The Silences of Home

by The Silences of Home (v5. 0) (epub)

  Galha touched her hand. “I should not have brought you here. Forgive me, my dear—and let me help you. Let me help you and Nellyn.”

  Lanara opened her eyes as the Queen was going out into the dim corridor. When Lanara did not move, Malhan said, “Follow her, Lanara.” She did, hastily, while he walked steadily behind her. Her breath came more smoothly as soon as the tomb’s glow had faded.

  This time Galha led her deep into the palace. They passed many tower doors and guards whom Lanara knew, but soon they reached the innermost ring, with its two towers that she had never seen before. One of these was the Queen’s sleeping tower; the other was her study. Queensguards Lanara did not recognize made the sign of the arrowhead and tugged open two thick wooden doors, and she began to climb, dizzy with confusion and weariness.

  “My mother’s study isn’t at all like the Scribeslibrary,” Ladhra had told her many times when Lanara had demanded a description. Lanara had been to the Library often. It was huge and sunlit, and filled with the sounds of writing sticks and unfolding parchment. “The study is silent,” Ladhra had said, “and dim”—but these words were not enough, Lanara realized as she stepped into the room. It was round, the entire top of the tower, which was ringed by other, taller towers. No sunlight fell through the high arrowhead-shaped windows. Lanterns and candles lit rich red wood: table, chairs, floor, and the rows of drawers that stretched from floor to domed ceiling. The open cabinets in the Library contained the scribes’ transcriptions, rough and final, of documents provided by the Queen: public documents, many of them transparent with age and handling. The drawers in the Queensstudy held all the records of all the days of the queens since Sarhenna the First: private, closed, kept for the eyes of future queens. Lanara stared at these drawers, shifting her feet on the smooth, strange wood.

  “Sit with me,” Galha said, gesturing to a chair by the enormous triangular table. Lanara sat. “Drink,” the Queen said, and Lanara saw that there was a goblet by her right hand. She took one sip, and another. The wine stung, made her feel dry and stronger. “Why is Nellyn sick?”

  Lanara licked wine from her lips and set the goblet down on the table. “Because,” she said slowly, “he’s overwhelmed. There are so many people here, so many buildings, and his own town is tiny.”

  Galha shook her head. “But for many weeks after his arrival he was well. Why has his sickness struck him only now?”

  Lanara took another swallow of wine, waited for it to sear its way down her throat before she answered. “When he arrived he was content only to be with me. I was so excited by this. I dragged him into the city and made him try all kinds of different foods. At first he didn’t seem bothered by any of this. But he hasn’t been eating recently—not even lynanyn. And he won’t go outside without me. He’s frightened here. He chose to come after me, and now he’s discovered that he can’t live where I do.” Another gulp of wine. She would be too drunk to stand when this conversation ended.

  “So,” the Queen said, tracing the stones inlaid on a box of writing sticks, “he may simply need to be in a smaller, quieter place. Somewhere that will not frighten him.”

  “Maybe,” Lanara said. “Yes.”

  Galha stood and walked over to one of the drawers. She reached up and pulled it open, lifted out a stack of parchment. “Let’s see,” she said, spreading the sheets out in front of Lanara, “if we can find somewhere that will serve you both. A place where you can do my work and he can feel more secure.”

  Lanara watched the Queen bend over the parchment, moving fingers and eyes across the shapes there. “Why?” Lanara asked after a moment. “Why do this for me? For us.”

  Galha looked up at her. “Any wise ruler knows that an unhappy subject is an unproductive one.” She smiled. “Also, it is what any mother would do for a beloved child. Now, see—there is a posting about to become available somewhere here. Malhan, come and tell me if I am right about this. . . .”

  When Lanara returned to her house, hours after she had left it, she found Ladhra hunched over a pile of parchment. “You look like your mother,” Lanara said from the doorway.

  Ladhra grimaced. “No, thank you,” she said, letting go of the parchment’s ends.

