Tathea

by Anne Perry

  No one spoke; the flutter of hope came achingly slowly. The ravine had seemed a blind alley beyond escape, sheer walls where weary eyes had searched in vain for the smallest crevice that would allow a man, if not a horse, through, or for footholds to enable them to climb the walls.

  But Menath-Dur did not hesitate. He walked a narrow, twisted path through the fronded bracken that seemed to cover nothing but wet rock. He led them to hidden caverns leading to open gullies.

  They traveled slowly, on foot and leading their animals, boots slipping on the scree and loose stones rattling and falling away. In the darkness there was little to see except the occasional reflection of starlight on a wet surface, a momentary gleam of water, or a fretwork of bracken against the dusting of a faint wheel of stars across the sky.

  Still no one spoke. The sound of horses breathing was close, familiar, the creak of leather and clink of harness muted; now and then someone gasped as he stubbed a foot against rock.

  The sun rose slowly, pale and dim in the southeast. Once Menath-Dur seemed to step straight into a waterfall, only to emerge beyond it, wet, chilled, but in a deep chasm slanting upward towards a valley. A dead tree leaned over a shattered, stony buttress, and in its shelter he stood smiling, his hair plastered to his head and his absurd clothes bright like flowers in bloom.

  “Cut the tree,” he said to Merdic. “Build a fire and dry yourselves. Tend to your horses. Rub them down. Eat. Rest. Beyond there,” he pointed with an outstretched arm, “is the western shore. Yaltabaoth will find you—but not yet, and he will be weary when he does. You have time to heal, to rebuild your strength.”

  They stared at him as he stood in the sun, joy surging up within them, rising like a white bird with dawn on its wings. Then one by one they set about obeying, reaching for axes, caring for the beasts, then unrolling blankets and unpacking grain.

  Menath-Dur jumped down from the rock and came over to Tathea. He undid his satchel and took out dried powders and oils and gave them to her.

  “For wounds,” he said softly. “For fevers and agues, and to prevent infection.” He smiled, an odd, lopsided smile. “Keep hope—keep hope forever. We shall meet again!” And then without another word he turned and loped away so swiftly that in a matter of seconds he was gone, and there was nothing left but the winter light on the grass and the smoke of the beginning fire, pungent and sharp.

  The worst of the winter raged in white torrents, crowning the high moors in shining armor of ice and filling the valleys with drifting snow. Under the moonlight it shone like a living jewel, the very air seemed to glimmer, and the night tingled on the skin like the touch of cold water.

  The season for grain and berries was long past, but they knew which roots to dig and eat. Mostly they lived from the sea. Many of the weeds washed up in the shallow pools at low tide were edible, and they grew accustomed to their taste. And there was an abundance of fish, which necessity taught them to catch.

  As the year turned and the days began to stretch again, the coldness ate into flesh and bone, and snow turned to ragged slush. The earth was dark, stained with death. The light itself was gray, but they grew rapidly stronger in both body and spirit. They drank so deeply of the words of the Book they became of one heart and mind in purpose, and every man sought his neighbor’s well-being.

  Before the first frail blossom or the first spear of new grass appeared, Yaltabaoth attacked. It was noon on a day when a pall of cloud had shredded in the gale to show thin banners of ice-blue sky, and the wind keening in the heather all but swallowed the high, thin scream of the demon war cry. Merdic and his last warriors, a hundred and thirty men, were camped on the plains by the western shore that looks onto the sea which bounds the world. Here they must stand and fight.

  The fearful sound came to them as they sat by the campfire, burning peat cut from the moor and dried seaweed. Suddenly their blood was chilled and fear struck as a blow to the heart, stopping the breath in their throats.

  Merdic spun round, for a single instant hoping it was a delusion, a sound born of memory. But even as he faced the wind, he knew the truth.

  “To arms!” he called, and every man obeyed, reaching for sword or spear, springing for his horse.

