The Revenants (48 page)

until their Healing comes at last
.

FROM THE QUEST BOOK OF EPHRAIM THE ARCHIVIST

The Prophecy of Geraldhis

Between Gerenhodh and the sea
,

by Gahlian maimed, by capture grieved
,

three chainbound captives are set free

that one great end shall be achieved
.

From shadows a dark warrior comes

with Widon’s sons and Power’s Sword
.

A singer beats the dead-march drums

to welcome him, the Lion Lord
.

The King of Rhees shall rise again
,

beside him maiden, mother, hag
,

and go to reign in otherwhen
,

Basiliskos, his battle flag
.

The Queen of Beasts wanders the lands

with Wisdom’s Crown upon her hair
.

Eastward the fabled postern stands
,

the Girdle goes to meet it there
.

In Orena the Remnant dwells
,

these seven shall the Girdle bind
.

Throughout each age, this voice foretells
,

shall all men seek what these shall find
.

Wounded nor whole shall they prevail

until a weary time is past
,

nor cease, nor turn, nor die, nor fail

until their Healing comes at last
.

CHAPTER FORTY

THE GATE

Day 18, Month of Sowing

Taniel sat with them on a grassy knoll beside the river, all gathered together in firelight. Tharliezalor cut knife edges of dark against the stars, and they could hear the sea where it crashed upon the city walls. Lights moved in the city, carried by some unknown explorers. Once Medlo had thought he heard soft laughter coming from the city, nymphlike, perhaps, but he could not be sure. Jasmine told him she had heard nothing, but he did not think she was listening to anything except Taniel’s voice, She spoke so softly that they had to be very still in order to hear her.

‘It was very long ago,’ she was saying. ‘Sometimes I do not remember clearly. We were very wise, very clever, and when the First Cycle ended, we gathered together here in Tharliezalor. Some of us decided to leave the world, to go out among the stars, Some of us, the Thiene, decided to stay. We were few, but we thought ourselves the wisest of our kindred. Not for us the far reaches, the endless voyaging. No, we chose the earth, chose to make it our own, chose to perfect it and ourselves. We were very proud.’ She mused at the fire, placing a small stick upon it, first this way and then that, watching the flames climb along it on hungry, undulant feet. Presently she went on.

‘There were two among the Thiene who loved me, whom I loved. Urlasthes and Omburan. Unlike as day and night, one fair, one dark, one sharp, one smooth, one all angles and exclamations, one all silences. Both wise. Both students, learners.’ Again she watched the flame, feeling the sweet warmth of it play on her skin. ‘Omburan discovered a Way, a Way into the heart of earth, into very Earthsoul. It was a way of long study, of silences, of losing oneself. It was a way of seeing and becoming. He tried to teach it to me, but I was impatient. I was young then.

‘Urlasthes found another way, a way to create life in new forms, change it, combine it. He and Audilla and Lucimbra, and Talurion, too. I was not that wise, you understand. I was only there, among them, very young, loving them all, but mosdy Urlasthes and Omburan. It was Urlasthes who brought the gryphons to life within the people of Anisfale, though it was not Anisfale then. It was Omburan who taught them the rites to protect themselves from themselves. It was Urlasthes who brought me a tiny horse with wings, delicate as a carving, prancing and neighing in the green meadows he had set it in. A gift. I showed if to Omburan, challenging him, perhaps to say, “Oh, prove you love me more!’ H6w do I know, now, what my reasons were then? Omburan only smiled and told me, “When you look at this gift, look behind it, where its shadow falls. There you may see something more; the true, the real.”

‘I looked as he had said. For a moment, only a moment, I saw beside the trifling little creature a glimpse of something more, eyes shining with the light of suns, a silken majesty of flung mane and high purpose. Then it was gone, and the little toy horse which Urlasthes had made pranced in the meadow. But I did not understand what I had seen. Not then.’

Leona put a stick into the fire. She had come here swiftly, bearing Jasmine and Hu’ao. Hazliah had carried Thewson. She had had to leave the dogs in Orena, and Bombaroba. Hazliah stood behind her now, somewhere in the shadows with his kindred. She turned, inviting him with her eyes to sit beside her.

