Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  ‘I can’t see a thing,’ he confessed. ‘We’ll have to try getting up to a roof-top again to get our bearings.’

  How can I cross half the Hundred Thousand and then get lost crossing half a city? I grinned, thinking how I’d asked that question in exasperation ten years ago. Tathcaer has a way of doing that to me.

  ‘Four hours,’ Doug added gloomily. His coverall was dusty with ziku spores, his boots snagged with the thorn of hanelys-tanglebush; he looked as uncomfortable as a ruffled cat. ‘I despair of reporting to Molly Rachel that we’ve spent four hours trying to cross a native settlement …’

  ‘Douggie, you’re cute when you’re angry,’ I said, quiet so that the Mendez didn’t hear; and decided to ignore the explosively obscene comment that D. Clifford made in reply.

  Corazon checked her wristlink. ‘I’ll call in at the end of the hour. The satellites –’

  I held up a hand for silence. They waited.

  ‘There,’ I said. Kazsis-stems crunched as I climbed through to the blocked end of the alley.

  The sound of voices grew more distinct.

  Two spindle-trunked ziku grew up at the alley’s end. Their scarlet foliage cast shadows on the sandstone masonry of the telestre-house walls, that here stood twenty-five or thirty feet high. I stepped between them, feeling they made a natural entrance to this unnatural clearing. A fire had burned here, perhaps last summer – young ziku and lapuur sprouted in the blackened earth, mossgrass began to cover the tumbled masonry. Five or six Ortheans were sitting on fallen stones, boots stretched out idly on the flagstone floor, now open to the sky. There was a low Wellhouse dome beyond. Then a young male looked lazily up at the telestre-wall above my head.

  ‘Right, Hana, they’re here. You can go back on watch.’

  A lithe, yellow-maned male dropped from sound to broken wall, sure-footed, and from that masonry to the earth. ‘Shadow take it! Send someone else. I’m tired of baking in that sun.’

  There was laughter: the others glanced up from where broken walls and seedling lapuur protected them from the heat. Mercenaries, by their dress; by the nilgiri-blades and nazari-knives, and the ochmir board that lay between them on the rubble.

  A dark-maned female raised her head. She lay on her back, face in the shade, eyes veiled with translucent membrane. ‘I’ll go on watch – if you go to the Wellhouse, Hana.’ She got to her feet, turning casually to me; ‘You s’aranthi want the Wellhouse, yes?’

  Doug emerged from the tangle of vegetation at the alley-mouth, followed by Cory Mendez, her hand resting on the CAS-IV holster.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  The city had a quiet so intense that, when no one spoke, you could hear the shifting of warm summer air; could almost hear the sunlight falling on the stones. Each small sound was magnified: the creak of leather boots, jingle of harur-blade harness as the woman walked across the burnt earth. I heard some heavy animal shift padded feet, and saw the shaggy bronze coats of marhaz in the shadow of a wall.

  ‘Who’s T’An in the city?’ I asked a male with braided mane, and northern province dress, whose belt-badges proclaimed him captain. ‘Can you tell me who has your contract?’

  ‘I won’t answer your questions,’ the male said, and his gaze went to each of us in turn. Three offworlders, all armed, one plainly from the paramilitary forces – not in those words, but I saw the thought in his face. And something I’d never seen in an Orthean before: that half-ashamed and half-defiant ignoring of hi-tech weaponry. He said, ‘Hana, take them to the Wellhouse.’

  I saw, across that stretch of rubble and sunlight, the low dome of a Wellhouse. An Orthean stood at the door. The scarlet mane was a flare against the brown brickwork, and she lifted a hand in casual salute, and I recognized the Earthspeaker Cassirur Almadhera.

  ‘One thing occurs to me,’ Commander Cory Mendez said. ‘The Company must station a detachment here, as well as on the southern continent.’ She paused, then lifted her wrist to key in the comlink transmitter. ‘I’ll relay through to the orbiter and check – my squads should be making hi-orbital docking about now.’

  Doug Clifford blinked. ‘Out of interest, what size force did the Company assign here?’

  ‘A small force,’ the white-haired woman said, ‘three squads in fifteen F90s; that’s two hundred men. If it wasn’t for the ban on anything except medium-tech, I could handle these assignments with a tenth of the manpower. Pan Oceania abides by home regulations, of course …’ Here her smile became cynical.