  He turned to Tathea. “There is nowhere to fly,” he said quickly, his eyes narrowed to the wind. “We will do all we can, but this is our last stand. If we are beaten, it would be better for you to be dead than for Yaltabaoth to take you. God would count it no shame that you did not suffer yourself to come into his hands. I would that you could be saved, but it is too late now to regret, and my soul rejoices that you taught us the word of truth. May God’s will be done.” And he raised his hand in the old imperial salute, then mounted his horse and moved to lead the charge.

  In a clash of arms Yaltabaoth’s dark force came over the brow of the last rise and met Merdic’s legion at full gallop. There was a splintering of spears. Shields flew awry, and at the first shock many fell dead to be trampled by flying hooves. The scream of horses, the clang of metal on metal, the cries of men filled the ears. Birds left the air, even the carrion crows flew away to wait. The small beasts in the heather scattered and burrowed for their holes. Only the vast, icy sky and the endless sea beyond the western shore remained as they were.

  Back and forth they fought, lunged and struck. Wounds went unheeded, every man was in the saddle with his sword, surgeons, armorers, and farriers alike; there was no future beyond this battle for which to guard or prepare. Tathea rode with them, dagger at her side, sword in her hand.

  The sun began its short descent, and still the battle was neither lost nor won. Casper was wounded, and Tathea dismounted and fought on foot, slashing hand to hand, stumbling over the fallen. But the dead were more of Yaltabaoth’s force than of the legion. Still the small animals cowered away, and the carrion birds dared not come, for all the dying and dead that lay amid the darkened heather.

  There were not more than fifty alive on either side, although unknown numbers of Yaltabaoth’s forces lay beyond, men he could draw on in another season.

  In the center of the battle, Merdic faced the black figure with the streaming hair and the bloodied sword. They were both on foot now with only the naked blades of their swords to fight with. For an instant’s silence their eyes met, and Yaltabaoth’s lips drew back from yellow teeth in a smile, victory in his nostrils and on his tongue.

  Merdic swung his sword, and Yaltabaoth met it with his own. The clash and scrape of steel came again and again. Merdic was wounded. Blood gushed from his side, his thigh, his arms. Seldom did he strike flesh himself, and Yaltabaoth seemed to feel no pain even when the sword point pierced him.

  No one came to Merdic’s aid; all his men were fighting their own desperate battles. Tathea was freed from her struggle by a legionary as Merdic fell to his knees and Yaltabaoth plunged the sword home to his opponent’s heart with a thin scream of exultancy.

  He drew the sword out and whirled it about his head, eyes blazing, mouth wide in a cry of victory. Merdic did not move again.

  Tathea stood as if alone. The clamor of battle, the icy wind, and the withered heath seemed to recede as she stared at the black figure of despair before her, his jubilation clear in his face.

  She thought of Menath-Dur, the fantastical man with the multicolored costume and the bells like birdsong on his feet, who had told her to hope when there was no hope and when the darkness was complete, still to follow the light of the star she remembered.

  She stepped forward with her sword in her hand and gazed for a moment into those terrible eyes. Then she lunged forward, head down, and drove the sword not into his heart, or his throat, but into the side of his belly.

  Black blood spurted out in a jet and his shriek of anguish tore the air, rocketing upwards in jagged sound till the very clouds were rent, and fragile as the wings of dawn the sunlight came through.

  All other fighting ceased. As if stricken, the dark warriors stood with weapons useless in their hands. Merdic’s leg
ion was exhausted, wounded not only with swords but with grief. They had loved Merdic; he had been their leader and friend since youth. His loss could not be borne without a numbing pain.

  Tathea looked down at Yaltabaoth where he lay writhing on the ground, not dead, not even mortally injured. But the sunlight fell not on the dark lord who had ridden over the hill with his demonic wail, but on an old man, hair blasted white like the down of a thistle, his face gaunt, the flesh sunken, gums shrunk back from his teeth, limbs wasted. Only his eyes were unchanged, still burning with the fire of hatred and lust for the night of the soul.

  Slowly he rose to his knees, clutching his sword in his gnarled hand.

