Ancient Light

by Mary Gentle

  I came to a dome that rose up out of the white dust, where the awning over the doorsteps was half pulled down. The late afternoon light shone in through its door, fell on rubbish, broken arniac bowls, a cast-off robe. Order House Su’niar. I called out but my voice fell flatly, without an echo. Deserted.

  Gone, for how long? How long until they return – if they ever do? Is the inner city something we’ve lost forever?

  At last I came to that stretch of open ground, and crossed it, and entered the gardens of the Tower. Here were stunted ash-grey lapuur, the earth between them trodden flat; and their fronds curled in the heat, alternately hiding and disclosing the sun-baked bricks of the Tower’s west wall.

  Suddenly I was overcome with a strong conviction. Everything that’s important is happening away from here – four hundred miles down the Coast, or a thousand miles away in Melkathi. Not in this backwater. I can only spare a few hours here, and even then, that’s hours that are being wasted …

  Ah now, hold on a minute. I recognize that refusal to look at the Tower.

  Deliberately I dug my nails into my palms. The pain cleared my mind. Again I felt the sharp heat of the sun. Dust caught in my throat. I looked round at the drooping lapuur and up at the high dome of the sky, my perception changing: it is so still here because here is the eye of the storm … And something nagged at me. If I can put all the pieces of my “memories” into one pattern, there is something I ought to see.

  But those memories are false. Aren’t they?

  I thought on that while two brown-robed Ortheans came to lead me into the Tower; a melancholy walk through slick-walled artificially-lit corridors. They took me, not, as I had expected, to the library-room, but up through an elevator to the roof-garden. There, in the sunlight, among the stone tubs that spilled scarlet blossoms of arniac, a dark Orthean woman sat cross-legged at a low table.

  Ruric Orhlandis glanced up as I approached. Her single hand held a bowl of siir-wine. The Tower roof-garden is walled, so I could see beyond her nothing of the city, only the sky and the days tars and the setting sun.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I wanted to talk to you, S’aranth.’

  I could only look at that narrow, dark face, at those sunny eyes, and hear what she said to me a month ago: I wish that I were all Ruric, all Orhlandis, but I’m not. I’m Hexenmeister now. I saw her smile.

  How did I convince myself she meant the duties and responsibilities of the office of Hexenmeister, not that she is less – or more – now than amari Ruric Orhlandis?

  ‘I came to ask about – memories? Visions? I’m not sure what they are. Came to ask you, because it seems to me that if it’s only fragments of Tower Archives, it’s too damn real.’ I looked at her. ‘And now … it isn’t something I can prove, but I know, now, that you’re not just Ruric. I can see it – sense it. But I can’t explain it. You’re Hexenmeister.’

  She said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I – need to know why I’m not the only one to experience these memories. I could understand it, I think, if it was just me, because I’ve been in the Tower. But what about Rakviri, and Calil bel-Rioch?’

  She inclined her head. No necessity for explanations: the Tower hears these things.

  She said, ‘There are still dreams of ancient empires in the world, and they touch you, as if they were not quite dead. They cling to relics, and to places, and to people who desire, with desperation, the days that are past. Because you have been in the Tower, you become sensitive to this.’

  ‘“Come because you remember, there was a city seen in mist and pearl.” … So that was true, too?’ I stood looking down at her. The Tower is the Tower, not an archive; the Hexenmeisters are one Hexenmeister; how else could she know my visions.

  ‘Damn, you lied well! I did believe you. I suppose until now –’ Or did I know when Calil and I together saw the City Over The Inland Sea? And couldn’t consciously admit it, because that means admitting one thing more … ‘You lied to me again, tricked me again. Except that it isn’t you, is it? It’s the Hexenmeister. That ought to make it different, but –’

  She rose to her feet in one swift movement. All the old swordfighter’s grace was there. She stood in the sunlight, in the Tower garden, and I shivered. This lean, ageing woman, skin like flaked coal; dressed in simple shirt and britches, with bare feet, and mane straggling out of a half-crop … is this something wearing the Orhlandis face as a mask?