‘The centuries went on,’ Taniel continued. ‘We could live as long as we wished. Omburan began to go away for long times, coming to me only now and again, bringing me gifts which I could not comprehend, which I did not try to comprehend. Urlasthes was always there, always smiling, explaining, laughing. I loved them both, but Urlasthes was there.’

Thewson leaned on his spear shaft, regarding Taniel with thoughtful eyes. The spear had no blade. He had given the blade to Medlo who had laughed, saying. ‘I have given up ambition, Thewson. Almost it defeated me.’ Still he had taken the blade and sat beside the fire with it now, memorizing it with his eyes and hands.

Taniel said, ‘Sienepas was the least of us. He was envious and malicious. He went away to the west saying he would create a race greater and more beautiful than any the world had yet seen. He did not return, but we heard rumours of evil, of a race of ugly little creatures that did not please their creator. Still, the creations of Urlasthes went on, other little creatures, these bright and lovely, toylike and marvellous, filling the meadows around Tharliezalor.’

Jaer remembered the sphinx. There had been nothing toylike about the sphinx. Nothing toylike about the naiads, the unicorns. Urlasthes’s creations had not lasted, but other creatures had. Perhaps they had been made by a greater creator than Urlasthes. Jaer peered into the shadows where the tall, strange form stood, firelight glittering from its yellow eyes. It had been with them since they had come to the knoll, always there, almost always just out of focus. Jaer watched the form and dreamed.

‘Then, at last, Urlasthes wearied of it all. He decided, they decided, to do the one thing they had not done – to create themselves anew, to make themselves perfect.

‘To make themselves gods. Telasper said that to Vincepthos. That they would make themselves gods.’

Jasmine made a reverent gesture. She felt the Lady would not approve of this story, and with her belly beginning to bulge before her, it was wise to be in good standing with the Lady.

She had flown to this place on wild wings, clutching Hu’ao to her, leaving Dhariat and Lain-achor behind to mourn Sowsie and Daingol, dead from the venomed creatures who had taken Jasmine from the boat. She had left Mum-lil and the baby, and Gaffer, and the horse Tin-tan, and Fox, silly Fox who had found Hu’ao, her laughing child, made so much of by Sowsie who would never do so again. Jasmine felt tears running down her cheeks and hugged Hu’ao close, stroking the sash on her knees to comfort herself with the feel of it. She wished they would stop talking. She wanted to lie down.

‘They said,’ Taniel went on, ‘that mankind contained within himself all good and all evil, just as they had proven that he contained all beast, all spirit. Yes. That is what they said they had found to be true. Well, if that were true, then they might become perfect merely by removing all evil. That sounds well, does it not?’

Those around the fire murmured assent.

‘Yes. It sounds well. It sounded well then. They resolved to do it, to remove all passionate lusts, selfish desires, all hatred and violence, all mockery, cruelty…. They would drain all this away, they said, leaving only the pure, the good – the perfect, the true essence of mankind. There were seven of them. Talurion, Audilla, Lucimbra. Vincepthos, Telasper, Lendhwelt. And Urlasthes.’

Medlo shifted uneasily. The fringed sash was no longer upon his shoulder. He had given it to Jasmine. He saw it shining in her hands and remembered himself wearing it above the valley of ghosts at Gerenhodh. It was this girdle the ghosts had fled from, screaming across the valley – this girdle which his aunt had given him for a naming day gift; old, dull, antiquarian aunty, raiding the museums of Howbin for gifts for an ungrateful nephew. He watched it slither through Jasmine’s hands as she studied |he pattern of it.

‘They prepared to do this thing,’ Taniel said. ‘They prepared a vessel into which the dark forces should be drained away and held. They talked of it, the vessel, full of unnecessary waste, lying there, quiescent, to be stored away and forgotten. They spoke of the seal they would set upon it and the place they would store it. Then they lay down upon the tables, jesting, to sleep while it was done. When it had happened, they woke.’

‘They screamed,’ said Jaer. ‘I saw it in my dream.’

