Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (16 page)

“Haven’t I? When you snatched me off my horse’s back and dragged me to YY-knows-where?”

“For your information I found you lying here in the snow. Did you know that’s where you are, at the bottom of a snow drift? The snow is beautiful and white, and the sky is clear over your head, and wind is blowing across you, and your skin is quite blue. How did you get to the top of the mountain?”

“I’m not on any mountaintop,” I said, “I’m in a room, and your sisters are with you in it and all of you are watching me. Why are you trying to trick me?”

“How do you know so much? You can’t see, can you?”

“Not with my eyes,” I said.

Again her laughter rang out, echo-less, as if we were under the broad sky; but still I was sure I was right. “What do you use to see then, if you don’t use your eyes?”

“I don’t care if you believe me or not. But I can see you. You have blonde hair. You are bending over me. Your eyes might be blue or green, and your lips are rather thin, and you use no paint on your face. You have your fingers just above my forehead waiting to send me back to sleep, but you hope you won’t have to, because it hasn’t been so easy keeping me asleep. Has it?”

“What do I care whether you sleep or not?” she asked.

“Your name is Vissyn,” I said, ignoring the interruption, “and when I was brought here you were the one that carried the rest of us through the air. I heard the others making fun of you.”

She said nothing else. After a moment I felt the touch again, the cool fingertips, but this time I was waiting. “I won’t,” I said, “you can’t send me anywhere, because I won’t go. My grandmother Fysyyn was a witch, and my mother was a witch, so powerful that Drudaen sent his servant Julassa to capture her, and I’m a witch too, ask the other trainees in Theduril’s archery drill, they all say so; I stopped the lightning from falling on my uncle’s horse. You won’t send me anywhere.” But already other fingertips were joining hers, already the warmth of her voice and presence were abating, and I felt sleep rise over me. “Why are you doing this? YY-Mother will punish you. I’m her servant, and she’ll protect me sooner or later.” Speech came more slowly. For a moment I thought I was gone, then I heard someone mumbling words, and caught at the sound like a handhold. “Even if you were Drudaen the Great I would not be afraid of you. I am the youth who is awaited, who has come to return light to Imith Imril, and I was found singing by the River as was foretold —”

The darkness evaporated entirely and the cold fled. For a moment I was free, and I saw the waking world, three women in rich black robes bending over me, jeweled rings on their fingers, an incredible radiance around them. They were startled when I sat up, throwing off the smooth cloth that had lain across my naked body, looking round at them all. Then the tallest of them, the broad-shouldered, dark-haired woman I had met on the road in Arthen, said a word I could not understand though I could hear it, and she lifted a white jewel aloft. She touched it to my brow quickly and the room vanished with a crackle like lightning. I was in darkness again, and alone, and sightless.

3

This time I was farther from my body than before, and the cold was absolute. I had a hard time breathing. While I had been unable to move for a long time, now I felt pain in my limbs like white fire burning. Fear did possess me then, and images formed in the void about me, horrible — my own body mangled, piles of lizards coiled round me, or Mikif with the soldiers on her, or the neighbor’s daughter Sergil watching her father gasp, falling into the loop of rope, his neck cracking and his feet kicking, kicking, and becoming still. My mother, hands tied behind her, gagged and bruised from beatings, mounted onto a horse with the help of a Blue Cloak. When I fought away one image another took its place. Even now I don’t like to remember everything I saw in that time.

Finally a vague figure formed in the shadows, the voice of my dream taking shape, the one who had warned me he would never leave my mind. He missed me in front of him at first, and I thought this odd, since my presumption had been that these images were always focused on me, that their purpose, the reason for their creation, was my torment. This one was searching. He was not hideous, either. He had a handsome face; not young and fresh like Kirith Kirin but smooth, white as porcelain, opaque, a beauty like stone. A small scar on his temple, throbbing. Words began to travel from him, and the sound was odd, threading out from his mouth like a tendril. I began to understand. His black eyes flicked from side to side. He was aware of me. He was searching for me.

Real fear grew in me, because I knew who he was.

Distance would mean nothing to him, he had vast power. Wherever I was, this was a place he knew about, and if he found me here, there was no protection for me, no Woodland around me to baffle him.

A measure of wakefulness returned. I fought to remember myself, my life that I was beginning to love, the light of the deniire lamp flowing in colors, the splendid bustle of camp, the beauty of Arthen. Some of the cold left me and the white pain ebbed from my motionless limbs; but at the same time the mist-draped image became more distinct, and the voice clarified. “Jessex,” he called, his voice tinkling like water over rocks, “son of Kinth, come to me, your strength become my strength, do not return to your body but join with mine...” His strong body became plain, became desirable; and I became lost in the motion of his lips forming the words, his restless gaze coming closer.

He was in front of me, he waited. He was lovely, yes, but not lovely in the way of the living, not like Kirith Kirin. He lifted his white hand toward me and would have touched me, would have laid his cool fingers on my brow, except that I was warned by what had happened before, I said, “No, whoever you are, you may not touch me here.”

“But you are longing for me.”

“No, I’m not. I forbid you.”

His smiled never wavered. “You’ve been calling for me ever since you were taken from Arthen. I heard your voice. Tell me where you are and I’ll come for you.”

“I haven’t called you.”

“Tell me where you are and I’ll come for you,” he repeated, and his eyes were shining.

“I’m in the bottom of a snowdrift at the top of a mountain, the place where I want to be.”

“You’re being held against your will by skillful women,” he said, “tell me where you are and I’ll find you.”

“I don’t know you, why should I want your help?”

