“You spilled it,” said one, shaking her free hand. “Wet.”
“You pushed,” said the other. “It was my turn to be human.”
Jehan stopped where he stood. In his pocket, his fingers curled again about the stone chip. He could hear Clairet’s breathing close by, soft and calm. Dead things that walked. Animals that became human—human shaped. He had walked into myth, as if he were a man from an old fable. Except that doesn’t happen, one part of his brain said. It explains the woman’s nails. Nails like claws, said another. He bit his lip, straightened his shoulders and asked, “What are you?”
“Guardians,” said one. He could not tell if it was the woman thing he had spoken to before. They were identical.
“Ourselves,” said the other.
“Fitches. Ferrets.”
“Watchers.”
“Twins.”
“We make the Grass King smile.”
“We hunt.”
“We bite.”
“We keep this place.”
“We keep our book.”
“Marcellan’s book.”
“Grass King has Marcellan.”
“We want him back.”
“Grass King has your woman.”
“You read. We go.” The words tumbled, each twin overlapping the other. As they spoke, they turned and shifted, arms about one another, heads tilting, rocking to and fro. It made him dizzy.
He retreated to the corner, rested a hand on Clairet’s neck. Warm flesh, thick hair, normal, comforting in the midst of this chaos. He said, “You…You change shape. You can turn into animals.”
One of the women spat. “Who wants to be human?”
“Our shape is quick.”
“Our shape is sharp.”
“Swift and clever.”
“Strong.”
“Good for hunting.”
“Good for watching.”
“Better than human. Blunt teeth and blind eyes.”
“Deaf ears. Can’t smell. Can’t hide. Only blunder and break things.”
“Not human. Fitch-women. Marcellan chose us. Grass King owns us.”
“Put us here to watch, to wait, to hold the way.”
He could not follow. Fingers knotting into Clairet’s mane, he asked, “What do you want with me?”
“Read.”
He shook his head. The other woman frowned at him. “Read the book.”
“Marcellan’s book.”
“Stupid human.”
He looked across at the book with its old binding. It was the only thing in this house for which he had any context. According to the priests, long ago, before kingdoms and empires, engines and factories, Marcellan had wandered the lands, writing down what he learned and what he saw, so that peoples of one place might know about peoples of another. It was a story, no more. And yet…Marcellan shared out knowledge. He did not lock it in his coffers to his sole benefit. He had read that in one of the pamphlets that came out of the Brass City. Printers and bookbinders revered Marcellan as the first of their kind. The devout revered his writings, clustering in temples to chant prayers and invocations. Jehan’s own grandmother had read a portion of the Epitome every morning when she woke. Aude looked to his writings as a guide of some kind, a map to some mystery she longed to uncover. The pamphleteers were divided, some hailing him as the champion of equality, some dismissing him as a comforting fiction. Most people had no opinion either way. Books of mystery and old tales were for children and widows, the elderly and the weak.
Shapeshifters, bannermen, gates to another world. Every part of it was out of a story. And now he was in it, too. He had been in it since that day in the factory when Aude had intervened on the shop floor. Or before that. Perhaps since the day he had found and answered her letter about expeditions to other worlds. He walked back across to the table and sat down, as far as possible from the women and the water slick. The women watched him closely, limbs entangled. He said, “All right, I’ll read. But you have to get dressed.”
“Fur is easier.”
He considered that. “Will you understand the words then?”
“Of course.”
He would not understand them. That might be no bad thing. On the other hand…He said, “I have questions.”
The women exchanged glances. One of them leaned forward to lick her twin on the cheek. And then…He could not follow. A swirling, as flesh and air were stirred by an unseen hand. Fur and skin, a blur of limb and whisker, and then a ferret crouched beside the book. Beside it—her—the remaining woman shrugged into the tunic. She looked exactly as she had when he first saw her. He did not know if that meant she was the same. He said, “Who are you?”
“We told you.”
“Yes, but…Do you have names?”
