The Revenants (36 page)

Day 15, Month of Wings Returning

Leona led the wagons east from the Hill, heedless of noise or confusion, like one who hears alarm bells ringing. Within her the gryphon roused, hearing again the sound of Murgin, Her skin felt the black robes approaching from the north; and though the children and young women in her charge meant little to her as persons, they meant much as a sworn charge. So they fled away to the east and south, harness creaking, hooves clattering, with no regard for stealth. ‘Find us the swiftest road to the Del,’ she demanded of the scouts. ‘One which will not break axles or splinter wheels, for we have no time for repairs. We must be across the Del today.’ The others, catching haste from her as a fever, drove onward without stopping for rest, snatching bites of food as they went.

East of Murgin, the River Del swung far to the north to join the Gomilbata before turning east once more. Thus, though they had come weary miles from the river in reaching the Hill by Gerenhodh, they had to go a much smaller distance to reach the Del near its confluence. There, where it separated the vast grasslands of the cattle herders from the northern lands, the Del spread into a wide, shallow basin which the horses and wagons could cross on winter’s ice. Leona drove them toward that fording relentlessly. They reached the river after dark in a night unlighted by moon or stars, with rain clouds hanging heavily over the Savus Mountains and the air breathing of storm.

‘We will cross tonight,’ she said to the scouts, shutting off their objections impatiently. ‘By torchlight. By candlelight. By feeling our way if necessary. Tonight it will rain, and the floodwaters of the mountains will come down the Gomilbata in black torrents. You have seen it year after year. We will cross tonight.’

Cross they did, with the horses slipping on the ice, the drovers swearing, the children crying, the young women snapping at each other as they tried to keep stored food and bedding inside the wagons while they kept themselves and their charges warm and dry. Torches guided them away from patches of thin ice where dark water gurgled and bubbled. When all had crossed, Leona pressed on, not letting them stop until the last wagon had been dragged over a sheltering rise and circled into an encampment far beyond the river. Then she walked among the sullen, exhausted travellers. ‘Sleep. When we wake, you will be glad we came this far tonight. Rest. In the morning you will see a sight.’

They woke to see Gerenhodh hidden behind cloud and a vast muddy lake stretching where they had come, a lake tossing wildly with angry water and into which black floods came bearing an endless foamy litter of storm. The scouts who had argued with Leona the night before had the grace to look ashamed of themselves, and there were more than a few mumbled apologies to which Leona paid no attention. Instead, her eyes searched the clouds obscuring Gerenhodh as though she would see across the miles to know what happened there. At last, sighing, she turned away and gave the order to move the train once more.

‘In ordinary times,’ she told the scouts, ‘we would go south to Das, then to Dierno, then east to the Unnamed River, following that to its source in the World Wall Mountains. We would find food among the cities of the plain. The cities are now closed and dangerous, therefore we will scout a trail south-east through the unsettled lands until we come to the River of Hanar. Remember, this is called “the land of the cattle herders.” The herds move across this grassland accompanied by men and by fighting dogs to guard the herds. It is said, “The dogs of the herders are the walls of the herds.” They are huge, vicious, dangerous, those dogs. So stay away from them. Find us a level way, near water, so that we are not seen. Task enough, I should say.’

For a small part of that day the children were sufficiently tired or cowed by strangeness to be quiet. By evening the quiet had gone. By morning, Leona knew it would not return. She grew alert to the sounds of the children, to their movements and habits as she would have studied the sounds and habits of wolves or deer. Shortly she began to know them, to name them. Lithe Nilla, always followed by a train of little ones, dark and silent, able to disappear among the grasses like water. Fat Bombaroba, steady on the march as one of the harness beasts, fair hair plastered to his moist, round head, little mouth pursed as he searched the horizon. The other children made fun of Bombaroba, but they listened when he spoke. There was noisy, complaining Sharba, Tinine the comforter, two sturdy ones often in demand for rounding up the littlest, Dath and Dorme. There were hundred, like and unlike. She came to know them.

The younger Sisters were scarcely older than the oldest children, many of them cradling babes at the breast. None of them were old. All the middle-aged and older ones had stayed behind. Looking at her charges cynically, Leona thought she might as well have had a thousand children to guard and ware for. Then she caught a glimpse of one of the grey-haired scouts coming wearily back to camp after a full night in the saddle. No, she thought. Not all children. Mimo whined at her knee, and she stroked him. Werem was pretending she was a puppy again, pursuing three screaming children in a race through the tall grass, watched tolerantly by a Sister with a round, capable face. Not all children, she thought again.

