by Jude Fisher
The choice tugged at him, unequal, unbearable.
‘I cannot leave,’ he said softly.
‘Oh, Virelai.’
No one had ever spoken his name with such affection. He gazed into her eyes and saw himself reflected there, not as he thought of himself, but nobler and finer by far. He reached out a hand and cupped Alisha’s ravaged face, watched in wonder as the area around his hand changed. The nomad woman’s skin began to lose the appearance of sun-hardened leather, filled out, became as smooth and soft as he had remembered it.
He took his hand away, amazed.
A voice said: Farewell then, Virelai. It is good that we leave someone behind us to help to heal the world.
When he looked away from Alisha, it was to catch the spark of a bright light fading and the One was nowhere to be seen. He turned his face up to the sky; but all he found there were clouds. A gentle rain began to fall. It pattered onto his face like a blessing. Closing his eyes, he let it wash over him, felt it soaking his hair, his clothes, and when he looked down, it was to find green shoots sprouting in the black ash, tendrils and budded leaves. Daisies pushed their blind heads out into the light; clover and grasses came next, running like a vivid green fire out across the plain. A herd of wild horses followed the line of green, their hooves dashing up clouds of dust which fell back to earth as a rich loam.
Alisha Skylark gazed around in awe and delight. Overhead, a cloud of swallows soared and dived, their aerial turns as fast as a thought. Doves roosted now on the broken ledges of what had once been Falla’s Rock. Vines crept up its southern slope.
While she watched, something on top of the Rock moved. She shaded her eyes.
She breathed a name, and Virelai turned to stare where she stared.
It was Saro Vingo.
Virelai watched as he stumbled to the edge of the shattered outcrop and stood there with his head in his hands, as if he were debating whether or not he would leap off. Something about the set of his shoulders told of absolute despair.
‘Saro!’ he called. He had never thought to see his friend again.
Dust covered Saro’s face and hair, but tears had streaked his cheeks. His eyes were haunted. The gods were gone, and miracles were all about him; but the most important miracle of all had not occurred.
‘Virelai . . .’ It was barely a whisper, but the sorcerer heard it as clearly as if Saro was at his side. ‘Virelai, I have lost Katla.’
Katla Aransen drifted in the darkness. New pain revived her briefly, then retreated like a sea. The wound in her belly had opened: she could feel its wetness and the rawness of the interior exposed to air. She dragged in a breath and felt how it rasped and bubbled. Something was pressing down on her, crushing her chest and legs. She took another breath, shallower than the last, and it knifed through her. She coughed and twisted, and that racked her again.
Be strong, Katla.
There seemed to be a voice in the darkness with her, a voice that was so close it seemed almost inside her head, a voice she recognised but could put no name to. It comforted her to know she would not die alone in this darkness. Unless, she thought suddenly, she had merely dreamed the voice as a last comfort, and was talking to herself. Just like Old Ma Hallasen, cackling away to her goats and her cats on all matters of philosophy. Mad as a bat.
This is no dream, Katla. And I’d rather you didn’t defame my old Ma.
Katla frowned. Everyone knew Old Ma had no children: now she really was going mad. Deciding to test her theory, she asked aloud, ‘Where in Sur’s name am I?’
Inside the Rock. It split apart when the gods erupted through it and you fell in.
Apart from the bit about the gods, she could have worked that out, if she could remember anything leading up to these latest events. The last thing she could remember was being at sea with everyone talking across her and the waves rocking the barge so gently that they took her away from all that disturbing chatter and rocked her to sleep. Weariness rolled over her now, promising to steal her away to a place where there was no pain, or anything else at all.
Stay awake, Katla. I can’t afford to let you die.
Her eyes snapped open. ‘What?’
If you die, I die. So don’t die.
That seemed fair enough, if she could only make sense of it. She tried to find a more comfortable position in which to have this strange discussion, but that just caused another wave of red agony to engulf her, so she stopped and lay there, panting. Now that her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, she could make out the rough shapes of boulders all around. Behind her, a splinter of light shone through the fractured rock, illuminating tiny details here and there. It seemed impossibly far away, no more than a tantalising promise. She reached out with her right hand and felt about her. There were rocks jammed onto her chest and legs, but her head was in open space.
I wish I could lend you my strength, but another stole that from me, the voice told her. Which made no sense at all.
