Eternity Road (9 page)

Flojian examined his stein. It was ornate, inlaid with midnight glass tears. Nice, actually.

The hangdog shook his head and addressed the belly. “Gammer, the other one didn’t come back. You’d think they’d learn.”

Gammer looked bored. “I figured you’d be first in line to go, Hok.”

“Not me. There aren’t any idiots in my family.”

Gammer grinned. It was a lopsided grin, rendered cruel by vacuous eyes. “I didn’t think you knew your family.”

Flojian took a long pull from his brew.

“What really happened on the first expedition?” The woman’s question.

“What’s-his-name, the guy who came back, he left them.” Gammer tore off an end of bread, dipped it into his stew, and pushed it into his mouth. While he chewed, he jabbed his fork toward the back of the room. “They got in trouble and he left them. That’s why he never said anything.”

“I think there’s more to it,” said Hok. He finished his drink and offered to pour another round for everybody. The woman passed. “Look, that thing they brought back, the book, they say it’s worth a couple of sacks of gold.
Big
sacks. I tell ya, it doesn’t take much imagination to see a fight breaking out among them, winner take all. This what’s-his-name—”

“Endine,” said the woman.

“Yeah, Endine, he was the winner. The guy who came home. Maybe he murdered the rest of them.”

Flojian banged his stein down. He got up and faced them. The tavern fell silent. “You’re a liar.” He threw a silver coin onto the table. It rolled about a foot. “Endine wouldn’t abandon anybody.”

Hok tilted his head and grinned a silent challenge. Flojian started in his direction, but the host hurried over to make peace.

Word came in the middle of the night. It was brought by one of the attendants, who was kneeling by her bed with a taper. “Avila. The boy is dying. They need you.”

Her heart sank.

“The father waits downstairs.”

She threw the spread aside. “Wake Sarim.”

“We’ve already attended to that. He’ll meet you in the sanctuary.”

She rinsed quickly at the basin, slid into her robe, fastened her sash, and drew on a black cloak, for the night was cool. She had no stomach for what lay ahead.

She gathered a supply of
agora
, which would ease the child’s passage into the next world, for she knew the case offered no hope of recovery unless the Goddess intervened. But the Goddess had not acted in many years. Avila wondered what had happened that she had been so completely abandoned.

She knew what the
Kiri
would say:
Your faith is being tested. Believe and do your duty, and all will be well
. But all was
not
well.

The father waited in the reception room. He sat, head sagging, eyes devoid of every quality except pain. When Avila entered, he rose but could not speak. Tears rolled down his cheeks. She helped him to his feet, and held him. “Mentor,” he said, “we are going to lose him.”

“He is in Shanta’s hands now,” she responded. “Whatever happens, she will be with him.”

He wiped his eyes. When he seemed to have steadied, she took his arm. “Come with me,” she said softly.

They left the sitting room, went down a stairway, and passed into a long marble corridor illuminated by lanterns. Murals depicted Shanta in her various aspects, creating life, sending the rain, protecting the child Tira against the serpent, appearing in blood-covered clothes to inform the Illyrians that she had fought beside their sons at the battle of Darami.

They passed between twin columns, suggesting the Goddess’s support for the world, and ascended into the sanctuary.

The sanctuary was oval-shaped, dominated by a small unadorned altar. The only light in the room came from a brazier, which contained the Living Fire, brought to the Illyrians by Havram, who had it from the Holy One herself.
So long as these flames brighten my chapel will they give strength to your spirit and to your body. Nourish them and live forever in me
. Sarim, broad, gruff, devout Sarim, was waiting. He held an unlit torch, which she took from him.

“Blessed be the eternal light,” she said, and pressed the torch into the father’s hand. He took it, and she helped him hold it over the brazier until it caught.

Moments later, they passed out of the Temple into the streets. It was a windy night. The torch, in Sarim’s grip, flickered and blazed and Avila’s cloak tugged at her shoulders. Sarim and the father walked side by side. Avila, a few steps behind, bowed her head and prayed fervently.

Goddess, if it be your will—

His name was Tully. He was nine years old, and afflicted with a wasting disease that had not responded to her array of medicines, poultices, and palliatives. She had seen it before, the graying of the skin, the loss of weight, the aching joints. And the gradual deterioration of the will to live. Usually, the victims were elderly.

Tully had been coming to the Temple for almost four months. At first reluctant, and anxious to be away to join his friends, he had not responded to her ministrations. In time the impatience in his eyes had broken and given way to sadness. The boy had grown to trust her, and he fought the disease with courage. But despite all she could do, he grew weaker with each visit. The parents brought with them a childlike faith that broke her heart.

