“You’re a fatalist, Gos,” said another. “I think it was a mistake.”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s done,” Lata said.
“What’s done?” Jassa demanded.
Tobas shrugged. “If you don’t know, then perhaps that’s for the best. Thank you for listening.”
The circle broke apart. Somna’s Storytellers went off alone, in ones and twos and all in silence. After a while Jassa left, too, with the rather strange feeling that, as he passed beneath the Weslan Gate, he was leaving a temple.
Jassa did not go very far in his walk outside the city walls. He soon passed through the Weslan Gate, now deserted, and made his way home. There was no one there to greet him, had not been since his father’s death the month before. The smithy attached to the building was locked tight and shuttered, the forge cold. Jassa gathered what he thought he would need and in the morning he left the city. As he passed the Weslan Gate, Jassa paused for a moment and smiled.
I need a miracle to win Lady Scythe. If there’s any truth at all in what the Storytellers said, now I know where to find one.
It’s not as if he had anything to lose.
The Aversa laughed until Jassa was afraid the roof of the cave would come crashing down on both of them. She finally wiped tears from her eyes and grinned at Jassa. She had a lot of teeth. Sharp, too, he thought.
“They still tell that story in Thornall? Such a paradox, that men’s lives should be so short and their memories so long. For all that they never seem to learn much from either.”
“Then it’s true?” he asked.
The Aversa shrugged. “Truth is a matter of interpretation; if the Storytellers failed to mention that, I will be amazed. Did it actually happen? More or less.”
Jassa had followed the storyteller’s directions and walked for two days, till he came to the foothills of Gahan’s Spine. He followed the only road—more of a goat-path—and came to a freshwater spring near the end of a narrow box canyon. The cave was just a little farther in.
He found the Aversa sitting on a chair of stone about ten yards from the entrance, at a place where the entrance shaft widened into a high, echoing chamber. For a creature of myth and legend she was surprisingly easy to find and to recognize. She was slim and elegant, but her hair was white and the beautiful proportions of her face were nonetheless covered with skin almost translucent with age, marked with a fine network of lines almost as if she had been woven of spider-silk. Her eyes were larger than any human woman’s, and the color of amber. She almost appeared to be waiting for him.
“It’s true, then? You can reshape Somna’s Dream?”
“We can make small changes in the world, if that’s what you mean. Trifles. And at very high cost.”
“I’m not a wealthy man, but I have some property to sell—”
The Aversa almost burst out laughing again, but she confined it to a brief chuckle, though it took obvious effort. She shook her head. “Let me show you something, Jassa of Thornall.”
The world changed.
They weren’t in the cave now. They stood in a perfumed garden at the base of a mountain that looked a little like the one where the Aversa made her home now. A waterfall cast rainbows into the air as it fell into a marble basin. Statues of exquisite artistry were set into niches carved in the living stone, in places Jassa remembered seeing as eroded, crumbling rock just a few minutes before. The Aversa sat done on a white stone bench and patted the seat beside her. Jassa sat down, numbly.
“How do you like my home?” the Aversa asked.
“It’s lovely.”
“Yes.” She sighed deeply. “It’s also gone.”
They were back in the cave. The Aversa wasn’t smiling now. “Once all my people lived like that. But there never were very many of us, nor did living in peace with your kind work out very well. They’d have us greater demons than Gahan himself when the mood struck them. Use us when they could, kill us or drive us away when they could not. Until what few of us are left hang on in the empty places that no one else has found a use for.”
“With your power, why did you allow this to happen?”
The Aversa smiled again ruefully. “Our power is in the Reshaping of Somna’s Dream, the dream that is the world. But it is still Somna’s dream, not ours. Do you know what happens when someone reshapes the dream in a way she does not like?”
