“Fine place to meet wolves,” Hwyn whispered as I peered cautiously out from our shelter. “Not a branch within climbing distance.”
We'd come upon a wolf-pack once during the journey; for a man who'd never climbed trees as a boy, I thought I'd managed to get the knack of it wonderfully fast that night. But Hwyn was right: even at my height, there were no accommodating branches to be seen. Nonetheless, I was not too alarmed: the movement I'd seen had not looked like wolves. I stuck my head cautiously out of the thicket and peered on ahead. As I did so, Trenara broke away laughing and dashed on ahead before either of us could stop her.
“Hidden Goddess!” Hwyn swore under her breath. “There's no keeping her safe.”
If there were any wild beasts ahead, they now had no doubt of our whereabouts. We rushed out and followed Trenara into the clearing.
I saw clearly before me, then, no wolves, but a clear, dusty path between gleaned fields and a farmer pushing a wheelbarrow of late vegetables toward the gray walls of the town. We careened downhill at full speed and walked between the wintering fields, staring about us. Smoke came from the chimney of every farmhouse we passed. Plowmen and oxen toiled along some of the gleaned fields, breaking them up for the new seed.
When we reached the gates, the sentry neither responded to our hail nor delayed us, staring dully out into the moonlight. We shrugged and went on into a bustling town. Tradesmen led loaded carts of wares through the wide gates; smaller peddlers pushed wheelbarrows of goods. Women clustered about the well, filling buckets and talking. Children ran and screamed in front of the houses until their mothers leaned out the windows to hush them. It was all so normal that it astounded me.
“Alcorel swore no one remained to the north of Berall,” I said. “Here we see life undisturbed.”
“Not quite undisturbed,” Hwyn said. “Have you been traveling so long by night as to forget the ways of daylight? Who plows a field by night, or goes to market by moonlight? Why have they taken to the darkness?”
“Well,” I said, “you told me the Troubles are the fall of night. Maybe this is how they've learned to live with them.”
Hwyn raised an eyebrow. “A better way of meeting the Troubles than Lord Var's, to be certain. Let's find out.”
We caught up to the farmer with the cart of vegetables and called a warm greeting. He took no notice, plodding ahead as steadily as before.
“Rude,” I muttered.
Hwyn said, “We'll go to the market-square. They can't ignore us if we're buying.”
So we followed the farmer and his cart, certain he would lead the way. But before we reached the marketplace, a familiar sound captured my ears. “There's a shipyard in this town! I'd know that noise anywhere.”
“Can't be,” Hwyn said. “Does this look like the seaside to you?”
“Maybe the stream joins a river on the other side of the town,” I said. “Though I grant you it's strange. The lay of the land seems wrong. Besides, it would be foolish to build a town between two rivers where they join—that's flood land. It doesn't make sense. But I can hear the sailors' chanteys—no inlander sings like that.”
“Lots of workmen sing at their jobs.”
“But not that song,” I said. “Besides, I could swear I smelled the sea. I must at least look.”
I turned down an alley toward the shipyard sounds, and Hwyn followed me. As we passed, a burly man turned the corner suddenly and collided with me head-on.
“Sorry,” I said, “I didn't see you in time.” But he never looked at me. Instead, he kept on walking straight into Hwyn and almost through her without once breaking his stride, as though we weren't there. She tripped on his leg and just managed to catch herself on her hands, or her face would have kissed the ground. I cursed the man to his back, but Hwyn, uncharacteristically calm, looked thoughtful as she got to her feet. “Jereth, I've got the strangest feeling these people don't see us, don't hear us,” she said.
“What could do that to them? Sorcery?” I said.
“Maybe.”
We came out on the other side, and sure enough, it was a shipyard. I breathed in the smells of sea air, fish, and the pitch they were using to tar a broad-bottomed fishing boat. It all looked familiar—too familiar. I was certain I'd seen it all before. Of course I'd seen thousands of boats tarred in my lifetime—but I felt I knew every knot, every peg in its hull, every movement of the workers, every stray cat prowling the shipyard, every dead fish lying on the dock.
