The Revenants (5 page)

‘Our people would accept him, Nathan. You know they would.’

Nathan harumphed. ‘Better he stays here. With us.’

Ephraim shook his head sadly. They had spoken of this so many times before. ‘We’re old, Nathan. We’re so old that the winds of age echo along our ribs and pick at our eye sockets. We could be gone tomorrow. A chill, say, or a little slip on the cliff side. I feel as fragile as a dried flower. I rattle a little in the moving air, but I’m only coherent dust-a shape of what once was. My essence is going.’

‘You’ve been saying that your essence was going for the last twenty years.’

‘Well, my fragrance has gone. I’m redolent of decay.’

‘I’ve heard that before, too.’

‘The point is,’ said Ephraim with some asperity, ‘that Jaer can’t stay here once we’re gone. Not for the love of thee or of me or the memory of his mother or the hope of a patrimony from some unknown source. Jaer could not stay forever alone. Jaer will go. We must be able to feel that we have helped him to survive when that happens. That’s all.’

So, for the moment, they stopped discussing it and began to plan ways in which Jaer might survive. They began by matter-of-factly telling Jaer that he/she was unique, a freak, a strangeness. They went on to explain that the world would try to destroy Jaer, and that it was Jaer’s business to figure out ways the world could be foiled in that attempt. They made up the rules as they went along, since no rules ever made before would have helped them.

‘It’s really fortunate for you that all travellers have to wear orbansin,’ said Nathan.

‘Why?’ This was a word of which Jaer was excessively fond.

‘Because He From Gahl did not pass away,’ muttered Ephraim.

Nathan went on without noticing the interruption. ‘About nine hundred years ago, in about 210 TC, a man came from Obnor Gahl and started the Separation. That is, so far as we now know, he was a man, and it is said that he came from Obnor Gahl, an old city on the ancient Rochagamian road, north of Orena near the badlands. He had no name. He was called “He from Gahl,” or sometimes Just “Gahl.” It was a bad time. The reign of the Axe King had ended just a few years before, and there was disorder and ruin. He from Gahl preached Separation as a way of gaining security and peace, each group to Separate from all others so that they might live only like with like.’

‘He came first to Soolenter,’ murmured Ephraim. ‘Up in the Savus Mountains …’

Nathan went on. ‘It seemed to make sense to people weary of the confusion and violence. That first city began to split up on the basis of – what was it? – skin colour, I think. Then, later it split again on the basis of something else, accent, or eye colour, or food habits, or anything at all. Each section walled itself off from the others into an enclave. Some groups moved out of the city entirely to set up small communities by themselves.’

‘The first Separated villages,’ nodded Epraim. ‘The very first ones.’

‘He From Gahl, had… followers, I guess. Minions. Acolytes? No, not acolytes. That has a religious meaning to it, and Gahl wasn’t preaching a religion… exactly. The minions came from this place and that, all different, but they became all the same. They built a “Temple of Separation” in Soolenter. Again, we shouldn’t call it a temple. No worship is done there, so far as we know. But that’s what the Gahlians called it. Perhaps that’s the only word they had. They might-have said “armoury” or “redoubt” and have made more sense….’ Nathan’s thoughts seemed to carry him away into a painful silence, and Jaer did not say ‘why’ or ‘what happened then’ for several minutes. At last Nathan sighed and went on.

‘Well, there was still a need for trade. Food had to be transported from one place to another. Fuel had to be moved, and metals. None of the enclaves or villages were completely self-sufficient. In order that no person “offend” another person by appearing different or strange, it became the custom to wear orbansin. There’s one in the wardrobe. In a sense, an orbansa
is
a wardrobe, a robe that wards others away. It covers everything, head to heel. They are worn by anyone moving among enclaves or villages – traders, sailors, any travellers at all.’

Ephraim interrupted, obviously thinking about something else. ‘Gahlism might be called a political system, Jaer, of a very ancient kind. Or a secret society of some kind, since they do not tell outsiders what it is they believe, or intend, or allow others in those so-called Temples….’

Nathan went on doggedly. ‘There were some people who thought that Separation was a dangerous, wicked teaching. The Sisterhoods felt so, and the people in Orena. In Orena we have always had many differences, of color, of ideas, of languages. We were all alike in one way, however! We all thought Gahlism would pass. We said it couldn’t go on. For hundreds of years we said that. But, it does. Now there are “Temples of Separation” from Obnor Gahl to M‘Wandi, all the way up the coast of Dantland, into Jowr and Sorgen, in Howbin and Tharsh.’

