Tathea

by Anne Perry

  “Thank you,” he said gravely.

  She closed her eyes. She could not bear to look at him. “They should not be children!” she said so softly she barely heard herself. “We should teach them not to need us! They are beautiful, but they are not growing.” Slowly she looked up and saw the dawning understanding in his eyes, and then the horror ... and at last despair.

  “Then I have achieved nothing!” he whispered. “I’ve created them in my own image! They’ve learned nothing but to obey.”

  She reached out and touched him. He was not a physical man. Even after so long his arm felt bony and strange under her hand, but she needed to express something that words alone could not.

  “That is the beginning,” she said gently. “Build from there.”

  His eyes were full of panic. “I don’t know how to! I don’t know where and how I have gone wrong now. I don’t understand!”

  “Neither do I,” she admitted. “We must go back to the beginning and start again.”

  He pulled away, closing his eyes and putting his hands over his face. “No.” His voice was muffled. “It is my failure. You must go north to find the eleven priests who will hold the light. They are not here. We both know that, I will pray to the Father of us all that He will show me the way, and I will keep on trying.”

  She knew what it cost him to say that, the sacrifice to remain alone in the forest that terrified him, with no one to speak to in his own language, no one with whom to share his dreams of old cities and subtle and delicate ideas refined over the years, never to speak of the sweet and familiar, of home.

  She leaned forward and touched her lips to his cheek, then sat back and remained silent.

  The firelight flickered and faded, and neither of them broke the peace of understanding.

  After Tathea had gone, a loneliness settled over Tugomir so deep he all but drowned in it. He had no idea when she would come back or even if she would. The forest people were good, generous, eager to please him, but their very admiration for him was a burden that crushed him. He was always cold, and with winter it grew darker every day, the nights longer. The chill seemed to eat into his flesh and wrap itself round his bones. Even in his bed he was chilled, and he woke from sleep with cramped muscles.

  Now that Tathea was gone, the trees seemed to close in on him even more. People spoke of ice and snow, and the dread of them crowded his thoughts. Sunset was ever earlier and dawn later. In the lengthening darkness, every sound was a terror he dared not even imagine—hungry beasts prowling, great ones that would eat him whole, small ones with sharp, rodent teeth, which were almost worse. He felt as if the world had abandoned him. This was surely the curse of the Great Enemy!

  Garran came to him one bitter morning, his expression grave. He seemed embarrassed, and yet there was a determination in him. His face was a little flushed, his eyes cautious, but his shoulders were set square. He was about Tugomir’s height but twice his muscle and strength.

  “Yes?” Tugomir said quickly.

  “The winter is come,” Garran began awkwardly.

  It was something of which Tugomir was bitterly aware. He hoped with a feeling close to desperation that Garran was not expecting that the great God of whom he had taught them would somehow change that.

  “Hard times are for us to learn strength,” he said wretchedly. He must believe his own words. “They teach us courage and compassion for others, and to use our intelligence to overcome, to invent, to build upon experience so that we may be masters of ourselves.” That was easy to say, but a world of fear, discomfort, and loneliness to do.

  “Oh, I know,” Garran agreed instantly. “But I was thinking not of the spirit but of the body. Of course you are welcome to stay in my house forever.”

  Tugomir kept the horror from his face with a mighty effort. The thought of remaining forever here in this barbarous forest was worse than death. When he tried to speak, his voice would not come.

  “It will be my honor to look after you,” Garran went on. “You will always have food and warmth and clothing.” His brow furrowed. “But that is not enough. The forest is not safe when it becomes colder. If you were lost you could freeze. Food is more difficult to find.”

  Tugomir stared at him. The fleeting thought ran through his mind that perhaps freezing would be better than living on here.

  Garran was flushed with self-consciousness, but he would not retreat. He had not the faintest idea what was in Tugomir’s head. The forest was the only place he knew, the idea of longing for something different had not occurred to him.

