The Revenants (43 page)

‘So,’ said Leona, ‘we are shut in. So soon. Can these creatures come down the cliffs?’

Hazliah shook his head. ‘Not the Tharnel worms, Lady. Not the black minions of Gahl, not alive.’

‘The black robes are easy to kill.’

‘So we know, Lady. But what remains when we have killed them can come over our cliffs like water falling into a pool.’ He turned the device to look south, and she saw mists roiling in the valleys, washing almost to the foot of the ramparts in menacing coils, sluggishly alive. ‘The Sisters tell us this is the result of killing Gahlians. Is this so?’

Leona was suddenly angered. It was the gryphon who had killed the Gahlians, the gryphon and Terascouros. ‘It is a result of one kind of killing. Who knows if it is the only result? There may be some here who would know.’

‘Some might know. The Remnant, perhaps.’

She drew her brows together in frustration. ‘Well, we must find out what we can, Hazliah. I must speak to those in authority, to your Remnant. Are they in authority here?’

‘The questions cannot be answered, Lady. I will take you to them. You can ask them, if you will.’

‘I do not understnad your calm!’ she burst out. ‘To the north are these things you have shown me. To the south, the mists. To the east, the Concealment hems this valley. To the west?’

‘The mists again, Lady, and more Gahlians.’

‘Then where is your hope? Where is your defence?’

‘The Choirs, those of Gerenhodh, of the valley of T’tumek Paddom, and of the plains.’

‘Young women. Almost children.’

‘No, Lady. From Gerenhodh it is true, only the youngest were sent. We do not know why the older Sisters stayed behind. From the other Choirs, even the oldest came.’

‘So, with all your wisdom, with these devices salvaged from the ages, with these fortifications and weapons, with all this, you depend upon the songs of the Sisters of Taniel?’

Hazliah bowed deferentially and did not answer. After a long, silent moment, Leona stiffly apologized. ‘Forgive me, Hazliah. It is unbecoming for me to harangue you.’

‘Let me take you to the Temple of the Remnant, Lady. Then you may ask me again, or harangue me, as you choose.’

Raging within, Leona consented. ‘Menaced from all sides,’ she told herself. ‘Shut in like an animal in a trap. I twist in fury, longing to rise up, fly, fight. They walk calmly among their maps and pictures. By all that is yet holy, yes, I will go to their Temple. I may get answers there.’

The Temple coiled like a great shell upon the highest hill of the city. To reach it, they went through Orena, beside fountains which sparkled in the sunlight, beneath flags which whipped and snapped above them in silken parentheses. Groups of children in their red baby-shirts, only the five parent-beads around their necks, rushed by in babbling coveys herded by patient teachers. Old citizens, their beads of status woven into belts around their tunics, sat in the plazas in quiet conversation. Brown-clad archivists bustled to and from the windowless buildings in which all the world’s history was kept. All was purpose, calm, business. ‘Madness,’ whispered Leona. ‘Madness.’

Eyes followed her as she strode down the boulevards. She was dressed as she had been when she had first met Jaer, in white, pale hair drawn high through the silver circlet set with dark stones. She had left the great hounds with Bombaroba, and her hands twitched from time to time as though she felt for them beside her. On her belt was the flask Jasmine had given her. She glared at the citizens with the eyes of a falcon seeking its prey, and yet hardly saw them at all.

They entered the eastern segment of the Temple, passing through an arching portal beside still pools in which lilies bloomed. The colours of the Lady of the Waters were blue and silver, argent and pale amethyst, sea green and foam grey. From the inner wall of the Temple, water fell in a veil around the image. The air was warm and heavy, sounding of the distant surf mixed with the music of flutes and harps. The people scattered throughout the Temple moved quietly, or stood in meditative silence. Hazliah bowed before the image, leading their way around the curve of the Temple into the court of the south, the shrine of Earthsoul.

Here the rising walls were hidden by tree and vine. Flowers burst in pannicles from high boughs over the paths leading between plots of waving grasses, heavy grain, fruit-laden vines. The colours of Earthsoul were green in all its shades and hues, brown of stone and soil, gold of leaf and grain. The image of Earthsoul reached mighty, gnarled hands toward those who entered the precincts, smiled from beneath the hood of a carven robe which hid eyes and body. Here the perfumes were of warm leafmold, the pungency of resin and new wood, and the sounds were of strings bowed and plucked, reeds blown, the clash of cymbals. Again Hazliah bowed, and they passed to the right around the curve of the Temple into the Sanctuary of the Lord of Fire.