  ‘Christie …’ Ruric Orhlandis sighed. ‘Sunmother! For Her sake, don’t be so stupid – it is me. I may have more lives in my head, but it’s still me; and yes, I lied to you again, what did you expect? Do I look as though I’m playing ashiren-games here?’ That dark, narrow face showed plain exasperation. She hooked the thumb of her single hand in her belt.

  ‘Eight years on and you’re still expecting people to act in good faith … Sunmother! It’s a wonder they let you out without a keeper.’ And she grinned, unmalicious, to take the sting out of it.

  ‘You cynical old –’ I stopped. ‘“Old”. Ruric, I don’t have any idea, do I?’

  A gleam came and went in those yellow eyes. ‘More than most, you do!’ Ruric smiled again. ‘It’s ironic. There was I, whining that because I’m part Witchbreed I have no past-memories, and now I’ve more past-lives than half the Hundred Thousand put together. Christie, I tell you, She has a very peculiar sense of humour …’

  ‘She isn’t the only one.’

  ‘Ah, well. After all, this is too serious to be solemn about.’ Ruric turned away, prodding thoughtfully at the nearest stone tub. Then she wiped her hand free of the earth, and in quite a different tone remarked, ‘Ziku spores. A grove of ziku would suit the Tower gardens, but I can’t get them to grow here. They’re telestre plants. They don’t thrive outside it.’

  Del’ri mats were thrown down round the low stone table. The Orhlandis woman sat down, folding long legs, and reached over to grab the siir flask, and pour the viridian liquid into her bowl. She hesitated over a second bowl, and looked up at me with only a host’s curiosity.

  ‘Ruric, Goddammit! Why am I here?’

  ‘That’s my S’aranth.’ Thin lips curved. She put down the flask, gestured at the mats beside her. I remained standing. She rested her arm across her knees.

  ‘When he –’ I hesitated. ‘When it was suggested I enter the Tower, eight years ago, and undergo memory-transfer, it was as proof. Proof that the Hexenmeister isn’t what you claimed, a month ago – merely the keeper of archives. Now I’m so confused I don’t know what I’d take as proof of anything! What you are, what happened to me …’

  ‘Same thing,’ Ruric said briefly. She leaned her head back for a moment against another stone tub, basking in the setting sun. The black mane fell across her forehead, hiding the scar of branding.

  ‘It takes time to become Hexenmeister,’ she said. ‘There are always several – apprentices, shall we say? Those who’ve been through the first stage of memory-implant. That was what I gave you, eight years ago. It was making you unable to speak of it that damaged you, and for that I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  The response was automatic, and I saw how Ruric choked back a laugh. My legs ached with standing, so I lowered myself down to sit on the del’ri mats. No Tower brown-robes were visible in the gardens now, as I looked round; there was only the light of Carrick’s Star falling on brown brick walls, on scarlet arniac and gravel paths. Familiar, why? And then I realized: This could be any roof-garden in Morvren Freeport or Tathcaer.

  Ruric poured siir-wine into a bowl. ‘Do you know, I knew you’d come here if I asked? That’s why I sent word out with the traders. They’d find you, and you’d come.’ She paused, looking at the siir and not at me. ‘Did you ever forgive me for that summer in Melkathi, and SuBannasen, and Kanta’s murder? I asked you to come to me then. When they’d just done this.’ Long fingers brushed back that dark mane. The exile’s mark: a jagged scar.

  I said, ‘Thinking back, when you were going i
nto exile, didn’t I say, “Have you considered Kasabaarde?” Now that’s ironic.’ But I had been thinking, then, of the inner city.

  Ruric looked up.

  ‘Now I’ve called you again, after I’ve done worse: tricked you into memory-implants, blocked off your own memories from you. Brought you here again, after eight years.’

  Chilling, to hear her speak. One the act of Ruric Orhlandis, the other of that old man, the Hexenmeister; she speaks as one remembering both. Like the sun on the surface of a river: one minute all brilliance, all Ruric; and then the light shifts, and under that surface are depths … That feeling of frustration came again. On the tip of my mind, as it were: there is more to this than the accumulation of memory, and an ancient being hiding itself in an impregnable tower … Carrick’s Star shone on her face, on the lines faintly incised in alien, reptilian skin. She rubbed at her nose and mouth, that gesture utterly familiar from her days as T’An Commander of the telestre army. She’s tired, I thought. And if I know Ruric (if I do), would like nothing better than a fight. Simple action. How she must fret, as Hexenmeister …

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘What am I doing here?’