She managed to get a knee bent up so that her foot found some purchase and pushed feebly backwards. A trickle of dust slithered down onto her face, making her cough, but she shoved herself an inch or two into the space behind her. It hurt, horribly, but she did it again, then again. The boulders shifted dangerously.
Be careful, Katla; be slow.
Being slow or careful had never come naturally to Katla Aransen, but she gritted her teeth and pushed again until her head touched solid rock. The jolt it gave her was shocking, disorientating. She reached up and felt it, allowing the natural energies it gave off to run down her arms, charging her muscles, filling her with heat.
Inside her, the voice sighed and fell abruptly silent.
Above her head she found a small ledge. It was sharp with rugosities: the best sort of hold. Her fingers curled over it and she pulled with what little strength she had left to her. For what seemed an age nothing happened, then she felt her hips slide against the ground. The crushing weight of the boulders above her shifted minutely. Again she heaved and they ground together with a rumble, raining dust down over her. A moment later there was a crash, and suddenly her legs were free. She drew them up in a galvanic heave and rolled sideways, feeling even as she did so how she tore herself. Noise and pain shattered her; she screamed out, and it seemed to her then that she screamed with two voices. Gasping and sweating she lay there as the world turned and changed and flowed, aware of nothing but the blood beating around her damaged body for long moments until silence fell.
Saro Vingo had never moved so fast in his life. When he heard the scream he had swarmed down the broken planes of the Rock as if he had been climbing all his life. He swung down from the top on one hand, scrabbled his feet onto a ledge, braced himself against the widening crack, jammed his body sideways, and bridged down the chasm without a thought in his head except that the voice he had heard had been Katla Aransen’s, and that meant she was still alive.
He transferred his weight and jumped down the last section, landing in a heap at the bottom. All around was a jumble of rock, and in the back of the cavern a splash of deep red picked out by a patch of sunlight.
‘Katla!’
She blinked, tried to focus and gave up.
I’m sorry, she said to the voice inside her, recognising it now. I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can hold on any longer. I wish I could have saved you, but it seems I cannot even save myself.
But there was no response, none at all. Exhausted, she closed her eyes.
‘Katla!’
Nothing.
Something died in Saro, then. He felt his throat swell. A hand fell on his shoulder.
He turned. It was Virelai, and beside him was Alisha Skylark – not the haggard, demonic figure they had found crouching over the pitiful remains of her son, but Alisha Skylark as he remembered her when they rode with the nomad caravan beside a gentle river, who told him about the properties of plants and the patterns of the stars. She caught him in her arms now and held her face to his shoulder, rubbing his
back as if he were a child.
‘Hush now, Saro,’ she whispered. ‘Hush now.’
The pale man knelt in the dust beside the dying girl. He straightened Katla Aransen’s limbs, then bent and lifted her, grunting with the effort of it. Then out he walked, into the light, with her body in his arms.
Epilogue
‘Tell me again about the Far West.’
‘I have only been there the once, and it was long ago. What I remember most particularly was the colour of the place: golds and ochres, reds and a blue deeper even than Jetran pottery. They built tall there, towers and spires, minarets and the like. It was a very pretty place. There were fountains in the squares, and tumbles of flowers from every sill. Doves roosted in the shadow of the eaves and cooed by day and night. I would fall asleep listening to them; except when the cats fought in the street outside.’
‘And the women. Tell me again about the women.’
‘You surprise me!’
‘I am just curious: am I not allowed to be curious?’
‘Ah, the women.’ A long sigh. ‘It really was a very great time ago.’ The speaker paused. You could sense the smile that spread across his face almost as a change in the air. ‘But they would be hard to forget. Some were dark-skinned with hair burnished to a sheen like polished bronze, while others had skin of ivory and hair the colour of this snoring beauty here, as red as fire, down to their knees. There was one I knew would tie you up with it—’
‘I don’t snore!’
Tawny brows drew together in a frown, then one furious blue eye opened uncertainly, blinked and stared.
‘You!’
Katla Aransen heaved herself onto her elbows, and found that doing so didn’t hurt as she had somehow expected. She stared around, trying not to look too nonplussed.
‘Just how long have you been lying there listening to us?’
‘Oh . . . forever. I heard the bit about the women. Well, several bits about women, actually.’ She fixed the speaker with an accusatory glare, then transferred her gaze to the other. ‘It seems you have enjoyed yourselves thoroughly, talking away about such things over my head.’
