We walked upon mosses, thick and soft underfoot, radiant with a greenish light. Gentle lands ran away to every side. To the east, a woodland rose up, the trees slender, with smooth bark and silvery, oval leaves and swaying strands of white flowers. The flowers glowed as brightly as though each was a tiny lantern. When a little bird fluttered up, her breast and wings were streaked with light. This was a country of light, for all that the Sun never came here.
A breeze came gently against my cheek. The air was soft and warm, fragrant with the unfamiliar scent of the flowers and the green scent of the crushed mosses and the damp smell of the earth after it rains.
I stopped. This was not my decision. Aras stopped, and I stopped with him. We had come to an open place in a gentle woodland. Low hills rose up here and there—less hills than mounds, so gently did the land rise and fall. The tallest of these mounds hardly rose higher than the height of a tall man.
Tano said, “Ryo? Is that a house?”
I looked again, and saw windows set into the earth. I had not remembered until that moment that the Tarashana build in that way, into the earth. Very properly do my people call them avila, dirt people, but at some point I had stopped thinking of them that way. I had not even realized it.
I could not answer Tano, but Aras said, “I think we may be standing in the middle of a village.”
Far away, at least several bowshots distant, to the north, many Tarashana were singing. If I turned to the south, I would see the great mountains raking up against the sky. Beyond the mountains, the winter country would lie, and my home—my family. But I could not turn. My body was not mine and did not move to answer my desires.
I wanted to go home so badly, the longing was almost as strong as my grief and rage. At the same time, I felt that even if I could throw off every chain of sorcery and reclaim my will, I would be far too ashamed ever to go home. That was a bitter thought. I was not the only one who flinched from it.
The voices of the Tarashana were not like the voices of Ugaro singers. The Tarashana had soft voices that blended one into the next rather than rising, clear and piercing, to the sky. Among the voices of the Tarashana singers, my sister’s voice would have stood out as clearly as the falcon’s cry rises above the hum of insects in the warm season. But there was a power to the voices of the Tarashana even so. I imagined the Tarashana walking north, the dark tide drawing back before them, the sunless sea retreating as far west and east as the world ran. But I wondered why I could not hear my sister.
“Your sister is perfectly well,” Aras said, almost before that fear occurred to me. “Her mind is still very far from the earth, but she is aware her task is finished. She sang for a long time, Ryo, even after Inhejeriel’s strength wore away. Before the end, when she knew her strength was failing, Inhejeriel gave a great many names to Lalani, and Lalani handed each one to Etta, and your sister gave each of those names to the stars. Between them, your sister and Lalani redeemed several thousand Tarashana who would otherwise have been lost.”
I thought something else, and Aras sighed. “It was a great working. As great as any I’ve ever heard of. Inhejeriel poured her strength into that working, and she was hardly robust when she began. She never thought she would return from the sky. She gave her name to Lalani ... her full name: Inhejeriel Kiolekarian taja-Shalaseriad. That was the last name Lalani gave your sister, but though Etta sang that name, she could only give Inhejeriel to her star. Her star could not give her back to the world.”
Even after everything, I was sorry for that. But at least Inhejeriel had gone to her star, which I knew was right for her people. Knowing that made me think of other people. I thought of them very hard, pushing aside the deep anger that beat in me so that Aras would see that question in my mind.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I hope so, and I’m trying to find them, but I’m tired, Ryo, and there are so many Tarashana that it’s difficult to sort through them for anyone else, even people who are very familiar to me. I’ll keep trying—” breaking off, he turned to face a Tarashana woman who had come to us.
She was so like Inhejeriel that at first I thought Aras might have been wrong about what had happened. But then I saw that the patterns on this woman’s face were different. Her design was an elegant pattern of leaves and flowers rather than spirals and circles. I could see now that the Tarashana were probably all going to look much alike to me, as the Lau had for a long time, but as long as they all wore different designs on their faces, that would be much easier.
This woman bowed gracefully. She spread her hands wide, indicating the woodland surrounding us. “This village is for your people,” she said softly in taksu. She spoke the language very well. But she amended her first statement at once. “For the Ugaro people, redeemed from the dark tide, and for you, lord, and your own people.”
“My people?” Aras said. “Are there other Lau here?” He turned to me without waiting for the woman to answer. “Ryo, Geras and Suyet are here somewhere—I see them in this woman’s, this lady’s, memory.” He was smiling, broadly for him. He started to say that if Geras and Suyet had come with us into the starlit lands, recovered from the death that had come to them within the land of the shades, then perhaps everyone else had come too, all the people we had lost. My heart had leapt up with that hope, but when Aras met my eyes, my fury surged still higher. His smile died, and he left the thought unspoken. Instead, he said to the woman, “Perhaps you will show me a place I can speak to my—to Ryo inGara alone.” Then he said to Tano, “I ask you to forgive us, Tano, but truly, I need to speak to Ryo privately. This is a matter that should not wait longer. It cannot wait longer.”
