Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  ‘Enter the city, blood-kin of Santhendor’lin-sandru. Bring that dead flesh into the city, and he will do what must be done. Only forgive us that we bind your hands and shackle your feet: the living and the dead.’

  And so we pass on into the City Over The Inland Sea: six of Golden blood who carry her bier, Zilkezra who does not move nor breathe nor speak; and her hands and feet are tied with silken cords, and my hands and feet are shackled with iron, in this time of war. And as I follow, I see how on great terraces, and flights of steps, and in entrances to wide avenues, and on seven-span bridges, the people come out to watch the procession pass. And these are true Golden, white manes like fire in the night’s chill, eyes gold and cold with the sight of death.

  At the third gate I cry the cry:

  ‘Zilkezra is dead, Zilkezra of the High Lands is dead and come to corruption, and her flesh must not lie unconsumed. Let Santhendor’lin-sandru, Phoenix Emperor, come to do what must be done.’

  And the third gate opens, admitting us to that city-within-a-city where scarcely a light shows, the spider-heart and lair of the Emperor. I follow the bier up a wide and great flight of steps, to a terrace that lies before carved doors and pillars and an entrance all in darkness. There they lay down the bier, and she lies without motion or breath or speech: the colours of corruption already gleaming under the surface of her skin.

  ‘—————————————’

  ‘————————’

  ‘—————————————’

  An echo comes back from those gleaming blue-grey walls of chiruzeth. The ancient tongue of the bloodline of the Golden Empire. I see how the guards step back from the bier, and she lies with her face to the cold stars: Zilkezra of the High Lands, sister to Santhendor’lin-sandru.

  ‘————————’

  ‘———————’

  Unwillingly our tongues echo his, compelled to it. And he, Santhendor’lin-sandru: tall and thin and bright, whitefire, and his eyes as yellow as summer, as yellow as the sun on the Inland Sea. He stands in the shadow of the pillars.

  I raise the cry:

  ‘Zilkezra is dead, Zilkezra of the High Lands is dead and come to corruption, and her flesh must not lie unconsumed.’

  And Santhendor’lin-sandru laughs. He holds up slender hands, gloved in some substance light and impenetrable. That laughter is soft acid.

  ‘O brave, sister! What, have you swallowed poison for my sake? And am I to forget our long enmity, and shroud your poison corpse in my own body? Will you have me go into nothingness, as you have gone? O, sister, no! For I will not do it. Not a drop of your blood, not a morsel of your flesh will I eat –’

  Shock radiates out from that focal point, his voice. I hear the crowd cry at this sacrilege, and I hear him laugh again. He holds up one gloved hand, and in it the knife shines: gleams once against the dark.

  ‘– but I will scatter you, blood and body! See, here, what I do now. And you have killed yourself for nothing!’

  My hands and feet are shackled, I can only shuffle forward; and she – she! – is shackled and bound before him. I protest:

  ‘She lives! She yet lives –’

  Before I can speak again, Santhendor’lin-sandru throws himself down full-length on her body and slashes wildly. She cries out, face streaming blood, a cry that thrills through the stone city. His knife slashes the cord that binds her hands, half severs her wrist. Zilkezra throws wide her arms and scatters blood-drops. Santhendor’lin-sandru springs back, face wet with her blood. The guards run; the crowd seethes in panic, and she – on her feet, face slashed open, laughing – she gives me one look of pure triumph:

  ‘So: my revenge. So: my love. So.’

  And then, almost tenderly, to Santhendor’lin-sandru; who stares in frozen panic at her blood on his hands:

  ‘That will not hurt you, lover, brother. My poison is not for you. Not yet for you. Zilkezra is dead, Zilkezra of the High Lands is dead and come to corruption, and here her body will lie, unconsumed.’

  She stoops and picks up the knife, and draws the blade across her throat. The skin puckers as the metal draws it, and then parts: raw flesh pushes up and out; blood rills down her breast as she falls.

  And he looks up at me in bewilderment, Santhendor’lin-sandru.

  ‘What revenge is it – for her to come here and make herself dead meat, and harm no one else?’

  I kneel down beside him, and wipe a little of her blood from the chiruzeth.