Jassa shook his head, trying not to lose himself in her amber eyes. The Aversa continued. “It disturbs the Goddess’s sleep. Do it often enough and brutally enough and she wakes. The world ends. Do you think the Aversa wanted to do what the Demon Gahan, with all his tricks, has so far failed to accomplish? Your folk have their place in Somna’s dream or they wouldn’t be here; I think ours will soon go away entirely.”
“But . . . you are Beloved of Somna! First of all the races of the Dream!”
The Aversa looked around at the bare stone walls. “As I said—the cost is high. Only we pay it, Jassa. You do not. You choose your way, and that has its own consequences which have nothing to do with me. Now, then—do you still want me to help you?”
Jassa took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“You’re a fool, but I already knew that. This concerns Lady Aserafel of Thornall, yes?”
Jassa blinked. “How do you know that?”
“I can always tell when the Storytellers have been at work, and whom they’ve touched. Your dreams told me the rest. Call it a whim, but I will help you. What do you want?”
“If you’ve seen my dreams, you should already know.”
The Aversa smiled again. “Clever boy. Dreams at once reveal and obscure. It’s true I know what you want. Do you?”
Jassa shrugged. “I want Lady Scythe to love me. I want to have her lips on my brow. I want her to look into my eyes with such devotion that, in that instant, she is mine and only mine.”
The Aversa nodded. “So I expected. Hand me that stone at your feet.”
Jassa bent down and picked up a piece of dull limestone, little more than a pebble. He handed it to the Aversa, and in a moment she handed it back to him, only now it wasn’t a stone. What she gave him was a small bronze medallion on a leather thong.
“Wear this,” she said. “When you return to Thornall, show it to the Watcher at the gate. You will get your wish. Or . . . ”
Jassa was already tying the cord around his neck. “Or?”
“Or you can toss it in the nearest river, or simply drop it here and now, go home, take up your father’s profession or some other, and build a life for yourself without Lady Scythe. That would be my advice, if you’d asked for it.”
“I can’t do that. I love her.”
The Aversa nodded, and she looked even older than she had before. Older, and infinitely more weary. “I know,” she said.
On the long walk back to Thornall, Jassa took a little time to think. He wondered if it were really possible to do as the Aversa had advised; he would always be a poor substitute for his father at the forge. Oh, he was well-trained, and Jassa was sure he could earn a decent living at the forge, but not like his father. The man worked art with his steel; where Jassa would make a serviceable sword, Noban would create a master blade, perfect in balance and form. The same for anything Jassa had attempted; what his father had went beyond experience and practice, and Jassa knew that neither one would turn him into the smith his father was.
I could settle for less.
Only it was a lie. That was one thing Jassa could never do. Just as with Lady Scythe; there was no one to compare to her, and no point in trying. All or nothing; if there was a middle way he could never quite see it.
Jassa looked at the medallion. It was a simple disk of bronze with a carved sigil that looked like a closed eye. He dimly recognized it as one of the ancient symbols for Somna the Dreamer; beyond that it meant nothing to him. He wondered what it would mean to the Watcher.
He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Jassa approached the gate and the Watcher on duty there. Jassa didn
’t show him the medallion; Jassa didn’t have to. The Watcher glanced at it as Jassa approached and in an instant the man’s sword was at Jassa’s throat.
“In the Name of the Emperor, I apprehend thee.”
In a dirty, damp cell that night Jassa reached fitful sleep. The Aversa was waiting for him in his dreams.
“You betrayed me!” he shouted, though no one not on the stage of dreams heard him.
The Aversa shook her head. “I have done something, yes, but not that.”
“They wouldn’t even tell me what the medallion means.”
“To the Watchers it means you are a man who helped lead the revolt against the Emperor in the city of Darsa. A revolt that is spreading. Now they will stop looking for that man for a while. We all serve Somna with what we have, and the Emperor’s reign has been bad for all of the Dream. You aren’t the man they were looking for, of course, but the Watchers believe otherwise.”
“Then I’ll tell them!”
She nodded. “I suppose so.”