  Tathea backed away, fear in her throat, her body shaking. She had struck her blow. She had nothing left.

  Yaltabaoth leaned on his sword, and as he did so it became a spear, then a staff, but his eyes never glanced towards it, although his hand must have known the change. His smile was mirthless, and he did not move, even when he was upright, a wild figure, white hair flying in the wind, clothes bloody and ragged.

  “You have not escaped,” he said to her softly, his voice sibilant and penetrating, reminding her of the dwarf Azrub, far away in Shinabar. And suddenly she knew Yaltabaoth. He was the Lord of Despair—as Menath-Dur was the Lord of Hope.

  “You have wounded me!” he hissed. “But I shall not die. I shall wander this land forever, and my staff is the Staff of Broken Dreams. I am still the Lord of Disillusion, and my reign will last as long as the earth!” And he swung round, glaring at the remnants of the weary and wounded legions. Then he started off into the heather and the dark bracken and in moments was gone, and his forces after him.

  Chapter XIX

  THEY BURIED MERDIC AND the other dead with legionary honors, after the old fashion of Camassia, with plumed battle standards upright and spears aloft as they stood on the western shore in the evening light. The waves beat gray and silver on the long stretch of sand and hissed white foam up to the weed-strewn tideline, translucent as the sun set scarlet and spilled fire over the sea.

  Birds wheeled and called in the air above, their underwings flashing as they turned. There was no sound but their cries, the wind in the reeds, and the roar and boom of the water. It was a place of peace, and when they had said their last farewells, they turned and walked to where their horses stood waiting.

  “Where shall we go?” Drusus asked. “Yaltabaoth is changed. We have defeated him, but his forces still hold all the Waste Lands and there is no path back for us.”

  “We must remain here,” Tathea answered unhesitatingly. “We will build a fortress on this headland, where the tide will protect us. There is much stone here, and we have tools. We can make all that is necessary. The sea will feed us. In time we can find trees and seeds. There is fresh water and peat for the fires.”

  Drusus stood with the wind tugging at his hair, his cloak flapping around him.

  “Until one by one we die,” he answered.

  For a moment she did not understand. Then she looked at the last fifty alive. They were all men. For a moment, icelike despair flickered at the edge of her mind, then knowledge returned to her that to those who have faith, nothing is lost, and the purposes of God are never defeated.

  “God never abandons any creature who trusts in Him and walks in his commandments,” she replied. “There will be a way.”

  One by one they dropped to their knees, the wounded, the weary, the bereaved, and each prayed to the God who had begotten him in the world before this, and whose love never died.

  They tended the injured, man and horse, and gradually they recovered. But it was thirty-nine grim and toiling days before they had hewn from the ground with adzes and chisels enough rock, split and cut to size, to lay just the foundations of a shelter to house them from the sleet driving over the moor. There was no mortar and on the wind-racked shore only driftwood. Their spirits sank and they grew silent as they labored, failed, and labored again.

  Casper recovered, and Tathea rode alone up over the dark moor, still patched with white in the hollows and the lee side of the valleys, the far mountains brilliant in reflected sun against lowering clouds. The wind had dropped, and the air was clean and prickling sharp, laden with the smell of wet bracken and earth, and the bitter pungency of wild herbs.

  For a long time she rode, not quickly, merely needing to be alone. Then as the sun sank in brilliant color across the south-west, she dismounted, leaving Casper to graze, and hunched down in a hollow where the earth was sheltered and dry and wrapped her cloak round her. She bowed her head and spoke her heart to the God who had called her to this mighty purpose which she could see no way to fulfill. Darkness was everywhere against her, across the relentless earth as far as she could see, and in the ruin of despair Yaltabaoth had woven in heart and mind.

  Then as she sat, the shadow across her vision cleared and she saw a garden where there was no death and no birth. Every creature under heaven dwelt there without enmity, and there was perfect peace.

