Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (30 page)

Suddenly a shimmer of bright laughter flitted through the tunnel, past the boat and away into the distance. The voices of people celebrating the beginning of the hunting season ... and Indigo heard, blending with them, the distant, ethereal strains of a harp. The music and the laughter were gone so quickly that she had no chance to react, let alone to call out the names that came to her lips, names from a happier time and a happier place. She was tensed, half risen from the narrow bench seat and straining in an effort to catch the last faint echoes, when from somewhere ahead, another voice, a new voice, sang her name.

“Indigo...”

Indigo dropped back onto the seat, her legs nerveless. She knew that voice.

“Indigo ...”

She stared into the dark, but nothing moved there. Yet the voice was so
familiar
.

“Indigo.” And then, in a tongue that was neither her language nor that of the Dark Isle, “Don’t you remember me, Indigo?”

Anguished, she looked at the Ancestral Lady, serene and unmoved in the stern. “Who is it? In the Mother’s name, tell me,
who is it
?”

The black lips smiled, but without feeling. “Look and see.”

Indigo turned. Ahead, a cold, white light had appeared, slanting onto the water like a moonbeam shining through a window. It spilled onto the surrounding rock, and she hissed, feeling an icy shudder go through her as she saw that the tunnel’s wall, like the walls of the terrible catacomb through which she had walked with Shalune and Inuss, was filled with the bones of a hundred, a thousand, a million dead. But even their grisly, empty-eyed skulls, their clawing hands, their twisted, fused skeletons, weren’t enough to stop her stunned gaze from focusing on what lay at the heart of the shining glow.

The light emanated from a niche in the wall. The niche was arched, and large enough to accommodate, if not a man, then at least a child. As the boat inexorably drew closer, Indigo saw that there was indeed a child standing there: a girl perhaps ten or eleven years old, golden-haired, honey-skinned, smiling and holding out rounded, smooth-skinned arms.

“Dear Indigo.” Oh, but she knew that sweet voice now; she would never, ever forget it. “Don’t you remember your
beba-mi
?”

Jessamin. The Takhan’s daughter, darling of the great city of Simhara, the child bride of Augon Hunnamek—

“No!” Indigo turned her head away violently. “No, I won’t look at—at
that
!”

Behind the figure of Jessamin another voice began to scream, and a sinuous shape writhed in the nacreous light, like something dimly seen through water. Still smiling, still reaching out, the small and lovely figure fell behind, and as the screaming faded away, the Ancestral Lady spoke.

“What are you afraid of, Indigo?”

Afraid? No, it wasn’t fear; it was revulsion, the revulsion of seeing those old, dead memories restored to a parody of life. But it seemed that the memories weren’t done with her yet, for another light had appeared ahead now, another window in the black wall. This radiance was fainter and warmer, like the glow of a dimmed and shaded lamp, and the silent, frozen skulls that crowded about the arch were nothing more than a half-glimpsed fancy. But in the niche there was a tableau that made a cry of pain catch in Indigo’s throat. Four people—two men, a woman and a boy—stood grouped around a bed in attitudes of sorrow, while in the bed another man lay white-faced and unmoving. He was dead—Indigo knew he was dead, she
knew
it, she had seen his corpse—but she knew the others, too. Dead; all dead. How could they have come to life again, to grieve for their kinsman.
How
?

One of the mourners, a man older than his companions, raised his head. As though he had heard the gentle sound of the boat passing by, he looked around, looked directly at Indigo. No glimmer of recognition showed in his sad face, but then the girl at his side also looked up, also saw. As her gaze and Indigo’s met, she smiled a small, knowing and triumphant smile of sweet hatred. Then, shockingly, her eyes turned a vivid sapphire blue—and, echoing through the tunnel, shuddering through Indigo’s marrow, the challenging roar of a snow tiger rang faintly on the murky air and was gone.

The boat glided onward. This time Indigo didn’t hide her face but stared at the receding tableau until it was lost from sight. Only then did she look up at the shadowed figure of the Ancestral Lady.

“Why are you showing me these things?” she demanded hoarsely.

The white arms continued their smooth movement, the oar rustled in the water. Then: “I am showing you nothing. You see only what anyone might see within my realm ... or within their own mind.”

