The Revenants (50 page)

Medlo curved his hands about his mouth, cried between the stones in an echoing roar. ‘Strike where stone burns as thy need burns, O King!’

The horseman leaned from his mount to strike the fiery lava with the lance he held. A clot of burning stone flew up to hit him on the forehead so that he cried out. Now he saw the Sword. Medlo could see it, too, glittering, green, scarcely heated by the lava flow. The horseman dismounted, took it up to look upon it with unbelieving eyes, then rode back the way he had come.

Medlo leaned against the stone, weary beyond hope of rest. ‘So,’ he whispered. ‘It is done. The Sword made as it was made, set as it was set, found as it was found. Done. As I am done.’

‘No,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Not so.’

There in the fireglow stood a giant figure which Medlo thought he should recognize, except that it shifted in the shifting light. ‘Northward,’ the figure told him. ‘Beyond the great Abyss which men call the Abyss of Souls, a kingdom waits your founding, Scion of Rhees. Even now, events so move that a people will come to you. You are not done.’

It seemed then that Medlo was led away to the north, a journey of many days which, afterward, he could scarcely remember, into a land of cleanly green, watered by many fountains. The people there were herdsmen and workers in stone. They greeted Medlo as a king foretold, and he lived there long. He was still there when Widon the Golden came out of the south to build even greater the green and meadowy land of Ris. He was yet alive, white-bearded, honoured, and as content as any man has ever been.

LEONA

In the great forests of the north there was a tall cliff which loomed across the world, its face pocked with caves. In these caves lived a squat, strong people who hunted all the creatures of the forests and die grasslands, painting their likenesses upon the rough, curved walls of the caves. They knew the beasts of the world as they knew the feel of their own flesh, their own hands clenched around a flint knife. When they showed the children how it was that each beast lived and moved, the hunters would become the animal with each thrust of neck and head, each movement of shoulder, each stride becoming the thrust, movement, and stride of the animal. When they drew the beasts upon the rock walls, the animals breathed there as though they lived. The people were as close to the creatures of the earth as it was possible to be. They did not think of themselves in any way separate.

So it was with a feeling of strangeness but not separation that they saw one of the rare animals moving among the long grasses at the foot of the cliff. These were animals so rare that the people never learned them well enough to paint them, scarcely well enough to name them, never enough to dance their beings in the hunting dance. It looked somewhat like the great cats, which they usually avoided, but it was not one of those. It had a great, curved beak, shining and metallic, sharp as their knives, curved at the tip and knobbed like a fern frond at the base. It had forefeet clawed like those of a bird of prey, and it had mighty wings like the wings of an eagle. Its eyes were calm, like the eyes of an aurochs, yet full of understanding, and when it saw the men crouched at the cave entrance, it cried once and moved away.

The first hunter knew that the beast should not have been there, there in the grass at the foot of the cliff, but knowing it did not help matters. The cry of the beast had been the cry of the hunt, and he followed that cry, the men following him, spears dangling in their hands, unready, almost unwilling.

The beast led them three days south, down the grasslands to a place of meadows above the long, southeasterly flow of a great river. There, above the river, the beast turned toward them, crying once more. The hunt leader shuddered, his throat dry, and made a clumsy throw of his spear. It touched the beast, and the beast fell, its wings bearing once against the earth as though it might have wished, at the last, to fly.

It lay unbloodied, its eyes half closed. Around them was a flicker of summer lightning, the eyes of the beast glittering in that light. Two of the hunters took to their heels. The others watched while the first hunter cut off the strange, curled beak with his knife, grunting and sweating as though he struggled with some unseen enemy while the lightning flickered nearer in a mutter of thunder. The first hunter rose from the body of the beast, weeping, and stepped away with the brazen beak in his hands.

Wordless, he led them back as they had come. When they had returned to their own cave, he placed the beak far back on a shelf of stone in that part of the cave where they painted the animals. He never spoke of it again. Long after, one of the hunters asked if he had heard a voice in the thunder. The first hunter only shrugged, but he did not say he had not.

