At last she put a hand on my shoulder and guided me into the great hall. I did not want her guidance, but she was going where my heart led me, so I had no choice. We walked together to the bier where Hwyn's body was laid, dressed once again in the other Hwyn's embroidered gown. It was her best garment, travel-worn but still splendid in its crafting, and fitting, in more ways than one. Fitting that she should be buried in her clothes and in her name, now that her own had been torn by the hatching of the Sky-Raven's Egg. I knelt by the bier, cradled Hwyn's head in my arms, and wept yet again. Some time later I noticed that Trenara, facing me across the bier, was also weeping.
“Why do you weep, Goddess?”
“Don't you know?” she said in such a feeling tone, such a forlorn haunting sound, that I almost relented, almost regretted the harshness of my question.
Almost, but not quite. “No,” I said fiercely.
“I have as good a right to mourn as you,” Trenara retorted, matching my fierceness. The Holdouts standing around us drew back a pace.
“What right?” A memory turned in my mind: I remembered how Hwyn had spoken of her mother, the holy fool. “Were you her mother?”
“Only in the sense that I am your mother as well, and the world's,” she said. “I gave birth to it before time.”
“Ha! Fine neglectful mother you are.”
“If I am that,” she said evenly, “then why am I here?”
I could not answer that riddle, but I was not to be won over. I turned my face away from her. All the while that I argued with their goddess, the Holdouts had been staring at me in horror, awaiting a response, awaiting, perhaps, retribution. I did not care. I turned again to face her, challenging: “You sacrificed her! You have no right to weep for her. Her death was just part of your plan.”
She didn't flinch, didn't drop her gaze, didn't even blink. She only said very softly, “I have no plan.”
Syrc came between us, nothing afraid of the goddess, for all that she'd been the first to kneel to her. “It's time,” she said, so surely that we all forgot time had stopped in this endless night. “Come, Jereth. The other fishers are bringing your boat to the shore. Now we must carry Hwyn's body in procession. The people will follow us.” She took one corner of the bier, I another, Hart another, and across from me I was surprised to see Trenara as the fourth of the bearers. Led and flanked by torchbearers, we marched toward the sea with a slow drum beating and Tresanda keening somewhere behind me, singing a lament, in that sweet high voice that was almost as good as Hwyn's but never, never so dear to me. Outdoors, beyond the shelter of the city walls, the torches' light was strained thin, all but swallowed by darkness, with little to send the beams back to us in the open expanse of the shore. The torchbearers led us to a long pier stretching out into the ocean, a finger pointing north to the Rim of the World. Upon its boards we stepped fearfully, mindful of the dark waters on both sides. It had never been meant for use in such utter blackness. But half the funeral procession held torches or lanterns, and in the patches of light around them we were able to creep cautiously to the far end of the pier. There the fishermen moored the boat I'd made, and we set Hwyn gently down inside it.
Trenara claimed the right to speak first. I did not mind, so long as the last turn was mine. “This night,” proclaimed the goddess, “we send forth a great saint who died in the darkness so that others could come through the darkness alive. If you have any hope in this night, it is her gift. Honor her for that. She gave herself to my quest, knowing full well what it would cost her. Such a generous heart should never be forgotten.” And Trenara took off the silver crescent pendant they had given her at the festival, and fastened it around Hwyn's neck.
Next Per spoke: “We were promised hope in dark times: strength from the earth, friends from the South, hope from the sea. Now we commit one of those friends to the sea. May the Hidden Goddess—” he turned suddenly to Trenara, and seemed to pause, disconcerted, seeing the flesh-and-blood face of his formulaic invocation—“may all the Four Great Ones keep her in their care, and may we always keep her in our memories, so long as we have tongue to tell the tale or pen to write it.”
Syrc would have deferred to me, but I motioned her to proceed. She spoke little, uncharacteristically. “Hwyn was my friend,” she said. “I am grateful for that. She was the strongest soul I ever knew.”
Fourth and last, I spoke. “Hwyn was all they say, and more than any of you can say, more even than I can say who knew her best, but never knew her true name. That name is lost now: she sacrificed it with her life for the hope she saw amid the Troubles. All that she was—which was most precious—” the tears began again, and my voice shook, but I gathered breath to speak through it, “—all of herself, she sacrificed: for the Hidden Goddess, for me, for all of you. Whether she did wisely I cannot now say. I know nothing—I never knew anything—except that she—” tears choked me, but I forced myself to go on, “—of all things that touched my life, she was most beautiful.”
Then I turned from the crowd to the boat moored beside me where Hwyn lay. “Hwyn, my heart, in the morning we would have proclaimed our marriage vows before the people—but that morning, now, never comes. Nonetheless, I have married you with ring and promise, heart and body. And I have not followed you so far to abandon you now.” With that I lowered myself slowly into the boat, careful not to unbalance it. I had made it to hold us both, but the disparity of our weights made it difficult to keep the craft upright. But not for nothing had I spent my childhood at sea. I found my balance, unfurled the sail, and untied the mooring-rope. “Thus I began this journey, and thus I end it. To the world's end or the sea's bottom, I go with you.”