They both knew it wouldn’t make any difference. “Why?” he asked, finally. “What did I do to you?”
“You asked my help,” she said. “And did not understand what that meant. That understanding is coming.” Then Jassa was left alone in a dream that was no more than a dream. In the morning he did not remember.
Jassa walked with three younger men along the Aversan Way; his arms bound behind his back. In time he came into the presence of Lady Scythe.
Jassa almost smiled. At least no one can deny me this much.
One by one the others died. Soon it was his turn. He looked right at Lady Scythe and said, “I love you.”
The Watchers just stared. Lady Scythe’s sweet face had a quizzical look, but she didn’t say anything. Jassa drew himself to his full height and waited for the Watchers to try and force him, as they had the old man. It didn’t happen. Lady Scythe stepped forward immediately and took his hand. She led him to the device.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I love you.”
She smiled at him. “I do understand,” she said, and then Jassa was in the harness. Her smiled flirted with madness. “Of all those I have loved, you were the only one to speak first of love to me. Thank you.”
Lady Scythe took her place by the lever and then Jassa saw her lips move, as they always did. Only now he was close enough to hear. Now he was close enough to see the look of joy and devotion in his Lady’s eyes; the recognition that was always there when she pulled the lever and looked into the eyes of Death itself. And, at that instant, it was all for Jassa.
“I love you,” she said.
Jassa wanted to laugh, but he had no time.
When the Storytellers gather at the Weslan gate, every now and then someone tells the story of how Lady Scythe took an unclaimed head lying by the statue of Somna the Dreamer and made the skull into a gilt drinking cup. They would tell of how she would smile to herself as her lips brushed its cold brow and she gazed into its empty eyes. No one really knew if this actually occurred, but like any good story it grew enough in the telling that, in time, more than one good meaning found haven in the shade of it.
Such as the version in which, a few years later with both the Empire and the need for her services in decline, Lady Scythe married the governor of the frontier province of Lyrsa and moved far away from Thornall. Her clothes, her gold, and the skull cup were all she took from the city. The execution machine fell to rot and rust beneath the statue of Somna the Dreamer who, with closed eyes, saw all.
The Man Who Carved Skulls
“I married your mother for her skull. It’s no secret.”
Jarak put aside his rasps and gouges for the moment, resting his eyes and mind from the precise, exacting work his trade demanded. He didn’t mind his son’s persistent questions at such times. Akan was at an age when he should be curious and, if curiosity was a duty, Akan was a dedicated boy. It wasn’t as though Purlo the Baker, whose skull rested patiently on Jarak’s workbench, was in a hurry.
Akan nodded. “Mother is pretty,” he said. “Often men of the village speak about what a fortunate man Jarak the Skullcarver is.”
“Letis is indeed the most beautiful woman in Trepa and for seven leagues around. But that’s not the same thing. The ugliest man alive during your grandfather’s time turned out to have a skull of exquisite beauty, as your grandfather knew all along. With time and practice and the aesthetic sense that might come with them, perhaps you’ll understand and be able to see the difference for yourself. I hope so, if you’re to take over for me some day.”
“I hope so too, Father,” Akan said very seriously.
The trumpet call echoed faintly from the south side of the village, opposite the temple of Somna the Dreamer. As a chance to satisfy his son’s curiosity, it seemed a perfect opportunity. “They’ve started,” Jarak said. “Let’s go see, and maybe I’ll tell you how I won your mother.”
They walked out of the workshop, around Letis’ herb garden, and out through the gate onto Trepa’s main street. Other folk were stirring now as the trumpet sounded again, gathering in small groups that slowly grew and spread out until the entire cobbled street was lined with smiling people.
“Here they come!”
Three young girls led the procession, dropping daisy petals from willow baskets as they came. They all looked very solemn in their white muslim gowns and red ribbons. Jarak pointed to the dark-haired little girl in the middle. “That’s Melyt, Theran’s granddaughter. Your mother thinks she’d be a good wife for you. Isn’t she pretty?”
