Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  Not all monsters are of the mind. Not all delusions are totally detached from the truth.

  The shadow of the sandstone wall fell cool on my skin. I stood in the arch of Harbourgate, staring out at brightness. Carrick’s Star shone on the ceaselessly-moving water of the harbour. The hoop-masts of jath-rai flashed in the sun. I put both palms flat on the sandstone surface, rough and dry against my skin. The Order-robed male in the gatehouse looked curiously at me. He wouldn’t act unless I showed I wanted to leave the inner city …

  Where would I go?

  I blinked, blinked again at the harsh light. Wanting to do what human bodies can’t: bring down a third eyelid to cut the glare. Do I only think I know how that feels?

  Now I don’t know: did I come to the inner city to learn to control these visions, or did I come because I had learned to control them – to accept them as memories? They still wash over me. Take over. All I’ve learned is to stop fearing that. And if they’re delusions, not memories, does the fear return?

  I rubbed my hands against the sandstone, anchoring myself in physical sensation. Stone, and bright light.

  Those lost days, I became not just the person to whom the alien memory happened, but Christie-experiencing-the-memory. As one sometimes clearly thinks in a dream, I am dreaming. Two simultaneous levels of awareness.

  Is that delusional too?

  Okay, girl, now you do what you did in those twenty-five lost days – call it up deliberately, and go into it. Only this time, watch. Judge. Does it feel fake? Does it?

  The reflected sunlight from the water dimmed. I let the sensation carry me. Feeling that deep difference, a self that is not mine, is alien, and is yet utterly familiar.

  Dim light, grey and shifting, which I see now is fog. Swirls of mist that move above me, around me. I move six-fingered hands, drawing a robe closer about myself. The cold bites bone deep.

  That bright shadow.

  And underfoot is broken ground. Shattered slabs. The mist puts beads of water on the blue-grey surface. Bending to touch it, I find the chiruzeth not broken but distorted, melted, warped.

  A brilliant blackness.

  Without volition, I am moving, scrambling across the tilted slabs. It is ‘I’ who moves, and Lynne who has no control over it. Breath harsh in the throat. The drag at muscles climbing a slope, where the mist thickens to fog again, and so I move in a grey sphere continually shifting, myself at its centre.

  A brightness that ends in splinters like crystal, or the edge of cat-ice on a puddle –

  A silver glow in the mist. Moving on up the slope towards it. Does the sun, hidden now, cast light enough to shine on something beyond the ridge? Only the fog clings close, dark grey and heavy, smelling stagnant as the floor of the sea.

  A wall grows out of the fog, massive chiruzeth blocks; a wall that as I follow it, one hand trailing along the cold, wet substance, ends suddenly. The surface is rounded, ridged like candle-wax. Beyond are the regular lines of halls, chambers, towers. I climb over the low part of the wall. Walk the chiruzeth floor that I have never seen (but I recall Kirriach, over the Wall of the World; great ruined city of that barren land) …

  Carrick’s Star shines on the Glittering Plain, and a flare of light flashes out even to the western horizon –

  I stop, crouch down, touch the mist-damp floor. And something else. It could almost be an inlaid line of glass or silver, this streak in the chiruzeth paving. But as I follow it with my eye, I see how it widens. Grows. Splinters of silver-glass following the contours of broken walls. See how, beyond the next broken arch, that sky-exposed floor is all silver; pure and bright as the surface of a mirror.

  The infinite sun of Golden rule. The brilliant beating heart of Empire; Archonys, that great city –

  Cold makes me shiver uncontrollably; I can hardly walk. The muscles of my legs are weak. To step through that arch takes long minutes. Fog mats damply in mane and robe. Each sound, each footfall, is muffled.

  Some trick of air shifts layers of cloud, somewhere in the thousands of feet of space above. The mist begins to turn from grey to white. To the heart of pearl: sea-cold, iridescent.

  Walls of mirror rise up round me. Broken silver towers, lost in the earth-touching clouds. Arches clear and brilliant as glass with the sun on it. And I see through those arches distant landscapes of silver; walls, paving, bridges …

  Remember that what you see is not a primitive but a post-holocaust world. What you see is plain and simple war damage –

  White mist swirls and shines. The cold works its way into my body. I reach out and touch the silver-glass wall. Claws slide from its diamond surface.

