Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  Doug keyed the holotank to Clear.

  ‘If NuAsiaCo can put PanOceania in any kind of commercial difficulties, there’s every likelihood that they will indeed do so.’

  I went back to the table and poured bowls of herb-tea from the half-empty jug, and took one back to Douggie. He put it down absent-mindedly on the edge of the holotank.

  ‘Lynne, one of us will have to talk to Anzhadi-hiyek.’

  I cupped the bowl, sipping the citrine liquid. ‘Yes. At the moment, though, can you find anyone willing to let an outsider on to this continent?’

  He rubbed at his lined forehead. ‘No. You don’t change two millennia of history in half a year. Lynne, the Orhlandis woman, I can appreciate she can’t have her identity known; but surely she could exert some form of pressure on the Wellhouses?’

  ‘She may be. I have to be so careful asking.’

  Late afternoon sun slanted through the window-arches, patching the floorboards. The rooms still seemed disused. Covers remained on half the equipment. The shifting warm air brought the scent of ziku spores in, and rustled through old printouts and map-images still pinned to the walls. A rhythmic hollow clop came from the alley where marhaz and skurrai passed by.

  ‘Call Molly Rachel,’ Douggie said. ‘You still have a technical right to be kept informed by the Company. I want to know –’

  ‘What the storms are like on the Coast right now?’

  He took from the holotank the tab that contained the Trismegistus broadcast, tucking it into his breast pocket. ‘Pray for bad weather. We need the time.’

  By the time the systems linked up to give me access to Molly, afternoon had passed into second twilight, and mist from the rivers muffled all the city’s sounds. The upper-storey room was hot. I welcomed the cool night air.

  The holotank began to image Molly Rachel. Her skin seemed blue-black in the interior lights of the shuttle. A soft sound ran in the background, a hissing that, before she could speak, broke into a crackle that split the image. The sound that followed I recognized as distant thunder.

  I keyed in a climate profile, superimposed mid-image, and the Pacifican woman smiled a crooked smile when she saw it.

  ‘I was going to ask how weather conditions were in your area,’ I said. ‘And the rest of the Coast?’

  ‘Same as this morning, and the last three mornings.’ Those long black fingers keyed an inset-image. The metal hulls of F90 shuttles shone wetly, rain drumming back inches with the force of its landing; the earth was a morass. Lightning spiked a barren horizon, and the shuttle’s exterior sensor momentarily went black. Molly said, ‘Storms in a holding-pattern from here, three hundred miles up the Coast. Climatology put it down to the Elansiir range. And the central-continent war damage.’

  ‘What about the hiyek ships in the harbours?’

  Molly shook her head. The tangled black hair, shaggy now, was pinned back with del’ri-wood combs; her coverall was crumpled. She looked as though she hadn’t slept.

  ‘The storms block surveillance,’ she said. ‘That and whatever atmospheric effect it is that the war devastation makes. At least the native ships can’t slip away now. I’d hesitate to send one of the Company’s amphibious craft out; jath and jath-rai are helpless.’ She sighed. Her brown eyes were keen, but the rims were reddened. ‘I seriously think we made a mistake in coming here. The natives are interested in settling old grievances, not in the benefits of technology.’

  ‘Molly –’

  ‘Calil bel-Rioch tells me that the “Emperor” here is threatening to forbid the T&A station, and it isn’t half finished yet. She says he doesn’t want the Coast families independent.’

  Is that what Calil’s aiming for, to be Emperor-in-Exile herself? I hate to say it but we could do worse than have a pro-technology leader in Kel Harantish … And then I thought of those yellow eyes, that slight droop of the lid; her smile at the imagined death of Santhendor’lin-sandru, who was also an Emperor.

  ‘This isn’t a scheduled call,’ Molly Rachel reminded me. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to talk to the Anzhadi. If I can get some of them over here and talking, other hiyeks will follow their lead.’

  She said sourly, ‘If you can find them. What do you think I’ve been trying to do? The Anzhadi are mingling in with the other hiyeks and keeping under cover. You can look for Sethri-safere in any of the eighty small ports between here and Quarth – my people have.’

  I thought, Yes, Sethri doesn’t want to fight the Emperor and attack the Hundred Thousand and nor do any of the other Anzhadi, they’re not stupid. Only they’ve spent too many years knowing of the Hundred Thousand, looking at them with hungry eyes.

