But Joram’s most outstanding feature was his hair. Thick and luxuriant, black as the glistening plumage of the raven, it sprang from a sharp peak in the center of his forehead to fall down around his shoulders in a mass of tangled curls.
Unfortunately, this lovely hair was the bane of Joram’s childhood. Anja refused to cut it, and it was now so thick and long that only hours of painful combing and tugging on Anja’s part could remove the snarls and tangles. She tried braiding it, but the hair was so unruly that it sprang out of the braid almost within minutes, curling around the child’s face and bouncing on his shoulders as if possessed of a life of its own.
Anja was extremely proud of her son’s beauty. Keeping his hair clean and well-groomed was her great pleasure—her only pleasure, in fact, since she haughtily held herself apart from her neighbors. The combing of Joram’s hair developed into a nightly ritual—a dismal ritual for Joram. Every evening, after their meager supper and his brief exercise period, the boy sat on a stool at the crudely shaped wooden table while Anja, with her magic and her fingers, lovingly combed out the child’s wild, shining hair.
One night, Joram rebelled.
Sitting home alone that day as usual, he had watched from his window as the other little boys played together, floating and tumbling through the air, chasing after a shimmering ball of crystal their leader, a bright-eyed young lad named Mosiah, had conjured up. The rough game came to a halt with the return of several parents from the fields. The children crowded around their parents, clinging to them and hugging them in a way that made Joram feel dark and empty inside. Though Anja constantly fussed over him and hugged him, it was with a fierce kind of intensity that was more frightening than affectionate. Joram sometimes felt as if she wanted to crush him into her body and make them one.
“Mosiah,” called out the boy’s father, catching hold of his son who, after a quick greeting, was heading back to his play. “Y’er lookin’ like a young lion,” the father said, ruffling his son’s hair that fell in long blond tanks over the boy’s eyes. Drawing the child’s hair between his fingers, the father gently sheared it off with a quick, deft motion of his hand.
That night, when Anja called Joram to the stool and began to take down what remained of the braids in his hair, Joram jerked away from his mother and turned to face her, his dark eyes wide and solemn.
“If I had a father like other boys,” he said quietly, “he would cut my hair. If I had a father, I wouldn’t be different. He wouldn’t let you make me different!”
Without saying a word, Anja struck Joram across the face.
The blow knocked the child to the floor and left a bruised mark upon his cheek for days thereafter. What followed left a bruised mark on Joram’s heart that never truly healed.
Hurt, angry, and alarmed by the look on his mother’s face—for Anja had gone deathly white and her eyes burned with an inner fever—Joram began to cry.
“Stop it!” Anja dragged her son to his feet, her thin-fingered hand digging painfully into his arm. “Stop it!” she whispered fiercely. “Why do you cry?”
“Because you hurt me!” Joram muttered accusingly. His hand holding his stinging cheek, he stared at her in sullen defiance.
“I hurt you!” Anja sneered. “The slap of a hand and the child cries. Come”—she hauled the boy through the door of the shack and out into the mean little village, whose people were settling down to rest after their hard day’s labors—“come, Joram, I will teach you what it is to hurt!”
Walking so fast that she literally dragged the stumbling child through the muddy street behind her (Anja always walked when she was with Joram—an odd circumstance that the other magi noted and wondered at), Anja came to the catalyst’s dwelling at the far end of the village. Using her magic stored from the day’s work, Anja caused the door to burst wide open. She and her child burst through after, propelled by the heat of her fury.
“Anja? What’s the matter?” cried Father Tolban, springing up in alarm from where he had been resting before a cheery fire. Marm Hudspeth bent over the flames, cooking his dinner, this task taking more Life than a catalyst has. The sausages hung suspended over the fire, spitting and cackling very much like the old woman herself, who was preparing gruel in a sphere of magic bubbling on the hearth.
“Get out!” Anja ordered the old woman, never taking her eyes from the astonished catalyst.