  ‘You don’t change, Cory,’ Doug said. He couldn’t hide his distaste. Corazon Mendez shrugged.

  ‘You and the groundsiders who make “humane” legislation ought to try it, Douglas. Try forcing a cease-fire when you can hardly do more than bluff. These beings here are alien, they don’t think like we do, but they’d understand a seismic-nuclear missile if they saw one demonstrated!’

  ‘Cory –’

  She glanced at me as we began to walk towards the Wellhouse. ‘That would put a stop to your “farmers’ war”, Lynne. As it is, all I can do is threaten – and a little more.’

  Inside the Wellhouse, Cassirur Almadhera didn’t seem at all surprised to see us. I assumed she’d had word of the shuttle’s landing earlier on.

  ‘I’ll take you down into the city to meet with the others who are here,’ she said, with a slight inclination of the head that acknowledged both Doug and Cory Mendez. ‘You must eat first, I think. The ashiren will fetch food. Christie, Blaize Meduenin gave me your greeting when he returned from Kasabaarde. I didn’t expect to see you again in the Hundred Thousand so soon.’

  ‘You’ve heard what’s happening on the Coast, of course? Yes. We have to talk. Earth and your new T’An Suthai-Telestre, when you have one.’

  ‘Soon. Soon now.’

  Cassirur’s children ushered Doug and Cory through into the Wellhouse dining-chamber. I followed. Heat had robbed me of hunger. When I came to the central part of the dome I went on and into it, hardly aware that Cassirur Almadhera followed me.

  Midday sun slanted through the roof-slot of the low dome. Where it fell on the mouth of the Well, bright coruscations danced from the water’s surface and cast mutable shadows of light on the white walls.

  Here is Your daughter from a far world. Receive her name. Words spoken by the Earthspeaker Theluk in a northern Wellhouse, with Ruric as my second; none of us knowing then that one would die and the other be proven traitor, and I – I would forget that naming ceremony, because I never knew what it meant.

  ‘Who’s here from the Freeport?’

  She said, ‘Haltern Beth’ru-elen. Blaize Meduenin. I’ve had word on the rashaku-relay that the T’Ans of Melkathi, Rimon, and Roehmonde will be here soon; and even that the Andrethe will leave Peir-Dadeni to come here.’

  ‘To an abandoned city,’ I said, still half in the past.

  ‘Ah, that was Suthafiori’s death, and the summer of the white plague.’ She smoothed her green chirith-goyen robe with brown six-fingered hands, and then wiped tendrils of red mane from her forehead; squinting up at the inner curve of the dome with unveiled eyes. ‘Tathcaer was never abandoned, Christie. Without Wellkeepers, summer lightning would have razed it. Now we need it again, we come back to it.’ She paused, looked at me. ‘Different from our meeting in the Freeport, this.’

  Just a few months have put us here, I thought. The Company arrives, the Coast goes to war, the Hundred Thousand fears Witchbreed technology, others crave it – and then the Tower …

  ‘I said in Morvren that you had the look of one named for the Goddess,’ Cassirur said. ‘One sick with past-memories. You’ve lost that – or it’s changed. Does She still know your name?’

  That abrupt, natural change from politician to Earthspeaker. I smiled to take the irreverence out of what I said: ‘Probably not.’

  Her dark eyes went cloudy, membrane sliding across them. ‘If I were a superstitious woman, I’d wonder if that wasn’t because you’ve been to that abomination, Kel Harantish.’r />
  ‘You trust one Desert Coast city, you Earthspeakers – but do you know as much about Kasabaarde as you do about Kel Harantish?’

  She laughed, a short bark that sent her head back. Then she shrugged. ‘Perhaps the Hundred Thousand doesn’t listen as closely to the Tower as you believe. We trust ourselves only. Not outlanders. And not s’aranthi.’

  She knelt, one knee on the rim of the circular Well, trailing a claw-nailed hand in the water. Her slit-backed robe pulled aside to show the complex braids of her mane, rooting down her spine.

  ‘And when it comes to war, Cassirur?’

  Without turning round, she said, ‘Many will go to the Goddess. But we meet, and part, and meet again, and we do not forget. And the earth is always here for us again.’

