by Tanith Lee
“It’s the mark of another fear,” Raldnor said, “an older fear. A fear of betraying who I was.”
Tullut looked at him but asked no question. He took Raldnor’s hand in a gesture of friendship.
“Well, you must do as you wish, Ralnar. Yannul too, and Resha will do as he does, no doubt. We have our own way. I hope your luck may change. I doubt it will.”
He went below as had the other Zakorians. They did not come up again.
So she lay, a ship of death, and at dusk three birds came flying over the mast.
“Land near,” Yannul cried. “Perhaps better than the last.”
The moon swam cold into the sky and brought a cold wind. It blew them through the night, and there were big fish leaping silver in the water.
Resha fell asleep at Yannul’s side. At last only Raldnor still watched. He saw the black shape of the land come up out of the ocean like a huge beast.
As the sun rose, the heights of the land were drenched with carmine, while its valleys were black, as if in retention of the night.
He thought of Tullut. “None of us,” he thought, “wait long enough. Whatever god, whatever destiny, is at work must have time.” And in the midst of death, he felt the surge of hope in him, and leaned and woke Yannul out of sleep.
17.
HAVING BROUGHT THEM WITHIN sight of land, the wind abandoned them. There were dark forests along the coast, rocky inlets, a backbone of crags. It seemed a turbulent landscape, and untenanted by men.
The heat of the day came down from the sky, up from the ocean.
Raldnor, as he sat alone at the rail, made out a movement in the sea, and thought it was a fish. But the fish swam on the surface, never dipping in the water. Shortly he realized it was a narrow boat, made of some hollowed black tree, similar to the fishing canoes of Zakoris. One figure occupied it—a man, rowing with strong easy motions. As he drew closer, coming quite obviously for the ship, Raldnor saw his sunburned face, empty of surprise or curiosity, a face quite closed in on itself, yet at peace. The man’s hair was very long, lying over his shoulders, chest and back.
In color it was corn yellow.
The pulses kicked in Raldnor’s body. He lifted an arm and hailed the rower. In turn the man raised his hand briefly; he did not call.
The narrow boat came alongside where the ladder trailed in the water. The man climbed up on deck and stood facing Raldnor. They were of an equal height, but the stranger’s body, though muscular, was thin almost to the bone. He wore only a cloth about his middle; the rest of him was tanned, but with that pale clear tan of the white-skinned, which fades with the cold.
“You’re a Lowlander,” Raldnor said, and he laughed, his eyes extraordinarily full of water.
The stranger clearly did not understand his speech, did not attempt to speak himself. He gestured to the boat below and indicated that Raldnor should follow him. Raldnor shook his head, pointed to the tower and called Yannul and the girl.
The man showed no concern. The boat did not seem large enough, but somehow he placed all three of them in it and took up the oars, rowing in the same easy movement as before. Little patches of the blue fire ran before them, almost playfully. The ship fell behind, a ragged skeleton, black on the sky. Ahead, the land drew closer. The boat appeared to be making for an area of thick forest where a rocky promontory stretched out into the sea. There were no signs of life there, but faint blue smokes rose from the tree-covered slopes above.
The man never spoke or moved his lips. His mouth had an indefinable strangeness about it, as if it had never been used to form words. Perhaps he was dumb. A dumb Lowlander, Raldnor mused in surprise.
The canoe was beached. The stranger moved to the first line of trees. There was a clay vessel set in the shade. He gave them water, then led them up into the forest.
• • •
It was a house of wood—a tall, wide hall built of mud clay over a frame of staves, with its black knotty pillars and mainstays the great trees themselves. The roof was full of leaves and nesting birds, which shook off their droppings on the floor, and sang in sweet fluting voices, and flew incessantly in and out of the high window spaces. The forest people lived in the wooden house, bathed in the clear streams below, cooked at innumerable fires on the open place above. They ate neither meat nor fish, most of their food being raw: berries and fruit, plants and leaves and milk from their small herd of black goats. They were a yellow-haired race, and light-eyed. None of them spoke. It came to Raldnor at last, as he lay in the shade of the wooden house near sunfall, that they did not speak because they had no need. They, like the Lowlanders, came together in their minds, and being more at peace, more content with their life, saw no need to express themselves in any other way. He felt a sense of angry despair, finding himself again with this key of communication, which should have been his birthright, freshly denied him. He was once more a cripple, a deaf mute among the hearing, speaking ones.
