Jinian Stareye

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘Only part of one,’ murmured the Flitchhawk. ‘They are more impressive when they are complete.’

  I don’t know that ‘impressive’ was quite the word I would have used. ‘Indomitable,’ perhaps. I did not worry about them further; they needed none of my concern. Instead, I faced south and asked, ‘Are you strong enough to go on? We can get to the cavern before dark. I will watch if you will carry. Or I’ll carry and you can watch.’

  The Flitchhawk said something about meeting the terms of the boon, which meant it had to carry. I watched, therefore, from above him, or under him, or off to one side or the other. Several times I saw roiling air away in the distance, but nothing approached us. Evidently the surprise of the Bell sound had been enough for a temporary surcease.

  We came to the cavern before dusk, slipping in along the fold of hills to find it, spotting it at last by the firelight gleam in the cavern’s mouth. I started to lose my shape and knew that one of the Immutables must be present, so I turned and landed some distance away, coming the remaining distance on my own two feet, naked as a fish.

  The governor of the Immutables, Riddle, was there with Mertyn and Quench and a smallish crowd of men and women who could have been techs or pawns or Immutables. When they saw the Flitchhawk slanting down out of the evening sky, there was a great hoorah, and Mertyn came running to the rock shelf, where he landed just about the time I arrived, puffing. He hugged me, and I him, and someone fetched me some clothing. Then we stood merely looking at one another until an outcry aroused our attention.

  The Flitchhawk had set down its burdens, knocked several dozen of the workmen down with its wings, then taken off again. I saw it circling high above me, moving off to the south while the workmen exclaimed and shouted. It was going toward Chimmerdong, I supposed. Jinian had said it preferred to live in Chimmerdong. I waved, not knowing whether it saw the gesture or not. Then they were all around me, pulling me along toward the tents and barracks they had set up just inside the cavern, invisible from above.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you, boy,’ said Quench. ‘Waiting for those crystals, rather. Didn’t want to start until we had them. Important things, those.’

  ‘Very,’ affirmed Riddle, punching me lightly on one arm. ‘Good to see you, Peter. We didn’t really expect you just yet, but we’re glad to have you here. A matter has come up. ...”

  ‘It’s the resurrection machine,’ said Mertyn. ‘It’s in good repair, and they can start using it anytime, but the best they can do is bring back twenty-five or thirty a day. At that rate, it will take twelve years to get all the frozen Gamesmen awake, and yet the crystals you gave us urge haste.’

  ‘It’s more than mere urging, Mertyn,’ I said, trying not to sound too panicky about it. ‘We don’t have twelve years. It is questionable if we have even a season left.’ And I told them about the deadly yellow crystals and the tragedy of the Maze while they exclaimed and sighed and shook their heads. ‘We’ll have to do something faster,’ I concluded.

  ‘It seems to me that something was mentioned about using Demons? Demons and Healers, wasn’t that what you did on the Wastes of Bleer? I couldn’t quite remember.’ This was Mertyn.

  Of course they could use Demons and Healers. Silkhands the Healer and Didir the Demon had wakened Thandbar. After which Didir and Dealpas - also a Healer - had wakened others. ‘Didir should have remembered,’ I said half-angrily. ‘She did it, and it wasn’t that long ago.’

  ‘I’m sure she would have remembered, Peter, but she’s down at the High Demesne. It’s something any Demon and any Healer could do, do you think?’ This was Riddle, sounding very uncomfortable about something.

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Then I think our strategy is obvious,’ said Quench. ‘Sort out the bodies in there, use the machine to wake the Healers and Demons first - Gamelords, what a job it will be to sort out both bodies and blues and be sure they match - then get teams of them resurrecting the others.’

  ‘I would have thought Didir would have been here to help you. She and Dealpas.’ The last time I had seen her, she had been at the Bright Demesne, with Barish-Windlow.

  They looked at one another, shifting from foot to foot very uncomfortably. It was Mertyn who sighed at last and invited me into his tent. ‘Come in, my boy. I’m afraid we have bad news.’

