“No.” She shook her head into the firm denial. The taibhse’s plea tugged at her with Meir’s presence. All she needed to do was give herself fully to that interior existence and become one with it, but she couldn’t do that, not when it meant abandoning Orla and Hakan. She clung to her memory of their children but didn’t dare look for them in her doubled vision. She stared at the sun-path. Only the sun-path. That was the only solidity, the only solace. “I’ll come to you in time, but that time’s not now.”
Voada grabbed Orla and held her tightly. She saw Hakan a few steps away, staring at the two of them as if they’d gone mad. She looked around the temple. Voice Kadir and Voice-wife Dilara had left, along with Sub-Commander Bakir, the rest of the Mundoan citizens, and even all of Voada’s own servants except Una. There were a few other Cateni still remaining—merchants from the market, mostly—but they looked frightened. Orla lowered her voice to a near-whisper, her lips close to Voada’s ears. “That was Father’s ghost, his taibhse?”
Voada nodded, silently.
“And did you … ?”
“I showed him the path. He’s gone on to Tirnanog. The Voice … ?” Voada asked Orla.
“He was terribly angry, Mother. He kept calling you a sihirki, saying that you were insulting the emperor. He said …” Her eyes widened. “He said that Father had insulted him and the emperor too, at the banquet for Commander Savas. The Voice-wife was shrieking the same things, and she said you’d deserve what you get. Sub-Commander Bakir looked furious, and he threatened to kill you if Voice Kadir gave him the order. Then they left, and most of the others followed them. Mother, I’m frightened, and poor Hakan …”
Voada hugged Orla tighter and stood slowly. She gestured to Hakan, but he remained stubbornly where he was. The taibhse had retreated to the back of the temple, staring from the shadows. Voada looked at the people who had remained in the temple: not the elite of Pencraig, but Cateni who still harbored some of the old beliefs. “The Hand’s body must still be burned,” she told them. “The pyre outside …”
“We’ll help you, Hand-wife,” Una said loudly. “You,” she said, turning to a man Voada recognized as the local fishmonger. “You and your sons will help the Hand-wife, and you”—that to the coallier—“take a torch from the brazier and bring it. The rest of you, gather up the oils and unguents. Quickly, now; you’ve seen that the Hand-wife is menach here, and you don’t want her angry with you …”
Under Una’s scolding direction, Meir’s wrapped body was carried outside to the oil-soaked pyre. They laid the body on the small platform over the logs, and Voada, her head still fogged with the effort of showing Meir the sun-path and the uproar she’d caused by doing so, took the unguents handed to her and lathed the wrappings of the body with the aromatic contents. She spoke in Cateni, not caring about the additional insult of using that language on the Temple summit, trying to remember the few fragments of the Cateni burial ritual that came to her.
The coallier handed her the torch. Invoking Elia, Voada plunged the torch into the midst of the pyre, then stepped back quickly as it ignited the oils. At first, only a meager few flames arose, but they were quickly joined by more and more until they engulfed the platform and Meir’s body, hissing and fuming. The heat drove them all backward and away. Black smoke whirled upward, and the fire was bright even in the daylight with sparks like orange and yellow stars.
Voada wondered whether Voice Kadir looked up toward the temple and saw the flames and smoke, and what he thought.
It was past midday when Voada, along with her children and Una, finally left the summit. The other Cateni had departed as the pyre began to collapse into explosions of sparks and embers, but Voada had remained until it had gone to smoking ruins. Then she had carefully gathered up a few handfuls of ash and charred bone with the help of Orla and Hakan, placing the remains in the small funerary jar and stoppering it with wax.
As they walked toward the estates along the road, they could hear the hubbub coming from farther down the hill, could see the crowd that had gathered: a mob of people around the gates of the Hand’s home. Their home.