  And in the garden dwelt also a man and a woman who knew no sin. Their faces were fair and smooth. Time had not begun, and age had no meaning for them. Their eyes had never seen grief, and their innocence had no blemish. They had freedom to do anything they pleased. Nothing was barred from them except one thing only; of all the fruit of all the trees, there was one of which they might not taste, and they refrained from it, having no wish to do other than obey.

  For aeons without name or number they dressed the garden and took joy in the beauty of it.

  Then Tathea saw another person standing under a shining tree, and his face was terrible, as if he carried with his soul a darkness so great it would crush the stars and consume all life. And he spoke to the woman.

  She knew him not and asked his name.

  “I am Asmodeus,” he answered. “I am your brother.”

  She had never beheld evil, and she knew no lie. She looked on him without fear, and without understanding.

  “Eat of the fruit,” he said to her. “It will give you the knowledge of good and evil.”

  She shook her head, puzzled. “But my Father commanded me not to. It is the only thing I may not do. If I should, then I would also taste death.”

  In his eyes cunning, corruption, and truth were twisted to snare and destroy.

  “You are a babe unborn. You know nothing! If you do not know bitter from sweet, light from darkness, then you are a child damned never to grow up. Would anyone who loved you wish such a thing? Life, and knowledge of good and evil is how your Father became God! Take the risk. Take life ... and become like Him.”

  She hesitated. “There must be another way.”

  “Without knowledge of good and evil, there can be nothing,” he replied softly. “It is God’s way. How could it be wrong?”

  The leaves rustled in the shining tree. Still the woman was uncertain.

  Tathea could see into the heart of Asmodeus and the black exultancy that waited there, the triumph already sickly sweet on his lips. If the woman ate, then all mankind would take mortal flesh. Because they knew good and evil, they would be accountable for sin. The path upward to God would be open before them, but so would the descent to the mouth of hell and beyond.

  Asmodeus already possessed in his dominion one-third of the hosts of heaven, fallen as he had fallen. If the woman did not eat, then that was the extent of his dominion, less than half that of God! But if the woman did eat, then he might have them all, every last one of them, because as surely as they gained knowledge, they would also gain corruption and death because they would sin, be it ever so slight, even a lapse of watchfulness, a chance missed, an indifference.

  It all depended on one man in the meridian of time, who had offered to live without stain and at the appointed hour, to face Asmodeus in another garden. He would be alone, with all the frailty of human heart and flesh, and Asmodeus would have his immortal powers and the hosts of hell, all the pain and terror of eternity in his hands. That man would
fail! Asmodeus would crush him slowly, destroy him with the collected evil and suffering of all life. Then every human soul would be his, every living thing that had ever drawn breath or put forth leaf, even the rocks and clay of the earth itself. His dominion would be boundless. His fingers grasped it, his eyes beheld it, and the smell of victory was in his nostrils. He believed it with a fearful triumph.

  Creation held its breath. Eternity stood still.

  The woman reached out her hand and plucked the fruit. She put it to her lips and ate.

  Asmodeus smiled, satisfied. Now all he had to do was wait until that white center of time and the ultimate conflict, and then all life would lie within his grasp.

  The woman looked at him steadily, not yet afraid, but there was already the beginning of knowledge in her eyes.

  “I know who you are,” she said slowly. “And I know that I have eaten death, as well as life. But it is better so. Without knowledge of good and evil I cannot become like my Father. I know that I walk a knife blade between life and darkness.”

  Asmodeus smiled, and was content.

  Tathea watched the woman go and knew that she was leaving the garden forever, and that the man would choose to go with her into the exile of the great journey, with all its trials and pain, its labor and grief. Together they would travel the path to its end, understanding its meaning, and believing that they would find the light.

  And she loved them with all her heart.

  Then as she watched Asmodeus, a suffocating weight descended on her so that she could not move. Her mind was crushed by it. She saw inside his soul and knew the world as he beheld it. All was vanity, appetite, and rage. He saw love; he felt its hand in his own and its breath upon his cheek. It whispered his name and he did not hear. He thought it a deceit, a thing that would disappear in the face of test. He did not understand it. In his vanity and cowardice he would not even try.