The roof curved higher, almost lost to sight among the smokes of the altar fires. The image of the Lord was lit from below, so that His eyes were in shadow. In one hand He held a hammer, in the other a sword. Around them were walls and half walls of iron and stones, of steel and basalt. The colours of the Lord were red, scarlet, orange and black, and His sounds were of trumpets and drums and the clang of hammers on anvils. The smell was of smoke and pungent incense and hot metal. Here few worshippers were found, and those present lay upon the fire-splashed pave as though stricken down. Hazliah knelt and bowed his head to the floor before leading her around the great curve once more into the northern segment, the place of the Spirit of Air.

The roof of the Temple vaulted away into invisible heights, blue and white into cool mists of driven cloud. Air moved around them from the far, empty spaces of the Temple of Air toward the image of the Spirit, a form impossibly tall, robed as though in mist, only a glittering hint of eyes beneath the hood saying that this Spirit might take form if it chose. The colours here were only hinted at, pale to transparency, uncoloured grey, the white of snow, the light blue to deeper blue of summer skies. Without knowing why or how, Leona found herself kneeling before the image, hearing the soft sounds of wind-struck bells and of air blown across stone jars to produce organ tones. After a time, Hazliah touched her shoulder, drew her up to lead her still further around the circle to its centre, the base of a tower spiraling above them to vertiginous height.

Here the shell form was drawn up into a coiled pinnacle, and they stood within the nacreous walls, lost in the tower’s immensity. Hazliah struck a silver bell which stood nearby, the sound rising around them to reverberate among the walls. Far, far above echoed an answering sound, a muted whine showing itself as a descending light. In the centre of the towering space was a transparent tube containing a little car similar in kind to that they had ridden to the cliffs. They rose within it into chill silence and emerged upon a shining floor surrounded by a low parapet, walled and roofed by the blue arch of the sky. She looked across the valley, over the tops of the circling cliffs to the dim horizons beyond the mountains. Below them the city lay, a bright garment, too remote and tiny to be believed as a habitation, to be thought of as real.

Upon the shining floor stood a few persons. They were slender, she realized, dressed in simple white garments. They spoke to her, and a red haze moved before her eyes as though she had been beaten. They spoke, scarcely breaking the stillness of the place, the rarified silence of that height. She tried to count them in growing panic, could not; tried to answer them, could not. There might have been one or two, or a hundred. They lit the air around them with anguish, with a cold perfection of sorrow. She cried out, ‘Stop.’ She staggered, would have fallen had not Hazliah caught her. They did not misunderstand her, but went away, their sorrow colder and more absolute than it had been before.

She was sitting beside Hazliah, gasping, staring uncom-prehendingly at the woman who was offering her water, a haggard woman who had been beautiful, with dark hair and a tender mouth. The woman knelt before Leona.

‘I am Taniel,’ she said.

‘Taniel is dead,’ Leona mumbled, stupidly.

‘No,’ the woman said, offering the cup once more. ‘No. I am Taniel. I live still. As do these of my kindred, the Remnant, whom you have seen.’ Presently she added, ‘I have sometimes wished to be dead, but it is necessary to live.’

‘Who are they?’ Leona drew her body up stiffly. The woman before her was of a familiar kind, a person, only a person and not an agonized flame.

‘They? The Remnant – the Remnant of those who were in Tharliezalor. The Remnant of Thiene. The Remnant who were left after they presumed to do what should not be done. Some call them the Remnant in Orena, the Undying Ones. You may call them what you will.’

‘I will not call them anything. I will go away now.’

‘No. Not you. Not I. Time is spun to this point, and we are upon it. We may not go away, for there is no place to hold our going. Where may we go? What place is there to receive us?’

Tears fled down Leona’s cheeks to fall unregarded upon her hands. ‘I do not understand.’

‘Ah, but you are one of
ours
, Leona. One of those in whom Urlasthes found the Great Beast and set it free. One he created, freed, like Hazliah. Oh, what wonders he wrought. Leona! What wonders. It is failed, gone. Now there is only the silence, the endless wounds, the maiming without cease.’ The woman fell silent, only to look up with an expression of childish naivete. ‘Can you help us?’