Yannul and the girl Resha seemed more ill at ease than he, though they were all well enough looked after. The silence troubled them, though for different reasons.
An indigo night settled, like the birds, on the wooden house, glinting with white bird-eye stars. Raldnor rose and went out into the cool. Fireflies darted a gold embroidery from thicket to thicket. Below, the soft thunder of the sea.
As he stood there, someone came walking through the trees toward him, light as an animal. He sensed rather than heard her come. For some reason his skin prickled.
At once there was an old woman, near him, in the starlight.
She was dressed, as were all the forest people, only in a cloth tied about her middle; yet, despite her age, there was nothing ugly in her body, though she had neither the smooth skin nor the firm breasts of the young women. Her hair was faded and streaked but still fine, and very long. Her eyes were strange, large and yellow as an owl’s. She seated herself cross-legged on the grass with a suppleness that gave him pause; she indicated that he too should sit, facing her.
She stared in his face. After a moment there came a startling, fearful flicker in his brain. He flinched; sweat broke out on him. It was to be hard this time, though without pain.
“Cease struggling,” a voice said suddenly and quite distinctly in his skull.
He lapsed, shivering, against the bole of a tree, and the voice said: “There is nothing you need fear.”
He did not comprehend how he could understand her, for they did not know the language of the lands he had come from. That much had been plain. He strove for expression. The voice said: “I use no language, only thought. You interpret in your own way, which suits you best.”
It had no gender, this voice. He tried to question it, blindly. An answer came.
“There are many in this land. Not all live as we do. Yet all could speak within, at need. You are of our people, yet you could not speak within. Some of us are more sensitive and more strong—we are the delvers. We seek out pain in the sick mind, and cure it. I am sent to you to cure your pain, so that you may speak as it is your right to do. I see now there have been others. Both women. Lovers. Ice hair and fire hair. To these you could speak; such a thing has its logic. Have no fear of me; I see your grief. Let me see all. I will help you to be yourself.”
But his mind cried out at hers in angry hurt.
“So there is another land,” the voice said, “and dark men who rule it. We have old stories of such a place. Do not fear your half-blood. It is your strength and not your trouble. I see your mother, back down the long corridors of your memory. Look, there is your mother. Do you see her? That is how you saw her as a newborn child. Thin she is, sick from bearing you. But how beautiful. There is strength, true strength, hard as the forest tree. Think what lay behind her, and before. Would you call this woman weak? Do you think she left you nothing of herself? Yes, weep, poor child. Know her, and weep. She is your spirit, and the other half is a
King.” Then there was a curious inflection in the voice, a kind of sorrow. “You imagine yourself so little, Raldnor, son of Ashne’e, son of Rehdon, Dragon King. So little.”
There was a lance of fire in his skull, yet no pain. A darkness swirled like the sea, but there was no fear. Now the voice, which led him like a guide through the unknown dark rooms of his own brain, had assumed a sex and a name. It had become Ashne’e’s.
• • •
Yannul whistled as he crossed the clearing behind the wooden house at noon. Resha sat, as she always did, outside, staring dejectedly down across the slope at men and women moving in the thin forest below. They had been here ten days and had adopted the forest people’s mode of dress. Resha looked very well in it, and, certainly, she had worn little more aboard Rorn’s Daughter. Yannul lightly ruffled her hair. He thought of her generally rather as he had long ago thought of his sisters, with a protective amusement, tempered by occasional slight irritation. Their sexual unions did not disrupt this attitude, for in Lan, where farmsteads were remote from each other, it was neither uncommon nor frowned upon for sisters either to couple with, or even marry, their brothers, or sometimes their sires.
