The Revenants (49 page)
Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
‘Yes, Who?’
‘The Sword must be set in Sud-Akwith’s hands,’ said Medlo.
‘The Girdle must be woven,’ said Jasmine. ‘My hands know that.’
‘How?’ whispered Terascouros into the terrified silence. ‘By what Gateway?’
‘By me,’ cried Jaer in a voice not her own. ‘I
am
the Gate for which the quest was made. Woven out of a thousand lives, male and female, stretched through time, made for this and no other reason, woven into the web of myth, given to be what I am. I have only to … only to …’ Her voice trailed away as she turned, sought, set her eyes upon Leona, who rose, came toward her as though to speak, reached out a hand to touch Jaer’s … and blazed with incredible light and was gone. Vanished. Hazliah stared in anguished disbelief, seeming to hear from a great distance the wild, mournful howling of the great hounds.
Taniel was weeping, Jasmine wept, also, but Thewson set his hands upon her, lifting her up so that she faced Jaer at his side, Hu’ao clutched tightly between them. Jasmine cowered. Together,’ she pleaded. Together, please …’ Something or these words came though. There was an instant’s comprehension in Jaer’s eyes, something of
herself as
she had been with Jasmine on the road to Byssa. She reached out to touch them both. The light flared. They were gone.
‘Rhees is gone,’ cried Medlo. Trees and meadows only slag and dust. Alan is dead at last. The age is embittered. What is left for me here, Jaer? You have me. Let me go!’ He rushed upon her as though to seize her in his arms and was gone in that same wild flare of light.
Jaer staggered, murmured, ‘Ephraim, Nathan… I only wanted to be … Jaer.’
And where Jaer had been, where the multitude had been encompassed in one panic understanding, now was only a childish figure, slender and androgynous in the dawn light, blank-faced as a newborn, gazing with wondering incomprehension at those who remained behind. This figure dropped to the earth and lay there, fingers in its mouth, staring at the fire. Taniel wept. Hazliah clung to Terascouros in a spasm of agony too sudden to be realized in that moment. She, Terascouros, only watched, watched to remember.
The Magister stepped forward in the dawn to cradle Jaer in powerful arms.
‘So we have a child now, Taniel. Yours ana mine.’
‘Yours, Omburan. Not mine.’
‘Ours. The child’s mother, Jaera, I honoured, honouring you, Taniel. She was held in my being as no other has been held, given peace such as no other has known. She would have counted the cost not too dear, had she known the cost. Part of the price paid to her was that she never knew. And this is our child, newborn, all the past burned away in the making and breaking of the Gate.’
‘It
is too late for me.’
‘No. You will learn. Jaer will learn. We three will make a day together to sing the name weeping of Jaera of the Isles.’
The Magister took them away, in a direction Terascouros could not see. When they had gone, she gathered up the things they had left so casually behind. The Vessel, die Sword, the Girdle, the Crown. So many, so wondrous, left with so little ceremony. Carefully she packed them away to be carried home to Gerenhodh. Hazliah would take her there. They would sing the Song of Comfort for Hazliah. Then she would go with him to Orena to see it, to meet the little people, to meet Leona’s son. Busily she worked, remembered, and wondered curiously.
In the Lion Courts, a shaman planted seedling trees. New grass poked through slabs where the casde of Rhees had once stood. In Lakland, a man remembered a dancer he had once seen. In Anisfale, the heath bloomed bright about a stone which bore Fabla’s name. The deep songs of earth sang on, and in that song were all of earth’s creatures made whole.
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THEWSON AND JASMINE
Thewson found himself among stony mountains in a wild and desolate place. The earth around him was fused, as though by a bolt of lightning, into glassy nodules. He picked up three of them, recognizing them for what they were.
When he came out of the mountains, he had the three stones in his belt pouch, smooth and dark, with a golden light dwelling deep within. He came to the town of Txibbias, not speaking one word that they understood, nor they one that he could comprehend. They were workers in gold and silver in Txibbias, exporters to the City of the Mists and to the great seaports of the east, and it was to one of the foremost among the artisans that Thewson made his needs known. He wanted the stones polished and set into a simple circlet of sea silver. He drew the circlet on a fragment of hide with a burned stick, but offered no payment.
The artisan attempted to ignore him, but Thewson was not one easily ignored. By signs he conveyed willingness to guard the premises, to hunt, to guard the caravans which went east and north along the sea. At last the artisan allowed him to sleep between the inner and outer walls of the shop, only to find him there one morning, bleeding and exhausted, sitting on a pile of what had been an armed band of robbers who had thought to steal from the artisan in the night.
From that time on, Thewson slept within the inner walls, was well fed and armed, and had the strange stones handed over to the lapidaries for polishing while the artisan drew design after design for the crown. Thewson would not have it embellished, long though the artisan pleaded for only a few simple curlicues or a delicate wreath of flowers. Only when the artisan finished, Thewson bowed deeply before the startled artist and took himself off–eastward with a caravan.
