Hart's Hope (29 page)

“Look at his eyes. Have you seen his eyes?”

They traversed a ledgeless slope over a pit so deep the stones they dropped never made a sound at all. They shimmied down a chimney in the rock, scraping their knees and covering each over with the dust of passage.

“How were you so clean in my room?” Orem asked.

“I took a bath,” Flea answered. “What else did I have to do while I was waiting? I was only borrowing some clothes when your friend came in. What are you looking at?”

Orem was looking at three barrels against a wall that was only faintly lit by Flea's lamp. Orem walked closer, knowing what he would see. But the tops were off, and the barrels were empty. He breathed again in relief.

“What's written on them?” Timias asked.

Orem lowered his light. He had seen the words before, of course, and remembered well how they were written.

He remembered another message that once had been written on these barrels:
Let me die
. He had obeyed that command; the rest of the message waited. Now he knew he had to understand if he was to do what must be done.

“You know this writing?” Timias asked. “You know what it means?”

“Not what it means. But it was written to me. Two years ago.”

God slave you must serve. Orem looked at the old man. “You are what you say you are, I think.”

The eyes blazed.

“I will serve you if I can.”

“At the Rising of the Dead,” God whispered. Then he turned his back on them, ducked down into a low passage, and disappeared. They followed him closer to the sound of rushing water.

“What is God doing as a slave in Beauty's house?” Timias asked quietly.

Orem had no answer. And then they emerged into a vast chamber, the Rising of the Dead, where all the answers would be given.

T
HE
R
ISING OF THE
D
EAD

There was no need of lamps here, for above them were holes that let in daylight—dim, but bright enough to see by, if they didn't look up at them and dazzle their eyes.

“The cisterns,” Flea whispered.

And sure enough, there were the voices of the cisterns, rising and falling, crying out in terrible mourning. There was a river rushing along the bottom of the cave, so wide that Orem could not see across, a vast but shallow flow. And the stench was so vile that as they approached they could not breathe. The sound came from the water's edge.

“The sewers of the city,” whispered God. “They all flow here.”

They did not come nearer the water. The old man led them off along a ledge that paralleled the flood.

“Are we going downstream?” Timias asked.

“Yes,” Orem said.

“But we're climbing, aren't we?”

Unmistakably they were. And yet they got no higher above the water. It had to be an illusion. Still, the farther they went, the steeper became their path along the ledge, while the water seemed to rise with them. It was definitely flowing uphill.

The old man clambered up the last and steepest portion of the narrow path, almost straight up and down; soon they were all gathered on a much wider ledge. It was plainly level. Just as plainly the river had no such notion: it hurtled upward, soared in an impossible cascade. The spray of it covered them—and the drops drifted downward, as they should. Orem noticed that here the water did not smell; no odor at all, and he walked near the flood and wet his hand, and tasted the water. It was pure. It was as pure as—

“The springs in the Water House.” Timias looked at him in awe. He turned and shouted to Flea. “This is the source of the springs in the Water House!”

“Come and see what cleans it!” Flea called back. They followed his shout to the lip of the ledge and looked down. “With the light behind it, you can see now,” Flea said. At first Orem did not know what it was that he was looking at; then his vision adjusted, and he realized that both banks of the river were writhing, twisting, heaving.

“Keeners,” said Flea. “The place is full of keeners.”

Like the rush and retreat of the waves the serpents heaved themselves into the water, flowed back out. Millions of them, as far as the light from the cistern mouths would let them see. “They're eating it,” Flea said. “What else could it be?”

“It rises,” Timias said. “What could make it rise?”

“It rises,” said a woman's voice behind them, “because it wants to rise.”

Orem whirled. He knew that voice—at once dreaded and longed for the sight of the speaker. She looked at him with a single eye, a twisted face, a body that was perfect as the limb of an upreaching tree. “Follow me,” she said. He followed.

Her sister sat on a rock behind the rush of the water. It was bright here, though none of the sunlight could have touched the place; the light had no source and cast no shadow, merely
was
, merely illuminated this pocket in the rock so all that was there could be seen. The mist-faced woman moaned.

“My sister greets you.”

“And I her,” Orem said.

“She says that all things come together in the end.”

“Is this the end?”

“Nearly.”

“Why am I here?”

“To free the gods, Orem son of Palicrovol.”

Orem shuddered. “My father's name is Avonap.”

“Do you think the Sweet Sisters make mistakes in such things? We know all motherhoods and fatherhoods, Orem. Avonap is your mother's husband, but Palicrovol sired you.”

In a moment the whole dream of his own conception flashed through his mind from the crossing of the river until Palicrovol left the cave of leaves.

“Queen Beauty took the forbidden power, which never a man can take, and never another woman would. She bound us, Orem, bound us as you see us now.”

Orem looked at them, looked at God. “How are you bound?”

The old man turned his head. Orem followed his gaze. On the floor of the cave lay the skeleton of a great hart. The bones were so dry they should have been scattered, but instead they were all connected, as if the animal still lived. The skull hung in the air, suspended by the great antlers; the hundred horns were embedded in the solid stone of the cavern wall.

“See how the worlds are captive,” said the Sister who could speak. “Oh, Orem, we are feeble now, and what we do is slow. We can still send visions here and there, still do little works, but it's a labor hard to bear. We made you, Orem. Shantih and I awoke your mother, named her Bloom, taught her to come to the riverbank; the Hart brought Palicrovol; God gave you Avonap and Dobbick to make you who you are. We bent your life to bring you here, watched and shaped where we could. You must not disappoint us now.”

