Mallesh leaned on the spear. Something would have to be done with the body—something different than what he had done with all the selkesh bodies he had found here, after he had returned alone from the peaks. Those he had dragged to the place where he thought the burying trees would have been, before; a place upriver, at a bend where the earth had been soft and deep. These could not be true selkesh burials, for there were no hearth and gathering pool waters to bathe the dead ones in; nor were there kin trees whose roots would encircle and sing. But Mallesh had hacked at the hard, cracked ground beneath the ash until he had hollowed out an enormous hole. He thought it must have taken him days to dig and days more to cover again, but he had not noticed this time passing. He had laid them all within, as gently as possible. He had placed his parents side by side on the top; their faces had been the last he had seen. When he had finished, he had hauled large stones to the mound and arranged them above, so that the bodies would not be disturbed by wind or the burrowing of beasts.
He would not bury Aldron. Too much effort, now that Mallesh was a weaker man, and in any case, Aldron had not been selkesh. There would have to be another, different way. Mallesh held the spear in front of him and spun the shaft slowly between his fingers. When his hands stilled and felt the warming wood, he knew what he would do.
Leish felt light. He had thought that he would follow the spear up, his body just a wind, but he had remained on the earth. He was there still, though he was dizzier every moment. Dizzy, giddy, made of air, even though his land’s song was the same as it had been before Aldron had climbed the gathering pool stone.
It’s wrong, he thought, grinding his fingernails into the skin of his palms as if discomfort would return him to himself. Wrong to feel such joy when nothing has changed—but something had. He had, as Aldron had met his gaze at last, and held it. As the spear had left his hand. Aldron had not looked at the spear; his eyes had remained on Leish, so wide and vivid that Leish could see them even now. Wrong, Leish thought again, and drew a deep, new breath.
When Mallesh walked back toward him, Leish rose. He swayed a bit, and grasped at words he might be required to say—but Mallesh went past him, to the side of the cave. He pulled a length of driftwood from the top of the tall stack that stood there and carried it back to the gathering pool stone. He came back for more, and more; only when he lifted Aldron’s body and laid it on the pile did Leish understand, and move.
The driftwood was so smooth that it did not splinter, when it was grasped and tugged, but it was also difficult to hold, and Leish dropped several pieces before he could carry any. He found, once he began, that his dizziness had no effect on his strength; he seemed stronger, if anything, balancing the wood and throwing it. It was because of him that they finished as quickly as they did. The sky was darkening already—so early, as it had in the Queensrealm winter. Mallesh bent, gasping, over the bottom of the pile. It was Leish who struck the flint, hard, until sparks wheeled and lit.
The flames spread swiftly. Leish and Mallesh retreated to the cave when the heat grew too intense. By then it was dark, and Leish was ravenous. He ate two treerats that Mallesh had cooked the day before, and drank four handfuls of black water. Mallesh went into the cave after the fire had been burning for a few hours, but Leish stayed outside. I’ll never be tired again, he thought. He watched the fire light this place that had been Nasranesh, and he heard fire- and landsongs twining, and it was almost beautiful. He saw and heard the blaze lower, sometime after dawn. When Mallesh emerged from the cave, Leish was watching fresh ash swirl over his feet.
“I’m not tired,” he said to Mallesh, to see if the hardness of his voice would weigh him down a little—but it did not.
“Maybe, but you should still sleep.” Mallesh’s words rippled like water against Leish’s ears: loud and soft, soft and loud.
Leish did not sleep for many days. He sifted through the remnants of the fire and passed the largest chunks of ash through his fingers. He ate and drank every few hours, and ran for hours more, up the old riverbed and back again. The world bent around him. He was the fixed centre, and everything else pulsed and flowed, toward him and away.
“Swim,” he heard Mallesh say one day. “Your skin is unwell.”
Leish looked down and could not see his body. “No,” he said, his tongue sluggish as the rest of him flew. He knew he would be light and strong as long as he did not enter the sea. The water would drag at him until he sank; here, among rocks and dirt, he would not. He did not know how to explain this to Mallesh, and even if he did, Mallesh would not understand. It was wrong; it was truth.