“You—you had better go along, Marm,” Father Tolban said gently. He would have liked to add, “and bring the overseer at once!” but the sight of Anja’s glittering eyes and mottled face made him bite his tongue. Clucking and muttering, Marm sent the sausages from the flame to the table, then—staring at Anja and the boy with narrowed eyes—she flew out the door, making the sign against evil with her hand.
Her lip curled in derision, Anja slammed the door shut and stood facing the catalyst. He had not been to visit her since she had stopped him from educating Joram. She never spoke to him in the fields, if she could help it. So he was astounded to find her in his house, and even more astonished to see her child with her. “What is the matter, Anja?” he repeated. “Are you or the child ill?”
“Open the Corridors to us, Catalyst,” Anja demanded with the superior air she used when speaking to underlings, an air that contrasted oddly with her shabby, patched dress and her dirt-smeared face. “The boy and I must make a journey.”
“Now? But … but …” Father Tolban stammered, completely at a loss. This was unheard of! It could not be allowed. The woman had gone mad! And that brought another thought to the catalyst. He was alone and unprotected in the presence of a wizardess, an Albanara if one believed her story, whose Life force he could feel radiating from her like the heat of her anger.
She had probably saved up energy from the day’s work. She wouldn’t have much, but it might be enough to mutate him or wreck his small house. What should he do? Stall for time. Perhaps Old Marm would have brains enough to go fetch the overseer. Trying to remain calm, the catalyst’s gaze went from the mother to the child, who stood beside her silently, half-hidden by the folds of Anja’s rich, tattered dress.
Even in the midst of his fear and mental turmoil, Father Tolban stopped and stared. He had never seen the child up close, Anja always keeping them separated. And, though he had heard rumors of the child’s beauty, the catalyst was certainly not prepared for anything like this. Blue-black hair framed a pale face with large dark eyes. But what was remarkable, besides the child’s extraordinary beauty, was the fact that there was no fear in those wide, shimmering eyes. There was the shadow of pain—the catalyst could see the marks of Anja’s hand upon the child’s cheek. There were traces of tears. But there was no fear, only a look of calm triumph, as if this had all been carefully planned and arranged.
“Immediately, Catalyst,” Anja hissed, stamping her bare foot upon the floor. “I am not accustomed to being kept waiting by the likes of you!”
“P-payment,” stuttered Father Tolban. Tearing his gaze from the strange child, he turned to face the wild-eyed mother, feeling relief flood over him as he ducked into the safe refuge of the rules of his Order. “Th-there must be payment, you know,” he continued more severely, gaining confidence as the rules loaned him the strength of centuries. “A portion of your Life, Mistress Anja, and also a portion of the boy’s, if you travel with him …”
The catalyst had expected this to stop the woman—what Field Magus, after all, had enough magic left at the end of the day to grant the necessary portion demanded by the catalysts for the use of their Corridors?
And it did stop Anja, but only for a time, and then not in quite the manner Tolban had intended.
At the mention of the boy, she glanced down at the child in some perplexity, as if she had forgotten his existence. Then, scowling, she turned back to the catalyst, who was folding his arms across his chest and preparing to consider the matter closed.
“I will pay you parasites what you need to live!” she snapped. “But take nothing from the boy. I
will pay you his portion from my Life as well. Come. I have sufficient! Take my hand!”
Anja stretched out her hand to the catalyst, whose confidence was oozing from him like sap from a wounded tree. Blankly, he stared at her and, for an instant, he did not see her dirty face or half-mad eyes, he did not see the ragged dress or the sun-browned skin of a Field Magus. He saw a tall and lovely woman, regally dressed, who had been born to command and to have her orders obeyed. Without really knowing what he was doing, the catalyst took hold of the woman’s hand and felt Life surge into him with such force it nearly knocked him down.
“Wh-where would you go?” he asked weakly.
“The Borderlands.”
“The Borderlands?” His mouth gaped in astonishment.
Anja’s brows came together in alarming fashion.