  A steep western scarp falls several hundred feet to a plain, desolate as these hills, that stretches out to the horizon. Sun reflects off something – water? snow? No: it ends in sharp edges, splinters … I kneel under a daystarred sky, feeling dirt and grit beneath my hands, and there the earth itself changes. Crystalline mirror: each shard of stone or frond of mossgrass transmuted to a fragile, sterile petrification –

  I made the hard-learned effort and pulled free. Cassirur looked up at me as I said harshly, ‘Is the earth always there? You ask the Coast families. They’d use Witchbreed weapons if they could, or Earth technology; and you’re going to find your only way out is that technology – improve food production here and share land with those who are starving –’

  The scarlet-maned Orthean woman got to her feet. Her expression told me I’d miscalculated, broached the subject soon and too baldly.

  ‘We’re not hiyeks, Christie. We won’t take offworlder science. We won’t take that path that leads to a new Golden Empire and a new destruction!’

  This untidy, middle-aged Orthean female, with little of the Earthspeaker about her; she spoke now with a hard anger in her voice. It was automatic (but I disliked myself for doing it) to go straight for the weak point and attack: ‘Has Barris Rakviri come to Tathcaer?’ I asked. ‘Or is he still back on Rakviri telestre, making Witchbreed relics into functioning technology?’

  The Almadhera held my gaze for a long moment. ‘Barris Rakviri is dead.’

  ‘What? How? When did it happen?’

  ‘A month ago. We gave him saryl-kabriz in his food,’ the Earthspeaker said. She spoke quite calmly. ‘He died. Jaharien Rakviri chose to follow him, and he took the saryl-kabriz poison also. And that is an end to Witchbreed science in Rakviri telestre.’

  Light from the Well rippled across her pale features and green robe, and in the silence I heard ashiren in the dining-hall, and Doug and Cory’s voices raised in argument, and I could only stare at this Orthean woman that I had thought I might be coming to know. What’s more appalling? I wondered. What she says or how she said it?

  ‘You killed him?’

  Cassirur Almadhera inclined her head, ‘I killed him. I suppose by that I’m the cause of Jaharien’s death also, and for that I’m sorry.’

  ‘How can you stand there and say that!’

  ‘I sent him to a joy,’ she said, ‘that I would sooner have than any of the shadows it casts on earth, which are love and ecstasy. I gave him saryl-kabriz poison to close his eyes, and death to open them in that bright realm; poison to close his mouth, and death to open it to breathe in the fire of Her world.’

  We meet, and part, and meet again, and we do not forget.

  I stared at her, and she smiled. It was warm and friendly, and a little humorous. She made a gesture to follow her into the dining-hall, and walked through the archway.

  Pain made me aware that I was digging my nails into my palms. What I feel is shock, I thought. Is outrage. It is not familiarity, there’s no way I can have Orthean memories of what it feels like to have past-lives, no way I can be thinking how different it is from how the Witchbreed glutted on death, fed on cessation, worshipped extinction, but Ortheans love the cycle of turn and return because that is a delusion.

  I thought I am human, there’s no part of me that’s Orthean, much as I want that and the light of Carrick’s Star sent ripples across the curve of that radiant dome.

  It was some while later that the silence was broken by footsteps, and Doug Clifford entered the dome, glancing up at it as he came in.

  ‘I’m going to open up the government quarters on Westhill,’ he said. ‘There’s hi-tech equipment under store there, we ought to be able to contact the Company and the orbiter. I want to know how they’re reacting to Orthe at home.’

  I said, ‘The people here aren’t going to be co-operative. We’ll have our work cut out. And it won’t be long now before Coast warships can cross the Inner Sea.’

  That day was Durestha Seventhweek Nineday, a Fast-day; the next, Durestha Eighthweek Firstday, a Feast-day. It dawned with the clarity of summer, drowned daystars in a mid-morning heat haze, shone warm on the neglected stonework of the Dominion government quarters.

  ‘… the department has had to come down on the government’s side,’ Stephen Perrault’s image told me from the holotank. I didn’t turn to watch, but stayed looking out of the window. His message-blip continued: ‘That means the multicorporates want to close us down now, and open us a new Liaison Department. One that they can control. I can stall them for a few more weeks, but we need you here to fight for us!’

