The Revenants

by Tepper, Sheri S

  ‘Patterns,’ said Jasmine. ‘Swords of Power. Vessels of Healing. Girdles of Binding. Crowns of Wisdom. Bits and pieces, woven in, like silver in the web.’

  ‘Others moved,’ the voice said, ‘to open a Gateway once more.’

  There was silence beside the fire, Leona turned to Hazliah suddenly, grasping his hand tight in hers. ‘If anything … anything should happen to me, Hazliah, I set the boy in your care. Sorrow and Silence, too. Care for them. Please.’ His hand tightened upon hers in puzzled promise.

  ‘To open a Gateway. A way.’

  ‘A Gate? A way?’ Jaer asked. ‘For some Ahl di or other? Oh, Magister Omburan. What am I?’

  ‘You know what you are.’

  ‘Yes. I know what I am. I am a link between what men call myth and what men call reality. Between male and female. Between age and youth. Between one time and another. I can read the pattern within me, built by my thousands for a purpose I never knew. It was not Ephraim’s quest at all, was it?’

  ‘You have his book.’

  Jaer looked at the stained cover between her fingers. Yes. It was Ephraim’s book. It was Ephraim’s quest. ‘It was not entirely his,’ whispered Jaer.

  ‘It was yours.’

  ‘Mine all along. Do you know, it was only love for those two old men kept me at it? Funny. Nathan didn’t even know about it, and yet I did it to please them, to repay them.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. Partly. Sometimes. Mosdy. But what was it all for? Was it only to bring Thewson and Jasmine and Medlo and Leona here or wherever else they have been? Only that? It seems an obscure and unnecessarily complicated way to have done that.’

  ‘Obviously then, not only that’

  ‘Obviously.’

  They let the firelight play across their faces. None of the others spoke, only watched and listened, letting it play out before them as though they had determined upon a course which they did not understand–like a child who says, ‘Let me try that,’ and then must wait endlessly while it is explained. So they waited.

  Presently, Jaer asked, ‘Who was it, really, who made the Sword? And the other things? Who?’

  ‘Yes. Who?’

  ‘I,’ said Thewson. ‘I will have to put the Crown where it must be. Who else knows of it? Who else can climb the Wall and put the Crown upon the head of Ulum Auwa where it must be? Who?’

  ‘Yes, Who?’

  ‘The Sword must be set in Sud-Akwith’s hands,’ said Medlo.

  ‘The Girdle must be woven,’ said Jasmine. ‘My hands know that.’

  ‘How?’ whispered Terascouros into the terrified silence. ‘By what Gateway?’

  ‘By me,’ cried Jaer in a voice not her own. ‘I am the Gate for which the quest was made. Woven out of a thousand lives, male and female, stretched through time, made for this and no other reason, woven into the web of myth, given to be what I am. I have only to … only to …’ Her voice trailed away as she turned, sought, set her eyes upon Leona, who rose, came toward her as though to speak, reached out a hand to touch Jaer’s … and blazed with incredible light and was gone. Vanished. Hazliah stared in anguished disbelief, seeming to hear from a great distance the wild, mournful howling of the great hounds.

  Taniel was weeping, Jasmine wept, also, but Thewson set his hands upon her, lifting her up so that she faced Jaer at his side, Hu’ao clutched tightly between them. Jasmine cowered. Together,’ she pleaded. Together, please …’ Something or these words came though. There was an instant’s comprehension in Jaer’s eyes, something of herself as she had been with Jasmine on the road to Byssa. She reached out to touch them both. The light flared. They were gone.

  ‘Rhees is gone,’ cried Medlo. Trees and meadows only slag and dust. Alan is dead at last. The age is embittered. What is left for me here, Jaer? You have me. Let me go!’ He rushed upon her as though to seize her in his arms and was gone in that same wild flare of light.

  Jaer staggered, murmured, ‘Ephraim, Nathan… I only wanted to be … Jaer.’