  ‘Not all poisons are for us, you who shall be called Santhendor’lin-sandru, Phoenix Emperor and – Last Emperor.’

  Her blood, warm and rich, can incubate the virus, the death she and others have created. Could not the slave races create that bloodborne sterility that makes ours the last generation? Well and so: she has made a death that, cancerous, turns things to feed on their own substance and transform themselves …

  ‘See.’

  Already, the faint shine of the living chiruzeth has dimmed. He reaches out to touch a mark, a lichen, a flower: chiruzeth is turning under his hand to dead crystal. Spreading as rapidly as ice forms on water, as swiftly as a crack in a mirror – spreading to the nearer pillars, the terrace, the towers of this chiruzeth city – spreading unstoppably now, until even this earth, even this sea itself, are turned to crystalline death –

  ‘She brought it. She freed it. She has given you a great gift, brother of Zilkezra. She has given you the death of all cities, the death of the Empire.’

  The night air begins to shimmer. As that genetically-engineered virus spreads, multiplying as it causes chiruzeth to transform to dead matter, the energies it releases will kill almost as many as this plague of stone itself.

  The City Over The Inland Sea will shine, a beacon, a brilliance. Shine as other cities in the Elansiir and the north will shine also – others have their vengeances, too.

  ‘———————’

  I can’t name it, human tongues can’t speak so; and Calil bel-Rioch, her eyes full still with vision, can only stumble for the name the Last Emperor (his face filled with love of his sister) gave to the weapon, and in poor translation say at last, ‘“Ancient light”.’

  PART FOUR

  19

  Recognizable Strangers

  How could I have told her?

  Ten days later and a weary monologue of self-justification is still playing in my head: sooner or later Calil would have heard, her people listen to Company gossip, they’d hear, “the first envoy was tricked into believing one of these natives is immortal” … oh, she would have heard without me to tell her!

  The shuttle grounded. Tact took me out of it ahead of Cory Mendez – a figure waved a greeting, and even in the dimness of first twilight I could see it was Doug, leaving his own grounded shuttle to meet us.

  First twilight smelt of rain recently fallen, the flagstones underfoot slick with damp. Mist began to rise. Light grew swiftly, the east a magnesium flare; and I smelt the wind and rubbed cold hands together and, as Carrick’s Star cleared the horizon, began to walk away from the foot of the shuttle-ramp. A full minute later, the echo of my footsteps came back from distant walls.

  ‘Good timing,’ Doug greeted me. ‘The first takshiriye came in on the ships from Kasabaarde yesterday.’

  Then his gaze went past me to the shuttle, that was marked with a Peace Force logo.

  ‘Molly’s going ahead with this? Without consultation?’

  The light grew stronger. I walked on a few paces across the square, seeing the city take shape round me. Mossgrass rooted in the crevices of the paving underfoot, blue-grey fronds tightly curled. The arch of the sky was milky, freckled with daystars, and I could taste on my lips the sweet salt of Orthean waters; could hear the sound of the sea.

  ‘Douggie, come on; it was obvious after the talks in Kasabaarde broke down, the Company would have to do something.’

  ‘You approve of this?’

  The first time I came to Tathc
aer, I came aboard a jath-ship, a ship that catches the dawn tide as it sails the barren sandy coast of Melkathi, and comes to where river meadows of mossgrass are blue and grey, mist still curling where marhaz and skurrai graze. And there, held between the two arms of the Oranon River, is the island-city of Tathcaer …

  The air above was cold and vast now; and I wondered, Are there ships up there already? Cory Mendez’ Peace Force ships, docked in the Company orbital station? Are they landing on the Coast now? And when they see that threat, what will Sethri and the Anzhadi do?

  I said, ‘Storms won’t keep those ships in harbour forever. What do you plan to do when the hiyek fleets sail north to the Hundred Thousand?’

  There was a high flush of anger on his round face.

  ‘This is an internal matter. Internal hostilities. The Company has no right to bring its own forces in!’ He took a breath. ‘I’ll see how home office reacts to this. And how people in general like the idea – I don’t think Pan Oceania is going to find itself very popular back on Earth.’

  Now the day shone clear, the white gold of early morning, and I stand in the great Square below the Citadel, in the heart of the white city, Tathcaer.

