The Seventh Gate (The Seven Citadels ) (26 page)

“That's true enough.” Kerish sat down on
the curve of a tree-root and swung his feet through a drift of leaf-mould. “Small
things clutter the face of time. Large actions or large thoughts need space
around them. Then you can't help seeing how far away you are from anyone else.
Yet our sorceress seems to have struck the right balance.”

“Tebreega?” Gidjabolgo rubbed the bark
slime off his hands and on to his tunic. “She's got more sense than most.”

Just as they mentioned her, the travelers
heard Tebreega's deep voice echoing through the trees. A gaggle of animals
bounded towards them to whine and chatter and tug at their clothes to summon
them back to Tir-Jenac.

In the center of the glade Tebreega knelt
over a misshapen cooking pot, stirring vigorously and tossing back the long
tresses that continually slid across her face. Kerish searched for and found
the bowls and spoons and they sat down to gigantic helpings of spiced vegetable
stew. Kerish surreptitiously fed half of his to the monkeys while asking more
questions about the Ferrabrinth. Some were ignored, others provoked a spate of
information. Gidjabolgo snapped at Tebreega's answers, often demanding to know
the reason behind the Ferrabrinth's actions.

“Why do they dislike water?”

“I'm not sure. “ Tebreega's forehead
puckered. “Perhaps because the sea cannot be reduced to order; it remains
unpredictable.”

“And do they find us lacking in order, too?”
asked Gidjabolgo.

“Woefully,” answered the sorceress.

“Have they never considered,” began the
Forgite, “that disorder may be necessary to every society? That without it the
mind stagnates?”

Kerish leaned back against a tree-trunk,
stroking the animals curled in his lap and listening placidly to the others
talking. No, he thought, your faults are not pretty and your virtues are those
that are hardest to love. Kerish fixed in his mind a final picture of
Gidjabolgo pouncing on Tebreega's words and worrying the truth out of them like
a glutton stripping meat off bones. There was no courtesy between them and no
animosity either. Tebreega seemed to thrive on the Forgite's rudeness. Her
small eyes sparkled and the color in her cheeks blurred the old scars. `I am
right to leave him,' thought Kerish sadly. `He will grow out of me here.'

“You are very silent, Prince,” said
Tebreega at last.

“I am tired,” answered Kerish truthfully.

“Sleep then,” the voice of the sorceress
was very gentle. “You have an early start tomorrow.”

The Prince left the others sitting beside
the fire-pit, still arguing about the uses of disorder.

*****

Just after dawn, Tebreega woke him. “Sweetheart,
it's time to go.”

“Gidjabolgo?”

“He will sleep until tomorrow,” whispered
the sorceress. “Better a peaceful start to your journey.”

Kerish slipped out of his hammock and
followed Tebreega into the pavilion. He accepted the purple cloak that she had
woven and clasped it over the blue-grey robe. The sorceress handed him stout
rope sandals, a sack of provisions that he could fasten across his shoulders
and a water-flask to hang at his hip.

Then Kerish walked back across the glade to
Gidjabolgo's hammock. The Forgite lay on his back, snoring loudly, with two
squirrels curled up on his stomach. Kerish unfastened the bracelet that
Gidjabolgo had always admired. It was too narrow for the Forgite's wrist but
Kerish laid it on the pillow so that he would see it when he woke. The zildar
was already propped against the nearest tree. There was nothing else left to
give. Tebreega's hand touched his shoulder.

“I am ready,” said Kerish-lo-Taan.

Chapter
12

The Book of the Emperors:
Sorrows

And they asked
him to speak over the graves but he denied them saying, “If Zeldin himself came
to you at this hour and spoke the truth, you would drive Him from you with
stones and curses. Do you not hate those who smile at the deaths of children?
No, this truth I offer cannot be spoken to the many, it can only be passed from
one heart to another.”