  That touch is obscene, as if I touched fossil-flesh.

  An iron bowl transformed to a lacework of rust. And in it, chiruzeth grows.

  What made this a living city – is dead. Pearls of water hang on the surface of dead mirrors. As I turn, the cloud-cover for one freak moment thins. I am standing at the top of a hill. Below, and stretching out for miles to east and west and south, the broken city lies. Broken, dead, fossilized: turned to glass and silver, mist and pearl. That in an instant, then the light reflected sears into eyes that are agonizingly, irrevocably blind –

  – light from the lapping waves of the harbour of Kasabaarde.

  For some minutes I could only lean against the hot sandstone wall. At last lifted a hand to wipe the tears away, and stepped out of the arch’s shadow. The sun’s heat soaked into me.

  Is that what lies under the cloud-cover of the Elansiir, the Barrens, the Glittering Plain? Or have I built it up from surmise, words overheard, that brief sunset glimpse off the hills that look west to Eriel? Is that what causes climate anomalies, changes a world’s weather? I have reason to think it could be exactly what that war damage looks like.

  Is it memory, is it delusion?

  A gust of wind whisked a dust-devil towards Harbour-gate. Masts and sails creaked in the harbour itself. There was the smell of stagnant water. And there’s my answer.

  There is the source of that vision’s blinding light – the sun on the surface of the harbour. There is the smell of the mist – that stagnant smell of the sea. And I have seen the war damage on the Glittering Plain, and seen the ruins of Golden cities in the Barrens; what easier than to put the two together?

  And how could ‘I’ come, blind and lost, at last to the Tower, to give my memories up to the Hexenmeister’s Witchbreed devices? The ‘I’ in that vision was close to death, and far from Kasabaarde … Except that, since it’s delusion, there is no ‘I’. Only me.

  Voices came distantly from the Order House, and I walked a few steps in the hot sun, away from the gate and the harbour. Our concern now is that threat of war, not one woman whose mind has been messed about by alien science –

  And is that all there is? some child-part of me wailed. I miss the myth of the immortal being in his Tower, holding the living memories of a hundred generations behind membrane-veiled eyes. Mechanically-stored archives are no substitute. But this is the real world, I thought. If there’s no immortal Hexenmeister, still, there are records of the past.

  I do at least know why Ruric Orhlandis says the Tower must survive. Even if my visions of it were false, there was a weapon that could turn the very earth on which that city stood to crystalline stasis. The unknown weapon that made those dead wastelands is gone now, gone with the Witchbreed Empire, but there must be no chance of Ortheans ever creating or acquiring such a weapon again. The Tower must stand, and guard against the rise of another Empire – Orthean or s’aranthi.

  ‘Doug Clifford said I’d find you here.’

  The voice interrupted thoughts that were light-years away. I blinked, realizing David Osaka was standing in front of me. He wiped sweat-sodden blond hair back from his forehead, squinting against the brilliance of Carrick’s Star.

  ‘We need your advice,’ he said. ‘All hell’s breaking out in the Order Houses.’

  16

  Domino

  A storm
passed, rapidly, and spring sunlight fell on the inner city with noon brightness. I thought, I didn’t realize so much time went by while I was at Harbourgate … The shadows of domes seemed black pits on the white earth. Now no breath of air stirred. Coast cities usually cease activity over the hours of noon, but as I walked with David Osaka, we pushed through crowds of hiyek-Ortheans in the alleyways.

  ‘Where’s the shan’tai Rachel?’ an Anzhadi male called out.

  ‘Trade for weapons, s’aranthi, we’ll buy!’

  ‘Feed us, or war –’ A tan-maned female’s comment was cut short as she tripped over someone’s outstretched legs and cursed.

  David gave a genial wave, a smile, and kept walking. I sweated, the dry heat making moisture instantly vanish. An iron-blue sky promised heat and tempest. How long now until the monsoon?

  ‘There isn’t anyone to negotiate with!’ David said, frustrated. He glanced at the plentiful crowds, and I saw no humour on his face. ‘No one we can persuade, who’ll then tell the rest what to do.’

