Noman (8 page)

"Where are they?" he said.

Pelican meant to resist but found he could not.

"In the tower," he said.

Seeker knew now that his long hunt was over. The last two savanters had nowhere left to run. Mere stone walls could not stand in his way.

He drew one long deep breath that made all his body vibrate. Then he raised both his hands and pointed his fingers at the tower. The air before him turned dark. A stream of pure force flowed from the tips of his fingers.

The stone wall of the tower shuddered and cracked open. A cloud of dust belched out of the gaping hole. The cracking and tumbling of falling masonry filled the air. Then out of the dust came the figure of a woman in black.

She came slowly, walking with great difficulty, a stick in each hand: a stooping, frail old lady.

Seeker began to move once more, slowly now, his eyes locked on to her aged eyes. She came to a stop and waited for him.

Cheerful Giver and his family looked on with jaws agape, as did Pelican and all the others in the Haven. This was not their battle. There were powers at large here that were beyond their understanding.

When he was close, the old lady spoke to Seeker, her voice as thin and frail as her body.

"You don't know what you do," she said.

"I do what I must," said Seeker.

It had already begun, the conflict of wills. Neither struck a blow. They held each other's eyes and fought for domination, mind over mind.

"You have strength, boy," said the old lady, "but no love."

Seeker said nothing. Little by little he was overwhelming the savanter. The proud spirit within that aged body was bending before him. He was the hunter. With each day that had passed since he had begun his hunt he had grown stronger. Now nothing and no one could resist his power.

Seeker felt no joy, no pride. This was what he had been empowered to do. He was a destroyer. Now he would destroy.

The old lady uttered a small cry and tottered on her sticks. A look of terror distorted her deeply wrinkled face. Seeker did not relent. Slowly, helplessly, she slid to the ground, and lay there curled up on one side. For a few moments more she could be heard whimpering softly. Then she fell silent.

Seeker knelt down by her side to satisfy himself that all was truly over. He rolled her onto her back. Her eyes opened.

"No love," she hissed.

With that, her withered arms shot up and seized his head. She pressed her face to his lips and kissed his mouth. She held him with ferocious strength, and her kiss sucked at his face, and he could not shake her off. He struggled to break her grip, but even as he did so he could feel her face softening against his, losing its outline, melting into his. He thought her intention was to suffocate him, to fill his mouth and nostrils with her decomposing flesh, so that he would die, too. But then he felt her breath in his mouth and knew that it was more dangerous by far. She meant to live on within him.

He choked as he fought, and twisted his head from side to side, but she held fast. Now her face and his were fusing into one. If he were to tear her from him he would rip his own flesh from his skull. She was dying, he could feel the power draining out of her, but in the last moments of her dying she was binding herself to him forever.

He heard sounds ahead. Someone else was moving in the shattered tower. The last savanter. The final kill. Seeker knew then that he had very little time and only one way to release himself.

Let her in. Let her death feed on my life.

He released his grasping hands. He let go his resisting mind. He let her fall into him through the kiss, like one who loses their last prop. She had not expected it. She fell fast, and in falling, she loosed her grip on him. In this way she fell deep into him even as her withered body dropped away from him; and he found himself free once more, looking down at a lifeless, faceless corpse.

There came the grinding rumble of timber on stone, the snap of a boat's sail in the wind. Seeker jumped up and raced to the tower. He vaulted over the rubble of the breach he had himself made, then bounded through the ruins of an inner hall to a doorway beyond. Here the doors were open wide, giving onto a stone launch ramp that sloped steeply down to the sea. A small sailing boat was slicing into the water, the wind driving it rapidly from the shore. Beneath its sail Seeker saw a single litter, shrouded in a white canopy.

The last savanter.

In a rage of despair he poured his power into the water and caused the sea to seethe and boil. But all his anger served only to drive the boat farther out to sea; and great though his power was, the ocean was greater. His little storm was soon dispersed into that boundless immensity.

