‘There is no need to frighten ourselves with what might be in Tharliezalor. There are no serim here, now.’
Terascouros pulled herself to her feet, tottered around in a circle to get her blood moving again. ‘Medlo’s point is well made. There were serim there, hard to kill, in uncounted numbers. But they are easy enough to subdue, so I have learned. Be careful with me for my song is your weapon against the serim.’ She pantomimed extreme age, toothlessness, the hunched back. Jaer laughed, then became abruptly serious when he saw the pain it caused her to straighten that back. ‘I have no real wish to encounter the creatures. I think that land we came through, the ashy land within the veil, I think that was the time of the serim. It is told that when Sud-Akwith returned to his army with the sword of power, in one place he found only the minstrel alive, all others dead, and he liked not the minstrel’s song. I liked not the song we heard. However, we go with you where you go, and if you must go to Tharliezalor…’
‘Yes,’ Jaer answered her. ‘I must. As for you, Medlo, I can let you back the way we came.’
Medlo made a grimace of annoyance and began to rummage among his odds and ends looking for something he could use as a snare. Tall ears bobbed above the grasses here and there and he intended to eat hare as soon as possible. Terascouros lay down again on the blanket Jaer spread for her, content to rest for a time and drink hot tea. ‘How many days were we under there?’ she murmured, surprised when Jaer answered.
‘Only one. One day, not even a whole day, and one whole night. Not long, Terascouros, but long enough that I, too, am weary. Let Medlo snare us something to eat, and let us rest while he does it. I think we will travel little today.’
They did travel very little, stopping at the first sign of approaching darkness to build a comfortable fire and cook the hares, augmented by fresh herbs and the starchy roots which Terascouros pulled up as they travelled. They slept early, deeply, and it was not until dawn separated the horizon from the sky that Jaer woke to see a dark, winged body silhouetted against the dimming stars.
The form turned, furling a wing, crouching like a cat, smiling into Jaer’s face from so close a distance that Jaer pulled away in discomfort. It was a sphinx, terribly near, ideously familiar.
‘I have come,’ she said, ‘as is my right, human, to ask a question. It is our custom.’
Jaer drew the blanket around her shoulders, noticing as she did so that she had changed in the night, without dreams, without the feeling of being sought. ‘I was not aware of that.’
‘It does not matter what you are aware of. We do not care what you are aware of. For all the generations of man, my people have dwelt in the hidden places of the earth, on the edges of great deserts where basilisks bake in endless sun, at the roots of mountains beyond the memory of those who pass, letting those who answer go free with our blessing, letting those who do not answer end their lives with us in the desolation.’
Jaer cleared her throat. ‘It hardly seems a profitable relationship for man.’
The sphinx laughed, a metallic sound. ‘We have no relationship with man, changeling. To riddle and be answered is all our life and reason for being. There are many among mankind who would undo us, uncreate us. Are you one of these?’
Jaer thought about it. ‘No. For if you were unmade, brutal sister, who would hiss the hard questions in the black places of the heart? Come. Ask me your riddle and be done.’
‘I have done,’ the sphinx said, spreading a wing against the dawn. ‘But I will ask another.’
‘Is that allowed?’
‘We make our own rules, especially with the unwary. Tell me, Jaer of the Outer Islands: what weapons do you carry?’
Again Jaer thought, again answered. ‘I will tell you what I will, winged one. One weapon binds for a time, one binds forever, and I carry neither.’
The sphinx laughed, screaming at the sky. Wrapped in their blankets, Medlo and Terascouros slept on, unconscious of the wild laughter. In the trees, birds wakened to chorus drowsily at the flushed sky.
‘Now,’ said the sphinx, ‘it is allowed that you may ask one question which I am bound to answer. Think well. Ask well.’
Jaer knew at once there were two questions she wanted to know answers to. One was the identity of her father, the other was where the Gate might be found. She started to ask one of these and said, ‘What is the Serpent’s name?’
