Tathea

by Anne Perry

  Then she saw that the man and the woman had children. Birth and death were in the world, not only for them but also for beasts and herbs. All things were subject to it. The number of people grew, and they covered the face of all the earth. The multitudes of them seemed endless, and they had a wealth of crops and beasts, trees of the forest, rich metals of the ground.

  Slowly righteousness became corrupted and turned into such evil that God opened the heavens and let loose the floods, and the waters beneath broke their bounds also and swelled up and roared and swallowed the dry land until it was no more. Tathea watched in horror as all living things were drowned, save only one family and its creatures, the cargo of a single great ship.

  The waters receded, and from that handful the earth was again peopled and covered with animals and herbs. And again there were both the just and the unjust. There was passion and pain, laughter and weeping, anger and joy.

  Great men sought to walk in the footsteps of God. They offered all they had in His service, and loved the unlovely without condition or reward. They kept faith that in that white instant at the center of time, one man would come who would stand alone in a garden and look upon hell, and he would not turn his face away from it.

  She saw nations rise and fall, heroism and cruelty, splendor and ruin. She saw war sweep over cities, and plagues decimate lands. Prophecy was mocked by the many, and still the few kept a bright hope. The heart of time grew closer. Signs were fulfilled and nations saw them not.

  And all the while Asmodeus waited in a black laughter, certain of his victory, and creation watched with him. A million worlds kept the light of hope across the stars of eternity—and waited.

  The moment came, the day and the hour. The man was born. He became a child, and then a youth.

  Asmodeus prepared. He whispered in the ears of kings and priests, common men and leaders of nations.

  And the man came to maturity with a pure heart and clean hands and began to preach the Word of God with power. Some listened to Him, many did not. His teaching was a sword to divide the true from the false, the coward from the brave, and those who loved God from those who would not. And because He shed light about him, those who feared the light conspired against Him, and the weak, the cruel, and the self-seeking cast in their lot with them. They hated Him with a terror because He showed them the truth, and they could not abide it.

  It was the moment. They sought to put Him to death, and He prayed alone in the garden, His soul trembled for what He knew must come, and He longed to step aside, but He knew at last what weighed in the balance. Eternity before and after hung on this one battle.

  Armed only with love, He stood forward. “I will ...”

  And Asmodeus faced Him as one man faces another, but with all the legions of hell beside him. He opened up the pit of damnation and showed Him all the torment of sin, guilt, and terror, all perversion and madness. He saw disease and lingering death, loneliness, and failure, all mockery and corruption of innocence. He saw famine and slaughter, the beauty of the earth wasted, its creatures hunted and tortured. He saw His own truth twisted into monstrous shapes and used to justify abomination, until in body’s agony and soul’s despair His spirit was poured out like water.

  But He did not turn away. He let the pain roar through Him and the darkness of hell cover His face, and still He did not cry out for Himself or let go of love for even the weakest and ugliest and smallest of them.

  Creation held its breath.

  Perdition raged against Him and was confounded because it did not understand the power, the magnitude, and the endlessness of love. And the darkness shriveled and returned to its place, and Asmodeus knew that the center of time was over and he had not won.

  And they took the man and killed him, and He died in the flesh. But His spirit was whole and perfect and living, and all creation rejoiced. The dead of all ages past who had kept faith with Him awoke and were restored, and those who had died in ignorance were taught in accordance with the promises of God.

  And the man returned to the earth to tell those who loved Him of His victory, and they believed and were filled with a hope which no darkness could crush or devour.

  They taught in His name, and some believed, and some did not. And when they passed from mortality into immortality, their words became perverted, even as the man had foreseen in the face of hell. Evil things were done in His name, and twisted doctrines spread a new kind of darkness over the world. But even while there was ignorance, war, corruption, and tyranny, there was also love, courage, and sacrifice, and a hope which never quite faded away. Again men waited and watched and prayed.

  And after a great time, truth was given anew out of heaven, and the old powers were restored, and the old persecutions, because as ever the Word of God was a sword which divided the people, and a mirror which showed a man his face as it truly was.

  A darkness of evil troubled the earth as never before, even when God had cleansed it with many waters. Whole races of men perished in holocausts of slaughter, and there was famine and new and fearful pestilences. Greed starved and polluted the land itself until the voice of the earth cried out in anguish, “How long must I suffer? O Lord, how long?” And God reached out His hand and cleansed it again, and it was restored, and the harvest of men was gathered, and then it was made perfect, and its joy was greater than Tathea could behold.

  The vision melted from before her eyes, and she awoke to see the dawn pale in the eastern sky, spreading wide and clean and pure as the breath of heaven.

  She stood up slowly, her stiff body cold, and found Casper, then began the long ride back to the fortress on the shore.

  Tathea told Drusus what she had seen, hesitantly, in words of awe, and then afterwards she engraved it painstakingly on thin, metal plates which the farrier made for her because they had no paper. But she knew the knights of the western shore must never forget.

  They continued with building, and in the spring they began to plow the earth and plant the seeds they had gathered from the wild verges of the woodland, and the roots which they had learned to eat over the years in the north. In time they would domesticate beasts.