  “It is time I taught you how to care for yourself,” he said determinedly. “In the forest no man should depend for his life on the skills or knowledge of another. I will show you how to find the dry places, how to make fire, which are the roots you can eat, and where to find honey and how to get it without being stung, and where to find nuts. I will teach you how to avoid the wolves and not to waken the sleeping bears—they sleep all winter—and how to find your way again when it is daylight.”

  Tugomir was paralyzed with dread. It was his worst nightmare realized. Garran stood in front of him, smiling and gentle, refusing to give way a step, and unable to understand a shred of Tugomir’s emotion. His blue eyes looked back unwaveringly. “I’m sorry,” he said without moving from the doorway. He was already dressed in boots and a heavy, green wool coat, ready to go. He held another over his arm. “It is necessary.”

  Tugomir gave in; he had no choice. He went like a lamb to the slaughter.

  It was the worst month of his life. He lived in a state of physical pain and mental terror. Coldness developed an entire new world of meaning.

  Garran walked ahead of him cheerfully, pointing out small facts of forest lore. “Here,” he said helpfully. “You must learn how to make fire, and where to find dry wood.”

  “Nothing is dry!” Tugomir retorted. “Nothing on this whole island is dry!”

  Garran smiled patiently. “Oh, yes it is. The beasts know where to find food and warmth. You must learn to notice them, make them your friends.”

  Tugomir shuddered. The idea was obscene, and ridiculous.

  Garran kept his temper; as with any recalcitrant pupil, one needs time. “Be careful when you explore a hollow tree. You will almost certainly not be the first one to have noticed it. Water falls downward.”

  That was such an idiotic remark Tugomir did not dignify it with an answer.

  “Higher places will be drier,” Garran added. “Look.” He moved a pile of dead leaves from the leeward side of a tree trunk and found several dry twigs.

  Tugomir bit his lip.

  Garran showed him how to use flints to strike a spark; then he collected rainwater in a tin bowl which he carried, mixed the water with roots he had dug up, and boiled them over the fire.

  “Or you could bake them,” he said enthusiastically. “Wrap them in leaves and put them in the ashes.”

  Tugomir tried to be civil, even to sound as if the idea pleased him, but he found it disgusting. His body ached in every joint, and each movement he saw threatened to be some creature larger and hungrier than he was and possessed of teeth and claws to rend his flesh. He slept little and badly, and then it was full of nightmares. He woke so stiff he was afraid he might never walk properly again. But Garran was relentless.

  “Come,” he said cheerfully. “Today I shall show you where to find honey. You’ll like that. Just watch for the bees.”

  Tugomir got stung. It was acutely painful, but it did him no lasting harm, and the honey was indeed delicious. Actually he felt a certain sense of achievement, and the oatcakes they ate after that were a great deal less unpalatable.

  The rains passed and were replaced by sharp, tingling frost. It crackled underfoot and formed exquisite, jewel-like stars on the leaf edges, like millions of diamonds in the sun.

  Garran showed him which leaves were good to eat and which were poisonous, how to find the small, sweet apples and the wild plums. He also showed him how to find
nuts and tell the ripe from the unripe, and which wild grain was fit to eat.

  Once they discovered a bear, a huge beast like a mound of earth and leaves, fast asleep in a cave. Garran treated it with immense respect and tiptoed away with his fingers to his lips. Tugomir would have been delighted to run, had his legs been willing to carry him.

  The time passed in a haze of long, cold, journeys with numb, squelching feet, meals of unmentionable foodstuffs eaten over a miserable fire, perishing nights filled with sounds, creaks, footsteps, and more cold. But Tugomir did learn, and without realizing it, he felt a fierce sense of having endured hell and survived it with something like honor.

  When they returned to the village, the frost was sharp on the skin, and the earth was hard. Dead leaves lay in bright drifts that crackled underfoot. Scarlet berries blazed on the vines, and they smelled wood smoke in the air before they reached the village.

  Tugomir had seen beauty in the forest and developed a respect for it. Garran was pleased with his pupil, and he said so, only once, his eyes bright with pleasure. He had shared his own gifts with the man who was more than mere mortal to him.