  That walkway that zigzags up the sheer cliff-face behind me, up to the top of the Citadel crag, that’s where I went with Haltern Beth’ru-elen when he took me to my first audience with the T’An Suthai-Telestre – light shines on the rock now, and on the masses of blue vines that have overgrown all the cliff-walk, choking it, that hang out questing tendrils on the morning air; vines that spill down to cover the deserted gatehouse and archway where the Crown Guard stood.

  ‘Douggie, if you’re thinking of starting a media propaganda campaign … just be sure you’re right.’

  ‘I am. I am,’ he said, ‘and I’m amazed that you can’t see it.’

  He broke off then, as Cory Mendez left the shuttle and came to join us, be-ringed hands behind her back. Her rings clinked. ‘If we’re going to go down into the city –’

  Doug said, ‘I’ll do my best to lead you, Commander. I’m afraid it isn’t easy to get around in the city yet. Lynne – Lynne?’

  Only the deserted Citadel stands unchanged, each tower and balcony and cupola and terrace clear in the light that puts precise shadows on luminous grey masonry.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d see the day. Douggie, I didn’t ever think I’d see the day.’

  I turn one way, and there on the east side of the Square are high walls, and beyond them the dome of the great Wellhouse that imprisoned us when we returned from Kasabaarde: Blaize, Rodion, Havoth-jair and me. The gates hang askew in the wall’s archway, and through the gap can be glimpsed a courtyard, and fountains that are now dry.

  Cory Mendez tapped her fingers impatiently together. There was a CAS-IV in her belt-holster.

  ‘Are we likely to find native authorities here?’

  ‘They won’t be happy about this shuttle landing,’ I realized.

  Doug said, ‘This is the only open space on the island of sufficient size for a shuttle to land. But, as you imply, we’re stretching telestre custom to have it here at all. If I might suggest a course of action, we should attempt to get down to the harbour on foot. One of the old Dominion consulates used to be there, on Westhill.’

  The silence was broken by the raw, metallic cry of a rashaku-lizardbird. It was enough: suddenly there was a catch in my throat, water in my eyes. Once I saw rashaku cling to an awning-pole here, the sun bright through its spread pinions, and that on a day when the whole Square was full of telestre-Ortheans – s’ans in robes and bright tunics, gems and harur-blades shining, some with young ashiren sat up on their shoulders; city tradesmen and merchants and young Ortheans from the Artisans Quarter, and those in Mercenaries Guild leathers, and Peir-Dadeni riders with their plumed manes … And we sat the whole day here and played ochmir, Haltern and Blaize and I, at Midsummer-Tenyear, when the new T’An Suthai-Telestre was to be named.

  Emotion is never less than ambiguous. I am hurt by the desolation of this city, so there is some love for it in me; but this, now, is a city of strangers. Those were the last few days before the treachery of Ruric Orhlandis was made known. I think of her now, in the Tower, perpetrating that massive necessary fraud –

  There is a link between vision and memory and the Tower, and I don’t know what it is.

  ‘… something on her mind,’ Cory Mendez was saying. ‘For a few days now. Lynne, shall we go?’

  ‘What? Yes, of course.’

  We began to walk across the Square, leaving the shuttle secure behind us; moving away from Citadel crag, that is the point of this arrowhead-shaped river-island. It seemed we hardly moved, so large a space the Square is, and so empty. No crowds, no skurrai-jasin carriages.

  ‘Who drove these people out of this settlement?’ Mendez asked Doug Clifford, as we walked.

  ‘No one. They decided they didn’t need it.’

  ‘And now they do?’

  ‘Haven’t you realized, Commander? They’re coming here to make a new T’An Suthai-Telestre, a new Crown.’

  Corazon Mendez, all Peace Force, said, ‘It doesn’t do to allow political unrest when a war-sequence is in operation. We could stop that.’

  Seeing Doug’s face, I hastily cut in with, ‘That might be unwise.’

  ‘It would be an unjustifiable intervention,’ Doug said.

  Cory smiled. ‘Still trying diplomacy, Douglas? Good. Just remember, I have to cope with what happens when diplomacy breaks down.’

