The Revenants (35 page)

He barked once and was gone into the darkness, swift as an arrow’s flight. Far off they heard another quick bark, and then silence.

‘Would I had this magic,’ said Doh-ti, ‘to bind that one who called himself Lithos.’

Sowsie shuddered. ‘Hush. That one could not be bound so, uno-li. That one did to his companion what Terascouros and the company did to those of Murgin. Terascouros would not have let me put the oath of Obon upon her unless she was weary unto death. That one, Lithos, would not allow bonds upon him … it. I wish we could reach the Choir of Gerenhodh to tell them of Lithos, but it is too far, too hidden. They must learn of it for themselves.’

Jasmine’s feelings were injured that night. Thewson seemed to disregard the fact of her pregnancy, said nothing of it, treated her with no new courtesy or respect. Indeed, he seemed rather more distant than usual, remote, spending most of the evening with Daingol and Lain-achor. Finally, late, she approached him as he wandered alone far from the firelight and challenged him about it. He spoke then as though to the stars, shaming her.

‘When I walk in the day, I remember a time. When I wake from sleep, I remember that time. It is as though all the life which is Thewson turns upon that time and is changed.

‘We stand in a dark place with shining beasts around us, a black city seeking us, nanuluzh, a new strangeness. Umarow comes from the high sky and cries. I see the strange one, wrapped in robes from the black city, Jaer, like something killed for meat, half butchered, half skinned. I smell blood like a knife on my tongue, hegr the Umarow cry metal in the sky, see black night and grey dawn far off, feel the old woman’s claws in my arm.

‘And I am not there. I am far off, in the night of the Lion Courts where the One Who Will Not Answer lives, where stones shine in my face and a voice speaks. It tells me I am chosen to do a thing which the god desires. It tells me I will take a wounded one to safety. Do it, says the god.

‘And I am there in the place of shining stones, also here where the black city dies. In my head comes the whirr of the wings of the jewelled bird god, and the voice saying, “Think, go. For this are you saved and saved again.”

‘At this, I am angry. I am Thewson, son of the Chieftain-Not-Yet-Buried (though he is buried now). I am warrior, spear carrier. God should save Thewson because I am he. Then I smell blood and am ashamed. When we walk in the forest of the sloping land while that Medlo and you, Jasmine, make stories and the sun is warm, that Jaer walks with me and thanks me for noon meat. We talk of hunting, of the spear.

‘I am ashamed. I, Thewson. In my head, the bird god curses me. “Fool! Eater of Shadows! Would we choose an unworthy one to do this thing? Have pride, warrior, for only strength will do our bidding now.” So, I swear I will walk forever with this burden, this Jaer, until I die from walking.

‘Now, Jaer sleeps, wakens, goes away to the east. The smell of blood is gone. Jasmine curls against me in the night and there is joy. Sky gatherer falls in the Lion Courts. Old ones die. All the towns are shut tight, shut against us. I do not know what will come. It may be, wa’osu, that the gods save me for something more. I seek a crown, still, the Crown of Wisdom, for I need it. Where? Where?

‘The child – is this a child I may have as Thewson’s child? Will the gods let this be? Will the enemy strike at the gods through this child? I am Thewson, brave, a worthy one for the gods’ bidding.

‘But Jasmine, little flower, I am afraid.’

They wept together in the night, and were comforted together in the night, and for a time forgot the needs of the gods in their own.

Thewson drove the group north at speed, insisting that they make a ‘battle march’ in each day instead of the ‘wagon march’ or ‘man march’ which he alleged had been their pace. He explained that a wagon march was such a distance as women and children might make in a day while accompanying laden wagons; a man march was what a hunter would travel, not hurrying, but striding strongly; a horse march was faster yet; and a battle march fastest of all. It meant exhaustion for Jasmine and the little people, grim-faced weariness for the others. They did not argue. What Doh-ti had told them about Lithos together with the stinking wagon trains and the endless flow of black-robed forces to the south made them eager to make haste, to find help in the north or fail; in either case to do what they might do as quickly as possible.

‘We will come to Seathe in ten days, fifteen if there is much delay at the Abyss,’ said Lain-achor. ‘Today is the first of the month of Wings Returning, “Gomimada,” as the northerners would say. We will come to Seathe by midmonth, four bundles of days or less, counting northern style.’