  ‘In plain terms, you’re being kept a prisoner.’

  Startled, before I thought better of it, I said, ‘You can’t hold me here.’

  Ruric drank from her siir bowl, and set it down with a clink on the stone table. Then she scratched at her mane where it rooted on the back of her neck, and shot a glance up at me from under dark brows.

  ‘Too dangerous to let you loose, with the s’aranthi ripping the Coast apart in search of Witchbreed technology. I can’t have them knowing what’s here. As I said to you once, if you had not been desired to enter, you could not even have passed the gardens. The Tower’s defences work both ways, keep people out – and in.’

  Not her who said that, but him; the old man.

  ‘I could have made certain, early on, that no word about the Tower ever came from you. There are assassins on the Coast. I could have had you killed in Maherwa, by Annekt. Haven’t I done all I could for you? But the Tower must survive.’

  I said, ‘Damn the Tower’s survival. What use is all your Hexenmeister’s knowledge if you never do anything with it? Have you seen what’s happening in Kel Harantish? The inner city? And in the telestres, in your Hundred Thousand? You sit there and whine that all that matters is the Tower’s survival –’

  ‘Mine and the Tower’s.’ She smiled: there was something of pity in it. ‘Christie, you do know why. Even if you don’t know that you know. I’m sorry. I did you a great wrong, eight years ago, and all I do is compound it further.’

  The dome of the sky was ashen now; daystars fading to the Coast’s swift twilight. The heat of the day became comfortable warmth. I reached for the bowl of siir, drinking cautiously. There was no scent of saryl-kabriz or ruesse. I looked at Ruric and, as well as human tongues can manage, stumbled out the phrase that Calil bel-Rioch had used to translate ‘“Ancient light”.’

  Membrane slid across those yellow eyes.

  ‘Ruric, is that – it’s what I’m afraid of. If the hiyeks rediscover how to use the weapon that produces ancient light; if Rashid Akida discovered something in Maherwa, or if it’s possible to produce – I don’t know – some synthesis of Earth and Witchbreed science.’

  ‘They don’t have to,’ Ruric said. ‘That isn’t necessary at all.’

  Heat reflected back from brown brick walls, comforting as night began to fall. Because I didn’t want to think about what she’d said, I hastily asked, ‘And what else am I doing here, besides being a prisoner?’

  ‘I need an offworlder.’ Again, that grin, white against her satin black skin; lines crinkled at the corners of her eyes. ‘A tame offworlder, shall I say? Ah, that ruffles your feathers! Christie, I want to apply to Earth, through the national governments, for Orthe to be given Protected Status. On anthropological grounds. Your WEBcasters are making us so widely known that we might have a chance, now, if we’re quick. I can’t leave the Tower. I need human support. That’s you.’

  She put her hand down in a long-familiar gesture to rest it on the hilt of harur-nilgiri; found no blade there.

  ‘T’An Commander,’ I said. ‘T’An Melkathi.’

  ‘I was ignorant then.’ She met my gaze. ‘One thing I did know enough to fear. That Earth would change us, destroy us. I was more right than I knew … If you’re to help me, Christie, you ought to remember all the reasons why. You know too much to be safe, and I should send you to Her. I could ask you for that –’ she indicated my wristlink ‘– allow you no contact outside the Tower. But you know what I know, and I’d sooner have you as an ally.’

  You know what I know. Fear made my mouth go dry. I moved slightly, the weave of the del’ri mat had imprinted on the skin of my hands. The light of Carrick’s Star as it set sent long shadows reaching for us.

  ‘Ruric –’

  ‘Now that I am Hexenmeister,’ she said, overriding what I began, ‘I have the memory of your coming here, eight years ago. And I have the memories the then Hexenmeister took from you. I’ve been Lynne de Lisle Christie. Can you imagine? I’d been four years in exile from the Hundred Thousand, Orhlandis was broken up, Rodion dead, Suthafiori dead. And because you were here before you went back to Tathcaer, and found out what I’d done, I saw myself through your eyes, as you saw me, a friend.’

