The Revenants (21 page)

The gryphon may have sighed, or only breathed deeply. Wings struck downward, ringing like anvils, buffeting the air, lifting the beast upward in a long arching flight toward the black city. Terascouros tugged them into the circle, linked their hands and began the breathy, monotonous chant which hinted at melody. The other three shivered, caught in a skein of thoughts which flowed restlessly around the circle as they linked, as though doors had been opened among them, and their very selves flowed and coalesced. Medlo caught a thought of the Tree of Forever, knew it, lost it, wondered at it. Thewson was caught up in the gardener’s mind, was planting herbs, seeing them grow, and knew that he was Jasmine. She, in turn, watched the great sea serpent move down the moon track toward Candor. The flowing thoughts ebbed, steadied, became a torrent which rose up around them like flame. They grew within it like trees of force, their branches waving in a storm wind of sound which was the chant made manifest. It went up from them, a fountain exploding from within their circle, upward to break into clouds borne on hurricane winds, crackling with pent energy and shattering the sky with lightning. Within their circle the sources of the fountain dropped deep into the earth. They were a fragile ring around a tempest which plunged from the depths outward, widening, spreading across the sky to the horizons and beyond, around the sphere, the call of the chant falling from it like rain.

Then the call faded, the storm quieted, fell away into fragments of cloud, and they were left teetering at the edge of a bottomless well. They looked again, and it was only the bare, grey earth beside the pave. From the black city came a splash of acid light and a mighty clangour as of metal shattering. The squat tower came to life, and light speared out across the pave, beams which crossed and recrossed in search. Thewson gathered them back into the shelter of the forest. ‘Leona has broken the doors, he said, matter-of-factly.

‘She is only one,’ murmured Terascouros. ‘Only one. Did any other hear us?’

There were other sounds from the city, a shrilling of bells and whistles. Tiny black shadows began to mass in the light from the broken doors. Terascouros went on mumbling, ‘Only one. One.’

Jasmine caught her breath, staring toward the south where flickering whiteness at the limit of their sight moved from the rim of the forest into the cleared lands. The movement suggested tossing heads, manes thrown in silver veils, single horns jutting like spears from foreheads. Nearer there were bulkier movements, taller, like vast reaches of pinions. To the north, suddenly, were gouts of flame as though a mighty forge coughed among the trees; and sounds of hills moving, of horns blowing above and below the range their ears could hear. Around the full circumference of the pave drew in a noose of pearly fire, leaving only the space they stood in darkness.

Behind them came the pad of huge feet, and they turned to confront a sphinx which paced toward them on slow lion feet, fixing them with enigmatic eyes. ‘We come who were called, with those both high and low, with theuram, with basiliskos. Go or die.’

Thewson backed away from the sphinx, gathering the others with outstretched spear toward an outcropping of stone onto which he lifted them, muttering the while, ‘Wa’os fanuluzh. To break those walls…. Basilisk…. I know him….’ They perched precariously above the torrent of pale creatures which flowed past them, some part snake, part bird; some part bird, part beast; some part beast, part man; some part man, part snake; a tumult and perturbation of creatures, striding leafed ones, flying fish, some indescribable. Jasmine laughed, almost hysterically, and Terascouros pulled her close.

‘ “All things are possible, and enduring, in Earthsoul.” Have you not learned that? There is no Separation in the heart of earth. Annnh. Look on more wonder than these eyes have ever know….’

Before them the circle of pearly light grew thicker as it moved over the pave toward Murgin. In that black city, the outcry mounted, the light beams jittered across the pave, washing the creatures into invisibility with splashes of green light. They can’t be seen in that light,’ said Medlo, awed.

‘Pray they cannot be seen at all,’ murmured Terascouros. ‘Leona is still inside alone.’

The pearly light had extended almost to the walls of Murgin, washing over scurrying black figures that darted this way and that without avoiding the creatures. Abruptly the disc of light divided, becoming a pallid wheel, dark spokes running from the centre to the edge, and down these aisles of darkness something moved from the forest to the city. Down the aisle directly before them there was a soft clicking, as if made by small talons. The light flowed in behind the sound, making the disc whole once more.