  ‘You’ve heard from Cory Mendez?’ I asked.

  ‘Commander Mendez is on her way here.’ Molly’s noncommittal expression slid into weariness. She rubbed at her eyes. ‘I’ve told her cultural taboos are too strong for her to station a detachment of the Peace Force with you right now. Lynne, we’d better come up with something soon –’

  Because actual bloodshed will make you look bad on Company reports? Or is that too cynical?

  ‘– because I’m running out of options,’ Molly Rachel said. ‘I can’t play soft arbitrator if hostilities break out.’

  21

  Midsummer-Eightyear

  The next morning, six days before the solstice, they opened up the halls of the Citadel, that great sprawl of stone on its high crag. I took a skurrai-jasin up to the Square. Sea mist curled round the white roofs of Tathcaer, and held close to the ground the reptilian scent of the skurrai, the slightly overripe odour of the food-collection points. A little after first twilight and already the city alleys are crowded.

  I found the Earthspeaker Cassirur Almadhera in the Stone Garden, up on Citadel crag.

  ‘There was a question I learned to ask when I was on Orthe before,’ I said. ‘Have the Wellhouses had any communication from the Hexenmeister of Kasabaarde?’

  She straightened. The green and scarlet slit-backed robes were gone, replaced by undyed becamil-cloth. Her skin and robe were smeared with ochre, and she held a clump of mossgrass in one dirty six-fingered hand. Her eyes cleared.

  ‘Christie. Have you forgiven me Barris Rakviri’s death, then?’

  I felt uncomfortable. ‘That’s no business of mine.’

  ‘You judge the action.’

  ‘I haven’t the right the judge.’

  She smiled the protest away. Morning sun gleamed on the Stone Garden’s miniature cliffs and crags, on the smooth and carved rock-beds covered with scarlet, yellow, viridian and blue mossgrass. Dew collected in shallow pools, shadowed pools. Thousandflower moss tumbled down a flight of steps that ended at Cassirur’s feet.

  ‘This could be rerooted,’ she said absently, looking down at the moss on the choked stairway. The shadow of the Citadel slanted across this garden that lies between the sprawling building and the river cliff. A sheer hundred feet below the Oranon roared, dividing to pass the island-city. The smell of the river was rank in the air.

  ‘About the Hexenmeister –’

  Cassirur settled the clump of mossgrass in a dew-wet crevice. She wiped her hands on her robe, and brushed the mass of red mane away from her face. Clear light showed the lines in that reptilian skin.

  Irrelevantly she said, ‘Have you heard from the Tower that the Goddess was an invention of Kerys Founder, and Her Wellhouses set up only to put use of the Old Science under ban? That’s untrue. She is older. When we lived in those great Golden cities we joined with Her in secret. She is older than the Tower knows.’

  ‘Cassirur, I wish you’d answer a simple question!’

  The scarlet-maned woman laughed. She moved away from the thousandflower-shrouded steps, and on a sudden turned her face up to the sky. The nictitating membrane flicked back from her eyes and she gazed straight into the sun. Then she lowered that gaze to me. Such a radiant shadow I have seen in other eyes, long ago; Orhlandis eyes.

  I said, ‘What happens
when men and women of the Coast land here and burn the telestres, kill you? Will you fight and die, or just die?’

  ‘The s’ans say we should first fight, and then, if the men and women of the hiyeks do not return to their canals, give them what space here that we can.’ She paused. Her tone was prosaic. ‘We must see if they can be discouraged. The fighting will mean less of us, more food, so we can take them in. And if, as I think, they prove to be land-destroyers – why, then, we can kill them later, when they’re divided amongst the Hundred Thousand. And having sent them to the Goddess, hope She brings them back to fertile lands.’

  I stared.

  ‘Don’t take me for s’aranthi,’ Cassirur Almadhera said. ‘We don’t need to hear from the Hexenmeister. We have always planned this, in the Wellhouses, if a numerous enemy should come against us.’

  There in the early sun, this Orthean woman; standing in her dirty robe, bare high-arched feet planted foursquare on the rock.

  ‘Don’t take me for an idiot,’ I said. ‘That might be the way to deal with an Orthean war. It revolts me, but it might be. These are Ortheans with human weapons. Yes, and who knows, maybe with Witchbreed devices of their own – will you give saryl-kabriz to them?’