  The old problem with Orthe: hierarchy. Everybody is talking to everybody, and some decision will arise out of it, but as for what, and when …

  ‘Lynne, I’m thinking of advising Molly to let the fighting break out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Then, whichever hiyek-family emerges as victor will be in a position to dictate to the others. They can help us bring in T&A to the Coast cities, without other hiyeks being able to object.’

  I looked at him, the frown of concentration on that old-young face. ‘What about the suffering a war will cause?’

  Self-righteous, David said quickly, ‘I’m not suggesting it’s the best way.’

  We turned into a wide, chiruzeth-floored avenue, between large Order House domes. The avenue was crowded wall to wall. Voices were raised in a dozen Coast dialects. That and the sun began to make my head ache. I shouldered my way through, behind David Osaka, elbows digging into my ribs, mouth dry, gazing over the heads of the Coast Ortheans.

  ‘Wait –’ I heard a familiar voice, searched; then saw faces I knew, under the awning of a dome. David stopped, looking where I pointed.

  Hildrindi-keretne was on his feet, facing a group who sat on benches under the awning. Sunlight threw the planes of the elderly male’s face into sharp relief, cast shadows in deep-set alien eyes, so that for a moment it was a skull I saw. Only a month since I saw him in Maherwa, but illness had ravaged him.

  ‘Answer me, shan’tai Meduenin!’

  Blaize Meduenin sat resting back against the Order House wall. I saw that dusty mane, that scarred face; heard his sardonic answer.

  ‘I know the Coast. I’ve been here as a mercenary in your bloodline wars. And I’ve been there when your ships raided the Melkathi and Rimon coast telestres.’

  A red-maned woman sitting beside Blaize leaned forwards, and I saw it was the Earthspeaker Cassirur Almadhera. ‘It isn’t Anzhadi-hiyek that we blame, shan’tai Hildrindi, or any other hiyek. If the Coast was prosperous, there’d be no cause for raids. Still …’

  What a music-hall double act, I thought. Carrot and stick, conciliatory and tough. And for a moment, as David and I stood unnoticed at the edge of the crowd on the steps, I hated the red-maned female simply for being able to be where she was. And despised myself, as one does, for feeling so.

  The elderly keretne leaned on the arm of a stocky gold-maned female – Feriksushar. He raised his thin voice to be heard by all around: ‘We live in a wasteland. Tell us about your telestre, Meduenin. Tell us about the river Medued, and the marhaz and skurrai that graze on its banks. Tell us of ziku forests, of rashaku that nest there, and hura in the river whose flesh is sweet, and the makre-grain that grows on the face of the earth that She does not burn!’

  Blaize stood. The scar that half masked his face was a livid ruin. Roughly, he said, ‘Tell me what we can do about it! Not ashiren-tales, not fantasies – tell me! We can send food-ships to our own telestres when there’s famine, but not to all the hiyeks of the Coast!’

  I was about to move on, to get to the shuttle and use the comlink, when Hildrindi said, ‘You have the land.’

  A silence fell. Cassirur raised her head, eyes veiled, face white and stark against her red mane. She said, ‘We hold the land for Her, live under Her sky and return. We care for it and it for us. The land is not ours to give!’

  The Coast, to whom location doesn’t matter, so long as the hiyek-family is together … and the Hundred Thousand, to whom the land is a part of themselves, is the telestre, is the root from which they draw their source of self.

  Blaize shifted his booted feet, balanced as a swordfighter is. He glanced around, alertly scanning the alleys and domes; he did not (ten years ago) like or trust the inner city. ‘T’ans, I’m neither Earthspeaker nor keretne. I’m a plain man. I know the telestres have been as they are for sixty generations. They’re what we return to, when we return from Her. We can’t change. That’s all.’

  A voice from the other side of the steps called, ‘What if we act as one, shan’tai? What if you don’t face hiyek-Anzhadi and hiyek-Pelatha and hiyek-Cuirduzh but the Coast?’

  David Osaka said in my ear: ‘That’s what I wanted to see. They’re threatening invasion!’