All waited. The creatures filled all the miles of the pave, filled it and covered it and waited now at the very walls of Murgin. Within Murgin the clamour went on, but on the pave was only silence. At last a winged shadow occluded the light from the broken gates, and from this shadow came the gryphon’s voice crying adamant and iron, blood and stone. A sigh rose from the pave, and the walls of Murgin began to fall.

First was the sound of a cat spitting, a small cat, with small anger. Then a hair-thin crack ran up the walls of the city, spilling light, and the crack grew wider as the wall bulged outward, hanging for long moments like a brooding cliff. Then the wall fell, and the sound began again. The city gasped and shuddered, dying as it stood, killed by the unseen while its light still searched for what had killed it.

Through the rents in the city wall, the host poured into the city. The searching beams paled and died. A moan came over the pave as the earth would moan after a great quake, and the multitude of creatures met in the centre over the wreckage of the fallen tower. For a moment the pearly light blazed up, silvering wing and talon, horn and hoof. Then the light faded and was gone.

Beside them the gryphon cried over a bundle which it touched with a single talon. Terascouros and the others scrambled across fallen stone to unwrap the robes in which Jaer was tangled and then to weep as the gryphon did. The Keepers had not done everything that could have been done, so the body could still be recognized as Jaer—as they had last seen her. They turned from the mutilation with anger and nausea as Terascouros knelt to examine it with trembling hands.

‘The heart still beats. Great Powers, why does she still live? It is not possible to live after that, but her heart still beats.’

Thewson gathered Jaer’s body into the robes and stood, saying, ‘We must do something. Where are healers?’

‘None,’ said Terascouros. ‘The nearest would be the Sisterhood where we were going. It’s too far. Days’ journey from here. Even there, I doubt they could save her.’

The gryphon wailed, a long, whining cry, stumbling to its feet to show long lacerations on its sides and flanks. The great beast turned away from them north, began to move away.

‘I tell you, it’s too far!’ screamed Terascouros.

The gryphon wailed again, but moved on. Thewson followed. Medlo hawked deeply and spat. It was not possible to look on that body without a deep, heart-holding sickness which made one spit sour bile from the throat. He went after the others, gathering up his belongings as he went, moving wordlessly into the forest. At the crest of the first hill, he turned to look back, feeling Terascouros clinging to his arm. A lonely cry came from one of the black figures which still moved upon the pave, moved and dropped, one by one. In the early light they could see what was left of Murgin, a featureless pile, a great tumulus, tomb for all who lay within.

From within the ruin a mist gathered, pillarlike, rising, beginning to change, to move, a roiling fog which hung in long, tangled tentacles then drew into a single shape, the shape of a monstrous head, cocked and listening. Terascouros gabbled under her breath, ‘Oh, that…
that
… come away, quickly, come away.’ She plunged down the hill, shuddering, with Medlo running to catch up as she went on, ‘Away, into the trees. Hide from
that.’

They managed to walk for some hours before the gryphon moaned and fell, panting, limbs shivering with chill. They gathered wood, built a fire, and Terascouros bathed the gryphon’s wounds while Jasmine ripped clothing into bandages. In her kit was a store of dried herbs which she stewed into a sharp-smelling poultice to stop the wounds from bleeding. They used it on both Jaer and on the gryphon, then gulped food and lay aching on the hard ground until the gryphon cried out and stumbled to her feet once more.

They went on through the afternoon, losing the sun in a pallid overcast which seemed to lower with every passing our. Medlo remembered the shape which had gathered over Murgin, and he kept looking over his shoulder as he tried to carry Terascouros. They took brief rests at intervals. From time to time Thewson would lower Jaer to the ground while he stretched and bent his arms to get the blood flowing through them. Each time, Jasmine would turn back the blanket and put her ear to the thin, bloodied chest which moved so slightly.

Their way led upward, along dim aisles of trees so lofty and full that no sunlight fell between, the forest floor carpeted only with generations of leaves. By late afternoon the ends of the forest halls were hidden in fog, and even Thewson’s steps had begun to slow. The gryphon panted strangely. They were lost in greyness, in chill. The end of the light came suddenly, and Thewson turned to them.

‘Off that way a little is a cave. I smell the fern and the water. We can go no farther now.’ He led them aside from their path into the darkness and mist until all of them could hear the music of water dropping slowly into cavern pools. It was a sound like hollowed wood struck randomly in an aimless melody. There were beds of dry sand beside the pool within the cavern, and dead trees lay at the entrance in a tumble of broken branches.

