The Revenants (26 page)
Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
‘We have long awaited troubles, Dweller.’
‘Will this being unbecome, Magister?’
‘As Earthsoul wills. As we may prevent.’
The water burbled up and flowed away. Small flowers sprang up in the grass where the Magister had moved. Night had come as they spoke. As Magister went southward he heard the Dweller in Dalisslintoro-oa respond to the Magister’s greeting.
‘Long have you walked in earthways, Magister.’
‘Long has Dalisslintoro-oa bloomed and grown and leaf-folded, Dweller.’
This numen knew beeches rising massively in green-trunked towers. Here the streamlet ran between flowering banks, and the great stone watcher gazed down on an ancient dolmen. Night swirled around the Magister’s black hide, hid his huge dog feet, reflected starlight from his long white fangs and gleaming eyes. There were shapes and suitabilities for days and others for nights, forms for spring and others yet for fall.
‘Trouble, Magister.’
‘So say all the Dwellers, Dalisslintoro-oa.’
Magister sent his perception northward, the way he had come. The lands had been disturbed there, and many ancient dwellers had gone. He named them in memory, listing them among the cherished ones, reminding himself of their names in sorrow. Men had come in the north. Some heard the word of Earthsoul and made gardens. Others made barrens, holes in the fabric of earth, deadly places. No earthways were left there. The air burned, the stone was silent. Water was a curse there, and a filth and a defilement.
‘It is grieving to unbecome, Magister.’
‘It is grieving, Dweller.’
Dawn soaked upward into the darkness, north and south along the horizon of sparkling lakes and marshes to the east of Palonhodh. Early light shifted the shadows beneath the craggy hood of the watcher, making the shadowy features move and blur as though the shadowed lips uttered a command. Upon the dolmen a complex symbol gleamed as if drawn by slender fingers in a dew upon the stone. As the sun rose higher, the symbol dried, the last drops fading toward the south where Magister Omburan had gone. There, far and white against the southern sky brooded the hoary head of Gerenhodh.
Year 1169 – Early Spring
Winter moved north from the Hill of the Sisterhood; the Choir of Gerenhodh sang stillness upon the ghosts of Murgin. They roiled beneath this imposed quiet with ominous malevolence. Jaer slept as though forever; and the travellers gathered on a sunny ledge near the kitchens to fret away their impatience and drink midmorning tea. Old Aunt was with them, croaking hoarsely over her mug as Terascouros muttered angrily at her.
‘You can’t go on, Aunty. Let the others sing the ghosts quiet without you for a day or two. Within the week you’ll all be hoarse, and what’ll the ghosts do then?’
‘We do not know what they will do at all,’ the old woman cawed, grimacing at her own harsh voice. ‘We seek only to keep them quiet for a time, Teras, until our plea for help can be answered.’
‘Help!’ Terascouros made a mocking face. ‘Rituals that haven’t been used for a millennium.’
‘Rituals that haven’t been
needed
for a millennium,’ the Old Aunt corrected. ‘But taught to us by Taniel – taught to her by Omburan, so it is said – to be used at need.’
They had argued the matter since the morning after the Council when they learned that Sybil had left the Hill, had been seen riding away toward Zales, speedily, as though fearful of pursuit. Since that time Old Aunt had come each day to the ledge to stare northward into the wilds, whether to see her seven singers returned from their ritual endeavours or to see something else, she did not say. So this morning, she stared away in the early light which shattered from the threadlike tributaries of the Gomilbata and seemed to waken the vivd colours of a vanished autumn from the forest. For an instant a glint of crimson burned among the distant trees.
‘How are we supposed to know whether the singers have had any effect?’ grumbled Medlo. ‘What are the names they have sung?’
‘Names of a place, a place long gone. A special place, which meant something to the one whose help we seek …’ Terascouros’s attempt at explanation was cut short by Old Aunt.
‘Terascouros, there are times when I am inclined to wish that you had shared your mother’s infirmity. Often now I think I may have loved Mawen best for her silence.’
‘He doesn’t ask an unreasonable question, Aunt. How are we to know, after all?’
‘We will know when we know. You may help by watching for anything unusual. It will occupy your time at least.’