‘Up much of the River Rochagor. Into the old cities of Labat Ochor and Gombator – let me see, they call them Tiles and Tanner now.’ Ephraim ticked them off on his fingers. ‘There is one here on this island, in Candor, and ships of the black robes have been seen headed toward Cholder and Folazh.’

‘Everywhere,’ said Jaer dispiritedly.

‘No. Not in the high north, yet. The Laklands may well be free of them still, and the peninsula of Methyl-Drossy. Also, they had not gone far south.’

‘Almost everywhere,’ amended Jaer. ‘Almost everywhere I will have to wear those robes.’

‘Orbansin, yes. Though an orbansa is not always protection. The more minions of Gahl there are, the more difficult it is to travel anywhere. There are “Temples” everywhere, monitoring the “Separation” to see it is
correct
They keep making the rules more strict, more detailed. They order certain people cast out or given to them.’ Ephraim stumbled over the words as though he had something foul in his mouth. ‘And we from Orena go on collecting languages and cultures which are disappearing. The smaller the group, the less chance it has of survival, and those who carry the Seals of Separation seem always to work toward smaller and smaller groups, taking more and more of the people away.’ There was a long, sad silence and then Nathan changed the subject abruptly.

Jaer accepted it all with a patient puzzlement. Jaer was unique. There was no other child, so far as Jaer was concerned, in the universe. The moving flecks at the bottom of the cliff were not truly people, not creatures identifiably similar to himself/herself. Ephraim and Nathan were not like Jaer, either. They had told him that he/she was alone, but there are no degrees of aloneness. Not that Jaer said that to himself, merely that it did not seem to matter as much to Jaer as it did to the men.

Ephraim to Nathan: ‘There’s another thing. The child is not always the same person, whichever sex he/she is. She was a little slender thing last week, with dark hair and a kind of hazy look, a way of fluttering her hands. Then yesterday the girl was stouter, did you notice? With a habit of plunking her feet down.’,

‘You would have thought them sisters.’

‘Oh, yes. Perhaps. I don’t mean they seemed unrelated. But one would think she would be at least the same
person
each time.’

‘Why would one think that?’

‘Because it’s reasonable. Logical.’

‘And what in the name of devils has reason or logic to do with it?’

The old men did not neglect Jaer’s education. They taught him/her to swim in the pool above the falls; to sew; to shoot with a bow; to speak five languages rather well and several more a little; to read and write; to walk silently; to use an axe; to tie knots; to draw a map and read one; to count and calculate; to play the jangle; to kill game and skin it and tan the hide; to tell directions by the stars; to build a fire with nothing but wood, a knife, and a shoelace; to keep clean; and that there were no answers to some questions.

‘I wish you wouldn’t tell me once more you don’t know,’ Jaer grumbled.

‘But I don’t know,’ said Nathan. ‘What’s more, probably no one knows. I wish you’d quit asking questions that have no answers.’

‘What are women like?’ asked Jaer impishly.

‘What do you mean, what are women like? I’ve shown you pictures and explained the anatomy….’

‘I mean, what are they
like?’

‘I don’t know.’

Or, on the sun-warmed stone in the early morning, as Ephraim smoked a pipe after breakfast: ‘Why do you live here, Ephraim? Why did you leave Orena?’

‘We thought it was important to record things.’

‘What kinds of things?’

‘Knowledge. Books. Languages. Whatever we can find that’s left from the Second Cycle or early Third Cycle. Maybe even something from the First Cycle, though that’s only a collector’s dream. We collect whatever we observe.’

‘But why do you do that?’

‘Because otherwise it would all be lost. The people down in the valley have lost a lot in the last twenty years. They’ve lost songs and weaving patterns. They’ve forgotten most of their history. They have forgotten how to rotate crops and use fertilizer.’

‘Are you going to teach them what they’ve fogotten?’

‘No. I’m not going to teach them anything! Go do something. Go read your history. Stop asking questions for a while.’

Jaer read the history for a while. First Cycle: a time of mystery and prehistory, full of wizards that some called devils with great powers that no one understood. Destruction. Cataclysm. AH the wizards departing except a few left in the great city beside the Eastern Sea. ‘Tharliezalor,’ chapter Jaer, ‘Tharly-
ay
-za-lor, beside the Eastern Sea.’ Boom, boom, a punctuation of heels against the wall over his bed. Jaer often read upside down. ‘Then everything went to
pot?
he said, quoting Nathan. ‘To pot.’ After the wizards left, the rest of the world seemed to fall into disorder and darkness.

