A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel (17 page)

And then he struck them all with woe:

a stench rose from the sea,

and the fish no longer left their bed

at the song of Mirhavli.

The earth dried up, the green grew not,

and all were parched with thirst,

and Plague in his white dress stalked the streets

and a gull flew over with swift wing-beats

and cried, “Accursed! Accursed!”

And at last a wave rose from the sea

like the horns of a rearing ram,

and half the village it swept away

like the bursting of a dam.

“Alas, alas,” the maiden wept,

“the gods have abandoned me,

for an they had not, our house had gone

to the bottom of the sea.”

Now she has braided up her hair

and put on her broidered gown.

“In the morning I go to my betrothed”

she said, and laid her down.

And in the morning she rose up

and went down to the sea.

And she sang a song to comfort her,

the maiden Mirhavli.

And so like starlight was her song,

like a light that cannot wane,

that those who watched her hid their eyes

and their tears fell down like rain.

But the demon rose from the boiling sea

and his arms writhed to and fro.

“Cut out her tongue, for I cannot take her

while she singeth so.”

“O demon, I shall not sing again.”

But his great arms thrashed the sea,

and the people wept as they cut out the tongue

of lovely Mirhavli.

But as he bore her across the waves

with blood upon her lip,

the prayer that is not formed of words

’gan from her soul to slip.

The prayer most pleasing to the gods

was melted from her soul.

The sky grew bright, the wind blew soft

and the sea began to roll.

The great sea clasped the demon

and the maiden from him tore.

“My promised bride!” the monster cried,

but the good sea bore her on the tide

and carried her to shore.

The monster with his mother fought

in her waves so steep and high,

but at last his strength began to fail

and he foundered with a cry.

The monster with his mother strove

in her waves so high and steep,

but at last he gave a dreadful roar

and vanished in the deep.

The voice of the ancient troubador went on: it told of Mirhavli’s wanderings, and of how the Telkan discovered her fainting in the Kelevain; it told of his love for her, the jealousy of his queen and concubines, their false accusations, and how Mirhavli was wrongly condemned to death. It told, too, of the miracle: her voice restored, rising over the sea. It told how the Telkan begged her to return, and how she refused, and was taken up alive by Ithnesse the Goddess of the Sea, to live forever in paradise:

Oh sweet it is to be with thee,

and sweet to be thy love,

and sweet to walk upon the grass

while the dear sun shines above.

Oh sweet it is to tread the grass

while the dear sun shines so bright,

but sweeter still to walk the hills

of the blessed Realm of Light.

As the song ended, a sense of unreality seized me, a curious detachment. It was as if the music had carried the world away. I gazed at the torches that twinkled all the way to the horizon, and found them strange. Then, with a start, I realized that my companions were quarreling.

Perhaps I was slow to notice because they were arguing in a foreign tongue: in Kestenyi, the language of Olondria’s easternmost province. I recognized its hissing sound, for my master had taught me the one or two words he knew, and I had heard it among the sailors of the
Ardonyi
. I turned. I could see Miros gesturing, angry in the torch glow. The priest was hidden from me by the wall of the carriage. Suddenly Miros changed languages, saying distinctly in Olondrian: “But how can you refuse? What gives you the right?”

The priest answered sharply in Kestenyi.

“Curse your eyes!” said Miros, hoarse and vehement. “Even my mother wouldn’t refuse me this—”

“And that is why you have been separated from her,” Auram said flatly. “She means well, but she is weak. Her influence over you has never been of the best. It is common for women to spoil their youngest children.”

“Don’t talk about her,” Miros said. “Only tell me why you refuse. What harm can it do?”

Again the cracked, pitiless voice answered in the eastern tongue. The priest’s hand appeared beyond the edge of the carriage, jewel-fingered, trailing lace.

Miros shouted, and I suppose he was told to lower his voice, for he continued in a wild, strained whisper, a passionate outburst of Kestenyi which his uncle punctuated with brief, crackling retorts. Then it seemed as though Miros was pleading. I backed away from him, toward the tent. “Uncle!” he said in Olondrian. “You were young once—you have experienced—”

“You have said enough,” said the priest in a cold rage. He whirled around the side of the vehicle, stalked toward me and took my arm.