A strange beak it was. When the hunter people had passed away, another people came who found it where it had been hidden, and they took it with them in their wanderings. It was given to a trader, at last, who traded it to a metalsmith who made a vessel of it, plating it with silver. The Vessel was dedicated at a Temple of Earthsoul thereafter, and thereafter yet again was given to a great man, the Founding Doctor of a line of Healers.

All things are possible, and alive, and enduring, in Earthsoul.

MAGISTER JAER

In the Outer Sea of the known world lie those verdant isles known as the Outer Islands. The largest of these is a mountainous isle, with many fertile valleys which were Separated once, in the bad time, but are now knitted together by the ancient commerce between man and myth.

Above one of these valleys is a watch tower built, so it is said, in the long ago. A stream flows nearby, plunging over the scarp into the pools of the river valley. Ow trees bloom there, and small birds sing invisibly among the mosses. The young Magister Jaer stayed often in this place while the sun rose and set, time on time, learning the way from one place to another, learning the numen of this place, greeting the numen.

‘Contentment in time. Dweller.’

To this place, among others, the Serpent came. Jaer saw him out of eyes clear as dew in the morning of the world and smiled upon him – which the Serpent had not expected.

‘Have you sought your father yet?’ the Serpent asked, sharpened somewhat by annoyance at Jaer’s composure.

‘Yes:

The one word was all that was needed. The Serpent’s body lowered until only the head was raised above the earth. Jaer reached out a hand to stroke that scaled head, whispering.

‘
I
know your name.’

All things are possible,

and alive,

and enduring,

in Earthsoul.

APPENDIX

THE HISTORY OF THE KNOWN WORLD

At the end of that period which the people later called the ‘First Cycle,’ (FC), there was only one of the great ancient cities left on the shore of the eastern sea, In subsequent centuries that city was called ‘Tharliezalor’ [thar-li-AY-zah-lor] which means ‘High Silver House’ in the ancient tongue. What its original name may have been, none knew. It was said, however, that from this city at the end of the Cycle, and after the general destruction which encompassed much of the known world, the wizards of the first age had departed. ‘The Departure’ is synonymous with the end of the first age. Of the wizards some said they were high lords, others said they were devils. Whatever they had been or hoped still to be at that time, they departed the great city and went westward across the world. They rebuilt the area around Tchent, establishing a university there and a great library. They set up various places of refuge, towers and redoubts, all of which were said to be repositories of hidden, ancient knowledge. They are said to have founded the city of Orena [OH-r’nah], though some dispute this, leaving a great part of their knowledge recorded there.

At the end of this migration, this period of ‘Departure,’ the wizards vanished. Some said they went westward into Wasnost [WAHZ-nohst]. Some said they went ‘offworld,’ while others claimed that ‘offworld’ was only a metaphor for death. Wherever they had gone, they had left a strange heritage behind: A group of reclusive archivists in a single complex of building and tunnels at Tchent, a remote and solitary city, Orena, numerous other refuges scattered across the earth, and a few sayings. These were called, ‘The sayings of the wizards.’

If half life disputes with whole life, half life wins
.

If shadow disputes with light, shadow wins
.

If science disputes with knowledge, science wins
.

We are victorious. We depart
.

This was one of the sayings. After a time, most of them were forgotten, and anything that sounded obscure or foolish was said to be ‘a saying of the wizards.’ After the Departure there was a thousand-year period of violence, famine, war, and ignorance. Literacy was preserved only in Tchent and Orena and perhaps in a few other isolated places. Some say this period of darkness was foreseen by the wizards. Others say that the period was caused by the Departure. Whatever the cause, the lives of the people were brutish and brief, and history existed only in legend and stories passed from generation to generation.

Into this dark world came the Thiene, no one knew from where or why. They were people of marvellous persuasive powers, people of great skill and knowledge, and they joined tribe after barbarian tribe together into a skeletal civilization. They coaxed the archivists out of Tchent and sent them among the people as teachers, sent them to distribute copies of books newly printed in the languages then spoken. The Thiene founded the Choirs of the Sisterhood, insisting that members should be recruited to live full but sequestered lives spent in the study of the Powers, that is the natural powers of the earth and the universe. Taniel was the best known of the Thiene of that time since she actually lived and worked with the first Sisters to compose the discipline of their Order. It was to these Sisterhoods that the history of the First Cycle was given, including the story of its destructive end, prior to the Departure. Taniel taught that the First Cycle ended, at least in part, because of the worship of Firelord to the exclusion of all other of the Powers. This imbalance had brought the world to ruin, and the Sisterhoods were established that the balance might be restored.