Farther down the dock, men were unloading a cargo ship, a great three-masted galleon, taking down baskets of exotic fruits and loading them onto carts. As the carts passed by us, Hwyn tried to stop one after another of their drivers, but none of them saw her. At last she turned back to me. “No use. As far as we're concerned, they're blinder than I am,” she said. “What is that they're carrying?”
“Oranges,” I said. “An Iskarrian fruit; it's too cold to grow them in Swevnalond. They're a bit tart, but quite good once you get used to them.”
“It seems unlikely we can buy or beg a meal here,” she said. “As long as we're invisible to them, I might as well take something.”
Even months after our mishaps in Kreyn, I was still uncomfortable with Hwyn's thievery—once a priest, always overscrupulous. Still, I hardly felt justified rebuking her; our stores of food were small, and the road ahead hard. So, keeping uneasy truce with my conscience, I ignored Hwyn as she strolled off toward the unguarded baskets of fruit waiting to be loaded on the wagons. But eventually my eyes turned to the galleon they were unloading, noting the unusual height of its aftercastle, and a lightning bolt went through my head. “Hwyn, wait!” I shouted, “stop!”
“Jereth, I was going to leave payment,” she protested. “I still have a penny or two of Hwyn the Weaver's in my pocket.”
“Hwyn, listen to me!” Three sailors turned to look at me as I called out. “Don't eat what they're carrying! Those are dead men!” Hwyn froze; the fruit she'd picked up dropped from slack fingers.
Just then one of the sailors pointed at me: “Look! Isn't that Garmund's son? The one washed ashore alive?”
“Hey, survivor!” another called, “what are you doing here? You've still got flesh on you.”
Now it was my turn to stand paralyzed, my nightmares taking shape around me in waking life. At last I felt Hwyn's arm around my waist. “Jereth, let's go,” she said. “We'll find Trenara and leave this place.”
I nodded and followed numbly. At last I spoke: “That ship they were unloading, the Sea-Bird, went down seven years ago. It was my father's. All those sailors, my mother and father, my brothers and sister-in-law and uncle, even the baskets of oranges, everything on that ship sank beneath the sea—everything but me. They don't feel like ghosts, but they can't be anything else.”
“Then this is the land of the dead,” Hwyn said, “which we walked into alive. No wonder they asked you what you're doing here. We don't belong here. We'll soon be gone.”
“I thought,” I said slowly, “that they were asking me what I was doing still alive.”
“No,” Hwyn said softly, her arm tightening around me.
Back in the market-square we found Trenara dancing. A crowd had gathered about her, laughing and clapping their hands. Her every movement expressed perfect grace; her face was lit with ecstasy.
“Well, this land of ghosts doesn't bother her,” I said.
“No,” Hwyn breathed, gazing ahead spellbound. She approached one of the onlookers, tugged at his sleeve, then, receiving no response, elbowed in front of him. I threaded through after her, so that we stood together in the midst of the throng. “Look,” she said, “these people can't see or hear us. They can't even feel us. The sailors you knew saw you, but they couldn't see me, could they? I'd have gotten away with that fruit easily.”
“We're the ghosts here,” I said. “They're solid enough to our touch. We're insubstantial, only visible to special people, to people who knew us.”
“Then why,” Hwyn asked, “
can all these people see Trenara?”
I had just opened my mouth to reply when one of the onlookers, a burly, weathered man of about fifty, confronted Hwyn: “Hey! Little flea on a rat's tail, what are you doing loitering in the market-square? Didn't I send you after water?” At the sound of his voice, I saw her face freeze. Before I could react, he seized her with massive hands and dragged her out of the throng.
I struggled to push my way out after them, calling ineffectually, “Hey! Let her go!” But the crowd blocked my way, and my shoving did not even seem to bother them. Still, I trusted that Hwyn could defend herself a little, even with her size so much against her, until I came to reach her. I knew she had a knife, and I had seen her draw it, though I was not sure it would be any use against a man already dead. But Hwyn offered no more resistance than to drag her feet, cowering away from the man. He hauled her along like a sledge. With a clout of the fist to the side of her head, he shouted, “Good-for-nothing bastard! Is this the way you mind me? Is this how you repay me and mine for the food you take out of our mouths? Loitering along the way, watching the players in the marketplace instead of doing what I told you? I'll make you sorry you ever heard of players. I'll play a fine tune on your skull.”