Voada began to run, Orla and Hakan trailing her and Una puffing well behind. As she came closer, she could see the individual faces—a mixture of townspeople and soldiers from the Pencraig garrison—looting their house. There: someone was carrying out a handful of her best linens, and two men were lumbering away with the chest from the foot of her and Meir’s bed. “Stop this!” Voada shouted, rushing into the courtyard, where it seemed that most of the household goods were now sitting, surrounded by a shouting, surging crowd. She recognized Sub-Commander Bakir, leaning against one of the portico supports and watching the sack of their house. “What are you doing, Bakir?” Voada shouted at him. “Tell them to stop! Where’s Voice Kadir?”
The response was not what Voada expected. Bakir simply gave her a grin. “We’re here at Voice Kadir’s order, woman,” he said, not using her title and addressing her as if she were nothing more than a peasant. “The Hand’s estate is to be … distributed.”
“No!” Voada shouted. “This is my house. Half the estate goes to me. That’s what the Hand’s contract says.” She put herself in front of another soldier carrying chairs out of the main room, but she was not prepared for Bakir’s reaction. The sub-commander brought his baton of office down hard on her arm, so violently that Voada screamed from the pain. Another blow caught her on the side of the head, and Voada crumpled to the flagstones of the courtyard, her knees cracking as they impacted the polished stone.
In the shadows of the portico, where Bakir had been standing, she saw a heap of yellow fur: Fermac, his eyes and mouth open in death. Voada’s vision swam with tears of pain and loss. Bakir saw her looking at the dog’s corpse, and he laughed. “Your beast came at me, so I gave it what it deserved. Hand-wife, the Hand’s contract has been voided,” she heard Bakir say through the red-hazed agony. “And you’re the sihirki bitch who’s responsible.” She saw him lift the baton again, and she raised her hand against the coming blow, but he stopped, looking toward the gates.
“Ah, the spawn of the traitor,” Bakir said. “Bring them here.” Blood dripped into Voada’s eyes from the cut on her forehead, and she blinked it away, mouthing a wordless, sobbing denial as soldiers grabbed Orla and Hakan and dragged them roughly toward where Bakir stood.
Orla was staring at her mother, crouching bloodied in the courtyard, but as she started to run toward her—“Mother!”—Bakir grabbed Orla’s arm. He lifted her chin with the butt of his baton, smearing Voada’s blood on her throat. “Well, this one’s comely enough for a Cateni,” he said. “And about the right age. She might make a good wife, don’t you think? For me, or perhaps even for one of you fellows,” he said to the soldiers gathered around. “Or I hear that the renderer’s son needs a wife and doesn’t care what she looks like as long as she’ll work hard and can stand the stench. What do you think?”
The guards laughed, and Voada heard a chorus of obscene offerings. Orla struggled in Bakir’s grip. “I suppose she could be my wife, perhaps, if she’s untouched,” Bakir continued, looking directly at Voada. “Otherwise, well, there are other uses
for her. Let’s see …” He started to lift the hem of Orla’s dress.
“No …” Voada gasped. “Don’t …” She tried to rise, and again Bakir raised his baton, bringing it down hard on her shoulder. Voada screamed in pain, grabbing at her injured joint, and she saw Hakan break away from the guard holding him.
“Get away from her. I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!” One of the guards stuck out his foot as Hakan rushed toward Voada, and Hakan went sprawling on the flagstones. The same guard kicked the boy as both Voada and Orla shouted at them to stop.
“Now, the boy should make a decent slave,” Bakir commented, looking down at Hakan as he lifted his face, his nose and mouth drooling blood. “Small enough for the emperor’s copper mines, I should think. Get the child out of here. The Voice can decide where to send him.” Bakir gestured to his men, and one of them reached down and lifted up Hakan, carrying him away as if he were just another piece of furniture, albeit one that kicked and screamed. Bakir looked at Voada, reaching out with her good arm toward Hakan. “And I’ll take the girl,” he said to her. To his men, he nodded his head in Voada’s direction. “As for this one, make sure she understands how traitors to the emperor are treated.”