Terascouros shook her head, pantomimed a sentinel’s pose, hand across her eyes. ‘I see a flight of bright birds from the copse at the brook. I see a fox at the edge of the meadow – thank the Powers for long sight – making his way home from our hen coops, no doubt. There is a cloud of crows over the forest edge to the north, disturbed by those crimson banners.’ She choked on the word, repeated it in amazement. ‘Banners!’
The dark line of trees broke on the crimson flags; the procession came toward them over the meadow’s winter dun, figures as slender as reeds, green and swaying as they came in a dance of incredible grace beneath elegant undulations of the long, bright banners which lifted and fell in joyous calligraphy against the pale sky. They spelled a message of air and wind which the central figure below them echoed with each silken ripple of the gown he wore. It glittered with jewelled flowers, sparkled with vines, visible even at the limits of their vision and becoming only clearer the closer he carne. After a time in which they did not breathe, its wearer stood before them, full in the morning sun, attendants grouped in attitudes of respect and attention. Old Aunt fell to her knees, drawing Terascouros down beside her.
‘Magister Omburan,’ she whispered. ‘I have not learned the proper titles of honour.’
Thewson thought that the tall one smiled. Medlo seemed to hear words. Later they found it hard to remember. Leona, however, heard clearly and did not forget.
‘Contentment in time, Singer. Is it your people who have sung the names, weeping?’
‘Magister, I did not know what else to do.’
It was your intention to summon me, Singer?’
‘You. Any one of you, Magister. Or any servant of yours. We meant no disrespect.’
‘None has been shown. May not the foster children of Taniel call upon the kindred of Taniel in time of trouble? Tell me the troubling.’
‘There is a place south of here, Magister. A place called Murgin.’
‘True. A great barren. A filth. A grieving and desecration.’
‘One was taken into that… barren. Magister. One of us, my kinswoman, called upon certain Powers. She was answered, Magister, and that barren was cast down. Yet… things remained, a kind of mist, a gathering of ghosts. It grows, Magister, grows and fumes beneath our singing. It has injured some of our people. Here in our Hill is the one brought out of Murgin. The ghosts seek that one, perhaps. That one only sleeps, sleeps as though never to wake.’
Above them the banners described a turbulence of air and sun. Presently she went on, ‘We are frightened, Magister. Have we consented to some evil? We do not know what Power it was that cast Murgin down. We do not know what Power gathers here. We are greatly troubled.’
‘So. The troubled may sing the names, ancient and unforgotten, revered and cherished, the names of the long vanished.’
‘So we were told, Magister. By Taniel.’
A bird cried jubilation. In that moment they lived long. All minor motions were stilled and only the great ones were perceived. Beneath them the earth turned, singing. At last the Magister moved slightly.
‘As you have sung to summon, sing to waken. Taniel gave herself for you, for earth, and gives herself still. This time was not unforeseen. Await my messenger. Hold fast to your way. All may yet be well.’
In the forest near the ledge an oak blazed forth, haloed as though to mark some marvel. A shadowy way led behind it as though it were a roadway. For a moment they saw it. Something moved there briefly, and then the oak was only an oak once more. Time returned. Sound returned. Sandals scraped on stone. Old Aunt rose from her knees, moaning at the pain of stiffened joints. They stirred as though wakened from a dream, sought memory of it only to find the noon sun, the wind, the ordinary call of birds. Terascouros was unwontedly quiet, and Old Aunt glanced at her from the corner of an eye suddenly wondering and joyous. ‘Well, Teras?’
‘Well, Aunt?’
‘Shall we use the useless old rituals to wake the sleeper?’
‘Why not?’ Terascouros mocked herself. ‘It seems they have power yet.’
Seven weary, footsore singers were summoned to the cavern for the Song of Naming. Medlo thought the language bore some resemblance to the ancient court language of Drossy. There was no reason he should have wept at that, yet he wept. One singer began by singing a name, then moved on to another name as the second singer repeated the first, each in turn and in succession when each name had been sung seven times, the last name falling singly into silence.
Jaer opened her eyes.