“But it isn’t the truth! That ... that
travesty
,” she gestured back toward the now invisible tableau, “is a lie. It didn’t happen, not in that way!”

The Ancestral Lady didn’t trouble to reply to this, and, seething with frustration, Indigo turned her back once more, peering into the darkness but able to see nothing beyond the witchlight’s feeble glow. For a while nothing more happened, and the silence became oppressive; she could feel the tunnel closing about her, closing in, claustrophobic and suffocating. Inside her, a small voice asked over and again,
What next
? and though she tried to silence it, knowing it was insidious and dangerous, it persisted. What next? Whose ghost would come out of the dark to haunt her now?
Whose
?

Then suddenly she was all but flung from the seat as something huge and invisible buffeted through the tunnel, struck her and went whirling away astern. As it passed, she heard a cry of agony, a man’s voice, and blending with it, a woman’s dying shriek.

She knew them
—

“No! Father, Mother—”

Something laughed in the blackness ahead, and acrid smoke caught in her throat and lungs.
Burning
—the shadow of a great building burning was flung across the walls, and behind the shadow she could see the flames like serpents rising high above crumbling towers, hear the roar and crackle of stone and wood collapsing into the inferno. Then the illusion was gone, though the afterimage still danced before her eyes, and instead, another bright window opened in the wall and she saw a sad procession, three biers draped with indigo cloths and crowned with wreaths of leaves; not the lush, brash greenery of the Dark Isle, but the sage and lovat and crimson and mellow gold that clothed the trees of a southern autumn. At the head of the biers walked an old man with blind eyes, and a harp held in his arms; he was playing and singing, but Indigo could hear no sound save the bitter moan of a polar wind.

The soundless, moving images fell behind. And then a new voice called out of the dark, and at the sound of it, the last dregs of color drained from Indigo’s face. Her hands gripped the gunwale, so hard that a sliver of wood splintered away and gouged her palm. Unaware of it, unconscious of the pain as blood trickled over her fingers, her muscles locked and a cry burst uncontrollably from her throat.

“No! No, please! Don’t show me, don’t let me see her!
I don’t want to see her
!”

“Anghara! My poppet, my sweeting, my little princess!” The voice, so familiar, so dearly loved, trembled with grief and confusion as it cried out Indigo’s old name, her true name, which she had abandoned so long ago. “Where are you, Anghara? I can’t find you!”

The Ancestral Lady said remotely: “She is searching for you, Indigo. Are you too afraid to call to her?”

“Where is my sweeting?” the voice wailed, breaking with emotion. “Come to me, dear one; come you to me, I beg you! Oh, Great Mother; bring her back. Bring her back to her loving Imyssa, and I will never let her go again.”

“
Imyssa
!” Indigo could bear it no longer; loyalties and longings that she had learned to silence for half a century overwhelmed her, and she screamed her old nurse’s name into the darkness. As the tunnel hurled her voice back in a shattering volley of echoes, a bright halo sprang to life above the water, and a figure took form within its ring of light.

Imyssa, her nurse and her protector and her mentor, held out withered arms, and the small eyes, as bright and as dark as a robin’s, shone like stars.

“My poppet! My sweeting princess, my own, my little one! Oh, where are you?”

Indigo got to her feet, careless of the boat’s sudden, wild rocking. “I’m here, Imyssa. I’m here. I live!”

The old eyes darted, their gaze flicking this way and that. “Only let me see her once before I go to the Mother. Only tell me that she didn’t die! Only tell me—”

“Imyssa!”

Sick horror flooded through Indigo as she realized that the nurse could neither see nor hear her, and she turned furiously on the Ancestral Lady. “In the Mother’s name, have you no compassion? Why do you torment her—and why do you torment me?”

The dark figure shook its head solemnly. “Mortals create their own torment, Indigo; I do not inflict it on them.”

The Lady looked at the bright halo. The boat was approaching it, close now, and her expression took on a hint of reflective, but still utterly detached, interest. “She lost her mind before she came to me. Grief and remorse are powerful forces, and she never ceased to believe that she might have saved you. At the end, that brought about the final breakdown of her sanity.”