“Well, Resha of Alisaar, I told you I would communicate somehow with them, didn’t I?”
“You did, Lannic man. In Alisaar, boasters are whipped.”
“Are they, indeed? Well, well. No wonder you jumped aboard a Zakorian pirate rather than stay to lose your skin—No, don’t clout me on the ear! Hear me out. I have had a little conversation with some of the men. Truly, a simple method. We drew pictures on slate and waved our arms about. I’ve learned a good deal. Over these hills there are cities—great cities, with kings and palaces and taverns and entirely suitable whore shops. Ah! Bite me now, would you? Listen, little banalik, when Raldnor comes back from wherever it is he went with that old woman, you and I and he will seek our fortune over the hills. They talk there—by mouth. We can soon pick up their tongue. Imagine a city ruled by a yellow-haired king.”
“We’ll be outlanders—scum,” she grumbled. “They’ll burn us or stone us as the Vis of Dorthar do the Plains people.”
“No, Resha. Judge by these. Are we outcast here? Yellow-haired men, I’ve observed, have more justice. Did you know Raldnor was a Lowlander?”
“He was brave,” she said. “I did my best to win his favor on the ship, but he was celibate and pure. A good man.”
“And the son of Rehdon, the High King. Yes, that makes big eyes. It whets your appetite even more, doesn’t it, you shameless piece? Up now, and I’ll teach you to juggle and stand on your hands. We’ll need a trade where we’re going.”
• • •
The dusk came on, and little black bats fluttered among the trees.
Yannul and Resha lay in the shade. She had worked obediently, and her body—strong and supple from ship’s labor—was quick to learn, though far too enticing. In the red slanting rays of sunfall he had pulled her down for other lessons.
Now, in the lengthening shadows, a man came walking through the trees toward them.
“Ralnar,” Resha said.
Yannul looked up and studied the figure. Yes, he knew it. Skin burned almost black by the sun—the tan of the Vis—and hair salt-bleached to white, long now as Yannul’s own. Yet, as the man came nearer, Yannul hesitated to greet him and checked again the physique and face, as if uncertain after all. They had all suffered and all been changed on the nightmare voyage, and then had come this nine-day absence, during which Raldnor was hidden with the old wise-woman. But did any of these things account for the vast, oddly inexplicable differences Yannul saw in Raldnor? He crossed the little clearing and came to a halt by them, looking down. His expression was remote, as if he saw them from a long way off, still—as if he did not know them well. His eyes were wide, burning, clear. Yannul thought, with uneasy amusement: “That old one, she’s been feeding him incense leaves. He’s been having visions in the forest.” But this did not seem applicable. Yannul fathomed it suddenly. “He’s been emptied, scoured, cauterized. Then filled. Filled with something better.” But he said aloud: “You look strange. Were you ill?”
“No, Yannul,” Raldnor said. Even his voice was somehow altered. Now it was the voice—Yes, of a king. The forest fell peculiarly silent all around them. “For the first time in my life,” Raldnor said, “I am at peace with myself. A rare and wonderful gift.”
He turned and walked away from them, toward the wooden house or the sea.
Resha whispered: “He’s marked for a god.”
Her fingers fluttered in a swift religious sign. Yannul cursed her.
“Don’t be a fool. He’s had misfortunes. Perhaps the old woman helped him bear them.”
“No. I’ve seen that look on the faces of priests before they jump from the rocks into the sea, to honor Rorn.”
“Do you mean you think he’ll die? Be quiet, you stupid girl.”
Resha looked at Yannul in scorn.
“From now on, Lannic lout, all men will be to him only like dust on the wind or blowing sea spray. None of us could harm him. He is his god’s. And the gods protect their own.”
• • •
In the morning there were new men in the wooden house. They, too, were of the forest people, almost indistinguishable in coloring and style of dress. They had brought with them three riding mounts—milk-white zeebas of unusual size—and linen garments suitable for two men and a woman.