  That’s my career, I thought. It seemed faint, far away, drowned in the blaze of colour that is Tathcaer: the white city in summer. This was a small telestre-house, Westhill-Ahrentine, and from its first-floor windows I could see the ferry and the western end of the harbour. Ships jostled, moored at the docks, and brightly-robed crowds seethed round them. A constant influx of Ortheans and marhaz-riderbeasts streamed from the Salathiel ferry. Once on the island, they vanished into tangled alleyways that were rapidly becoming cleared. The city was coming alive again.

  And I just want to bask in it, I thought, that long and golden summer of Tathcaer … All the while, urgency nagged me. Beacon-forts were manned all along the coast, the rashaku-relay and heliographs brought nothing but warnings to watch the sea …

  Stephen Perrault’s voice ceased. I realized I’d paid him no attention, would have to replay the blip. And then as I turned away from the window, for the first time since my return, I heard the harsh carillon of the city’s noon bells.

  Doug came through from the next room. ‘The comlink’s out again.’ He frowned. ‘I haven’t heard anything about reaction at home yet. Which indicates either a superfluity of apathy on their part, or that my esteemed masters are failing to authorize media coverage.’

  Something of the Cliffordian humour in that, for all that his was a genuine concern. I said, ‘Could be they’re keeping their heads down. My deputy, Perrault, says the Companies are on the warpath again.’

  ‘I have to confess, if I were a national government, I wouldn’t quarrel with a multicorporate Company whose GNP exceeds mine by several orders of magnitude …’

  He moved to the window, looking down at the bustle on the quay.

  ‘The Almadhera tells me the church is reopening the big Wellhouse up by the Citadel. You said we should be talking to Earthspeakers and Wellkeepers, Lynne, are you coming up there with me?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘Where’s Cory?’

  ‘Our esteemed Corazon. Now that,’ Douggie said, ‘I would very much like to know. She’s Company, not government. I have no authority over her.’

  Do I? I wondered. As special advisor? Dubious. Only Molly has that authority; and Molly, damn her, doesn’t care one jot about the low-tech Hundred Thousand.

  ‘If we can take a skurrai-carriage across the city –’

  ‘You go,’ I interrupted him. I leaned both hands on the sill of the window-arch, looking down into the street. ‘I’ll join you in an hour or two. It was about time some of them started coming to us, instead of us running after them.’

  Two Orthean males were plodding up the steep alley to the
entrance of Westhill-Ahrentine. One, dark and in middle years, I had a feeling I ought to recognize from somewhere. The other, supporting himself with a staff and his companion’s arm, but gazing round with a bright-eyed curiosity, was Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen.

  20

  A Visitor to Westhill-Ahrentine

  ‘Give you greeting,’ the dark male said. ‘We have met, t’an Christie. You may not recall. I’m Nelum Santhil, of Rimnith telestre.’

  Dear God, Nelum Santhil! I covered shock. Haltern was regarding me with covert amusement. I stared at the dark male, with his thin Melkathi robes, and short-cropped mane, and I would not have recognized the man who, ten years ago, had been Portmaster of Ales-Kadareth in Melkathi – who allowed SuBannasen and later Orhlandis telestres to ship in illegal gold from Kel Harantish, who then betrayed both SuBannasen and Orhlandis …

  Haltern’s staff tapped on the floorboards as he crossed the room, and sat in one of the couch-chairs by the window. The sun gleamed on his fine, white mane. With deliberate casualness, he said, ‘Give you greeting, Christie. Nelum Santhil’s newly arrived from Ales-Kadareth, where they named him T’An Melkathi.’

  It was a major effort to keep still. T’An Melkathi? But that’s Orthean politics. I offered herb-tea to both of them, and Nelum Santhil accepted, and as I poured it from a stone jug I thought, Hal, you’re a wicked old man! And you’ve never given up your ambition of having the edge over s’aranthi.

  ‘And what can I do for you and the T’An Melkathi?’ I asked, sitting down beside Hal on the couch-chair, proud of my self-possession.

  ‘As representatives of two provinces – ah,’ Hal interrupted himself. With a charming air of apology, he went on: ‘That’s something else I should perhaps have mentioned- Morvren Freeport has been foolhardy enough to name a Beth’ru-elen as their Seamarshal – that is, myself.’

  I looked at him. Lines puckered the reptilian skin round that neat mouth; unveiled eyes were brilliant, pale and lively.