  Dominoes. One goes, and the next, and who can see where it ends? Not the Company, with its data-net predictions of possible cultural change. Not me, with a head full of Orthean memories that are neither mine nor memories. If ever we had need of the Hexenmeister of legend –! Well, there is no omnipotence in the Tower.

  I said, ‘Dave, you stay here and monitor the crisis level.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  No reason, if I’m not a target, to stay within the dubious protection of the inner city … ‘Out in the shuttle. I’m going to contact Molly.’

  But there is somewhere else I’ll go first.

  The Tower entrance remained firmly closed. Eventually I persuaded the brown-robed servants into an exchange of notes: “The situation between the Coast families and the Hundred Thousand is deteriorating – can’t you take action to stop it?”

  I waited in the heat and dust, by the brown brick wall, until a male brought me a folded parchment: ‘The Tower does not interfere in local squabbles.’

  Ruric, for God’s sake –!

  Then I turned the paper over, seeing what that dark hand had written on the fold: ‘S’aranih, will the Hundred Thousand heed the Tower if they know an Orhlandis is Hexenmeister? I must be secret. And only secrecy protects what is stored here; we cannot risk being attacked. You see I have no choice. But the Tower has its friends on the Coast. What we can do, secretly, we will.’

  The YV9 shuttle rested outside Kasabaarde’s walls, in a rock gully between the city and the last spire of the Rasrhe-y-Meluur. A gleaming white dolphin-shape … I plodded up the shuttle-ramp, grateful for the shade inside, flopped down beside the holotank, keyed the dispenser for a drink, and glanced over at Pramila Ishida.

  ‘I’d like to talk to Molly privately.’

  The Pacifican girl shrugged. She walked down the ramp, to stand outside in the shadow of the hull. The hot Coast sun blazed in at the entrance-port. I tasted dust, then nutrient-drink.

  The rim of the holotank was hard under my palms. It cleared to show the pale moonscape of the south-east Coast, the time there early afternoon. A wristlink contact. And there – I peered into the ’tank. When I spoke to her yesterday did I ask …

  ‘Molly, what’s your location? Are you still at Maherwa?’

  The Pacifican woman’s face came into focus as she adjusted her wristlink with her free hand. I got a clear view of the settlement behind her. A scatter of sun-bleached dice: white walls, spiderthread rope-bridges, roof-houses and steps …

  ‘I’m at Kel Harantish now,’ Molly Rachel said. ‘We haven’t got back inside the place yet.’

  The ground behind her was full of activity. Massive F90 shuttles come down from the orbiter, hulls gleaming palely in the light of Stormsun –
six, no, seven of them – and crews unloading cargo. Men and women in Trade&Aid Corps uniform drove cargolifters and groundcars over the rocky earth, shifting terra-forming equipment. And among the Corps people I glimpsed Ortheans with white manes, in the brown scale-mail of the Harantish guard.

  ‘The Emperor-in-Exile did a volte face ten days ago.’ Molly Rachel’s voice crackled, the ’tank snowed for a moment. ‘He decided to experiment with Earth tech. Or, I should imagine, his advisors decided for him. The ex-Voice, Calil bel-Rioch, seems to have friends highly placed in the Harantish caste system.’ She grinned. ‘You should have seen the reaction when we set up the water-purifiers at the edge of the harbour! I’ve seen it on other worlds. Crop-improvers take time, but drinkable water – that’s instant, and it hooks them every time!’

  It took me a second to adjust. I said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I’m grabbing a chance. Maybe, just maybe, this will lead to us getting back inside the Harantish settlement.’

  You still want the Witchbreed artifacts that are in there, I thought. ‘Isn’t Rashid Akida getting anywhere with the research team in Maherwa?’

  Molly scratched absently at the back of her neck with her free hand. Patches of sweat darkened her coverall. She wore a CAS-IV in a belt-holster, and I saw that she had that look we all have after a few weeks on-world, with no trips to the orbiter or FTL. In the Service we called it “grounding in”. Gravity has a grip on the body, the sky becomes an impossible high ceiling.

  ‘Rashid’s people have had no success at all. He keeps telling me they’re on the verge of a breakthrough.’

  Molly squinted – against the Harantish sunlight, but it took me back to a room on the northern continent, how she stared as if into bright light, unseeing.