Tathea

by Anne Perry

  “We?” Tathea demanded.

  “We who serve your Great Enemy,” he answered, smiling more widely, showing his gums. “She has stepped into the past. You will not find her. But she will return, now ... or later ... or earlier! When the time is right.” He stepped aside. “Go your ways. There is nothing you can do. The future may be yours or it may not, but the past is safe, and Tiyo-Mah with it!” Then he turned and walked away, and when Ra-Nufis and Tathea went into the passage he had disappeared.

  It was not until they were outside in the sun that Ra-Nufis looked at Tathea with blazing eyes, sweat glistening on his skin.

  She answered his unspoken question. “They can remember the existence before this, things we have forgotten. They know all truth.”

  His eyes narrowed, and his body stiffened. “How is it they remember and we don’t? Why would God allow them such an advantage?”

  Yattu-Shia stood in silent confusion, looking from one to the other.

  “Advantage?” she said slowly. “Is it?”

  “Yes, of course it is!” There was certainty in Ra-Nufis’s face, the attitude of his slender body. “Knowledge is always an advantage. If they have retained what they learned there and we have lost it, then they have weapons we have not! It is unjust, and I cannot believe that God is unjust.”

  “Nor can I.” A tiny spark of light kindled within her. “Which is one of the reasons I believe it is no advantage. Recalling what we knew there is not a weapon. If we did know, then the choice is already made. To think otherwise is to mistake the purpose of life. We must make our decisions for good or ill with no knowledge of the reward, simply because we love. No other choice has any value, it would be merely self-interest.”

  “That is a contradiction,” he pointed out, squinting a little into the sun. It was suffocating in the street, shadowed by the high old buildings, the air motionless. “If it were true, then the emissaries of darkness would have chosen light because it is the only decision which carries a reward.” He shook his head. “You have misunderstood something.”

  The light inside her was absolute certainty. “It is not the knowing that matters, it is the loving,” she answered. “You can know all things, indeed the Great Enemy does know.” She was willing Ra-Nufis to understand. “But he has no belief in goodness. He has no love for man, nor for anything else, not for anything in creation. Knowledge is good, and from it may spring wisdom, but it is love that is the power.”

  “You may be right ...” he said slowly, following her thought. “He taught Tiyo-Mah, that ... dwarf?”

  “Azrub? Yes. All manner of things, even necromancy.”

  Yattu-Shia shivered in the heat, his hands clenching.

  “Necromancy?” Ra-Nufis’s voice was high and a little hoarse. “Is such a thing possible?”

  “Yes, I felt ...” It sounded hysterical out here in the street, but it was true. “I felt the weight of the dead, the unforgiving and unforgiven, there in the room with her. I smelled the decay of it. The rot clung in my throat and filled my nose.”

  Ra-Nufis shuddered, moving his head from side to side in denial. “I didn’t know such things were more than nightmares.”

  “The power for evil walks hand in hand with the power for good,” she said quietly. “When I brought the light, I also opened the doors for darkness. That is what choice is about.”

  He did not speak, but let out his breath in a sigh of understanding.

  In spite of the fact that the vast majority of the people of Shinabar did not believe in the teachings of the Isarch’s Book, the High Priest Tugomir was still deeply concerned that it was being preached at all. It was worse than misguided—it was a dangerous disease in the heart of the nation which desperately needed to rebuild its morality after the ravages of first war, then famine, and now the worst of all, conquest by Camassia. The philosophy in the Book ate away at strength of character. It corroded virtue and propounded magic and reliance on mystical beings where there ought to be courage, self-mastery, honor, and devotion to duty.

  He had spoken and taught against it with every skill of reason and oratory he knew, and with great success, but still the Isarch persisted, and too many believers remained like a dark current in the core of the city and even out in the desert.

  He was wearing a single tabard instead of his usual regalia because he had been visiting an elderly friend. They had spoken in civilized and cultured terms of the days before Mon-Allat’s overthrow, long before Tathea had returned no more a Shinabari but a foreigner, determined to destroy all that was unique and precious in her people. They had taken a little wine, well-matured, and eaten honey cakes in the shade by the cool, watered walls.

