Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  When Doug came to Thelmithar an hour or so later, the Rainbow City Ortheans had left the steps, and I sat alone. Second twilight gloomed: Carrick’s Star set, the Heart Stars not yet visible. I poured a bowl of del’ri-spirit for Doug. The act needed concentration.

  ‘I’ve seen the Tower servants, the brown-robes. They listened politely enough.’ He sat down beside me, loosening the neck of his coveralls, and wiping sweat from his forehead. ‘Then they talked for some while, without actually saying anything. I’m told the Hexenmeister will consider an answer … Are you going to suggest to the Company that there may be alien technology in Kasabaarde?’

  I sipped more del’ri-spirit. The effect on human biology is slightly hallucinogenic.

  ‘The Tower must be wondering the same thing.’ I grinned crookedly at him.

  And the Tower has nothing to protect itself except secrecy – and reputation. No weapons, no troops, only a few defences within the actual walls. Nothing to protect that fragile, ageing machinery that he said cannot be replaced. Except Kasabaarde’s reputation. Have I made myself a target?

  ‘Douggie, I wanted to talk to you. Wanted to say this at Maherwa, but I didn’t have it straight in my mind. I ought to hand in my resignation to PanOceania,’ I said, ‘but I won’t. Not yet. Not until I’ve got everything useful out of them that I can get out of them.’

  Twilight blurred the dome roofs of the inner city. To the north, just visible, the tip of the last spire of the Rashre-y-Meluur was illuminated by the vanished sun.

  ‘I hope you meant what you’ve said,’ I added. ‘Or I’m going out on a limb for nothing. But I’m still going. I can’t condone what the Company’s doing on Orthe. I’ll act as a source of inside information as long as I can – which won’t be long, if I know Molly Rachel – and than I’ll quit, and carry on here, outside the Company. God knows what I can do, but I’m going to try.’

  Doug leaned back against the dome-wall, and took a long drink of the fermented del’ri-spirit. He said shrewdly, ‘And then you want a bolt-hole to run to. Government Service.’

  ‘If I don’t get that, PanOceania can deport me off Orthe. I’d find ways to stay, but I need a position of influence.’

  He chuckled wryly. ‘You’re joining me.’

  ‘A little late in the day. Believe me, Douggie, I know that.’

  ‘And I don’t know all of your reasons, do I? No, and you don’t know all of mine.’ He raised the ceramic bowl in a salute half ironic, half sincere. ‘Welcome to the conspiracy.’

  I shifted over to sit beside him, sharing the flask of del’ri. The last light faded from the Rasrhe-y-Meluur. We talked for a while, quietly. Lamplight spilled from the arch of an Order House further down the alley, and voices were raised inside; the thin wail of a metal flute rising over the din. A humid, sweaty evening. Above, the Heart Stars began to blaze like silver fur.

  We sat side by side, he with the collar of his coveralls unfastened, that grizzled red hair slicked up as close as it ever comes to disarray. Behind me, an Order House male lit lamps. Yellow light shone from the door-arch, limning the edges of the steps, and the alley dust rough with the print of bare feet. It shone on Douggie’s bowed shoulders, and the small curls of hair at the nape of his neck. I thought, I want to touch that soft, creased skin – here, where air and twilight and gravity are not Earth’s. Here, a very long way from home.

  I said, ‘I took a look in records, back in the Freeport. Sophie’s where, now? Arminel-III?’

  ‘On Thierry’s World. She’s doing xeno-biology research there.’

  He got up slowly, heavily. And then remained on his feet for a while, looking up at the Heart Stars. You’re warned: I mentioned her name. I saw his profile silhouetted against the brilliance. He hesitated and then seated himself again, on the step beside me. The place where he had been half leaning against my shoulder felt cold and unprotected.

  I put the bowl of del’ri-spirit down in shadows cast by starlight. The Order House’s arch is open, leading to domed rooms and del’ri-fibre pallets, and to chiruzeth chambers below us, where hidden canal waters flow. Doug Clifford sat, hands linked, staring at the ground between his boots. Then he turned his head fractionally, caught my eye, and gave me a deliberately theatrical version of his mandarin noncommittal stare.