Bakir’s baton struck Voada hard between her shoulder blades and drove her face down onto the flagstones. A boot slammed hard into her ribs; screaming, she curled herself into a fetal ball, but another boot struck her from the other side, and someone was hitting her again and again, the blows raining down on her from everywhere until the torment overwhelmed her in a black wave and she felt nothing at all.
8
Merging with the Unknown
WHEN VOADA RETURNED TO consciousness, the first movement and her initial gasping breath sent pain flaring through her ribs like a lightning bolt ripping through her body. She managed to scream once through thick lips and a jaw that didn’t want to move before the darkness rolled over her once more.
She drifted in the dark for a long time before she found the world again.
When she returned, she forced herself not to move and to only sip at the air. She tried to open her eyes, but only her left eye responded, and the light that poured in through her lashes was nearly as painful as moving. She closed her eye to just a slit; after a few breaths, she realized that she was looking at the flags of the courtyard awash in moonlight. She could see broken furniture scattered in front of her and the black edge of a stain on the flagstone. She lifted her head slowly, moaning, and her hair pulled reluctantly and stickily away from the congealed blood in which she’d been lying.
They left me here for dead …
“Help me …” she tried to call out, but her voice was cracked and her mouth dry, and the words sounded like the cawing of a raven. She licked her puffy and split lips, tasting blood, and tried again. “Please help me …”
She laid down her head again, closing her eyes, and drifted for a time in a darkness haunted by nightmares. She remembered Orla screaming as Bakir pawed at her and Hakan being dragged away. The horror of the memories pulled at her, and she opened her left eye and tried to push herself up. It was night, with a moon leering at her over the wall of the courtyard. Her left arm could not support any weight at all, and she screamed at the agony in her ribs caused by her movement, but she persisted, pushing with her right arm until she was sitting. Gasping with exertion and the pain, she looked around, her head throbbing. The courtyard had been trashed, littered with broken remnants of her and Meir’s life.
“Orla? Hakan?” she called out. There was no answer other than a cat slinking away near the courtyard entrance as the moon slid behind a cloud. There was a mounded shape near where the cat had been, and the cloth covering the mound was familiar. “Una? Is that you?” The moon emerged again from the cloud, and in the wash of light, Voada recoiled from the sight of Una’s face turned toward her, her eyes open and staring blindly, her mouth gaping in a soundless scream. “Una!”
Voada tried to lever herself to her feet. The broken ribs stabbed at her, but she managed to fold her legs underneath her. A length of broken pole that had once been used to hold up the laundry lines was lying within reach. She grabbed it with her right hand, then used it to help push herself up on legs that quivered and nearly buckled. She took one shambling step, cradling her left arm to her waist and leaning heavily on the pole as she stopped and took a careful breath. The world spun around her as she stood, and the memory of Orla’s and Hakan’s abductions threatened to overwhelm her with grief and panic. I can’t think of that. Not yet. Not now. Not if I want to live to do something about it. She forced the thoughts away, concentrating on taking another step toward the entrance of the courtyard and Una’s body. They thought so little of me that they didn’t even bother to make certain I was dead. Just a Cateni woman. Useless. Powerless. Just leave her to die on her own.
A step.
Another.
Each movement took an eternity, the moon sliding in and out of fast-moving clouds above her and draping the world in alternating light and shadow. She was next to Una now, and she could see that there was no hope there—the body was eerily still, the woman’s face terrifying in its fixed agony. There was no soul there either; even through the pain, Voada knew that. Una’s essence had vanished from the sprawled, empty corpse. She could only hope that Una’s taibhse had found the sun-path easily. Voada continued past the body, slow step by slow step, grunting and moaning with the effort.
She reached the courtyard entrance. The wooden doors there were open and askew on their hinges; the street beyond was empty and silent. She looked down the hill toward the town; there were few shimmerings of light there. Upward was the same. Pencraig was asleep. Uncaring. Oblivious.
