Living With Ghosts (59 page)

A hand touched her arm. She turned, expecting Urien. Another robed figure . . . His hood was back, and his face was dearly familiar. He said, softly, “Hello, Yviane.”

“Valdin . . .” Her hand reached out to him. His skin was cool. It did not seem so strange to her to meet him here now. She clutched at him. Perhaps she was already dead. Perhaps the boundary between the living and the dead was breaking, welcoming her in. “Oh, Valdin.” As his arms drew her to him, for a moment she allowed herself to feel the terror of what she must do. He was warm against her, breast moving with the slow tide of breath. She made herself look up. “Did Urien send you?”

“Yes.” There was a glitter in his spare hand, light on a blade. He said, “She’s dead, my Iareth
kai-reth
. Did you know?”

So are you . . . But that had no meaning now. She said, “No. I’m sorry.”

“I just go on losing her . . .” He stopped. They clung together for another long moment, her face against his shoulder, his buried in her hair. She was safe at long last, she was safe, and it was over save for one last little step.

She said, “Is it time?”

“Yes . . . I’m coming with you. I thought I wanted to live, but . . .”

“Hush,” Yvelliane said, reaching out to him. “We’ll go together, love. I’m ready.”

His blade flashed up between them. He said, “There must be blood shed, then the river. It will hurt. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Then she took her arm from his hand and walked to the very edge of the roof. “Will this do?”

“Yes.” Valdarrien came to her, his dark face gentle in the moons’ light. The sword tip touched the base of her throat, cool, forgiving. With his spare hand he reached out and took a firm grasp on one of hers. She could hear the river thundering a hundred or more feet below. “For Merafi,” he said, “blood binds.”

He was right. There was pain for one bitter moment, and fear, too, and the sour taste of blood. Then the darkness flashed about her and her head fell back, and her body with it, all the way down to the water.

His hand was still tangled in hers. The weight of her falling dragged him unresisting after her.

Alone, Thiercelin sat with his back to the parapet and tried not to close his eyes. His side pounded. Pressing a hand to it, he found the bandages damp. He should not be here; he had barely the strength to stand. Valdarrien had virtually dragged him up the long flights of stairs to the tower. He had no idea how he was going to get back down.

It didn’t matter, anyway.

He was a little to one side of the ritual area, near the priests. He had only a partial view of the ceremony, but that did not trouble him. He had little interest in the proceedings. Craning his neck, he could just about make out Yvelliane and Valdarrien on the leads. Yvelliane’s face was serious. Valdarrien looked tired, if the dead could tire.

The latter had spent a long time closeted with Urien, and had been unwontedly quiet ever since. Thiercelin, long accustomed to his moods, had asked no questions. But he was troubled. Both Valdarrien and Gracielis had been unusually gentle toward him. As if they protected him from something. Even Urien had shown signs of it. High on the tower, Thiercelin watched his wife and shivered.

There was something hidden. Something wrong. He could hear the river roaring even through the priests’ chanting, and he looked up at the moons. Swan wings lifted and circled. Whatever happened, Thiercelin was sure to lose tonight. He looked again at Yvelliane and felt cold. She should not be here. It was too dangerous.

Wind gusted, setting the pennants flying, making the torches gutter. He wrapped his cloak more closely and looked back at the priests. They were moving into the second part of the rite. The congregation had drawn back. The wind was definitely growing stronger.

The torches went out. Wind clutched and tugged, hats went flying, robes flapped. Thiercelin crouched against his sheltering wall. One priest cried out as water from the bowl he held blew out over his hands and arms, burning.

There was a pounding all around, like wings, like water falling. The senior priest stepped back as the air before him filled with feathers. Over the sanctuary came a thunder of wings. White feathers shredded and fell. For a moment it seemed that the moons fell, swan-wise. Then the form coalesced to hang over the sanctuary, neither bird nor man, feral eyes, strong bones, great white wings.

The Armenwy. Thiercelin struggled to his feet, clutching at his side. His blood trickled through his fingers and splashed onto the stone of the parapet. Some of the priests had fallen to their knees. Beyond them the prince consort stood, looking upward.