  I reached down and took his hand, risking the rejection of that touch, not knowing – when he returned the grip – if it would be to move my hand aside. But his fingers closed over mine with such force that his knuckles stood out white. And I love the breathing warmth of him, human warmth not felt for so long a time, and his smile –

  Later, in terrible clarity, I thought, But it should have been Blaize Meduenin.

  The dawn was hazy, heavy with a sea wind; and I stood with Doug outside the Order House. Morning, and an odd mixture of satisfaction and regret. Now I’ll feel awkward in the future, meeting Sophie Clifford again – and some self-disgust, at self-interest so nakedly displayed.

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to think that …’ Doug’s worried expression faded into a smile. ‘We understand each other, Lynne, don’t we?’

  Only powerful embarrassment could provoke such a cliché out of Douggie. I smiled reassurance, hoping for that slight barrier to vanish, for him to be what he was before. I thought, I wish I could walk down through Harbourgate and stand on the docks, and see the wide horizon, and the long morning shadow of the Rasrhe-y-Meluur on the waves, and the first islands of the Kasabaarde Archipelago …

  A voice from the alley said, ‘Shan’tai Clifford. T’an Christie.’

  I looked down the steps. A slight figure stepped out of the dawn shadows – masked, and barefoot, and wearing a brown meshabi-robe. And it was an ashiren, a child.

  ‘I have a message,’ ke said, in a pure, archaic form of Coast dialect. ‘From the Tower. The Hexenmeister says that you may come there and speak with her, t’an Christie.’

  Doug glanced at me, shaking his head.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m not twenty-six any more. This time I’m not going to enter the Tower just because I’ve been invited. Not with what I know. Without some better reason, I won’t enter it at all.’

  Doug turned up his collar against the sea wind. ‘I’ll go. It’s envoy’s business. I’ll speak with them again.’

  The meshabi-robe felt too thin for the dawn chill. I’m too old to go barefoot, I’d found a pair of the del’ri-fibre sandals that Kasabaardeans wear. An Order House’s gift. That niggled. The inner city can’t afford gifts now.

  ‘Doug, has it occurred to you – it’s all very well to condemn PanOceania and loudly support Orthe. We’ve still got to work out what we can do.’

  That lined, round face held a determination unlike his usual urbanity. ‘Get Carrick V declared a Protected world. If the Company research in Maherwa is successful, that won’t be easy.’

  ‘Nothing’s easy. If the Company goes, the Coast’s left to starve. If the Company stays, everything changes out of all recognition. Where’s the easy answer, Doug?’

  Knowing that in Maherwa, facing Calil bel-Rioch – was it blocked Tower-memories that sent me over the edge, then, or the simple impossibility of taking that decision for Orthe? It’s not a decision anyone should be called on to take, and we so often are.

  He squeezed my arm reassuringly, and, as he followed the brown-robe, called, ‘I have every confidence, Lynne. Wait here for me. I’ll have an answer as soon as possible.’

  A cool wind blew, flapping the del’ri-cloth awning.

  I waited in that bright dawn – knowing nothing of what Molly Rachel and Calil bel-Rioch were doing, four hundred miles south and east of Kasabaarde; nothing of what was said and thought that same hour by the Hexenmeister. The wave that had been gathering momentum since PanOceania came to Carrick V was about to break, and I didn’t know what rough water I would have to ride.

  I don’t know what I’ll do, I thought, I only know that, for better or worse, I’ve come home to Orthe at last.

 
Midday in the crowded city, and I saw among the hiyek-Ortheans the uniform of a government envoy. Doug and I met at the edge of a stretch of bare earth that lies between the Order Houses and the Tower gardens. He shrugged.

  ‘Lynne, I’ve talked to the brown-robes again. They say the Hexenmeister won’t speak with any offworlder in person except Lynne de Lisle Christie. I don’t know what you want to do about this. I believe I would think very carefully –’

  – three of us running through the dusty city, under the molten-metal sun. My lungs ache, and my head; adrenalin from the attack of Havoth-jair’s assassins. Blaize Meduenin moves cat-silent, alert, glancing rapidly from side to side.

  Are there more of them? In alley-entrances, in doorways; the assassin’s knife, that sound – like ripped silk – of a blade being torn from its scabbard. Are there more, near us, now?