  And Tugomir’s joy ran over, not for his own mastery of his fears and his physical inadequacy, his ignorance and defeat, but because Garran had learned that just as a man cannot live in the forest on another’s skills, so in the spirit he cannot grow on obedience alone. He must understand the purpose of the law and see behind it the reason and the love.

  They came into the village together, cold and wet, but side by side and smiling broadly.

  Chapter XVIII

  TATHEA RODE NORTH ALONE, thinking of Tugomir left behind in the forest, but she was impelled forward by the knowledge that her purpose was still ahead. She had learned much of survival on the land from Immerith and felt confident in her ability to find food for herself and sufficient warmth.

  Beyond Hirioth she came out into open uplands, vast skies mackerel-flaked with cloud, wind sweet off heather already dark as the year began its slow, splendid waning.

  As she rode she thought more and more deeply of what Immerith had taught her, and as the days passed she became in a new way at one with the sky and the earth around her. She drank in the physical loveliness of it: the great sweep of the moors, the shallow tarns bright with reeds spearing the water where the wind, hard and clean, ruffled the surface in silver ripples. Far overhead an eagle soared in blue, unimaginable heights.

  As she pressed further northwards she perceived also the splendor of the greater plan, the unity of a brotherhood in the universe where nothing was wasted, nothing despised or cast out. The entirety was not merely the creation of God; from the beginning it was formed of intelligence that was willing and obedient to the law. The beauty of it became overpowering, an endless miracle too vast to comprehend, only to wonder at with an awful joy.

  Beyond Celidon she came to the wilder, cleaner hills of the Waste Lands. With a shock so great it caught in her throat, she saw burned roofs in a small hamlet, then the corpses of beasts and the blood and devastation of battle.

  It was deserted now, the people fled. She could not help. There was nothing left living, and she passed by, sick with misery and sorrow, and began to travel only by night, by secret ways and hidden valleys away from the high roads. She found shelter in dry caves or clefts in the rock. This was the land where the legions of the Camassian Empire still fought against the barbarian Yaltabaoth, of whom Immerith had once spoken, and no man had victory.

  It took her three nights more of careful traveling, avoiding all human habitation, before she found Merdic, the last legionary general in the north, and two hundred of his soldiers, all that were left alive.

  The camp was in a valley facing west, and well outposted with guards. Tathea stopped when the first one barred her way. She saw his outline against the dawn sky and the glint of light on the scarlet of his cloak and the bronze of his armor. It brought a wave of memory over her so deep and so powerful she swayed in the saddle and grasped Casper’s mane with sudden dizziness. The soldier was tall, broad-shouldered, beaten and weary with battle, his cloak torn. He could have been Alexius. For a moment in the light against the sky, he was.

  Then she recovered her wits and straightened in the saddle.

  “I am Tathea,” she said huskily. “I have come from Sylum, and before that from Shinabar, and the City in the Center of the World. Immerith of the Flamens has told me of Merdic, and I would speak with him.”

  The sentry looked beyond her, then up. “Alone?” he said skeptically.

  “Alone since Hirioth,” she replied. “How long have you been without news of Camassia?”

  He shrugged bitterly. “Nine years. Eleven years since we came north from Sylum.”

  His answer should not have surprised her—nine years ago she had left the Lost Lands for Camassia. When she had brought the Book into the world, Azrub had come to Shinabar, the Lord Nastemah to Sylum, and Yaltabaoth had stirred out of the west and driven down from Dinath Aurer into the Waste Lands, destroying all before him. Now he led his forces against Merdic and the Lost Legion, and they fought not for land; Merdic fought to survive, and Yaltabaoth to destroy.

  “There is a new faith in Camassia,” she said quietly. “I have come to tell you of it. Take me to Merdic.”

  Perhaps it was the authority in her voice, or more likely the fact that she traveled alone, but after only a moment’s hesitation he did as she bade him, turning to lead the way down the incline. As soon as she was gone, another took his place.

