They were the same thing.
And Caille could translate.
Something lifted from him, some heavy veil, a blanket of iron.
Lerissa said, touching him suggestively, “That was untoward of you, trying to wrest my ring from me. Arousing, but inappropriate. Yet perhaps I may forgive you. Come with me now. We’ve kept your father waiting long enough, and after that I have something to show you, something that will change everything. Something far more astonishing than any chip of magestone.”
Bofric arrived, the aide she’d called for, a knob-nosed older man, breathless and far too late. He must have run from another hill; the captured children must be kept on that other hill. He showed no expression upon seeing Louarn, no spark of recognition, though Mellas had known him when he was a Holding steward; but he exuded an animal antagonism. Whatever Lerissa was to him, he did not like the idea of sharing her. They said nothing to each other, and Lerissa made no introduction, merely gave Bofric a set of instructions and entrusted the magestone ring to him. Though he had not witnessed their struggle, he turned his gaze on Louarn as he took the ring, and triumph flared there.
“So,” Lerissa said, “no more interruptions,” and led Louarn down onto the plain of the dead.
They were equally spaced, a perfection of arrangement as unnatural as their physical perfection. The lavender sky, lightening to violet though no sun appeared, should have tinged their flesh with the color of a bruise, but their skin looked healthy, infused with blood and vigor. He touched one body and found it neutral in temperature, with nothing like the clammy chill of a corpse. But none of them breathed. None of them lived. They were just flesh, smooth and whole, preserved as if in alcohol or amber, though their clothes were dry and clean. Laid out as if sleeping, though there was no sense of sleep about them. Even the slackest sleeping face showed life, and these showed none. Their spirits were gone on, or left behind. Yet if these were [373] shells, they were the most beautiful shells he could imagine.
“Rigael,” Lerissa said, pointing out a man devastatingly handsome, but stone-faced, pale under a shock of black hair. “Your grandfather.” If there was a grandmother near him—Lerissa’s maternal name had been n’Lessa, hadn’t it?—Lerissa declined to point her out. Perhaps she still lived, somewhere on the mainland. Louarn quashed a surging impulse to go find her when he returned. Lerissa was not his mother. Neither Rigael nor his mate had any connection to Louarn beyond the flesh. He must remember that. He must keep it very clearly in his mind. Their history was not his. His path had well and truly branched away from theirs now.
“Portriel,” Lerissa said. “Rigael’s mother.” In death the woman’s face appeared somehow joyful, perhaps the expression it had died with. “A stubborn woman, and formidable in her day. But my Ennead cowed her in the end.”
She had not led him far, it seemed; perhaps this was where all the dead of the Holding were gathered, perhaps their position here in this infinity of flesh had some relation to their proximity in the mortal realm, or how close in time they had died.
“Evonder,” she said, with what sounded like a wistful sigh, gesturing at a fair man dressed in robin’s-egg blue. “Your father.”
Louarn tried to feel nothing, but he remembered that boyish, haunted face, and knew it for his own. The hair was sandy, and the eyes were closed, but they were the same. A kind hand ruffling his hair ... all he would ever have of a father who had never known him.
“Vonche and Naeve and Daivor,” Lerissa said. “They were cousins, as you can see from the resemblance. Daivor got Evonder on Naeve, though she claimed he was Vonche’s. One day, perhaps soon, his brother Evrael will appear here. I will cherish that moment more than I can ever tell you.”
Evrael was the fleetmaster of Khine. Had he joined in the battle on the Menalad Plain, or perhaps somehow stopped it? He is my uncle, Louarn thought, and then thought, No. These are no folk of mine.
There were proxies he knew, warders and reckoners he’d called as vocates. There were stewards he knew. He did not react to them. He let her show him her folk, her Holding folk. The bodies of the remainder of the Ennead he looked upon without interest, keeping a tight rein on what would burst out of him if he did not maintain control.
“There are only seven,” he said.