Another exchange of glances. “Names are nothing. Smell reveals.”
All he could smell was the overwhelming odor of ferret. If there were subtleties within it, he could not make them out. He said, “They help me.” And then, “I’m Jehan Favre.”
She shrugged. “Yelena.” Her hand sank into her sister’s fur. “Julana. Marcellan said.”
“Yelena.” He reached out for the book. The ferret arched its back, hair bristling. The woman—Yelena—hissed at it. Under his fingers, the cover felt dry and friable. He would need more water if he were to read this thing. Assuming that he could. It was old enough that it could fall apart. The spilled water could not have done it any good, either. He said, “Is there any more to drink? I’ll need it to read.” Yelena slithered off the table and padded over to a door. A draft of damp billowed across the room as she opened it: moss and wet stone. A well, perhaps. Clairet lifted her head. After a minute or two, Yelena reappeared, holding a bowl. “No more jugs.” Water slopped over the edges as she set it down.
He said, “It’ll do.” He took a few sips, cautiously. Then he opened the book. Flakes of worn leather sifted from the binding. The leaf-edges were stained and crumbling. On the thick, ridged pages, the print face was solid and black and fuzzy. Not the sharp small font he was accustomed to in the Brass City. The letters on the title page were tall and tapered, drawing the eye with fine descenders. About them was a thick border. Birds. Birds out of stone, out of air. He stared at it in silence for a moment, then said. “This pattern…”
“Marcellan’s birds. Escaping into flesh. Like bannermen.”
“Like you?”
“Not like us. Like bannermen.”
The pattern had filtered, somehow, to the Brass City and the scarves of the Eschappés. He had seen it nowhere else, not on any pamphlet, not in his grandmother’s copy of Marcellan’s Epitome. Birds out of stone, out of air…The wind had torn Aude from him. And now, this book, with its image of escape…He could not quite believe that he was allowing himself to credit any of this. He inhaled and turned the page. Letters marched away before him, long finials and sharp ends. The language was archaic. He recognized perhaps one word in six. He had never studied such things; it was the preserve of aristocratic scholars and university recluses. His education had emphasized more practical daily uses of literacy. Another in-breath. He said, “I’m not sure I understand this. This is in an old tongue.”
“We understand,” Yelena said. “Read.”
He shrugged and began, haltingly, to do as they bid.
12
The Nature of the Domains
“OUR WORLD,” WROTE MARCELLAN, in the longest and least-read of his books, “is layered and twisted like a maiden’s sash. And, like an old sash passed down from mother to daughter, some parts of the fabric are worn thinner than others. In one place, layers may intertwine without anyone really noticing—at least, from the side on which we human creatures live. In other places, we may glimpse, through the sheen or warp and weft, the fabric of other places, other domains or layers of being. I do not know if these latter remain always in one place or even one time, or if they shift, just as the layers of a sash will move and change. But this much I do know: a handful of places ha
ve torn or worn away, and through these holes we human creatures may sometimes pass. It said that such holes or gaps are five in number, one for each of the domains. This may be so, but for myself I have witnessed the existence of but two. The first lies at the site of the Glass Tower, whose sides no man may scale and whose doors few men may see, and whose shimmering stairs may, if one possesses the strength and the courage and the persistence to climb them, lead the traveler at last to the domain of the Emperor of Air, called also WorldOver, which some say lies where the light of the sun intersects the glow of the moons. The second place is the Stone House, whose rooms may not be counted and whose guardians are none or few or many, and through which a man whose patience or whose need is great enough may finally pass into the domain of the Grass King, called by some WorldBelow. As to the locations of the other three openings, I know them not. Yet it seems to me that the gateway to the domain of the Fire Witch must lie perhaps deep within the crater of some volcano or else through the passages of some mountain of fire-glass, and that to the domain of the Lady of Shoals and Shores in some crevice concealed beneath a mighty ocean or else at the foot of an immeasurable waterfall. But neither I nor anyone I have met has found gates to these two WorldsBeside. I hear that it is said by the Northmen that Gaverne Orcandros drew creatures out of water in the lee of a cliff, but that cliff is long ago tumbled and drowned.
