Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  ‘How did you do it, Ama?’ he asked breathlessly. ‘How did you escape?’

  But the child who sat opposite him on the bed was not the Oracle.

  ‘Essape?’ lisped the little girl on the pillows.

  Lai gazed back at him with bleary eyes. Tymon wondered, with a pang, whether he was going to be called upon to produce another vision of Jan: he felt exhausted to the bone by the Reading and unable to dredge up the concentration necessary for a Seeming. The child, however, appeared content simply to be with him. She smiled.

  ‘Light in my head,’ she whispered.

  With that, swift as a feather in the wind, she was gone. Her chest grew still and her gaze blank, emptied of both its personalities. Lai had given up her long battle with illness, severing the connection that kept the Oracle in the world. Tymon reached out sorrowfully to close the little host’s staring eyes. Behind him — although he had forgotten until then that she was there — Adana raised up a thin, keening wail.

  19

  The Beast paced the gloomy floor of the Veil, making a wide loop about the spot the Oracle had fallen. It completed one loping circle and then another. Its feet made scratching marks on the frozen surface. At the end of the third round it stopped and crouched beside the remains of the black dress. It swayed from side to side; it waited, brooded. If it had possessed a head it would have raised its snout to snuff the air, to nose the primordial night. The only light in this barren world came from the distant stars piercing the blackness of the sky above. A shiver rippled over the Beast’s scaly skin, a brief, uneasy quiver of anticipation. It remembered the terrible Old Times when this plain of ice had been a theatre of war. Those were the times, this the place where it had not yet become the creature that was Lace. Then it had been Eblas, lieutenant of the glorious battalion of the First-Born. The worlds Above and those Below had bowed before its flaming sword. It had put to flight all those who dared oppose its Masters.

  A wind arose. A whispering lament of air stirred over traces of the Beast’s passage. The creature that was Lace shivered as gusts of crystalline dust were whipped up in its wake. It crouched further down, shrinking back on its haunches as the dust-clouds rose higher and higher around it. They grew improbably large, forming massive columns that glittered and faded only to re-form once more against the sky. They coalesced into a ring of seven misshapen figures, gloomy and indefinite, half shape and half shadow. The Beast lifted its headless torso. The toothy gash appeared between its shoulders and opened with a bloodcurdling howl, acknowledging recognition and giving fealty to its Masters from the depths of its own darkness. Their outlines were gloomy and indefinite as they bent over the Beast. It was their minion, their hell-hound, their guardian in the world of the Veil; it kept watch while its Masters slept. And the First-Born did not like to be disturbed.

  ‘Why do you wake us, Eblas?’ rumbled one. Its voice was like the cracking of the ice itself.

  The Beast raised itself up on its hind quarters. ‘To honour you, my Lords,’ it growled.

  It bowed low, throwing itself flat on the ice. As it made its grovelling obeisance, a sigh seemed to pass through the looming figures. For a moment they appeared as great beings wearing starry cloaks and crowns, their faces scarred with sorrow. But the impression passed in a second as a ripple of harsh laughter shattered the air.

  ‘We are honoured to be woken by you, dog!’ thundered another.

  And it seemed to the shivering Beast that its Masters had suddenly become giant brooding birds, hunched beneath their wings. When they shook their shadowy feathers the crystal dust of the Veil swirled and eddied. When they opened their hooked beaks the sky was filled with raucous mockery. But the stars shone faintly through their expressionless faces. The creature that was Lace knew, even as he cowered below the clash of their ringed talons, that the First had lost their memory of form. It was hardly surprising. Millennia of imprisonment would wear away even the most tenacious will to live. The First-Born had become mere remnants of themselves.

  Shaking itself like an animal with a wet pelt, the Beast rose on its hind legs a second time. A lump emerged between its shoulders, swelling into a neck and head. Its claws disappeared and its jointed limbs became human arms and legs. The form of Father Lace emerged from the Beast’s bubbling, melting flesh, complete with kerchief and surcoat. It was time to talk reason to his Masters, as well as flatter them. He bowed obsequiously to the seven. Whatever their current state, it would be wise to treat his ancient sovereigns with respect, especially if he was to negotiate with them.