“Yes,” Lerissa said. “I left Worilke to a rebel onslaught, attended by an ancient steward. She would not have talked or fought herself [374] free. She was paralyzed with shock from some vision she’d had of Galandra during the hein-na-fhin. Perhaps they dragged her away, drowned her or killed her out in the woods somewhere, and the other bonefolk took her. It’s of no matter to me.”
The other bonefolk. “She was your wordsmith.”
“Freyn there was my binder and my second mother, pledged to Rigael my father, and I cut her throat. Never assume alliances where you can assume even deeper grievances, love.” She cocked her head. “It healed nicely, don’t you think? But it was such a lovely smile.”
He had seen enough.
Lerissa said, “Now you lead.”
“I don’t know the way back.”
“We’re not going back. We’re going on. There’s a stream I want to show you. But we’re not finished here. You go first, now.”
He resisted, baffled and frowning. This boded ill, but he could not find the harm that must be in it. If he got them lost, he would dream his way free and leave her wandering.
He moved down the rows, between them, in what felt like random steps.
The body of Brondarion te Khine came up on his left.
He swallowed hard. He continued on. There was one of the mutilated mages he had led out of the Ennead’s torture chambers. Restored to beauty and power, though her unpassaged spirit, liberated through Yuralon’s mercy, would haunt the mountain still. He saw another, and another, and among them the bladed stewards who had died in that brief bloody confrontation in the passageway—he remembered Saraen, their leader, and the man with the craggy face who had opposed him. He had seen the bonefolk passage these folk. He had seen these bodies consumed, dissipating in a light so bright it made him wince. This was where they had gone. This was the other side of the green glow of bonefolk feeding.
In front of him appeared an infant of three moons. A baby girl, tucked up as in her cradle. One of the newest fosterlings of Bron’s. He remembered her. He’d been fond of her, a sweet burbly child. Her swaddling seemed insufficient in this open space. He almost reached to pull off a garment to cover her with.
She’s not there, she’s not there, he told himself, and ground onward.
On his right he passed three Lowland Southers, and he blanched. He did not remember their names. They had frightened him badly, on that last journey back to the Holding. His own razor shadows had killed one ... but that must have been some doing of the Ennead’s, some manipulation of their mountain, like the mudslide that killed the two others and his horse Purslane, because whatever that man’s [375] name had been, Pelufer had not spoken it when she touched him. He felt relief at that, unlooked-for, and fled from it, increasing his pace. He must not let this affect him. These folk were dead. Images of what they had been. Constructs. Vessels.
Shells.
The farther he roamed, the more faces he recognized. Was this how it was? You found your own folk, somehow, through the intrinsic nature of this place? This was no good, no good at all—
He fell to his knees in front of the bodies of his parents.
His mother, and his fathers. Dressed in immaculate snowy velvet and crisp linen. Beautiful and whole, their burned flayed flesh restored to pink-cheeked health. They looked like Heartlanders—the fair, even features, the rich thick hair dark as the coal on which they lay. Their eyes would be blue and green under the lids. Bron had fostered him to folk whom no one would question as his parents. Why had they hidden him? Why had they trapped him? Why hadn’t they given him a bolthole, taught him to survive, why had they left him alone in the dark tunnels?
Inside him, Flin
wailed. Oh, to see them animated again, to see them full of spirit, to see his mother’s face light up with that beaming silly smile, to see Alliol stern and loving, to see Ellerin wink at him. ...
“Oh, my,” Lerissa said. “They fostered you to the head warders. The bloody fools.”
He rose, deeply shaken, his heart broken inside his chest. Denial was useless. She had seen what she had seen. He nodded.
Her arm came around him, maternal, comforting. “All right, love,” she said. “It’s all right. We’ll go now. You’ve had enough. It’s hard, the first time, I know. But I have just the thing for you. Just a little farther. Back the way we came. We’re leaving now, I know you want to go, it’s over now, no more hurt. There, now. Sit down here, by this sweet stream. Let me show you a wonder.”
