Noman

by William Nicholson

  I killed my friend, said Seeker to himself, and I gave him back my own life. Why am I not dead?

  Now more than anything he longed to be alone. Once they knew he was awake they would all come pushing round him, blaming and pleading, looking to him for answers he did not have.

  Nothing more for me to do here, he thought, watching Morning Star. Better that I go.

  He rose unsteadily to his feet and stood still for a few moments, breathing slow deep breaths. He felt giddy, but he did not fall. The raised voices of the chiefs came to him through the tent walls. They were disputing over status.

  "This is spiker land!" he heard the Wildman say. "None of your yabba-yabba can take that away!"

  So the Wildman was himself again. And Morning Star had eyes only for him, as always. No need to stay and watch.

  He untied the tent cloth at the back and eased himself out. The bright light of day made him blink. For a moment he felt too weak to walk, but he stood still and gathered his strength, and the moment passed.

  He set off steadily, not looking back. Shortly he was over the brow of the hill and out of sight of the crowd. He strode on, trying to empty his mind of all the confusions of the day gone by. He made for the high road, hoping to find again the door in the wall and the Garden beyond. He wanted to be released from his powers now. He wanted to throw himself down before the All and Only and ask to be given his own life back.

  Then, as he strode along, he heard once again the low deep boom that had sounded as Manlir had died. It was a little louder this time, though still more a vibration in the ground than a true sound. It sounded like the land echo of thunder in the sky, but there were no clouds.

  Then came a sharper sound: the rapid click of hoofbeats ahead. Out of the roadside wood burst a riderless Caspian, running wild. He knew the horse at once from his markings: it was Kell.

  "Kell!" he cried. "Where's Echo?"

  As if in answer, Kell turned and trotted back into the trees. Seeker followed. There was a track through the wood, but no sign of Echo. Thinking she might have fallen and be lying injured nearby, he called to her.

  "Echo! It's me—Seeker!"

  There was no answer. But then he heard a rustle in the branches, and looking up, he caught a sudden rapid movement between the dry summer leaves.

  "Echo? Is that you?"

  "You think you've killed him, don't you?"

  The voice was mocking and shrill. There, clinging to a high branch, was Echo—her eyes wild and staring.

  "You can't kill him!" she taunted. "Manny's coming to get you!"

  With that, she swung away with astonishing agility, from one high branch to another, and turning back to look down on Seeker, she called again, in the same harsh high mocking voice.

  "Manny's coming to kill you!"

  She sprang away, leaping from branch to branch, until she was high up in one of the highest of the tall trees. Here she came to a sudden stop, and crouching in the crook of a branch, she bowed her head to hide her face. Seeker followed to the foot of the high tree.

  "Echo!" he called to her. "It's Seeker, your friend. I want to help you."

  She raised her head then and looked at him with her beautiful eyes. She smiled a sad smile and spoke to him in her own voice.

  "Too late," she said. "Good-bye, friend Seeker. I have to go now."

  She released her grip on the branch and kicked with her legs so that she vaulted away from the tree and began to fall. Her arms reached wide as she fell, and she turned in the air, making no effort to save herself, meaning to dash her brains out on the ground and so end her torment. But her outstretched hands brushed against clusters of leaves, and instinctively snatching herself closer to the trunk as she fell, she found the elastic support of the branches once more, and so sprang back unharmed.

  "No-o-o!" she cried. "Let me die!"

  At once the other, harsher voice answered from her own mouth.

  "We want to live! We want to live forever!"

  Seeker watched in horror and pity as Echo flew back up the ladder of the trees and tried once more to throw herself to her death. Again she caught herself, and again she cried out in her wretchedness.

  "Let me die!"

  But even as she called with her own voice, the other within her was pushing to the fore, taunting Seeker on the ground below.

  "Seeker's the one who's going to die! Can't escape Manny now!"