  And where Jaer had been, where the multitude had been encompassed in one panic understanding, now was only a childish figure, slender and androgynous in the dawn light, blank-faced as a newborn, gazing with wondering incomprehension at those who remained behind. This figure dropped to the earth and lay there, fingers in its mouth, staring at the fire. Taniel wept. Hazliah clung to Terascouros in a spasm of agony too sudden to be realized in that moment. She, Terascouros, only watched, watched to remember.

  The Magister stepped forward in the dawn to cradle Jaer in powerful arms. ‘So we have a child now, Taniel. Yours ana mine.’

  ‘Yours, Omburan. Not mine.’

  ‘Ours. The child’s mother, Jaera, I honoured, honouring you, Taniel. She was held in my being as no other has been held, given peace such as no other has known. She would have counted the cost not too dear, had she known the cost. Part of the price paid to her was that she never knew. And this is our child, newborn, all the past burned away in the making and breaking of the Gate.’

  ‘It is too late for me.’

  ‘No. You will learn. Jaer will learn. We three will make a day together to sing the name weeping of Jaera of the Isles.’

  The Magister took them away, in a direction Terascouros could not see. When they had gone, she gathered up the things they had left so casually behind. The Vessel, die Sword, the Girdle, the Crown. So many, so wondrous, left with so little ceremony. Carefully she packed them away to be carried home to Gerenhodh. Hazliah would take her there. They would sing the Song of Comfort for Hazliah. Then she would go with him to Orena to see it, to meet the little people, to meet Leona’s son. Busily she worked, remembered, and wondered curiously.

  In the Lion Courts, a shaman planted seedling trees. New grass poked through slabs where the casde of Rhees had once stood. In Lakland, a man remembered a dancer he had once seen. In Anisfale, the heath bloomed bright about a stone which bore Fabla’s name. The deep songs of earth sang on, and in that song were all of earth’s creatures made whole.

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  Also By Sheri S. Tepper

  Land of The True Game

  1. King’s Blood Four (1983)

  2. Necromancer Nine (1983)

  3. Wizard’s Eleven (1984)

  Marianne

  1. Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore (1985)

  2. Marianne, the Madame and the Momentary Gods (1988)

  3. Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse (1989)

  Mavin Manyshaped

  1. The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

  2. The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

  3. The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

  Jinian

  1. Jinian Footseer (1985)

  2. Dervish Daughter (1986)

  3. Jinian Star-Eye (1986)

  Ettison

  1. Blood Heritage (1986)

  2. The Bones (1987)

  Awakeners

  1. Northshore (1987)

  2. Southshore (1987)

  Other Novels

  The Revenants (1984)

  After Long Silence (1987)

  The Gate to Women’s Country (1988)

  The Enigma Score (1989)

  Grass (1989)

  Beauty (1991)

  Sideshow (1992)

  A Plague of Angels (1993)

  Shadow’s End (1994)

  Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (1996)

  The Family Tree (1997)

  Six Moon Dance (1998)

  Singer from the Sea (1999)

  Raising the Stones (1990)

  The Fresco (2000)

  The Visitor (2002)

  The Com
panions (2003)

  The Margarets (2007)

  EPILOGUE

  THEWSON AND JASMINE

  Thewson found himself among stony mountains in a wild and desolate place. The earth around him was fused, as though by a bolt of lightning, into glassy nodules. He picked up three of them, recognizing them for what they were.

  When he came out of the mountains, he had the three stones in his belt pouch, smooth and dark, with a golden light dwelling deep within. He came to the town of Txibbias, not speaking one word that they understood, nor they one that he could comprehend. They were workers in gold and silver in Txibbias, exporters to the City of the Mists and to the great seaports of the east, and it was to one of the foremost among the artisans that Thewson made his needs known. He wanted the stones polished and set into a simple circlet of sea silver. He drew the circlet on a fragment of hide with a burned stick, but offered no payment.

  The artisan attempted to ignore him, but Thewson was not one easily ignored. By signs he conveyed willingness to guard the premises, to hunt, to guard the caravans which went east and north along the sea. At last the artisan allowed him to sleep between the inner and outer walls of the shop, only to find him there one morning, bleeding and exhausted, sitting on a pile of what had been an armed band of robbers who had thought to steal from the artisan in the night.