  My heart hammers.

  And the third one of us, that slender white-maned woman, stumbles as she runs. Black blood wells out from between her fingers gripping her arm. No more than a child, Ruric’s child: Rodion Orhlandis. Who stumbles against me as we cross that stretch of bare earth between Order Houses and the gardens surrounding the Tower.

  ‘There.’ No other sanctuary. And as the girl falters, I pick her up, and stagger the last few yards into that one refuge from all attack: the Brown Tower …

  The light of Carrick’s Star is still as acid-white, and I saw Doug squint against it. He fumbled for eyeshields. I put that decade-old memory back into my mind. Adrenalin still made my heart pound. The effects of memory? Or this, now?

  ‘Doug, the Tower depends on secrecy. I’m the only one they’re likely to let in, because I already know … and you’re right, it needs thinking about; that’s no good reason for going, is it?’

  Light glinted off the glass shields covering his eyes. He said, ‘It may well be considered unwise of me to pass this on, but I suppose it would come to you in any case. I have a message I was directed to give to you – a verbatim message, if the Ortheans who serve in the Tower are telling the truth. From the Hexenmeister. I understand from reading your old reports that you’ve received such messages before.’

  ‘Douggie, for Christ’s sake, what did they say?’

  ‘The message is “Come because you remember there was a room in the Citadel, in the island-city of Tathcaer”.’

  Deliberately I cut off all thought, all feeling, all speculation. The sun beat down like white-hot iron; somewhere a rashaku called. The air was loud with the murmur of the hiyek-Ortheans a dozen yards away.

  ‘Doug, walk with me as far as the Tower.’

  Two pale-skinned and tan-maned Ortheans in brown meshabi-robes stood at the entrance. I was conscious of the warm dust, almost ankle-deep here; and the smell of the lapuur, and the kazsis that spidered its crimson way up the brown brick wall in front of me.

  ‘Give you greeting,’ said the male. His shadow pooled at his feet, black as a pit.

  The female stood with her back to the slab of metal, ten feet high and seven feet wide, that was the only break in the brickwork. Set back into a plain brick arch, the colour of silt.

  Doug touched his wristlink. ‘I’ll call you at five-minute intervals. Let them know this is patched up to the orbiter, through the shuttle. Lynne, I wish you wouldn’t do this.’

  His spare comlink was fixed round my left wrist; a permanent discomfort. I put my hand on his arm for a moment, then walked forward. The metal slab slid up, disclosing a smooth-walled corridor beyond. I didn’t look back as I entered.

  Something in the dry air hushed speech. There was a soft noise as the metal slab sank back down, cutting off the heat and white sunlight. The two brown-robes stood beside me. I put out a hand and brushed fingers across the wall. Dry stone, pale and seamless. Yes. There are certain places in the Tower that Ortheans sometimes see. And nothing visible there to disturb them.

  ‘Come, shan’tai,’ the female said. Both of them seemed young, no more than early twenties.

  As I followed them, I was conscious of a subliminal hum, just below the threshold of perception. I thought, Have I ever been away from here? The last ten years could be a dream. Oh but this body is not a young woman’s body, and as for me …

  We came at last to a room once familiar. One of the few with windows, and the light of Carrick’s Star slanting whitely in to bleach the already pale walls. The room was small, darkened by the shelves that stood in almost every free spot; and the shelves were piled with scrolls, bound books, papers, maps. I moved forward, wondering if there would still be the great table standing before the hearth.

  ‘You don’t have to cater to my tender sensibilities,’ I said, ‘I know there’s more technology in the Tower’s Archives than pen and ink –’

  The world went away. The mind refused belief but the body reacted: dizzy, cold, stunned.

  A lean Orthean woman sat writing at the table. She wore a white shirt and black britches, and her high-arched feet were bare. She turned as she glanced up, leaning one arm on the back of the chair. That sleeve was rolled up casually, showing the dusty anthracite skin of her forearm, the long fingers that held a writing-stick. The other sleeve was empty and the cloth tied in a rough knot below the shoulder.