‘Ah. So you begin to understand what must be understood before the seeking stops and the fighting begins, Jaer of the Outer Islands. You know what the Serpent’s name is. His name is fury, and quest, and search, and goad. I have answered your question, and I will answer one you have not asked.’ The sphinx turned away, whispering over her shoulder, ‘Each thing carries the cure for its own illness.’
The black stallion had been grazing near where Jaer lay, and he moved now, stamping a foot imperiously upon the earth, eyes swinging toward Jaer and away. Jaer’s eyes flicked up for an instant. When she looked back, the sphinx was gone.
The stallion pushed a soft nose against Jaer’s neck, and she rose to lay her face against the smooth black flank. She saw what had disturbed the stallion. There beside the stream a head of unicorns were grazing on the flowery banks. On an outcropping of stone, a phoenix preened in the early light, feathers glittering like jewels. White hands showed briefly at the edge of the bank, then disappeared into ripples which fled downstream toward the river. Jaer whispered to the horse.
‘We go to Tharliezalor, forty or fifty days to the northeast. We go peacefully because every pattern of my life says I must go there, and because that which searches for me still does not search here in the east. Its eyes are fixed beyond the Concealment, in the western world. It does not know I am here. It will not know until I come to it, where it is, in Tharliezalor.’
The horse made a soft noise with its nostrils, stamped a foot delicately as though in agreement. Jaer hugged the arching neck, glad of the animal warmth, the easy familiarity. The unicorns went on grazing, looking up from time to time with glowing, incurious eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE STONE CITY
Days 16-26,
Month of Wings Returning
Thewson tarried a day in Seathe, most of it spent seated on the foot of Jasmine’s bed, talking about the Lion Courts. He told her of his spear round, dwelling lovingly upon the catalogue of gods, big and little, and the marvels of their various dwelling places. He could not tell her what he did not remember, but the things he did remember both intrigued and disturbed her.
‘When the gods are finished with me,’ he promised her, ‘we will go to the Lion Courts, though little may be left by that time, and build them up again.’
‘We, Thewson?’
‘Ah, you will come there. Do not make mockery. You are my zhuraoli-nunu, the bright fire of my life. You will pick some bride price, Jasmine, and you will come. You and the boy child – and your girl child, too, for Fox will find her.’
‘You think this one will be a boy then?’
‘It will be.’
Perhaps, she thought, the god voices has assured him of it. In that case she was annoyed. They might have had the courtesy to have told her first.
‘I am not sure I like your gods,’ she said, sulking. ‘They use you. They do not consult you or let you say what you would rather do.’
‘Ah, Zhuraoli, Bright Fire, do not insult them. In my land we know many gods, and we know this about them: they pay well for what they take. If they take a piece of a man’s life, they will give such riches in exchange as to make even the Chieftain jealous. We know that!’
‘And what if they take his whole life?’ she asked soberly. ‘AH of it?’
‘Then the gods will pay. If not in this life, then in another. Or in another time. It is so, Jasmine. You think it is not because you have seen people suffer ill with no repayment; but not all suffering comes from the gods. Sometimes it is merely faxomol, foolishness, things men do. That is the difference between men and gods, after
all. Gods always repay.’
‘I do not want them to take you, Thewson.’ There were tears in her eyes, and though she tried to hold them, they spilled down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. ‘See, I am weeping like Chu-Namu. You know the song:
‘The wind weeps
where once Chu-Namu wandered
seeking her lover.
The sun creeps
through seasons time has squandered
and days now over …’
‘Ah,’ said Mum-lil. ‘That is a song I know:
‘Remembered
is she who loving, seeking,
in deepest sorrow,
engendered
a story ever speaking
to our tomorrow…
‘Yes,’ said Thewson. ‘All know that song. You sing the sad part where all the women weep and the men look uncomfortable. There is more of it:
‘A kind fate
bound them from separation,
forever after.