‘And will Seathe be closed?’ asked Jasmine. ‘Against us? Against everyone?’

‘Wa’osu,’ answered Thewson. ‘It may be. Vaa-nah, xoxal-nah – their separation, their gathering, who can say? We will know when we come there. My voices say only, “Go quickly.’“

Jasmine and Mum-lil shared a sympathetic grimace and settled into the travelling pace once more. Jasmine’s nausea had passed, but her back ached more with every day’s journey.

Three days after crossing the Nils they forded the northern fork of that same river, still bearing northeast. Behind them the mounds littered the plain, small villages betrayed themselves by lines of smoke; before them stretched the grasslands and the line of fire hills beyond the Abyss. The Abyss itself they could not see, for it cut deeply into the grasslands, plunging downward with no warning into the dark depths of the earth. Rivers and streamlets emptied into the Abyss. None flowed out of it. The city of Seathe lay beyond it, connected to the southern rim by a narrow bridge built in the age of the wizards, a silver arch flung high and frozen, a spider’s web of light a hundred man heights above the prairie, a height unknown above the depths of the Abyss. It was from this height that Sud-Akwith had cast his sword. It was by this height that travellers reached Seathe, or by a journey of four or five ‘battle marches’ around the eastern end of the Abyss through stony badlands. Twice they saw distant wagon trains going south, but they were far to the east along the River Rochagor, no threat to the travellers.

Jasmine caught Thewson watching her more than once. ‘It won’t kill me,’ she growled at him. ‘I have been pregnant before, warrior. It will only be four months along by the time we reach Seathe. Scarcely enough to notice. Not enough to interfere with travel.’

‘When we get to Seathe,’ he said, ‘you will go with Sowsie to Gombator – to Tanner. Also the little people. The others, too, to guard and protect.’

Jasmine protested that Tanner would be walled, closed and Separated as the rest of the known world, but Thewson was adamant. He spoke enigmatically of his voices and would not be moved.

‘So,’ thought Jasmine, ‘it is not enough he goads me this way and that, but now I must be goaded this way and that by his voices as well.’ She tried for the better part of a day to stay angry at him – or at his gods, but he was too familiar to her and his gods too strange to maintain the pique. Since each day in the saddle was a kind of torture, she could not oppose him with as much force as she might have wished.

Daingol scouted the bridge on the tenth day, returning to tell them that a crowd of horsemen, wagons, traders, and village people were waiting to cross the Abyss. ‘There is much excited talk,’ he said. ‘Seathe was abandoned by the Gahlians some days since – Seathe and, it is said, all the northlands. The traderssay that virtually all departed to the south. Some say Orena, some Lakland, some say to the Concealment itself.’

‘Where do you think they go?’ asked Jasmine. ‘Sowsie, where do you think?’

‘To Orena,’ she answered. ‘It is there that the Remnant dwell – the last power of the ancient time – or so it is said. Of course they go to Orena.’

‘Then Leona, the children, the women from the Hill –’

‘Are in the jaws of forever,’ said Dhariat. ‘If they got there timely. Elsewise, they are lost.’

No amount of bluster or persuasion could move them forward through the pack of wagons and men. There were traders in the mob who had not left their native villages in some years, and the camp surged with an unaccustomed air of freedom. It was three days before they could take their turn upon the span; then it was plod, plod, plod up the centre of the way in single file with the Abyss falling away beneath them and the horizon moving farther and farther into a blue haze of distance. The railing which had once guarded the edges of the span were broken in places, shattered and fallen away as though from some great disaster. Twice they passed gaping holes in the pave, resolutely not looking down. They were a full day upon the bridge, beginning at dawn and ending after darkness, lighting the last hours by torches.

Jasmine had peeked into the gaping holes, disregarding the warnings they had had, into vertiginous depths of blackness and rising mists. She drew her eyes away with difficulty, and focused them on her horse’s neck. Mum-lil, riding with her, murmured, ‘It is like looking into night, Jasmine. Except there are no stars.’

‘I will not look again,’ she said. ‘Do you believe that the sword of Sud-Akwith was brought out of that depth?’

Mum-lil shrugged. ‘If something lived there, then it might come out. If it might come out, it might bear a sword.’

‘But what manner of thing might live there?’