“Wait!” cried Miros. But the priest dragged me forward toward the door of the tent. When I looked back, Miros was clutching his hair in both hands, his eyes closed. Auram pulled the tent flap aside and we entered the rosy light, and I did not see Miros again until after the fire.

Lamps burned on tables inside the tent. There was grass underfoot, its dry autumnal odor strong in the warmth. There was also, in the center of the space, a high carved chair—brought from a temple, I guessed, or borrowed from some sympathetic landowner of the district. How swiftly they must have ridden to place it here, so that I might sit as I sat now in my white robe, my hands clamped tight on its lacquered arms. Auram was himself again, forgetting his quarrel with Miros. He traced a circle on my brow and whispered joyfully: “It begins.”

He went outside. Dear gods, I thought, what am I doing here?

There was a pause in the murmur of the crowd that had gathered before the tent. I only realized how loud that droning had been when it stopped, as one becomes aware, in a summer silence, of the music of cicadas.

Auram’s voice rose harsh and pure. “Children of Avalei! Children of the Ripened Grain! Who would hear an
avneanyi
speak?”

“I,
veimaro
!” cried a woman’s voice. “I and Tais my daughter.”

“Come then,” said Auram impressively. “He awaits.”

He led them in: a girl, a woman in wooden slippers, a bent old man. “Avalei hears you,” he said, and went out.

The woman sank down and advanced on her knees, pulling her daughter behind her with some difficulty, for the girl would not kneel but walked stiffly with a fixed gaze.

“
Avneanyi
,” the woman sobbed. She put her hand over her face. It was clear that she had not intended to address me in tears.

I clutched the arms of the chair. After a moment she regained control of herself and looked up, still shaking, drawing her arm across her eyes. “
Avneanyi
,” she moaned. “You must help us. It is for the sake of a child. A little child—you know how Avalei loves them.”

“Please stand,” I said, but she would not. She looked at me wonderingly, as if my slight accent increased her awe. Her daughter, still standing, gazed at the tent wall.

“It’s my grandchild,” the woman said. “My daughter’s son. A little boy—three years old when we lost him a year ago.”

“I can’t,” I said.

She looked at me eagerly, her lips parted.

“I can’t promise anything,” I amended. “But I will try.”

“Thank you, thank you!” she whispered with shining eyes. “Thank you,” the old man echoed behind her, seated cross-legged on the grass. And I looked at one of the little red lamps. I listened to my heart until it grew steady. And I conjured up Leiya Tevorova’s words like a smokeless fire.

The Afflicted must sit facing in the direction of the North, which, though it be not the Dwelling-Place of the Angel, is yet the place which draws the Spirit to it with its Vapors, and thus may keep it lingering in its Environs. The Afflicted must then bring to mind a certain Wraith or Image which shall have the form of a Mountain of Nine Gorges. Each of the Gorges shall be deep, ragged, and abysmal, and filled with brilliant and icy Vapors withal. The Afflicted must pursue this Vision until it is well attained, building up the Mountain Stone by Stone. When he has achieved it, he must cause, by an action of Mind, a Tree to grow from each of the Nine Gorges. And the Nine Trees shall have a golden Bark, and various Limbs, of which there shall be Nine Hundred on each Tree: one hundred of Ruby, one hundred of Sapphire, one hundred of Carnelian, one hundred of Emerald, one hundred of Chalcedony; and one hundred also of Amethyst, Topaz, Opal, and Lapis Lazuli; and these shall flash with a most unusual Splendor. When the Afflicted has mastered this—the Gorges, and the Trees, and the Branches which are nine times nine hundred in number—then will he be dazzled most grievously by virtue of the Radiance of that Image, which he will maintain through sore Travail. And when he is able to look upon it without Agony of Spirit, then must he bring into his Vision miraculous Birds, of which there shall be nine hundred on each of the Branches of the Nine Trees; and each Bird shall have nine thousand colored Feathers. On each of the Birds one thousand Feathers shall be jetty black, one thousand white, one thousand blue, one thousand others yellow; and one thousand each of red, green, purple, and bright orange; and one thousand feathers shall be clear as Glass. The Afflicted must perceive these things at once: the Mountain, the Gorges, the Trees with all their Limbs, and the colored Birds. Then shall there come a moment of most dreadful Suffering, which shall be sharp, white, and heated as if in a Forge. And when that Moment has passed, the Afflicted shall no longer see the Mountain, nor any of the things he has lately perceived; but another Vision shall take its place, an unfamiliar Image which shall take a form such as that of a Wood or a Cave. Then shall the Afflicted enter the Cave, or the Wood, or the Strange House, or whatever Image is by him perceived; he shall walk until the Image grows obscured with a gaping Darkness. And in that Darkness he shall meet the Angel.