Urien spoke. The tongue was one Thiercelin had never heard, smooth cadences like wings rising over a wind. There was something permanent to it, solid as the stone under his hand. The water went quiet. From somewhere below, light flashed. Urien threw back his head and cried out to the moons. The tower began, very slightly, to shake. Urien hung silver in the moons’ light, mist rising about him, deep, luminescent. The great wings beat and struggled, and bonds sought to form about them. Forgetful of his own weakness, Thiercelin took a step forward, reaching for a sword he was not carrying. Urien spoke again, and the mist crouched back. The top of the tower went silent save for the beating of wings.

Thiercelin looked at the consort and saw he was not watching Urien. Thiercelin turned his own head and bit back a cry. Yvelliane stood on the very edge of the roof, head flung up to the night. Valdarrien was beside her, dark, forbidding. To her throat, he held a sword.

Blood binds . . . Gracielis had told him and Urien over and over again that old tale of Yestinn Allandur, and a sacrifice. Thiercelin stumbled forward, almost blind, unable to call out. Light ran like oil down Valdarrien’s blade as it twisted and turned black under his hands. Yvelliane’s neck turned dark, and her body jerked backward. Thiercelin was too far away even to hear if she cried out. He reached out to her anyway, and fell to his knees on the stone, jarring the breath from him. Behind him Urien’s voice rose again.

There was a crack like thunder. Suddenly all the torches sprang back to life.

The precincts of the Old Temple were silent. From within the buildings came the low glow of candlelight, the susurration of voices at prayer. In this holy space, the mist lay thinner, yet its fronds still swirled and licked at lintels and sills. Miraude hurried them across the courtyard and along a cloister to a door behind the main temple. She tried the handle, found it locked. From behind her, Joyain said, “Maybe we should just go into the shrine. The priests would shelter us.”

Kenan had come here, and it had been in some way important to him. She was certain of that. Kenan was involved, somehow, in the disasters that threatened her city. Miraude said, firmly, “We have to go on.”

“But a tunnel . . .” Joyain sounded uncertain. “It could easily be damp, after all this rain. It could be as dangerous as the streets.”

“But narrower. Hold my torch for a moment.” Miraude tried the door again. Its frame was old and soft. If she leaned a little and lifted . . . There. Wood creaked and splintered close to the edge of the lock. She lifted up on the lock itself and pushed: the tongue eased free of its socket and the door swung open. Valdarrien had shown her the trick years ago, during one of his rare visits to her during their engagement. She had been a child, back then, no more than ten and not strong enough, but she had remembered. “It only works on old locks, mind you,” he had said, tugging on one of her plaits, “but it’s good for stables and old gates and suchlike.” She took her torch back from Joyain.

He said, “Should we . . . ?”

“Yes. Come on.” She thought she could retrace the route down to the undercroft. It was cold, in here. Somewhere, she could hear water running. Their footsteps were loud in the darkness. The air tasted acrid. She led them through corridors, into the cellars, picking her way between wine racks and rice vats into the broken undercroft. The stairs down into the oldest remains were slippery. The closer they came to the clan hall, the older and sourer the air became. The torches were once again growing blue. Joyain coughed, making her jump. The darkness clung to them, sticky and hindering.

A chill pinkish light played around the entrance to the clan hall: the water sound was thunderous. She had been right: this place mattered. Joyain’s hand closed on her arm. She looked up at him. His face was gray. She said, “We have to . . . Kenan came here.” His fingers tightened for an instant, and then he released her. She inhaled slowly and stepped through. She had to see this through. She had been complicit, after all, in bringing Kenan here in the first place.

Yvelliane would have counseled caution. Yvelliane was not here. There was no one here, save her and Joyain. She had no special skills, neither the ancient knowledge that Kenan chased nor the erudition of the missing scholar. She was all there was. Torch held high, she followed the pink glow along the rock passage and out into the main cavern. Joyain followed her, his breath warm and reassuring on her nape. The light wavered, ebbing and flowing with the water-beat from behind the walls. All across the cavern floor extended a fine network of channels, running red. She stepped back into Joyain, felt his hand close over her shoulder. Blood . . . It could not be blood, that made no sense. Although the scholar was missing and Kenan . . . She could believe that Kenan would kill, if it served him. Joyain said softly, “A net of fire . . . I saw this, I saw Lelien.”

It was not fire; it was tainted water. She turned to tell him, but he was already striding past her. She said, “I don’t . . .”