Be with him in the ordeal to come
.

He had been a bright, green-eyed child filled with laughter when she’d first seen him. Now he was wasted and out of his head, and his fevers raged all the time. “Help him, Mentor,” the mother had pleaded.

Tully was covered with damp cloths, in an effort to contain the fever. But his eyes were vacant. He was already effectively gone.

Avila could not restrain her own tears.

Shanta, where are you?

She accepted the torch from Sarim and held it for the father. He took it desperately and plunged it into the pile of sticks and coals in the brazier at the side of the bed. They began to burn.

From the front of the house, where relatives were gathered, Avila heard muffled sobs. She took the boy’s wrist and counted silently. His pulse was very weak.

She could not bring herself to look into the eyes of either parent. Instead, she laid the emaciated arm back atop the sheet, but did not let go of it, and bowed her head.

Mother Shanta, I never ask any boon for myself. I know that you are with me now, and are always with me, and that is enough. I will accept without complaint whatever your judgment for me. But please save the child. Do not let him die
.

She watched the hopes of the parents fade, watched the boy’s struggles weaken, watched the relatives file one by one into the room to take their leave. The wind worked at the windows and the frail flame in the brazier sputtered and gasped.

Whatever your judgment—

“Mentor?”

“I do not know.” She resented their importunities. Why did they demand so much of her, as if the divine power were hers to wield?

In the hour after midnight, the thin body ceased its struggles, the labored breathing stopped, and Avila closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. The mother tried to gather him to her breast and the father slumped against the wall, whispering his son’s name as if to call him back.

Shanta, accept to your care Tully, who lived only a handful of years in this world
.

On the way back to the Temple, Sarim asked whether she was all right. “I’m fine,” she said. And then, after a couple of silent minutes: “What’s the point of a god who never intervenes?”

The young Avila had loved riding along the banks of the
moonlit Mississippi with her father, hoping that Lyka Moonglow would put in an appearance.

No one has seen her for a long time, Avila. She’s shy and prefers to come when no one is about. But your grandmother once saw her
.

There had been times when Avila was sure she’d also seen Lyka, a quick burst of iridescence skimming the dark waters, a glowing curve much like a smile in the night. But she’d understood that the adults were amused by her claims even while they pretended to be amazed by them. In those days, the skies and the forest had been full of divine power, voices speaking to her, unseen hands turning the inner workings of day and night.

It was a vision she’d never forgot, even when tensions had risen in the family, and she’d run off to Farroad where for three years she’d danced and played for the men who worked the river.

Men had fought over her in those days. And one, whose name she’d never known, a young one not yet twenty, had died. She’d knelt in the street that night with her arms full of blood and felt for the first time the presence of the Goddess.

What more natural than that Avila Kap would, at the somewhat late age of twenty-two, enter the Order of Shanta the Healer, and dedicate herself to a life of service to gods and men?

It had been a fulfilling existence. During the early days she’d heard divine footsteps beside her in the dark streets as she hurried to assist stricken families. But in time the sound had faded, like voices in a passing boat. On the night that Tully had slipped away, she’d returned to her cubicle, warm against the chill rain, and had lain awake well into the dawn, sensing
nothing
in the dark, no power, no spirit lingering to heal the healer, no whispered assurance that there was purpose to it all.

She was alone. They were
all
alone. What had the young man, the one they called Orvon, said at Silas’s seminar?
We may be seeing only what we wish to see
. She had sensed in him a desire to believe, and a smoldering anger.

But if no god went with her into the night, how was it that the medicines worked?

But then, why did they not
always
work? She knew the dogmatic answer, of course: It was not always Shanta’s will that a cure be effected. But then, if the matter depended on Shanta’s will, why bother with the medicines and the curatives at all?

During the two weeks that elapsed after Tully’s death, Avila Kap had been locked in a dark struggle of the soul. She felt her old self slipping away, everything she believed in, everything she cared about.

She now knew she was going to leave the Order. It was not an easy choice. The world outside was hostile to ex-priests. Even persons who paid little heed to their religious obligations seemed to feel a duty to show their moral uprightness by mistreating those servants of the gods who had abandoned their posts. But she could no longer pretend to believe.

The real issue now was simple: What could she find to replace the Order, to give meaning to her life? She was well educated and could support herself easily enough. But she did not wish to devote herself exclusively to making money.

