by Tanith Lee
This was like the great Uaarb, the ice desert of the farthest north. There, antique Magikoy teaching had it, weapons the like of those that had been deployed in the Ruk were once before unleashed, experimentally.
During the storms and snowfalls, if she was far from any settlement as frequently she was, Jemhara sheltered in snow caves, in ice-jungles, or sat on the open ground.
It was no longer complex to ward off the elements. She could erect a sort of cage of air about herself, or draw thick curtains of it over the doormouths of cave-holes and leaning byres.
Twice she came on caravans of wandering unhappy people. The first she gave her usual help, but could not advise as to where they should tend. She did not know herself where she should go. All she wanted was, after all, to go back to him. And that she could and would not do.
The first caravan decided for itself on the ruin of Or Tash. Something might be made of it, they said, for they had heard others were settled in there.
The second caravan reacted to Jemhara in another way.
Some of its members had already fled from Kandexa during the war. Others were from various more eastern settlements round about, which had either been wholly abandoned or simply ceased to function. The dying of all these outer environs of the Ruk was like nerves dying in a human body at some killing central injury a vast distance from the eventual paralysis. There were however with this caravan a group of people from the heart city itself, Ru Karismi.
These knew Jemhara, even in her spoiled clothing, which anyway had come to her from the city by the Gargolem’s will.
‘Lady – you are a queen.’
‘No,’ said Jemhara.
‘Yes,’ they insisted. ‘The second queen of Sallusdon, King Paramount. His widow.’
‘No longer.’
‘Yes. How can you untie such a knot? You were crowned there.’
‘I saw her crowned,’ stated one of the older men, ‘on the high terrace above the stair, sparkling. I saw it.’
Accused unfalsely of her royalty, Jemhara recalled how she assassinated Sallusdon at Vuldir’s order. None of these people knew that.
‘It’s done now,’ she said, meaning everything.
They had a minor mageia with them who saw to the fire and any healing. The woman was from some small Rukarian town and had dyed her hair pale blue – but now it was mostly grown out, a faded greying brown with pale blue streaks and ends. The mageia showed serene respect for Jemhara, not because she had been a queen but because she was a more puissant sorceress. She gladly let Jemhara work her prodigies in the repair department, assisting modestly if required. Jemhara next taught the witch, who learned quickly, the knack of melting ice. Other women included in the class were not able to learn. Obviously the lesser mageia was herself latently gifted.
‘I wish you’d stay with us,’ said the mageia. ‘What you might be able to lesson me in – I’d be grateful.’
Jemhara shook her head.
All the others called her by royal titles, some elaborate in the Rukarian manner.
‘Stop this,’ she said. ‘I am Jemhara.’
During that time the caravan had made a choice and moved on – or back – towards Kandexa, which lay many miles off on the north-western hilt of the continent’s shore.
Jemhara was presented with a slee that had a tattered half-shell awning of silk. She refused a driver, handling the team of two lashdeer herself. Soon, seeing the witch bumping along uncomfortably on her sheep-drawn slederie raft, Jemhara invited the woman into the carriage.
Her purpose was as they journeyed to teach the mageia whatever might be possible before she, Jemhara, went away. But strangely, after a while Jemhara found the older woman’s company suited her. Sometimes they even laughed together. Hearing her own voice, laughing, Jemhara was always startled. But the ache of loss soon came back. It was, though the subjects were different, the same for all of them.
They had travelled nearly a month through the often falling, heavy snow when Jemhara understood that they no longer asked her if she would stay, and that when she spoke of her departure they smiled patiently, confidently accepting what she had not. Which was that they had adopted her and she would now accompany them to a ruined city by the sea.
After a particularly violent snowstorm, Thryfe was alerted one morning to the advent of a band of people under the mansion walls.
One of the gargolems went out, to which they haltingly explained that they wished to have a few words with the magus, should he be able to spare the minutes.