‘Help you?’ Leona cried in her hawk’s voice, drawing in the thin air like a draught of acid. ‘Help
you}
What are you doing? Planning? Readying yourself for battle? How will you help
us?’

The woman who called herself Taniel was mildly astonished. ‘Help you? We can do nothing. The Remnant have done all they can do, all that could be done. They are too maimed to do more. Urlasthes says that if we had the Crown of Wisdom, given, so it is said, by the Spirit of Air in past ages. … Or, if we had the Vessel of Healing given by Earthsoul in the time long gone … well, then we might do something. Heal them, somehow. Grow wise enough to answer. Without such, our hope is gone.’

Leona laughed, shockingly, hysterically. ‘So this is the source of all your calm, Hazliah? This bland cowardice? This furtive acceptance! Oh, you want so little, woman! You are no more the Taniel of whom the Sisters tell than your Remnant are like the giants of old. You want so little! A crown? Well, I have no crown but this maiden circlet I have worn since childhood, and you are welcome to it. The Vessel of Healing? Why not? Why should I not be merely a messenger to bring it to you for your need? I know nothing of the worth of your Remnant. If your Urlasthes did indeed create me, then I owe him nothing, but let him have the Vessel. A gift. For which you may bless the name of Fabla for whose sake it was sought, and of Jasmine who gave it.’

Flinging the flask and her circlet at the woman, Leona laughed until she wept and was drawn into Hazliah’s arms to rest against him as he murmured. ‘Naa, naa, naa, shh, shh,’ as though she had been some horse or dog he quieted in its fear.

When she had sobbed herself quiet, he sat with her still as she blurted bitter apologies and recriminations through a throat grown tight with weeping. ‘I am suddenly weak as a child, weeping, which I have never done…. No. Bombaroba is a child, and he would have behaved better.’

He said, ‘I know none who have first looked upon the Remnant without weeping, Lady … Leona. When we see them first, we go sleepless and in anguish. Few in Orena can bear to come here at all. Only Taniel has been strong enough to survive this close contact throughout the centuries. You have not disgraced yourself, Leona. You have done well. You do well still.’

She wiped tears into her hair, loosened from its knots when she had ripped the circlet away. The circlet was gone, the Vessel was gone, the woman had taken them. ‘Who are they?
What
are they?’ She leaned against him, not yet able to sit upright.

‘I will tell you what I know. After the Thiene left the world, long, long ago, they lived in Tharliezalor – “High Silver House” that was – beside the eastern sea. They were few, very wise, but some were of one mind and some were of another concerning the goodness of Earthsoul and the ways of wisdom.

‘One group was led by a man named Omburan – for the Thiene were men, whatever else they may be. His was the way of long silences, of joining with the earth in understanding, of walking the earthways. The other group was led by Urlasthes. It was he who found a way to create life in new forms, changing and combining it. One of the followers of Urlasthes went away into the west where he created a whole people and was destroyed by them. I have seen these people, people of rock, worshippers of horses. But Urlasthes meant to do more – more than that.

‘He decided to change himself, himself and those other Thiene who followed him, to make them perfect.

‘There were seven: Urlasthes, and with him Talurion, Audilla, Lucimbra, Lendhwelt, Telasper, and Vincepthos. Seven. They thought that they would do a kind of surgery upon themselves – oh, not anything so crude as with a knife, no–and cut away all evil, for they said that mankind had in himself all goodness and all evil, and if the evil were cut away, only the good would remain.

‘So, they did whatever it was they did.
They prepared a vessel into which the dark forces should be drained away and held
. She who names herself Taniel told me that. And when the thing was done, they awoke to find the vessel full, alive, and they had no power to kill it or join with it again, for it would not.

‘It is there. Now. Beyond the Concealment.

‘And from it comes all this–Gahlians, ghosts, monsters, horror and despair.’

‘What have they done about it?’ asked Leona. ‘All this time, these centuries. What have they done?’

‘Tried to undo, so says Taniel. Tried to rejoin, but could not.
That
will not be bound to them again. Unless the Girdle of Binding itself were to be found,
that
will live and thrive, unchecked.