  And by that time I was four years gone from Orthe, on different worlds. Different myself, because of her.

  ‘If I know that my “delusions” about the Tower are true,’ I said, ‘if I know that it’s the Old Science that stores and transfers living memory from Hexenmeister to Hexenmeister; that that memory goes back thousands of years, to before the Golden Empire itself … Ruric, you can’t let anyone who knows that leave the Tower.’ I challenged her: ‘Not if the Tower’s secrecy and survival are all you care about.’

  She reached across, briefly resting her hand on my arm, where I had half rolled up the coverall-sleeve. Her fingers were dry, hot; the pulse of a different heartbeat felt through the skin. Then she sat back. The western light shone on her high-arched ribs, the small breasts and paired lower nipples, and then as she turned to pour more siir-wine, on the mane that rooted down her spine to the small of her back, showing through the slit-backed shirt.

  ‘Christie, some people you have to trust. I know you. You love this world, you’re of it I did one thing better than I ever knew when I had you marked for the Goddess. That was a true foretelling. This is your home.’

  She faced me again, sipping at the bowl of siir, and then added, ‘It isn’t only the Tower knowledge that matters. It never was. You know that.’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t quite get there – I do know, but –’

  It was suddenly as if there were three of us present: Ruric, myself, and that old male, eight years ago; who had told me what it meant to be Hexenmeister, and in face of my incredulity, said –

  ‘“You must believe,”’ Ruric quoted softly. ‘“Or else you’ll believe nothing I tell you. And what I tell you may affect relations between our two worlds …”’

  ‘“Kasabaarde is the oldest city in this world, and I am the oldest person. I know this world. So when Orthe comes to deal with other worlds – I am the only one qualified to speak for us.”’ I finished the quote. For a moment I was quiet, perceiving the last of the day’s warmth; tasting dust on my lips, and the aftertaste of siir in my mouth. The kazsis-vines began to open their red blossoms, giving off a heavy, sweet scent.

  A mile or two away to the west is the shuttle, and my 19.00 hour call from Douggie almost due, outside the city. And here there is the Tower, and all the subterranean levels of it; levels that connect with the first spire of the Rasrhe-y-Meluur, and all that great chiruzeth structure that bridges the Archipelago to the Hundred Thousand. I cannot ignore what I know.

  ‘I could put a worse interpretation on it,’ I said. ‘All that concerns you is that the Tower survive. You must h
ave defences that could make even Cory’s Peace Force pause. So when do you decide to take action? When it’s possible that the weapon that produces ancient light has been rediscovered. When the Tower’s threatened. Am I right?’

  The dark Orthean woman put her fingers to my forehead, briefly. I thought suddenly how, long ago, in the north, an Earthspeaker had done the same with water from the Goddess’s well. And in that same place amari Ruric bears her exile’s brand. And was it there that he put a six-fingered hand, that old man, the Hexenmeister? I met those yellow eyes that now unveiled. And thought of Calil, and how we had together called up the dead past … Ruric took her hand away.

  ‘You know,’ she insisted. ‘Some of the things you said in your delirium, travelling from Maherwa to Kasabaarde – oh yes, I had eyes and ears with you on that journey. That was the nearest you came to an assassin’s blade, or ruesse in your cup, but you never spoke clearly enough to warrant it. Now I need you to speak.’

  I looked at her. Ruric Orhlandis; Ruric Hexenmeister.

  ‘You are what you say you are, but that doesn’t mean I can trust you.’

  Ruric shrugged, with that old crook-shouldered balance. ‘Then you’ll have to do without trust.’

  Assassin’s blade; ruesse in the cup. Yes, I thought. You’d do it. Even as T’An Commander you would have done it; it’s part of the game. The Orthean game that is too serious to be solemn about …

  I said ‘I don’t see why –’

  The woman rose to her feet. She rested that one hand on the edge of a stone tub; six-fingered, claw-nailed, black against the scarlet arniac. She turned her head; those yellow eyes met mine.

  ‘Why? Because there’s something I plan to do, and I need your help. It’s that simple. Forget that year and Melkathi if you can. Everything I did then, I’d do again. Still … I need your help. Christie, please.’