Beyond Gate
did they find reparation
and heaven’s laughter …:
His voice was a deep, mellifluous bass. When he sang, the windows rattled, and Jasmine found herself smiling against her will. He saw her smiling, and said to her: ‘You will not need to seek for five hundred years, little flower. No. I am not the silly man to go away and leave you without telling where I go. I go north, with those green men. The black bird said to remember the people of Widon the Golden, to remember the people of D’Zunalor, the Axe King. Well, I remember them. All the times I looked for the Crown of Wisdom, people told me the Crown was with the people of D’Zunalor, and the people of D’Zunalor followed the people of Widon. Foolishness – faxomol, sar luxufus, foolishness and shadows, all this following and running away to the northlands. What is it there they all run to?’
‘You will probably find out,’ she said with some asperity.
‘That is so.’ This seemed to contribute to his satisfaction, for he beamed at her for several minutes without saying anything. ‘One, two more days you stay here with Daingol and Sowsie and Dhariat, rest a little more, so, eat hot food not all full of ashes. Then, you go to Tanner, Gombator. Slow. Seven days, maybe ten. The green men say Tanner is empty of black robes now. All are gone away south. So you wait there for me.’
‘When will you come?’
‘When I find warriors. That is what I go for woman – to find many warriors to fight these black beetles. Then I come to you in Tanner –’
‘Why not Tiles, Thewson? The dog king will come there.’
‘Tanner is closer. Send Sowsie to Tiles if you want to do that. Have her look for Fox there. You wait. When flower month comes, then I come for you, Jasmine. In flower month. That is a … fanul… a sign?’
‘A symbol,’ she said softly. His talk did not fool her. He was spending the day with her because he did not know if he would see her again. She thought of pleading with him that he not go, or that she go with him, rejecting both. He must go. She would only slow him, perhaps make it harder for him to get safely to … to wherever, whatever. He had told her that his gods always repaid. Well, she must trust them, as he did. ‘A symbol, flower month,’ she said smiling and stroking his hand.
During their noon meal, Daingol queried him closely. ‘Do you trust these green-clad men, Thewson?’
‘Do you not?’
‘I have heard no ill of them. I have heard no good, either. You are going far with them, alone.’
‘No. Not alone. I will take Lain-achor.’ He went on to threaten Daingol and the singers with dire harm should they fail to bring Jasmine and the little people (but mostly Jasmine) safely to Tanner. He spent more time than Dhariat thought necessary in warnings and instructions, but she bore it as gracefully as possible. Sowsie seemed only amused.
He left them in the early dawn, riding out of the inn yard with the rising sun making long shadows across the rain-glossed cobbles of the street. A spring wind carried the smells of washed earth. ‘He knows what he is doing,’ muttered Daingol.
‘His gods know what he is doing.’ whispered Jasmine.
More out of boredom than anything else, Jasmine began to learn to weave. The little people did not think it worthwhile to unpack the big loom, but they had back looms with them which they used at odd hours of the day or evening. While Mum-lil strode back and forth (rubbing her own back dramatically and declaiming upon the pains and tribulations of approaching motherhood, much enjoying the drama of it all and the solicitous treatment accorded by Doh-ti) Hanna-lil and the Gaffer taught Jasmine weaving. It seemed that her fingers had always: nown the way of it, so quickly she learned. ‘So,’ said the little woman, ‘you have been joking with us. You were a weaver in Lakland to the east.’
‘Never.’ Jasmine was torn between pleasure and awe at the way her mind and hands responded to the threads before her. ‘Never before today. But it is as if my hands know all about it.’ The shuttle flicked between her fingers, one hand to the other, and the fabric grew between her knees.
‘Well, we will teach you some harder things – some that were hard for us to learn, even after years of weaving. That may slow your hands so that we do not feel outdone.’
