The Sleeping God

by Violette Malan

  Dhulyn shrugged. “Even those who have seen a woman’s strength never really believe she’ll use it against them.”

  Parno coughed. “And what about you, Cullen. Why didn’t you tell us?”

  The Cloudman’s teeth gleamed white for an instant as he smiled. He was leaning against the wall next to the door. “What was I going to do, Lionsmane? Swear to you I wasn’t possessed?”

  Dhulyn and Gun both laughed.

  Parno rubbed his face with his hands. It seemed his own bond with Dhulyn helped him to sense the link that they had between them. The Marked. As potent and as real as the bond of Partnership. It was a good thing, he told himself, he was only uneasy because he hadn’t experienced it before. Before, it had only been Dhulyn and him, and he could almost forget her Mark.

  Surely it was only this uneasiness, this new sensation of exclusion, that gave him the feeling things were getting out of hand?

  Dhulyn walked down the long narrow lane that snaked its way through the quarter in which Sortera had her house, having volunteered to fetch water. The tension was beginning to tell on everyone. Even after being up all night, she felt completely unable to sleep. The morning sun was bright, the streets-really more like stone-laid paths slanted to allow the water to run off downhill-still showed the damp marks of dew in the shady corners.

  Dhulyn had tried the tiles again after returning to their quarters in Sortera’s house, and even though they’d worked, she Saw no Visions that she hadn’t already Seen, although each was clear and precise in a way they had never been before.

  She stopped as a door in the wall beside her opened and discharged a Cloudwoman of her own age with a large basket of eggs on her hip. The villager saluted her with a nod and a “good morning” before setting off down the lane at a pace only a native would have found comfortable, given the steepness of the street.

  Chickens in an inner courtyard, Dhulyn thought. Enough of them that the excess eggs were going to market to be sold or traded for things that didn’t grow in the woman’s inner courtyard. The uncomplicated pattern of village life. When had their lives, hers and Parno’s, become so complicated? Since Navra. Dhulyn slowed her pace even more. And she’d had more Visions since Navra as well, now that she thought about it. The fresnoyn would account for some of those, she knew, as would the unusual stress and worry of being so near Parno’s home. Even the weather might have made its contribution. Blood knew, she’d never been really comfortable in the warmer north.

  More Visions; fine, she could account for those. But why clearer ones?

  Dhulyn shook off her thoughts and looked around her. Trevel was like no other town or village she had lived in, tucked into its high mountain valley, its location protected by narrow passes and thick forests impenetrable to those who didn’t know the ways. Ahead of her now was the tallest structure in town, the stone tower of a Jaldean Shrine-Old Believers, of course-and beyond that, perhaps three days’ ride away, the peaks of the Antedichas Mountains to the south. Nothing like what little she could remember of her own birthplace, the cold, windswept southern plains, or even any of the port towns she’d known during her Schooling with Dorian the Black.

  Light voices sang out ahead of her as a small group of children ran out from a crossing lane, racing down to the small square between the Jaldeans’ tower and the public fountain.

  Bursting into the open space, the children did a quick rhyming count to see who would be the victim-“one two, sky blue, all out but you” was what Dhulyn caught-and one small boy was blindfolded and took his place in the center of four others. As these four joined hands and began to chant, Dhulyn stopped to watch, setting her buckets down on the cobblestones.

  “Sleeping lad, sleeping lad

  Turning, turning, turning

  One two three, come to me.”

  The children repeated the chant several times, stepping first in one direction, then turning and skipping the other way, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. Finally, they fell silent, stopped, and dropped hands. The blindfolded boy in the middle began immediately to grope for his friends, grabbing the smallest girl as her giggle gave her location away.

  They had used almost the same words and a very similar tune as the children on the pier in Navra, Dhulyn thought; children were so much the same everywhere. So much had happened since the evening when they first met Mar and the Weaver woman in the tavern room of their Navra inn. So much-

  “Oh, for blood’s sake.”

  A woman passing between her and the children glanced at her with a tentative smile.