He travelled with the caravan for a season, two, almost a year, crossing and recrossing the lands to the west of the great sea. There was nothing familiar: no language, no custom, no costume, no line of distant hills or river valley. Then one day he found himself staring at a child’s face which peered at him from the back of a wagon, a woven lappet across its forehead in a design which Thewson knew. Though he stumbled still in die language of the place, he could ask ‘where’ and learn ‘there,’ die City of the Mists, the Temple of Our Lady.
The city was very beautiful, delicately coloured, with graceful towers softened and pillowed by trees. The veils of mist came from a great waterfall which spilled the waters of a continent across silver cliffs into the eastern sea, veils which drifted in scattered rainbows, making the city one of gardens, alive with flowers. The Temple stood beside the sea, and on its marble steps the women of the city came to offer blossoms and incense and beg to be allowed to put a stitch into the draperies of the Lady, silken garments as delicate as the mists which also clothed the graceful image within the Temple.
Among the women sat Jasmine, working intently upon a length of woven light, carrying in her needle a lacework of silver to embroider the signs of rain and cloud and sea. Thewson stood before her for a long moment before she saw him, but her look when she gave it to him was glorious and utterly unsurprised, i am almost finished,’ she whispered in a tongue no other then alive could have known but he. ‘See if I have done it aright.’
On her lap, new-made, lay die fringed girdle of Rhees, the Girdle of Chu-Namu – not yet born for a few thousand years – the belt which would bind the circles of the world together once more, the Girdle of Binding, the Girdle of Our Lady.
‘It is like,’ Thewson said.
‘It is not
like
. It
is
! She took the last stitch, a spider’s stitch. ‘And, since I am priestess here, it will not be questioned.’ Taking Thewson by the hand, she led him within the Temple where the filtered light fell across the marble features of the Lady, shining among her jewels and the embroideries of her gown. Jasmine drew the Girdle around the image, fastened it, stood back to look on it once more. ‘I woke here, on the floor, with Hu’ao. They found me at the Lady’s feet when the Temple opened in the morning. When I had learned a few words, I told them the Lady had sent for me to weave her a new Girdle. They called me blessed – which is what they call pregnant women hereabouts – and priestess, and cared for me and Hu’ao and for your son when he was born. He is growing big, Thewson, with skin like brown silk.’
‘We can go now?’ he asked, full of joy.
‘Yes. I am finished. We can go now. But where?’
‘To the great forest of the south were a cave is, my flower. In that cave is the stone which lives, ready for my carving. It shall be an image of Auwe, Lord of Air, set high within the clouds in that place. On his head will be the Crown of Wisdom. I have it, made for this. We will go there, you and Hu’ao, and the boy, our son.’
‘Is it far? Very far?’
‘It is far. Very far. But we have long to do it in. We shall live long, Jasmine. Very long and joyously.’
MEDLO
They called themselves the people of the sunset, remembering a trek many generations in length toward the setting sun. They called themselves the sunset people, and they spoke with the gods. Often a man would wake startled from sleep to come to his fellows in hushed solemnity to say that the god had commanded him to do a thing or proclaim a thing. Often a woman would start from reverie and exclaim, ‘The goddess has spoken.’ They set up images in high places and went there when troubled to listen. It was not usual for them to see the god, but it happened sufficiendy often for legend to arise.
So it was that a god came to the Master Forger of Shan. The god brought a leather bag containing lumps of metal. He brought a pattern for a blade, also, drawn on parchment. These things he set before the Master Forger, the holder of mystery of the earth, the man who knows the invocations. The man looked at the god sidewise and doubtfully.
‘To a god,’ murmured the Master Forger, ‘the making of this thing would be easy. It is your metal and your pattern, after all.’ The Master Forger was looking politely at the ground, and his voice was quiet, for so was the usual conversation between men and gods properly conducted. ‘It does not seem that this matter should be brought to me.’
‘The invocations are needed. Firelord must be told of this and invited to participate in the making. It is customary. Necessary.’
The Master sighed. ‘We work best those things we know. Metal of this kind I do not understand. It is green.’
‘It is green, true. It is also necessary.’
The Master Forger sighed again. Sometimes it was useless to talk with gods because they did not explain themselves. ‘As you will,’ he said, picking up the metal and the pattern. Rather than explain the matter to his people, he went to the forge himself and the god plied the bellows, which was not the least surprising thing about him. He worked through the night, and when the sun rose, the metal was shaped. It lay on the anvil, green, like a blade of grass, with a curled guard and a long tang. At each step there had been invocation of Firelord and incantation of the names of the Powers and the blade had been quenched in blood and wiped on raw hides.
The god nodded, satisfied, and the Master Forger risked a question. ‘What is it for?’
The god smiled. Tor me to sharpen, to make a grip for, Smith, and to take from this place to another.’
The god went away then, as they usually did, and in time the Master almost forgot about it.
And in time, far to the north, in the land of fire mountains, Medlo stood behind a stony pillar watching the place where he had laid the Sword, now sharpened to a glittering green and hiked in gold. He had not been there long. From the east a horseman was approaching, a tall man, in dented armour, his face tired and despairing, picking his way among the hot lava flows. When he stopped it was almost on top of the Sword, and he called in a hoarse voice, ‘What wiliest thou, Lord of the Fire?’