“No!” she gasped, limp with terror, as I had never seen her, even in a fetid dungeon awaiting her death. “Please, stop, Grandfather!”
Grandfather? The man was beating her like a drum. His meaty fist looked almost as big as her head, and to judge by the knotty muscles on his thick neck he might be a blacksmith, strong enough to bully draft-horses. And I had the dark suspicion that the Hwyn he saw was even smaller than the woman before my eyes: in his ranting and cursing, he seemed to be speaking to a child. But her weakness did not soften him. He might be a ghost, but he seemed in no way insubstantial. If the man in the alley, ghost though he was, had tripped Hwyn, this one could hurt her. What's more, I could not bear to see Hwyn so afraid, so broken. I squirmed through the crowd to catch up with them.
Coming within reach of the man at last, I grasped him by one iron-muscled arm. He neither saw nor felt my touch, but it did not matter: I had him. I had teased his name out of the tangle of ghosts' names in this place of the dead.
“Del, son of Devon,” I cried, and he turned to me, seeing and hearing me for the first time. “By your name I command you: let go of her.” He dropped her helplessly. “I banish you, now and while I live, from the presence of your granddaughter. By your name and my own, Jereth son of Garmund, I seal your banishment.” The man disappeared: he melted away between my fingers, while I was so intent on holding him that I lost my balance and fell in the dust. Hwyn, still shaking, came to help me off the ground. I put my arms around her and sat holding her a while.
“What have you done?” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper, as if she still feared her grandfather would find her by her voice and punish her for daring to speak.
“I bound him by his name.” I stroked her hair; her body was still tense as a bowstring.
“And by your own,” she said. “Gods protect you, by your own name.”
“I should have banished him forever, and not just for my lifetime,” I said. “I should have sent him to the scorched valley where Dirnlac of the Red Oak nurses his anger.”
“Jereth, my love, my life, you must know by now that you will pay the price for sealing that bond with your name.”
“Never mind that, beloved. Nothing less would do. How could I leave you at his mercy? I've seen you face death with a steady hand and a bold word on your lips. I've never seen you so frightened before.”
“I'd become like a child again,” she said. “It's what I've always feared: that at any moment, in any place, my grandfather could come back for me. I scarcely dared speak of him for fear the words would bring him back, or change me back to the helpless thing I was in his grasp.”
“Where were your parents, then? Dead? Or were they as bad as the old man?”
She laughed then, bitterly. “My parents? I never knew my father. My mother was something like Trenara—only a little different, more mad and less simple. At least she had sense enough to run away from home to St. Fiern's Town before I was born. There, they think fools and lunatics are holy: they write their ravings onto oracle-sticks and use them for augury. Better yet, they take care of them, feed, shelter, and cherish them. As a madwoman's daughter, I seemed to inherit some of that sanctity; I was fed, sheltered, and cherished as well. I lived most often with the midwife who looked after my mother, or in the temple of the Hidden Goddess, where the priestesses used to teach me chants; but I was at home everywhere. Every house in St. Fiern's Town was my home, every child my sister or brother. A place was set for me at every table. I could even rebuke my playmates' parents for beating them, and they would heed my words. It was a marvelous childhood!
“But one day my grandmother, no doubt meaning well, came to bring back her lost, moontouched child into the care of the family; and to my harm, she discovered she had a grandchild as well. She bundled us both, unwilling, back to Tarn's Ford. Back to my grandfather.