  It was a small camp, a fraction of the size of those she had known in the desert, but the pattern was the same the world over. They found Merdic at the fire in the center, kindling it to make a hot gruel for the first meal of the day. He was dressed in full armor and ragged cloak, a lean man with a face at once powerful and lonely, though he was little beyond his youth.

  “This is Tathea,” the sentry told him. “She has come from the City in the Center of the World to tell us of a new teaching there.”

  “A teaching from whom?” Merdic asked, straightening up. “If Camassia still remembers us, then it is men we need, not beliefs.”

  “When I return I shall tell them so,” she answered, puzzled by the neglect of this outpost. Ortelios had not seemed to know it existed. Certainly their distress had not reached him. All the south believed the island secure as far as Yba and the fortress of Layamon, and beyond it no longer concerned them.

  “If you return,” Merdic said with a bitter smile. “It is not as easy to leave as it is to arrive. Yaltabaoth’s men are everywhere in the land. If we could ride south, do you not think we would?” He barely glanced at the great hills around them, stark, cloud shadowed, and the wind-scoured arch of sky above. The knife-edge of snow was in the air already, and the long winter lay ahead.

  Merdic turned to the fire and set another piece of twisted heather root on it. “You should ride back as soon as you are rested and have eaten. We will give you a fresh horse. Yaltabaoth’s quarrel is with us. He may let you pass. Certainly you will fare no worse alone than you would in our company.”

  “Thank you, but I will remain,” Tathea answered him.

  He swiveled around, his face bleak, almost angry. “We are at war, lady! We cannot protect you. We are harried from battle to battle. We have no certain camp, no shelter to offer you, and sometimes no food. Only death lies ahead of us.”

  “I must remain with you.” Tathea had no doubt as she stood in the broadening light, silver as it never was in the gentler south. All might seem to the mind purposeless in teaching this lost band, hard pressed by the enemy and driven ever northward, but there was a peace within her which was greater than all arguments of reason. A warmth filled her body and a sense of radiance that did not dazzle or shadow and made arguments of logic irrelevant. She had felt it before and knew it was the light of God. “I shall not ask for rest or protection,” she answered. “I shall travel with you and fight at your side.”

  “Fight?” he
said with disbelief that edged on derision.

  “Yes, fight,” she answered quite calmly. “I marched with the Camassian army from the sea to Thoth-Moara and fought battles on the way.”

  He frowned, puzzled. “Thoth-Moara? Is that not in Shinabar? Are we at war with Shinabar now?”

  “No, it is conquered.” It still hurt to say that. “There was a coup ten years ago. The Isarch was murdered. A new, corrupt order took his place. It was the Camassian army that overthrew it—at least for awhile.”

  He looked at her more closely, his eyes narrowed, sudden perception in his face. “You are Shinabari!”

  “I am the Isarch’s widow.”

  “Ta-Thea ...” He gave the name its Shinabari lilt. “If you overthrew the usurper, what in the name of the gods are you doing here?”

  “It was temporary. The corruption was to the soul.”

  “I’m sorry.” He said it instinctively, but his sincerity was plain in his face. “But we have no time for new teachings, lady.” His candor robbed his words of rudeness. She saw too clearly in it experience of past battles and deaths and the knowledge that the future held only final defeat. The hour could be altered, but not the fact.

  “Then if time is short,” she answered him softly and with equal gravity, “it would be best to spend it well and learn the truth while we yet have life to do so.”

  He stood facing her for only a moment longer, then accepted her decision.

  After a brief meal shared over the campfire, she prepared to travel with them and share their life, as she had promised. She would face the hard winter of the north, open camps on the windswept moors and fells, already feeling the first frost and then the bite of ice. Soon a blanket of snow would smother the mountains.

  She braided her hair back and cut her skirts to form a more suitable garment. She bound the spare fabric round her legs with thongs to protect them from the cold and the scarring branches of the heather. She was given armor made hastily from odd pieces left from the most recent dead, and the lightest sword they could find. There was chest armor and leg greaves for Casper too. He found it strange at first, stamping and shaking his feet.