  Lanara ignored her friend’s bitterness. “More love letters?” she said as she picked up a lynanyn from a bowl on the table. She skinned it with her fingers and squeezed it. Blue juice poured over her hands into a small bowl.

  “No,” Ladhra said, and sighed. “Though I almost wish they were. My mother, wisest of all the queens, has decided that I should familiarize myself with the writings of my great-great-great grandmother. Or, more accurately, my great-great-great grandmother’s consort-scribe.” She drew her palms across the parchments, and they curled away from her.

  “No change?” Lanara asked, glancing at the bedchamber door, and Ladhra shook her head. They went together into the other room, where Ladhra stood and Lanara sat, the bowl balanced on the bed beside her.

  “Nara.”

  Lanara eased her hand behind Nellyn’s head and held it up. The juice dribbled into his mouth, and she saw him swallow. His eyes were moving beneath their lids.

  “Nara, he needs to go home.”

  She laid his head back down and wiped his lips and chin with a cloth. “Your mother doesn’t think so,” she said, and continued quickly, before Ladhra could reply. “And anyway, he can’t. He isn’t one of them any more. He told me they wouldn’t have him, and he wouldn’t want them to.”

  Ladhra knelt beside her. Lanara felt her gaze, though she looked only at Nellyn. “He said that before he got sick. And he isn’t one of us either—you know that.”

  Lanara turned away from him. “Does it matter? I love him.”

  “It does matter. You’re too different. Let him go back to his people and recover his strength. You’ll soon find another love here, among your own people.”

  “Ah, yes,” Lanara said, rising, striding around the bed to the windows and back again. “A Queensman—like Baldhron? Is that the kind of love you’d have me find?”

  “No. Perhaps! I don’t know—you’re angry, you’re confusing me—let’s go outside and—”

  “Baldhron?” Nellyn’s voice was soft and very deep, but both women started. “Who is . . . Baldhron?” He was smiling at Lanara, and his eyes were clear and steady.

  “Oh, Nellyn,” she said, and knelt by him as Ladhra’s footsteps faded on the stones outside.

  Today, as darkness came to the city and the air grew cool, Queen Galha met Lanara, daughter of Salanne, before the royal stables. The Princess Ladhra was also in attendance, to wish her dearest friend well. The Queen made Lanara a gift of a wagon and a brown mare, so that the shonyn Nellyn would not be further weakened by riding.

  Lanara was also given her royal orders, sealed with the Queen’s mark: she is to travel east to Fane, where she will assume responsibility of the signal tower there. Her journey too will be of importance, for she will record details of the places through which she travels and the peoples with whom she has contact. Although these eastern lands are part of the Queensrealm, many of them remain little-known and are manned by only a few Queensfolk. Lanara’s writings will deepen our understanding and thereby strengthen our place in history. For this reason, Queen Galha has commanded Lanara to journey slowly and linger wherever she wishes.

  The Queen kissed Lanara upon both cheeks. Princess Ladhra neither spoke to Lanara nor embraced her. Lanara took up the reins, and the wagon left the palace grounds. The Queen climbed to her tallest balcony and from there, many minutes later, witnessed the quenching of the gatekeepers’ lanterns. Only then, when she was certain Lanara’s wagon had left the city, did Queen Galha turn to other matters.

  They rode down through the Queenscity as darkness fell. The wagon lurched and jolted; Nellyn clenched his teeth and clutched the seat until his nails bent. He glanced at the brown horse in front of them, then slowly upward, past lantern-lit
windows and the shadows of fountains and courtyard walls. The sky was filling with stars, though the moon had not yet risen. He wondered whether there would be a moon at all. He had been inside too long, beneath sheets and ceiling, so far from the night.

  “Tell me again,” he said, hoping Lanara would smile. She had been silent and grave since they had left the stables. He supposed this was because Ladhra had not spoken to her, or even looked at her. He was not entirely certain that this was the reason, however: Queensfolk emotions continued to confuse him. “Tell me again about where we are going.”