  Passing close to the tower above the great cisterns—the vast underground chambers hewn from the rock by primeval rains, where the water was stored for the entire city—he heard ugly shouts and a note of raucous laughter. He quickened his pace to see what the disturbance was and put an end to it.

  He came round the corner into a small square. On one side stood an ancient temple with a carved façade, and on its shallow, sandstone steps a woman was defying a mob. They were closing in to attack an old man with a crippled arm. They crowded round the two figures, fists raised, faces red with fury.

  “Stop it!” the woman commanded. “What is the matter with your wits? Do you think one old man’s words are going to change what you are? He has no power. Leave him alone!” She put her arms round his scrawny, misshapen shoulders. She was a handsome woman with fair skin and bright auburn hair tied loosely back, wound in a turquoise rope of silk. Tugomir knew her; she was the courtesan Arimaspis, who used to be Mon-Allat’s mistress and was now one of the few who openly espoused the Book.

  The crowd was quieter but no less menacing.

  “He cursed us!” a thin-faced woman cried out. “He said one day Shinabar would fall and become a wilderness. If he lives, the curse lives!” She flung out her arms dramatically. “That’s what you want, you and your Book! The priests know that.” She swung round to the others, her face mottled and ugly with rage. “Haven’t you heard Tugomir, the greatest priest of all, warn us that its filth would weaken and pollute us all till we are no longer acceptable to our ancestors and we will be cut off from the gods—alone in eternity?”

  “Yes!” came back the cry. “Stone him! Stone them both!”

  “Yes, stone her too!” yelled a man in blue and gray. “Get rid of the Book. Send it back to Camassia with the witch who brought it!”

  “Get rid of the obscenity!” echoed the shouts. “Stone the blasphemers!”

  “You’re wrong!” Arimaspis tried to raise her voice above them. “No one has the power to curse you! Your soul is your own. You can be whatever you want!”

  “I want to be rich!” a voice hooted shrilly. “What about that, eh?”

  “I did not say you could have what you like,” Arimaspis replied, still holding the old man and half protecting him with her own body. “I said you could be what you wanted. You can be good or evil, cowardly or brave ...”

  She did not finish. A stone flew past her, hit the wall behind, and clattered to the ground. She flinched but did not step back.

  “You can’t always choose what happens to you,” she tried again. Her body was shaking, and her blue eyes were wide with fear. “But you can choose what you do about it, what you feel, whether you love or hate.” She swallowed, facing them with her anger and her belief. “Shinabar will stand or fall on the strength of her people, not on an old man’s words!”

  Tugomir was half aware of a strange figure standing shadowed by one of the temple pillars, a heavy, squat man with a huge head and hands that were always moving, but Tugomir’s attention was on the woman in the crowd. He pushed his way forward, forcing people aside with his sharp elbows till he stood next to her, facing the mob. He saw the hate in their mouths and their eyes with a rush of coldness that caught him by surprise. These were his own followers.

  “The Book is a mistaken and wicked teaching!�
� he said loudly.

  They knew him, and a shiver of excitement passed through them. They fell silent to listen.

  “But this is not the way to oppose it!” he cried, the fire in his voice burning across their emotions. “Screaming in the streets like animals dishonors your ancestors and brings shame on your families! That is what will tear Shinabar down. Forget the old man!” He flung out his arm dismissively. “Whether he speaks true or false, you cannot change it by beating him, only by changing yourselves.” His face burned. It was what the woman Arimaspis had said. The last thing he had meant was to echo her.

  “Yes, we can!” a woman shrieked. “Stone the curser and the curse will be undone!” She stooped to pick up a smooth piece of rock and hurled it at them. It caught Arimaspis on the shoulder and she staggered back, tripping on the step, and gasping with pain. Another stone struck the old man, drawing blood. A third landed with a sharp crack on the wall beyond them.

  Tugomir was horrified. Had his people degenerated so far? And they were his people, mirroring his hatred of the Book, repeating his words against it, but twisted with a violence he had never meant.