“Yes,” Tano agreed, puzzled, but trusting Aras completely, as I had once trusted him. “Just as you say. If—if everyone lives, if anyone lives, I will go try to find them.”
“Yes,” Aras agreed, not looking at him. He was looking at me. His mouth was tight with strain. He said, “Yes, by all means,” but it was plain he was not paying attention to Tano any longer. Tano looked from him to me. Then he nodded, turned and jogged away.
I forgot him instantly. All my attention was on Aras.
The woman spoke as softly as before. “I will show you such a place if you wish. But you are wounded. You are both sorely wounded. I am a healer. Will you not permit me to attend you? Please.”
“Later,” Aras said impatiently. “A private place where we can talk. That will do.” He was clearly not attending to the Tarashana healer either. All his attention was on me.
-25-
The Tarashana woman guided us around one mound and then another, and through a hedge blooming with enormous white flowers—these glowed softly but brightly—to a place apart from everyone else. I walked beside Aras. My body walked beside him. I could hear the murmur of many voices, warm and pleasant, and, almost too far away to hear, the singing of the Tarashana sorcerers. I might have even heard the more resonant voices of Ugaro, but not so close that I could be certain. I listened for the voices of my brothers. I hoped very much to hear Raga’s voice, but I dreaded seeing him, speaking with him—having him speak to me. I imagined that he would say, Ryo, you left me to die. I could almost hear those words, filled with his disbelief that I had done such a thing. He might not say it, but even unspoken, those words, that memory, would stand in the air between us, and how could I bear that?
“It wasn’t your choice,” Aras said. His voice was low now, his tone strained. “I realize that doesn’t make it better.”
Nothing could make any of this better.
The woman had gone. I had not even noticed her departure. But she was not here. Only Aras and I stood in this place. I faced him—my body moved to face him. He was standing quietly, holding his injured arm against his body with his good hand. He was not looking at me, but gazing down at the mosses and the earth where we stood. The light fragrance of the flowers mingled with the green scent of the crushed mosses beneath our feet.
“Ryo,” Aras said, and lifted his gaze to my face. He d
rew breath as though he would say something else, but then he shook his head a little and let that breath go again without speaking.
The leash he held tightened around my will. Then it eased. I felt both the tightened control and then the relaxation of that control, in the strange way one feels such things. Then, at last, he let me go.
I was free.
I hit him instantly, a hard blow to the abdomen so that his breath left him and he folded over, his good arm coming up to protect his belly. I hit him again, smashing the back of my fist across his face. He fell hard, sprawling, barely catching himself, and I kicked him in the side, then reached down, dragged him up, and hit him again.
Then Geras was there, catching my arms, shoving at me, shouting my name, telling me urgently to stop. I broke his hold, intending to hit him too, but at the last possible instant, I realized who had put himself in my way. I was so glad he was not dead, that he was not still dead, that I checked my blow. He seized my arms once more, bracing himself, pushing me back. To get past him, I would have had to hurt him, and I did not want that.
Breaking his grip again, I stepped back, lifting my hands to show I did not want to fight. He said something to me, but I did not listen. I turned my back instead and walked away.
Going out of the garden, I turned to follow the first path I found, away from everyone, all the distant murmur of voices, especially Ugaro voices. I followed that path around one hill and another, past one low-roofed dwelling and another, one small grove of lightly glimmering trees and another. The breeze that came against my face carried the scent of damp earth, and of the grasses and herbs under my feet, and the flowers, and perhaps just a trace of the snow and stone of the mountains that rose up in their harsh splendor against the sky.
I passed only a few Tarashana, who gave way at once, moving out of my path. I barely noticed them. But after a time I remembered that these people had been cast down by enemies and were now restored to themselves and to their lands. That, at least, I could not regret.
Above, in the soft darkness of the sky, the Moon stood. She was much smaller here than in the land of the shades. She stood barely above the mountains, turned mostly away so that only a thin crescent of her face showed. I could see she was no longer very much concerned with anything happening here in the starlit country. High above the world, the uncountable stars glimmered, some faintly blue and others pale yellow and many white. The Dawn Sisters stood in the vault of the heavens, brighter than they ever showed themselves in the winter country. Though the songs of the heavens had long since faded from hearing, I thought I could hear them singing: three delicate drawn-out notes, each balanced against the others in faultless harmony.
Nothing could have made me feel better. But the earth and the sky and the stars and the Dawn Sisters made me feel a little less like I wanted to die.
I walked for what seemed a long time. I was so tired all the country blurred in my eyes and my mind, but I thought I walked through woodlands and through fields. All the land was gentle and pleasant. Eventually I came to a stream, almost a small river, wide and deep enough that I turned to walk along its bank rather than attempting to cross it. I stepped on mint growing along the bank, and the fragrance made me feel that I had come to a place I knew, though nothing else here was familiar. I could not go farther, so I sat down there, beside the stream. I looked up at the stars, pacing slowly through the measures of their circle as though nothing terrible had ever happened to their land or to their people or to anyone in the world.
I tried to think about nothing, but this was impossible.
