A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel

by Sofia Samatar

  There were tambourines in the streets of the city, and drums, and joyful flutes; everywhere people were singing, embracing, and dancing with wild gladness. The young sorcerer pushed through the crowds to the very edge of the city in search of the dolphin who had caused him to anger the goddess Sarma. But instead of the dolphin, a beautiful maiden was swimming in the water, clad in white garments which floated about her and mixed with her long black hair. “Help me up!” cried she. And Finya went down the steps and helped her, and she stood on the white steps of her city and wept for very joy. “Thank you, blessed enchanter,” said she. And Finya said: “Alas, good lady, why did you cause me to sin against the goddess who already hates me?” And the princess said: “Why, what did she say?” “That you are wicked sorcerers.” “Ah, no,” said the maiden: “It is she who is wicked; she hates me for my beauty.” “That I can well believe,” said Finya; for truly the damsel was exceedingly lovely, having bronze skin and black eyes and hair, and a shape to devastate nations. Indeed, he was well-nigh dazzled by her and found her more lovely than any woman he had seen, save only she who haunted his dreams. And the princess laughed and led him into the city filled with rejoicing, where all they passed bowed and did them homage. “Now you shall see,” said she, “if ours is truly a wicked city. Stay with me for one year: for I love thee.”

  So Finya stayed with her in the beautiful city of wells and gardens. And she told him: “This is the city of Nine Wonders. The first wonder is our horses, which are scarlet and shine like roses. The second is our fine white hunting dogs, which can hunt at sea as well as on land. The third is our musicians, who can make men weep until they cast off all their burden of sorrow. The fourth wonder is our light, which is the most delicate in the world. The fifth is our birds, who are wise and speak like men. The sixth is our fruit: the most gratifying to the tongue, and strengthening to the body, of anything one can eat on earth. The seventh is our wine, a delight to the tongue and the heart; and the eighth is the water of our miraculous wells, so pure that it preserves us from old age, sickness and death.”

  “And what is the ninth wonder?” asked Finya.

  “Is nothing to be held sacred?” cried the princess with a laugh; and Finya asked that she forgive his discourtesy. “I have already forgiven thee,” she said. Indeed, she had a loveliness that could drive the very gods to envy.

  Finya stayed with her for a year and enjoyed every good thing: hunting on land and at sea, and the best of music, wine, and horses. At the end of the year she asked him to stay longer, and he agreed, for he said to himself that there was only despair in his other suit. And he enjoyed the love of the princess, who bore him two fine children, the most passionate hunting of his life, and the wisdom of the birds. All things he enjoyed, save that he did not know the ninth wonder, which he thought must be the most wonderful of them all.

  Now Finya still possessed the earring made from a piece of amber which had been given to him in the forest by the witch Brodlian, in which there dwelt his helper and familiar, the lubnesse, which was an owl with the sad face of a woman. Once when he was alone in the palace he rubbed at the earring, and the lubnesse appeared flapping before him. “O lubnesse,” said Finya, “I wish to know the ninth wonder.” “Art thou yet unsatisfied?” said she. “Yes,” said he: “Without this knowledge I cannot enjoy the other wonders.” “Not even thy wife,” asked the lubnesse, “and thy two children?” “Not even these,” said Finya. “Then,” said the lubnesse, “thou chosest well, when thou didst determine that thou wouldst be a wizard. Hast thou not noticed, then, that for one month out of every year, thy wife doth leave thee, taking the children with her?” “Yes,” said Finya: “She goes to the sacred mountain behind the city, for it is her custom to pray at the tomb of her father.” “That is as may be,” said the lubnesse. “When next she goes there, climb the narrow stair to the top of the palace. If her dogs fly at thee, strike at them with a sheaf of wheat, and they will not devour thee. Enter the room at the top of the stair. There will be a fire burning inside, and another thing, and this is the thing that thou must throw onto the fire. Then indeed shalt thou discover the ninth wonder of the city.” “May I perish,” said Finya, “if I do not so.”