  He shouted, but this time he was barely heard above the din. They were not listening anymore. Unthinking rage possessed them, born of the fear he had taught. They pressed forward, fists raised, hurling punches and blows, stones flying. It was hideous and bloody. Arimaspis fell to the ground.

  Choked with horror, buffeted and knocked to the ground, Tugomir tried to cover his head as the stones thudded into him, tearing his skin. He shouted, and no one heard him. Another stone struck Arimaspis, and another. There was blood on her head, on her face. A stone hit Tugomir’s shoulder. Another broke the bones of his thin arm, and pain shot through him. The old fortune-teller was a trampled heap, unable to resist the blows raining on him. Everywhere was the din of screaming and cursing, the thrashing of bodies, the smell of sweat and fear and sticky, sweet blood.

  Then suddenly the crowd was silent. They stood motionless, staring at the bodies crumpled on the steps, blood running over the stone.

  One by one they moved back, shuffling in the dust, and Tugomir leaned awkwardly to lift Arimaspis’s head with his unbroken arm, sick with pain and misery. She was covered in blood and disfigured by terrible injuries.

  “Why?” he sobbed, holding her with desperate gentleness. “Why? You don’t believe in fortune-telling. Why did you defend the old fool?”

  Her voice was less than a whisper as she fought darkness and pain. “I wanted them to see ... that God gave them the right to choose.”

  He attempted to raise her, wipe some of the blood from her face, her tangled hair, but his broken arm was useless, and he was dizzy with pain.

  She was trying to speak. He bent closer to her.

  “No power of heaven or hell can take it from them,” she whispered, “only themselves. I wanted ...” For a moment she struggled. Her breath caught, stopped for a while, and a slow trickle of blood stained her lips. He held her tenderly, fiercely with his one arm, as if he could will his own life into her, as if his horror and his grief could give her strength. A drenching guilt racked him, worse than any physical anguish. He saw himself without illusion—as if until this moment he had had his back to the sun.

  “I wanted to ...” she began again, very low, “... all their promise.” Her eyes met his and saw his pain. The faintest smile touched her mouth. She moved agonizingly slowly and put her fingers on his shattered arm. “That is what love is ...” But she had no more breath left, no more life. Her heart stopped; her hand slipped away. Where it had been, his flesh was whole.

  He stared at it in disbelief. There was not even a scar. He would have doubted that the splintered bone, the pain, the uselessness had ever existed, but his pale tabard was soaked with his own blood.

  He looked up. A man near him was staring where the wound had been, his skin ashen. He put his hands up to his face slowly, smearing himself unknowingly with dust. Then he took them away again, his eyes filled with wonder and terror.

  “Oh God! What have we done?” he said hoarsely.

  Another began to weep.

  No one looked at anyone else; all were shocked and suddenly afraid.

  They parted, stepping aside. The uniforms of the imperial guards showed blue and white against the dust colors. Yattu-Shia pressed the crowd back, sword drawn. Isarch Tathea came forward, her face dark with fury and grief. She knelt beside Arimaspis, so close Tugomir could smell the perfume of her hair.

  “She’s dead,” Tugomir said with tears choking his voice. “I couldn’t save her! I tried. I ... I was to blame in the beginning.”

  Tathea glared at him, then straightened to her feet and swung round to face the stoners.

  “Is this your faith?” she demanded with scalding contempt, tears running down her face. “Is this what you believe in, murdering women in the street and stoning old men to death because you don’t like what they say? Is that what you admire, what you want to be?”

  There was a sullen silence. They shifted uncomfortably.

  “A hundred of you to kill one old man?” she went on. “I see courage is also one of your virtues ...” Her sarcasm was acid. “Tolerance, nobility of thought and act, and honesty!”

  They began muttering under their breath. Several moved forward, ugly with rage.

  She stood facing them, her fury and pain mounting. “You are cowards, all of you, vicious, corrupt, and despicable. If this is what your creed has brought you to, then it is a doctrine of damnation ...”

  She got no further. A huge man with a protruding belly snarled a curse and bent to pick up another stone. Others surged forward roughly.

