The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  “Jereth,” the answer came, a soft moan. My heart contracted painfully.

  “Hwyn! Where are you?”

  “In the center,” she said weakly. “Lying in the circle's center. Can't—can't you see me?”

  “No. I see nothing,” I said. I dared not walk toward her, sightless as I was, for fear of stumbling on her, so I dropped to all fours in the snow and crawled, groping ahead of me with one hand before I moved. “I'm coming,” I said.

  “I thought it was my eye that had failed,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “Night has fallen. Are you near?”

  “Here,” she said, not so far ahead of me now.

  As I crawled toward her, I noticed that the snow under my hands and knees thinned and then disappeared, and the ground even grew warm. “Hwyn, what happened? Was this—did you plan this?”

  At that moment my outstretched hand touched her body. She let out a helpless cry of pain. Hastily I drew back.

  “Gods! What have I done?” I cried. “Oh, Hwyn! What's happened to you?”

  “Jereth—I—I'm sorry,” Hwyn murmured absurdly, panting as though with exertion, as though the effort not to scream again exhausted her strength. “I didn't mean to—to drive you away. I—I'm hurt. I—Jereth, I'm dying now.”

  “No!” A choked whisper: it was all I could say.

  She spoke on, breathless and stammering but insistent. “I know it will hurt but I want you—I want you to hold me while I die.”

  “Oh gods! Hwyn, I don't want to hurt you again, I—I'll do this as carefully as I can. Where are you hurt?”

  “My chest. Here—lift me by the shoulders—” One hand reached out and found me. I reached carefully to take both her shoulders without touching her chest, to lift her as gently as possible; but by her sharp intake of breath, I knew it pained her. Still, I managed at last to settle her more or less comfortably in my arms.

  “Thank you,” she panted. “I love you.”

  “Hwyn, you're not going to die,” I said. “I'll take you back to the hall. Harga—”

  “No,” she said simply. “You can't see. By the time you find your way—no, Jereth. Let me stay here in peace.”

  “But—”

  “It's no use, love,” she said. “The morning may come—but I will not see it.”

  “Then neither will I,” I said.

  “You must,” she returned. “You will be needed.”

  “For what?” I said bitterly.

  “I don't know,” she said. “Maybe—maybe to correct what I have done. It is so dark! I never imagined it so dark. I—I wonder—was I wrong?”

  “No,” I said. “Hwyn, don't say so. You always knew—”

  “Not now,” she said. “My truesight is gone.”

  “Hwyn, what happened? What hurt you?”

  She was a while catching her breath before she could answer. “The Eye of Night has hatched,” she said. “I felt it, ready, when I woke in the night. That—that's why I left your side. I knew—I had to bring it here.” She paused for breath.

  “What happened? What did it do to you?”

  “It was filled with fire,” she said. “It burst with a force like lightning, and it—the force of the blow—” She paused to gasp for breath, and I waited, scarcely daring to breathe myself, lest I miss her faltering words. “Part of the shell was driven through my chest. And the fire—it burned me.”

  “Through your chest— It was still in your breast pouch, then,” I said. “Why? Why didn't you leave it at a safe distance? Why couldn't you hold it in your hand, at least, away from your heart?”

  “It needed me,” she said, more steadily than before. “The warmth of my body to kindle its fire. The pulse of my heart. Maybe even my life.”

  “It needed you. What if it did?” I retorted. “What kind of creature could feed on your life like that?”

  “I don't know,” she sighed. “It may be—I may have done wrong.”

  “No. Hwyn, no,” I recanted desperately. “Don't mind me; I never understood this quest. You must have done right. You were—you have always been so wise. You knew—” Suddenly a new thought struck me like the crash of a wave, hard and merciless on the rocks. “Hwyn, you knew it, you knew this would happen, didn't you? That's why you wouldn't let me carry the Eye of Night, toward the end. You knew.”

  “I expected something of the kind,” she said wearily.

  “And did you know when I was making the breast-pouch for you, that I was helping to kill you? Dear gods, if only I had died first!”

  “No, Jereth, my love, you did nothing wrong. You did nothing to hurt me, and everything to help me. The breast-pouch made no difference.”

  “No difference? A shard through your chest, no difference?”