‘I would rather not think of it. No healthy thing, I am sure of that.’

They came down from the bridge as night fell to see the lights of Seathe spread a carpet of sequins before them. There was a noise in the city, a human, humming, hivish noise unlike any they had heard for years, a noise without bells or the clatter of iron wagons or the harsh chanting of black robes. Great rents were torn in the walls of the city. As they passed, more chunks of the wall fell into a cloud of dust and a sound of young voices cheering. Women leaned from high windows, naked-faced, staring at the travellers with eager curiosity, and those who walked the streets did so with the hoods of their orbansin thrown back.

‘When did the Gahlians go?’ Dhariat demanded of a passerby.

‘The last went ten days ago. Wagons have been coming from the north; almost all went south with the wagons.’

‘Almost
all?’ They had seen no black robes in Seathe.

The passerby patted the long knife at his side. ‘All left Seathe. One way or another.’

‘Rebellion,’ Sowsie whispered to Lain-achor. ‘The people of the city rose up against the black robes.’

‘When all but a few had gone,’ he replied in a sombre voice. ‘When they return in thousands … what then?’

They jostled through the crowd searching for an inn. They wanted to rest, bathe, and find food tastier than that which they had eaten for too many days. Eyes followed Thewson as he rode, towering over the others both in his own height and the height of the great horse. While Jasmine was not surprised, she grew uneasy, commenting to Dhariat, ‘Who are the pale-faced men in green leather? Three times now I have seen them, always looking at Thewson, whispering.’

Daingol, hearing the question, leaned toward them to say, quietly, ‘The dress is that of the northlanders. Those who dwell in the wastes beyond Tranch, which is beyond Tanner at the edge of the unknown.’

‘They have a noble look,’ said Jasmine.

‘They are proud,’ he agreed. ‘And no one knows how they live, there in the cold north.’

‘Come,’ said Sowsie. ‘It is no farther north than the Fales, and men live well enough there,’

Thewson’s quick ears had caught every word of the conversation. ‘To go into the north, one must find men of the north. Good. I will find one dressed in these green leathers.’ He spied an inn down a side street and led them out of the crush toward its courtyard gate. They pressed within, to find more open space than they could have hoped for into which they could dismount, unload the horses, see to the hand feeding of the foal.

‘Ah, Tin-tan,’ murmured Jasmine. ‘So long a way, and weary. Such trembling legs it has, my little one.’

‘Tin-tan?’ came a lazy voice from the shadows. ‘Tin, tan, zara san. Do you speak the old tongues, Lady?’

They turned to confront one of the green-clad men, a long, pale face with curving locks of yellow hair, firm, level brows over eyes of dark cloudy grey. Daingol stepped, forward. ‘We can count the little horse’s legs, or the fingers of a hand.’

‘Would you know the word for two hands, twice?’

Jasmine cocked her head at him. ‘Let me remember. That is a “ris,” is it not?’

‘A strange word,’ the stranger murmured. ‘Ris. Almost, it might be the name of something else, or someone, perhaps.’

Thewson stepped forward, his brow furrowed in thought. ‘A riddle, Northlander? Ris. Rhees. The name of one we know – a prince, he says. Maybe that, wa’osa?’

‘Maybe that.’ The stranger bowed. ‘Are there any among you who need guides to the north?’

Thewson stared at him, meeting the grey eyes without blinking. At last, he said, ‘That may be. When morning comes, we may see.’

The stranger bowed and disappeared into the shadows. Jasmine shivered, not with horror or fear but with a sudden twitch of excitement. ‘What did he mean with his riddle? Will you go with them?’

He stroked her hair absently. ‘I do not know, bright flower. The gods know. When they must, they will tell me. I grow weary, sometimes, waiting for them to say this or that thing.’

‘At least they
do
tell you, eventually.’

He shouldered his pack and hers, strode toward the inn, Doh-ti and Po-Bee lost in his shadow, Mum-lil and Hanna-lil close behind, the others gathering as the stable boy led their mounts away. ‘Sometimes,’ he agreed as he opened the door into a smoky common room that smelled of bacon. ‘Sometimes they do.’

‘Ask them,’ whispered Jasmine, ‘where Leona is. Ask them if she is well, if the children are well….’

He gave no sign that he heard her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE SOUTHERN WAY

Day 7, Month of Thaw –