He watched the craft sail away out of his reach towards the far horizon, towards other lands, and a terrible desolation possessed him. His power had been given him for a single purpose, and he had failed.

Leave one alive and it will all begin again.

T
HE DAY WAS ENDING AS
M
ORNING
S
TAR AND HER LITTLE
band of spiker children took the hill road out of the village.

"Where are we going now?" said Burny.

"To find the happy people."

"I never seen any happy people," said Libbet.

Morning Star was puzzled and concerned for her parents. Her father never strayed far from his flock. But she had found the sheep on the hillside without a shepherd.

She had no way of knowing where they had gone, and so she was taking the road that led along the ridge of hills to the lowlands. She followed the long slanting track that climbed the flank of the last hill, panting now. Hem strode stolidly beside her, just half a pace ahead to show he was the leader, but glancing back from time to time to make sure he was leading in the right direction. Burny held tight to one of her hands, and little black-eyed Deedy held tight to the other.

Hem crested the brow first and came to a stop, staring down into the plains below. Morning Star joined him, with the rest of the children. They all looked in silent surprise at the scene now laid out before them in the light of the setting sun.

An immense crowd of people was gathering in the river valley. From all directions more groups of people could be seen making their way to join this crowd, so that it was growing all the time. These were not soldiers, or bandits. Even from this distance it was clear that the crowd was made up of women and children as much as men. From the crowd rose up the sound of singing and laughter.

"What's them all doing?" said Burny, tugging at Morning Star's hand.

"Don't know," said Morning Star. She was trying to read the aura of the great crowd. It was hard, because as the sun set, it sent streams of red light over the plains; but as far as she could make out, the crowd's color was rose pink, the color of happiness.

"Only one way to find out," she said. "Who's coming with me?"

"Me," said Burny.

"Me," said Deedy.

Hem, the leader, was already on the way down. So they all descended the steeply sloping hillside together.

The sun had set by the time they reached the fringe of the crowd, and fires were burning brightly. As they approached,
they were spotted by a stout middle-aged woman who had unpinned her long hair to let it fly wildly about her head. She hurried to meet them, arms spread wide, a great beam of welcome on her face.

"Joy!" she cried. "Joy to young and old! Share our joy!"

She embraced Morning Star as if they were long-lost friends.

"Thank you," said Morning Star, backing out of the embrace.

She gestured to the milling crowd.

"What is all this?"

"This! Don't you know?" The beaming lady gave a happy laugh and spun round and round, arms waving and hair flying. "This is the Joyous!"

"The Joyous?"

"The gift of the Beloved to all people! To you, and you, and you!"

She patted Libbet and Burny and Hem. Hem jerked back from her touch.

"Oh, you young separator!" cried the happy lady, wagging one finger at Hem. "I was just the same as you once. But the Beloved has shown us that separation is pain. Let go of your pain! Come to the Joyous!"

"Who is the Beloved?" said Morning Star.

"The Beloved?" The happy lady rolled her eyes upwards and clasped her hands to her chest, momentarily unable to put into words the intensity of her feelings. "The Beloved is our teacher and our guide. You must go to him—yes, and you, and all of you! Look on his dear beautiful face just once and you'll follow him for the rest of your life."

"Does he have a name?"

"A name? He is the Beloved. He is the Joy Boy."

With that, she ran dancing and skipping back to her own group, to be received with hugs and laughter.

"Funny in the head," said Libbet.

"Maybe," said Morning Star. "But she's not the only one."

They made their way deeper into the crowd, and on every side, clusters of people were holding hands and laughing. Many were dancing, linked in small rings of five or six, spinning round and round, their heads thrown back, kept from tumbling to the ground only by their clasped hands.

"Drunk," said Hem.

A sharp yap drew Morning Star's attention. She caught a flash of white between the legs of the crowd.

"Lamb!"

The dog came bounding towards her, wagging the whole back half of his body in his excitement at finding her. He sprang up, his front paws on her thighs, and made small squealing sounds of delight.