  ‘Masters,’ he declared. ‘I presume to wake you only because the need is great.’

  The mighty birds of prey that had circled him so threateningly a few seconds earlier seemed to melt at his words. For some seconds they hovered uncertainly in shifting shapes before solidifying into monolithic columns of stupor.

  ‘I call on you in my capacity as guardian,’ persisted Lace, his voice growing stronger. ‘I call on you because Matrya has been here. She who has done you so much wrong has been walking among you with impunity.’

  ‘Matrya.’ The name appeared to excite the Masters, rousing them from sleep. They echoed the word; they repeated it with a mixture of hatred and longing. ‘Matrya, Matrya.’

  ‘Matrya has not walked the Veil for an entire revolution of the heavens,’ continued Lace complacently.

  ‘Not since she imprisoned us!’ wailed the first who had spoken.

  ‘Not since she turned the World-Key upon us!’ murmured the second. And a shudder passed through the circle of First-Born like a gust of icy wind, leaving their kingly rags fluttering in its wake.

  ‘What is the reason, the reason for this trespass, Eblas?’ they all whispered.

  ‘She came to fetch one of her puny mortal creatures who had strayed.’

  There was a time, thought Lace, when the mere presence of a human Grafter in the Veil would have caused a war of the worlds. There was a time when his Masters would have risen up with all their powers to challenge such an intrusion. Now they only slept. It was a shameful end to aeons of power and intelligence.

  ‘Cheated, for a pittance!’ groaned the seven figures. They swelled into monstrous birds once more, stretching their shadowy wings and craning their necks in outrage, scraping their claws on the ice. ‘What new treachery is this?’ they hissed.

  Lace stood up and straightened his shoulders. His Masters might sleep, but he was awake. He would succeed where they had failed. He felt capable at that moment of assuming all their lost powers. His voice rang out with renewed confidence.

  ‘It is not the first time we have been betrayed,’ he cried. ‘My Lords! Remember the cause of your dishonour! Remember the source of your shame! One person and one alone could have brought this indignity of chains upon the First-Born of the stars. One person only could have reduced the rightful rulers of the universe to this paltry state.’

  ‘Matrya!’ murmured the swaying shadows. ‘Matrya!’ But it was a lament now, a moan.

  ‘The one named the Oracle by the human upstarts plays cheap tricks on us at every turn,’ continued the ever-more-confident Lace. ‘She retains her physical form and seeks to extend her influence over the mortal world by means of the Exchange. We are compelled by the laws of the Old Order to leave the human spawn to themselves, but she does not. She acts without respect for our ancient agreement.’

  ‘Deceived!’ groaned the seven. ‘Deprived! Matrya, Matrya!’

  ‘It is the will of the Greater Order,’ murmured one.

  ‘It is the way of the worlds,’ wept another.

  Lace glared round him at the circle of weeping Kings. ‘No, my Lords!’ he snarled. ‘This has gone on long enough. We will no longer abide by a lie. We must do away with her. We must banish her from time and space!’

  ‘But how, Eblas, how?’ shuddered one of the circling shadows, whose tears had riven deep clefts in his cheeks and whose ravaged features still showed faint traces of lost sovereignty. ‘You know the Laws!’<
br />
  ‘I know she can be snuffed out,’ snapped Lace. ‘I know her body can be hunted down. She wishes to stay in that world of worms and decay, living among the human creatures: so be it. Let her suffer their fate.’

  There was a terrible stillness in the air above him. Lace glanced up, disconcerted, and saw that the swirling star-dust was fading to pitch black. The wavering figures were melting away with it. His Masters were disappearing. Only one face hovered above him, still faintly visible as the wind blew the rest away.

  ‘Shut the gate, that she may be silenced forever,’ whispered the last of the First-Born. ‘But remember the consequences, Eblas.’

  ‘With great pleasure, Masters,’ answered the Envoy, softly. And he smiled in satisfaction. The creature named Lace heeded no consequences but his own.

