The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  To this last, Sanjirmil had nothing to add, and so she sat, for a long time, saying nothing, her eyes totally reverted to the blind scanning, devoid of expression. At last she got up from the bed, wearily, as if she had been through some great internal struggle. She moved to the place where Morlenden was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward. She took his face in her hands, which were hot and dry, and pressed his face to her abdomen, the muscles within taut as wires. She was trembling slightly, in the grip of some strong emotion.

  She moved his face upward, pressing it to her breasts, then looking him directly in the eyes with a burning regard Morlenden did not know he could hold indefinitely, so intense was it. She said slowly, “I will not ask that you sleep with me; I still want you, the past is too well-remembered, and I know that you are beyond me now. But I will ask a last kiss.”

  “A last kiss?”

  “A kiss before sleeping, that we may remember each other as once we were.”

  She bent farther and pressed her lips to his, childishly, her lips relaxed, making no attempt to shape them. As they touched, Morlenden felt the image of the past within his memory emerge, take over, become as one with the present. For all her aggressiveness and belligerence, he remembered vividly that Sanjirmil had been from the first a shy kisser, not teasingly falsely shy, but truly so, as if she were afraid to really give of herself, afraid to abandon herself even to a kiss, and much less what would come after. It was the same, exactly the same, the soft, relaxed mouth, barely parting the lips and not offering her tongue until he touched it with his. Morlenden remembered the past, their past, too well. But for the present, he felt nothing save some subtle, ephemeral emotions that had no form and no name, except in that they were related to a form of sadness, a form of regret. She breathed once, deeply, through her narrow nostrils, then broke, turned abruptly, and blew out the candle. Morlenden felt moisture on his cheeks; he did not need to taste its salt to know that it was tears, notwithstanding that he had neither felt nor heard a sob from her. It was blind-dark in the room now, and he could follow her only through the sound of her movements, the rustles of her undershift, the scuffling of her bare feet along the rough wooden floor, the touches and taps of her hands, and he heard the bed creak as it took her weight. Then silence matched the darkness, Morlenden turned under his own covers and began sinking into sleep almost immediately, one last thought surfacing in his mind like some great bulkhead behind the dam: Yes, the bed creaked, but just this little once. We creaked, too, Sanjir and I, when we took the weight of each other’s bodies; we still creak from it.

  In the morning, in the gray light of a rainy-day morning, Morlenden awoke and saw that Sanjirmil was still sleeping, breathing slowly and deeply. He slipped out of his bed carefully and quietly, gathering his things and dressing so as not to wake her. He wished no more of the laden conversation they had made the night before.

  Taking one last look about to be sure he had left nothing, he paused, wishing to take one last look at Sanjirmil, Sanjir whom he had met in the forest long ago, Ajimi with whom he had been a lover, and also the new and disturbing Sanjirmil . . . Terklaren, yes, adult, who spoke of traps and threats and still more enigmas. Sanjirmil was on her side, lightly and carelessly half covered, half curled, her lips slightly parted, still deeply sleeping. He looked closer, remembering. Asleep, her now-face lost much of its new harshness and seemed soft and childish again, a ragamuffin, yes, but also a ragamuffin who was very alone, very frightened of the uniqueness being pressed upon her. The aquiline nose lost much of its predatory curve. Relaxed, it was a face of desires and passions and something close to loveliness, ever so slightly slanted in the angles of the eyes, this face delicate and strong-lined at once, smooth and sleek as the face of some wild animal at peace. He saw there was no mystery of how they had come to be together when they had met; Sanjir was indeed in a class all by herself. Striking, commanding, she would have been exceptional even in the midst of girls of great beauty.

  He moved yet closer, cautiously, so as not to awaken her, peering closely at her eyes, which were still closed. He thought to detect some movement under the lids, as if she were having a dream. He wondered idly what such a one would dream about. Closer. Behind the closed eyelids, there was movement, but as he watched her, Morlenden could see that under the soft black lustrous lashes the movement was not the erratic, looping motion of a normal person’s dream, but a version of the same scanning pattern he had seen in her before. The eyes scanned, rather than tracked, in a raster pattern: a line across, then repeated, a little lower, until the bottom of the field of vision, then repeating the cycle. It was slowed now, and he could see the component motions he could not see before. Odd, indeed, to be so impressed upon her that she would even dream it that way. What was she dreaming? The Inner Game? At the same time, he saw that her lips were also moving, as if sleep-speaking, but he heard no sound. He leaned closer, trying to hear, identify the mode, listening closely, knowing that even if she were speaking Multispeech he would be in little danger because there was no synchronization and no submission on his part. He could not be caught in it.