  Tugomir tried to rise, but he was held down by the weight of Arimaspis’s body, and he could not bear to let her go, even to save himself or the Isarch.

  The imperial guards drew their swords. Another moment and there would be a massacre in the streets.

  It was then that the dwarf spoke almost at Tathea’s elbow. He stood in the shadows half behind the nearest pillar, barely distinguishable from the bars of sunlight and shadow on the stone.

  “Choice!” he whispered in his soft, hissing tone. “You have choice, Ta-Thea! Blood in the streets. Your people’s, your guards ... Yattu-Shia’s for certain ... Tugomir’s ... perhaps even your own. Is that how you want it to end, your bringing the Book to your people?” He let his breath out in a sigh between his teeth. “And more than that. I can crumble the tower into the cistern below and poison the whole city’s water, and I will. The dead will choke the streets, and they will blame you and your Book for it. You have just promised them damnation. We all heard you. Never doubt I can do it. You know well enough ...”

  She made herself turn to look at him, to meet the dreadful goat eyes.

  “Or?” she whispered.

  A spark of triumph lit inside him. “Or denounce the Book—say it is a lie, a device you used to gain the throne, to dupe the Camassian Emperor into helping you—and you can have the crown of Shinabar, keep it all your life, and I will see that that is long, far longer than you can know.”

  “No!” Her body was tight, as if she had been struck. She was holding her hands up to defend herself. “No, I can’t ...” She seemed to have forgotten the crowd, the heat, the danger, even Tugomir crouched on the steps with Arimaspis in his arms. She saw only the dwarf. “No!”

  “The cistern?” he whispered. “I will!”

  “No!” She moved forward, then stopped.

  “There is one other choice.” His voice caressed the words.

  She said nothing.

  “Leave Shinabar forever. Never set foot on this land again. Then I will stay my hand; the crowd will let you pass. Go as you are, without returning to the palace, without the Book, and Thoth-Moara will live.”

  It was monstrous! Everything in her rebelled against it ... except a tiny heart of stillness inside her, so far inside it was like another age, Iszamber’s voice in the desert, his wide blue eyes, which looked be
yond the known into ages undreamed. He had said Shinabar would not believe, but the Island at the Edge of the World would, even after the ruin of the earth.

  “I will go,” she said clearly. “I will leave Shinabar.”

  Azrub’s eyes flickered, and in that instant she knew with amazement and a shock of joy that he was disappointed. It was not what he had wanted, not what he had meant to happen. He turned away from her, to Tugomir.

  “There you are, priest,” he said softly. “Now you can rule your people’s faith again.”

  At last Tugomir let Arimaspis’s body rest and rose to his feet stiffly. He stood very straight, a narrow, ugly little man with a great nose and burning eyes.

  “I have seen a terrible beauty today.” His voice was harsh with passion. “And I must follow it. I will go with Ta-Thea. Where she goes, there I will go also. Now, whatever heaven or hell bids you, let us pass and begin our journey.” He turned to Yattu-Shia. “Bury the woman, and the old man also. God will preserve the light of their souls.” He raised his hand in parting, then followed Tathea out of the square.

  Chapter XVI

  THEY LEFT FROM TARRA-GHUM. They passed unrecognized through the city and took a ship westwards towards the Island at the Edge of the World. Tugomir had never left Shinabar before, but if he were afraid or the immensity of the shifting, turbulent ocean troubled him, he was too proud to show it even by a clenched jaw or a shaking hand. His mind was consumed by the desire to learn from Tathea all she could teach him of the true meaning of the Book, not the mangled fragments he had heard. The darkness of his misconceptions caused him constant anxiety, and he spoke of it every time they were alone.

  The Book itself was in Thoth-Moara, where she had left it. It was the first time it had been out of her keeping since she had awoken in the skiff on the shores of the Lost Lands. It was a bereavement that hurt with an almost physical pain, but worse than her own sense of loss was her fear of what would become of it.

  What would happen to Ra-Nufis, perhaps the only true, passionate believer left in Shinabar? He knew where it was and would surely take it and guard it—if Azrub left him alive to do so!