack of attention to the bells, for having crossed eyes, for not having enough coin. I told you this place was a bad place. What did you think I meant?’

After a moment she said, ‘Do you mean they would put us in a cage, like that, for nothing?’

‘They could. They still may, unless you are very quiet and very inconspicuous. I thought you understood that.’

They understood it then. They melted into invisibility against the stone walls, letting the dust settle on them, watching the afternoon fogs rise once more to the very edge of the walls. Only after others in the yard had built fires did Jasmine risk setting a small blaze to huddle over, looking as old and juiceless as Jaer’s boots. Around them small groups gathered and dispersed, eyes peered from under hoods, voices muttered. Long lines of pack animals entered the great yard and clopped across it. Many of the caravanners went unrobed, their numbers protecting them. Animals were loaded and taken away. Medlo wandered away, only to return worried and pale. ‘No one goes east. We must find a train to join, or stay in Byssa through the night. This would not please me.’ He shook his head. ‘The people are more cautious than usual. I can find out nothing.’

Beyond the wall a chilling sound rose, freezing those in the yard in their positions as though they had been statues. Voices were chanting, harshly, violently, over the slow beat of a great drum which echoed off the far, fog-hidden banks of the Del. There was a clang of heavy metal, a rattle of chains, then the reverberation of iron wheels, the rumbling of an iron cage like that Jaer had heard on the road to Candor. He held himself rigid, trembling. The sound pounded away, gave way to an uneasy silence.

Into that silence a woman came into the yard, alone except for two enormous bridled hounds which walked at her side, eyes alert, backs straight under strapped packs. She gazed calmly about the yard, examining each group without hurry or nervousness, throwing back the hood which had covered her head to reveal silver hair drawn up through a slim circlet set with dark stones. Her eyes were so pale they seemed colourless, and her skin, also, was pale as the petals of a swamp flower. She moved with a striding, queenly grace.

Medlo muttered to himself, almost beneath his breath, ‘There’s a likely guardian. I like the dogs.’ He made a covert gesture which caught her glance. She regarded them for a moment, then came toward them, inclining her head.

‘Gavil-leona, dai. V’lai chaggan? Preon? Urdan?’

Medlo matched her nod, somewhat stiffly. ‘Medlo, dai. Benise urdan d’dao ni.’ He turned to the others. ‘She wants to know if we need huntress, guide or guard.’

‘I speak the western tongue,’ she interrupted him. ‘Yes. If you have need of a huntress, of a guide or guard, I seek such employment.’

Jasmine turned from the cooking pot, cackling like an old woman. ‘I hope you have food for those beasts. Otherwise, they may choose to eat one of us, or more than one if they are very hungry.’

The woman’s lips moved in what might have been a smile. ‘They eat at my let, starve at my order. They have eaten today.’

‘Then you are welcome. Medlo, here, can guide us well enough, but guards are much needed. How did you come to Byssa?’

She gestured toward the north. ‘There, through the broken lands.’

Jaer gaped at her. ‘Medlo says there are cannibals there.’

She let the smile cross her mouth once more and stroked the heads of the huge dogs beside her. ‘We were bothered only once.’

‘And her doggies have eaten today,’ cackled Jasmine. Jaer saw a look of honest amusement on the pale woman’s face.

‘They have, and I have, old woman. Make what you will of that.’ She began to dicker with Medlo for the amount of her fee, Jaer paying careful attention lest Medlo send the woman away. When it was mentioned that they intended to go eastward, the woman paused thoughtfully. ‘You will need at least one more weapon carrier, then, for the tribes there are more dangerous with each passing season. I have seen only one traveller move east this day, the driver of that wagon which was sent away with such ugly noise. This in itself is strange, for the caravans usually flow through Byssa like beer through a drover. Such scant traffic increases the danger. Still, find one more to share watch with me and I will go with you.’

She sat beside them in the dust and they watched the gate together. However, no one entered but a clot of priests who moved among the travellers demanding to know names and places of origin and reasons for travel. Medlo assumed that look of perky obsequious candour with which he masked fear. ‘Medlo, Holy One. From the westlands, now returning there. Only a poor musician with a poor wretched brother and an old servant. We will go east when a caravan goes.’

‘Leona,’ said the pale woman to the same questions. ‘I am a huntress for caravans. I go eastward with my beasts.’ The priest did not move on, and one of the great dogs growled low in his throat. ‘Hush, Mimo.’ She looked calmly at the black robe. The priest pursed his mouth and turned away.

Medlo fretted. ‘I have been here before, and the priests did not come into the caravansary. I don’t like the feel of it.’

Beside a long line of pack animals came a group of striding men, one among them tall and black, naked except for leather boots and loin guard, his hair tied into flowing tails by bright cylinders of yarn. He carried a spear half again as tall as he from which a cockatrice banner flew, and Leona looked him over carefully as though he were a horse she thought of buying. ‘There’s a passable man.’

Medlo nodded, approached the dark spearman and spoke with him in a quiet mutter which the others could not hear over the clatter of hooves. They returned together, the dark one bowing, intoning his name in a muttering bass as though it were an invocation.

‘Thew-son,’ he rumbled. ‘I will sell-spear if you will give me food and drink this very time. The way south is all dust and salt meat. The bread was sour.’ He spat, then grinned as Medlo began to talk to him about his fee. As they ate together they agreed it was dangerous and unwise to stay in Byssa, even for one night, and yet it was too late to get away.

‘We must buy a room,’ decided Medlo. ‘It will get us out of this dust, noise and confusion, and it will get us out of sight. Something brews here. It has my hair itching.’

‘It feels like a nest of basilisks,’ agreed Thewson. ‘Many places are bad, but this is very bad. It stinks.’

Medlo touched the strings of his jangle into a mockery of Thewson’s phrase.
Pling plang
. ‘Oh, yes, it does stink. All the dark sewers of Byssa come reeking into the air that the dark warrior may discover how they stink.’

Thewson showed his teeth, ivory on brown. ‘What can be discovered about you, tune twister?’

‘Oh,’ Medlo jeered at himself, ‘that I went from bad place to bad place as you have done, to save my skin. And after that, decided to go seek what I had been sent seeking in the first place.’

‘Luxuf-razh,’ murmured Thewson. ‘Riddles. What thing do you seek?’

‘A sword which carries power. The Sword of Sud-Akwith. But it’s only a casual quest. If I should happen upon it.’

‘I too,’ said Leona. ‘I too have a quest. There is a vessel I would be glad to have, the Vessel of Healing. Though it is probably too late for it to do what I would have it do; still – if I happened upon it.’