She joined the scouts. ‘The voices of children can be heard for great distances,’ she said. ‘I trust we are out of range of wary ears?’

One of the oldest shook his head. ‘We could gag ‘em, ma’am, and lead ’em in chains, and they’d still find ways to make a racket. Little devils. There’s nothin’ half day’s ride ahead or to either side. We’ll stay well out, though, to be sure.’

The night scouts ate and went to sleep in the creaking wagons while the day scouts took their places. The train wound slowly south and east across the endless plains, rising and falling with the swells of the prairie, the un-dulant horizon before them moving from crest to shallow crest. Spring flowers peeped through the brown grass, green at the roots where new blades thrust toward the spring sun. Tall thunderclouds sailed above them to drop burdens of rain in curtains of hazy grey.

The sisters gave up their woollens, rummaging in boxes for lightweight summer tunics and trousers. They had left their places empty in the Choir at Gerenhodh along with their ritual robes and the guidance of the Council. Still, from time to time Leona would come upon a small group of them gathered together, heads bent toward one another as they sang softly into the twilight.

‘Have you knowledge of them, there?’ she would ask. Always came a look of quiet sadness in return. She need not have asked, for the weight of Zales was within her like the weight of Murgin, rousing the gryphon to irritated disquiet.

On the tenth day the fat boy, Bombaraba, sought her out as she ate a solitary meal at the top of a grassy swell above the camp.

‘Please, ma’am,’ his anxious voice reached her in her abstraction. ‘There is a funny thing, and we think you should know….’

Leona looked down at him, suddenly alerted,
seeing
him as she had seen no person since Fabla, long ago, and Jaer. He stood there, plump and pink, perspiring faintly across his high bulbous forehead, lank hair clinging to his scalp, lips pursed in concern. ‘Please, the children are making pets of them.’

‘What children, Bomba? Your mates?’

‘Ma’am, no. No, the
little
children.’ His eyes held the terrifying wisdom of which only ten years is capable. ‘The
little
ones.’

‘And what are they making pets of?’

‘Things. Things I don’t know the names of. Like – well, like deer that fly. Like little horses, only with horns. Like different things …’

‘Oh.’ She let the monosyllable hang between them encouragingly. He came forward to tug her by one hand.

‘I can show you. Some of them are out in the grass now, with the babies.’

She went with him, resting a hand on his head as though he had been Mimo or Werem, letting him take confidence from that touch. They went stealthily toward a tumult of gentle laughter, peered through grass stems to see a dozen of the youngest children frolicking with little animals, perhaps not animals, creatures she hesitated to name. They ad names. She knew them all. When she moved into the clearing, they did not flee, only settled around her in wild grace and feral joy, nuzzling her hands and fluttering around her shoulders. Presently she turned, wide-eyed, to find Bombaroba searching her face for an explanation.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘They are only babies, both, baby people and baby others. How long …?’

‘Since we came to the grasslands,’ he said. ‘They found us right away.’

‘Do others know? The Sisters? The scouts?’

‘I don’t know,’ the boy mumbled. ‘The Sisters could see them if they wanted to. If they sang. Maybe not without singing. I don’t know.’

‘Nor do I. Well, no harm to the children. No threat. We will wait and see. Can you do that?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded soberly. ‘If there is no danger to the little ones, I don’t mind.’

‘Will they play with you? With the older children?’

‘They talk to us sometimes. It isn’t easy to understand them.’ At that, he looked so woeful and distressed that she drew him to her without thinking about it, stroked his head and shoulders, leaned to put her cheek against his brow.

‘There. Don’t worry about it. We live in a time like dreaming, Bomba. The edges of our lives flutter and change as we watch them. Listen to the dream. Tell me what it tells you.’

On the thirty-sixth day of travel they came upon a vast meadow watered by two great rivers, one from the south, one from the east flowing red as blood to join the waters of the other and flush it pink as sunset.

‘The River of H^nar,’ said the old scout. ‘Once in many hundred years she flows so, as though the earth bled from some great wound away there in the east. Not many may see the river bleed twice in his life, and most never see it once.’