Then the Thiene, the Thousand, came out of Tharliezalor to pick up the pieces. It was they who had brought the archivists out of Tchent, they who had taught the people how to read, they who had started numbering the years again, they who had started the Sisterhoods. Reading about the Thiene always made Jaer feel itchy behind the eyes, as though there were something he/she should know which was not in the books anywhere. Jaer rubbed at the itch fretfully, rolled over to rearrange the book.

Second Cycle: the Thiene roaming around, putting things in order, then disappearing. Maybe. Ephraim had said once there was a Remnant in Orena, but Nathan had said ‘Hush’ in an odd voice. Something itchy there. Maybe the Remnant wasn’t the Thiene at all. Maybe it was wizards. Not likely. Jaer sighed. Nothing much after that in the Second Cycle except the Akwithian kings and their dull battles. Pride, Nathan had said. Pride and folly. Well, old Sud-Akwith had tried to enter the Thiene’s city of Tharliezalor even though the archivists at Tchent told him he mustn’t, but he found nothing there but horror and awfulness. ‘He was very fortunate to have come out of it with a whole skin,’ Jaer commented primly, quoting Ephraim. The book had a picture of serim, bloody fangs dripping beneath stony eyes. ‘Very fortunate,’ Jaer said again, turning the page in some haste.

Then all the people who lived near Tharliezalor came running out of the East, running away from something they couldn’t se£ or talk about. People tried to go there, to see what was Wrong – but couldn’t get there. All the east was behind the Concealment. It didn’t do any good at all to ask Nathan or Ephraim about the Concealment. They said they didn’t know. Maybe someone in the Sisterhood might know, they said, but no one in Orena did. (‘No one?’ Ephraim had asked, in that odd voice. Nathan hadn’t answered.) Then Sud-Akwith threw his sword away. Widon the Golden went into the north. Then everything went to pot again. Until the Third Cycle. The Axe King. More battles, altogether meaner and nastier, and then Gahl. Jaer put the book away in disgust. The things he really wanted to know weren’t in the book, weren’t in any of the books.

Later: ‘Nathan, why won’t Ephraim teach the people what they’ve forgotten?’

‘Sometimes when Ephraim is taking his bath, you take a good look at his back and legs. That’s what happened to him the last time he tried to teach people what they’d forgotten.’

Jaer did so. The scars were old, but deep and close together as though the flesh had been repeatedly cut to the bone.

And again, later: ‘Nathan, are you and Ephraim going back to Orena? Are you going to take all the things you’ve written down?’

‘The records will go into the vault here, Jaer. This tower was built by the wizards – at least / think so. It is protected more powerfully than even Ephraim or I can understand, and we’ve made a bit of a study of the matter. The people of Orena know where this place is, this place and others like it, places older than our histories but seemingly made for this purpose. As for us, well, we would have gone away on a journey of our own long since if we hadn’t had a child full of questions to look after. We were going to leave the summer we found you.’

‘Why didn’t you just take me and go?’

‘If we had gone alone, just the two of us, likely only one of us would have survived the trip. With a baby, it’s likely none of us would have made it. It’s hard to hide a baby, even under an orbansa. Babies cry, you know. They get hungry at inconvenient times. Certain people out there, certain
creatures
out there, seem to have an appetite for babies and young ones.’

‘They’d have killed me, huh?’

‘They’d have done that, yes. Or worse. Now Ephraim says he’s too fragile to go.’

‘I know. He says the wind plays in his bones.’

‘His bones remember pain. That doesn’t make things easier.’

Jaer thought long on this, unsure whether to be glad that the old men had thought enough of the baby to give up their journey or sad that they had given up so much. It was a thought which came back at intervals as Jaer learned and experienced what the place afforded. In the forests there were many birds and beasts, some of them belonging to that group of beings which the old men called ‘mythical.’ They were always amused when Jaer said he had seen some of that kind, rather as though they thought he was creating stories for them. Jaer was not sure how to react to this attitude, nor was he sure about the difference between the ‘mythical’ creatures and the others. He treated them all with the same polite caution. He did note one seeming difference. Mythical creatures were not generally considered edible by the other kind.