“Jissavet,” I said. “Answer me.”

The red lamp burned, and the angel arrived. She stood there in her shift, her shoulders bright as dawn. Her bare feet tore the fabric of the air. Sparks clung to her plaits; her inimical light engulfed the glow of the little red lamp. A veiled light, certainly less than what she was capable of, but still a light intrinsically hostile to life. In the islands we say that death is dark, but I know there is a light beyond that door, intolerable, beyond compare.

“Jevick,” she said. Her absorbed, caressing voice. Her expression of longing and the wildness in her beautiful brooding eyes. She raised her hand, and I stiffened and closed my eyes, expecting a blow, but she did not strike. “Jevick,” she said again: a glass shard in my brain.

Words came back to me, whispered prayers, ritual incantations:
Preserve us, O gods, from those who speak without voices
. With an effort of will, my eyes tightly closed, my head pressed back against the chair, I forced myself to say: “I have a question.”

“I will tell you everything,” she said. “I will tell you everything that happened. You will write it for me in the
vallon
.”

I opened my eyes. She hung in the middle air, her hand still raised in an orator’s gesture. All about her gleamed a soft albescent fire. She smiled at me, stars falling. “I was waiting for you. I knew you’d call me. You are that rare thing, I said: a wise man from the islands.”

I swallowed and stumbled on. “My question. My question is for this woman here, this Olondrian woman. Her grandson is lost. Do you know where he is?”

She stared at me from the circle of her light. She was still so small. Had I stood beside her I could have looked straight down on the top of her head. I sat, frozen, on the Olondrian chair, not daring to move. After a moment I managed to say: “This woman’s grandson . . .”

“Grandson,” she said. Her glance was like a needle. It was her glance of startling clarity, which I remembered from the
Ardonyi.

Then her voice clashed against my brain in a shower of brilliant sparks. “What do you want? Are you asking me to find him? You dare to ask me that?”

“Not me. These people. Their priest. He said you could answer—”

“Answer! Do you like to see me? Does it please you?”

She advanced, a golden menace.

“No,” I screamed.

“For me it is the same.
The same
. To enter the country again—
that
country—among the living—never! I couldn’t bear it!”

She shuddered, throwing off light. I could feel her dread, as strong as my own, the dread of crossing. She clenched her fists. “Write me a
vallon
,” she said.

“I can’t. Jissavet, these people are trying to help you. They’ll find—they’ll find your—”

“Write me a
vallon!
”

“Stop!” I screamed, pressing my hands over my eyes. The outlines of my fingers throbbed before me, huge and blurred, the blood in the body like oil in a lamp. Then she was gone.

I came to myself on the ground, in the odor of vomit. “Grandson,” I murmured. A face floated over me, tearful, the face of a stranger. An Olondrian peasant woman. My head was pillowed on her knees. “Thank you, my son,” she sobbed, her fingers in my hair.

“But I told you nothing.”

“We felt her. We saw your torment.
Avneayni
. . .”

I rolled away from her, sat up after a brief struggle, spat in the grass. My chair lay on its side. Two of the little lamps had gone out; another blinked madly on the verge of dissolution. And we—myself, the woman, and the old man she had brought with her—we looked at one another like the survivors of a deluge. The girl still stared at the wall. She stood in that same attitude, as if exiled from life, when out on the starlit commons a storm arose.

At first I thought it merely the noise of the Market. Some new attraction must have arrived, I thought dully: dancers or a wagon full of clowns. Then, as the woman was helping me stand up, a figure burst into the tent, his dark face wild and sweating. “Fly, fly!” he shrieked. “It’s the Guard!”

Stains on his robe—earth or blood. “The Guard, I tell you!” he shouted, waving hands like claws as if threatening to tear us apart. A moment his shadow chased itself over the walls, and then he fled. As the tent flap opened and fell, I caught a glimpse of fire.