Taniel nodded, the firelight gleaming on her hair. ‘They screamed then. They realized what they had done, what they had become. Even I knew. They were half creatures. Not divine, merely crippled. What is love without the lash of lust? Where is learning without die goad of the unknown? Where is high resolve without fury at loss? What is left? Only what they were, pure, good – for nothing.

‘They tried to undo, but they could not. They tried to bind
that
to themselves again, but it would not. The darkness lived – it thought, and it was full of lust and power. It had been stripped of all controls, all directing intelligence, all loving guidance. It had acquired identity, personhood, and it desired to
live
, to have
power. I am
, it cried.
I am I
. Urlasthes had opened the Gate for
that
But Urlasthes could not close the Gate again.’

‘The Gate?’ asked Jaer.

‘There. In the chamber. Those buttresses of grey metal with the veil of light between. It was the Gate for what they resumed to do. It is dead now, without power. It will not be used again.’

‘Ahh,’ said Jaer.

‘So, what could we do, we who remained?
That
taunted and tempted, began to build and woo. We took counsel. The seven we sent to Orena. Elsewhere we learned and schemed and built. I knelt upon the hills, singing the names Omburan had taught me, summoning him, to beg him to help us. So the Magisters came, Omburan among them, and helped us hold
that
in Tharliezalor. Centuries came and went. Sud-Akwith came, moved by his own ambition perhaps. Moved by
that
, I believe. Only the Powers saved the world then. The Magisters set the Concealment, with me beneath it for all time to hold it in place. He came there, Omburan, now and again, to look on me and speak into my dream that the world still lived. Still, it could not be forever.’

‘There was a Taniel in Orena,’ said Leona. ‘With them.’

‘Created in my image,’ whispered Taniel, ‘by some of my kindred, to comfort Urlasthes, who had no comfort. I was in Tchent.’

‘She was in Tchent:
The voice came from the shadows, and they held their breath to hear it.
‘She was in Tchent, but others moved upon the earth. Omburan had followers, too. Others, who knew the weaving of the fabric of time, the weft of the Powers and the warp of history. Others who could move to set within that history certain patterns.’

‘Patterns,’ said Jasmine. ‘Swords of Power. Vessels of Healing. Girdles of Binding. Crowns of Wisdom. Bits and pieces, woven in, like silver in the web.’

‘Others moved,’ the
voice said, ‘to open a Gateway once more.’

There was silence beside the fire, Leona turned to Hazliah suddenly, grasping his hand tight in hers. ‘If anything … anything should happen to me, Hazliah, I set the boy in your care. Sorrow and Silence, too. Care for them. Please.’ His hand tightened upon hers in puzzled promise.

‘To
open a Gateway. A way.’

‘A Gate? A way?’ Jaer asked. ‘For some Ahl di or other? Oh, Magister Omburan. What am I?’

‘You know what you are.’

‘Yes. I know what I am. I am a link between what men call myth and what men call reality. Between male and female. Between age and youth. Between one time and another. I can read the pattern within me, built by my thousands for a purpose I never knew. It was not Ephraim’s quest at all, was it?’

‘You have his book.’

Jaer looked at the stained cover between her fingers. Yes. It was Ephraim’s book. It was Ephraim’s quest. ‘It was not entirely his,’ whispered Jaer.

‘It was yours.’

‘Mine all along. Do you know, it was only love for those two old men kept me at it? Funny. Nathan didn’t even know about it, and yet I did it to please them, to repay them.’

‘Did you?’

‘No. Partly. Sometimes. Mosdy. But what was it all for? Was it only to bring Thewson and Jasmine and Medlo and Leona here or wherever else they have been? Only that? It seems an obscure and unnecessarily complicated way to have done that.’

‘Obviously then, not only that’

‘Obviously.’

They let the firelight play across their faces. None of the others spoke, only watched and listened, letting it play out before them as though they had determined upon a course which they did not understand–like a child who says, ‘Let me try that,’ and then must wait endlessly while it is explained. So they waited.

Presently, Jaer asked, ‘Who was it, really, who made the Sword? And the other things? Who?’

‘Yes. Who?’

‘I,’ said Thewson. ‘I will have to put the Crown where it must be. Who else knows of it? Who else can climb the Wall and put the Crown upon the head of Ulum Auwa where it must be? Who?’