“You know me, you’ve always known me,” his figure swelling in my sight, the cloud of him engulfing me, so that I foundered, the cold returning brutally, fiercer than before, a feeling of finality to it. “You’ll enter me one day and never leave me, and your strength will be my strength, and we’ll be more powerful than any, and all weather and winds and all forces of time and space will answer to us.”

For a moment I was blank, and the sense of the brooding figure was overwhelming. But he was no more real than I was, here. Reality was far away for both of us: for me it was my body on a table in a wide, high chamber, beneath the scrutiny of three women. “I don’t want you,” I told him, “I don’t need you, I despise you, you’re my enemy, and my life will destroy your life. You’re Drudaen the White-Handed, and you’re very strong, but I’m not in your power and I never will be. If you could find my body you could kill me but I won’t tell you where I am. I’m at the bottom of a snowdrift on the top of a high mountain and eagles are my friends. One day we will meet and I will see you dead. Till then don’t trouble me.”

It eased my fear to let my thoughts babble. I had no notion of any plan. But he was dismayed, I could feel it, and something born into me understood this was my gain. The cloud that was his presence was already re-gathering, however, and the cold held me more deeply each moment. When his face began to form from the cloud my heart sank. I could fight him while I was aware, but if sleep came over me I had no idea what would happen. Tattered thoughts passed in and out of my mind, phrases from Velunen, from Kimri. I closed my eyes and felt the cold rise, the darkness increase. “Yes,” he said, “that’s it, don’t fight it any more, there’s no need; so much cold and so much pain, for nothing. When you could be so warm. When my voice makes you warm even now. You are so far away from your body, why go back? Why make such a long journey, when you can be warm and happy here, with me. Since you won’t tell me where you are, sever the link yourself. One slender cord binds you to your body. Unfasten it. Let your spirit be free to fly from this place with me. Come with me southward. Let me take you to your mother —”

Her image was more concrete than his, and I saw her bruised and battered as before, the rough-handed soldier dragging her onto the impatient horse. Anger scorched me and he withdrew again; and as he did another presence found us both, a pure light.

“Hail to you, Drudaen Keerfax, prince of fools,” a voice said.

“I hear no one, I hear nothing,” the cloud said.

“You hear me, you know me well enough.” The other cloud shimmered and took form. A beautiful woman stepped forward, as if through a curtain of light, and I knew her to be the broad-shouldered woman, the one who had sent me here, whom I had thought to be my enemy. “The child is not for you. He is here through my neglect and I claim him. You have no power over him here, you can claim nothing.”

“Jessex —”

She spoke aloud awful words and light crackled from her, showers of particles of light, and a sound like music. “Listen Drudaen, I have news. Yron is coming. You know that name, don’t you? This child is a sign. Save your strength while you can.”

Anger swelled out from him and the cold became so sharp I cried out. But he vanished and the woman returned to me. An overwhelming gentleness engulfed me, and her voice hovered just outside my ear. “Sleep a good sleep, a pure sleep this time, little singer. We only meant to test you, not to kill you. When you wake up you’ll be in a good place.”

Why did I believe her now? I let the warmth she radiated lull me into rest, real rest, and knew nothing beyond that.

4

I awoke in my body, truly and at last, by the shores of a blue lake. Grass tickled the skin of my palms and a warm breeze blew over me. I was looking up into the branches of one of the great duraelaryn, and when I recognized the man-sized branches, the tiers of broad leaves rising toward the blue heavens, I sighed deeply. I had come home to Arthen.

From nearby I heard women’s laughter and tried to sit up.

A shadow fell across my face. “Not yet,” said a mellow voice, and a plump woman laid the back of her hand against my cheeks. “Be still, rest a while longer. You have a lot of strength to recover.”

“Is he awake?” one of the women asked.

“Yes,” said the gentle-faced woman, “finally. Bring him some tea, Vissyn. Bring one of the cakes too.”

My head was clearing. Warmth had returned to my limbs. I recognized the woman bending over me as the second voice on my journey, one of the women I had glimpsed when I woke in the strange room. She was ruddy-faced, round, and ample, with the face of a grandmother. I started to tell her I knew her but her hand closed over my lips. She was smiling and I realized with a start she knew what I had been thinking. “Yes,” she said, “that’s who I am, but you don’t need to say so. My name is Vella. My sisters are Commyna and Vissyn. Vissyn you know by name already, apparently.”

The other women were joining us, their shadows passing over me. Vella lifted a cup to my lips. Someone slid a cushion under my head, and a moment later the broad-shouldered woman, the one who had rescued me, sat cross-legged at my feet, arranging her luxurious skirt in folds on the ground. Her black hair was piled on her head, fastened in place by pins adorned with small jewels. She wore a white blouse whose full arms billowed in the breezes. “Commyna,” I said hoarsely, remembering her name.

She lifted her finger to her lips. Even now there was something forbidding about her, a sternness that endured despite her merry eyes and the smile that lit her face. “Welcome to Illyn Water, boy. For a while we were afraid you’d never get here.”

“Don’t be in such a hurry, Commyna,” Vella said, breaking off the cake into my mouth. “He’s still weak.”

The flavor of the rich, sweet bread flooded me, tasting of honey and spices. I took a deep breath. “Where is Illyn Water?” I asked.

Commyna glanced at Vella in something like triumph. “This one’s strong,” she said. “Not too many questions boy, or Vella will make me go away. Illyn Water is our home when we’re in Arthen. It’s a hidden place, and few people have ever seen it.”

I ate more of the cake and felt some strength return. “Where’s Nixva?”

“Yonder,” said Vissyn, the blond woman. “He’s perfectly happy, grazing with our horses. Nixva is the son of an old friend.”