Gulien blinked again, reaching for memory, for knowledge, for clarity. But there was no clarity, and memory fractured as he reached after it.
“Not through the kephalos,” Tanothlan said severely. “Let that go, Gulien. Listen to me. Let it go. Let it wait. This is not the time.” She paused, looking at him with a hard focus. Then she repeated, “Let it go, I say! Your memory of having mastered it is not your own; your memory misleads you. You have lost the surety of your self. You know perfectly well that you must not touch the kephalos again until you regain that surety.”
For a moment that made no sense. Then it did. Memory cracked and shifted. . . . He wanted to reach after solidity, but there was nothing solid within reach.
“Gulien!” said Tanothlan. “You will remember who you are.”
She sounded very certain. Gulien clung to her certainty, since he had none of his own. He pressed his hands over his face, then held them out and stared at them. They were his hands. Too young and too bony as they were, he claimed them, tried to recognize them, reached after any memory that knew them as his. He swayed, but caught himself before he fell. Memory came momentarily into focus, then scattered again. He said in a voice he almost recognized as his, “Help me. Tanothlan. I don’t know what’s real.”
“Everything you remember is real,” Tanothlan promised him. “But not everything you remember is your own memory. Your name is Gulien. You have few years of your own to remember; thus you find older memories compelling, though they are not rightfully yours. But those memories are fragmentary. Yours are whole. Your name is Gulien. Look around you. Look! That is your sister, Oressa. You remember her.”
He looked, and thought he did. Oressa—of course, Oressa. Her expression was urgent; she needed him to be all right. He knew her. She was part of his own life. His memories began to settle into place, becoming at last distinct from other memories that had never been his. He closed his eyes, shuddering, then looked back at the Kieba. Tanothlan. He knew that Tanothlan had become the Kieba and lost her own name. He remembered that. He remembered her as a child, as a girl, as a woman; he remembered her as an ancillary, learning to raise up her aspect . . . or part of him remembered that. But now he remembered being Gulien, too, who had not even been born until the Kieba, this Kieba, was already old. Yet the memories of his own life, short as it had been so far, carried a deeper sense of reality than his . . . other memories.
“I was in Gontai,” he said. “I was in Kansai, when the white city burned under the red mist and died. But that wasn’t me, was it?”
“No,” the Kieba said gently. “Though it is a true memory, it is not yours.”
“It was you. It’s your memory. I was . . . before that . . . I defeated the poison rain in Gerranan. That wasn’t me, either. But I remember . . . Luenuthlas challenged me while I was distracted, as Bherijda challenged you. He found an aspect of Ininoreh and raised the attribute of fire. . . . Who was I then?”
“That was Manian Semai. You remember him clearly, I know.”
Gulien laughed, a desperate little sound. He remembered that his name was Manian Semai. Had been. Was. No. Had been.
The Kieba said gently, “You have most of your own memory, Gulien. In time you will learn to sort out the memories that are rightfully yours from those that you have . . . acquired. I believe you will. I wish I could tell you I am certain. I am not certain. Gulien, I do not believe that anyone ever did before what you did for me.”
Those memories, too, were confused. He slid backward and forward in time, trying to remember . . . then shook his head violently and asked, in his confusion, “What . . . what did I do?”
“You remember. King Osir struck against me, against this body, and succeeded, in one sense. Parianasaku’s Capture took in the whole of my remaining self and closed around me. In my absence, Magister Ghemat mastered the kephalos. He tried to reduce me to disembodied memory, but I was held safe by Parianasaku’s artifact. Then you opened it and released me. Only I had no living body to serve as my anchor, so I could not reestablish my identity. So you gave me the use of your living mind and body. Thus I regained the surety of self necessary to resume mastery of the kephalos and defeat all illegitimate claimants. You remember all this.”
Gulien nodded slightly. He did. Yes. That wasn’t his other memory, Manian’s memory. That was his. He did remember. He shuddered, not sure whether he would have done it if he’d known it would lead to this confusion of memory and identity.