  Lanara did smile, and he kissed the skin below her ear so that she would laugh. “Fane,” she said, twisting to catch his lips with hers. “A much smaller place than this,” she went on, straightening to look ahead, still smiling, “but we won’t be living in the city itself. We’ll live in a signal tower, and it’ll be perfect: high above the city, but only a short walk away if we need something. It’ll be so quiet.”

  “We’ll see the end of the river together after all,” she had said after he had woken from his long fever-sleep, eight days ago. “We’ll see the ocean. If you wish it.” He had thought of her by her Sarhenna River that had had no name for him, as the lynanyn trees swam with sinking light and the wise ones gathered on their stones. Maarenn would be waiting for him, her feet already in the water. Blue curtains would be stirring, and blue-black hair, and the fruit in the river.

  “I do,” he had said. “I do wish it.” He knew the constancy of fear and sorrow now. Better to feel them far away from this city of towers and voices and water that was bound.

  Spirals of bats darkened the sky above Luhr’s walls. Nellyn heard the blurring of their wings and cries, and he felt Lanara touch his knee. The double doors swung open before them, and Queensguards raised their hands as the brown horse drew the wagon out into the silence of the desert.

  Leish could not look at the land.

  He had been listening to it, though, for days, weeks, longer. Its song had swelled like the sea, buffeting him as he lay at the bottom of the boat. “Imagine, Leish,” he heard Mallesh say once, the words nearly lost beneath the song, “if these boats had not been built. Where, then, would you have cowered?”

  Leish had wanted to cry, “I would not have come. I should not have come”—but he had no voice. And if he had spoken those words to Mallesh, he would have shrunk more deeply into the darkness at the bottom of the boat. For the singing of that far place was in him, and he would have followed it alone, swimming, if Mallesh had not ordered these boats and this journey.

  Leish did not know how many boats there were. When he had looked out of his own, early in the voyage, he had seen a shifting mass of them, dark as birds on the waves. Selkesh swam as well, skimming beneath the ocean surface, surging ahead of the boats and circling back to rest as others swam. Leish had swum once, so deep that the light had vanished, and huge eyeless fish drifted past him. He had heard underwater shelves, molten fissures, plants whose roots echoed into the rock below the water. But even then he had heard sun on stone and towers that pierced the sky.

  He knew, dimly, that the moon had waxed and waned. He heard islands, and saw them days later, raucous with trees and beasts. Other selkesh heard these places, but as the boats travelled on, Leish was the only one who heard the other land. “How far?” Mallesh would demand, leaning so close to Leish that he could feel breath on his neck. Once, when Leish had answered him, Mallesh had rested his hand on Leish’s back. A warm, lingering pressure—but when Leish had rolled over to look at him, Mallesh had drawn away.

  They were not alone on the water. One day sea serpents lifted their heads and tails from the water, and the selkesh cried out in fear as sunlight leapt from golden scales—but the great beasts looked, only, and sank back beneath in silence. Fish leapt and darted, and porpoises, and other creatures the selkesh had never seen before, whose songs were new.

  And then one day Mallesh said, “Do you hear them?”

  Leish was sitting up, his eyes closed against the midday sun. Cloth-draped planks provided some shade, but he felt sunlight on his legs, burning them dry.

  “Yes,” he said. The song of the yllosh was like that of the selkesh, but twisted, with sounds he did not recognize. He opened his eyes. Mallesh was leaning over the side, staring down.

  “They’re getting closer. What will we do?” Leish thought, I should enjoy his fear, or at least share it. He was far away from the boat and the sea and his brother.

  “Listen to them,” he said, and then they were there, rows and rows emerging from the water, stirring it into waves. Leish dragged himself up beside Mallesh and looked at their blue and green scales, their white eyes, their web-joined fingers. He tried to hear beneath the scales and bone, to listen to the blood that would be like his despite the centuries between them; but he saw and heard only strangers.

  “Stop there!” Mallesh called as the yllosh drew closer to the boats. All of them stopped, except for one. She swam slowly on until she was directly below Mallesh and Leish.

  “Why do you enter our waters?” Her voice was thick, threaded with hissing, and the words themselves were odd. Older, thought Leish, as Mallesh’s fingers clawed at the wood.