Before them, the body on the bed rippled, features melting and flowing as though the person before them was not one but a multitude, as though a legion battled for mastery within the wakened body. Terascouros called out, ‘Jaer, hold on, let me …’
But Jasmine had already flung herself forward to cling to the flowing insubstantiality before them, crying Jaer’s name. As the others laid hands upon the body, it stilled and
became
. Medlo found himself staring into Jaer’s eyes, remote and vague as a misty horizon seen from a high mountain, blank and directionless. Medlo shook the shoulder he held.
‘Jaer. It’s Medlo. We are with the Sisters at Gerenhodh.’
Momentarily, someone who looked almost like Jaer was there with them, putting her hand to her throat, murmuring, ‘Thirsty.’ One Sister, more practical-minded than most, had prepared a cup of broth. Jaer drank deeply, eyes closed, then belched, a tiny, very human sound in the unearthly quiet. Someone giggled. Jaer searched for the sound. Not Jaer anymore, but someone – anyone else.
She was standing in a tall grey vault of stone, watching the smoke rising like visible prayer in the light of the high windows, hands raised to the knife and the images …
… walking through the marketplace of a port city, servants trotting behind him, carrying the ledgers, the air heavy and damp with noon, smelling of rotting fruit and the bite of dye …
… drifting through a moss glade, naming herself woods-walker, moving as quickly as the flicker of a hawk owl’s flight in that long, dropping curve …
… at the forge, hammer in his hand, the blows falling sure on the red iron as the bellows chuffed in the amber light…
… high on the scarp, tugging at the hides in which the bloody meat was packed for the long trip down to the place where hunger waited…. Who are those who unger? Where are they?
‘Who are those who hunger?’ she asked. ‘Where are they? In Cholder?’
An indrawn breath hissed from the Sisters in the cavern, Old Aunt blanching at the name of the place. ‘Only dreams, Jaer. There is no one here from Cholder, no one from that place.’
At the sound of her name, Jaer flickered into being once more, was gone again. Those who watched could
see
others within her, others who changed her face, her eyes.
She was spiked to a bed by a faceless, hard body, her mind exploding in amber and purple …
… falling into the endless softness of woman, wheels of fire in his head, spinning sparks into the caves of loneliness …
… on the pitching deck as the wind drove salt ice into his face …
… captive in the woods tower, watching from the narrow window as clouds went by like startled sheep …
… in the cavern of Gerenhodh, where familiar faces ringed her, saying ‘Jaer, Jaer,’ again and again, imperatively, ‘Jaer.’
‘I have,’ she murmured, ‘more lives than I was given.’
Sisters mumbled at the bedside, ran away for cups and vials, mixed and muttered, offered a potion. Jaer drank, was silent, then seemed to come forward from some vast distance.
‘I know you,’ she said to Thewson.
‘Yes. I am Thewson.’
‘Not only Thewson,’ she said. ‘The pattern, from before…
They urged her to drink again. This time Jaer emerged without the flicker of other presences moving behind her face. This time she looked at them herself.
‘It was Cholder,’ she said to Old Aunt. ‘And the runes on those gates are the same as those on the stones of Owbel Bay. I wish I did not know why that is, but I do.’
Old Aunt said huskily, still pale, ‘I wish you did not know it, child. It is important to you now?’
To which Jaer replied, ‘No, it doesn’t matter. It is only part of the pattern, the endless pattern of all these people within me. Do you know what has been done to me? Every story told to me while I slept passed into reality, became persons, became persons with stories of their own to tell which became persons, with more stories yet…. They live! They are as real as I. As I!’ She laughed until she choked, bending forward to put her head between her knees, rising up again with eyes glowing in a kind of madness. ‘What is that singing?’
They had become so accustomed to the endless song of the Sisters that for a time they could not think what singing she meant.
Terascouros identified it. The Sisters. Singing to keep the ghosts of Murgin at rest. The ghosts which came from…’
‘I know.’ She nodded her head. ‘I was there.’
‘You were wounded. Unconscious.’
‘I was there. Leona told me, Medlo told me – I saw it each way, through each one.’ She mused. ‘I remember a ring of fire. You did it to us, Terascouros. Put us in that ring of fire. We were threaded like beads on that ring, the fire bleeding from one to the other of us, staining each with the flavour and colour of each. I remember it myself.’ And within her, multiple voices cried out, ‘Myself? Which self? What self?’