  From that time on, Thewson slept within the inner walls, was well fed and armed, and had the strange stones handed over to the lapidaries for polishing while the artisan drew design after design for the crown. Thewson would not have it embellished, long though the artisan pleaded for only a few simple curlicues or a delicate wreath of flowers. Only when the artisan finished, Thewson bowed deeply before the startled artist and took himself off–eastward with a caravan.

  He travelled with the caravan for a season, two, almost a year, crossing and recrossing the lands to the west of the great sea. There was nothing familiar: no language, no custom, no costume, no line of distant hills or river valley. Then one day he found himself staring at a child’s face which peered at him from the back of a wagon, a woven lappet across its forehead in a design which Thewson knew. Though he stumbled still in die language of the place, he could ask ‘where’ and learn ‘there,’ die City of the Mists, the Temple of Our Lady.

  The city was very beautiful, delicately coloured, with graceful towers softened and pillowed by trees. The veils of mist came from a great waterfall which spilled the waters of a continent across silver cliffs into the eastern sea, veils which drifted in scattered rainbows, making the city one of gardens, alive with flowers. The Temple stood beside the sea, and on its marble steps the women of the city came to offer blossoms and incense and beg to be allowed to put a stitch into the draperies of the Lady, silken garments as delicate as the mists which also clothed the graceful image within the Temple.

  Among the women sat Jasmine, working intently upon a length of woven light, carrying in her needle a lacework of silver to embroider the signs of rain and cloud and sea. Thewson stood before her for a long moment before she saw him, but her look when she gave it to him was glorious and utterly unsurprised, i am almost finished,’ she whispered in a tongue no other then alive could have known but he. ‘See if I have done it aright.’

  On her lap, new-made, lay die fringed girdle of Rhees, the Girdle of Chu-Namu – not yet born for a few thousand years – the belt which would bind the circles of the world together once more, the Girdle of Binding, the Girdle of Our Lady.

  ‘It is like,’ Thewson said.

  ‘It is not like. It is! She took the last stitch, a spider’s stitch. ‘And, since I am priestess here, it will not be questioned.’ Taking Thewson by the hand, she led him within the Temple where the filtered light fell across the marble features of the Lady, shining among her jewels and the embroideries of her gown. Jasmine drew the Girdle around the image, fastened it, stood back to look on it once more. ‘I woke here, on the floor, with Hu’ao. They found me at the Lady’s feet when the Temple opened in the morning. When I had learned a few words, I told them the Lady had sent for me to weave her a new Girdle. They called me blessed – which is what they call pregnant women hereabouts – and priestess, and cared for me and Hu’ao and for your son when he was born. He is growing big, Thewson, with skin like brown silk.’

  ‘We can go now?’ he asked, full of joy.

  ‘Yes. I am finished. We can go now. But where?’

  ‘To the great forest of the south were a cave is, my flower. In that cave is the stone which lives, ready for my carving. It shall be an image of Auwe, Lord of Air, set high within the clouds in that place. On his head will be the Crown of Wisdom. I have it, made for this. We will go there, you and Hu’ao, and the boy, our son.’

  ‘Is it far? Very far?’

  ‘It is far. Very far. But we have long to do it in. We shall live long, Jasmine. Very long and joyously.’

  MEDLO

  They called themselves the people of the sunset, remembering a trek many generations in length toward the setting sun. They called themselves the sunset people, and they spoke with the gods. Often a man would wake startled from sleep to come to his fellows in hushed solemnity to say that the god had commanded him to do a thing or proclaim a thing. Often a woman would start from reverie and exclaim, ‘The goddess has spoken.’ They set up images in high places and went there when troubled to listen. It was not usual for them to see the god, but it happened sufficiendy often for legend to arise.