“As to the domain of the Masters of Dark, which lies on the shadow side of Mothmoon, all men will step through into it, soon or late, and some will seek it actively, but all who go there must leave their fleshly forms behind them, and those few who return are no longer men as we know them and are shunned. This is what I know of portals and I record it here not so that the curious may wander in search of the Five Domains—for such acts seldom meet with a healthy outcome—but so that all human creatures may be mindful that the world as we see it is not the only world, and the rulers to whom we bow are not the only rulers, and that those who by nature belong to the other domains can pass with far greater facility between and through the folds of place than we ever may and are as such all the greater in power and adeptness, being more suited by nature to all the worlds and their folds than we can ever be.
“What can be said of the shape and nature of the Five Domains? It is a commonplace in these days to refer to the rulers of these by forms and titles akin to those we bestow upon our own rulers and priests: the Grass King, the Emperor of Air, the Lady of Shoals and Shores, the Fire Witch, and the Masters of Dark. By this very naming, we also bestow upon them somewhat of the qualities we behold—or wish to behold—in our own leaders. A king or emperor must possess subjects over whom he rules, and, by extension, it is assumed that he will also possess a court and an army, a law and a body of courtiers and officials who assist and advise him and oversee his possessions and people. In popular imagery, the Grass King is held to be openhanded and generous, welcoming to his subjects and tender toward them. By contrast, the Emperor of Air is portrayed as aloof and secretive, hidden away in his fortress of screens and walls, surrounded by a complexity of officers, viziers, administrators, warriors, and wives. It must be observed that these images bear considerable resemblance to, on the one hand, the forms and usages of Yestinn Allandur, first ruler of the lands above and below the Bitter Mountains and, on the other, the closed court of the emperors of Tarnaroq and its outlying villages. The Fire Witch is often said to dwell alone or with a handful of acolytes and apprentices in a network of caverns and passages whose plan is inscrutable save to those who live therein. This in turn recalls tales of the miners and metalworkers of the Valeranican Plateau, with their mysteries and guilds. The Lady of Shoals and Shores is seldom referenced in daily life, yet her temples and shrines are many, for it is held that she lives imminent within each body of water, salt or sweet, large or small, that the raindrops are her fingers exploring and the puddles the mirrors through which she sees and knows all things. The origins of this belief I do not know, but it appears to me that our image of the Lady bears some similarity, perhaps, to our childhood certainty of the all-seeing and all-knowing powers of the mothers upon whom we depend and whom, knowing their power over us, we love and revere and fear according to their moods.
“As to the Masters of Dark, they carry all our terrors and premonitions about our mortality, and thus we shun even the thought of them and wrap them about with stories of ghosts and revenants. And yet of all the domains this last must be the closest in nature to us and our lands, for it is there that we go when we die, and its subjects are thus no more than our ancestors and our future selves.”
“Thus we picture the domains in our image and ascribe to their rulers our own qualities and foibles. And yet, do not the beings of these realms possess also their own characteristics? It seems to me that it must be so, for our world and the domains are bound tightly together, as I have already described, and just as, of necessity, our beliefs and practices lend shape to these other worlds and their denizens, so their actions and shapes effect us. The moods of the Lady are well known to all who ply their trade on water. The safety of ships lies in her hands; her anger splinters them, her favor brings them laden back to harbor. And her blessings and curses rule the land as well, for her gift of water is vital to all living things. The Grass King and the Lady together give birth to the crops that feed us, and just as the Lady’s displeasure dries out the land, so the Grass King’s rage overthrows cities and breaks buildings. Yet it is not for us to understand what pleases or angers them, nor yet to predict it.