  He hummed and hawed until I was half-crazy with it. I don’t know what it was about Mertyn that made him so irritating; perhaps because he was so cautious not to use Beguilement (which was the Talent of Rulers) on me that he went the other way. He could not even be normally sympathetic without worrying whether he was being manipulative. After a time I grew weary of it and said, ‘Mertyn, quit being diplomatic and tell me. Something’s happened to Mavin?’

  ‘No. No, not Mavin.’

  ‘Himaggery then. He’s dead.’

  ‘Gamelords, boy! What would make you think that?’

  ‘You would! You’re dodging all over the place, not telling me what’s happened. What has happened?’

  ‘It’s the Bright Demesne. It seems to be under siege.’

  I sagged. Bad enough, but not as bad as I’d feared. ‘How did you find out? Who’s doing it? Is it a Game?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. We sent an Elator with a message for Himaggery, and he came back saying he couldn’t deliver it. Game has been declared, and the place is shut off. The two main players seem to be a Witch named Huldra and a Basilisk named Dedrina Dreadeye. Ah. I see you know them.’

  ‘I do, yes. Yes, Mertyn. Indeed I do.’ As I did. Huldra was, I hoped, the last of her family. I had done away with all the others, one way or another. As for Dedrina Dreadeye, she was Jinian’s enemy, which made her mine also. ‘Who’s in the Bright Demesne?’

  ‘Himaggery. Barish. I think all the Gamesmen of Barish as well, though some of them could have left before the siege was laid. Oh, that girl, the one Jinian sent from a place called Fangel. The Elator did manage a few shouted messages before the besiegers came too close.’

  ‘Sylbie? And the baby?’

  Mertyn blushed. ‘According to the Elator who saw her on the walls with the child. Do I understand the baby is yours?’

  ‘It is, and honorably got, Mertyn, so don’t make faces. Jinian fully understands the situation. So who else is there? How about Mavin?’

  ‘Mavin had gone before the siege, I think. I still haven’t heard from Mavin. She left another of those enigmatic clues of hers, and there’s been no time to figure it out. Something about the best apples to bake upon the hearth are those from one’s own orchard. She’s really quite maddening at times.’

  ‘No reason given for the siege?’

  ‘We have no idea why the siege, but the Gamesmen have turned up in overwhelming numbers and with an unfair advantage as well. They’re using shadows. Which is why my Elator couldn’t get in and none of the people in the Demesne can get out.’

  I smiled. The three who were watching me looked at one another, wondering if I’d lost my mind. ‘My expression isn’t one of joy.’ I said. ‘It’s just that you seem at a loss for an explanation, and I can give you one. Huldra and Dedrina were sent south to dose us all with poisonous purple crystals. You, Mertyn, and Quench and Riddle. Everyone at the Bright Demesne. However, that could be done easily enough through spies and Elators without need for a siege. So, it’s obvious the siege is for some other reason, probably to do precisely what it is doing, which is to keep Himaggery and Barish bottled up. To keep them from coming here,’ I laughed. ‘Huldra was instructed to come here and destroy everything, but she doesn’t know about you, Riddle. With you here, no Seer can

  peer into the cavern. So, they don’t know the resurrection is already beginning. Make sure they don’t find out!’

  The Immutable frowned. It was his Talent to form a barrier against the use of any other Talent. Barish and Queynt were said to have bred his people long ago in the early years of the millennium as a kind of defense against the unlimited Talents of the Gamesme
n. Now he objected, ‘If Demons and Healers are to be used to raise the frozen Gamesmen, we Immutables must withdraw. Else their Talents will not work.’

  ‘Withdraw, Riddle, but only so far as you must, and let a good rank of you camp between the cavern and Lake Yost, where the Bright Demesne is. Let Huldra’s Seers struggle to get a vision through your people. Let them try to get an Elator through. They won’t be able to penetrate the barrier you’ll make. They’ll continue to try, however, so be on your guard. Sooner or later they’ll send a force to try and destroy the place.’

  ‘Why does this Witch want the resurrection stopped?’ Mertyn was puzzled by this, as he should have been.

  I had thought about this for many hours during the flight from the Maze. ‘She cares nothing for the resurrection, thalan. But the one who gives her orders, that one cares that the resurrection should not take place. Huldra thinks she is doing this for the giants in the northlands, giants who are dead, though Huldra probably doesn’t know it. Dead or not, I do not think it was ever the giants who decided upon this. They were huge and powerful, but they were not subtle. They were cruel but not amused at their cruelty. No, they were guided by another mind, a mind more subtle and more depraved, though they never knew it.’