  It was there, and he caught a fragment of it, an odd form, an unusual mode he couldn’t quite identify, something similar to the mode of one-to-many, but with an odd lilt, a catch, a syncopation in the rhythms, almost as if she were somehow controlling actions in another, others, three people. He began getting quick visuals. Visuals caught. And now receiving the full blast of what she was sending in her sleep, Morlenden was pinned in an iron net of command-override Multispeech, and he saw and performed, and did not understand what he was seeing and doing, but he did with great urgency, the persona being projected by Sanjirmil, because he could not help doing exactly as the instructions were passed to him. He did not have the option to disobey or reflect; and he did not hear, for through sound and modulation and the heritage of the people, Sanjirmil had somehow inserted her own persona directly into his mind and was manipulating Game skills he didn’t know he had. A single will permeated everything, a force filled him with energy, with verve, with skill and power: hell and death flowed along his arms into his hands as they flew like manic butterflies along the controls of a Game keyboard that seemed to surround him, all around the domains of his reach. It was the Game, of course, and he could see it all above him; he was reclining, looking upward, scanning a ceiling the whole of which was a subtly curved Game display panel alive with patterns of light, color and darkness, the shapes and patterns permutating, evolving, shifting with terrible urgency, immediacy. Something was coming and they blanked it with some motion that caused the rest to tremble and shift and emit pieces of themselves. Waves of change, of destruction, and of reordering flowed across the field. There was more, and it continued, the intensity growing, but all he felt was confidence, exultation, the semblance of something coming into reality at last, of being victorious, of imposing some concept upon something else, and then there was a terrible stroke they all did together that made the multiple personality wince, flinch, shrink back with horror, but they could not reflect; they must move on. He felt and rejoiced in the exultation emanating from she-who-controlled: triumph, vindication, the utter joy of performing the ultimate crimes and atrocities upon one’s most hated enemy, something hated and feared and not long ago hidden from. As stability returned slowly something was now being done that was incomprehensible to him. Energy long-stored, locked up in the prisons of cold matter, rigid, now leaped into freedom and fled shrieking at the skies; there was fire and carnage.

  Morlenden knew he was feeding something back to the Control, the Will, but until now he had not attempted to insert himself. Now he did. It had gone on long enough. And he saw himself now as a sage, a governor, a steadying influence against excess, a stay against impulses even more wild than those he had glimpsed. Like oil on the waters he tried to steady what they were all doing, through feedback; after all, was he not Fire aspect, did he not have the Will also? There was conflict, here there could be onl
y one Fire and out.

  Shaken, he drew back from the sleeping girl, and he was now back in the real world. Or was it? He saw and did not understand. Now he remembered, and still he did not comprehend. He looked at Sanjirmil again. She was moving restlessly in her sleep, now muttering something unintelligible, the scanning in her eyes stopped. She had been acting out some dream only she knew, and Morlenden’s hands trembled and tingled as if he had received some electric shock. It had been the Game, sure enough, but it had been in a form he had never seen, in a place he could not imagine. He tried to remember: the image was furred and distorted by being someone else’s dream, but he could see it, crudely—he had been within a reclining couch, contoured to his body, slightly tilted, his hands at the ready arrayed along massive keyboard controls that lay all about him. But he had been scarcely conscious of all that, immersed in concentration upon the huge Game screen that curved all over him, over them all, dwarfing the tiny beings who manipulated the flying shapes that fled and changed over its surface. Morlenden could not imagine what it was he had seen, been within. The environment was abstract and alien. But there could be no mistaking the confidence, the arrogance, of the sender, the girl who lay before him, now relaxing again, drifting back into deeper sleep, almost pretty, exotic in coloring and shape, innocently dreaming in the gray early hours of a rainy winter morning. She moved slightly, adjusting her position, disturbing the covers, causing them to emit her scent, still that tart and sweet maddening odor of warm adolescent girl, gamy, all body. Morlenden shivered violently, shaken by the contrasts his senses and memories were making in him. He hurriedly fastened his overcloak, and slipped from the room as quickly and as quietly as he could. And as he carefully pulled the door to behind him, out in the cold and drafty corridor, he knew that however brave the words he had used, he was in fact very much afraid of this unknown, this incomprehensible being concentrated in the sleek tawny body of Sanjirmil, who had been, upon a time, Ajimi.

