The Revenants (38 page)

There were towers, some half collapsed, others whole, walls rearing in proud bulwarks, others subsiding under drifts of blossom and sharp green, vast outreaches of masonry looming in cliffs above areas half paved, half forested. Copses arranged themselves against empty arches, curving lines of stone mocking a curving arch of branches, the movement of one playing against the still bulk of the other. Medlo thought ‘contrived.’ Terascouros in words other than this thought much the same thing.

They looked past the city to the plains stretching eastward and endless. There was no barrier there. Beyond Tchent was the Concealment, yet nothing was concealed. Jaer brooded, more worried by this openness than he would have been if the way had been barred by walls of stone. His eyes were caught by glints from the setting sun across ancient windows, glazed still in defiance of time. Water winked at them, too, from a plaza. They felt empty flasks and let the horses move toward it.

At this end of the city, no wall was higher than their heads, and they threaded their way to the paved court above a monumental stairway. At its foot an avenue ended against a half-ruined tower. Trees had rooted high upon it and had grown there to thrust flowered branches through ancient fretwork where bells hung. A branch, moved by the wind, struck sound, softly plangent, echoing silver across the city as the light died. When it had gone, the tower became a forested hill, an outcropping of some alien world, sharply black against the dimness of stars. Birds called querulously before settling into silence.

The pool of the long dead fountain held clear water. Jaer stopped with his hand half to his mouth. ‘There is no trash in this pool. No ancient soil, no autumn leaves.’

‘We aren’t the only travellers in the known world,’ said Terascouros calmly. ‘Others come through Tchent; some may be here now, friendly or unfriendly. A small matter to clear a pool or two in order to have clean water. I would do so if I came this way often.’

‘Friendly or unfriendly is a wide range,’ remarked Medlo. ‘Let us sleep under cover.’ And he led them away to a partly roofed tumble. Of the three, only Jaer stayed long awake, listening to the wind as it prowled the streets, listening to the voices inside himself as they spoke of this city, exploring it while he lay motionless.

On the morn they wended eastward through the city, up and down long staircases, past blank-faced buildings which had housed the fabled archives of Tchent. It was evening before they came to the eastern outskirts of the city to repeat the previous night’s camp in a sheltering tumble. Again, Jaer lay sleepless into the night hours, hearing the calls of owls and the widely spaced ringing of the wind-struck bell.

When they rode out of the city, east, in the morning, they began to feel the Concealment. The air grew heavy, burdensome, leaving them gasping for breath. The horses struggled to go on, could not until the travellers walked and led them, struggling step by step, wading through air as though it were heavy liquid. At last the pressure eased, and they mounted to ride forward – to find themselves riding back into the eastern outskirts of Tchent. Sun gleamed high above the ivory and green of the city. When they turned to look eastward, the plains stretched to the horizon with no visible barrier.

‘Well,’ said Medlo. ‘Shall we try it again?’

‘Something hot, first,’ pleaded Terascouros. She was holding to the saddle with both hands, lips blue. Though both Jaer and Medlo had helped her in the travail, her body lacked their young strength and had been pushed to its limits in the effort to breach the Concealment. ‘Even then, it may be I will wait for you here while you try again. I do not think I can …’

‘Not I,’ said Jaer. ‘It will not change. We may do it over and over until the horses refuse to move, but it will not change. The Concealment conceals nothing, and everything. I need to rest and think.’

He mused while they brewed tea, for Terascouros. ‘Something gets through, somehow. The thing that pursues me is through there, yet it reaches here.’ His eyes were caught by a distant flicker of bright colour against the skyline, and he hissed to the others as he kicked dirt across the fire. ‘There are Gahlians coming down the hill to the north. Bring the horses.’ They moved swiftly to lead the horses through a collapsed doorway into a nearby tower. Stairs wound up to an observation platform under the crumbling roof, and after a hesitant testing of each tread, Medlo and Jaer wound their way upward to lie on the platform and peer out through narrow slits in the masonry.

There were red robes, a few black robes in attendance, riding beasts of a kind they had not seen before, and some other riders who seemed to flash in the light as though armoured. The procession came into the city, down the distant staircase above the avenue, and down that avenue to turn abruptly south and disappear from view. They did not reappear. Time passed, then their eyes were caught by the swinging of a vine outside their tower. There was no wind. They became aware of a sound coming to them from the tower wall, a recurrent, rhythmic pulsing, as of the passage of marching men on a paved way.