  Soon enough the time came when the princess wrapped herself in a cloak and said: “I go to pray at the tomb of my father. Let the children come with me, that they may learn our custom.” “Very well,” said Finya; and they parted. Then Finya went up the narrow stair which led to the top of the palace, a dark and dusty stair which seemed in disuse; great dogs rushed at him, barking and snarling with foam on their jaws, but he struck them with a sheaf of wheat and they lay down and whined. At the top of the stairs he opened a door and entered a small and dirty room where a fire smoked foully in the grate. On the table was something long and black. He picked it up and held it; and it was the long black hair of his beautiful wife.

  “Alas,” cried Finya, “what is this?” And he threw the hair on the fire. Then a great hush fell on the City of Nine Wonders: the music, the laughter, the footsteps, all ceased, and the only sound to be heard was that of a single voice weeping and lamenting.

  Finya rushed down the stairs and out of the palace into the street, and the city was as it had been when he had first seen it: vast, empty, graceful, abandoned even by the mice. And again the chains moaned in the deserted wells. He followed the sound of weeping, and it led him to the sea; and there he saw the beautiful white dolphin, and with her two dolphin pups. And she cried: “Alas, my husband, what hast thou done?” And she wept bitter tears.

  Finya, wild with grief, ran down the white steps to the sea. “Who art thou?” he cried. “Who art thou?”

  “Alas,” said she, “I am the ninth wonder of the City of Nine Wonders.”

  And she swam with her children out to sea, and was lost.

  An owl gave a low, flute-like call from somewhere in the garden. For a moment I thought the High Priest was looking at me, but the light of the oil lamp writhed like a sea worm, casting wayward shadows, and his pensive gaze was impossible to trace. Miros and the others applauded, congratulating Kovyan’s sister, exchanging remarks on the poignancy of the tale. Auram leaned and clasped my arm. “From memory!” he hissed in triumph. “All that from memory. She cannot read a word.”

  I rose, pleading exhaustion, and one of the young men led me into a dark bedchamber. The only light seeped in from the other room. Don’t worry, I told myself. Only survive, survive until they bring the body to you and it crumbles on the fire. Flames grew in my mind, great bonfires, suns. The young man slapped the bed, checking it for stability or snakes. He left me, and as I sat down and pulled off my boots I heard the priest’s voice clearly from the other room: “Yes, a Night Market.”

  A Night Market. I lay down and covered myself with the coarse blanket. The others talked late into the night, exchanging laughter. In the morning a watery sun showed me the scrubbed walls of the room patterned with shadows by the ivy over the window. Once again the angel had not come. A painting of the goddess Elueth regarded me from one wall, kneeling, her arms about a white calf. The expression on her dusky face was sad, and underneath her ran the legend: “For I have loved thee without respite.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Night Market

  The next day we traveled farther into the Valley. And a message ran out from Kovyan’s radhu in every direction, announcing the Night Market. It would be held outside the village of Nuillen, almost on the eastern edge of the Fayaleith. The news traveled to Terbris, Hanauri, Livallo, Narhavlin, tiny villages in the shadow of towers overgrown with moss. We followed in a carriage, jouncing along the graveled roads. Miros drove, and I sat beside him on the coachman’s seat. Sometimes we stopped by the roadside and drank milk from heavy clay bowls, waving our hands to drive away flies in the shade of a chestnut tree, and the young girls who sold milk spoke to us with the glottal accent of the country, clicking their tongues when Miros teased them. They urged us to buy their pots of honey and curd
, or strings of dried fish. One of them tried to sell us the skin of an otter. They had lively eyes and raggedly braided hair, always in four plaits, sometimes with tin or glass beads at the tips.