  The Lens tile in the center with the other Marks placed around it. A child in the center with four others circling around. Circling. Herself asleep on the trail with Mar in her arms, Mar with her hands on Gundaron’s shoulders.

  Not the bowl. Mar. Mar herself.

  Dhulyn whirled around, almost tripping over the buckets she didn’t remember until much later, and ran back up the hill.

  Mar and Gun sat on the stone threshold of Sortera’s house, holding hands, squeezed into the doorway, the door open behind them and a beaded curtain let down to keep flies and direct sunlight from inside the house. Not that it was really hot enough yet for either. Mar held his hand, rested her head on his shoulder. A man had passed them a few minutes earlier, giving them the courteous greeting and half bow that all Clouds seemed to give to Marks, with a special smile when he saw their joined hands. Mar knew that, appearances to the contrary, they were holding hands for comfort and companionship, not love.

  But the love’s here, she thought. It’s here.

  Gun sighed. “I’m so useless,” he said.

  Mar bit back an exasperated retort. “Come on,” she said, as kindly as she could manage given that what she really felt like was slapping him. “We’ve been through this. You’ve done the best you could.”

  “And how good was that? Dhulyn Wolfshead had to find it, and the Shadow was right under my nose the whole time.”

  Well, no arguing with that, Mar thought. She was trying to come up with an argument, however, when the Wolfshead herself came running up the narrow steps-smiling.

  “Gun, you were right, the books were right. I should have listened to you from the start. We’re just too blooded smart for our own good.”

  Gun got to his feet. “I was right?”

  The beads behind them rattled as Parno Lionsmane joined them in the doorway. Mar felt something tight in her chest loosen as Dhulyn Wolfshead gave her Partner a wide and joyous grin.

  “We’re making this too hard. The fifth Mark you said, Gun, and the fifth Mark it is. The Lens isn’t a thing. It’s a Mark, like all the others. Not a thing, a person.”

  Shutters popped open in the house across the stairs.

  “Inside,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said, ushering everyone before her.

  “But why hasn’t anyone met a Lens?” Parno Liondsmane said. “Not even Sortera, and she isn’t sure how long she’s been alive.”

  “Listen!” The Wolfshead sat down on a stool. Her chest rose and fell, but she didn’t seem to be out of breath, for all the running uphill she’d just done. She reached out for Gun, and when he was near enough, she took his hands in hers. “You know how all the books and stories say that some Marks are rarer than others. Menders the most common, Seers the most rare? The Lens must be the rarest of all! There’s no general use for a Lens. It only affects another Mark. It’s a focuser, a Lens.”

  Gun sat down, and seemed unaware that Parno Lionsmane got a stool under him just in time to prevent his falling to the floor. He was nodding, his eyes focused inward. “It makes sense. It’s logical.” He looked up at Dhulyn Wolfshead. “That passage in Holderon’s Commentaries makes sense if what you say is true. That’s why I couldn’t Find it, I’ve been looking for a thing. You’ve got to be right.”

  Mar’s cheeks hurt, and she found she was smiling just as hard as the Mercenaries. The weight that had oppressed everyone since the discovery of Karlyn-Tan’s possession seemed to be lifting.

&
nbsp; Then she saw that Gun wasn’t smiling, and she felt her own smile fade.

  “But, Wolfshead,” Mar said, sure now that she saw the flaw in all this deduction. “We still don’t know who…”

  Dhulyn Wolfshead was holding up one finger. “Oh, yes, we do.”

  That was when Mar realized that the Wolfshead was pointing at her. Jerrick Mender was almost twelve years old, thin, with eyes so large and round his name would be Jerrick Owlbeak if he were a Mercenary Brother. When Parno told him that, he seemed quite pleased, and Dhulyn had laughed. Parno had always had a way with children.

  “You didn’t see my parents in Gotterang? Savern and Korwina Mender?” he said in a voice too old for his child’s face. A voice that said he knew the answer, but had to ask.

  “No, Jerrick, I’m afraid not.”

  The boy nodded. “I promised my sisters I would ask. There was another Mercenary Brother who helped us, Hernyn Greystone. Is he with you?”