  “It would have made no difference if I'd left the Eye here and run away, Jereth,” she said. “I was doomed. I sealed my fate the night I met you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I found the Eye of Night in the magic circle,” she said, “it was bound with the names of the lords of Kelgarran. To break the binding, I had to replace their names with my own.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, Hidden Goddess, no,” I groaned, remembering how insistent Hwyn had been against my using my own name in bindings—seeing how she had protected me, unprotected herself.

  “The Eye of Night was enclosed in my name,” she said. “I had no more hope of surviving its hatching than—than if it had been closed in my flesh.”

  “Oh Hwyn, my heart, my life!” I moaned, rocking her gently. “How can I live if you do not?”

  “I wanted you to live,” she said slowly, her voice down to a hoarse whisper. “I—Jereth— As best I could, I tried to keep you alive. I love you so. Maybe—maybe I should not have let you love me. It—it was a little cruel, because I knew. I knew I could only die.”

  “That love was the saving of me, Hwyn my soul, my saint,” I said. “I love you so desperately.”

  “I know. I'm sorry and I'm glad,” she said. “Without you— A person can only take so much loneliness. I needed you. And with you I have been happy, even starving and cold and stumbling through the snow toward my death.”

  My eyes burned with tears I could not shed. “Oh, why can't I save you? Why can't I die with you?”

  “Jereth—I'm sorry.”

  “There's been so little time,” I said. “We were scarcely together. There's so much you haven't told me. Not even— What is your name?”

  “Can't tell you,” she murmured. “It is broken. Shattered, with the egg.”

  “Oh, gods. Is there no mercy anywhere?”

  “But you guessed it,” she said. “You named me right. That first morning. When we sailed.”

  “What?”

  “You named me,” she sighed.

  “What did I say?” I pleaded.

  No answer came.

  The land was very still. The only sounds in my ears were my own ragged breathing and frantic heartbeat.

  “Hwyn?”

  I loosened my hold on her with one hand to caress her face. “Hwyn, speak to me, please.” She did not respond. I clutched at her wildly, almost as I had in the night, in our brief night of pleasure. When my hand fumbled against her wound, she did not cry out. My last hope died.

  There rose from my throat a wordless, senseless cry, the raging of a beast that can roar but not weep. I thought my heart would split. I thought the world would crack. But nothing happened, and that was worst of all.

  Nothing happened, except that my body shook, and my unseeing eyes seemed to be bleeding, bleeding fire, bleeding life out of my soul, as the hot harsh tears I had dammed up since childhood burst forth. It hurt to weep, as though the tears were too big for my eyes. In a confusion of grief and pain and shame, I sat in the center of the Sky-Temple clutching her poor torn body, clutching the wreck of all I loved. How long I sat there, I do not know; there was no sun or moon to mark the time.

  At length I was disturbed by a light. My eyes were closed, but such
was the shock of it after utter darkness that I swear I saw it through my eyelids. I opened my eyes, and was at first too dazzled to see the figure carrying the torch. “Who is it?” I said, in a voice that scarcely seemed to be my own.

  “I,” said a voice I knew.

  “Trenara?” Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the torchlight. It was the lady indeed. “Trenara,” I sobbed, “look— What's happened, I can hardly tell you. It—it's Hwyn. Hwyn is dead.”

  The lady planted her torch in the earth, crouched beside me, and slipped her arms gently around the body I held. Her touch was as soft as compassion. She bent to kiss Hwyn's cold brow, then slid away, only holding one lifeless hand. Then at last she spoke: “Alas, my faithful traveler! I come too late for farewells. You have gone too swiftly before me.”

  Was this Trenara? I gaped astonished. I must have been mistaken. Peering through the unsteady torchlight, I looked into her face—Trenara's face, there was no doubt—and felt, for the second time, a veil fall from my eyes.

  “Goddess,” I said, “why didn't I recognize you till now?”

  “Peace, child. Your Gift of Naming did not fail you,” she said. “But come: I have slept too long. Years, long dark years. And in the last hours I walked in dreams in my own land, with you and this saint. Come, bear her with honor to the hall.”