I heard a chorus of voices cry “No!” and “Stop!,” Trenara's among them. Then came the splash of a body cutting the water. Before we were well clear of the dock, the swimmer reached the boat and pulled himself up on the edge. “Jereth, don't,” panted Til. “Come back to us.”
“Til—”
“Gods, but I'm cold,” he sputtered. “Come on! Or I'll freeze to death, and you'll have that on your conscience to the world's end.”
“Til, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't have swum out,” I said. “It's kind of you, but it's no use. You can't help me. Please, let me go.” But he'd already retied the mooring-rope to the boat.
“Jereth, you can't do this!” called the Hidden Goddess, her musical voice filled with a cold fury I hadn't known she possessed.
“Why not?” I shouted back. “Wasn't there once a custom to send one of the living to the world's rim with a dead hero as an offering? An offering in exchange for the dead—to bring the hero back.”
“We never demanded that,” the goddess proclaimed. “We never asked for that offering. It was human custom—”
“Because human hearts demand it,” I said, “when we cannot accept unjust and untimely death. Command what you will, a man cannot live when his heart is dead. You may stop me from sailing to the world's end, but you can't forbid me to die.” As I said this, I held Hwyn's body in my left arm, leaning half over her; my right hand gripped the knife I always wore at my belt. I set the hilt against the bottom of the boat beside Hwyn, the point against my heart so that, embracing her, I could lean into the knife and die.
“She would forbid it,” Trenara said, and I knew without looking that she was pointing at Hwyn.
I let the knife clatter to the bottom of the boat. “You are cruel,” I said, “to torment me so with the truth.” Then I picked up the knife again, speaking once more only to the dead. “Because you forbade it, Hwyn, and for no other reason, I will not send my body with yours. But a part of me goes with you to the world's end.” With that I made a slash across my left forearm and let my blood spill out onto her breast. “May I soon follow.” Then I allowed myself to be hauled back up onto the pier. Held back from the edge by kind, imprisoning arms, I watched the rudderless craft carry her off into darkness.
“Gone. She's gone. What can I do?” I cried. No one answered, but Hart a
nd Til, who'd been holding me back from the brink, tightened their grip on me. Til was wet as a flounder and shivering violently. “Til, I'm sorry,” I said. “You'll catch your death. I never meant—”
“It's all right,” he said. “Come on.” I put my cloak around him—he resisted at first, then gave in—and I let them lead me home.
In Larioneth Hall, Ash and her helpers started warming fish stew and pancakes left from the feast to feed the mourners—not the traditional generous funeral dinner, but just enough to keep strength up. Food had to be doled out cautiously, for no one dared guess how long it might be before there was light to hunt by. But I excused myself from the meal, saying I wanted to sleep. They let me go uneasily, but they'd taken my knife away, and there was no other blade left in the room I'd been sharing with Hwyn, so they gave me my way.
But when I was alone again, the door shut against any who might have consoled me, I did not sleep. I stumbled through the darkness to the bed where Hwyn and I had shared our one night of joy, but I could not lie down on it. I wrapped the blanket around myself, dropped to the floor, and sat leaning against the bed brooding till my back ached.
There was a timid knock on the door. “Come in,” I said indifferently.
The candle they carried dazzled me a moment. “Your fire's gone out,” Hart said, and Syrc groped her way to the grate to light what remained of the fuel from the candle flame. I thought they had come to coax me out into the great hall with the others, but they shut the door instead, set the candle on the bedside table, and drew near me, even sat on the cold stone floor as I did.
“Do you mind if we sit with you a while?” Syrc said.
“No,” I said listlessly. “I mean, thank you. Everyone's been so kind, but I—it's no use, I just can't bear it, and no amount of kindness—I'm sorry, I must seem terribly ungrateful, but—”
“No,” Syrc said, “We understand. That's what we came to tell you, that we understand. I mean, not really understand, of course, because no one really understands, do they? It's all inside you where no one can see, no one can touch. And it's not the same, it's different for every loss. People always say ‘I know how you feel,’ but they don't know, do they? You know? Do you understand what I'm trying to say?”
“Yes,” I said, seeing her with new clarity, for her disclaimer had convinced me, as no assurances could, that she did understand. I touched her shoulder. “You've been here.”
“In a way,” Syrc said, trailing off to silence as though weighted down by memory.
“Then tell me, please, how did you go on?”
“That's just it, isn't it?” said Hart. “Sometimes it seems harder for the ones that have to go on living. But we wanted to ask you to live. And we thought if we told you our story, you might think we had some right to ask.”
“We haven't spoken of this in years,” Syrc said, “and everyone in Larioneth knows better than to speak of it, for I won't hear my parents' names spoken; I struck the last man that uttered their names in my hearing.”
“They left us,” Hart explained, “with the crowds that left Larioneth.”
“It was fifteen years ago,” Syrc said. “They went south without us. Sent us down to the seaside to dig clams and were gone when we returned, taking most of their household goods with them, but leaving the baby crying in his cradle. I don't know what they thought we could do without them. I don't know if they thought at all.”