In other times, when she’d faced difficult choices, she’d retired to the green chapel, which was named for the variety and profusion of plants that lined its walls and surrounded its altar. Invariably she’d come away with a solution. Now, however, she remained in the community areas or in her quarters. And when other late-night calls came, she went out as she always had, clinging to her dying faith as tightly as the families she visited clung to their dying fathers and wives.

Silas hired four people to begin the task of making copies of
Connecticut Yankee
. Each worked on a separate volume, of course. (Esthetics prohibited multiple types of handwriting in a single book.) Later, when they had several copies to work with, they would expand the operation. Eventually, Silas expected, a hundred or more bound volumes would circulate through the five cities.

There’d been a brief debate about modernizing the language. Silas had argued that they retain the original, in that it was still easily readable. He also believed no one could do it justice. The board had squirmed a bit, but conceded the point.

There were original copies of the other two extant Mark Twain fragments, from “The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract” and
Life on the Mississippi
. Now, with the addition of a complete
Connecticut Yankee
, there was a large enough body of work to begin a serious evaluation of the Roadmaker writer. Silas wondered what lessons Mark Twain, standing with him in Illyria, would have drawn from the ruins of his civilization.

Silas had written over thirty commentaries on various aspects of ancient and modern literature, ethics, and history. Only one, “Brave New Hyperbole,” had ever been committed to permanent form and placed in the library. (Now, years later, the title embarrassed him.) “Hyperbole” argued that Huxley’s book was in fact a speculative fantasy rather than an accurate depiction of Roadmaker technologies and ethics. He wasn’t sure he was right, but he trembled at the possibility that civilization could descend to such horror.

Now he was recording his impressions of
Connecticut Yankee
. There was simply nothing like Mark Twain in the entire panoply of League literature. The closest approach was probably the wry comedies of the Argonite playwright Caper Tallow. But even Tallow seemed a bit droll at the side of this Roadmaker humorist.

Silas took extreme care with his commentary, because he knew many others would follow. And because he was first, his remarks would draw attention, either as an example of insight or ineptitude. He sensed that this single document would make his reputation, one way or the other, for posterity.

He’d been working, off and on, almost a month on the project and felt so good about the result that he was violating an old rule by showing his progress to some of the other masters. They were impressed, but in the way of such things, they gave all the credit to Mark Twain.

On the day that Silas finished his final draft, Chaka Milana rode up to his front door. He had just put his writing materials away and was getting ready to walk across the street for dinner. She smiled triumphantly at him as she climbed down from Piper. “I can’t guarantee Haven,” she said, “but I think it’s possible to go where Endine went.”

She led him to the Lost Hope, a nearby pub, where a tall, dark-skinned man with thick black hair and a clipped beard sat at a corner table. “Silas,” she said, “I’d like you to meet Jon Shannon.”

Silas extended his hand. Shannon put down his beer. “Pleased to meet you, Silas,” he said.

Chaka pushed in against the wall and Silas sat down beside her. “Chaka tells me you’ve been doing some work for her.”

Shannon nodded. “She wanted me to see if I could find the track of the Endine expedition.”

A chill blew through Silas’s soul. “I assume you succeeded or we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

He glanced at Chaka. “I found some markings up on Wilderness Road. You know where that is?”

Silas had never been on it, but he knew that it was about 140 miles north, that it led northeast from Argon, running roughly parallel to the Ohio. “Yes,” he said.

“We know that’s where they started. I followed it for a couple of days. To Ephraim’s Bluff, which is pretty much on the edge of League territory. Just beyond Ephraim’s Bluff there are several sets of marks.”

“What kind of marks?”

“Tree cuts. Always three strokes. Piles of rocks. Three rocks with a fourth on top. They probably used some chalk, too. There’s some granite up there and I’d have chalked it if I were making a trail.”

“But there’s no chalk now?”

“How could there be after all these years?”

“How old are the marks on the trees?”

“Can’t tell. At least five or six years.
Maybe
ten. Damn, maybe twenty.”

Silas looked at Chaka, and then swung his gaze back to Shannon. “That’s it?”

Shannon frowned. “What more did you want?”

A waiter arrived and they ordered beer for Chaka and Silas, and dinner for everybody.

“Wilderness Road isn’t really much of a road,” said Shannon. “Nobody uses it except hunters and traders. And the military. Those people all know their territory pretty well, so it would have to be a special set of circumstances that anybody would need to leave guide marks.” Silas could see the big man liked his beer. He finished it off and set the stein down gently. “I’d be willing to bet I was looking at Endine’s jump-off point.”

The pub was busy. It was dinner hour and the dining room was filled with laughter and the sizzle of steak and the aroma of cold brew. Candles flickered on the walls.