Kerish woke in the chill of dawn and
reached down to stroke the small animals curled up at his side. They were gone.
The paw-marks in the dust led back towards the jungle and the birds were
missing from the rock they had perched on. He was alone. Kerish got up and
shook out the cloak that had done little to soften his bed of stones. Ahead lay
the Desolation of Zarn: silent and grey and endless.

In comparison, the country he had journeyed
through in the last three days seemed a paradise. There had been pools of
brackish water, clumps of thorn trees with fierce orange flowers and patches of
straggly grass. There had been the whining of the insects and occasionally the
dry patter of a startled lizard darting beneath a rock. There had even been
reminders of humanity: small cairns built by men who had come seeking death but
after seeing Zarn, had turned back to life again. All the time a flock of
Tebreega's birds and three monkeys had followed him, singing and gamboling,
even though the hottest hours of each dreary day. Now they were gone and he had
reached the true edge of the wasteland.

Tebreega had stooped to kiss him as they
parted and whispered, “Enter the Desolation with your body but not with your
mind.” He understood her now. Two days ago Gidjabolgo would have woken and
raged at being left behind Was he reconciled yet? Was the fascination of the
Ferrabrinth strong enough to hold him at Tebreega's side?

In the jungle, Kerish had been afraid of
forgetting who he was, but Gidjabolgo had been there to hold up the forbidden
mirror. Now there was no one. No one to stop him fading into the greyness of
the Desolation.
“Not with your mind.”
The words of the sorceress rang in
his thoughts. Kerish stepped forward. “I will make you a garden,” he said
aloud. “I will furnish you with color and life and beauty and while I am alive
there will be no Desolation.”

It was not easy country for walking. The
ground rose in small hills, each bringing the hope of some new prospect and
dashing it with the same dreary vista. The hills fell away sharply into narrow
gullies that might have been the beds of streams long ago when the wasteland
had life. There was no sound but the hiss of the hostile wind as it sifted the
loose sand from the stones.

Kerish tried to transform the hiss into the
rustling of leaves in the Emperor's Garden. He pictured the gullies as lily
ponds and the hills as grassy mounds but the scree still slipped from beneath
his feet. He twisted his ankles several times before learning to walk more
cautiously. Kerish rested at noon but there was little shade and the sun
scorched his skin wherever it was unprotected.

At sunset he tried to reach Forollkin.
Slowly he built up a detailed picture of his brother, trying to remember him at
his happiest on Vethnar's island, hand-in-hand with Gwerath. There was no
answering warmth. Perhaps the person he was trying to reach had died with
Gwerath.

Wrapped in his purple cloak, Kerish drifted
into sleep, thinking of their journey through the Sea of Az. In his dreams, the
Desolation of Zarn was strewn with soul figures, cracked by the heat, blurred
by the winds, but still human. He tried to bury the soul of Khan O-grak, but
the stones slipped from his bleeding fingers.

The light woke him on the fifth morning
since his parting with Tebreega. Kerish decided that today he would walk
through Ellerinonn. As he slithered up and down the dry hills he clothed them
in emerald grass and planted stately trees. Every so often he would pause,
trying to remember the exact form of a statue. In the heat of the day he ringed
himself round with fountains.

The fresh fruit that the sorceress had
given him was rotting now, but there were no insects to be drawn by its
rankness. Kerish forced himself to eat it for his evening meal. There were
enough dried rations to last at least a week but now the moist fruit was gone
he would need more water. Kerish had topped up his flask at the last pool but
it was not much: five days' supply, six if he was careful, seven at the very
most. He had vaguely expected there to be something in the Desolation that he
could live off, roots perhaps or berries, but there was nothing.

“Is it far?”

“Very far, but it will not take long.”

On the sixth morning the muscles in his
thighs and calves ached worse than ever. The rope sandals chafed at his
blistered feet but the ground was too hot for him to walk without them. The
wind scorched him but Kerish forced it to rustle, not sand, but the grasses of
Erandachu. The windflowers swayed as he moved, though he could not remember
their scent. He sent herds of Irollga galloping down the gullies as the dust
clouds choked him. Sometimes there was Gwerath to walk by his side, but he
could not hold her image in his thoughts for long.