  20

  When the noisy speck appeared above the twig-thickets to the east of the Marak road, the day after the Beloved Oracle’s passing, the members of the convoy were perplexed. Their confusion quickly turned to terror as the speck enlarged and bore down on them at breakneck speed, making a sound like a rain of hammer blows. They shouted to each other in warning, pulled their herd-beasts to a bellowing stop and scrambled for the shelter of their wagons when the hammer-creature actually alighted on the road. Only after the monster had quit its infernal whirring and sat skulking in front of the foremost pair of panicked herd-beasts — waiting, as the travellers supposed, to pounce on one of those unfortunate animals — did they peep around their doorways and awnings and gaze in horror at the sight. They had no doubt the thing before them was a demon straight out of Hell. It was as big as a farmer’s barge, with four legs and a barrel body. It might have been some kind of giant insect, for it was covered in stiff chitin the colour of bark. Its wings were also rigid, mounted on its upper back in the manner of a beetle. They could see no mandibles, the gaping holes at the front of the creature might have housed hidden eyes.

  The refugees were most alarmed when a hole opened in the side of the monster and a man jumped out, as nonchalantly as if giant demonic insects descended on the canopy every day, and he just happened to have caught a ride with one.

  ‘Friends,’ called the stranger in their own tongue. ‘I am seeking a traveller whom you may have met on this road. A foreigner from the West.’

  There was a pause, then the door of one of the house-carts opened and a dark-skinned youth stumbled down the steps, as if he had been given an unceremonial shove. The demon-rider called out merrily to him in Argosian, switching languages with the ease of the damned. He must have been a half-caste, surmised the refugees, for he was as dark as the other one, the one who had been under the protection of the Oracle.

  The Beloved’s choices were mysterious. The fact that she had travelled in the company of this foreigner might have rendered him sacred, untouchable, but it provided no guarantee of his character or those of his friends. Wary eyes watched from behind curtains as the two youths greeted each other warmly. They had met before. The Argosian’s joy quickly faded, however, as the other spoke to him in urgent tones. The demon-rider had brought unwelcome news. When he ceased speaking, the young man who had accompanied the Oracle hung his head and remained silent. The half-caste glanced up, addressing the line of wagons in Nurian.

  ‘Friends,’ he said. ‘If you wish for shelter and employment, don’t waste time in Marak. Come north to Farhang Freehold. My people there will welcome you. We need help to build our new homes.’

  No one replied. The convoy was a sleeping snake on the road. The demon-rider frowned. ‘Well, we’ll be off, then,’ he finished falteringly.

  ‘Just a moment,’ piped a voice from the Omly wagon.

  There were several bitten-off groans among those watching as Adana Omly stepped out of the cart, wresting her arm free of the grip of her son — the only member of that family who had any sense, apparently. The honour of providing shelter to the Oracle must have gone to the old woman’s head, the refugees whispered to each other, for she was putting herself and the rest of the convoy in needless danger. Despite all objections, the old fool shuffled up to the two youths on the road, smiling stupidly.

  ‘May the Sap bless you,’ she said, patting the cheeks of the young Argosian as if he were a blood relation. Her own son could be heard cursing in his cart.

  The foreigner answered in his incomprehensible gibberish. The members of the convoy heard him mention Dell’s name. Then, against all custom, he took Adana in his arms and held her tightly. Dell cursed all the louder. Not content with making a spectacle of herself, the old woman permitted herself a word of advice to the young Argosian, although she had no hope that he could understand her.

  ‘Don’t get into that thing,’ she told him, grimacing with distaste at the hammer-beast. ‘It’ll move too fast and take you too far. Your soul won’t be able to catch up.’

  Of course he did get into that thing, along with his half-caste friend. And good riddance, thought the refugees. They watched resentfully as the demon rose into the air and thudded away, disappearing northwards above the twig-line. May he go and trouble them no more. They had sheltered the sacred stranger so long as the Oracle was alive: the Green God could not expect them to do more.