  He hurried down the corridor and then the stairs, empty as the night before, half-dark, feeling a pressing danger, a peril, a murderous threat, a panicky urge that inspired him to get out right now. The alternative to the search for Maellenkleth was to get out of it as fast as he could extricate himself and Fellirian. He suddenly did not wish to know how Maellenkleth got wherever she was; he wished to forget the whole thing, and return all the money to the Perwathwiy and all her henchmen.

  But by the time he had reached the ground floor, he felt reason coming back to him, the old sense, familiar resolves and character, and the old curiosity and self-confidence. He entered the refectory and saw people again, and even if they were unspeaking, takers of vows of silence, it reassured him. He thought of Fellirian and her calmness, her steady pace, her quiet resolve to undergo this, she having many of the same misgivings as had he. The thought of his partner, insibling, co-spouse, mate, and rarely, lover, all sobered him. He suddenly found himself wishing to be free of the past, of memory. And of this suddenly uncertain future; to be resolved. He looked around and saw a few guests at their tables, all caught up in the rituals of silence in respect to the members of Granite Lodge, as well as the members themselves, a few of whom were present. One was the cook, standing nonchalantly behind the serving counter and methodically frying sausages as if that were the most important task in the whole world. At that moment, Morlenden understood that it was just that, exactly and precisely.

  He walked across the refectory and took up a position by the serving counter, holding a simple wooden bowl, wide and shallow. He also understood now that much speech was unnecessary; for to stand behind a counter with bowl in hand was as clear as speech; perhaps talk was what was unneeded, the idle rattling of acorns in a jar.

  The cook piled his plate with a generous helping of sausages and flat-cakes, nodding at the butter-jar close to hand, and proceeded on with his tasks. Morlenden helped himself, chose a table, and filled himself, knowing that he would have to walk all day on what he ate here. He reflected, as he sat and ate, that perhaps all the talk Sanjirmil had made about the members of Granite Lodge keeping secrets was indeed but an excuse, for the food was unsurpassingly excellent. That was a secret worth keeping. He looked again, and saw that all within sight were well-fed, no doubt about it. He had visions of great platters of roast dripping with gravy, tankards of ale, and laughed inwardly to himself, thinking also of what was expected of one in way of payment: meditation upon the curious strictures of the Doctrine of Opposite. Just imagine, he thought, do that which you fear most; therein lies freedom. And then he thought again, and it did not seem so curious after all. Perhaps he might yet have an entry to make in the tomes of Granite Lodge. But however it went, he resolved to bring the rest of them back here. At least for the food. As for the rest, he was sure that only Cannialin would actually like it. She loved quiet. Fellirian liked talk too much, and Kal was hopeless.

  Refreshed and mind more at ease, he left the table, setting his bowl in a place set aside for them, and departed the refectory and the common-house, leaving behind some more coins from his pouch on the way out. Yes, indeed, he thought. A fine place to visit. And perhaps to live? He would have to think on that. He loved talk no less than Fellirian.

  Outside, the day was cold, overcast, and still drizzly. A vile day for a long Walk through the woods. But soon, he was on his way again, covering the ground with his practiced pace learned along many a path across the reservation. He followed paths now pressed into the fabric of the rainy damp forest, the trees covered with a sparkling film of clear water, dripping clear sweet droplets, the pines covered with silvery luminescence.