‘Under us,’ said Medlo, suddenly. ‘They are under us, going east.’

The sound died gradually but they continued to watch until the sun was halfway down the sky. Then, marking where the procession had disappeared, they went back down into the city.

The way was not hard to find, a staircase leading downward into darkness at the end of a twisting alley. The stairs had been smoothed almost into a ramp by the accretion of blown debris over centuries, and the way smelled of damp with a disquieting overlay of some other musty smell. Hoofmarks showed plainly, cleft hooves, very far apart from front to rear. Whatever the beasts were, they were long-bodied and small-boned and had disappeared into an impenetrable darkness. The darkness demanded torches.

Terascouros told them where to seek squirrel-cached oil nuts, where to find reeds on which to string them. It was evening before they followed the tracks into the earth by the light of flickering, smoky brands which threatened to go out in every draft.

They followed the hoofprints down long, dusty, straight corridors and into twisting ways, through vaulted hallways peopled with echoes, past cavernous places once bridged by floors which had collapsed into chasms below. At length, a bellowing roar of wind came toward them from some unknown depth and they entered a stone-floored cavern into which a dozen ways opened. There was no dust upon the cavern floor, polished bright by centuries of wind-scouring particles. They stopped, confused, searching black tunnel mouths for any sign that someone had passed there. All the ways led into indistinguishable blackness.

Into this confusion, Jaer seemed to hear or feel or sense some orderly tugging, as though a voice called him or a summoning hand gripped his own. ‘Come this way.’ It pulled him toward one of the tunnels. ‘This way, come.’ The way was long and curving, a trackless arc without echo, muted in velvet dark. Without warning, torchlight fell upon a door closing the way before them. Moreover, it was neither ancient nor rotted but shone in the light with a sheen of new metal worked into letters and words in an unknown language.

Or was it? He tingled with recognition as though he knew or might once have known. Terascouros pushed past him with a smothered exclamation.

‘Tiene! See, writing of the Tiene! Oh, Powers, can I remember what I learned too long ago? Medlo, do you have any knowledge of …? No, of course not, stupid of me.’

‘Not stupid,’ Medlo corrected her. ‘The writing is like that found in many places in Methyl-Drossy, the language of monuments of the Drossynian kings. There is a museum in Howbin, one an aunt of mine was benefactress of, which has much writing of this kind. I even have something with-’

‘So much information, to so little use,’ remarked Jaer. ‘What are you both talking about?’

Terascouros was peering at the letters, following them with a fingertip and muttering to herself.’ “Otie ah, ninie dra, dosh tabon.” It is like learning the alphabet all over again. See, here, in what you would call Drossynian, can you read that, Prince? Look, under my finger. No, ninny, here. Does that not read, “Lords of earth and all Powers …” Does it not?’

Medlo knelt beside her, scrubbed at the door with his sleeve as though to brighten letters dim from lack of light. ‘ “Lords of earth and all Powers, know that she who lies here guards thee. Forbear to waken her who waking frees the darkness.” ’ He nibbled a thumbnail. ‘Like a children’s story.’

Terascouros repeated the words: ‘A children’s story.’ She was busy at the door, pressing at the leaves and flowers which were cast into the metal, her fingers slipping into curves to press here and there, again, again. There was a quiet ‘tlach,’ and the door swung away from them.

‘Children’s stories.’ Terascouros beamed. ‘Exactly. That was the tale of the Princess Moonlight, who slept in the cavern behind golden doors. In the story, the doors unlocked in precisely that way. What fun!’

Jaer hauled her back, cursing quietly under his breath. ‘For love of us, Teras, be careful. This is not a children’s story. It is not Princess Moonlight but Gahlians, monsters, pain and hate. Be careful. Think before you go.’

‘You think!’ she said sharply. ‘May I go?’

His hands fell away. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I led us here, didn’t I?’

‘You will see,’ she said. ‘It may be a story, one I learned as a child and had forgotten, but there is no harm in it.’ She led them into dusty darkness beyond, the horses following, letting the door brush shut behind them.

