Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (29 page)

Commyna watched me with keen eyes, noting every flicker of feeling that touched my features. “Tell me what you just remembered.”

I felt helpless, hearing again my mother’s voice, Let no one see it, ever, as she handed the locket to me. “It’s like something my mother wore once. That’s all.”

She eyed me suspiciously, and finally said, “Are you sure there’s nothing you’re not telling me?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

She let the subject drop, but she was clearly dissatisfied with my answer. I hid my relief by returning to meditation, and after a moment of hesitation Commyna began to give me the usual round of instructions and tutorial abuse in Wyyvisar. She was harsher than was warranted by my efforts, I thought, and I wondered if I were really the simpleton she seemed that day to think me, or if she were disturbed by whatever intuition had prompted her to question me about the pendant.

In the press of events that followed, the incident was forgotten.

One afternoon at Illyn, in the midst of another exercise in the cleansing of the mind, while I was in sixth level trance an image of my mother unfurled.

I was not expecting it and had not been warned that any vision might come to me, nor was I, to my knowledge, using a different application in maintaining the trance. I had managed to enter the deep state without the aid of any jewel this time, but I had even managed that trick before. My mind was clear. I ceased chanting in Wyyvisar and was gradually slowing my breathing, carefully, still feeling the slight pressure of Vella’s fingertips on my wrist pulse. The image came to me clearly, my mother on horseback in country I had never seen before, colorful fields, golden, violet and bright green, circular houses with red roofs. My mother wore garments of gray and a drab cloak of the same color. A hood drawn over her head. The horse she rode was a well-fed roan mare wearing a criss-crossed bridle of a type I had never seen. My mother held the reins in her hands though her wrists were chained together with links of bronze. Riders flanked her on either side.

I saw this as if I were hovering above the riders, a party of a dozen altogether; yet, when I wished, I could see her face as clearly as if we were facing each other across the dinner table. She was sick and weak. She had no notion I was anywhere near her, and I could feel fear radiating from her, along with deep anger. In her eyes was a wildness that had never belonged to the mother I remembered.

Since I was in trance-state I simply catalogued these different elements of the vision; one does not bring feelings into the trance. I watched the party of riders for some time. Something warned me not to question what I was seeing but simply to catalog as many elements as I could. The riders were wearing white cloaks. The figure at the head of the party, also wearing white, was a woman, and I gradually realized I had seen her before as well, raising her arm to call down lightning the morning I entered Arthen with Uncle Sivisal. She was a milk-skinned beauty in this light, arms covered with jeweled bracelets, green eyes flashing, white tunic clinging to her spare figure. She was not aware of me, though I could feel her power. Strange words formed in my hearing. Before the vision faded I saw, in the distance before them, a gray-walled fortress on a hillside, a red-domed tower rising beyond the turreted walls.

When the vision was gone, awareness of my breathing returned to me, and after that came pressure, more and more insistent, Vella’s fingertip on my wrist, and her voice calling “Jessex! Jessex!” along with the Wyyvisar command that brings an end to trance.

She was leaning forward, gripping both my wrists in her hands, calling the Words urgently over and over. When I opened my eyes she said, “Praise YY,” touching my forehead with the back of her hand. “You were too deep,” she said, when I gave her the sign that means one is oneself enough for conversation. “Your breathing slowed to nothing and your heartbeat was gone.”

“I saw my mother, riding with a party of white-cloaked riders.”

When she understood what I had said she became utterly silent. For all I know she may have been reading my mind. “You’re telling the truth.”

I told her everything I had seen, every detail. She listened without responding. When I was done, she said, “I’d better tell this to my sisters.”

“Have I done something wrong?”

She stood, gracefully, for such an ample woman. She carefully brushed grass from her skirt. “No.” But she would say nothing else till she had brought me to Commyna and Vissyn, who were under the duraelaryn in the meadow, Vissyn working the broadloom and Commyna spinning thread. Both watched us approach with some surprise; my lesson had just begun and here we were returning. Commyna watched calmly as Vella built up the fire, sending me to the lake to fill the teapot. I could hear them talking as I returned.

Commyna blandly directed me to tell her what had happened, and she and Vissyn listened, broadloom and spinning wheel falling silent. I had learned to give a plain narrative and did, ending with the red-domed fortress. A moment’s silence ensued.

Vissyn broke it. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?”

Commyna watched me sharply. “You’ve had no reports from the Prince’s spies that warned you about any of this?”

“The last report I had was before Kirith Kirin left camp. Soldiers took my mother to the Queen’s palace on Kmur. They told me she was sick but no one knew what was wrong with her.”

Vella spoke in a hush. “Commyna, I think you should tell him everything.”

“So do I.” Vissyn stepped away from the loom.

Commyna watched me. Finally she said, “I plan to. Sit down, Jessex. Sit down all of you. Pass me a cup of tea.”

Vella poured the tea and handed it to her. Finally Commyna said, “There’s no question but that you’ve seen a true thing. This morning my sisters and I noted in our own far-seeing that Julassa Kyminax was riding north in the Kellyxa in the same country you’ve described. The red-domed fortress is Pemuntnir, where the Osirii and the Osar fork. Those are the rivers that wash through Ivyssa on their way to sea. We didn’t know who the woman was; her identity was hidden from us, and we couldn’t have learned it without challenging Julassa directly.”

Kellyxa is the southern plain. If she was riding north —

“Julassa is going to meet Drudaen,” I said.

Commyna nodded. Vella laid her hand in my hair.

I remembered the woman I had seen, the gaunt-faced stranger with the wild eyes, my mother, and my eyes filled. For a while no one spoke. I let the tears fall without any thought of shame, wiping my face on my sleeves. “Is there nothing I can do?”