He waited for dawn every day, and every day the light and land were more blurred. One dawn was speckled with darkness, and Leish blinked, not expecting to see anything clearer—but soon the specks were larger, and soon after that they were clear. He felt Mallesh step up beside him, heard him draw a sharp breath. “They’ve come.” Mallesh’s water-words clung to Leish’s skin, skin he could feel just a bit, though he tried not to. “They saw the fire.”
Leish sat down, his dizziness turned suddenly to nausea. Mallesh took several steps away from him, but Leish could not move. Mallesh turned to look at him. “Come with me, to meet them.” Leish dragged his eyes from his brother to the selkesh who were coming from north and east. He could already see their jutting bones and pale seamed skin, and the cloth that hung from them because it was too ragged to tie. As he saw these things, the world stopped its pulsing.
“Come,” Mallesh said again, and his voice was so loud in the stillness that Leish whimpered. He did not rise. Mallesh walked out alone, and then he ran, and so did all the others. Leish heard their words. They rose and spilled, and their edges gouged his skin.
They gathered that day, and the next, and the next. Days and days of returning. The sea frothed with them and the ground was covered. Mallesh went among them and spoke. Leish could hear this even from deep within the cave, and he was too weak to blot it out with the singing of a different place. He slept and sweated as far away from the crowd as he could drag himself. When he was not sleeping, he collected fossil stones and laid them out end to end until there were three circles of them, and him in the middle. Mallesh brought him food and water. Several times he tried to pour the water onto Leish’s body, but Leish cried out and slapped his brother’s hands away.
One day Leish heard footsteps that were not Mallesh’s. He remembered hearing Aldron walking down the tunnel, and for a moment he thought it might be him. Leish would not look. He lay wrapped in his own rot yet again, and closed his eyes.
“Leish.” He would not look. A prison—always a prison, and it was only his sickened mind that filled it thus. Soon a Queensguard would force him to his feet and this voice, so clear and close, would dissolve. Or perhaps it would be Baldhron, come to lead him out—and Leish would still be too weak to kill him. But the voice came again, yet, so that he felt breath on his cheek—and he felt hands as well, stroking his closed eyes and the line of his neck. Arms came around him from behind, and knees bent in against his knees. He was in Ladhra’s tower again, holding her, singing against her skin—only it was he who was being held now, and a woman’s voice that murmured. He rolled from his side to his back. A hand traced the length of his face. He opened his eyes, though he knew he would not believe what they showed him.
Her face was above his. No long black hair trailed down over him; it was cropped short. He looked at it, and at the livid purple scar that twisted out from beneath it, down her neck. He touched the scar, which was puckered and smooth. She drew in her breath and pressed her lips together, and he touched them too. He sat up very slowly, so that his cracked skin would not crack wider, and she sat with him. They looked at each other for a time without touching.
“Well,” Dallia said at last, “we certainly make a striking pair”—and after a steady, aching moment he laughed and reached for her.
FIFTY-THREE
Nellyn woke in daylight. This w
as not unusual: he had not been sleeping soundly since the rains. Today, though, it was not just restlessness that woke him. He lay and listened to it as it grew louder. He thought that he might stay in his hut until the air was quiet again, but soon there were sounds from the village too, and they all drew him out, shivering, onto the hot earth.
Since Galha had summoned Lanara back to Luhr, so long ago, two Queensfolk had taught the shonyn small ones. These two were coming down the ridge, laughing when they slithered sideways. They were both young men, both loud and cheerful and apparently unconcerned about disturbing the shonyn sleeping time. Nellyn had heard them before, shouting as they went down to the river, and once he had seen them shooting arrows at lynanyn and slapping each other on the back when they brought one down. Today they seemed particularly exuberant. They ran among the shonyn houses to the riverbank. One of them stood on a sitting stone and peered downriver with a hand shading his eyes. Nellyn watched him point and heard the other Queensman cry out something unintelligible. The two arranged themselves side by side in front of the sitting stones. They stood very straight, and did not speak again; these things alone told Nellyn that the vessel being rowed upriver was not just another boat that would leave messages and food, or pass the village by.