The darkness gave way to opalescent grey, to pearly light, to a nacreous haze like early dawn. Before them a dais rose between cabinets in which lights fluttered and blinked, and on the dais an oval of haze seemed to float without weight. Within it a figure lay as though asleep, or carved from ivory, or dead and preserved in the appearance of life. Dark hair lay above level brows and dreaming eyes. Lips curved as though smiling. From above them a bell sounded, solemn and resonant, muted by distance but unmistakably the bell of the ruined tower of Tchent, both lulling and summoning. Jaer felt himself weeping, and the figure before them moved slightly, as though it perceived a disturbance, and then slept on.

Terascouros knelt to run her fingers along the letters carved into the stone steps before them. ‘Taniel,’ she whispered. ‘It says that this is Taniel, guardian of the west. Oh, Powers, what wonder to have lived to see Taniel!’

Medlo moved restlessly, looking over his shoulder. ‘Not possible, Teras. Here? Almost in the open? Behind a door which took you only moments to open?’

‘Oh, Medlo, there are not but a few dozen in the world who knows that old story. It is told to children, true, but only to Sisterhood children. It is obvious why that is. We were meant to tell it, and remember it. What better place to hide a clue, a key?’

‘But the Gahlians, those we followed …’

‘Did not come this way. Look around you. Do you doubt it?’

There was thick dust on the floor, on the steps, with no tracks in it but their own. ‘How could they have missed it?’

‘There were a dozen corridors, each branching into more,’ said Jaer. ‘Something led me here, and that something did not lead the Gahlians, For them, it is only an unexplored corridor. For us … well, for us, what?’

Terascouros replied. ‘You led us. You tell us.’

He tried to relax, to let the swarming multitude within him speak, the patterns communicate with him, the understanding come. The suspended body before him did not move, and yet within him it seemed to move, to speak, to point, saying, ‘Look, there and there, at this, at that. Note, compare, how this joins to that.’ He shuddered at the onslaught.

‘What is it?’ whispered Terascouros.

‘She maintains it,’ he answered. ‘Taniel. She holds the Concealment in place. It is like a great wall which protects us all from what lies beyond.’ He turned toward one of the tall cabinets, to the crawling lights and the whispering hum. ‘There is something here, something I dreamed of. A map. A design. Something.’ His eyes fell upon one of the silvery panels and fixed there. ‘Yes. A design.’

They peered over his shoulder at the lines which branched and branched again, the tiny letters, the blinking lights. An arrow marked a place. He pointed. ‘We are in this place. There is the corridor which branched so many ways. There is the long aisle which goes eastward and ends – in what? I cannot read it.’

‘Nor I,’ confessed Terascouros. ‘It seems to say something about… would it be eggs? What has this to do with eggs?’

‘That is where we must go, eggs or no. And this place – well, we must leave it quickly, circumspectly, with reverence, being sure the door is shut behind us.’

‘You don’t think we should wake her?’

‘As the prince did Princess Moonlight? With a kiss, Teras? No. I do not think we should wake her.’

‘It was a silly question,’ the old woman admitted. ‘But, in the tale, she was awakened.’

‘No.’ Jaer said firmly. ‘Not now.’

They went back the way they had come, all three turning to stare at the one sleeping in the net of haze. The door opened as they approached it and closed behind them with the same gentle ‘tlach’ as before. They made their way back to the room from which the many corridors had radiated, and Jaer led them from that place without hesitation. They went past side ways again and again, but the way was as clear to him as though marked with lights. As they retraced their steps, Terascouros whispered a song that stirred the dust to cover their footprints. The horses clopped behind them, the two Hill ponies following the stallion.

They came to a place which lifted into vastness, a hall of chains. From the darkness above them chains hung down, swinging almost imperceptibly in some draft of air. In places they were only handspans apart, in others a man height distant. Terascouros saw a tight, secret smile on Jaer’s face. ‘Mystery, Teras. Far above us these chains are connected to something. Bells, perhaps? Or knives? Or diabolical machinery we are better not knowing of? I will tell you this. We had better not touch them, for they are not hung here for our comfort.’

He led them into the maze of chains, turning once and again, then again from one narrow aisle to another. Terascouros stumbled once, thrust out an arm to catch herself, then stood in appalled silence as a chain moved. Far above, a creaking sound echoed throughout the vast, steel-hung hall. Even when the chain stopped swinging, the sound went on and on as though something delicately balanced were poised monstrously above them. Until silence fell once again, they did not move.