The phantom of Imyssa was sobbing now, wringing her hands, and as the ring of light drew nearer, Indigo saw with shock how dreadfully the old nurse had changed before death claimed her. Age had taken its toll, yes; but the depth of the lines on her face, the darkness of the shadows beneath her eyes, spoke of ravages far worse than simply those of the passing years. If only, Indigo thought despairingly, if only she could reach Imyssa, make her see, make her understand—

“Imyssa!” She was still on her feet in the prow, and now she stretched outward and upward to the phantom, trying to reach the clenching, twisting hands within their bright halo. “Imyssa, hear me. See me.
I am alive
!”

The boat entered the oval of light. Radiance spilled across Indigo’s face and hands, across the Ancestral Lady’s impassive figure. Indigo felt the slightest of tingling sensations as for one moment she almost—but not quite—touched the nurse’s gnarled fingers, and then the phantom of Imyssa floated through her, past her, and, still sorrowing, was gone.

Indigo began to tremble. Her limbs shook as though she had a palsy; her body quivered with a desire to weep or scream or rage—she didn’t know which, but it hardly mattered, for she couldn’t express what she felt; she hadn’t the power to give it release. She sagged down onto the bench once more, trying to regain her self-control. But that too was impossible, for her mind was keyed up like a cat in a trap, waiting for the next vision to swim out of the dark ahead, and dreading what it might be.

The boat sailed on, and there was silence but for the steady rhythm of its progress. Indigo’s senses were strained to a painful pitch, and the tension grew worse, until she was almost aching with anticipation of what might come. At last she could bear it no longer. She turned about, her eyes filled with anger and pain, and looked at the Ancestral Lady.

“Was that the sum of your challenge, madam?” she asked savagely. “Am I to presume that you have done your worst?”

The Lady’s calm expression didn’t alter. “No. I have done nothing. You’ve simply seen a little of your own past, Indigo, and that is gone now and so has no relevance. The demon lies ahead of you ... if you can find it. Are you still prepared to continue with your search by this route?”

Indigo’s shaking and shivering was receding now; with no further apparitions to haunt her, she was beginning to regain her self-control. “Yes,” she said through tightly clamped teeth.

There was a rustle, like old silk stirring, and the rhythm of the sculling oar altered fractionally. “Very well,” the Ancestral Lady said emotionlessly. “Then what must be done shall be done. And when it is over and you have admitted defeat, I trust you will remember that the consequences were of your own choosing.”

Suddenly she dug the oar deep. The boat slued violently, changing tack, and Indigo was thrown sharply to one side. She struggled upright, an oath on her lips—then froze as she saw a shape darker than the water loom out of the gloom ahead. A tongue of land, whether a small island or a peninsula of some larger mass, she couldn’t tell. A translucent white shimmer showed where the current eddied against a small shale beach, and the underworld river divided to flow past the low-lying mass in two narrow channels.

The boat nosed toward the beach and grounded. Indigo stared past the dim witchlight at the prow. The land ahead rose a mere few feet above the water. It was bare, barren, not so much as a blade of grass to be seen. Nothing moved there, and indigo looked back at the Lady once more.

“You want me to alight?”

A veil of shadow passed across the dead-white face as the Lady inclined her head. “Yes. We can travel no farther together on the water.”

Indigo rose and stepped over the boat’s side. The shale was sharp and cold beneath her feet; she advanced five paces or so up the beach before the sound of water shifting made her turn.

The Ancestral Lady had used her long oar to push the boat free, and it was slowly drifting clear of the beach. The Lady stood in the stern, looking back.

“It is time for me to leave you,” she said. “From now on, you must face your trials alone.”

Indigo glanced over her shoulder at the dark land. “How long am I to remain here?”

The black lips curled in a thin, mocking smile. “Oh, your journey is ended. What comes now will come to you without your needing to seek it. And when it comes, and when you have named it, then you will call out to me and I shall answer.”

Her tall figure leaned toward the boat’s prow and plucked the tiny witchlight from its anchoring place. “My parting gift,” the Lady said, and she cast the witchlight toward Indigo, where it fell in the shale at her feet. “Take good care of it, for it won’t last long. Good-bye, my oracle—for the present. I hope you are ready for what faces you now.”

As Indigo crouched down to retrieve the light, the boat began to move away. The oar dipped rhythmically and the sound of its sculling in the water echoed with a flat, dreary sound. Then the darkness engulfed it, and Indigo was alone.