“Then I inhabited Magister Ghemat’s mind and body, since I needed a living anchor and he was available. My awareness is not here.” The Kieba touched the breast of the golem body she wore. “It is in the living body of Ghemat.”
Gulien nodded. He thought that he should have found that horrifying, that perhaps he soon would find it horrifying, but horror seemed beyond him at the moment. And after all, Magister Ghemat had tried to destroy the Kieba.
She added gravely, “This is a temporary measure, for his identity will struggle to reestablish itself, and as the living body is rightfully his, eventually it will succeed. But by this exigency you will gain time, Gulien. You must have time in yourself. In your self. This will give you that time.” The Kieba touched his shoulder and waited for him to look at her. “I did not even lose the thread of my work in Gontai. You gave me that chance, Gulien.”
Gulien was fiercely glad of that, and knew that the fierceness came from Manian, who had for centuries owned the duty of stopping plagues. But he was almost sure that some of the gladness was his own, too. He took a slow breath and straightened his shoulders. “I’m—it’s all right. I know who I am. I think I do.” He took another breath. “I do know who I am.”
“Yes,” said the Kieba. She lowered her hand and stepped back. “You will recover your self, in time. In time you may try once more to master the kephalos. When you do, I think you will succeed.”
Gulien shook his head, not in disbelief or refusal, but because he could hardly imagine the clear surety of self that mastery of the kephalos required . . . and yet he could remember exactly that. From several points of view.
“While we wait for you to recover, I think we might investigate the recent work of Tamaristan magisters. I surmise they have learned too much and understood too little.”
Gulien felt almost amused by the idea of challenging the magisters of Tamarist. The amusement was because of Manian, he realized. The Kieba said he was like Manian Semai, but that wasn’t exactly true. Manian would have enjoyed challenging the gathered opposition of the Tamaristan magisters. Gulien shook his head and didn’t even know if he meant the gesture for the Kieba or for the part of his memory and mind that rightfully belonged to Manian.
“Gulien?” asked the Kieba.
“I don’t—I can’t—I don’t think you can trust me to help you with that. With anything. I’m not him!”
“No. You are yourself . . . plus a little. I think I can very well trust you with everything. Not immediately, of course. But as your memories settle and your primary and secondary identities become established and reach a balance.”
Gulien shook his head again, but again, it was not exactly disagreement.
“I might well guess the names of some of the artifacts the Tamaristan magisters have found. But so might you, I think.”
“Yes . . .” Gulien was struck by the unsettling feeling that this might be true. He almost thought he knew how he might pull their teeth, figuratively speaking. As long as they were using the artifacts he thought they were. He could have named them out: half a dozen lingering artifacts that Maranajdis might have used to defeat all his brothers and establish his own power in Tamarist.
This knowledge was most uncomfortable.
“So,” said the Kieba, watching him closely. “A year, perhaps, until Magister Ghemat recovers ascendency within his mind and body. A little more, a little less. That will be time enough, Gulien.”
Gulien took a deep breath. “All right. All right. Maybe . . .” He took another breath, pressing his hands to hi
s eyes, trying to remember who he was and sort through memories that were his and not his. Then he dropped his hands in sudden realization. “Carastind,” he said.
“You are not now fit to be king of Carastind; nor can Carastind wait without a king while you recover yourself. Your memory will not be sufficiently your own for some time. And it does not matter, anyway. You cannot be your father’s heir, because you must be my heir.”
“No. No, I know that. I see that. But—” He turned to Oressa. “Father—”
She was pale, but she said immediately, “I’m sorry, Gulien.”
Gulien stared at her. He understood, but he said nothing because he did not want to understand. To him, at this moment, it seemed one loss too many.
“Father died stopping Bherijda,” his sister told him, her voice soft. “He died protecting me. I don’t know . . . I think he meant to destroy Bherijda, but surely he didn’t know . . . Except Bherijda’s artifact was stronger than Parianasaku’s Capture. But Father saved me, and then I killed Bherijda, and the Kieba turned Bherijda’s artifact to dust. . . .”