Thryfe, absorbed in rebuilding of oculum and self, had thought very little of humanity. Having betrayed it, what right had he to think of it at all?
But the crassness of that had begun to reveal itself to him. Guilt maybe was one of the most selfish and self-focused vices. It let you off any further attempt to aid or amend, saying you were beneath any virtue, so need not try.
He went down, in the elegant garments of what he was, a mage. He went down remembering that his vocation above all else was service, and that being allocated to a court of kings had never been his preference: he had envied those Magikoy who strove in the lesser towns and villages.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
The villagers nodded low bows and spoke his name with firm esteem.
He had assumed the storms must have caused them trouble in a dilapidated village.
They assured him that this was not the case.
‘The lady came by, the Magikoy.’
Thryfe stared at them and for a second, despite Jemhara’s praise of him to them, they feared his eagle’s eyes. Then he had corrected himself, seemed only bleak.
‘A Magikoy,’ he repeated.
‘Yes, sir. Like yourself. We called her Ravenhair.’
Thryfe knew no Magikoy woman by that name. He had known one who might go by it.
‘All that she did for us, sir, prevented any damage from the worst storm. The fire still burns too, and the liquid water’s constant. She taught us easy protective charms, she said they were only small things, but that wind blew slantwise and missed us.’
Another man said, ‘I believe it was her own power she gave us, a tiny slice of it, or how else could we do such things, never being Magikoy-trained.’
‘She is not—’ Thryfe paused. ‘She isn’t Magikoy’
He noted they did not credit this. They seemed to be thinking he lied to protect her in some way, when of course in reality—
Torrents of rage threatened again to smash through his brain and heart. He curbed them, wrestled them away.
That whore Jemhara, what did she play at? What had she done? How dare she do these things—
He said he would go with them to the village, make sure all was well.
They were delighted, like youngsters wanting to show off.
When they reached the village of Stones, Thryfe saw all they had said was a fact. Not an ice-brick was off let alone a wall down. Contented lamasceps foraged from lines of dormant grass that seemed less dormant than potentially growing under some trees. Water bubbled from a cistern with women chattering round it. The worst of the gale-blown snow lay in neat heaps over on the north side – where they declared it had drifted of itself.
‘See how well the children are, sir. She blessed us, so I think.’
‘Ravenhair,’ he said. That was all. And then, ‘But what then do you need from me?’
‘Nothing, High Magus. It was she who said we should be ready to serve you, if you should require it. And we are. It seemed time we should come and tell you so.’
TWO
Curjai had reached the tableau of figures and chariots.
He seemed to himself to have been running for months.
The stone King stood in the prow of his car, with the gorgeous queen beside him.
All around grouped the guards of Hell, their snake-hair sizzling and the vizors hiding their eyes. There were no jatchas. In the traces of the chariots, the spider-horses resembled machines temporarily disconnected.
Vashdran stood unmoving also.
Vashdran was new as a new-minted coin of gold. He was twenty years of age, or twenty-two perhaps, and had been born without pain, and grown to his present stature and status in ten days.
It seemed to Curjai the tempest of winds and dislodged falling slates of sky was easing.
Cloud had closed over the sun that had been pulled down and then replaced, cloud like a bandage.
Vashdran turned to Curjai. ‘We’re going to the city over there. It’s called Thasuba now, they say.’
‘It’s the same name, isn’t it?’ Curjai said.
‘Yes, always the same name.’
But the name Vashdran – Curjai pondered it – that name too had altered itself into another form. Lionwolf.
‘Lionwolf,’ said Curjai softly.
‘Yes?’
‘Are we prisoners here again?’ And asking, Curjai felt himself a child.
Lionwolf said, ‘No, Escurjai.’
‘Why do they stand there then?’ Curjai said stupidly.
‘They are waiting for me,’ said Lionwolf.
‘For – you?’
‘Go on,’ said Lionwolf quietly to the King and queen and the guards.