  She was away again, swinging fast through the trees, gaining height as she went. Far off now, she dived once again from the treetops like a hawk on its prey, dropping almost to the ground before swooping up, helplessly secure in the familiar branches, hunting for death, unable to die. He heard her cries recede into the distance as she bounded through the trees, and Kell trotted over the woodland path beneath.

  Haunted by Echo's piteous voice, Seeker returned to the high road. What had she meant? Manlir was dead. He was sure of that. Why then did he feel such dread at her words?

  Can't escape Manny now!

  When he reached the road, he found a bullock cart drawn up by the verge, as if waiting for him. The driver was a lanky youth with protruding eyes and a smile on his face. In the open cart lay a litter covered by a white canopy.

  The driver fixed his gaping face on Seeker and, giving a nod behind him, said, "He wants to speak with you."

  A hand reached from within the white canopy and drew it aside. Seeker approached. There in the litter, robed in white like a corpse, lay Jango. His deep-set eyes gazed out at Seeker.

  "Hurry, boy," he said. "You have very little time."

  "Jango!" cried Seeker. "Are you hurt?"

  "Not hurt, my friend. Just old."

  He did seem older than before. Talking tired him. He stopped to catch his breath, like one who talks while climbing a mountain.

  "Why do I have little time?" said Seeker. "I've done what I was sent to do."

  "Not all," said Jango. "Not yet."

  "Manlir is dead!" He shouted it out to make it be true. "I killed him!"

  "His body is dead."

  "I don't understand—"

  Jango held up one frail hand to silence him.

  "Soon, soon. Do as I say." Again he paused to gain strength. "Touch me."

  Seeker put out his hand. Jango took it in his and pressed it to his withered cheek. A faint smile formed on his face.

  "Warm hand," he said. "Strong hand."

  "Tell me. Was I not strong enough?"

  "You were strong. Stronger than him. He knew you had the power to kill him. So he did what no man has ever done before. He released his living lir."

  Seeker heard this with a return of dread.

  "I saw it," he said.

  "No man knows lir as he does," said Jango.

  "So where is he now?"

  "Everywhere."

  "Everywhere!"

  "There is lir in the earth," said Jango. "In the trees. In the rivers. In the clouds. In the oceans. But this great power that exists in all living matter has never before been united in a single will."

  "Manlir's will!"

  "No one has ever done this before. He has lost his self. But he has not died."

  My life is all life. Seeker heard again the savanter's last choking words. I will never die.

  "What can I do?" said Seeker.

  "Go to the True Nom. Call on the strength of the All and Only."

  "What True Nom?"

  Jango's eyes closed, and in his exhaustion, he panted softly as he lay. Seeker knew of no True Nom, so he waited for Jango to regain his strength before he asked more. But when Jango opened his eyes once again, it was to ask him a question.

  "Tell me, boy," he said. "Do you love the All and Only?"

  "Yes," said Seeker.

  "Think only of your love. Your faith must be strong. True faith is the only armor that Manlir cannot pierce. Do you hear me?"

  "Yes," said Seeker.

  But Jango gripped his hand tight, painfully tight, and said again with fierce intensity, "Do you hear
me?"

  "I do hear you," said Seeker.

  "Faith, boy. In the end, faith!"

  With that, he sank back and let his weary eyes close again.

  "Which road am I to take?" asked Seeker.

  "The road to the True Nom. We have been there before."

  Seeker could only think he meant the door in the wall, through which he had found the shadowy trees and the glowing Garden.

  "West," said the old man, his voice now faint. "Go west. He'll be ready soon. Go quickly..."

  He spoke no more. He had slipped into sleep, his enfeebled energies drained by their exchange. Seeker looked up at the lanky youth in the driver's seat.

  "Do you know where he means me to go?"

  The youth shook his head.

  "Where are you to take him?"

  "West," said the driver. "Through the forest. On to the west."

  Seeker stood irresolute. Then once more came the deep boom of sound that shook the earth. He looked up at the driver. The staring youth showed no sign that he had heard anything.