  Parno exchanged a look with Dhulyn, who shrugged. There was no good news to tell this boy.

  “Our Brothers are always with us,” Parno said gently, crouching down until he was on Jerrick’s level. “Hernyn Greystone the Shield is with us in Death.”

  Jerrick Mender’s lower lip disappeared, and he nodded, blinking.

  “Will you be able to help us, Jerrick Mender?” Dhulyn asked.

  The boy squared his shoulders, taking a deep breath that shook a little on the way in. “I think so,” he said. “My Mark’s new, but my mother was training me since I was little.”

  Parno patted the boy on the shoulder.

  It had taken what felt like hours to convince everyone that what she’d suggested could be so, and at that, Dhulyn was sure they were willing to try only because no one could think of something else to do.

  “Look,” she had finally said. “It’s Mar that I keep seeing in my Visions-has been right from the start and the same Vision over and over. When Mar is in the room, my Visions are clearer, have more detail, even when I’m using the vera tiles. And it was Mar that Gun kept Finding, not because he was tired and wanted to go to bed, but because he was looking for the Lens.”

  “There is one thing,” Parno said now, making room for Jerrick at the table with the others. “Now that we know what the Lens is, what are we going to do with her?”

  Dhulyn looked at Gun and nodded. “There’s one of each of us,” he said. “It’s common for Finders, Menders, and Healers to work together; and Sortera remembers working with a Seer, years ago. With her experience to guide us, we should be able to unite our Marks, and using the Lens…” He looked at Mar and seemed to gather strength from her nod. “We’re going to call the Sleeping God.”

  “Oh, good,” Parno said. “I was afraid we didn’t know what we were doing.” Dhulyn rolled her eyes.

  “I suggest we use the drying shed,” Sortera said. “It’s the largest space that’s not in use at the moment, and whatever happens, there’s not much there to damage.”

  At this time of year, the drying shed was almost empty, the larger stores of food long since used or moved to more convenient places. The air smelled clean, and slightly spicy from a few bundles of herbs still hanging from rafters high overhead. They stood on a stone floor, so perfect and smooth that Dhulyn knew it for a relic of the Caids. The drying racks, empty now, had been folded and stacked against the walls.

  “In my Vision,” Dhulyn said when she found everyone looking at her. “Mar was standing, holding the hands of the people next to her.” Mar took hold of Gun’s left hand with her right, and offered her left hand to Jerrick. Dhulyn shook her head. “But the vera tiles have the Lens in the center and the rest of us around her…”

  Sortera was nodding. “Take Mar’s left hand in your left, Jerrick, now give your right to Dhulyn Wolfshead. And you, Gun, give your left to me. See now, we’re all connected.”

  Mar nodded. “It’s like the start of a country dance.”

  “There was a dance in my youth,” said Sortera, “so many years ago now, that began like this-”

  “The Market Dance,” Parno said. “You remember, Dhulyn, I told you my sisters used to dance it.”

  “The Marked Dance.” Both Dhulyn and Gun spoke at once. “But with the Lens in the center,” Dhulyn continued, “not the Seer as you thought, Parno, my soul.”

  “It is possible,” Gun added.

  Parno pulled the chanter of his pipes from his belt. “Do you remember the tune, Sortera? What?” He looked at the faces in the form. “You’ll need to focus on something and the music can be just as old as the dance.”

  Sortera shut her eyes and began to hum a tune. Parno frowned. At first, it seemed the woman’s age was against them. Like many elderly people, her voice had lost its ability to modulate itself into notes, but as she hummed, her body began to move in time to the beat, and after a few more tuneless notes, the humming grew stronger, and the notes more distinct. He began to hear hints of the tune and it seemed familiar; much like the one Dhulyn had been humming for months, but also like the one he remembered from his own childhood. Parno lifted his chanter to his lips and began to play. Like all these tunes from round dances, the same short, bouncy melody repeated itself over and over.