  I let them argue, and walked ahead. The remaining sides of the Square are taken up with the white façades of low-roofed blocks of buildings. We were coming to the gap between them, that marks the beginning of the one named, paved road in all the city, that runs from here clear down to the harbour: Crown Way.

  There is a link between vision and memory –

  I should go to the Company, to Molly; but Molly thinks of that experience in Rakviri as a ‘side-effect’ of alien technology. Who else can I go to? When I am desperately, steadfastly trying not to think of a room in Kel Harantish, and the face of Calil bel-Rioch. Who?

  At the top of Crown Way, I stopped.

  Tathcaer lay sprawled below me in the early-morning sun. The light made a clarity of the air. I looked down the hill at the pale-plaster telestre-houses, with their blank outside walls and inner courtyards, and their cisterns now standing dry. I saw no smoke rising anywhere. Only a sprawling confusion of white and sand-coloured buildings, with narrow unnamed alleys between them; and now as my eye grew keener I could pick out landmarks: the Guild-Ring, Wellhouse domes, the barracks on that prestigious district known as The Hill, home of the T’An Commander …

  Silence. No dawn bells. All the alleys are choked with the feather-fronds of lapuur, growing unchecked, and the sporeborne red-and-black branches of ziku.

  Melkathi summer: the smoke from bush-fires obscuring the sun, Orhlandis telestre, burning. And she, cornered, ash-stained; only the harur-nilgiri bright in her hand. She who had been T’An commander and T’An Melkathi; and there is no one now who will not willingly see her exiled – I wanted, suddenly and desperately, to hear her tell me how she’d survived from then till now; what had happened, what the truth is.

  And will that tell me what really happened between Calil and myself?

  Looking east, I see the wider and more shallow branch of the Oranon River, sparkling under ten or twelve bridges; and beyond it, blue meadows fading away into the hills of Ymir. And, looking west, there is a deep and narrow channel, once crossed by the Salathiel ferry; and in the distance, mudflats, and the chalk headlands of the Rimon coast. Not an acre of this land but I have memories of it.

  As Doug and Cory came up with me, Doug said, ‘It will be difficult crossing the city, I’m afraid. I’ve only just got here myself; I didn’t realize quite how bad it is.’

  I gazed south, across the dips and hollows of the city and its clustered buildings. Two hills rose up. On them are squat brown forts, pocked
with the black shadows of window-arches. On Easthill I once had a telestre-house, Easthill-Malkys; but now at four or five miles’ distance I can’t make out individual buildings. The Westhill telestre-houses I didn’t often visit.

  Invisible from here, over the saddle between those two hills, lies Tathcaer’s harbour. The two branches of the Oranon rejoin there at the estuary. It was the harbour I first saw, under a daystarred sky, crowded with all the ships of a trading port, and the young Haltern there to meet the Earth envoy. I don’t know if I can stand to see that harbour silted up, deserted …

  I wonder if, when Ortheans return on Her earth, they feel the same: neither the place nor the person is the same?

  ‘Where now?’ Cory Mendez asked.

  I put all doubts and problems into that corner of my mind reserved for procrastination. In that moment of searching, I caught sight of what I’d been looking for: ‘There.’ I pointed to where telestre-houses, blurred by distance, went down a long slope to the place where the Salathiel ferry used to run.

  A thread of smoke rose up into the bright morning air.

  ‘Mother of God!’ Cory Mendez swore, stopping to push away pale green fronds of lapuur. Heat-sensitive, the feathery plants coiled with vegetable slowness around her bony wrists. She added, ‘Damn all technology embargoes – what I’d give now for a laser-cutter!’

  ‘Depends how badly you want to be in the middle of a forest fire,’ I observed. ‘Looks like it’s been a dry summer.’

  The walls of this choked alley were carpeted with bronze foliage of kazsis-nightvine; sapling lapuur rooted in the earth. A ribbon of blue sky overhead showed noontide stars. I picked black spines of ziku out of my sleeve, and was showered with that tree’s red spore cases. Two- or three-year growth, most of this; equally hard to push through or walk over. Stems of kazsis gave soggily underfoot. Doug Clifford emerged from the next alley-entrance, beating away swarms of chirith-goyen and kekri-flies that shone like mica in the hot sun. He wiped sweat from his red face.