  I told them about the Oracle.

  There were expressions of consternation, vows of retaliation, loud expostulations from Quench, mut-terings from Riddle. When all their exclamations and posturing were done, however, the truth was still there before us. Lom was dying, and avenging ourselves against the Oracle had to take second place to that. When that understanding finally came, also came silence.

  ‘You must get the frozen Gamesmen moving,’ I said gently. ‘The Demons and Healers to raise the others. To raise Tragamors to move the stones of the Ancient Roads and set them in place again. To raise Sorcerers to hold power for them. Sentinels to keep watch against the shadows. Armigers and Elators to carry word across the breadth of Lom. Even the Necromancers, Seers, and the Gamesmen of mixed Talents. All who can must go south, to the site of the Old South Road City,’ and I told them where it could be located, using Stoneflight Demesne as a guide. ‘The city must be raised up again. The Tower must be rebuilt. It must be done as soon as possible, and even that may be too late.

  ‘All beneath the mountain were chosen because they were good,’ I said. ‘By which is meant, I suppose, that they were unselfish persons of perception. And the lords of fate know we need those qualities now.’

  ‘I have not heard that oath,’ said Mertyn, ‘What lords are those?’

  I laughed, perhaps a little shrilly, for I was very tired. ‘The lords of fate? Those we pray are larger than Lom. If nothing is larger than Lom, then whom shall we swear by if Lom dies?’ They smiled at this, as I had intended, though not much.

  ‘That is all we have to do, then?’ asked Riddle.

  Mertyn answered, shaking his head. ‘Yes, that’s all. To undo every wrong man has done. Rebuild every road. Replant every forest. Clean every river. Send the message that is in these crystals to every being who walks, swims, flies upon the world. ...”

  ‘Stretch the crystals as far as they will go,’ I advised them. ‘Have Healers try laying their hands upon other creatures. The Eesties convey messages in this way, and Healers may be able to do it also.’

  I sighed. The sleep that my pombi self had had the night before seemed very long ago. And I was worried about Jinian. I seemed to see her face before me, that troubled, slightly concentrated expression she so often wore. ‘Danger,’ her vision face said. ‘Danger, Peter.’ I took a handful of the blue crystals from the basket and secreted them in a pocket. Something told me I would need them.

  ‘Well, then, we’ll be at it,’ said Riddle. ‘And what about you, boy?’

  ‘Why,’ I said, ‘I have no choice, really. Someone must carry this word to the Bright Demesne.’

  Five

  Jinian’s Story: The First Lesson

  Time in the gray spaces between memories was not an easy thing to judge. I might have been there for a season, or perhaps for a few breaths. However long it may have been, there seemed to be a good amount of thinking time. About the time I had decided to count my pulse as a way of measuring - realizing with a panicky sense of loss that the Eesty shape had no pulse I could detect - Ganver came back, sliding through the gray walls of the place like a fish into a shallow.

  ‘Is Peter out?’ I asked.

  ‘Out of the Maze, yes. It is evening in the world. He will fly in the morning, south to the lands of your people.’

  I must have shown some emotion at that, though how it could be perceived in that Eesty shape I don’t know.

  ‘He is in your bao?’ Ganver asked. ‘Your wholeness, your ubiety?’ Wholeness and whereness. I had not thought of it in those terms, but it was true.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Peter is my . . .’

  ‘Bao-lus,’ said Ganver, giving me the right Eesty word for it. ‘I, too, have experienced this. Once. Among our kind, it takes five to become bao-lus. And only from the perfection of bao-lus does a new form come. You have no child as yet? No. There is an oath among the sevens. I had forgotten. Well, we five had a child. Among our people we say “a following of perfection.”’

  It was silent, then, for a very long time. I did not want to interrupt its thoughts. Finally, Ganver shivered and turned to and fro, as though shaking its head. ‘I will take you now where you may be safely hidden while I lead the Oracle away. ...”

  I shook my top end. ‘Before we do that, Ganver, there’s something else we can do.’