Only when the sounds of oars and timbers were directly beside him did Nellyn turn. This was the same ship that had sailed past him through the rain—but now at least twenty Queensfolk stood on its deck, not merely the three who had huddled there before. The wood shone, as did the blue and green of the sails, which flapped but did not fill. Water and wind were so calm that the ship slowed as soon as the oars were drawn up. It eased to a halt before the anchor chain was even taut.
A rowboat came down, and a rope ladder. Nellyn stepped back so that he felt the hot clay of his hut against his skin and tunic. He ran his palms over it, pressed down where the clay was roughest—something solid that might bear him up as shonyn time tugged. I am older, he thought. This is not the boat that brought her before, and she is not here now. A Queenswoman slipped down the ladder and into the rowboat. Another Queensship, a true shonyn would have thought, and another Queenswoman rowing to our shore; these things are always the same.The two Queensmen waded into the river and pulled themselves into the rowboat, and one of them took up the oars. Nellyn watched them reach the boat and climb. They vanished among the Queensfolk at the rail and did not reappear until the shadows were much longer on the sand. The same Queenswoman rowed them back. Nellyn waited for the men to go back to their ridge, and one did turn that way—but the other did not. The anchor surged out of the water and long oars dipped, but Nellyn looked only at the Queensman who was walking toward him.
“Nellyn?” the man said when he stood before the hut.
“Yes.” The Queenstongue word emerged effortlessly, as if he had spoken this language often since his return. As if he had spoken at all.
“I am Rilhen. I bear a message for you, from the Queen.”
Nellyn took the folded parchment Rilhen held out to him. “Thank you,” he said as he thought, A message from Galha—I do not understand. . . . The Queensman lingered. Nellyn saw that he wished to say more, but also that he wished not to. At last he nodded at Nellyn, smiled a bit uncertainly and left him.
The parchment was warm, as if it had been left in the sunlight or clasped tightly in other hands. Nellyn felt its warmth before he looked at it. He saw writing, upside down. He turned the parchment so that he could read it. He understood two things as he blinked down at the letters: they spelled his name, and Lanara had written them. He glanced away and back again. He lifted the parchment so close to his face that the marks blurred—but they were still hers.
He walked slowly to the plants, which the rain had made fiercely green. He placed the folded parchment on the ground. He dipped his head into the shade of the plants so that he could not see the river or the huts or the tents, only his upturned wrists, the blue-brown of their skin, darker still where the blood flowed beneath. He breathed and looked and could find no stillness.
There was another breathing. It was quite soft, but he heard it in the spaces between his own breaths. He twisted his body around and saw Maarenn standing behind him.
“Gathering companion,” he said, “it is not dusk. Why do you wake?”
He had sometimes thought, in the weeks following the rains, that he had dreamed her in his hut, against his skin—but now he met her steady, bright gaze and knew that he had not. “The ship is noisy,” she said. “And you are also awake.” She paused. “I see the Queensman come to you. I see him give you this.” Her eyes shifted, no longer bright.
“Yes.”
“Is it. . . .” She frowned at the parchment, then at the plants. “It is from her. The Queenswoman who makes you leave and return.”
He picked up the message, held it in his palm. “Yes. I do not know what words are inside.”
“What words do you want?”
He stood up. “Maarenn,” he said carefully, “you should not speak with such heat—it is not—”
“What words do you want?” she said again, and he saw tears in her eyes and turned away from them.
“I do not know. I know nothing of what I want or do not want.” He felt the heat beginning in his own throat and did not wait to quell it or slow his words. “I am looking for a place and cannot find one. I think I am mad to stay here, where my people shun me, but I stay. Part of my looking is my staying. That is all I know, every day until now, but I think every day of change.”
“And if she offers change? If she summons you to her great city in the sand?”
Nellyn breathed until the warmth within him was gone. “That great city is not my place. This I do know.”