  So it was that a god came to the Master Forger of Shan. The god brought a leather bag containing lumps of metal. He brought a pattern for a blade, also, drawn on parchment. These things he set before the Master Forger, the holder of mystery of the earth, the man who knows the invocations. The man looked at the god sidewise and doubtfully.

  ‘To a god,’ murmured the Master Forger, ‘the making of this thing would be easy. It is your metal and your pattern, after all.’ The Master Forger was looking politely at the ground, and his voice was quiet, for so was the usual conversation between men and gods properly conducted. ‘It does not seem that this matter should be brought to me.’

  ‘The invocations are needed. Firelord must be told of this and invited to participate in the making. It is customary. Necessary.’

  The Master sighed. ‘We work best those things we know. Metal of this kind I do not understand. It is green.’

  ‘It is green, true. It is also necessary.’

  The Master Forger sighed again. Sometimes it was useless to talk with gods because they did not explain themselves. ‘As you will,’ he said, picking up the metal and the pattern. Rather than explain the matter to his people, he went to the forge himself and the god plied the bellows, which was not the least surprising thing about him. He worked through the night, and when the sun rose, the metal was shaped. It lay on the anvil, green, like a blade of grass, with a curled guard and a long tang. At each step there had been invocation of Firelord and incantation of the names of the Powers and the blade had been quenched in blood and wiped on raw hides.

  The god nodded, satisfied, and the Master Forger risked a question. ‘What is it for?’

  The god smiled. Tor me to sharpen, to make a grip for, Smith, and to take from this place to another.’

  The god went away then, as they usually did, and in time the Master almost forgot about it.

  And in time, far to the north, in the land of fire mountains, Medlo stood behind a stony pillar watching the place where he had laid the Sword, now sharpened to a glittering green and hiked in gold. He had not been there long. From the east a horseman was approaching, a tall man, in dented armour, his face tired and despairing, picking his way among the hot lava flows. When he stopped it was almost on top of the Sword, and he called in a hoarse voice, ‘What wiliest thou, Lord of the Fire?’

  Medlo curved his hands about his mouth, cried between the stones in an echoing roar. ‘Strike where stone burns as thy need burns, O King!’

  The horseman leaned from his mount to strike th
e fiery lava with the lance he held. A clot of burning stone flew up to hit him on the forehead so that he cried out. Now he saw the Sword. Medlo could see it, too, glittering, green, scarcely heated by the lava flow. The horseman dismounted, took it up to look upon it with unbelieving eyes, then rode back the way he had come.

  Medlo leaned against the stone, weary beyond hope of rest. ‘So,’ he whispered. ‘It is done. The Sword made as it was made, set as it was set, found as it was found. Done. As I am done.’

  ‘No,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Not so.’

  There in the fireglow stood a giant figure which Medlo thought he should recognize, except that it shifted in the shifting light. ‘Northward,’ the figure told him. ‘Beyond the great Abyss which men call the Abyss of Souls, a kingdom waits your founding, Scion of Rhees. Even now, events so move that a people will come to you. You are not done.’

  It seemed then that Medlo was led away to the north, a journey of many days which, afterward, he could scarcely remember, into a land of cleanly green, watered by many fountains. The people there were herdsmen and workers in stone. They greeted Medlo as a king foretold, and he lived there long. He was still there when Widon the Golden came out of the south to build even greater the green and meadowy land of Ris. He was yet alive, white-bearded, honoured, and as content as any man has ever been.

  LEONA

  In the great forests of the north there was a tall cliff which loomed across the world, its face pocked with caves. In these caves lived a squat, strong people who hunted all the creatures of the forests and die grasslands, painting their likenesses upon the rough, curved walls of the caves. They knew the beasts of the world as they knew the feel of their own flesh, their own hands clenched around a flint knife. When they showed the children how it was that each beast lived and moved, the hunters would become the animal with each thrust of neck and head, each movement of shoulder, each stride becoming the thrust, movement, and stride of the animal. When they drew the beasts upon the rock walls, the animals breathed there as though they lived. The people were as close to the creatures of the earth as it was possible to be. They did not think of themselves in any way separate.