Stargate (44 page)

Yet under all this was a mystery, a sea of things unknown. Sometimes Yarne seemed like an object caused to move and speak, smile and laugh, and between these things to be shut off, like the closing and opening of a gate. He seemed to feel neither heat nor cold, and when the snow fell and Chilka shivered at the desk, he would be garbed in a thin, sleeveless white tunic, and his feet on the stone would be bare. Yet when he touched his slave in affection or gentle remonstrance, his long fingers were always cold. He was a man, Chilka reflected, without emotions, save the slight ripples of convention. Chilka knew that he must know Yarne, that it was important to pierce to the heart that caused the steady flicker in the white throat, but it often occurred to him that perhaps within Yarne there was nothing.

He worked and watched and was unaware that he also waited. He cooked and served, washed Yarne's clothes and made his bed, mixed his inks and took his notes. Twice a day the tiny bell would send out its polite summons, and Yarne would tell him to tidy the room, leaving to climb the stair to its summit, where, under the ragged roof of the House, the Lady lived.

No one ever saw her, but she was everywhere. Nothing was done without reference to her. She dominated every conversation in the city and in the cells of the slaves. She was the subject of worship, conjecture, oath-making, and fear. Sometimes Chilka would go to the door to watch his master run lightly up the stair, and to peer into the shadows that always seemed to lie inside the great summit spires of the House, but though he often saw the vast double doors open to admit Yarne, he caught no glimpse of the hand that swung them inward.

Ishban by day was endlessly fascinating to Nenan. He and Chilka explored it from wall to gate and back again, the only slaves within the House to be given that privilege. But a restlessness had begun in Nenan, growing with his increasing fear of Ishban's haunted nights, and one evening in their cell he asked Chilka diffidently, “Father, isn't it time we went back to the mountains? You can run away anytime you choose, you know you can. Have you done what you came back for?”

Why did I come back? Chilka wondered. Wings, bells, and a Gate. I promised Yarne that I would not hurt him again. But is it worth leaving Lallin to wait uncomprehendingly for me and allowing my son to grow to manhood in Ishban? What am I waiting for? He shrugged and managed a wry smile. “I do not think so,” he said. “I'm not sure.”

Nenan's face mirrored frustration, anger. “Perhaps it is a cunning lie,” he whispered. “Perhaps they have put a spell on you, these past six years, so that no matter how you try, you can never tear Ishban out of your essence. Can the two-minds drug the essences of their slaves with words? Are fear and hatred themselves drugs? I have come to feel both. You were right. Ishban is a mirage, a vision just out of reach of my understanding. I am beginning to doubt my own memories.”

“So am I.” Chilka tried to smile. “I know I have been on Shol all my life. I know I have a wife in the mountains who still waits for me with a damning patience. But sometimes I am equally sure that I only came to Shol last summer and I have an overlord on Danar who paces by my empty body and peers into his mirror at a Gate that is no longer there.” He sighed and lay on the bed. “Perhaps I am mad, but there is something within me that compels me to see my madness through to its end. I must wait, Nenan.”

Nenan scowled. “You showed me visions on the mountain, and then I believed. But visions fade with time, and now I only want to go home.” He sat on the floor, prepared to argue, but saw that his father had fallen asleep.

In the morning Yarne sent for Chilka. He climbed the stairs that seemed to hang suspended over the terrifying void of the hollow-House and knocked on the little door, hearing Yarne's permission to enter as he swung it open. He had not slept well. He had dreamed vividly and frighteningly of nothingness, of the space between the stars, black and awesomely empty, and his dream came back to him as he advanced into the room. No sunlight fell through the straight, thin windows. The sky was sullen and heavy with unshed snow. Yarne stood by the window, lit palely, and Chilka fancied that the wanness of the day had somehow entered the blue-tinged skin and dulled the sparkling eyes.

“I have ordered our notes,” Yarne said. “Today we will begin a discussion on the scrap of poem that was found in the jar. I am tired of the book. I don't want to see it today.”

Chilka was shocked. The book was Yarne's family, his lover, his friend. “Very well,” he said and moved to the desk, uncovering the ink and picking up a pen. Clean paper lay before him. He lifted the mantle of the lamp and lit it and then sat waiting. The moments ticked by. Yarne still gazed abstractedly out the window, and presently a few flakes of snow drifted past his set face, gray and silent. Chilka noticed that he wore a white cloak, and his feet were booted. Then Yarne spoke, still without turning his head.