  But there were still no women, and they were bitterly aware that all the labor and the dreams would end with their own mortality, and there was no one to whom they could leave the blazing light of their knowledge.

  “We must do everything we can,” Tathea told them with a certainty that rested inside her with a piercing sweetness. “And then the Man of Holiness will do all else that is needed.”

  Iszamber had said that there would be eleven priests who would keep the light of truth, and she prayed day after day to know which of the legionaries should be chosen. And no matter how hard she struggled, she was certain of only nine names. She called those nine, and each accepted with surprise, humility, and gratitude, at first overwhelmed by the magnitude of the call and uncertain of their ability to meet it. Then as time passed they learned faith in the unseen, and mistakes became fewer, knowledge widened, and hope became a staff to lean on in the moments of loneliness as the seasons changed. Life became more certain, they gathered seeds of grain, crops grew, and beasts multiplied, but still they were alone.

  It was winter, two years since the defeat of Yaltabaoth, when under a sickle moon a great boat was washed ashore from the sea. The outrider of the night watch found it as dawn whitened the east. He went down to it quickly, his horse leaving deep prints in the wet sand as he approached, curious and afraid of what he might find. He splashed through the shallow foam and peered over the high gunwale into the boat. What he saw huddled inside, half insensible with weariness and cold, sent his heart soaring. They were women, old and young, at least fifty of them. One stirred, seeing the shadow above her, and opened her eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid!” he said urgently. “You are safe. God has brought you here.” He reached out slowly and touched her, smiling to let her know he meant no harm. Her clothes were wet and she was rigid with cold. “I’ll get help,” he
promised. “We’ll make you warm ... and find you food ... and dry clothes. Wait here!”

  He turned and spurred his horse back, galloping along the hard strand by the waves’ edge, then swinging round and clattering up across the stones to where the first men were beginning to collect the cattle for milking.

  “Fetch Drusus!” he shouted excitedly. “Tell Tathea! There is a boat washed ashore with women in it! They are perishing from cold and hunger! Fetch blankets. Prepare food. God has answered us!”

  Everyone set aside their usual tasks and in overwhelming thanksgiving offered the best of what they had to make the women welcome and revive them. The best food, the warmest blankets, the most comfortable rooms were given.

  When they were dressed in dry clothes and wrapped in wool blankets to warm them while they ate hot gruel, Tathea spoke to the dark-eyed woman to whom the night watchman had held out his hand.

  “My name is Tathea.”

  The woman gazed at her. “Where are we? Why do you care for us in this way? Do you know who we are?”

  “You are on the western shore of the Waste Lands. We care for you because you are in need. Do you not care for those who are cold or injured or lost?”

  The woman gave a brief smile; then it vanished and was replaced by fear in her eyes. “My people would not care for the outcast. I would because I am one of them. I know what it is to be exiled from your own place.”

  “So do I,” Tathea said with more feeling than the woman could know, but no longer any bitterness. The end of comfort had also been the beginning of growth, and that she would not have forfeited for anything. “What is your name?”

  “Sefaris.” The woman laughed abruptly and then shivered, drawing her borrowed blanket tighter round her. Her face was still ashen pale. “Do you not want to know why we are exiled from our people?”

  “If you wish to tell us,” Tathea answered. “But it does not need to be today, or even tomorrow.”

  “We blasphemed against the gods of our race,” Sefaris said challengingly, her eyes wide and angry. “I can see you have given us not of your spare but of your best, and you have gone without, but grateful as we are to you for generosity, we will not forgo our beliefs for you.”

  “Our help does not rest upon your belief,” Tathea replied, “but upon our own.”

  Sefaris smiled, the shadow of both humor and apology in it. “I should have known that. Thank you.”

  Over the next few days Tathea learned something of the faith of Sefaris and why she and the women of her household had been driven from their place. Sefaris was the daughter of the high chief of Lantrif of the River, whose beliefs were alien even to the Flamens.

  “They are in many ways good,” she said defensively, as if still she would protect her own. “But their power did not seem to me to rest in morality. I spent much time alone, and one night I was meditating on good and evil and man’s course between the two, when I heard a voice command me to seek wisdom in the love of all mankind, and of all the earth and everything in it, which is the workmanship of one God.” Her eyes dared Tathea to challenge her.

  “And did you?” Tathea asked.

  “Of course! Only a madwoman or a coward ignores the voice of heaven.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “That you must love God before all else, before all men, ideas, places, or dreams, and that you must learn to long for the well-being of the souls of all people, friend and enemy alike,” Sefaris answered. Her gaze did not waver from Tathea’s face, and there was no moderation or evasion in her.

  “Then it was indeed the voice of heaven you heard,” Tathea responded. “And whoever tries to change you from that is either blind or evil. Remain with us as long as you wish. Make your home with us, and be welcome.”

  “Perhaps,” Sefaris said guardedly. “But we are in your debt for your compassion and your honor.”

  The days grew into weeks, and winter gave way to spring. It was no preaching of words which wrought the acceptance of the Word by Sefaris and her women, but the slow lessons of kindness, of watching men who kept an order larger than any one of them, who held all goods in common, and who loved the least as much as the greatest, and who spoke of God as one who above all loved the world.