"Oh, Lamb! Are you drunk, too?" She rubbed his head and face with her hands and pressed her cheek to his wet nose. "Where are they? Where's Mama and Papa?"

Lamb understood her well. He scampered back through the crowd, and Morning Star followed, and after her trailed her train of small children. The dog led her to a circle of dancing people and came to a stop. Morning Star looked at the dancers as they whirled round and round.

One of them had something of the look of her father, Arkaty. She knew it could not be Arkaty because he was grinning like a lunatic and swinging his head from side to side as he danced in a way that her shy, grave father would never have done. But there in the middle of the circle was Amik, her father's sheepdog, her head on one side, looking disapproving. And the woman who had just danced by laughing so merrily looked very like her mother, Mercy. How could it be? What had happened to her gentle sadness?

Morning Star felt her face flush red with embarrassment. The spectacle was so undignified. She wanted to call out to them to stop. She wanted to shut her eyes and pretend she hadn't seen them.

Burny and Deedy, still holding her hands, were excited by the dance and started trying to mimic it. Morning Star refused to be spun round and round.

"But them's doing it," said Burny.

"I don't know what they're doing," said Morning Star.

"The joy dance," said a man standing nearby. "We all do it. You should try it."

"No, thank you," said Morning Star. "We're new here."

"You'll be meeting the Joy Boy soon, then. Once you've met the Joy Boy it'll all make sense to you."

The dance came to an end in a laughing tumble, with all the dancers hugging each other on the ground, Amik and Lamb running round them in circles, barking. Morning Star waited for her parents to emerge from the heap.

"Papa," she said reproachfully. "Mama."

They were astonished to see her, and unself-consciously delighted. They leaped to their feet and embraced her.

"Star!" they cried. "Share the joy!"

They seemed to feel no shame that she had watched their dance.

"What's happened to you, Mama?"

"We've found the Joyous! Oh, my darling, I'm so happy. And now you've found the Joyous, too!"

"You're drunk," said Hem.

"Yes, my friend," said Mercy with a ringing laugh. "Drunk on joy!"

Arkaty took his daughter's hand in his and held it, his eyes shining as he spoke.

"Your mother's sadness," he said. "All gone."

"Oh, my sadness!" Mercy laughed again. "The Joy Boy saw that for what it was as soon as he set eyes on me. Separation, of course. All gone now."

Morning Star wished she could be happy in this transformation, but the truth was it frightened her. She felt as if her real father and mother had been stolen away and replaced by these two laughing impostors.

"Papa," she said, "you've abandoned your flock. What are you doing here?"

"The old life is over," he said. "All gone now."

"But what will you do?"

"The same as everyone else." He swept his arms over the crowd. "We're all getting ready for the Great Embrace."

"What great embrace?"

"It's why the Joy Boy has come. Ask him and he'll make you understand."

"I want you to make me understand, Papa."

"It's the end of separation forever," said Mercy.

Arkaty took Morning Star's hands in his.

"You remember the nights we spent on the hillside, you and I?"

"Of course I do, Papa."

"You remember how we sat there holding hands under the rug, not talking, watching the dawn?"

"Yes, Papa."

She couldn't help it. Tears rose to her eyes as she remembered. They had been some of the happiest moments in her life.

"When the Great Embrace comes, it'll be like that for everyone, forever."

She shook her head. Those had been special times, just for the two of them.

"I don't want that," she said.

"You just don't feel it yet." He put his arms round her and held her close. "I didn't feel it at first. The Joy Boy will make you feel it."

Morning Star was quite sure this Joy Boy was a trickster and a fraud, and the more she was told how much she would love him, the more she hated him. But Burny was pulling at her tunic and complaining that he was hungry, and Deedy had started to cry.

"The poor darlings," said Mercy. "Take them to the long tables. Let them eat."

"I've no money," said Morning Star.

"Money!" Mercy laughed happily. "No money in the Joyous. Everything is given freely, out of love."

"Let's grab it quick, then," said Libbet, "before the others get it."