  Am I the only one who hears it?

  Now the boom was fading away. It had been longer this time, and nearer.

  20 People Need Gods

  "NO MORE YABBA-YABBA!" CRIED THE WILDMAN. "STOP your yabba-yabba, fool woman! You're on spiker land now."

  "Go feed it to the pigs!" retorted Caressa.

  "Orlans are outsiders!"

  "Got any more pig swill in your bucket?"

  "Orlans have no rights!"

  "Oh, shouting now? I can shout, too."

  They followed each other across the camp, yelling like ox jockeys at a market-day race.

  "Orlans have no rights to rule in Radiance!"

  "What's rights? You got rights in your pocket, Wildman?"

  "I swear I'm going to squeeze the life out of you!"

  "Do rights grow on trees?"

  "Rights are what's right!"

  "Here's what's right!" Caressa drew her short blade and jabbed it towards the startled Wildman. "Orlans got rights too, Wildman. And we keep them sharp."

  "Don't mess with me, Princess!"

  "Orlans don't kneel to spikers."

  "The Wildman don't take orders from a woman."

  "Why didn't you do us all a favor and stay dead?"

  "Yabba-yabba-yabba—"

  She smacked the Wildman's head. He seized her wrists and forced her arms down, pulling her face close to his as he did so. She glared at him, panting with anger.

  "Now what? Bite my nose off?"

  "You're as spiker as I am!"

  "Look round you, Wildman! See those warriors in armor? They obey me. Me! And they're not the stinking bandits you call an army, I can promise you that!"

  "Here's how it is, Princess," he hissed back. "I'm number one. My land. My people. I rule!"

  "Not me, pretty boy."

  Exasperated beyond endurance, the Wildman released Caressa's wrists and stamped away to his command tent, kicking the ground in anger as he went. Caressa swept back her luxuriant hair and retreated to the Orlan quarters, from where she could be heard shouting orders at her underlings. The lesser spiker chiefs and Orlan captains scowled at one another and strutted about with their weapons ostentatiously on show.

  The great gathering was disintegrating. The promised Great Embrace had not come to pass. Bewildered and exhausted, the people were beginning to drift away.

  A number of those who had counted themselves closest to the Joy Boy had come together to honor his body in death. Sorrowfully they dressed him in white and laid him on a litter beneath a white canopy. They found then that they were unable to agree on how to properly dispose of the body. The hill people had a tradition of burial, the people of the plains burned their dead on funeral pyres. The two groups were equally vociferous, and each outraged by the other's disrespect for the mortal remains of the Beloved.

  "Bury him? Like a dog buries a bone?"

  "You'd throw him on a fire like a bag of old clothes!"

  It was the small band from the coastal region who proposed the compromise. Let the Beloved pass away as the fisher people passed away: on a small boat released into the great ocean. This proved acceptable to all. The mourners then set about commandeering a barge to carry the litter downriver to the sea.

  Morning Star took no part in these discussions. Nor did she intervene in the squabbles between Caressa and the Wildman. What power did she have now to unite people? Instead she went in search of her mother and father and found them among a large group from their village, preparing to set out on the long walk back.

  "It's a bad business, Star," said Arkaty. "And I guess we look like fools."

  "He made fools of us all, Papa. And he would have done worse if he hadn't been stopped."

  "But it's not all sorry." He gave her a small sweet smile. "Never danced like that before."

  Mercy, her mother, could not smile. "I feel so tired," she said.

  "So where do you go now, Star?" said Arkaty.

  "I'm going to find him."

  They didn't need to ask who she meant.

  Nearby a loud quarrel broke out between Shab and an Orlan captain. Morning Star heard the Orlan's taunts and Shab's heated rejoinders and thought how recently they had all been dancing together.

  "If you find him," said Mercy, "come back and tell us."

  "I will, Mama."

  "I'd like to know there's—" She hesitated, not knowing what words to use. Then, with a little shrug, "More than I know."

  "The All and Only," said Morning Star.