Yannul marveled.
“They’re very prompt to supply our wants. How did you get them to understand you, Raldnor?”
“I can speak with them now,” Raldnor said.
Yannul said nothing further. He had heard the stories of the Lowlanders’ telepathic abilities, and, having already seen evidence of it in these alien forests, accepted Raldnor’s part in it with a shudder of unease. To Resha, nothing Raldnor did at this time was too wonderful. He was his god’s, which accounted for everything.
They left the wooden house before noon, leading the white zeebas up the narrow forest tracks, with one of the yellow-haired men walking ahead. The tree shade grew intense, then diminished. They reached a rocky summit, and below stretched rolling ocher grassland under a cobalt sky. Their guide pointed down and away. Raldnor nodded. The man turned and vanished back among the trees.
“Where are we headed for?” Yannul called, as they left the rock and mounted. “A town? Or that city they mentioned?”
“There are three cities here in the Plain. I shall make for the first of these, but naturally, you’ll have your own plans.”
“I planned to ply my old trade,” Yannul said, ill at ease as they rode. “A city would be a healthy place for it. And you?”
“I have business with their king, whoever he is.”
“Their king! You’re ambitious.”
“I always was, Yannul. I obtained status but no direction. Now, I’m driven, obsessed.”
“To do what?”
“To get my birthright. My second birthright. Already this land’s given me the first.”
“High King of Vis,” Yannul said. “A difficult task.”
“No, Yannul. That essential thing is merely secondary. My kingdom is in the Lowlands. They had their own lords in the past. Now, they have a lord again.”
Yannul glanced at him. Raldnor seemed calm, remote, his passionate words untinged by emotion. Then Raldnor turned in the saddle and looked full at him. For the first time the Lan felt the force of an incredible personal power stream like light out of the Lowlander—a power that seemed alive, fathomless, indestructible. It was an awesome thing to witness in a man he had known only as a man; for now, Yannul saw, whether at the whim of a god or not, Raldnor had become something more.
“What did the wise-woman do to you?” Yannul said, trying to grin.
“Removed my blindness, woke me out of sleep. Gave me the purp
ose I was born to.”
The passionless voice was, nevertheless, filled, like the face before Yannul, with the same vast strength.
“You look as if you’d eat these cities to get what you want—swallow the sea to reach the plains of Vis.”
“A harsh diet. Yet, whatever I have to do, I will do,” Raldnor said.
Yannul let the reins slacken a little. Raldnor’s zeeba moved ahead of him. It had a certain aptness. The white-haired man seemed to have outstripped them all. Yannul drew in a deep breath of the alien summer air. Whatever fire burned in Raldnor had scorched him, too. He knew he was no longer a free man. If any of them were any longer free. Even in the quiet, insect-humming afternoon, he sensed forces of disruption, of retribution, stirring underground. A cataclysm was coming, a leveling, a wind from chaos. They would all be caught in it, like fish in nets. And there, riding before him, was this unknown man, this comrade once called friend, who was to be the fisherman.
18.
IT WAS A THREE DAYS’ JOURNEY. They passed first through a scattering of villages and two small towns, all paying tax to the city, which in turn protected them from bandits by means of troops. Though physically resembling the Lowlanders, the yellow-haired people of the Plain were quite unlike them in disposition and intent. They were busy, outgoing and, on occasion, sly. There was no mysterious unvoiced code—they had their robbers and malcontents, and had had their battles, too. Only five years before, the city had been at war with its nearest neighbor. Who knew how many corpses under the soil helped now to nourish the grain?
Raldnor seemed able to speak their tongue fluently. Yannul, by dint of hard labor, began to learn. He learned also, as did Resha, to pull up the hood of his garment when they approached populated areas or passed travelers on the roads. The Plain dwellers did not seem hostile in the least to the strange phenomenon of black hair, but their curiosity and surprise grew irksome. Of their mind speech there was no great evidence. It seemed as if prosperity and worldliness were letting that inner art decay.