He hadn’t watched where she’d directed him, just went where she pushed, sat where she told him to. He had never felt so weary. He was weary in his deepest spirit. So long since he had slept ... real, healing sleep, deep and long ... years, years of fighting it ...
“No,” he said, raising his head. I will not succumb to this now. I am what I make of myself. I am a crafter. The man I have crafted is stronger than this.
“No? But look, listen—isn’t it marvelous?”
She waved a slender arm over the crystalline stream that flowed through a delving in the coal before him. It sang sweetly, a gentle, healing song. There was humor in it, and delight. He moved closer, [376] and looked into its sparkling currents, braiding and unbraiding in rivulets of diamond brilliance. A draught of this pure stream would be a draught of healing, a draught of immortality. ...
Lerissa knelt to scoop up water in both hands, and raised the hands before him. The water she held looked perfectly still.
She tossed it at him. He swayed back.
It thumped, solid, on the black ground before him.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Pick it up.”
He did.
It felt like magestone—cool, waxy, alive.
“You can mold it,” she said. “For a little while, before it fully hardens. Look.” She took the chunk of frozen stream and pressed it in her hands, making a square of it, then molding that into a pyramid, It shaped like wet clay in her hands, but it was crystal clear, and in the sourceless light it sparkled like the running stream. “Now it’s hardening,” she said. “It happens rather quickly, once it starts.” She’d flattened and extruded her pyramid into a shape that his eye could not define.
“Look,” Lerissa said, holding it before him now in all its adamantine brilliance. “You can make of it whatever you wish. It’s intoxicating, isn’t it? And it can be brought back to the other world. Like the magestone, it can pass from one side to the other; it’s like the bone folk, it exists in both places. It proved useful to me in the mortal realm. I needed to start a little war in the Strong Leg, you see, as a distraction, while my bone folk stepped up their collection. It’s getting too close now; soon the children will be able to see each other’s lights. I must harvest as many as I can before that happens. Pelkin will lay hands on them otherwise, and I can’t allow that. He’d removed himself to Khine when I was last there, trying to talk that idiot hall out of their war, so he’s distracted by his own doing. But it won’t last. Nothing lasts, love. We must take what we need and forge what we require of it. ...
In the clear depths of the crystal he saw tiny explosions, white star bursts, coruscating lights. He could not draw his eyes away. He had never seen anything so beautiful, so pure. Like the crystalline light in the passageway of dreams ...
He blinked and struggled out of the depths of purity. Bells were sounding, far away, warning bells. He’d always heeded those far warnings of his mind. He turned, sought some avenue of escape in the infinite coal-dark plain, and behind him, so close it startled, saw the nearest row of bodies. Flesh ... but no more human than the molded crystal Lerissa held ...
Croy was lying not two threfts from him.
[377] Croy the bricklayer, who’d lived in a house built by his own hands. He’d died in that house, a house of bricks, of stone, and the bonefolk had come for him there. To passage him here.
Hands. The body of Croy, whole and healed, had both hands.
“Wh ...” He turned to Lerissa, forcing his mouth to work. “What happens when the bonefolk don’t take their hands?”
“You’re tired, love. Let the crystal heal you. Let the crystal take the pain away.”
“Why do you ... castrate them? Why do you take away their ... means of casting if as adults they will never ... again have their light?”
“You’re the only adult in whom I have any interest, love. You’re a powerful boy. A good boy. A clever man. We’ll do so well together, you and I. Just let the crystal take the pain, the weariness—”
He gripped her by the shoulders, saw a flicker in her eyes, doubt and surprise, as if she’d expected something else of him, as if she didn’t understand what he was saying. She must understand. She must explain to him! “Why do you cut off the hands if they only regain them on the other side?”
He saw baffled innocence in her clear blue eyes for the first and only time, and knew how great a mistake he had made.