“Syrc was fifteen then, and the oldest,” Hart said, “so most of the burden fell on her.”
“Maybe they thought I was old enough to manage,” Syrc said. “Well, I didn't manage. There were eight of us when they left. Four died, almost before the dust of our parents' footsteps had settled on the road south. The little ones caught fever, and I didn't know how to care for them. They—they just seemed to dry up, burn up. Three of them died within a week—my sisters Byrne and Lind, my brother Aern. And after that, my first brother, Ord—” she stopped, choked, but this time Hart did not offer to continue for her. After a heavy silence, Syrc went on: “He was the one between me and Hart. We were almost twins, nine months apart, companions and rivals from the cradle. Well, Ord—after the three little ones died, he—Hart and I found him in the barn. Hanging. He hanged himself. We—I was so angry at him, I—oh, gods.”
I took her hand. She didn't tremble or show any sign of weakness, except to grip my hand painfully tight. After a time she spoke on: “Yes, I was angry at him, furious. I still am: he deserted us. But I wasn't so different, myself.”
“We both admitted,” Hart said softly, “that we'd thought of doing the same. Both of us.”
“And we agreed then and there that we wouldn't,” Syrc said. “We swore a solemn oath to each other not to—not to do what Ord did, for each other's sake, and for Ash and Hauvoc, who needed us.”
“They don't know about this,” Hart said. “At least I think they don't; maybe the ghosts have told them. We buried Ord in secret. We told Ash that Ord had gone looking for our parents, that we'd tried to stop him but he wouldn't listen to reason. She was young enough to believe us. And Hauvoc was just a baby.”
“It's a wonder he survived,” Syrc said. “He must be made of iron.”
“You kept him alive,” Hart told her. “I remember. You wouldn't give up.”
“Not I.” Syrc smiled. “You were always better with children than I was. But you see,” she said to me, “it doesn't matter who. We both had to live for Hauvoc, for Ash. They needed us. And now we need you.”
“What for?” I said. “Me, I was never anything but Hwyn's companion. You have the goddess now.”
“Of course,” Syrc said, “but she is beyond us. Wonderful she may be, indeed—but we can't understand her.”
“Neither can I,” I said.
“Of course not,” Syrc responded. “She is the Unknown.” She said it so simply that I was quite overcome with the force of it. I'd been underestimating Syrc—a dangerous error, as Harga had warned me—believing she deferred to me for lack of discernment, too easy-tempered to notice any defect in me. Clearly I'd judged her unjustly; she saw much that I, in my pride, had refused to see. I listened, humbled, as she continued: “We cannot know her. But we can know you. And you, too, are part of the promise: ‘friends from the South.’ We need you, Jereth. You must not waste your life; you must not waste that promise.”
Hart added softly, “I know you would have died for Hwyn, if you could. But it's not so simple as that. I used to dream I could do that: buy back the children's lives with mine. Probably Ord dreamed that, too. But you can't do that; you can't die for her; he couldn't die for the children.”
“But you can live,” Syrc said, “for the promise. For us all.”
“I owe you at least that much,” I said. “I don't know what sort of joker god would fulfill a promise with me: a lifelong failure with a talent for losing everything I have. I am no prophet, no hero. But what I can do, I will. I'll try not to fail you.”
“You won't,” Syrc said.
I almost laughed at her earnestness. “Why you should have such faith in me, I can't fathom. I keep expecting everyone to turn against me. All I do is argue with your goddess. Doesn't it shock you?”
“Which of us hasn't reproached the gods in silence?” Syrc said. “You are only too honest to hide it; and I am at least too honest to pretend it shocks me. Besides,” she added, “it doesn't seem to shock her.”
I let them lead me back to the great hall, to the circle of compassionate faces. They set food before me and I ate submissively. After a time the goddess entered the room; her dark eyes on me had the insistence of a call. I rose from my seat and crossed the room to her, head held high. Then I knelt to her for the first time, not in worship but in supplication.
“I need not sail to the world's end to ask you, Goddess: why did you refuse me? Am I worthless even as sacrifice? For the last time, will you take my life in exchange for my saint's?”
“I told you,” she said, “we never asked for that sacrifice.�
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“Didn't you accept the blood-offering in the Hills of Penmorrin?” I challenged her. “It was your touch, wasn't it, that made the land bloom after we worshiped you with song and with blood?”
“The song woke me a little to my true nature, when my saint sang my call to the buried seed,” the goddess said. “And the blood made me weep for pity. I tried to catch you when you fell.”
“Then why, why didn't you have pity on Hwyn?” I asked. “I thought you loved her.”
“I do,” she said. “Trust me. What I can do, I do.”
“But you've done nothing,” I said. Then, more quietly, “Are you saying it's not in your power? Are you not a goddess?”
“You yourself named me,” she said. “My power is yet to be seen; what I may do, I cannot say. I am not the Rising God to answer your riddles. I am the riddle. I am the Unknown. I offer everything but promise nothing. Will you refuse the offer for the dream of a promise?”
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