  Sefaris came to Tathea and asked if she might make her covenants to live in the way of the Book, and if it would be good in her sight if her women were to give themselves in marriage to those legionaries whom they loved.

  By late summer Tathea knew which two legionaries were pleasing to God and should be chosen to make up the eleven priests; to heal not by the laying on of hands, but by that gentleness of heart which listens to another’s grief and failures; who loves when the sufferer is at their weakest, their ugliest, their most lost, and casts out no one; who has the strength to tell the truth when it is hardest to hear, even to be hated for it, and not turn aside. She had learned to love them in a way she had loved no one since Arimaspis, or Eleni.

  Then one day the following spring, as the orb of the sun sank in a blaze of fire across the sea and wild clouds flew like a witch’s hair, Menath-Dur returned. He came over the heather and down to the shore on foot, and his step was as airy as ever, the tiny bells on his ridiculous shoes singing, the sunset coloring his clothes till they shone as if the gold in them was alight from within and the purple was like amethyst and twilight.

  The tide was running fast, and the pale waves crashed further and further up the sand. He moved swiftly to the portcullis, and the watchman saluted him and let him pass.

  Inside the great hall he found seventy people sitting at the tables, men and women. He had passed ten more on watch. As he entered, the noise of speech and laughter stilled, and everyone turned to gaze at him.

  He saluted Drusus; then with a smile that embraced them all, he walked over to Tathea and stood in front of her. It was one of those moments which is held in the heart and towards which history looks, both before and after.

  “The time has come, lady. The light of the western shore is safe. It shall not dim nor the torch fall from the hand from this time forth until the last war is fought and won, and the world is reborn of God. Now you must leave here and return to the path which calls you. Your journey is not yet completed.”

  Tathea was startled and dismayed. She had not foreseen this. She had become certain that she would live out her life here, leading these people with whom she had faced the darkness, fought and won such terrible battles, and built a fortress of the heart as well as of the hand. She had imagined herself growing old here among them, loving and being loved, and in the end passing on the torch.

  She looked at Menath-Dur’s strange, gentle face, and saw no wavering in his eyes.

  “How can she cross the Waste Lands?” It was Drusus who spoke, his face dark with doubt. “The forces of Yaltabaoth are still waiting in the hills and valleys, and the Wanderer with the Spear of Broken Dreams will hunt for her with enmity deeper than for anyone else. He swore it!”

  “She has all the weapons she needs to fight the Enemy,” Menath-Dur answered him softly. “What she will do with them, and with her armor, rests with her. But they cannot wound her unless she permits it. And the forces of darkness that will come against her are such that no man or angel can fight them for her. There are parts of the journey upward that each of us must travel alone; in the beginning because the choice must be free, in the end because there comes a time when the spirit has known the light well enough to stand on its own power and become the warrior, no longer the defended.”

  Drusus bowed his head in acceptance. He had watched Tathea, and he understood.

  Menath-Dur gave her only one night in which to prepare, and to grieve for what she must leave behind. She had shared terror and pain with these people. She had been part of their labor and had tasted keenly their joy. Now she would not see the children born. This wild shore with its pale sand and booming sea had become dear to her. She loved the cry of the birds and the light on the water. The bitter winter had a cl
ean beauty, which blessed even as it hurt.

  In the morning she stood in the courtyard with Menath-Dur and stared upward at the walls she had helped build, the people she had taught and loved, the beasts she knew by name. Farewells had a unique pain, but when there is no cry of denial inside, there is a dignity which allows friends to part without the need for tears or promises.

  They stood at attention, like legionaries before a commanding general, heads high. They had dressed in their tattered uniforms and full armor, scarlet-crested helmets and ragged cloaks blowing in the wind. Drusus raised his sword in the old imperial salute, a single bright blade in the light. No one spoke. Everything had already been said.

  Tathea stood still for a moment, imprinting on her heart their faces so that she could never forget. Then she turned, leading Casper by the rein, and followed Menath-Dur under the portcullis and out onto the sand.

  All day they traveled inland and southward over the wide sweep in the Waste Lands, its reed-speared tarns bright in the pale sun, wind-rippled. In the sheltered valleys the new grass was filled with flowers, golds and blues like fragments of a fallen sky.

  At the border of Celidon, Menath-Dur left her.

  “The enemy lies in wait for you, in many forms,” he said gravely, touching her face with his long, gentle fingers. “Some you will expect; some you will not. Some will be very terrible and will test your soul. But you are known unto God, and He will not suffer you to be tried beyond your bearing. Remember hope. Always hope. I cannot tell you more. It is forbidden me. If I were to help you now, I should rob you of eternity. Farewell.”

  And before she could answer him he turned and strode over the heather, the sun glinting on the gold at his shoulder.

  An intense loneliness settled over her as soon as she lost sight of him. Celidon was a beautiful land, and the spring had filled it with an abundance of life. Saplings in the hollows were veiled with translucent leaves. Streams chattered down the gullies, leaves and flowers sprang from the earth, and beasts came forth from winter sleep. Yet she pressed forth with urgency as if there were no time to bask in its loveliness.