  I don’t believe –

  Her mane fell like a raven’s wing across her forehead where (half hidden) the black skin puckered with the scar of an old brand. The mark of an exile. Put on her in a room under the Citadel in the island-city Tathcaer. In her forties now, by that face; that high-boned face. Proportions just slightly wrong: cheekbones that make the face too wide, jaw that makes it too narrow. She brushed the back of her wrist across nose and lips, and her eyes cleared as the nictitating membranes slid back. Sad, unshocked eyes as yellow as sunlight; in that shade almost luminous. This lean and ageing woman; casual, competent, silent.

  She threw the writing-stick down on the table and stood up, the chair scraping back, all in one movement. And stood with a crook-shouldered balance, and looked.

  ‘Ruric,’ I said. Could only say. Amari Ruric Orhlandis. Older; and I would have known her out of ten thousand.

  And because I needed to be certain this was no memory, I took a step forward and reached out and gripped that six-fingered hand; dry, hot skin.

  ‘“Ruric” …’ The Orthean woman shook her head, then, ‘Christie, I wish I was – I wish that I were all Ruric, all Orhlandis, but I’m not. I’m Hexenmeister, now.’

  15

  A Mirror Seen in Mist and Pearl

  There was a plain wooden bench set where Carrick’s Star shone whitely in through the window. I sat there. Motes in the sunlight were bright, distinct. The Orthean woman stood beside me, the long fingers of her hand resting on my shoulder, kneading a part of the shock away.

  You can’t be anyone else and therefore you must be –

  ‘Ruric?’

  She moved to the table, hitching one hip up to sit on the corner there and pour the ubiquitous arniac-tea with that long-practised and crippled dexterity.

  ‘I’ll have to ask you to keep this one of the Tower secrets. It shouldn’t be known in the Hundred Thousand who the Hexenmeister is.’ The woman put down her bowl, brushed back her mane. The brand was a jagged line from brow to temple, pale brown against her black skin; a raised ridge of flesh. The brand of the exile. For a second the fine web of lines round the yellow eyes smoothed out: she could have been the young Ruric, T’An Commander of the army, T’An Melkathi.

  ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’

  It sounded querulous. The woman grinned.

  ‘Sorry I can’t oblige. You wouldn’t be the only one to feel disappointed.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Didn’t you? You might feel that way yet.’

  Noon light made her a shadow, black on black. This lean, forty-year-old Orthean woman, with the youthful grin. How do I know if what’s different about her is being Hexenmeister, or being ten years older?

  ‘If you’re Hexenmeister –’
Then I’m speaking to that old male that I met in the Tower, when Ruric Orhlandis was plotting and intriguing in Tathcaer … I remember his voice: And when she speaks with you, she’ll remember this, as I do now, and she will be me.

  The woman came to hunker down on her haunches before the bench, and I met that yellow gaze. ‘Yes, I am Hexenmeister. Christie, you think you understand what I mean by that. You don’t.’

  ‘How can you say that? You know what I know!’

  She grimaced, stood, stretched her back. The white slit-backed shirt was open, showing her small high breasts, and the second pair of rudimentary nipples on the lower ribs. She turned, and I saw how that black mane grew in a vee down her spine to the small of her back.

  ‘No harur-nilgiri,’ I said, surprised. ‘You might convince me yet. A telestre-Orthean without a harur-blade, and especially Ruric Orhlandis –’

  She swung round, eyes blazing. ‘They exiled me, that doesn’t mean I’m not of the land!’

  In a room in the Citadel in Tathcaer – ‘Ruric Orhlandis, once T’An Commander and now T’An Melkathi, first named Onehand and Yelloweyes, and now and for ever after to be named murderer, conspirator, and paid traitor to the Hundred Thousand.’ – And those words themselves written by a traitor.

  I stood, unsteadily, and went to get a bowl of arniac. She watched me. The crimson liquid was only lukewarm, and I drank it down in a draught.

  ‘I wanted to speak with you first.’ She glanced down. ‘I’ve sent my brown-robes to invite the government envoy here, and the two offworlders from PanOceania.’

  ‘You’ll let them come inside the Tower?’

  ‘The Tower needs to consult with Earth. I’ve been planning for that. The problem is you, Christie –’ The Orthean woman hesitated, and said wryly, ‘That’s a name I thought I’d never use again. You’re the problem. You’re muddying the water. And I can’t see any way to solve matters, except by doing this.’