Whatever they taught her did not slow her greatly. She wove upon the little loom in the morning, and at noon when they stopped to eat, and in the evenings by the fire. If she could have thought of a way to do it on horseback, she would have woven then, too. When they came to Tanner and found it all but deserted with a quiet inn eager to house them all, she spent every hour not spent gazing northward in weaving. It seemed that the figured belts almost wove themselves, sashes of cream and green, lined in blue and violet. In her mind she saw the belts woven in deeper blue embroidered with silver, like the one Medlo had so often worn, and her fingers ached to try that design in those colours.
Days went by. Mum-lil had a child, a girl baby, blessedly small so that Mum-lil did not suffer in the bearing, but healthy for all her tininess. Between the baby and the weaving they did not become bored with the time though twenty days had gone since Thewson went north. Jasmine forbade herself to worry, told herself sternly that she would not be concerned for him – not yet.
Thewson, Lain-achor, and the company of green men rode hard into the north, crossing the icy torrents of the River Lazentien not far from a place Leona would have recognized, observed by a wandering shepherd who marked them as the second wonder of his life. Six days from sunup to dark they rode, and on the seventh came to a waste blocked by a wall stretching from east to west as far as they could see, a wall of such unexpected and bizarre construction that Thewson and Lain-achor were driven into silence past speculation.
When they came close enough to see it well, they saw the wall was just the beginning of an immense, empty city of stone, perhaps as deep as it was long or high, for no end to it could be seen in any direction. It was a place of shadow. Clouds hung heavily upon it, veiling the upward reaches of it, draping the pinnacles of it like heavy canvas tented upon poles of unimaginable height. At the horizon a swollen sun forced itself through lowering grey to slant long, red twilight rays upon the stones. Fantastic shadow structures loomed behind each wall and rampart, shadow pits and more walls through which shadow doors opened upon nothing. Walls changed direction without reason; doors opened into rooms which perched upon floorless space; crevasses were crossed by slabs while tiny declivities were arched with mighty bridges of groined stone.
Above them were more arches, more groins, multiple pillars with stairs twisting about them and away from them to launch into dizzying heights and slide snakelike down other pillars, remote and unconnected to the first. There were horizons of buttresses and vaults, domes, minarets, crenellated towers stretching upward forever only to end at the height and limit of vision against some vaster wall which faded into the ceiling of cloud.
And throughout this place the wind cried, sobbed down streets and alleyways, screamed among the chimneys and towers and across the great, paved squar
es, entreated hysterically through distant arches, crying to itself in external complaint. It was a dead place, cold, a place in which damned souls might wander.
‘What is it?’ Thewson grated. ‘Who built it? And why?’
The green-clad man who led the troop of northerners, one named Obonor, shook his head. ‘No one knows when it was made, or how, or by what, or why. It was here in the time of the Akwithian Kings; it was thought to be untenanted then. But since the time of the Concealment, there has been at least one kind of creature living here, called the Tharnel worm. The Gahlians have taken them away by thousands, away to the south in iron wagons. Now few of them are left, and we can go through the stone city safely, if we are careful.’
‘Did you come through this city on your way to Seathe?’
‘Yes. This time we did. Other times we have gone far to the west, almost to the source of the Lazentien. This time, being in haste, we came through this place.’
‘Why were you in such haste?’ asked Lain-achor. ‘It would take much to bring me through here.’
Obonor smiled, evading the question. Thus far the green-clad ones had proven friendly, expert in trailcraft, and evasive when questioned. Why they had come in such haste only to return they did not say – would not say. They merely clucked to their horses and led the way east along the line of the city, not entering it, merely staring as did Thewson and Lain-achor at the endless wall. They rode, stopped to build a tiny fire of dried whin, boiled and drank their tea, dunked their bread, put out the fire and rode on until weariness dragged at their thighs to make them rest for the night. Far away to the west the bloated sun heaved itself out of cloud like some baleful beast of the air, glaring across the moors. The place of stones burned red in its light, the red of fire, of wine, of blood. Then it turned abruptly dark. One of the green men stood watch, hands loose on the hilt of his drawn sword.
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