Gulien rubbed his face. He could hardly believe their father was truly gone. Even more completely gone than to any ordinary death, if he had been destroyed by Tonkaïan’s Resolve. He said slowly, “I doubt Father thought his artifact the stronger. He would never . . . He would never have let Bherijda balk him, never have let him have the victory. And after all, you were his daughter.”
“He hated me!”
“You hated him,” Gulien said wearily. “You never understood each other. He wasn’t . . . fond. But you were his. He would never have let Bherijda hurt you, especially not after . . . after what happened to me. And I think he might have realized, finally, that you were as much a Madalin as he. Only better at hiding what you were.”
“Maybe,” Oressa said, in a tone that said she didn’t believe any of this for a moment but wasn’t going to argue.
“He was a good king. Until the end.”
“Well, right at the end, he was a good king,” Oressa admitted reluctantly. “He did stop Bherijda. But you would be a good king too. Better than him.”
“No. Not anymore.”
Oressa hesitated. Then she said, not arguing, “I think I followed most of what the Kieba said. So I think I understand. It’s all right, Gulien. It is. Or it will be. You never wanted to be king anyway. Not really. But I don’t know what to do without you. They won’t accept me as queen regnant. Well, some people might, but . . . I don’t know. This isn’t Illian, where queens rule alone.”
Gulien unexpectedly found himself smiling. He took his sister’s hands in his. “Oressa. You will find a solution. You always do, and it’s always clever. Go back to Caras. Straighten everything out. By the time you do that, you’ll know what to do next.”
“Ha,” said Oressa, pleased but not convinced. “You’re sure you won’t come? For just a little while, maybe?”
Gulien flinched at the thought. “I can’t.”
“In time you will find yourself able to walk even the streets of your youth where people knew you,” the Kieba promised him. Then, as though satisfied that everything was settled, she turned to the farming family that owned this house and this farm. Both the man and his wife were present—the man big and steady and quiet, his wife worried but not, so far as Gulien could see, very much frightened by any of her uncommon visitors.
The Kieba told them, “I have put right what I can. I have provided good timber and stone and golems to rebuild what has been torn down. Though I do not know whether you will wish to stay now in the shadow of my mountain.”
“Shall we expect your enemies to come again?” the farmer asked grimly. He squared his shoulders and faced her directly. And the farmwife asked, not in the least frightened of the Kieba, “Shall we expect our children to be crushed between you and your enemies?”
The Kieba sighed. “I failed your trust,” she admitted. “I did not know I had enemies who had discovered enough of the old gods’ power to challenge me and yet not enough of the gods’ wisdom to know why they should not. It was my duty to know, but I did not. I assure you, I will not be taken unaware a second time.”
The farmer gave her a hard stare, plainly not convinced.
“It wasn’t her fault,” Gulien told the man. “It truly wasn’t. Their power built swiftly, with the discovery of only a mere handful of artifacts. One can’t predict such things.”
The farmer’s expression shifted from closed toward uncertain, though he still looked angry.
“It was my fault,” said the Kieba. “I should have been paying attention to the magisters of Tamarist.”
“There are always magisters, or men like them. You can’t spend every moment watching for the dead gods’ tools to reappear in the hands of men. I know that. So do you.”
The Kieba shrugged, not quite a concession. She said to the farmer and his wife, “May you and yours flourish, whether you stay here or go elsewhere. If you stay, you will be most welcome. I like to see your family prosper here by my mountain. You remind me of the wide world and of my life before I became the Kieba of the mountain of memory.”
Then she said to Oressa, “I owe you a debt too, Princess Oressa, and I would offer you my help now, to reclaim Caras and establish peace throughout Carastind—but I think you will not need it.”
Oressa looked half reassured by this and half wary. She gave a little nod. The Kieba returned it gravely. Then she turned and walked swiftly away, out the door and away, toward her mountain.