  “We are journeying across the sea,” Mallesh said. “We seek to fulfill our destiny in a new land. Do not hinder us.”

  Her white eyes were unblinking even when they slid from Mallesh’s face to Leish’s. “You will not enter our deep places,” she said, and Mallesh snorted.

  “Those stifling underwater lands? We would not want to. We left those behind long ago.” He paused. Leish felt him straighten. “Do you know who we are?”

  “Of course,” she replied, bubbling, hissing. “Why else forbid you entry to our places? Nasran-slaves.”

  Leish saw the blur of Mallesh’s arm and lunged for it. “No,” Leish said quietly, and Mallesh’s hand shook so that the knife fell with a clatter. “Do not hurt them. They would surround us, overturn our boats. Think only of our goal.” He did not recognize his own voice.

  “You are fortunate, yllosh-woman,” Mallesh said at last. “We will do you no harm now. But when we are established in our new land, I will return to these waters and find you.”

  “Your new land,” she repeated, and began to turn away. “You were fools to leave the golden waters of our ancestors, and you are fools still. Will you hunt for land until no land is yours?”

  She did not wait for an answer. Scales flashed as the yllosh disappeared silently, leaving only the gentlest of ripples. The selkesh boats bobbed beneath the sun.

  “On!” Mallesh shouted, standing. “Faster! On to the western land that awaits us!”

  A great cry rose from the other boats—and they did go faster; they sped into the setting sun, day after day, until all of them could hear the land’s song, and Leish was nearly deaf with it.

  “There!” he heard Mallesh call one morning, and for the last time Leish shrank against the boards so that he too was salt-rimed wood. “Leish—there it is! Stand with me. . . .”

  Leish lay still. When the boat ground onto pebbled shore, he cried out his own song, beginning and lost.

  BOOK TWO

  THIRTEEN

  Alea met Aldron when they were children, on the great plain bordered to the west by autumn-coloured woods. Alilan caravans had been gathering for days, and the tall grass had already been flattened by wagons and horses and the fires of countless families. Children shrieked and ran among the wagons, reunited with friends they only saw twice a year. The young Tellers did not play with these other children. They sat around fires on the outskirts of the camps, listening, as always—separate and studious and seemingly older, as always.

  Desert’s red sand—large, far, shining. Oasis pool—black water, tall green palm trees—

  “Enough, girl!”

  Alea blinked. Her Telling images vanished, and she saw only Old Aldira’s scowl.

  “
Dull. Flat.” The Teller was pacing, waving a hand at the smoke that was rising from her fire. “I always say the same things, and you never heed me. If a Telling does not enrapture, it has failed.”

  “But we can only Tell the way things look,” Aliser said as Alea swallowed and tried not to cry. He was frowning, which made the red freckles on his nose seem to widen. “How can a Telling be . . . enrapturing if we just—”

  “Please, Aliser,” Old Aldira said in a tired voice. She knelt across from the two children, her fingers kneading the white fabric of her skirt. “Your defense of Alea is, as usual, endearing but misplaced. It does not matter that you are only able to Tell appearance. If there is no passion at the beginning, there will never be any. I have taught more Tellers than anyone else, and I can swear to the truth of this. Alea, you will try again—but now Aliser will have his turn. Perhaps he will succeed.”

  Aliser smiled at Alea before he began. She smiled back, because his eyes were so bright and encouraging and because it would hurt his feelings if she did not.

  Sand around the oasis red and sparkling, up and down like frozen water. Oasis pool dark with shadows of palms, tall trees—

  —that rustle in the hot wind, though the water beneath is still. The wind is on your faces, blowing sand that stings your cheeks. You close your eyes. A horse whinnies, a baby cries, a woman begins to sing. And then you feel hoof beats throbbing against the soles of your bare feet, and you draw your dagger and it is cool and smooth as silk in your hand.

  Alea opened her eyes as the strange voice echoed into silence. She put shaking hands to her cheeks, which felt sand-raked and hot.