The guards went smartly back into their vehicles, and the spider-horses woke up. Legs and runners moved. The stone King’s chariot also turned for the city.
‘We’ll walk,’ said Lionwolf to Curjai.
A funnel of wind roared above. Another tile of sky flashed down between them.
Lionwolf raised his head. ‘Hush now,’ said the Lionwolf to the sky of Hell.
And the sky of Hell was hushed.
Thasuba’s walls were high and white but the gates that led into it were made, or so they appeared, of polished bronze. Above them a trumpet or horn, visible only as a round O, expressed a mellow series of tones.
People crowded about the gates and were out on the plain itself, despite the still-ominous overcast, and going in behind the chariots of the Hell King Curjai and Lionwolf entered a wide square, surrounded by houses and mansions, with walkways and stairs going up on all sides.
‘This city is nothing like the others,’ said Curjai.
Even the people were more actual. Men and women held up babies to watch the brief procession. There were calls and applause, but the vapid praise-songs stayed unsung. Welcome to Thasuba.
The palace still dominated the heights. When they reached it, there were groves of trees like cedars, glass-trunked and crusted, as normal, with prisms of ice. The doors of this palace were silver.
Flowers were thrown as always. Blue and mauve and white, some of the last with narrow stripings of dark pink. Looking into one, Curjai saw only calyx and stamens.
Going into the palace he found it uneasily partly familiar in a manner of the world. It was rather like, in its layout, the royal house at Padgish. A great hall opened with a floor of veined marble. Pillars rose at strategic intervals. There were windows that gazed on ice gardens elaborately laid out.
Everything had changed.
Curjai’s mind had never had to strive to accept the ability of flight, let alone a fully able body. But now it circled warily the concept of the make-over of Hell. This place is unphysical – anything may happen, and does—Like a morose dog nevertheless, round and about this reasoning his mind went prowling, looking for another solution. Looking for chinks in the armour of the unreal. He had never heard of the Kraag, who would have told him nothing seemed more solid than what was unreal, since the unreal passed itself off constantly as reality. Curjai was uncomfortable, and as Lionwolf walked up the hall with the stone King, the black queen moving separately beside them, Curjai dropped back. He stood by a pillar and observed, and when a girl came to offer him wine, for the first time in Hell he refused it.
Lionwolf and the King were seated by one of the windows. The queen had seated herself at the next window along.
Curjai heard clearly what was said.
Soon he moved from the pillar and sat down himself on a bench against the wall.
Rays of the wounded day and the reflection of the garden ice shone sombrely through the hall. There were now no creatures in it but for those four.
‘What then,’ said the King, ‘do you think of this city?’
Lionwolf said, ‘Much improved.’
They spoke like royal men, equals.
They had cups of wine, even the King, whose stone lips parted to drink, the wine going down with no motion of the throat.
Lionwolf looked deep into the palace hall. He could see when he did this the eddying currents that composed it, dispersing, reinventing, holding all together.
‘Ask your question,’ said the King.
‘Ask yours.’
‘Very well,’ said Hell’s King. ‘What am I?’
Lionwolf’s own question, constant and native to him as his glamour. He said, ‘You, sir King, are the stony aspect of myself, my obduracy, barely flexible. And from your hard stones, as once you almost told me, I built my Hell and made you its King over me. About the same time as I put the blue sun of my shame into the sky.’
‘And you, aside from myself, are what, Lionwolf?’
Curjai, listening, flinched at the voice of the King. For suddenly it was not all those voices it had been, but only one – Lionwolf’s own.
And Lionwolf said, ‘I? Human and god, lion and wolf, stone, bone, blood, shadow and light. But the shadow burns and the light has darkness in it. In fact I am like all the rest. A polyglot, an amalgam. I listen to myself now as if I listened to you, or to some priest or sage or mage. And he tells me, too, what I am I may never know, beyond what is now obvious to me. And that it does not matter.’