“Fire and water . . .” Joyain stopped at the edge of the pattern and looked back at her. “We have to break it. Fire and earth and water . . .” He switched his torch to his left hand and drew his sword. “We have to burn it. Do you still have your lamp oil?”

“Yes.” She came to stand beside him.

“I’m going to cut the sides of the channels. I want you to throw the lamp oil over the edge and set fire to them.” He smiled at her. “On the count of three.”

Gracielis was stone. All around him water clutched and dragged. He closed himself against it, falling through the chains. They tangled, weaving to catch him, but he was not there, he was below them, under their moving weight, still, unyielding, stone. He had lost all sense of Quenfrida. He could feel only himself and the water. No anger there, no need for revenge (unless in Quenfrida herself, wherever she might be). He reached out under it and found the bore, moon-drawn to the sea. Too fast, too hard. It would rock Merafi to her knees. Gracielis paused, then reached out into the heart of it, for the bindings that turned the natural into the monstrous.

About him the water changed its color. He could see nothing, yet he felt it. As blind as he was, the river neither assisted nor resisted while Merafi’s life bled into it. He followed the change, found more stone and a great cacophony of wings.

The bindings were dissolving. Hallowed under two moons, the river began to pull free of living control. Quenfrida had woken it; now it evaded her. He felt out into that winged thunder and tasted blood. Not the blood that pooled in the water, but something more familiar. He had knelt on the quay, hands slick with blood, and defended Thiercelin . . . Slick with Thiercelin’s blood . . .

A promise. And Thiercelin was with him. Stone-careful, Gracielis opened his eyes to the river-world and reached for the first of the bindings.

The water was dark with blood. It resisted as he wove into it the new covenant, but the will behind its resistance was alien. Gracielis held to his bonds, reached into the stillness that was Urien. Resistance warped and melted; briefly, he was aware of Quenfrida. Her face was covered but her hands were turning translucent. Strengthened by Urien, Gracielis cut her from her working, using the knife edge of Allandurin blood. The river began to turn back where it belonged, sleep renewed by the willing sacrifice.

The clans had fought for identity against their changing, dreaming land, and found the power to achieve it latent in their own blood. Yvelliane’s was as mixed as Gracielis’ own, Allandurin at heart, but mingled through the generations with many other lines. They were all there, all the people of Merafi, working through his weaving to lay their river to rest. He could hear them, light and serious, weak and strong, brave and lost, and clinging. Coiled amid them was a part of the river-force itself, once briefly manifest as Valdarrien, brought by choice to desire quiescence.

Gracielis held his hands out over the waters and felt them subside. He found Quenfrida, then, caught in the ebb, and reached out for her. Her blue eyes were gone to water. His hands passed through her as the power lashed back upon her and drained her away. Upriver, the bore contracted into its proper path.

Across Merafi the waters began to subside, leaving streets chaotic with mud and debris. The bore reached the place where the channels split, and poured along its accustomed course, washing away the last of shantytown.

In the ancient hall, Miraude cried out in surprise as the channels on the floor flamed, crisped, and faded. Beside her, Joyain leaned on his sword, gasping. On the temple roof the torches flickered and danced. In the sanctuary crouched a naked man, his gray hair drenched. The floor beneath his feet was carpeted with swan feathers. Another man lay unconscious on the iron of the Dancing Bridge.

Crouched against the parapet, Thiercelin of Sannazar covered his face with his dirty hands and wept.

24

T
HE WATERS PULLED AWAY from the city, drawing the mist after them. For a day or two Merafi was still, holding its breath against a new catastrophe. Two nights passed, clear and calm. No new cases of sickness were reported. Cautiously the remaining inhabitants stepped out to assess the damage. Small groups formed on street corners to exchange tales. Here, a woman scrubbed mud from her floors. There, a bakery relit its ovens. There was very little looting. Perhaps the Merafiens were too pleased to meet others to want to take advantage. Perhaps they were simply relieved to have survived. Distant acquaintances helped one another with repairs; strangers housed the displaced as guests and friends. Venturing down to army headquarters, Joyain found it staffed by a motley assortment of city watch, royal infantry, and fragments of other companies. The ranking officer was a major of dragoons whom he had never seen before. Presenting the letter he had brought with him from the palace, he waited for the major’s reaction. He had abandoned his post and lost his uniform.