  At the crest of a hill, we passed beneath the famous arch of Vanadias, the great architect of the Tombs of Hadfa. The pink stone glowed against the sky, carved with images of the harvest, of dancers, children, and animals entwined with bristling leaves. The intricacy of the carving filled me with awe and a kind of heartache, such as one feels in the presence of mystery. In the center of the arch were the proud words “This Happy Land,” and beyond it the very shadows seemed impregnated with radiance.

  At night those shadows were deep and blue, the radhui immense and silent, and the whole world had the quality of an engraving. The carriage trundled past temples and country villas, their white shapes standing out against the darkness, each one spellbound, arrested in torrents of light. A healing light, cool as dew. We passed the famous palace of Feilinhu, standing in nacreous grandeur against the dark lace of its woods: that triumph of Vanadias with its roof of astounding lightness, its molded, tapering pillars of white marble. Miros stopped the horses and swore gently under his breath. The palace, nocturnal, resplendent, stood among palisades of moonlight. Even the crickets were silent. Miros’s voice seemed to rend the air as he spoke the immortal first line of Tamundein’s poem:

  “Weil, weil tovo manyi falaren, falarenre Feilinhu.”

  Far, far on the hills now are the summers of Feilinhu,

  the winds calling, the blue horses,

  the balconies of the sky.

  Far now are the horses of smoke:

  the rain goes chasing them.

  Oh my love,

  if you would place on one leaf of this book

  your kiss.

  We watch the lightning over the hills

  and imagine it is a city,

  and the others dream of its lighted halls

  smoking with wild cypress.

  Feilinhu, they say,

  and they weep.

  And I weep with them, love, banquet,

  sea of catalpas,

  lamp I saw only in a mirror.

  The moon is escaping over the land

  and only the hills are alight.

  There, only there can one be reminded of Feilinhu.

  Where we saw the stars broken under the fountain

  and saddled the horses of dawn.

  And you, empress of sighs:

  with your foot on the dark stair.

  And she, my empress of sighs. Where was she waiting now with her ravaged hair, her deathless eyes, her perfect desolation? Waiting for me. I knew she was waiting, because she did not come. My nights were silent, but too taut to be called peaceful. Jissavet waited just beyond the dark. The night sky was distended in my dreams, sinking to earth with the weight of destructive glory behind it. In one of those dreams I reached up and touched it gently with a fingertip, and it burst like a yolk, releasing a deluge of light.

  People traveled together in little groups along the roadsides, talking and laughing softly, on their way to the Night Market. There was no sign of the Telkan’s Guard. I blessed Tialon privately: she must be doing all she could to keep me safe. Fireflies spangled the grass, and a festival air filled the countryside, as if the whole Valley were stirring, coming to life. At the inn in the village of Nuillen, in the old bedrooms divided with screens, the sheets held a coolness as if they had just been brought in from the fields.

  We spent two days in Nuillien. During that time the inn filled up until, the landlord told us panting, people were sleeping under the tables. From the window of my room I could see little fires scattered over the square at night, where peasant families slept wrapped in their shawls. On the evening of the Market, music burst out suddenly in the streets, the rattling of drums and the shouting of merry songs, and Auram came into my room bearing a white robe over his arm, his eyes alight. “Come, avneanyi,” he said. “It’s time.”

  He was splendidly dressed in a surcoat embroidered in gold, its ornamental stiffness softened by the fluid lace at his wrists. Above the glow of the coat, rich bronze in the firelight, the flat white triangle of his face floated, crowned with dead-black hair. He looked at me with delight, as if I were something he had created himself: a beautiful portrait or gem-encrusted ring. His exaltation left no room for the human. I saw in his shining, ecstatic, ruthless eyes that he would not be moved no matter how I suffered.

  “Come,” he said with a little laugh that drove a chill into my heart. “You must dress.” I undressed in silence and put on the robe he had brought for me. The silk whispered over my body, smooth and cold like a river of milk. Afterward he made me sit down and tied my hair back with a silver thread.