Their fire lit the cavern, but it barely touched the wings of the gryphon where it lay deep against the rock, eyes closed and beak gaping across a taloned foot. Jaer’s wounds had bled again, and Jasmine poulticed them with the last of her herbs. They slumped beside the fire, too weary to eat, unable to sleep, for Jaer’s shallow breaths had long, agonizing pauses between them during which each of them believed that she would not breathe again.

Medlo’s fingers caressed the neck of his jangle. The endless music of the falling water fell into him with an obdurate sadness. He knew Jaer would die. He wished, prayed that Jaer would die so that he could stop screaming within himself for Jaer to live, to breathe again, and again. He saw in Jasmine’s eyes the shadow of his own panic and fear.

Terascouros, also, knew Jaer would die, but wondered why those in Murgin had let her live this long. She would not die at once. No. This had been done so that Jaer would die after a time, after waking. Terascouros thought of that waking and prayed that Jaer would die before that could happen.

At length they slept. Outside the cavern the mist moved past in endless companies of shifting forms; it gathered in battalions at the cavern’s entrance and waited there. Inside, the travelers woke to Jaer’s screaming.

It was not a loud screaming. It had rather the sound of a small animal which had been caught in a trap and had been there through days and nights without water or food or hope. It was not a cry for help or a scream of surprised pain; it was the cry of a body which can make no other sound and is too agonized to remain silent. It is the sound the torturers wait for, knowing that there will be no more after this sound has ended. It was not Jaer’s voice, nor any human voice.

‘It is too far,’ said Terascouros. ‘We will not reach the Sisterhood while she lives.’

‘We will go on,’ said Thewson. ‘If she dies, we will bury her.’ His face was dark and inscrutable.

‘There are certain roots,’ said Jasmine hopelessly. ‘Ease-root is one. It grows in meadows – can stop pain. I have none. This is not the country to find it.’

Terascouros shook her head. ‘Sunny meadows. No, she will go on like that until she dies. It will not come soon enough.’

‘We will go on,’ said Thewson.

They went on, out into the darkness before dawn and away to the north once more. Behind them the battalions of mist seemed focused upon the firelight within the cavern. The travellers passed out of the fog and into the clear starlight of early morning. On the hills there had been frost during the night which made their feet squeak a shrill protest over the cropped grasses. Ahead was open land interspersed with groves of white-trunked trees, and far ahead the bulk of Gerenhodh blocked out the light of the stars. Thewson pointed it out, and Terascouros nodded. ‘Yes. The Sisterhood is just south of that, in a long, twisting valley. It’s been fifteen years. I may not be able to find it.’

As they crossed one of the chain of meadows, both the gryphon and Jasmine cried out at once. To the left the gryphon wandered away toward a distant gleam of pooled water, and on the right Jasmine knelt beside a frost-blackened stem. ‘Easeroot,’ she said. ‘I’m almost sure. Who would have thought to find it here, so far from the lowlands?’ She was digging frantically with her fingers, and Medlo came to offer his dagger, wincing as she blunted it on a buried stone. The roots which came into her hand were the size of men’s fingers, a long sausagelike row of them connected by dry, fibrous netting.

Thewson put his burden down and stood flexing shoulders and thighs as he watched the sky lighten to the east. At his feet the constant moaning went on, scarcely louder than a low wind sound at night, and yet as rasping upon the nerves as a knife blade across jangle strings. The gryphon had disappeared behind a clump of trees. Terascouros fell to her knees.

‘Is it the root you know?’ she asked.

Jasmine nodded. ‘Nothing else resembles it. It is a kind of sleep drug which deadens pain. It is not often used, because it sometimes kills. Still…’

‘Don’t worry yourself with words, child. Use it. If she dies she can be no worse off than now. Better, perhaps.’

Jasmine flushed. ‘I feel so guilty to think such things.’

‘Only fools insist upon life at any cost.’ Terascouros sighed. ‘Others would say that life may be laid down when it becomes too heavy. Where does it go, after all, but into the keeping of the Powers who gave it and will give it once again? Well. What can I do to help?’