In the worst of the heat he squatted down
in a frail patch of shadow and raised the hillocks into the Ultimate Mountains
but the world did not end in their splendor; it faded into the Desolation of
Zarn. Kerish forced himself to go on.

At sunset he ate his meagre ration of dried
fruit and lentil cakes, wishing they didn't make him so thirsty. He decided
that he would have to avoid moving during most of the day and travel mainly at
night. The skies were clear and the stars were the only beautiful things in the
Desolation of Zarn. The Prince followed them southward, thinking of Gwerath.

On the seventh day he narrowed his world to
a path through the dappled shade of Everlorn. When the heat became too intense
he curled up under his cloak and tried to soothe himself to sleep with memories
of Kelinda's kindness. Instead he dreamed of Pellameera dancing in her tomb,
and danced with her. He woke in the early evening and walked till past
midnight.

On the eighth day he was woken by the pain
of his blistered skin as the sunlight touched it. He moistened his dry lips and
began to walk. The golden chain slipped down from his thin waist to bruise his
hips as he moved. Stubbornly, Kerish filled the wasteland with marshes. Now,
even the memory of Lan-Pin-Fria seemed beautiful: the thickets of reeds, bright
with birds; the tangled trees overgrown with flowers and everywhere water -
cool green streams and pools and rivers. Kerish's hands strayed to the water-flask
but he knew he must wait until noon. `More detail, concentrate, concentrate.'
Struggling up a fierce slope with the scree bruising his ankles, Kerish
remembered flowers and insects and birds and the faces of lbrogdiss and Dau.

After a while, Lilahnee walked beside him,
kittenish at first, sometimes crying to be picked up and carried, sometimes
bounding impulsively ahead. Within an hour she had grown to her full size;
fierce and disdainful as she fell in with his slow pace, but how soft her fur
was . . .

“No!” Kerish opened his eyes with a start.
He had been almost sleepwalking. He must banish the Desolation but not at the
cost of surrendering to his dreams. He must remember where he was going and
why. `But I don't know,' he protested to himself, and found the answer,
`Southwards to the Seven Gates.'

In the cool of evening his head cleared. If
he turned back now he might have just enough food and water to get him to the
edge of the wasteland. If he went on . . . surely Tebreega would not have sent
him to his death? But he remembered her face as they parted. She had never
expected him to return. The High Priest, the Emperor, had they known that this
quest would demand a slow and painful death? How could it profit any of them
for him to die alone in the Desolation of Zarn? Who would even know?

On the ninth day he eagerly licked the
blood from his cracked lips. The sun tortured his tender skin. He longed to
hide all through the daylight hours but to lie half-choked beneath his cloak,
with nothing to distract him from the agony of his swollen tongue and aching
throat, was worse still. He staggered southwards.
“Don't stop while you
still have strength to move,”
Tebreega had said,
“or your quest will
fail.”

Kerish tried to raise the jungle around
him. Unraveling the strands of uproar, he knotted them again when he had
remembered and identified each individual noise. He forced trees to grow among
the stones, decked them with flowers and creepers and peopled them with singing
birds and mischievous animals. In the noonday heat, he invoked the
Ferrabrinthin and made the scorching wind the movement of its fiery wings.

He could not hold the images steady. An
Or-gar-gee rose from the crystal pool, Ellandellore's twisted tower blocked his
path, and the painted faces of Loshites stared from among the boughs.

Kerish threw up his hand to block out the
sight and found himself falling. The jungle dissolved as he lay winded and
bruised at the bottom of the gully. He hadn't been noticing the real path.
Kerish sat up slowly. There was nothing broken. `But there might have been', he
told himself. `Then I would have died here. How Gidjabolgo would scold,' he
thought dreamily, `and Forollkin too . . . Forollkin – Viroc- concentrate!'
With shaking hands he drew out the last of the dried fruit and ate it. Now
there were only two lentil cakes and a few mouthfuls of water left.