Gulien followed her. He remembered to look back, but by that time he could not see his sister plainly, nor any details of the life he was leaving behind.
CHAPTER 27
Only after the Kieba was gone did Oressa realize that really they had better get on with their own business. Which was to leave. And leave Gulien behind. That seemed unbearable, but plainly it was the right thing to do. Or a right thing to do. Or at least the only possible thing to do.
Gulien had always been there, her older brother, always ready to protect her, to stand between Oressa and anything that could harm her or frighten her, even between her and their father. And now their father was gone, and so was Gulien, and Oressa shied away from the awareness of that emptiness, but the emptiness was everywhere.
She tried to take comfort from the multitude of urgent tasks that faced them all, especially from the urgent need to get back to Caras and deal with Bherijda’s remaining people.
They couldn’t just fling themselves straightaway on the road and gallop through the night, unfortunately. There seemed to be a great many things to do, and a good many of them couldn’t be done by anybody but Oressa. As soon as the Kieba took Gulien away with her, all those things seemed to crash down upon Oressa at once. At least it stopped her from worrying too much about Gulien. At least he seemed better. She thought he was better, though all that about having the wrong memories was really disturbing if she thought about it too hard.
But the Kieba had promised that Gulien would recover. Oressa clung to that reassurance, partly because she had so many other things to think about. Even though in those brief moments when she paused, it still astonished her that there were decisions to be made at all.
Even now she sometimes half expected time itself to stutter and stop, waiting, as she was waiting, for her father to reappear from the dust and smoke haze. And yet the world did not stop. She still saw that last look of his in her mind’s eye: of irony or humor or scorn or whatever it had been. She felt that if she knew what expression it had been, she might have been better able to accept the fact of his death. But she could not decide. She wished she could talk to Gulien about him. But her brother was out of reach as well, and she had to try to accept that, too.
But she seldom had time to pause. She had to decide about Prince Bherijda’s men, for one thing. They were happy to be offered any terms at all as long as they could surrender to Oressa rather than the Kieba. Had their positions been reversed, she would never have surrendered
to Bherijda, but then, Bherijda had not been the kind of man to whom anyone would want to surrender. His men fell over themselves to surrender to her.
Bherijda’s surviving senior officer now was a mere karanat, a lieutenant. He took down the last scorpion banner with his own hands and laid it and his sword on the ground at Oressa’s feet. He was visibly surprised and relieved to be offered a chance to take back his sword, if not his banner, if he would take oath to Oressa as well.
“After all, where else can they go now?” Oressa said to Laasat. “He can take oath for himself and all the men. They can make individual oaths later, but I don’t think we want to take time for that now, do we?”
“I think we need not. You’re very generous to take them at all, and well do they know it,” Laasat said grimly, as much for the young officer’s benefit as for Oressa’s. “They have no other prince to take them in now, nowhere else to go, and no hope but your generosity. But though you may return their swords and crossbows and arquebuses now, I would advise you wait to restore their supply of bolts and powder.”
That seemed very wise to Oressa, who gave the karanat a stern look.
The young man bowed his head and begged to be allowed to earn her good regard. Oressa said he and his people had certainly better try, and they might begin by spending the rest of the evening helping put out the smoldering fires they’d started, disposing of the livestock they’d slaughtered, and apologizing to the people they’d attacked and terrified and tried to murder. She said she was tempted to hang them all, except that, too, would take too much time. Making that threat made her feel strong and ruthless and like she might all of a sudden have somehow turned into her father. For a moment, taken by surprise by a storm of confusion and anger and possibly even grief, she couldn’t think of anything else.
But the threat alone, or maybe just the fact of their defeat and their prince’s defeat and death, seemed enough to make the scorpion soldiers behave. She spoke to them in Tamaj to be sure they understood. Few of Bherijda’s men spoke Esse, not even the officers, and so at last she admitted she could manage in their language. Laasat didn’t even blink; he only shook his head as though to say, Of course.
The Mountain of Kept Memory Page 45