  He headed southwestward, and after not too long a time, began to recognize familiar landmarks. Now, knowing a bit better where he was, and being closer to home than he thought he had been, he increased his pace as much as he could, considering the slipperiness of the path, now well-worn down to bare earth. But throughout the gray day’s passage, as he walked through the empty woodlands and fields, the temporary sense of well-being he had gained gradually left him, to be replaced by some of the uneasiness he had felt the night before when he had been with Sanjirmil. Not the morning’s panic. No, not that. An uneasiness, and growing. But he began to have some sense of apprehension, and by early afternoon he was watching his back trail carefully, recalling the incidents of the yos of the Perklarens and at the treehouse of Maellenkleth and Krisshantem. He saw nothing, heard nothing that he could actually identify, detected no hard evidence whatsoever of any follower lurking behind him or to the side, but he never lost the feeling that he was being shadowed by someone expert at it, perhaps rivaling Kris in ability to track at a distance and still keep contact. Kris would not have exploited that talent; he would always approach directly, silently, but directly.

  As he thought of it now, he realized that this intuition of being followed had begun not long after he had left Granite Lodge, and had continued, strengthening during the day. He began to keep closer to cover, attempting to conceal his location, trying to walk ever more silently. At first, these intentions had no measurable effect, but after a time the sensation of being followed did begin to decline a little. It neither eliminated it nor cured it, but merely reduced it; as if by being evasive he had broadened the area of probability about himself, and his shadow had withdrawn a bit, uncertain exactly where he was. Still, he felt followed.

  The primary result of his efforts was direct and immediate; it made a long walk longer; and by the time he was truly back into what he considered his own territory, near the holding of the Derens, it was beginning to shade off toward darkness again. Late afternoon. The only consolation to him was that the rain and the intermittent drizzle had stopped. The ground was extremely slippery, here in the clay-and-hill flint country; red clay that stuck to one’s boots when it was not threatening to trip one into a nasty fall. But the air was clear as spring water, washed, clean, sweet-smelling, and the overcast was breaking up. There were patches of luminous blue showing, and there was a lightening
along the borders of the west, behind the Flint Mountains. It would be clear again by morning. And suddenly he noted that the sense of being followed had vanished as subtly as it had come, that it was gone, and had been for a considerable time. Fine, that. Perhaps it had been imagination after all, easily spooked by the incident of Sanjirmil’s dream-speaking. Or perhaps he had lost his follower through all the detours he had taken. Ahead he saw—through the leatherleaf oaks, some still bearing browned leaves along their dark and twisted branches—his own outhouse, and beyond was the rise that hid the Deren yos from view from this direction. It made him feel a great deal more secure, although the logical part of his mind still persisted in reminding him that he was in reality no more secure here than he was anywhere else.

  Morlenden detoured by the outhouse before turning down the hill to the yos, and, finished with his detour, was proceeding slowly down the slippery path, ruefully considering that after all he should indeed take the ritual wash down in the trough, and most assuredly it would be cold. He shivered at the thought of it. Perhaps he could lie to Fellirian, who would insist. No, that wouldn’t work either; she’d spot that fast enough, call Kaldherman for help, and they’d pitch him in while Cannialin would stand to the side and laugh her laugh. But it was cold now. A freeze tonight for sure. Below, in the dooryard, beyond the pot holding the yos-tree, an overage blackwillow, he caught sight of Fellirian and Pethmirvin walking slowly up to the yos, their breath steaming in the cold, damp air. Fellirian saw him, nudged Peth, and they both waved. Morlenden returned the wave, remembering to watch for his ancient enemy the root at the same time. There it was, and for once he had missed it, but in watching Fellirian and Pethmirvin, waving, and avoiding the root, he had misjudged his footing on the rain-slick path and the red clay, and began a ludicrous slip, now waving both arms wildly for balance. He thought in the midst of a most undignified escapade that he heard a sudden, sharp, woody noise close by, like a chop of an ax, but it was indeed a busy moment and he could not be sure. What was much more curious was the fact that he did not fall, but hung suspended, a strange happening indeed until he realized with a chill that he had been pinned to an oak by a large metal arrow, dully anodized into a vague greenish-brown color to make it blend into the background. Morlenden felt ice in his veins, for the arrow had passed through his clothing under one armpit and driven into the tree with such force that when Pethmirvin and Fellirian arrived, all three of them together could not pull it out. Morlenden worked free of it, and shortly afterward Kaldherman arrived. He returned to the shed behind the yos, retrieved a large machete they used against the always-encroaching brush about the yos, and immediately charged off into the brushy woods in the direction from which the arrow had come, following back along the shaft. That he found nothing, save some vague and scuffed tracks that shortly disappeared in the undergrowth, surprised no one.