“Till then, I had never lived like other children. I had never had to account for my comings and goings. I had done chores to keep my friends company, not because anyone said I must. I was unused to being ruled; Grandfather was unused to being gainsaid. And I was too young to see trouble coming until it was upon me. I couldn't understand why he kept beating me. When I asked, it only made him more furious. Once, he struck me so hard on the side of the head that something burst in my eye; it's been turned off course ever since. He broke my nose and jaw. He did unspeakable things to me. He made me the deformed creature I am today, unrecognized when I returned to St. Fiern's Town, mocked by children, shunned by all, never to be loved by anyone but you, who must be a saint or a blind man to see past my horrible face.”
I didn't know what to say to her. I rocked her in my arms as though she were a child.
“My mother,” Hwyn continued, “ran away again soon after we reached Tarn's Ford. I don't blame her; she couldn't have done anything for me anyway. No one could defend me—until you, who have entered a bond with your name only to guard me from him.”
“Never mind,” I said. “It's all right. It's rare enough that I can do the least thing for you, you who carry the world's burden in your breast pocket. Now let's leave while we still can. If Trenara doesn't follow us, then we'll know she belongs here.”
Hwyn allowed me to help her to her feet and lead her along the outskirts of town. “If I'd had my wits about me,” she said as we left the marketplace, “I'd have asked my grandfather why he recognized Trenara. He was watching her, you know. I'll never get a clear answer from her.”
“It doesn't matter,” I said. “He might sooner have answered me, since I held his name, but it was hardly the first thing on my mind at the time.” The northern gate was already in sight when I heard a voice calling my name. When I started to turn, Hwyn caught me by the shoulder.
“Don't,” Hwyn said. “Don't listen. There's nothing good for us in this town.”
“I have to,” I said. “It's my mother.”
Turning, I saw both my parents standing some distance away. “Jereth,” my father shouted, “why did you leave us? Why did you let us go down? You just watched me as I went under; couldn't you have stretched a hand in my direction?”
“It wasn't like that,” I said. “You were well out of reach. The waves were high as a house. If I'd let go of that scrap of the hull to swim toward you, neither of us could have reached it again alive. Is that what you want? Would you rather have me dead, too? A clean sweep, the whole crew, the whole family, dead on the ocean floor?”
“You never tried to save anyone but yourself,” he said. I turned from him to my mother, absurdly seeking pardon; her face unreadable as ever, she only said my name once more: “Jereth.”
“I'm sorry,” I said hopelessly. In front of me the ground seemed to open and then surge. I felt myself tossed up and down on the waves once more, saw
them all but swallowed up in the sea; no way for me this time but to give in, try to do what I hadn't seven years ago, play the hero's part, give my life: better that than to live with myself as a coward for another seven years. I dropped off the edge of the board I was floating on, and plunged into the tumult. But something held me back; I seemed caught in rough claws. I struggled until I heard Hwyn's voice, and realized that it was her bony hands holding me back. She was standing on dry ground; only I was on the sea, tossed almost out of her reach as she struggled to hold on. “Jereth! For the gods' love, for mine, don't go!”
“I let them drown once! I can't again.”
“What use could it be to throw your life away? What good will it do them if you die? Who could possibly demand that?”
I gestured mutely at my father, who seemed frozen in the moment of drowning.
“Garmund!” she called—but he didn't respond. “Why doesn't he hear me?”
“You need the Gift,” I said. “Only I could banish them—but I can't. Now I must go.”
She locked her arms around me with all her strength. “If you throw yourself in now, I'll go with you. Jereth, these people aren't drowning now; they drowned years ago. You can't save them. You couldn't have saved them then. Look how far they are, and how high the waves. You can't blame yourself. You weren't to blame.”
“How can I be sure?” I cried. “How do you know? What makes you think I didn't play the coward's part seven years ago?”
“Because I've led you into the dungeon of Berall Hall, the abodes of ghosts, and a desolate wasteland, and I've never seen you play the coward's part anywhere,” she said. “You've even risked a binding with your name—a binding for life, which will do no more good if you drown yourself now.”
Someone came, then, between me and my parents, walking over the waves as though she could not see them: the Lady Trenara. “Let's go now,” she said. Under her feet, the waves had turned to sand. Looking over her shoulder, I saw my parents alive, sitting in their favorite chairs on the balcony of our old home overlooking the sea.
The Eye of Night Page 36