The Revenants (46 page)

‘We have slain more than one,’ he grumbled, wiping the blade of his spear. ‘Stony heads. Worms from the stone city. Black things with no shape. Those fuxlus of Gahl. No, Leona, these do not make more ghosts. See. The are
dead
. It is my spear. It is the Sword of Sud-Akwith, they said that. All this time I had it. In the northlands we melted it in the great crucible with the metal for ten thousand others, so now Sud-Akwith’s sword is in every sword, and we kill these things dead.’ He glowed at her with enormous complacency. ‘AH the time hurry to get here in time, with the boats against the wind on the river and battle march the whole way. Well. We are here.’

‘Is Jasmine with you?’

He gestured over his shoulder toward the north. ‘In the boat. On the river with no name. I say, “Stay in Tanner, where no black robe is.” But no. They would not. They would come here. Jasmine. Her girl child. The people from Gerenhodh. The small people.’

‘I would they were not so near, Thewson, for I do not believe even the Sword of Sud-Akwith will prevail against ghosts already made. Song was to have saved us, but it comes haltingly.’

‘There will be victory,’ he announced. ‘Why did the bird bid me bring warriors else? My gods would not do such foolishness.
Ranamu-ah alumya!
Listen, you high god!’ Then for the first time, he saw the tottering towers of mist in the valley below them. ‘Aaah. Who will kill that if the swords cannot? The singers?’

‘They will not, Thewson. After everything that has happened, still they will not. Walls will not stop the mists. Weapons will not wound it. Come to the city. You will see for yourself.’

They came up out of the tunnel into the armouries below the Temple, up into chaos. Sisters lay as though slain, blood trickling from their ears, some moaning, some silent, healers scurrying among them with drugs to aid the pain. Bombaroba threw himself into Leona’s arms. ‘It was the drum. It got louder and louder in the echoes, louder and louder. Some of the singers fell down. Some stopped their ears, but then it was hard for them to sing. Oh, Lady, have they made the drum stop?’

She knelt beside him. ‘This is Thewson, Bomba. A very mighty warrior. He has come from the northlands with thousands, and they have killed the drum. Go, tell the Sisters. Tell everyone. Ask one of the Choir leaders to come talk to me.’ He went away, wiping tears, too busy for the moment to remember his fear.

The Choir leader came, hair dishevelled, face spotted with blood – her own or someone else’s – lines graven between her eyes. ‘Only one in ten is able to sing now,’ she said. ‘Perhaps that many more after a few hours’ rest. Those singing now will soon need rest. We cannot hold the ghosts.’

Leona took the Vessel of Healing from her belt, handed it to Hazliah who stood nearby watching Thewson with a curious intensity. ‘Hazliah, fill this with wine and give it to the wounded, then fill again, and again. You know what it is and what it will do, but it will take time. How long until the ghosts reach the city?’

‘They are moving slowly. Perhaps some hours yet.’

Thewson shifted irritably. ‘You cannot take the people away from here?’

‘Where? How? We can send some to the ramparts, now that the mists are here. The children, perhaps, but only a few in the time we have.’

‘Then you get strong and sing these mists gone,’ he said to the Choir leader. ‘You must.’

The leader pressed her hands to her forehead in anguish. ‘We may not. We dare not. It has been forbidden.’

He struck the floor with his spear, resoundingly. ‘See this. You do not sing them gone. All die. You do sing them gone. Wa’osu – it may be all die. What is the difference?’

Leona laughed without humour. ‘Thewson, I will make you a gift. Long have you sought it, my friend. Long have I borne it. It is no help to me; perhaps it may aid you.’ Too quickly for him to protest, she took the circlet from her head and set it upon his. He put up a puzzled hand to take it away, then stayed, frozen in place, an expression of curious concentration knotting his face.

‘There,’ she said. ‘I need no longer feel responsible for this. Not for this, nor what is to come. You tell us what to do. You argue with the Choirs.’

Beneath the Crown, Thewson listened to a distant whirr of jewelled bird god wings, a jubilant whisper, ‘Thew-son, Thew-son.’

‘I will not argue,’ he said presently. ‘It is right what they do. They may not sing the mists gone.’

‘Well, so much for practicality. Then guide us. What shall we do now?’

‘West and south are mists; above are the winged things. If you fly there, they are many and you are few. Do not fly. Not yet. Wisdom says this.’