“No,” Commyna said. “Nothing would suit Drudaen better than for you to try.”

Vissyn knelt in front of me and lifted my face. “I’m very sorry, Jessex.”

“So am I.” Sudden weariness in Commyna’s face. “It can’t be a good sign that Drudaen has sent for her. But Jessex —” She took a studied sip of tea, and then looked at me. “The wonder is that you’ve seen it. Do you understand? We’ve taught you nothing of this technique, and yet your mind has found it. The vision came to you.”

“But I couldn’t control it, I didn’t know where I was —”

She shook her head. “No one could, without a device. You had no jewel, no godstone. You were in sixth-level trance. I myself could do no better from that level.”

Vissyn spoke gently. “Not only that. Julassa Kyminax suspected nothing the whole while, but you saw through the protective magic that disguised your mother. This shows a rare talent. Seeing with the mind is not like seeing with the eyes, Jessex. Your mother’s face would have been obscured from those far more practiced in magic. We ourselves saw nothing through the veil, and could only have gotten through it by using a higher level application. Julassa would have been aware of that.”

Vella stroked my hair. “In other words, we’re proud of you.”

The words gave me a warm feeling. The lake women had never praised me before, and to tell the truth I had begun to wonder if I were impossibly dull-headed. Commyna did not let me linger long in the courts of self-satisfaction, either. She turned over the spinning to Vella and led me to the center of the golden meadow, to see if I could repeat the meditation.

I did so, with no prompting. The trance came quickly, and I was able to see without a device. Clearing my mind was not as easy as it might have been, with so much anticipation to get rid of. But at last I was in the proper state, my breathing slowing, and an image forming, a clearing lit with morning light, silvered trees bending in the breeze, Kirith Kirin standing perfectly motionless over a runnel of water. He wore no tunic, only buckskin leggings, his torso bare, colored like the bronze chains that had wrapped my mother’s wrists. He bent with a silver basin and filled it with water. A voice called out from the undergrowth behind him, and he turned. His face struck me full on.

I have said that one carries no feelings into trance, and this is true. But the part of me that was in this vision felt a ghost of emptiness and longing, wonder at his beauty, till a figure crossed the clearing heading toward him and the vision faded.

When I returned to Commyna and the meadow, the transition being much smoother this time, I told her what I had seen. She asked if I had been thinking of the Prince prior to the trance, or if I had willed myself to see him in any other way, and I answered that I hadn’t been conscious of doing so. Though he was never far from my mind. I said this simply and plainly. Commyna had no comment, though she paused on the remark.

She had no means of affirming the truth of this vision, she said, but she had monitored my mental state and it appeared that I was using the proper far-seeing technique. She started to say something else but thought better of it. “I have part of my answer,” was all she said. Patiently, she commenced my official instruction in trance-sight.

At the end of the session I was tired, ready for rest. Illyn’s nightfall was approaching, and I would not return to real time for a while. We headed to the lakeside, where Vella and Vissyn were building a fire. I would not sleep there but would use another technique the women had taught me for doing without. They would feed me and after tea and conversation my training would continue.

But before we reached the shore, I said to Commyna, “I have one question I didn’t ask before. About my mother.”

Her face filled with sympathy, though sternness overlaid it. “All right. If I can answer it.”

“Why would Drudaen summon her? Why does he keep her alive?”

“He‘ll use her to torment you.” She had no expression on her face. “It would be better for your mother to be dead.”

Abruptly she turned away, heading for the brightening fire. I stood in the meadow for a while.

2

The Queen’s Second Army, under command of Drudaen Keerfax, marched across the southern plain, pausing at Pemuntnir to meet another army, the Fifth, on its way from New Ivyssa to Genfynnel, the northernmost of southern cities, ten days march from the border of Arthen. I learned about this body of soldiers at Illyn Water, during deep trance while Vissyn was teaching me to guide my disembodied awareness. Drudaen had six thousand soldiers with him. The Fifth Army, four thousand strong, was under command of General Nemort of the House of Tours, formerly the Military Governor of Novris. He was leading an army in our direction.

I had heard no rumor in camp of Nemort’s march. When I asked Vissyn if Kirith Kirin knew about the army headed north, she answered that he most likely did not, since spies bearing the news had not yet reached Arthen. The Sisters could only guess at the purpose of sending so large a force, but it seemed likely General Nemort was to reinforce the garrison in Cordyssa, perhaps to become Military Governor. “Drudaen will be giving Nemort his final briefing,” Vissyn told me. “One wonders who decided to assign Nemort to this, Drudaen or Athryn Ardfalla. Drudaen isn’t fond of Nemort, from what I’ve heard. And Nemort is known for his mistrust of magicians.”

Later we were bathing in the clear water following a long session of meditation, during which Vissyn had guided my internal vision to scan the place we guessed Drudaen would visit with his troops. We hovered over Montajhena and I examined the ruined city as summer was taking hold of its battered stone remains, from the Court of the Twelve to the old palace, Turmengaz, and the fire-scarred foundations that flank it. I saw the blackened stump that was Yrunvurst and the charred wreckage of Goerast, the two High Places of the city. One saw patches of green grass, beds of flowers on velvet-lush leaves, multicolored tufts of lichen, winter birds searching the earth for stray seeds, scattered remnants of food among tumbled marble columns, broken bits of statuary, shards of stained glass, a fanfare of gold leaf smudged with soot and sand. One could feel the far off echo of power, the faintest smell of sulfur, the sweet taste of air where lightning has struck.