Voada wanted to shout, to call out for Orla and Hakan, but she knew that the only answer she might hear would be the garrison’s guards, coming to finish what they’d begun with her. She looked upward to Voice Kadir’s estate, its roof visible in the moonlight above the walls sheltering the Voice and his family from the night.
Beyond, at the summit of Pencraig Bluff, was Pashtuk’s temple, white marble gleaming against the star-and-cloud-wrapped sky.
Elia’s Temple. The polished stone almost seemed to glow, and looking at it, Voada could feel the presence of the taibhse there, as if it were calling to her. Come to me. Finally. Come … She took a stumbling step toward the temple, catching herself with the makeshift walking staff. The jolt made her cry out in pain once more, the sound sharp and loud in the quiet, and she paused, hoping no one had heard her.
She couldn’t trust anyone in Pencraig. The Mundoa had all turned on her family because of what they thought she was, and any Cateni who might be tempted to help would be too frightened after seeing what had happened to her. No one would help her recover Orla or Hakan, and she couldn’t try to do so alone.
Come to me …
She had to be imagining the voice that pulsed along with the throbbing pain in her head. But she put her face toward the temple again and took another step up the slope, then another. She thought she would fall from the pain of movement, from exhaustion, from her injuries. But she didn’t. She passed the Voice’s estate, not daring to look at the closed courtyard doors there, afraid that the Voice or Voice-wife might look out and see her limping toward the temple. But the street remained silent and empty but for her and the shifting moonlight, and once past the Voice’s home, there was only the path and the trees and the temple beckoning her ahead.
Come to me …
There: Meir’s pyre, still smoldering in the dark with faint red streaks running along the edges of coal-black wood. “Meir …” Voada sighed. “I’m so sorry. This was my fault. I’ve lost them. I’ve lost our children …” Tears made the night swirl in her vision, and she sobbed aloud. She almost fell down there. The staff trembled in her hands, and she nearly gave in to the exhaustion and pain. I could die here. I could be with him again. I could end the pain. It would be easy just to die here.
But that would be abandoning Orla
and Hakan entirely, and she couldn’t do that yet. Not if there remained any hope at all.
Hope. She wasn’t certain such a thing existed. Not anymore.
She turned away from the pyre. Slow step by slow step, she entered the temple.
The taibhse was no longer pacing. It stood motionless before the altar, silvered by the moonlight, staring at her as if it had been expecting her arrival. Voada thought she saw a sadness in the visages that flowed across the taibhse’s face: ghosts within ghosts within ghosts. “Were you trying to warn me?” Voada asked it, her voice breaking with a sob. “Why couldn’t you just tell me? I’ve lost everyone I cared about. Everyone …”
She sagged against her walking stick, which bowed under her full weight. She could feel the darkness coming toward her again, and she wanted to embrace it, to sink into its nothingness and let the world fall away. Maybe this time forever. Maybe this time to join Meir …
Something touched her with the ice of winter. Her eye opened to see the ghost directly in front of her … no, it was passing into her with a breath of ice and snow, and she could hear it now, speaking to her, cajoling her.
“Why?” Voada asked it. With the taibhse inhabiting her body, her blood-smeared vision was tangled with its own; the temple was impossibly bright in front of her as if the moon were a midday sun, and images of the interior shifted and moved in the same way she’d seen different features racing across the ghost’s face. On the altar was Emperor Pashtuk; no, it was Elia’s statue as she remembered it; no, it was a different Elia, painted in blue and trimmed in gold leaf … Voada blinked, trying to clear away the overlapping images, but she could not.
Thankfully, the pain of her injuries receded as well, as if the torment were muffled and dampened as it moved through the ghost. Voada’s breathing was easier, and she managed to stand erect, though she still needed the staff to help her.
A Fading Sun Page 8