She had no idea what he was talking about. She was not the one who sent the magekillers. He’d learned her plans, he’d found his mother, his dead, his earliest memories, he’d learned so much ... but he was on the wrong mission. This was not his mission. He came here because a magekiller claimed fealty to an Ennead mistress. But only seven of the Nine lay here. Worilke was missing. Worilke was alive. It was Worilke he should have sought, Worilke he should have dreamed his way to, they’d never find her in all of Eiden Myr, only he ... only he ...
“I am in the wrong place,” he said.
“Here,” Lerissa said, and smoothed the crystal down the line of his jaw, brought it into the line of his sight. “Here, love. Here’s the right place.”
Pelufer found her father right away.
He’d looked ravaged when he died. He had puffy circles under his eyes, his skin was sallow, his hair was greasy, his nose was swollen with burst veins, he’d gone all jowly, and his body was bloated and starved at the same time. She’d forgotten how he’d looked when she was little. A man in the prime of life, the traders would say. A solid body, fine chestnut hair, smooth toned brown skin, a muscular body filling out the clothes that had hung loose on him when he died, and a face ... well, a face that looked from the outside the way hers felt from the inside. They’d always told her she took after her father.
Caille wasn’t with him. That was a relief. There were a lot of other people she knew when they were alive, and they were together in families here, even though they died at different times and in different places. If Caille was dead, Caille’s body would be with her father.
But living Caille wasn’t here either. They’d sent her somewhere else.
And she couldn’t find her mother.
The groves were beautiful. This was the true bonefolk’s wood, not the spirit wood at home where the newly dead were left for them to collect. But it wasn’t a wood. There were no bushes or saplings or plants. There was no undergrowth, only grass soft as goosedown. It [378] was a realm of tended groves. Light filtered through the canopy in drowsy, mote-speckled shafts, shifting as time passed, as though a sun moved overhead. But there was no sun. The sky was a suffusion of golden light seen in glimpses through the leaves overhead, no sky there really at all. There were no open places, no clearings where you could just stand and look up. One grove melded into another. And none of the trees were the trees she knew.
There were some with bark like blackstone and golden fruit weighing their soft toughs among leaves of jade. There were some shaped like oak, but their trunks were creamy and it wasn’t acorns that littered the ground, it was the flutternoses that came from sowmid flame woods—except flamewood keys were red, and these were white. When she saw trees with the spiky leaves of flame wood, the leaves were blue and the bark was like mar
ble and there were silver acorns everywhere. There were groves of flowering trees, where blossoms drifted like rose-colored snow and filled the air with a perfume so sweet it made her heart hurt. There were groves of harvestmid trees, copper-leaved with bark like rust, and groves of evergreens, their needles shining black and their heavy cones a dark blue whose color she couldn’t even name until she finally came up with indigo.
And among them all, everywhere except the emerald grove where she’d first found herself, were the bodies of the dead. Nonneds upon nonneds of them, more than she could ever count. Still very dead, but whole and perfect. She was glad for that. She was glad to see Sel’s body look like the Sel she remembered, not the thing that disease had made him. But it didn’t mean anything. There wasn’t any sense of haunting here. There were no names, unless she said them on purpose when she passed by people she knew. There was no one here.
No one human.
There were others. She felt their shapes, shifting through the trees like motes through the light. They felt like a frown. Confused and not very happy that she was here. But they stayed away. They let her roam. They made no sound. The only sound was the rustle of her feet through grass and blossoms, and the slow bending of boughs and leaves under their own weight. No breeze stirred. No breath, except her own.
She wasn’t afraid to get lost. As long as she could see, she couldn’t get lost. Her path was a shape, too, and she could follow it back the way she’d come. But when she decided to return to where she’d started, she was just there—it was the next grove she entered, even though the next grove had been purple hazel with silver pears. She was back where the grass was green as an emerald on Mireille’s stall, and the trees had brown-gray dappled trunks like real trees, and leaves [380] like sowmid limes, and no funny-wrong nuts or fruit.
Elora was standing there with the boneman, like two people who’d been talking for a while.
The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination') Page 47