  The mirror reflected the firelight and my face like a burnt arrow. Under the window a voice sang: “Gallop, my little black mare.”

  “Have you been studying?” Auram asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you committed it to memory?”

  “Yes.”

  My glance strayed to the ragged little book on the table. The Handbook of Mercies, by Leiya Tevorova. Auram had brought it to me wrapped in old silks the color of a fallen tooth. “One of the few copies we were able to save,” he said, and he pressed it into my hands and urged me to memorize the opening pages. This was the book Leiya had written in Aleilin, in the tower where she was locked away, in the days Auram called the Era of Misfortune. A handbook for the haunted. I turned away from it and met Auram’s eyes in the glass.

  “Come,” he said. “You are ready.”

  The yard was full of people: word of the avneanyi had spread, and now, seeing Auram and me in our vivid costumes, the huvyalhi pressed forward. “Avneanyi,” someone cried. The landlord struggled through the back door and ordered the stableboys to clear a way to the carriage for us. A careworn man with a sagging paunch and protuberant blue eyes, he looked despairingly at the crowd, which was still pouring in from the street, then flung himself into their midst, moving his thick arms like a bear. “This way, telmaron,” he bawled. “Follow me.” Auram stepped forward, smiling and nodding, gratified as an actor after a successful play, holding his hands out so that the people could brush his fingertips. No one touched me: it was as if a shell of invisible armor lay between them and the glitter of my robe. “Pray for us,” they cried. Above us the sky was dancing with stars. When I reached the carriage my knees gave way and I almost sank to the ground. Someone caught my arm and supported me: Miros. “Hup!” he said, holding open the carriage door. “Here you are. Just put your foot on the step.”

  I crawled inside.

  “Avneanyi. Avneanyi,” moaned the crowd.

  Auram joined me, Miros closed the door, and the carriage started off. All the way to the common I had the priest’s triumphant eyes on me, the cries of the huvyalhi ringing in my ears. At the Night Market I stepped down into the grass beside a high tent. Its stretched sides glowed, warmed from within by a lush pink light. All the moths of the Valley seemed gathered round it, and before it sprawled the booths, flags, and torches of the Night Market.

  A great crowd had gathered about a wooden stage in front of the tent, where an old man sat with a limike on his knee. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, a crag in the torchlight. He cradled his instrument and woke the strings to life with an ivory plectrum.

  “I sing of angels,” he called.

  Auram held my arm. “Look, avneanyi!” he whispered, exultant. “See how they love angels in the Valley.”

  The crowd pressed close. “Anavyalhi!” someone shouted. “Mirhavli!” cried another; and the word was taken up and passed about the crowd like a skin full of wine.

  “Mirhavli! Mirhavli!”

  The old man smiled on his stage. His face glittered, and his voice, when he spoke again, was purified, strained through tears. That voice melted into the sound of the strings—for though limike means “doves’ laughter,” the instrument weeps. In these reso
nant tones the old man told

  THE TALE OF THE ANGEL MIRHAVLI

  Oh my house, oh men of my house

  and ladies of my home,

  come hearken to my goodly tale

  for it will harm no one.

  Oh fair she was, clear-eyed and true,

  the maiden Mirhavli.

  She was a fisherman’s daughter

  and she lived beside the sea.

  She sat and sang beside the sea

  and her voice was soft and low,

  so lovely that the fish desired

  upon the earth to go.

  The fish leapt out upon the sand

  and perished one by one

  and Mirhavli, she gathered them

  and took them into town.

  “Now who shall wed our maiden fair,

  our lovely Mirhavli?

  For she doth make the very fish

  to leap out of the sea.

  “Is there a man, a marvelous man,

  a man of gold and red?

  For otherwise I fear our daughter

  never will be wed.”

  He was a man, a marvelous man,

  a man of gold and red;

  he wore a coat of scarlet

  and a gold cap on his head.