“That they are like us and also unlike is clear to me, for I have seen them in their homes, and spoken with them and learned a little of their minds. A man may pass the gates, but the cost is high and the way is hard, and no one, having passed into the domains, can expect to emerge again unchanged.”
13
The Courtyard
of the Concubine
“DON’T TOUCH ME.” Aude pressed backward and felt a wall reassuringly hard behind her. She knotted her fingers into the rags of her shirt. Her heartbeat roared in her ears, threatening to overwhelm her. Her forearms were sore, reddened, crisscrossed with thin scratches. Her whole body ached, as if she had ridden all day. If this was her shining place, then it was nothing like her dreams. And where was Jehan? He had been out in the wind, on the empty plain. She swallowed, staring back at the figure closest to her and made herself lift her chin. “Do you know who I am?”
“Ours.” The figure stood back from her, folding its—no, that voice was male—his arms. “Our captive.”
“My name is Aude Pèlerin des Puiz. I own this land.” She forced a hard note into her voice. Show no fear. Don’t be overwhelmed. Her uncle would not approve of her investigations, her journey. But perhaps he might approve of her now, as long as she maintained her pride and recalled her status. And Jehan would come for her. He always had. He would find her and shake his head at her and upbraid her, and all would be well. She looked around her. A small room, plastered in sunset colors, the colors she recalled from her shining place. A single archway, covered by a curtain of beads, and two high, thin latticed windows. The air was warm and still. A sweet tang of oranges taunted her dry mouth. She had been dropped down upon a heap of carpets piled against the longest wall; four veiled figures stood around her, between her and the exit. Beyond them was a low chest with a jug and ewer standing on its top. If she could reach that, the pots might serve as some form of weapon. She could not tell if her captors were armed beneath their long brown outer robes. All she could see of them was their eyes, long and dark above their scarves. She said, “What do you want with me?”
“Your assistance.” That was another of the figures; his voice was lower pitched, warmer. He was shorter and stockier than the first speaker.
Assistance did not sound too bad. Assuming, of course, that they meant by it something similar to what she did. “With what?”
“A restoration.”
“A restitution,” amended the first speaker. “This land is no
t yours.”
“I have documents…”
The first speaker unfolded his arms and bent forward. His shadow fell over her, and, despite herself, she shivered. He said, “This is WorldBelow, human thing. You have no dominion. No rights.” His hand reached out to her, closed on her shoulder, cold and hard through the torn cotton. She tried to pull away, and the grip tightened. She was outnumbered; she was trapped…
She would not lose face before them. Twisting, she slewed sideways and sank her teeth into his wrist. He let go, drew back, eyes narrowing.
“Careless, Jien-kai.” Another new voice, and this one female.
“Rash.” That was the fourth, male again, a voice that whispered.
The four were looking at one another. Aude moved slowly, reaching a foot for the floor. Tiles, cool and smooth. She slid across the carpet heap, watching, cautious.
A hand came down hard beside her. She started. Heat crisped from that hand, stinging her abraded skin. Dark eyes met hers. The whispering voice, clearer now, said, “Better not.”
“Much better.” That was the woman. She stood behind the whisperer. Her voice suggested that she was smiling. Aude swallowed, tasted rust and ash.
She said, “Who are you?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“They forget, the human things. They change. They discount.”
“Belief might be safer.” The two hung over her, thoughtful, oppressive.
“Enough.” That was the stocky one. The two close to her exchanged glances, then stepped back, just a little.
WorldBelow, the Grass King…A crazy laugh tried to force its way up her throat. She swallowed it back firmly. She said, “You want me to believe you’re the Grass King’s guards? The…” What was the word? Colonel Saverell had written of them, drawing on the Books of Marcellan. “The bannermen. That’s a what, not a who.” She fought not to panic. All the cards were in their hands. If she panicked, if she showed any fear, she would lose what little strength she possessed. “That’s a story.” Don’t let them know you’re scared. Be strong. And wait for Jehan.
The Grass King’s Concubine Page 14