Father Tolban gulped. Then he frowned, trying to recover some of his dignity. “I must leave the Corridor open, to guarantee your return,” he said sourly.
Anja snorted. “Leave the Corridor open, then,” she snapped. “It matters little to me. We will be gone only moments. Now get on with it!”
“Very well,” the catalyst muttered.
Using Anja’s Life, the catalyst opened the window in time and space to her, one of the many Corridors created originally by the Diviners, the Time Magi. The Diviners had long since vanished, and with them had died the knowledge of how to build the Corridors. But the catalysts, who had controlled them for centuries, knew still how to operate and maintain them, taking the Life needed to keep them active from those who used them.
Stepping into the window that appeared as a dark void within Father Tolban’s cozy living quarters, Anja and the child vanished. Glancing at the open Corridor apprehensively, the catalyst discovered himself toying briefly with the idea of closing it and leaving them stranded on the other side. He came to himself with a start, shocked at what he had been contemplating.
The Borderland, he thought, shaking his head. How strange. Why go there, to that desolate, life-forsaken region?
There are no guards at the Borderlands. None are needed.
To pass from the world into those drifting, floating mists is to step Beyond. To step Beyond is to die.
As for guarding the realm from what lies Beyond, there is no reason to do so. For nothing lies Beyond, nothing except the realm of Death. And from that realm, no one has ever returned.
The first line of the catechism states, “We fled the world where Death reigned, taking with us the magic and those creatures of magic we had created. We chose this world because it is empty. Here the magic will live, since there is nothing and no one to threaten us ever again. Here, on this world, is Life.”
There are no guards, but there are the Watchers.
Stepping hesitantly into the Corridor, his hand clutching his mother’s, Joram experienced an instant’s sensation of being squeezed, very tightly. Lovely, sparkling stars burst in his vision. But before his mind could quite truly register what was transpiring, the sensation ended, the sparkling light faded, and he looked around him, expecting to see the catalyst’s small room. But he wasn’t in the catalyst’s house. He was standing on a long, barren stretch of white beach.
The child had never seen anything like this before and was pleased by the feeling of the sun-warmed sand beneath his feet. Reaching down, he started to pick up a handful, but Anja jerked him roughly forward, striding across the beach with long steps, pulling the child after her.
At first, Joram enjoyed walking in the sand. That ended very soon, however, as the sand grew deeper and walking became more difficult. He began to sink in the shifting dunes, and when he tried to move ahead, they slid away beneath his feet, causing him to flounder and stumble.
“Where are we?” he asked, panting for breath.
“We stand on the edge of the world,” Anja replied, stopping to wipe the sweat from her face and gain her bearings.
Glad to rest, Joram looked around.
Anja was right. Behind him was the world—the white sand yielding to sparse green grasses that in turn yielded to the lush green fields. Tall, darker green forests carried the life of the world upward into the purple of the mountains, whose snow-capped peaks lifted it into the clear blue sky. And the sky seemed, to Joram’s gaze, to leap from the mountains, soaring in a vast, serene expanse above him. Following its curve, he turned and looked ahead of him to where the sky fell at last into the misty void beyond the white sand.
And then he saw the Watchers.
Startled, he clutched at Anja’s hand and pointed.
“Yes,” was all she said. But the pain and anger in her answer made the child shiver in the waning sunlight, though the heat of midday radiated still from the sand beneath his feet.
Gripping Joram’s hand firmly, Anja tugged him forward, her tattered gown dragging behind, leaving a snakelike trail through the dunes.
Thirty feet tall, the stone statues of the Watchers line the Borderlands, staring eternally out into the mists of Beyond. Spaced at twenty-foot intervals, the stone statues stand on the edge of the white sand for as far as the eye can see.
Joram gaped in wonder as he approached them. He had never seen anything so tall! Even the trees in the forest did not tower above him like these giant statues. Coming up on them from behind, Joram at first thought they were all alike. The statues were all figures of humans dressed in robes. Though some appeared to be male and others female, there seemed no other difference. Each stood in the same position, arms hanging straight down from his or her side, feet together, heads facing forward.