  White sun reflected back from the rock, drew curls of mist from wet mossgrass; dazzled me when I turned to walk back into the Citadel, away from that woman silhouetted against a daystarred sky. Cassirur’s thoughtful voice came clearly to me:

  ‘Perhaps yes. And perhaps not fight at all. Let them come freely amongst us, and then send them to Her bright realm with poison or with hidden knives. If you will hear it, that is what the sole message from the Tower these past six years has said. That old man the Hexenmeister would sooner pretend a belief in our Goddess than see a war fought with Witchbreed or Earth weapons.’

  I kept on walking. Was it shock, that clarity in my mind, or familiarity, or both? So very Orthean, what Cassirur said, and I remember –

  Memories that are the constructs of delusion.

  Somewhere inside the interlocking halls of the Citadel I found Doug Clifford, after wandering through silent, dusty rooms, and halls where ashiren were setting out braziers to combat the chill in the air. He listened, in the long gallery, while I repeated Cassirur’s words of an hour before.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m fully aware of the principle of cultural toleration, but it does have inherent limitations.’ Then, with a bright-eyed anger, ‘Haven’t they the plain common sense to avoid a massacre!’

  ‘Ortheans look on death differently. As something they’ll survive.’

  ‘Corazon Mendez won’t see it that way.’ Doug halted by one of the slot-windows. ‘I don’t see it that way.’

  ‘Neither do I. But I’m not Orthean.’

  Something in me wanted to protest that. I didn’t let it. Doug and I walked on down the gallery, on the floor newly spread with zilmei pelts and matting. Voices called back and forth. There was the sound of heavy objects being moved.

  ‘At least we’ll know in advance when the invasion is going to happen,’ I said. ‘Molly will warn me when any jath-ships leave the southern continent. Doug, how can I report back to her on Cassirur? It was bad enough before this happened. Now what are we going to do?’

  ‘Endeavour to ascertain whether it’s what one might call a general conviction, or merely the prerogative of Earth-speakers and Wellkeepers.’

  Here the long gallery opened into an octagonal hall, without the benefit of a connecting corridor. Other halls were visible through archways. Sun put blue shadows on white stone. No Witchbreed thing, this low-roofed warren. I could see through into a larger hall, where two pale-maned females were putting up hangings and ribbon-banners, and I wondered in which of these rooms I had first met that woman called Suthafiori, Dalzielle Kerys-Andrethe, Crown of the Hundred Thousand.

  Doug touched my arm. ‘Lynne, was my impression of the Orhlandis woman wrong? Would she use her position as Hexenmeister to encourage –’

  ‘A massacre?’ I prompted. That round squirrel-face was a stranger’s face, then; Douglas Clifford, who could presume to judge amari Ruric Orhlandis. Why should it hurt me, to think she would do that? It’s the Orthean way of thinking, and she’s Orthean; and yet she’s an outsider too. I said, ‘I don’t know, Douggie.’

  There was something of the bantam about the small man as he gazed round, getting his bearings.

  ‘I’ll talk to Romare Kerys-Andrethe,’ he said. ‘He’s here, I believe. And representative of some of the s’ans, wouldn’t you say? Lynne, you talk with the T’An Haltern and Blaize Meduenin. We need to know who else thinks as Cassirur does. If telestre-Ortheans take that kind of violent action, I’m afraid it could be seen as an excuse for Earth to take over the government of Carrick V – and God knows to what kind of action that might lead.’

  Which of the T’Ans first took up quarters in the Citadel I don’t know, but where one went, all followed. I found the T’An Seamarshal’s new quarters in a high tower, one of the few rooms with a slot-window. Haltern was looking down at the city.

  I saw nothing but upper air, and the flick of rashaku-flight against a sky swimming with stars, and then coming to the stone sill, I saw what he saw. Marhaz-riders crossing the Rimon hills and the Ymirian meadows: groups of three and four, and ashiren mounted on the smaller skurrai, and by their dress – only spots of vermilion, green, and gold at this several miles distance – they must be from the furthest telestres. North Roehmonde, Peir-Dadeni, The Kyre. The wind blew warm in my face. Humid sea mist began to roll up from the harbour, gradually blotting out telestre-houses, blurring the white walls, turning the heat-sensitive lapuur from green to ash-grey … Here one could look down into inner courtyards of blind-walled telestre-houses, see young ashiren, bright-clothed adults, marhaz in stables, and fountains playing. Roosting rashaku rose up in clouds, disturbed, as telestre-Ortheans came back to their city.