I knew I could not endure what Aras had done to me. I understood why he had done it. Of course I understood. But I felt deeply shamed by everything that had happened. Not only by what he had made me do, but that he had put his will on me in that way and I had not been able to stop him. I had not been able to resist him at all.
I did not want to remember Raga, calling my name, crying out in disbelief as I left him and Arayo to die. But now the memory rose into my thoughts and I could not push it aside. It was worse than the lies Lorellan had once forced on me, because I knew this memory was true.
Getting to my feet—this took more effort than I expected—I walked into the stream, until the water, cool rather than cold, came up almost to my ribs. The wound in my side pained me viciously when the water touched it. I set the pain aside. I stooped and gathered handfuls of sand and scrubbed myself, my skin and hair, careful of my wounded belly, my forearm, my side. The festering slices across my stomach were the worst of my injuries, but the cut along my side was not good. I unbound the bandage there, probing carefully. The bleeding had stopped. Mostly that had stopped. My ribs had turned the blow, but the weapon had been sharp enough to run up along the ribs for nearly half a handspan before the Saa’arii warrior had jerked it free. No wonder the wound was still bleeding now. That cut might have been bad enough to end the fight. Except that I had been under the control of a sorcerer, so that nothing save death could have stopped me.
The cuts across my stomach were swollen and red, much more painful than the newer injuries. Some of the stitches had ripped out of the flesh, but enough had held to prevent the muscle from tearing further. If Lalani had done her work less carefully, I might be dying now, those injuries torn open by that last hard effort to give Inhejeriel time to work her sorcery, to call her lost people out of the desolation that had taken them.
Inhejeriel had died courageously, by her death defeating all her enemies. I wished I had died. I could take my knife and kill myself now. But I was so tired. And my death now would not make anything better.
The wound fever or the loss of blood or sheer exhaustion had taken more of my strength than I had understood. I discovered this when I tried to climb out of the water onto the bank. This took several attempts, and when I finally crawled out of the stream on my hands and knees, I could not get up at once. I sat where I was, on the bank. Water ran from my hair and remaining clothing. I pressed out the water as well as I could with my hands. At least the air was warm. Gathering my still-dripping hair with both my hands, I drew my knife. In my mind, in my memory, I heard my younger brother call out again, desperate and disbelieving.
I understood now why Garoyo had cut his hair after he had left me as tuyo. He had not had any other good choice. But he had still left me.
I had not chosen to abandon Raga to that kind of death. That had not been my choice at all. But I had still abandoned him. I would never not hear his voice crying my name as I ran away and left him to die there.
He might be alive. Geras was alive. Probably Raga lived. I hoped very much that he lived. But I could not bear to face him. Both he and I would always remember what I had done. We would both remember his death. I would always remember how Aras had taken my will and made me his slave. Shame and rage stabbed into me more sharply every time I thought of it.
I lifted the knife to my hair and made the first cut.
Before I made the second, I realized someone was near me.
I did not feel afraid or angry. Even in that first instant, I knew this was a Tarashana person, not any kind of danger. Not my younger brother, who of all people I wanted least to see; nor, almost as bad, my elder brother. Certainly not Aras.
I turned, and indeed, a Tarashana man was there, waiting. He must have been there for some little time. He was sitting on the streambank a small distance away, his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped around his knees. He was not looking at me, but gazing up at the sky, waiting for me to acknowledge him or not, as I chose.
I sheathed the knife, though there was no sign he felt any alarm at the naked blade.
One of those uncountable stars must be his. I wondered whether he might lift his hand and point out his own star if he chose. Probably he could.
Even now that I watched him, he did not glance at me, but continued to gaze upward. I felt this was a kind of courtesy, a way of letting me look at him without requiring me to speak or acknowledge him. For some moments, I st
udied him in silence. He wore clothing that suggested he might be someone important: robes in a yellow so pale it was almost white, embroidered with patterns in a tan color so pale it was almost cream. A fine tracery of indigo and light blue lines spiraled around his right eye and rippled down his cheek in a series of elegant curves, the colors translucent against the soft radiance of his pale skin. His snow-colored hair rippled over his shoulders and down his back, long and loose, but strands had been braided from either side and wound around his head in a complicated circlet. One of his ears had been pierced. Nine tiny beads of amber gleamed along the curve of that ear. His eyes were a dark color, like the sky at dusk, but became a vivid blue as I looked at him, and then darkened again. I did not know what those changes signified. He was neither smiling nor frowning. I felt he had been waiting a long time for me to notice him, but I also felt he could have waited much longer without any kind of impatience.
I looked away from him. The vault of the sky was as soft and dark as before, but the Moon had gone and the Dawn Sisters had followed her, standing now almost where she had stood, above the mountains. In this place, the Sun would not rise. But I felt that time had passed and that it might be something like morning. I felt unutterably weary, but also quiet in a way that was not weariness.
If I thought about the things that had happened, I would become angry. I felt that anger waiting. I set bitter memories and anger aside, breathing slowly and deeply, trying to come to a better balance in my heart.
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