  The sound of the Maia’s propellers seemed to Tymon to come from very far away, or very long ago. The brand new air-chariot and its energetic pilot were objects from another world. He felt dim, sad and heavy beside Pallas standing so confidently at the machine’s controls. The Oracle’s abrupt departure had left him bereft; the foreknowledge of Samiha’s fate was a dead weight on his soul.

  He hardly needed the young guard to confirm that the Kion had indeed been captured in Marak. He had already spent a sleepless night thinking of the horrors she had suffered there, and what she was yet to suffer in Argos. Her trial was set to take place at the start of the Tree Festival, just as the Reading had promised. It appeared that Samiha’s fate was written in the Leaf-Letters and grown to order by the Sap. And yet his heart rebelled against it, rejected the idea that all outcomes were already decided. He clung to the Oracle’s assurance that parts of the Kion’s fate might yet be changed. Surely, he thought, the Freehold judges were doing something to stop her from being butchered. Surely the new Focal group had found a way to help. He could not bear to contemplate the fact that the Grafters’ philosophy of non-interference might well extend to letting the Kion go to her death.

  Pallas had the good grace to feel embarrassed about his part in the debacle. The villagers had not taken kindly to his actions, he confided to Tymon as they raced northwards in the air-chariot. He feared he had made a mistake in helping Samiha. His friends had been shocked that he had placed loyalty to her over the direct orders of the quorum; he had lost favour with the judges and been stripped of his position as captain of the Young Guard. A few people looking for someone to blame had gone so far as to compare him to the arch-traitor, Jedda, news of whose defection had reached them from Marak. It seemed the ex-Grafter had been spotted in that city, dressed as a boy with her hair cropped short. Only a priest could be fooled by such a disguise, remarked Pallas scathingly. She had left for Argos in the very tithe-ship that transported Samiha to her doom. The young pilot’s tone grew more bitter as he recounted how he, too, had been called a traitor simply for obeying his sovereign.

  ‘I trusted in Sap,’ he growled over the perpetual thud of the Maia’s propellers. ‘And look where it brings me.’

  At that point Tymon felt compelled to offer his companion a few words of comfort. He had not befriended Pallas as closely as their former commander, Solis, but had seen enough to know that this young lieutenant also possessed great courage. He did not merit the accusations levelled against him.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ he sighed, at some cost to his own pride. ‘The Oracle knew about the Kion. It’s all as it should be, apparently.’

  ‘But you nami do not agree,’ said Pallas astutely.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ grumbled Tymon. ‘I wish she hadn�
��t gone to Marak. It tears me in two.’

  And he did feel torn in half: part of him rebelling miserably against Samiha’s choices and the other part, the Grafter in him, knew full well she had acted as she should. He felt it in his very bones. The Kion had carried out the will of the Sap: it was her destiny to confront the priests in Argos. He could not deny the fact however much he hated it. The infuriating paradox was enough to make him want to bang his head against the walls of the air-chariot. As the journey progressed he ceased talking to Pallas, absorbed in his own thoughts.

  They flew on the better part of the day without glimpsing so much as a merchant’s barge above the twig-line. Tymon was not cheered after a few hours’ flight to observe a thick column of smoke rising on the eastern horizon. It was all that remained of Sheb, Pallas informed him. Although they had lost their homes to the pirates, the villagers had weathered this latest attack relatively well, thanks to Oren’s timely warning. The judges had organised a successful evacuation and the raiders had not been able to take a single prisoner. In spite of this qualified triumph, however, the quorum had thought it best to abandon Sheb, accepting an invitation to join their allies in Farhang Freehold. There the villagers would stay, until more air-chariots were built and they were better able to defend themselves. Tymon’s only thought upon hearing this was that the first battle for Sheb, which had claimed so many lives — including Solis’ — had been in vain. The Freeholders had been obliged to leave their homes after all.

  By the time they arrived in Farhang that evening, cramped and deafened by ten hours’ journey in the Maia, his sense of dislocation had deepened. The bark did not feel entirely solid and safe beneath him as he descended onto the branch that served as the northern Freehold’s docking port. He had to stamp his feet in order to bring life back into them.