Hazliah made a mocking face. ‘Then so much for wisdom. What may we do?’

‘The people are many. They cannot flee. We cannot move ourselves.
Other places, others move
. Wisdom says this, and wisdom says we wait.’

‘If we must merely wait, may we do it upon the city walls?’ Leona could not remain longer under a roof. The gryphon within her lusted to be free of the walls, longed for the sky Thewson had forbidden her. ‘Let us go to the walls.’

Thewson nodded soberly. ‘We may go there. To wait.’

In Tharliezalor, Jaer let the black horse carry her while she clung to the saddle, using both hands. Within her, the multitude was silent, as though they had never been, but the pattern they had built stretched from edge to edge of her being, a single structure, an enigmatic, brooding potentiality which was as ominous in its way as the serim piled before them. Puckered tentacles of hunger and threat plucked at her. Whatever inhabited the dome had found er and now hammered at her with an almost physical force. Her skin flinched and her body shuddered; her eyes watered, her stomach heaved with nausea, but the labyrinthine pattern within her mind stood like a mighty fortress, impregnable, unmoved.

They had struggled step by step down the long avenue, sometimes pressing against a weight of serim which they could feel, though the beasts never came closer than the song-charmed circle they moved within. Now they came to a broad plaza from which a bridge sprang up and outward toward the distant dome. Among the serim moved edgeless bulks which drew the eye and thought as magnets draw iron. Medlo forced his eyes down onto the jangle, playing with concentration. Into his thought, unbidden, came the song heard within the curtain of the Concealment. ‘Camped on fear’s ground … in terror’s tents …’ Almost his fingers began to play it; almost his voice began to sing it. He bit his lips, thrust the jangle away while the words sang in his head. Something wanted him to sing that. He would not. ‘Drinking alone from horror’s cup…’ No! Grinly he brought his mind back to the song which protected them, a shackle song, a constraining song, millennia old, magically powerful, the same that was being sung in Orena, though he was not to know that.

Upon the walls of Orena, a muffled exclamation from Hazliah drew their attention to the sky where huge bat wings circled down toward the heaped and tumbling ghosts. One, two, five, a dozen. The venomous beasts landed just ahead of the mists, departed again to leave their burdens behind. Thewson drew a horrified breath as he recognized those figures.

‘Jasmine,’ he cried. ‘The child, the little ones!’

‘Behind them,’ grated Leona. ‘On the dragon beast. Sybil, and that other one.’

There on the plain before the city the mists drew into a towering wall, a marching wall, moving with slow, inexorable pace toward the city where the thousands watched. And before the mists marched those others, tiny at the distance, leashed by heavy chains to the two red-robed ones who drove them. There was Jasmine, Hu’ao, Po-Bee, Doh-ti, Hanna-lil, Dhariat.

‘Mum-lil,’ mumbled Thewson. ‘Lain-achor. Daingol. Sowsie? Where? Fox? Where? Gaffer Gumsuch?’

‘Do we still wait?’ snapped Leona. ‘Or do we rise and fight? Hazliah?’

‘When you will, Lady. As you will.’

‘No,’ cried Thewson thunderously. ‘Wait. Even now, wait.’

The tiny figures were driven forward, so close that he could see the tears on Jasmine’s face. ‘Wait,’ he muttered, putting his teeth into his hand so that the blood ran. ‘Even now, wait.’

In Tharliezalor the riders were almost across the bridge, almost at the domed building. Behind them was a towering wall of scrambling fury, but before them was only the building and the dome, glowing in rotten light. Still Medlo sang, Terascouros sang, the voices from far-off Gerenhodh sang, and Jaer rode as in a trance, remote and dreaming.

Open doors gave into a wide hallway. The black horse went forward to a central space, open above to the sky. They dismounted and went farther. It seemed to Jaer that the black horse followed them, though she could not hear hooves, and she thought of the horse and of Kelner and knew she would not hear hooves or wings. Terascouros still sang, but the voices from the hill were weakened here. The three peered about themselves uncertainly, come to an end, a goal, not knowing what to do next.

There was a pit of twisted metal, lights flickering at the edge of vision like shifting eyes, a veil of corpse light between grey buttresses, high, narrow tables festooned with dust among a maze of shadows. Then to one side they saw the jar, vast, bound about with hoops of steel. Once having noticed it, they could not look away again, for in it something lived.