Maarenn matched her breath to his before she spoke again. “But if she says to live with her somewhere else?”
“No,” he said, and again, “I do not know.” He had struggled for answers before on this bank. He remembered how frustrated and amused Lanara had been, listening to his answers, or his silences.
“Do not open it,” Maarenn said. “Or do—but stay. You say your people shun you, but I do not. Stay with me. This is our place.”
He could not hear the ship now; he heard only the river flowing, and the silver leaves hissing when the wind rose. He laid his fingertips on the back of Maarenn’s right hand and she turned it up. The lines of her palm were so deep, so distinct, like the markings of a writing stick on parchment. “I know how I change in her world,” he said, “and now how I change in mine. These changes are like a river that cannot flow. There is no river for me, Maarenn, anywhere that I see.”
She pulled her hand away from his. She said his name once, again, and then she ran from him. He could not watch her go. He sat down and unfolded the parchment.
Galha is dead, and I am Queen in Luhr. I cannot love you now. Perhaps this no longer matters to you. I am sorry, if it does—but my sense of duty must be stronger than regret or indeed any other emotion.
When he had finished reading, he rose. The parchment fell from his fingers as he walked back to his hut. He lay down inside, rolled onto his belly and bent his arms over his head. He slept after a time, as the wind shifted his curtain and carried the last of the sunlight in to warm him.
Six months passed. Nellyn measured them as he had not measured the ones before Queen Lanara’s ship came. He counted the first few with a dull, aching interest, a feeling of dipping one foot back into Queensfolk time. Then the interest turned to need, and he began to mark full moons on the wall of his hut with lynanyn juice. When the sixth circle had been daubed, he sat back on his heels and stared at it, sucking the juice from his fingertip. Six moons—but he had no idea what season it was. It is important to me, he thought. I must know what colour the leaves are in that town on the plain. I must know if Nissa is walking yet. This is my desire now.
That night he slunk around the huddle of shonyn houses while the wise ones spoke their
words of unchange and the flatboats lapped across the water. He walked quickly up the sand ridge, his head tucked against his chest as if he were not already invisible. He stopped in front of the Queensfolk living tent, which was dark. There had been a light within until about midnight; Nellyn had waited another hour just to be certain that the Queensmen would be asleep. The teaching tent had been dark since dusk, when the small ones had filed out and down, to words they understood. Nellyn stood for awhile with his hand on the flap of the teaching tent. The canvas was sand-roughened and cool, and it made him remember so much that he had not thought about in such a long time. Memories come from objects, he thought, and objects become memories. He closed his eyes. Once I would have thought “or” instead of “and.” A Queensfolk dividing: or, and, yes, no, must be, must not. These words used to pain me. He took a breath, then lifted the door flap and slipped inside.
The two Queensmen were sloppy; Nellyn saw this even before his eyes could tell him exactly what he was seeing. Leaning shadows rose from the ground and from the table: the writing trays, which he had expected, but also stacks of parchment, slippery with rolled ends, and long thin boxes that had not been here before. The carpet was the same; the weak light from the open tent flap showed him this. He walked over the carpet, which was very smooth in the middle where so many small ones had sat upon it. He opened the bound sheaf of parchment that lay on the table, beside the writing trays. Lanara had sent for the binding materials from Luhr; she had been disgusted by the disarray of the papers that had been left for her, and determined to set them in order. He angled the book so that he could read the first few words on the upper page.
Queenswrit Eve in Luhr and other civilized parts of the realm. All has been the same as ever here, since the copper trader found us three weeks ago.
Nellyn set the book flat again. The copper trader had arrived with clamour and jests that Nellyn had heard from his hut. Three weeks ago, yes—that much he could calculate. And now Queenswrit Eve, which Lanara had told him came late-winter. Snow is hissing against the shutters of the inn, and of the tower, he thought. The grass on the plain is bent and buried. The moss handprint is yellow-brown on the cliff. The sea is white on top and black beneath. The icemounts are singing.
The Silences of Home Page 52