  ‘Do?’ it asked, as though ‘doing’ anything were foreign to its ability. Well, in a sense, I suppose that was true of Eesties. They had never really ‘done’ much except buzz about carrying messages. At least those of Ganver’s generation hadn’t.

  ‘There are a great many things which might be done,’ I said, not wanting to give it any time to think the matter over. ‘The first one that comes to mind concerns how memory works. From what you’ve said, I don’t suppose Lorn is remembering everything all the time, simultaneously. At least my mind doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘No,’ said Ganver stiffly, not unbending but condescending to explain. ‘As we messengers move through memory, Lorn remembers. Part of the duty of the Eesties is to move through memory, wandering, dancing through every part, recalling all past time to Lom’s consciousness.’

  ‘Well, since you’ve been holed up in your grave there, Ganver, who’s been doing the remembering? Don’t tell me. I already know. The Oracle and his friends, right?’

  It nodded. If an inclination of the top three points can be considered a nod, that’s what it did, and it did it in that superior manner that made me very angry.

  I stamped one point of me. ‘You know,’ I said in a conversational tone, ‘mankind is no great shakes in the holiness department. I think the Shadowpeople have it all over us, quite frankly. But I’ll stack us against your people any day, great Ganver. Half of you are fanatics and the other half are quitters.’

  This was not really a very diplomatic thing to say, nor was it at all kind. I repented of it immediately but was angry enough to go on in dogged fashion, ‘If the Oracle is in the Maze with its brethren, Ganver, we can take it for granted it is circulating repeatedly among the worst possible memories. It is undoubtedly recalling everything it can of destruction. Of pain. Of the fall of the Bell. All that. And while that is going on, how many of you elder Eesties are sequestered away, not doing anything?’

  ‘Too many,’ the Eesty said. It was said so humbly I was ashamed of myself for the outburst. ‘It seems even one is too many.’

  ‘Well, the point is, of course, that if there are enough of your generation - enough who aren’t “Brotherhood” - I’d suggest a thing you might do immediately is to start circulating among the pleasanter events of history. Recall to Lom’s memory some pleasanter times. Cheer it up a bit.’

  Ganver did not reply. Even I had to admit to myself that when talki
ng about an entire world, ‘cheering up a bit’ did sound undignified.

  ‘And another thing,’ I went on stubbornly, ‘is to figure out whether any particular memory can be destroyed.’

  ‘Destroyed!’ The Eesty was aghast. You’d think I’d suggested murdering its entire race.

  ‘Yes, damn it, Ganver. The memory in which the Bell is destroyed. If we could just get rid of that one! If Lorn didn’t remember it was gone - don’t you see, if it didn’t know the Bell was gone, it might act as though it weren’t.’

  ‘But the Bell is gone!’

  ‘Where did it come from in the first place? Lorn made it, didn’t it? Constructed it? Eesties didn’t make it, did they? I thought not. I think it’s like newts, I really do.’

  ‘Newts?’ Ganver evidently didn’t know the word. Well, why should the Eesty know about newts? Newts aren’t exactly prepossessing, and they certainly aren’t native to this world because they have tails.

  ‘Newts. If you cut off a newt’s foot, it grows another one. I think it’s because a newt is so stupid it doesn’t know the foot is gone, so another one just pops out. Somewhere inside the newt is the idea of footness, and footness takes over when it is needed. You cut off my foot, on the other hand, and I know very well it’s gone, so another one just doesn’t grow. Well, if Lorn didn’t know the Bell was gone ...”

  ‘You think another one might pop out?’ Ganver sounded exactly like Murzy, that same tone of slightly outraged elder dignity.

  ‘I think it’s worth the chance, whether it does or not. Even if another Bell didn’t pop out, it would make Lorn feel better not to remember the actual act of destruction.’

  The thing I was remembering really had nothing to do with newts. It had to do with that time in Chimmer-dong when I had grodgeled with the D’Bor Wife, pretending to find the Daylight Bell, only to see the Bell itself, golden and glorious, sinking beneath the waves of the lake. That was the idea of the Daylight Bell, I knew it. The idea, the model, whatever. If I had seen a Daylight Bell in that distant lake, there might be more or could be more than one. If I had seen another, it must mean that Lorn could make another, several, many. If it felt like it. If it felt better!