Something without colour, without shape. Something which had no right to be, no natural thing. Something which might have been drawn from the depths of an unknown space, too unfamiliar to be horrid, too strange to be totally terrifying. The horror and terror it evoked were of a different kind, a discrepant order. It was there. It knew. It had found them. Now it spoke to each.

‘Medlo. Come. We will go to Rhees. I have Separated them all, all the ones you have reason, good reason to hate – mother, uncle. You can see for yourself what is left of them, enjoy the sight. You may drink what is left of them like wine, Medlo. You may rule in Rhees. Medlo, Prince
.
Only lay down that which you carry, Medlo. It is only a burden. You don’t need it. Alan, Medlo. Alan will be there, too.’

Medlo’s voice dried in his throat. His hands left the strings to hang limply at his sides. He saw Rhees in the brightness of spring, the lawns jewel-green in morning light, River Einnit sparkling beneath the sun. From the streets came laughter. He was dressed in the honour cape of the King, and beside him was Alan … Alan …

‘Terascouros, you are old, so old. Bones creak and body aches. We don’t need it anymore, Terascouros. In me you can live forever. No pain anymore. No body at all. Roam the world, Terascouros. I will give you Sybil for a slave, what is left of her. You may go where you will, see everything, know everything. You have only to stop singing, Terascouros. Only to stop singing.’

Terascouros could feel all her bones, each one with its individual pain. She was old, too old. And yet her restless mind did not wish to go into nothingness, did not wish to die. Ah, to know
everything
. Ah, to wander and learn without pain …

‘Jaer, I will take all those others inside of you away. You don’t need them. It is you who are important, Jaer, not them. I can take them, and you can go back to the tower. Ephraim will be there, and Nathan, and it will all be easy and simple, with the sun warm on the tower steps. I am the Gate, Jaer. I am the Ahl di. You have found me. You have done enough. Give them all up, Jaer. Give them up:

Jaer trembled. Ephraim and Nathan were both pleading with her. She was weary, weary of the journey, the uncertainty, the inhabitants within who built of her a pattern she did not understand. She was weary of voices and quests. It would be good, so good to be a child again …

In Orena, Jasmine walked in chains, her eyes upon Thewson where he stood upon the wall. Behind her, Sybil rode upon the dragon beast and screamed to Thewson in a voice of jagged metal, ‘The Sword, Thewson, and the Crown: Put them down, and we will let you have this woman, this child. You may take them to the Lion Courts, Thewson. They call your name in the Lion Courts, to make you Chieftain. No one else. They know of your renown, of your courage, your battles. They have cried Thewson’s name along the god trail. Come down and give us the Sword, the Crown in exchange for these.’

And Lithos called to Leona where shfe and Hazliah hung across the battlements, staring in fury. ‘I will take you to Fabla, Leona, for she lives. Come down and set your talons into this pretty meat I have for you, and I will take you to Fabla once again. Get the Vessel for us. Trade it, Leona.’

The voices of these two struck Leona in whiplashes of sound. She screamed only once, a gryphon’s scream, heard it echoed by Hazliah. Together they lunged upward from the walls, mindless with rage. Thewson could not have held them longer. He bowed beneath their screams, hearing the same sounds coming faintly from the north. There Hazliah’s kindred beat toward the city, returned from wherever they had taken the Remnant. Still other cries of fury came from within the city, and those remaining of the gryphons wheeled out from the Temple tower into the battle which tore the sky above the city walls.

Serpent beast and gryphon met above the towers, air shrilling along bat wings, clawed feet slashing, venomed stings snapping and recoiling. Blood rained on the city from their meeting as membranes ripped into tatters; beasts fell in sprawled dragon shapes upon the roofs of Orena. Crippled gryphons planed down, struggling to veer away from the wall of ghosts. Individual battles broke from the mass to spiral away across the valley. Below, the people of Orena poured from every building to stare above them. Onto the walls the Sisters came in their gore-spattered hundreds, standing together in song beneath the blood-curtained sky.

Sybil and Lithos dismounted from their dragon beasts, gestured them upward to join the fray, laughing mockingly as Thewson clenched his fists to hammer them upon the stones. His eyes were locked upon Jasmine’s. He tried frantically to devise some plan for her rescue. Bells were ringing. The song rose in power. There was the sound of battle, screaming, the mockery of those red-robed fuxlus. The Crown told him nothing, nothing at all….