On the tenth day he finished the food.
Kerish climbed the next hill and stood unsteadily on the summit. Before him the
Desolation of Zarn stretched inexorably to the horizon.  He knew then that he
was going to die amongst its grey hills.

After that it seemed easier to keep on
walking. All he had to do now was obey Tebreega's order. If his quest had
failed he was paying the full price and no one could reproach him. His progress
was slow. Sometimes he wandered in circles until the images of Galkis that
filled his mind jolted his memory and he turned south again.

On the eleventh morning he drank the last
sip of water and threw away the bottle. All that day and through the night,
Lilahnee walked beside him. He heard her soft footfalls in the sighing of the
wind. Gwerath's hair was tangled with the stars and made them too bright to
stare at.

By the twelfth day violent pains in his
stomach sometimes bent him double but he still moved southwards. His thoughts
were uncontrollable, like water slipping through his fingers. He was afraid
that he might throw away the keys. They seemed an intolerable weight now. Every
so often he felt beneath his tattered robe to assure himself that they still
hung at his side. Then he would stare fascinated at the shapely bones that the
shrunken flesh of his hands exposed.

Gradually the individual pains of hunger
and thirst, sunburn and exhaustion, merged into one general agony that seemed a
natural part of his existence. He could not imagine being free of it. `Though
if Forollkin was here,' he thought, `or Gidjabolgo, they would take it away.'
He could no longer be sure if he was thinking or speaking. The noise of his
movements seemed to defile the Desolation. There should be silence; nothing but
bones and dust and silence . . . “No!” Kerish forced himself to walk all
through the night. He knew that once he lay down he would never get up again.

On the thirteenth morning the sun beat him
to his knees. He clutched at the keys. The gold burned his tender skin but he
would not let go.
“Go on to the last of your strength.”
The words lashed
at him. He could no longer remember their meaning but they still forced him to
go on.

He crawled towards the next hill and up the
royal road to Zeldin's temple but the snows were grey. Kerish's head dropped
and he inhaled the cruel dust. A spasm of coughing wracked his thin body and
for a moment the pain jarred him into lucidity. `Zeldin! Imarko!' His swollen
tongue could not form the words. Scree rattled past him. He was falling off the
mountain. Everyone was waiting for him but he would never reach the temple.
`Gentle Zeldin . . .'  

Kerish's fingers clenched on the keys. Then
his hand fell open and he lay still.

*****

The wind mocked him with the sound of
wings. The fountains of his memory overflowed. `They will wash me away,'
thought Kerish, `down the mountainside, down to a purple sea.' Waves rocked
him. The cool waters stripped away layers of pain. There was only emptiness
left; the Desolation of Zarn and of all men . . .

Why had he thought it was water surrounding
him? It was music. For a long time Kerish pondered whether he still had eyes,
and if he did, how to open them. At last his lashes quivered and he was looking
into a brightness turbulent with colors. Before he could close his eyes again,
the brightness surged over and into him and there was no emptiness left.

With a thrill of terror, Kerish knew that
he was too heavy now for the rocks to bear him up. Surely he would sink through
them? Perhaps he already had. He could feel nothing above or beneath him. The
brightness was within him and outside him but it was shrinking, concentrating
itself on a single point.

Kerish could see again. The glimmering
wasteland stretched all around him, pale and insubstantial as a shroud of dust.
The Prince stood up, still half afraid to look at the heart of the brightness,
to look at the purple and golden bird blazing amongst the rocks. Its song was
the music that had cleansed and healed him. Kerish shaded his eyes against the
zeloka, the messenger of Zeldin and Imarko. The bird spread its shining wings
and spiraled upward, still singing.