  Too stupefied to argue, I followed. I noticed for the first time that Trenara shone with a radiance not lent by the torch. She cut the darkness as a ship's prow cuts the wave. How had I ever been deceived? She was different, and yet oddly the same as ever, with the same thoughtless grace like an animal moved only by instinct. Even the inhuman glow of her body, which I had never seen before, was strangely familiar, as the Sky-Temple had been familiar. But I did not set my mind to this riddle. She ordered me, “Come,” and I came, too weary to resist, too weak to choose my own path. Hwyn lay in my arms, a trifling small burden, as though half her weight had departed with her soul. Hwyn who had never been still, even in sleep, always full of quick and nervous motion, now lay limp and unresisting as a doll. With every step I took, every motion to which she did not respond, I rediscovered her death, a dagger of ice in my heart.

  We reached Larioneth Hall's back kitchen door, the one that was never bolted. Trenara stood aside as though it were beneath her to open the door for herself—or as though she still expected Hwyn to lead the way. I would not put down Hwyn's body to grasp the door handle. Instead I kicked the door, surprising myself with the gesture, with the anger lying just beneath the surface of my grief.

  The door opened and Ash appeared, holding a lantern. “Jereth! What's happened?” she began, then saw what I carried.

  “Hwyn is dead.” It came out as a sob.

  Ash pulled me indoors without another word and, with her usual instinct for giving people whatever they most needed, she wrapped her arms as far as she could around me and Hwyn together, pressing us to her breast, saying nothing, for no words could console me.

  I heard Trenara step in behind me; from among the people who'd been with Ash in the kitchen, I heard gasps and shouts of amazement.

  March's voice broke out above the scattered sounds. “My Lady—what are you?” Even Ash, then, released me to stare past me at the lady.

  I looked over my shoulder at Trenara, who stood silent and radiant as ever. “Oh, Trenara. She is the Hidden Goddess,” I said indifferently, and sank into one of the kitchen chairs, rocking Hwyn's body in my arms, as though she were a sleeping child that might wake again.

  Around me the Holdouts of Larioneth were falling to their knees again. I would not. Goddess though she was, Trenara had not saved Hwyn, and I was not impressed with her divinity. She spoke to her followers now in the sweet musical tones that had beguiled me when I first met her, but I shut my ears against her.

  In the firelight of the kitchen I could see Hwyn's wounds clearly for the first time, the ugly burns covering her chest, the bloody passage that a shard had made through her body. She had been right: there had been no hope of healing. Scar upon scar and wound upon wound: such had been her life. There was no part of her small body that did not bear witness to suffering. And I had dreamed that I could mend those hurts, caress away the memory of pain. But pain had been her destiny; she had been marked for it, like an animal consecrated to sacrifice in the old days. I could do nothing for her. In the end she went off alone to die, protecting me, surrendering herself. I had not saved her.

  A hand touched my arm. “Jereth, let me see her.”

  It was Harga. I loosened my grip enough to let her examine Hwyn's wound, feel desperately for a pulse, and shake her head. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I had hoped it might all be a mistake. I— I hope she did not suffer much.”

  “She died in pain and doubt,” I said, “wondering if she had done wrong. I—I had never seen her in doubt before. It was—it was merciless, the Eye of Night. She nurtured it and it destroyed her. Left her with nothing, not even the sense of having done right. Not even her name.”

  “Oh, my child,” Harga murmured, a mere comforting noise, while she wiped away my tears and stroked back the hair from my face, as though I were one of Ash's babies. I had never seen her gentle before, and it almost unnerved me. I was still weeping uncontrollably, though some child-self in the back of my mind continually expected to be beaten for it. It might have been a relief, at that—simple physical pain to drown the horror.

  “I want to die,” I whispered.

  “Hush now,” Harga crooned meaninglessly, awkwardly half embracing me with one knobby-boned arm. “We're here. We won't leave you.”

  They did not leave me, the Holdouts. The hours that followed were a succession of reassuring touches, old arthritic hands and young sinewy ones, all tender with an affection I had never earned from them; warmth, as someone drew a blanket over my trembling shoulders; meaningless voices, a hushed babble of comfort nearby, and farther off, the purposeful speech of council led by Trenara's silvery voice; but no meaning, no meaning anywhere, except my loss. I too have lost my name, I told Hwyn silently: I had one, when you called me and I followed you. Now I am no one. My mind heard nothing else. Once, with the same gentle touch as all the others, someone moved to take the body from my arms, saying something or other, I cared not what. I snatched her back: “No! No one shall take her from me!” They retreated, and I contracted farther around her, clutching the ruin of my hopes, clutching despair.