‘Then it is truly the time of Hanar,’ said Leona.

‘Aye, Lady. Tomorrow we will dip linen in it for keepsakes of this time, for it stains all it touches. The one they called the Woman of Hanar, she came to the Sisterhoods in robes dyed crimson, so they say. It is a wonder, is it not?’

‘Among other wonders.’

Bombaroba tagged Leona like her shadow, becoming as the days passed a kind of errand boy, a second set of hands to curry Mimo and Werem, a second set of eyes to look upon the sunset from solitary spaces above the camp, ears to listen while she mused in the dusk and dawn. He was full of questions about the world, questions she could answer. He repaid her in kind, answering questions about the strange train of creatures which grew in boldness with each sunrise, moving as they moved, seen now by Sisters and scouts alike.

‘The little ones say the baby creatures are protecting us, Lady. When the herdsmen come too near, the creatures turn them aside. The creatures show themselves to the dogs, and the dogs run away after them. There are some people on our trail, too, from the north, and the creatures delay them.’

‘Enchantment,’ she mused. ‘We are enchanted.’

‘Maybe. That is a nice word, I think. Why are we enchanted, do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ She laughed. ‘Do you ever feel, Bomba, that you are an–invention? Not a – person, but something created by something else?’

The child was puzzled only for a moment. ‘But we are all created by the Powers, Lady. They have made us to arise …’

‘ “Out of the nature of Earthsoul, inspirited by Air, animated by Fire, nurtured by the Waters….” Yes. So we are told, Bomba. So we are said to arise, we and all living things. But not….’

Again he puzzled. ‘You mean, to … be in this place, but not to have … planned it. As though you were … were an arrow someone was shooting.’

‘As though I were an arrow someone was shooting, yes.’

‘I have not felt like that, Lady. I am not important enough. But, you, Lady, could be an arrow of the Powers.’

She stared at him in bleak amazement, feeling the bowstring tighten and sing behind her, feeling her being tense and point, upward and southward in the long arc, the sweeping flight that would end, where? ‘Well, it will be over soon.’

‘Not soon.’ The boy shook his head in mature consideration. ‘The scouts say many days yet before we see the World Wall Mountains. Then, it may take many days more to find Orena. None of them have been there. None of them have seen it.’

‘I have seen it, from afar. It will seem soon, Bomba. Sooner than we may like.’

So they went southward, surrounded by glamour and enchantment. Leona seemed to lead them but knew she no more needed to lead them than she needed to scan the sky for smoke or listen in the night for the bark of herders’ dogs. They would come to Orena if it was intended to be so.

As they travelled they came upon the locations of the Sisterhoods of the plain, one, then two, three, four. Four locations carefully mapped and learned. Four locations empty. From the places wagon tracks led away south beneath the curving high cup of the sky.

‘Gone,’ said Bombaroba. ‘All gone.’

‘To safety,’ whispered Leona, putting her cheek to his. ‘As we are going, Bomba. As we are being allowed to go.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE EASTERN WAY

Day 10

Month of Wings Returning

Jaer, Terascouros, and Medlo had travelled east from the Hill for thirty days, their journey bringing them to the southern edge of T’tumek Paddom, ‘the Stone Wall,’ those mountains which rose in jagged escarpments between Lakland and the River Del. The name was overly harsh, a leftover from the Axe King’s time. Jasmine would have called them ‘the Summer Moutains,’ for the herds of Lakland were pastured there from early spring to first snowfall. They were more forbidding on the southern side, but even here the land burst forth in flowers as the cold retreated north.

They had fallen into easy habits of travel, accommodations, among which was an assumed acceptance of the fact that Jaer, while she did not seem to know where she was going, or at least did not say, could not be moved from her direction: east as the quest book instructed. They had stopped asking her about it. She had stopped pretending to answer. They simply went, each day farther toward the edge of the settled lands, toward the Concealment. They did not talk about that either. They had no knowledge of it and speculation was fruitless. Instead, they talked about other things; Terascouros about her youth and the customs of the Choir, Jaer about growing up in the Outer Islands, Medlo about the lands of Rhees. Each of them tried to be courteous, to keep the talk going, for the silences which fell when there was no talk let the loneliness in along with the sighing wind.