  ‘The Andrethe of Peir-Dadeni is here,’ the old male said. He sank back on a couch-chair. It was piled with grey and black zilmei pelts, against the chill of the stone walls.

  ‘Are there more to come?’

  ‘The T’An Ymir. Geren has no love for cities.’

  The inner bead-curtain swung back, and a male in Morvrenni robes brought herb-tea. His brown mane was intricately braided, and there were gold studs set in the skin between his fingers; and something in the way he hovered over Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen made me move, turn my back to the window, so I had the old male’s face under that light. His wispy silver mane seemed thin. But it was the hollows in that wrinkled face that alarmed me.

  As the l’ri-an left, I said, ‘Hal, I haven’t suggested this before, partly because we have comparatively little data on Orthean physiology, but one of the Company medics –’

  Haltern shook his head.

  I asked, ‘Why not?’

  With no self pity or melodrama, but with infinite regret, he said, ‘It would make no difference. I shall die quite soon.’

  Half of me was shocked, half not. Well, I have been with Ortheans long enough to know something of them; that accounts fully for the sense of familiarity. I came to sit on the couch-chair beside him.

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘Soon, S’aranth. No,’ he lifted one thin hand, and when his pale blue eyes met mine, they were full of a wicked humour. ‘I shall use this, you see. I hope to see Meduenin as T’An Suthai-Telestre. Midsummer falls in six days. Now if I tell the new T’An Rimon that I stay only to see him as Crown …’

  A sudden lack of expression crossed his face. He lifted a hand to his mouth. I saw that he chewed ataile leaf, that herb that brings both pleasure and eradication of pain.

  ‘Hal –’

  ‘Ataile is a small vice. Nor I think, now, shall I be concerned over its addictive properties. No,’ he said, quite differently, ‘don’t grieve, Christie.’

  ‘Hal, do you remember, in Roehmonde; that woman Sethin was ill, and she said she wouldn’t stay for the pain? You sta
y. That’s what hurts me now. I wish you’d let me call a medic in.’

  ‘If it pleases you, do.’

  The fire in the brazier burned low. I leaned forward to put ziku-wood chips on it.

  ‘You mustn’t weep,’ he said. ‘Christie, you were so young when I first saw you, so frightened and so shrewd! I have you to thank if I understand anything at all of offworlders.’ He rested a hand on my shoulder, and there was no weight there; bones thin and hollow as a bird’s. He said, ‘This body pains me. Still, I would live, if I could, any way that I could –’

  I looked up, startled, unguarded.

  ‘– How can I leave young Meduenin without some guiding hand? And the telestres? Your people, I don’t trust them, Christie; I never have. To go to Her now –’ He broke off. The pale and whiteless blue eyes were veiled with membrane. In the wreckage of that face I could still see him: Crown Messenger, politician, spy, friend.

  I said, ‘Cassirur Almadhera doesn’t regret death, for herself, or for others.’

  ‘Ah.’ Hal nodded. ‘That’s the church. But no matter that we return, it means losing this life, these people; and it’s arrogant of me to think I can’t be spared, isn’t it, S’aranth? Arrogant and true. We have no Suthafiori, no Kanta Andrethe, now.’

  He leaned forward to the table to pour herb-tea. The weight of the stone jug was all but too much. I dared not help him. The cold of the stone walls must have got into my bones: somewhere deep inside I was shivering. You mustn’t grieve, he said. Ah, Hal. That sly, quiet humour of his; now it hurts.

  ‘Let me sit with you for a while,’ I said. ‘Hal, I don’t believe what you do. We shan’t meet again.’

  He pulled the zilmei furs more closely round him. ‘We can’t afford to sit, Christie, with only six days until Midsummer – I must have people come here, if I can’t go to them; you can tell me what happens in the city. I shall be in the Wellhouse on solstice day.’

  He paused then, and more quietly said, ‘You and she were alike. You and the Orhlandis. If I see her in that bright realm, will she ask me why I’ve abandoned the land? What will I say to her?’