  After a time someone put a cup to my lips and, drained dry with weeping, I gave in and drank. I slept, and in my dreams she was alive again. I was calling her, calling a name I could not hear and could not remember once I had spoken it.

  I woke calmer, if it can be called calm when a man's heart is dead. I was still clutching Hwyn's body so hard I could scarcely straighten, cramped around her.

  The council was dispersed, but it seemed they'd kept a vigil over me, like the vigil for the fire in the temple. Syrc was with me. When she saw I was awake, she moved toward me slowly, carefully, saying nothing, but looking gravely into my eyes all the time. She knelt, took Hwyn's hand, and kissed it. The gesture touched me; it opened my sealed heart. “Syrc, what shall I do?” I whispered.

  Before speaking, she moved cautiously and covered my hand with hers, as though the touch would ensure that I accepted what she said in good will. “Friend,” she said, “if we cannot comfort you, let us mourn with you.”

  She paused, and I nodded, waiting for her to go on.

  “Little though we knew Hwyn, we had begun to love her too, though not with the great love you have for her. I—I grieve for you, Jereth. But I also mourn Hwyn as a friend—if I may say so.”

  “You were a friend to her,” I said. “She'd never had many. She— I'm glad that—” I could not go on. I was weeping again, ready to slip back into unreason, into the haze of pain.

  Syrc's grip on me and the hold of her dark eyes remained steady, grounding me to earth. “We want to honor her,” she said. “We—we talked it over, but I don't think you heard or understood.
There is a custom, a rite reserved for the most honored dead, for heroes: to build a lordly boat for them and launch the body on the ocean, sending them in state to the rim of the world or the embrace of the waters. We want to do that for Hwyn, as for the greatest of heroes. She gave her life for—for hope, for the North, maybe for all the world. It is only her due.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak again.

  “Til says you know something of shipbuilding,” she said. “Do you want to build the boat? He'll help you, or simply give you what tools you need, as you prefer.”

  “I'll build it,” I said. “That will be fitting.”

  “Good.” Syrc nodded, then hesitated a while before she spoke again. “When you're ready, I—I will take her to be washed and dressed for the funeral.” By the time she finished I could hear the tears in her voice.

  “Did you come for her once before? Was it you that I pushed away?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I'm sorry. I just couldn't—couldn't bear—”

  “I know,” Syrc said. “It's all right.”

  I built the boat with as little help as I could manage, rusty though my shipbuilding skills had to be after all those years in the Tarvon Order. It was not very seaworthy, with a showy swan-curved stem and stern, and a low freeboard that would be too easily overwhelmed by the waves; but it was adequate for its purpose, a rudderless boat for her second ghost-driven journey into the unknown. It was a reliquary, a throne for the remains of a saint: one of those who bear the gods into this world. For this reason, I adorned the high prow and stern with rough paintings, icons of her glorious deeds: stealing the Eye of Night; confronting the ghosts in Kelgarran Hall; traveling northward, bent against the wind; lying wounded in the center of the Sky-Temple, a sacrifice, though for what cause I knew not. I was not deft with the paintbrush, but the vague images I drew seemed fitting to me, my clumsiness with the brush masking the damage to her face, blurring the memory of pain. Almost in despair, not knowing anymore if it meant anything, I painted a last icon on the sail, the Great Wheel of the Gods: the Rising God, yearning upward, seemed unable to quite reach the Bright Goddess above him, her arms open in mercy, like Ash, offering comfort he could not attain. To her right, the Upside-Down God smiled his mad grin, diving downward. At the bottom, for the Hidden Goddess, I painted no image of Trenara, but the shadow of the Sky-Raven spreading its wings over the world. As I added the last strokes of the brush to the icon, I felt a presence at my shoulder. There Trenara stood; how long she had been watching me, I did not know, but she smiled, stretching a hand toward my work as though to touch it, but stopping short of the fresh paint. Then she circled the boat, admiring in turn each of the four rough icons, nodding her approval silently.