Ornate lamps had appeared and lit themselves on the walls. The queen had done this, no doubt. Like most of those who had mortal blood, Lionwolf could invent a hell, but he had had the luck to tempt into it one such as Winsome to illumine it.
He sat, meditating on everything.
His brain was like a labyrinth, but through the never-ending interlocking halls and arches of it he moved now without impatience, anxiety or anger. He looked in at rooms full of what he had already done, been, lived, and destroyed. The emotion suitable to each of these libraries of his first residence in the world waited inside the relevant room, to be put on like a garment, felt and known all over again, and with an added intensity. Or they might be left on their pegs and in their chests. Lacking them, he could review the events and states judicially, implacably.
I am no longer afraid of myself.
That had been his only true fear, mirrored probably by his distress at his father.
Yet he had another emotion now, far greater, far more passionate.
Lionwolf acknowledged that he did not know what he was, but he knew at last why he had come to exist and what he must therefore do.
It fills me with terror and—
He could think of no description for the other element of the passion. It poised perhaps between excitement and disbelief, humility and overtowering vainglory. But it was himself, or all of Lionwolf that so far he had learned he was.
A cool peace lay all through him. It had been there from the instant he became fully aware inside the reborn body of the red-haired child, on the initial day that body was free of Wasfa’s womb. Before that he had only played, going in to see the baby inside her, the baby he was again to be, then whirling around the astral plateaux of his Hell – and other hells – and other othernesses, which like the second component of his passion had no words in any tongue to describe them. He had seen Guri then, Olchibe Uncle Guri. Lionwolf had said to Guri, ‘Only call out my name.’ Soon Guri would call, very likely without using voice or will.
And the world – that was calling already, louder than any trumpet, yet so very far away …
He might stay here for ever, and still it would be calling and still he could go to it at the exact and proper moment.
Lionwolf turned a little in the chair he had designed from
the recesses of his brain – the non-physical stone quarry that was personified as the King of Hell. That was Lionwolf’s Hell. Other men had been lured in, other women, to this war hell, guilt hell. They had shared portions of their unlives with him. Now they might even make the place their own.
Curjai sat disconsolate on a bench.
What was Curjai?
Fire. The smoky worldly fire of the fire god of his own people. Attajos – a torch, a hearth, the volcano brewing its laval fountains in the earth’s depths. Fire was Curjai – or rather, what Curjai must be.
Lionwolf laughed softly.
Across from him he saw the stone King had become another pillar of blue-greyish marble. Near the top, two black living eyes looked down at Lionwolf, then closed and were gone.
And she, Winsome, what was she?
Oh, but he had always known. She was Chillel who was the night. No wonder she had powers of light in darkness and could call moons.
Lionwolf got up. He went to her and stood before her.
‘Do you know who and what you are, Winsome?’
‘I don’t care who or what I am.’
Outside, beyond the windows and gardens, amusement and music were sounding in Thasuba. The light was slowly changing too, lifting, healing. Was it possible to cure Hell? Why not, if he had been its architect?
Curjai, sitting kicking his heels like a boy of thirteen with two legs and feet, watched Lionwolf go out of the hall hand in hand with the queen. The King had vanished, the way he always did. Curjai did not think he had seen that happen. When the wine-girl came back she said to him, ‘The sun is bright again.’ Curjai walked to a window. The sun was bright, like a blue pearl with a heart of palest gold.
The lovers lay together on a bed of carved stonewood, heaped with furs and fine linen.
They coupled slowly to begin with, like an elaborately choreographed dance, then joined like serpents, thrashing and leaping in each other’s arms. Flame and smoke, night and day, Lionwolf and Chillel.
Across the weird city of Thasuba a clean milky snow sprinkled down, then fluttered off. The sky became gradually more blue than the sun. Shadows flowed over the sharded barren plains beyond, making the ground flicker as if something grew there.