“I don’t know you well, Jon,” said Silas, “so I hope you won’t take this personally.” He looked at Chaka. “You hired him to take a look, right?”

“Yes,” she said, puzzled.

“Was it a flat rate? Or did he get more money if he brought back a positive answer?”

Her features darkened. “He wouldn’t lie. But yes, it was a flat rate.”

Silas nodded. “Good. So what do you propose to do now?”

She looked surprised. “I’m going after it,” she said.

“On the strength of a few marked trees.”

“It’s a chance. But it’s a good chance.” Her eyes blazed. “Listen, Silas, the truth about what happened to my brother is out there somewhere.”

“I hate to put it this way, Chaka. But what does it matter? He’s dead. And Karik’s dead. What’s the point?”

Across the room, someone cheered. They were celebrating a birthday.

“I think the truth is worth something, don’t you?” She fixed him with her blue gaze. “Anyway, Haven might be at the end of the road.”

Silas looked from her to the dark-skinned giant. “I’m sixty years old. I’m not really in condition for taking off on a wild chase. Especially not one that’s already killed a substantial number of people.”

Disappointment clouded her features. “Okay. I thought you’d be the first to want to go. There’ll be others.”

“I doubt it.”

Shannon was studying the ceiling.

“How about
you
?” Silas asked him. “Are
you
going?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because Haven doesn’t mean anything to me. Because I don’t believe it exists. Because you—” he was gazing at Chaka now, “—and anyone who goes with you, will most certainly fail, and possibly lose your lives.”

Silas turned back to Chaka. “I think he makes sense.”

Their meals arrived. The menu at the Lost Hope was fairly limited. It consisted of either beef or chicken, depending on the chef’s mood, and the vegetable du jour, and bread. On this occasion, the chef’s mood called for chicken, and the vegetable was cabbage.

“I think we all need to be reasonable,” Silas said.

Chaka sat back with her arms folded, stared at Silas for a few moments, picked up a knife, and sliced a strip of meat from the breast. “Haven doesn’t mean anything to Jon,” she said. “What does it mean to you? Ten years from now you’ll be seventy. You want to look back on this and know there was a chance you might have found the entire body of Mark Twain’s work, and who knows what else, but you didn’t
bother
? Because it was dangerous?”

Illyrian women caught in compromising situations lost their reputations, prospects, and often their incomes. (Men, as usual, operated on a somewhat different standard.) No decent person would associate openly with a woman who’d become entangled in scandal. She was no longer welcome at her place of employment; her customers disappeared; and she could expect to be turned out by her family.

The risks for unmarried women were intensified by a lack of reliable contraceptive devices. Various ointments and oils, if applied prior to sexual activity, were supposed to prevent conception. But it was hard to determine their efficacy. No one kept statistics, and everybody lied about sex. Chaka concluded, as did most women, that the potential consequences outweighed the game. And so virtue reigned in Illyria.

This state of affairs had, to a degree, evolved from a line of emperors and kings who believed that the stability of the city required a solid family tradition, which they had enforced with the power of the priesthood and a series of laws prohibiting divorce and confining sexual activity within the marriage bond. Violators were subject to a range of criminal penalties which, for a time under Aspik III and Mogan the Wise, included burning at the stake.

In the Republic, such laws were considered barbaric. Nevertheless, the moral code from which they had sprung was alive and well, and if offending women could no longer be deprived of their physical existence, they could lose virtually everything else.

Chaka was not a virgin, but she rarely strayed across the line, and had not done so at all within the recent past. Tonight, though, as she returned from her frustrating meeting with Silas Glote, she needed to talk with Raney, to be with him, to accept whatever comfort he might provide. For that reason, she had declined Jon Shannon’s offer to escort her home. (“What will you do now?” Shannon had asked as she’d departed, and she’d replied that she would follow the trail, that she had friends, that there were plenty of people who would join her to look for Haven. And his lips had tightened and he’d warned her to forget it. “But if you
must
go,” he’d added, “take no strangers. Take nobody you wouldn’t trust with your life. Because that’s how it’ll be.”)

Raney lived alone in a small farmhouse outside Epton Village, about two miles northwest of the city. She left through the northern gate and rode out on the Cumbersak Trail. Travel was relatively safe within a few miles of Illyria. The roads were heavily patrolled now that the wars had stopped, and the old-time bandits who had once owned the highways after sundown were either dead or in hiding. Nonetheless, she always carried a gun when she traveled at night.

The moon was high and it was late when she rode through the hedges that surrounded Raney’s wood frame house. His dog, Clip, barked at her approach, and Raney appeared in his doorway.