Akan stuck out his tongue. “I’m not getting married, ever.”
“You’ll change your mind. And when you do, best not to leave the choosing of your bride to chance. That gives the Forces of Gahon too much room to play.”
“You weren’t betrothed to Mother,” Akan pointed out. “She told me.”
Jarak smiled. “Nonetheless . . . oh, there’s Theran now.”
At least, what was left of him. Four priests of Somna carried the skull on a raised dais. Jarak had decided to go with an historical motif for that skull; considering Theran’s full and rich life, it had seemed more than fitting. The scenes of the old man’s life were played out in bas-reliefs carved in a spiral that started at the top of his skull and ended just where the spine has once joined its base. They were too far away to see properly, but Jarak named them to Akan one by one.
Here was Theran traveling with the Wind People on the Great Grass Sea, smuggling weapons to Ly Ossia under the noses of the Watchers; here was Theran visiting the ruins of the Temple of the Dreamer in Darsa and bringing back the piece of the original altar that now resided in the local Temple. Here was Theran as all had known him, surrounded by his wife and children and grandchildren. Whether any of his stories were really true didn’t matter; they were true now and would remain so as long as the House of Skulls stood.
Theran’s widow Karta and his family came last. They did not grieve; grief was over and done long before. Now it was time for Theran to take his place in the House of Skulls, Now it was time for celebration. Karta beat a small drum and her steps were close to a dance; her daughters followed wearing small bells on straps about their wrists. Between the trumpets of the flanking priests and the din from Theran’s family, Jarak was sure every Ancestor in that sacred place knew of Theran’s coming. He said as much.
“They can’t hear anything,” Akan said solemnly.
Jarak raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And why not? Because they’re dead?”
Akan shook his head and then hugged himself, nearly doubled over giggling. “No ears!”
Jarak put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Come on, you rogue. Let’s follow.”
Jarak and Akan fell into step behind the procession with the rest of the villagers, sharing the joy of Theran’s family and adding to it as well. They came to the entrance to the Temple of the Dreamer, passing by the wooden statue and shrine that Jarak’s father had carved years before. They did no
t stop at the shrine or the temple. Soon after Theran’s death, his proper funeral had been held at the temple and offerings made at the shrine, and that had been the time for tears. Now it was Theran’s Homecoming, and the procession did not pause until they reached the House of Skulls.
The procession broke apart; Theran’s family went first into the stone building. Next season the masons would be summoned and another large room would be added to the House, and then again when that one filled. For now, there was still room in the main hall. Jarak and Akan followed the others into the echoing chamber, with rows and rows of intricately carved skulls staring down at them from niches evenly spaced in the walls.
“Theran Molka’s Son, Beloved of Somna, has come home,” said the senior priest. He carefully lifted the skull and handed it to Karta, placed it in the niche on the far wall that had been prepared for it, beside the skull of the small skull of his sister who died in childhood, beneath the skulls of their parents Molka and Derasee. Farther along the wall, the masons had already begun work on the niche for Purlo the Baker, for when his time came.
“Our father has come home,” said each of Theran’s children as they approached the skull in turn and paid their respects.
“Our grandfather has come home.” Each of the grandchildren repeated the ritual, each looking very grave and serious, though Melyt was clearly trying not to giggle. The ritual was repeated by all who had known Theran best or felt the desire to honor him; even Jarak took his turn.
“My friend has come home.”
Then, finally, all was done. People broke apart into small groups and chatted, others drew apart to pay respects to the older residents of the House of Skulls. Jarak took Akan’s hand and led him to a central column that was also full of niches like little doorways. Jarak pointed to one particular skull residing there.
“Do you know who that is?” Jarak asked.
Akan nodded somberly. “It’s Great-Grandmother Laersa.”
Jarak smiled. “You asked about how your mother and I got married—it’s because of Laersa.”
On the Banks of the River of Heaven Page 20