Then, as Joram drew nearer, he noticed that one statue was different. On one statue, the left hand, which should have been open like the others, was closed, clenched into a fist.
Joram turned to Anja, bursting with questions about these wonderful statues. But when he saw her face, he stopped the words upon his lips so swiftly that he bit his tongue. Swallowing his questions, he tasted blood.
Anja’s face was whiter, her eyes hotter than the hot sand upon which they walked. Her wild, fevered gaze fixed upon one of the statues—the one whose hand was clenched. Toward that statue, she moved resolutely, floundering and falling in the shifting sand.
Then Joram knew. With the sudden, uncanny clairvoyance of childhood, Joram understood, though he could not have framed his knowledge in words. A sickening fear swept over him, making him weak and dizzy. Terrified, he tried to pull away from Anja, but she only held his hand more tightly. Desperately, shrieking words that Anja—from the lost, preoccupied look on her face—never heard, Joram dug his heels into the sand.
“Please! Anja! Take me home! No, I don’t want to see—”
He fell down, dragging Anja off-balance. Stumbling, she landed on her hands and knees, and was forced to let loose of Joram to catch herself. Scrambling to his feet, the child tried to run, but Anja lunged forward and caught hold of him by the hair, yanking him backward.
“No!” Joram shrieked frantically, sobbing in pain and fear.
Grasping him around the waist with a strength her work in the fields had given her, Anja lifted the child and carried him across the sand, falling more than once, but never deterring from her fixed purpose.
Coming to stand before the statue, Anja stopped. Her breath came in ragged gasps. For a moment, she stared up at the statue towering above them.
Its left hand clenched, its fixed gaze looking over their heads into the mists Beyond, it had—to all appearances—less Life than the trees in the forests. Yet it was aware of their presence. Joram felt its awareness, as he felt its terrible, tortured pain.
Exhausted, he ceased to cry out or struggle. Anja dumped him at the statue’s stone feet, where he crouched, quivering, his head in his hands.
“Joram,” Anja said, “this is your father.”
The boy squeezed his eyes tightly shut, unable to move or speak or do anything except lie upon the warm sand beneath the giant stone statue.
But a splash of water upon his neck made Joram start
. Raising his head from where it had been pressed into the sand, the child looked up slowly. Far above him, he could see the statue’s stone eyes staring straight ahead into the realm of Death whose sweet peace must ever elude him. Another splash of water struck the boy. With a heartbroken sob, Joram buried his face in his small hands.
While far above him, the statue, too, wept.
9
The Ritual
“I was the daughter of one of the noblest houses in Merilon. He—your father—was House Catalyst.”
Sitting at the table, once more in their shack, Joram heard Anja’s voice coming to him from somewhere above him, trickling down through a haze of fear and horror like the tears of the statue.
“I was the daughter of one of the noblest houses in Merilon,” she repeated, combing out Joram’s hair. “Your father was House Catalyst. He, too, came of noble blood. My father refused to have a catalyst living with us like Father Tolban—little better than a Field Magus himself. I was sixteen, Your father was just turned thirty.”
She sighed, and the fingers that tugged and pulled at the tangles in Joram’s hair grew lingering and caressing. Glancing at her face reflected in the glass of the windows opposite where he sat at the wooden table, Joram saw his mother smile a half-smile and sway a little to some unheard music. Raising her hand, she patted her filthy, matted hair. “What beautiful things we created, he and I,” she said softly, smiling dreamily. “I was gifted with Life, Mama used to tell me. Of an evening, to please and entertain my family, your father and I would fill the twilight with rainbows and phantasms of wonder that brought tears to the eyes of those who beheld them. It was only natural, your father said, that we, who could create such beauty, should fall in love.”
The fingers in his hair tightened, the sharp nails dug into his flesh, and Joram felt the sticky liquid of his own blood trickle down his neck.
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