‘We have waited three days for you to wake up,’ said Saro Vingo defensively. ‘We had to amuse ourselves somehow.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Three days?’ She trawled a surreptitious hand down her flank to her belly, felt around. Then she pulled open the shift she wore – an item of clothing which most definitely had never belonged to her – and stared down into its shadows at the place where the wound had been. All that marked it now appeared to be a pale pink scar. This, she pressed gingerly, and when that elicited no pain, harder and harder again.
‘Virelai healed you,’ Saro said.
She took this in, chewing her lip.
‘And how come you are here?’ Katla demanded a few seconds later, glaring at the visitor at the foot of the bed.
Tam Fox threw back his head, and the beads and bones rattled in his tawny braids. ‘Ah, Katla, I have much to thank you for.’ His vivid green eyes swept over her wickedly. ‘More than you could ever imagine.’ One heavy lid closed in a barely perceptible wink.
Saro laughed.
‘What?’ She stared from one to the other. ‘What are you laughing at?’
‘We have all travelled a long, strange road, Katla. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to examine closely every stone upon which we tread.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever it is you’re both trying to keep from me, I’ll find it out. You know I will.’
Voices sounded in the corridor outside and she stared at the ornate archway expectantly.
‘Where am I, anyway?’ she asked, to fill the moment before the door opened.
‘Cera’s fine castle, or what remains after your Eyran king had his way with it.’
There were obviously far too many stories to be told. Even thinking about the implications of this was tiring. She sighed, and watched the door come open and a head peer around it.
‘Mother!’
Bera Rolfsen grinned, and suddenly looked half her age.
‘Katla, my love!’ She flew across the room with her arms open, then at the last moment drew back.
Katla rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not made of twigs, you won’t break me so easily.’
It was the first embrace she could remember receiving from her somewhat austere mother; or maybe that was because she usually behaved so badly she rarely merited such treatment. Over Bera’s shoulder, she watched the next visitor enter, and her jaw dropped.
‘Father!’
Aran Aranson took in the tangle of limbs on the bed and his single-browed grimace lifted. He grinned, his dog-teeth white against the black of his beard. Despite the smile, he looked drawn and tired, a man who had too recently for comfort or reflection been through many hard experiences. He leaned against the door jamb as if to join in the embrace would be to take too large a step from one world into another.
A shaft of sunlight speared the room, falling obliquely over Tam Fox. Like a great cat, he stretched and yawned. ‘Well, now, I must away,’ he said. ‘Now that the sleeper has awoken and all is well. I have promised to accompany Mam and Persoa to Jetra.’
‘Go?’ she stopped herself before she said something she regretted, then added, ‘Persoa? But isn’t he—?’ Clearly the hillman had not died in the volcano, after all. She made a face. All this thinking hurt her head. It had been a lot easier being asleep all this time than having to deal with surprise after surprise.
Bera stood back off the bed and surveyed the tawny man. ‘So you’re off are you, back to your wandering ways?’ There was no disguising the chill in her voice. So one thing hadn’t changed, then.
‘Indeed.’ Tam Fox inclined his head. ‘I’ve been thinking of starting up another troupe. The little man, Dogo, has a remarkable aptitude for juggling; and Joz throws a mean knife.’
‘So, you’re not going to make an honest woman of my daughter, then?’ Bera enquired, hands on hips.
‘Mother!’ A shriek of outrage.
Saro went pale.
‘Me?’ The mummer’s green eyes slid to Katla’s astounded face, softened, darted away again. ‘I think not.’
‘Er, actually, I—’ Saro started.
Tam Fox crossed the room swiftly and got him by the arm. ‘Come with me,’ he said, his fingers digging into Saro’s bicep. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’
A family row was going on behind the door even by the time he closed it. ‘Saro, my lad, if you blunder in with a clumsy offer, you’ll lose her forever. Is that what you want?’
Saro pulled himself free of Tam Fox’s grasp. Gone from shock, to panic, to fury in such a brief space of time, now he was trembling.
‘You’ll have to give her a good long time to get used to the idea, and even then she may not have you. She’s a wildcat, is Katla Aransen: she’ll be hard to tame, maybe even impossible.’
Saro’s jaw firmed. ‘I don’t want to tame her,’ he said angrily.
Tam Fox grinned. ‘Good lad.’ He sighed. ‘And good luck.’
Then he turned on his heel.
‘Will we see you again?’ Saro called after him, not sure which of the likely answers he would prefer to hear.
At the end of the corridor, the mummer turned back. In the shadows his eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Oh yes,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sure you will.’