The Thiene provided a number of the lost years, giving the date of their entry into the affairs of the world as 1200 SC, Second Cycle. The Thiene were said to be the donors of certain artifacts and tools which they called ‘fairy godmother gifts.’ What was meant by this phrase is uncertain, though it is certain that the Thiene regarded it as humorous.

It is thought that there was some intermarriage between the Thiene and other people of earth. Tar-Akwith often bragged of having had a Thiene great-great-great-grandmother. His wife was a woman of Tchent, among whom there was rumoured to be quite an admixture of the line of Thiene. Certain there is no recorded contact with the pure Thiene after about 3500 SC, though some of the Choirs are said to have been visited by Taniel long after that time.

The name of this people has been rendered variously as Thiene, Diane, Diona, or even Thynys or Dynys. Some place names around the Inner Sea, itself often called the Sea of Thienezh, indicate that the people may have come from there, or gone there. The Straits from the Inner Sea are called Thien Straits. The city of Sushuba was formerly called Dynysa. The River Talthien is still known by that name.

The history of the Second Cycle went on in a generally peaceful vein after the loss of the Thiene for some hundreds of years. In the year 40’0, Tar-Akwith VII established the Northkingdom, an extensive federation of subordinate states which extended from Tharsh across the settled lands to the edge of that forbidden circle which girdled Tharliezalor in the east. He died in 4110, to be succeeded by his son, Dynys-Akwith I. Sud-Akwith, later called The Great, was born in 4115. In 4150, Dynys was killed in battle, and Sud-Akwith succeeded to the sword, the Akwithian symbol of sovereignty. Sud-Akwith engaged in several wars of conquest, seeking to incorporate isolated areas which had not previously become part of the Northkingdom. Among these was the area around Tchent, which was taken in 4162, arid the far eastern City of the Mists, taken in 4180. In 41’0, Sud-Akwith sought to memorialize the centennial of the establishment of the Northkingdom by rebuilding Tharliezalor, the ruins of which had been undisturbed by men for over three thousand years.

Among the documents in Tchent were some which were purported to be prophecies of the Thiene, warnings against disturbing the ruins of Tharliezalor. The archivists brought these to the attention of Sud-Akwith, quoting the ancient sayings of the wizards to indicate that a half life of shadows dwelt with Tharliezalor. Sud-Akwith heard the archivists out, but he was determined commemorate his reign of the Northkingdom with some great accomplishment.

He entered Tharliezalor with a great troop of armed men and battalions of workers. ‘Those who dwelt beneath the city’ attacked almost at once. These creatures of darkness were called serim by the people of the Northkingdom. In the language of the Fales they were called
Hlaflich
, or
Mot ditch
. The people of the Axe King, much later, referred to them as
dumma d’rabat
, animals of the depths, or
hagak d’tumek
, beasts of stone. Whatever they were called, they were grey, cold, ravenous, and hard to kill. Sud-Akwith and his army was driven from Tharliezalor and pursued, with great loss of life, into the west, the serim laying waste and poisoning the land they crossed.

Had it not been for the discovery of the miraculous Sword of Power or Sword of Fire, an instrument divinely designed for the killing of serim, the Northkingdom would have ended then. The Sword is identified with the Lord of Fire and with the gifts said to have been laid in store for mankind in the dawn of time by the Powers. Others of the gifts were said to be the Vessel of Healing, the Girdle of Binding, the Crown of Wisdom, the Gate of Time, the Eternal Goad, the Chair of the Oracle, and a long list of lesser marvels. These gifts, including the Sword, were said to be imbued by the will of the Powers with qualities necessary for the salvation of mankind and the earth. Certainly, Sud-Akwith was saved by the Sword though he was driven out of the east.