  “Hey.” Jerrick laughed. “I know this song. My father taught us this game when I was little.” His feet began to move in short skipping steps, and under his breath, he began to sing,

  “Sweeping Lad, Sweeping Lad,

  Brushing up and down…

  Gundaron the Finder frowned. This wasn’t going to work. Nobody had taught him a game to this tune when he was a boy. Stop it, he thought. He couldn’t be the only one who stood apart, the only one who wasn’t doing his best, who wasn’t helping. So he didn’t know the game, so what? He could Find it. He relaxed and let the others lead him, trying to match his pacing to theirs. This was a line, very twisty but just a line, like in the Library in his head. The steps were simple enough. Across and through, let go Mar’s hand, turn and catch Dhulyn’s, while Sortera was turning and catching Mar’s, having let go of Jerrick-he stumbled. Just let it happen, trust them, don’t think about it too much.

  Gun shut his eyes, let the music wash over him. Saw a page with writing. No, not writing, musical notes. He could read them like words, and, under his breath, he began to sing,

  “Leaping Lad, Leaping Lad,

  Where have you been?

  Leaping Lad, Leaping Lad,

  Step right in…”

  Sortera the Healer remembered the dance very well, and laughed aloud with the ease that her feet found in flying through the measure. The circle of the dancers turned, and she threw back her head, remembering. Sunny afternoons, the vault of the sky turning above her as the dance went ’round.

  “Sleeping God, Sleeping God,

  Only you can know, we are where you go

  Sleeping God, Sleeping God,

  In our hearts we know, all around we grow…”

  Dhulyn the Seer thought, of course, this is why the game and the song, and the dance has survived, and all children know it. In case we should need to call the God. She thought how much the dance was like the Shora, or how much the Shora like the dance. The same steps over and over, again and again, until you could do them automatically, blindfolded. Her pulse slowed, her breathing became regular. She could feel herself falling into the familiar trance, the dream state of her Sight. She Saw the dancers and the dance. The calling of the God. Someone was singing, words that matched the steps of the Shora, the steps of the dance-

  “Weeping Lass, Weeping Lass,

  Hold with all your might

  Win your heart’s delight…”

  Mar was smiling and humming, her feet moving naturally and freely as if they already knew the steps. Of course they do. She remembered the old game well. She’s dancing.

  “Sweeping Lad, Sweeping Lad,

  In and out he goes

  Can we really know…”

  Except Mar sang “Weeping Maid, Weeping Maid,” a
nd Dhulyn heard “Leaping Lad, Leaping Lad” and Gundaron heard “Sweeping Lass, Sweeping Lass,” and they all heard “Sleeping God, Sleeping God.”

  The right words Found, the steps of the measure Mended, the faulty heartbeats Healed, the Sight cleared, and all

  FOCUSED

  “Sleeping God, Sleeping God

  Come into our arms, show us where to go

  In our hearts we know, these the parts that grow

  One to teach, one to touch, one to reach, one’s too much

  Bring us an old one, a cold one, a bold one

  Give us a sold one, a told one, a gold one.”

  The dance goes round and round, every step in time, everything perfect, as if we aren’t five people dancing, but one. And we are singing in a tongue we never heard before, but in words we understand. We were scattered pieces until the Finder found us; the Mender put us back together; the Healer gave us the beat of our heart; the Seer looked before and behind, back through the mists to those others, forward into the light of tomorrow’s dawns; the Lens focuses all, the power and the light; the parts the form the heart, the light.

  No longer parts, but a perfect whole. No longer Sleeping, but Awake.

  We are the Sleeping God.

  “We can see the whole world. From the roots of mountains to the thinnest reaches of the air. Every heartbeat, every eye blink.” There’s awe and pleasure in her voice.

  “And the Shape and purpose of all these things.”

  “Look! A wrinkle there in the fabric of the world, just this one spot, where there’s a whole.”

  “You mean a hole.” We laugh.

  “Let’s Mend it, it’s easy when you know how.” The youngest part of us is very happy to be Mending.

  Together we’re Sight, and we’re the Lens turning the Light until in it we See the Shadow. We’ll Find, and once Found, we’ll Mend and we’ll Heal.