  "Something, at least. If there's nothing, I don't know that I can go on."

  "There's something, Mama. I'll find it, and come back and tell you."

  All at once the nearby quarrel exploded into violence. Shab drew a spike, there came a flurry of blows, and the Orlan fell to the ground. Men on all sides began to shout and draw their swords.

  "You want more?" cried Shab, brandishing his spike. "I've got more!"

  But an ominous silence had fallen over the crowd. The Orlan was dead.

  The Orlans picked up their slain comrade and carried him back to their camp. Caressa listened to what they had to say. Then she mounted her Caspian, and with Sabin by her side, she rode to the Wildman and spoke to him not as his friend and lover, but as the Jahan of Jahans.

  "A life for a life," she said. "Bring me the body of the killer by dawn, or I call the Orlan nation to war."

  With that, she rode away.

  The Wildman sat up late into the night, brooding by the fire. Here Morning Star found him.

  "I don't know what to do," he said. "Shab's a hothead fool, but I can't hand him over."

  "No."

  "Make us love each other again, Star. Like you did before."

  "I would if I could," she said. "But I've lost the skill."

  "Too much getting lost. I can't hold it together, Star."

  "No one can."

  "No one except Seeker."

  She watched the silky smoke curl out from the burning timbers, a slow white plume now tinged with flame, now shot with flame, now leaping into flame.

  "People need something to believe in," she said. "People need gods."

  "Got to have a god worth believing in, then," said the Wildman. "Can't crawl about on our knees hoping a god will come along, like a chick with its beak open clucking for worms."

  She smiled. "No."

  "There'll be fighting tomorrow. Can't see any way to head it off."

  "Caressa doesn't want to fight you. She's crazy about you."

  "Caressa's not my problem. The Jahan of the Orlans—there's my problem."

  "Tell your men not to fight."

  "And let them take Shab? I do that, I'm finished."

  "But it's all so stupid. It's all so unnecessary."

  "Maybe so. But it's how it is."

  "Let me think about it," she said. "I may be able to find a way out."

  She left him there and went away by herself. As she passed quietly through the
night crowds, Burny saw her from where he lay huddled with the other children. He jumped up and came after her.

  "Lady," he said. "Wait for me."

  "You should be asleep," said Morning Star.

  "Been asleep," he replied. "Awake now."

  She let him hold her hand as they walked.

  "Where you going?"

  "Nowhere. I'm just walking and thinking."

  "Thinking what?"

  "About gods."

  "What gods?"

  "Have you ever heard of the All and Only, Burny?"

  "No."

  "He's got lots of other names, too. The Wise Father. The Quiet Watcher. The Lost Child."

  "The lost child? That's like me."

  "Yes. Just like you."

  "So maybe I'm a god."

  "Do you think so?"

  "Don't know," said Burny. "What do you have to do to be a god?"

  "Well..." Morning Star was about to say that a god had to have great powers. But then she thought of it the other way round. "You don't have to do anything. People have to believe in you."

  "And then what?"

  "And then people do as you tell them."

  "Why?"

  "To please their god."

  "Sounds easy," said Burny. "I'll be one of them if you like. One of them lost childs."

  This conversation stayed with Morning Star long after Burny had returned, yawning, to his sleep huddle. It gave her an idea.

  As dawn broke, the Orlans were seen to be mounted and ranked in battle array. The spikers gathered in their more disorganized fashion, but in far greater numbers. The Wildman, weary from a night with little sleep, walked forward to speak with Caressa. By his side was Shab.

  "Heya, Princess." He gestured at the battle line. "No call for this."

  "A life for a life, Wildman. That's the Orlan way."

  She wasn't shouting any more. He didn't like that.

  "Here's the man who did it. Say your piece, Shab."

  "Got into a quarrel." Shab spoke in a low mumble, his eyes fixed on the ground. "Way men do. Turned into a fight. Way it does. Never meant to kill. Sorry he's dead."