“What do you want me to do?”

But Orem knew the answer. God slave you must serve. Sister slut you must see. Hart stone you must save. But how?

“I have no power. How can I unbind what I can't see?”

“Have you looked?”

And so he looked, cast his nets. Yet there was no spark for the Hart, for the Sisters, or for God. He searched, but all the magic he could find was the simple spell that Timias had upon his sword.

“What am I to see?” he asked.

“We cannot tell you,” said the speaking Sister. “We are bound.”

Shantih moaned.

“My sister says that you must restore us as we were before black Asineth undid all.”

But I don't know what you were
like
before—I was only born some eighteen years ago, and all these things were done before I was conceived, before my mother or her mother or her mother were alive. “I can't!”

“Be at peace,” whispered God. “Only think of what you know of us; we will wait a while longer, after all this time.”

Orem sat on the stone floor, reached out and touched the cold bone of the Hart's corpse. He heard Flea gasp behind him; a keener whined and unentwined itself from the Hart's ribs. It slithered off another way; it was not seeking Orem's death today.

He started with God, for he had studied Him for years in Banningside. What was God supposed to be? Kind, the father of all, perfector of the Seven Circles, raising all who would into the inmost round with him, to join in his unbodied labor, to gather all disorganized intelligence and teach it form, and—

Unbodied.

He looked at the old man, who placidly regarded him with eyes of amber, lid to lid.

“What are you doing with a body?” Orem asked.

God smiled.

Orem arose, and reached for Timias's sword. “What do you plan to do with it?” Timias asked. “Let me do it. You're not much of a fighter.”

“I don't mean to fight,” Orem answered. Timias reluctantly surrendered the weapon. It was too heavy for Orem's hand, and he dreaded what he must do with it, but with all his strength he plunged it into the heart of God. Blood gouted forth, but Orem watched only the eyes, watched as the amber brightened, yellowed, whitened, dazzled like the source of sunlight. Suddenly the light leapt out, for a moment filled the cavern, and was gone.

Timias bent over the old man's corpse, put his finger into the empty socket that had held an eye. “Gone,” he said.

Orem laid down the sword and covered his hands with the old man's hot blood. Then he strode to the Sisters, who also smiled at him. He wiped the blood all over the face of the faceless one, and on the blind side of the one-eyed Sister. The blood steamed and sizzled on their skin. And then he took each by the hair at the back of the neck and pressed their faces together as they had been faced at birth, one looking only into her sister, the other gazing with one eye out. The heads trembled under his hands, and then were still. He loosed his grip, and the women rose. Their clothing was gone; their arms and legs so enwrapped each other that no clothing was needed for their modesty. Their hair was all one, their flesh unseamed across the expanse of their two heads. “Ah,” sang the half-mouth. “Nnn,” sang the other into her sister's cheek, so that both tones were a single song coming from the same mouth. Together they rose from the ground.

“Don't leave!” Orem cried.

“Free the Hart,” mumbled their mouth, “and then stop Beauty. She's doing nothing that she hasn't done before. Avenge your nameless sister and your nameless son.”

And they rose upward in the cavern, spinning round and round each other, joined blindly again at the face, spinning up and around and madly through the cavern like a shuttlecock, and they were gone.

“I've seen the Sisters with my eyes and I'm alive,” said Timias.

Orem had three sisters and they all had names, and nothing had ever been done to them that called for vengeance. And his nameless son—what had happened to him that needed to be avenged? Orem did not understand, and so he turned himself to try to rouse the Hart.

He knew how the Hart should be—alive, and clothed in flesh and fur. But how was he to accomplish
that
, when he had no power in himself, no magic he could exercise?

“Will the old man's blood work on the Hart?” asked Flea.

“I don't know,” said Orem. Now the blood was cold, and he knew as he anointed the Hart's horns and head that it meant nothing, such blood meant nothing.

Yet the sight of blood on the horns reminded him of the vision he had seen in the hart's horn in Gallowglass's house. Reminded him of the farmer who stretched his throat to the blade of the plow and spilled his blood for the Hart's sake. And he reached up and touched the scar on his throat and knew what he must do.

Timias had not seen the vision, but he knew the scar on Orem's throat. He guessed what the Little King was thinking when he touched the scar. “No!” he cried, and lunged. Orem was quick, but Timias reached the sword first and snatched it out of reach.

“Name of God, Timias, I must,” said Orem.

“Have you gone mad?”

Flea did not understand at all, only knew that Orem wanted the sword and this half-chewed bastard wouldn't give it to him. It was a simple matter to knock down Timias with a blow to the balls; Flea retrieved the sword while Timias writhed, and tossed it hilt first to his friend.

He would have taken it back as quickly, if he could have, but before Flea could do more than cry out as Timias had done, Orem drew the sword hard and sharp across his throat. The blood filled his mouth and flowed down his chest, and the pain was more than he had known that he could bear. He gagged; the blood ran into his lungs; but it must not be in vain. He struggled toward the Hart's head, tried to raise himself so the blood would fall upon the horns. He hadn't the strength now, but his arms were taken by hands on either side. Timias and Flea lifted him up, and the horns were drenched with his blood.

Under him he felt the heat of the stag's body; felt it rise, felt the vast back and shoulders with their rippling muscles and the stink of strength lift him up. He saw the antlers pull away from the stone that bound them, saw the tips aglow like stars, like suns, like little jeweled worlds. And then he spun around, lost among the hundred horns, turning and turning.