“I had a dream last night,” he said. “I have never dreamed before. I dreamed that I was dead, that I was not immortal, that I had died a thousand times, over and over. My life was a thousand lives, all the same, and at the end, a thousand deaths, all the same. I dreamed a great nothingness, out among the stars. I dreamed of you.” Then he turned, and Chilka saw that he was shivering under the thick warmth of the cloak. “I dreamed of you,” he repeated, leaning wearily against the window frame, his face no longer in shadow but yellow in the lamp's glow. “You were the book, and the book was you, out there where there is no life, only black nothingness. Tell me, Chilka, what is it like to die?”

The snow was falling faster, swirling with a faint hiss against the window. Chilka felt his mouth go dry. “I did not die, Yarne. I have told you. I was only deeply wounded.”

Yarne sighed. “You are the only one who believes so,” he said, his words slow and inexact. “When I woke, I was oppressed by the nothingness of my dream. I tried to fill it with memories, but I do not remember a father or mother, a childhood in the mountains, as some say I had, or a house other than this House. There are only my sister and I, forever. I am a nothingness, Chilka. I am a mystery even to myself.”

There was a lonely vulnerability about the youth that tugged at Chilka's heart. “Did you tell your sister the dream?”

Yarne smiled wanly. “I did. She said nothing for a long time. She just looked at me. And then she asked me about you.” Chilka's heartbeat quickened. He laid down the pen but kept silent. “She spoke sharply to me. I had to tell her all I have learned of you since you first stood before me in your chains.”

“It was only a dream, Yarne,” Chilka said gently. “In sleep the mind wanders, that is all, and today it is cold and gray. Tomorrow the sun will shine on the snow, and you will have forgotten this thing.”

But Yarne was looking at him through narrowed eyes. “I have already forgotten everything,” he replied hoarsely. “I have no memories, Chilka. Only the book and my sister thread my life together. Today, for the first time, I wish the rumors that I was a one-mind stolen from the mountains to be my Lady's kin were true. I wish you were my father and Nenan my brother.”

“But you have a sister who is the most powerful woman in the world,” Chilka reminded him, his heart still tripping and racing in his chest. “You are loved, Yarne.”

Yarne turned away so that his face was hidden. “Though she and I go on forever,” he said forlornly, “I do not think she loves me.”

Something strong and familiar began to stir in Chilka. “Tell me what she is like.”

The stillness of death fell on Yarne. Chilka waited for the odd moment to pass. When it did, Yarne put one curved finger against the pane and followed the erratic path of a stray snowflake. Suddenly Danarion, half-blind and somnolent behind the wall of Chilka's mind, which had been strengthening so rapidly over the months, saw that the finger's passage left no trail of warmth to melt the frost on the pane. Who are you? he shouted silently, struggling to push aside Chilka's thoughts. Chilka resisted stubbornly, fighting to hold to the reality of a wound, a healing that had left him dislocated in mind, while Danarion, with all his powers, strove to give substance to the truth. No, Chilka, he said emphatically within himself. You are dead. Nothing is left but memories that have no life of their own. Your mind is fostering a delusion of vitality you no longer have. You walk without limbs on the Mountain of Mourning. All your emotions, all your thoughts come from the past. You cannot make them new anymore.

“What she is like.” Yarne repeated Chilka's words tonelessly and then took his finger away from the pane. “She is beautiful. She touches me, and I am young again. She …” He shrugged helplessly. “She is.”

She
is. Danarion cut savagely at Chilka's last despairing, self-delusions. She is who, she is what? She is the key. He rose and went to Yarne, taking the head between his hands, forcing the eyes to meet his own. As always, the flesh was cold and dead to the touch. “Yarne, I want to see her. Take me to her.” Looking into those pale blue eyes was like peering into space itself, like standing on the lip of the universe before launching himself through a Gate. Yarne withdrew himself from Chilka's grasp, and with a consciousness of deepening mystery Danarion realized that he could not influence Yarne by an imposition of the will.

“No, I cannot, unless she wants to see you,” Yarne said. “Very few mortals have ever seen her face. If you have a petition, take it to the judges or tell me. I thought we were friends, Chilka.”

“I have told you that we are.” Danarion had moved away from the white-clad figure. “But you are unhappy. The Lady spoke sharply to you when you wanted comfort. Why did she do that?” He had gentled his tone, and Yarne managed a brief smile.

“I suppose that I made her angry with my dream.”

“Do you think that something in the dream made her afraid?”

Yarne stared at him, uncomprehending. “Nothing can make her afraid. You do not understand about her. She is like me. She feels nothing beyond the small movements of convention. But last night…” He shuddered and plucked his cloak more tightly around him. “Last night I knew fear. It was my fear that made her angry.”

And insecure? Danarion wondered silently. He closed his eyes in defeat. There were riddles within riddles here. “Perhaps if you and I went to her together…”

“Why?” Yarne swung from the window, and his boots clicked on the stone floor as he gestured toward the desk and began to pace, one hand raised. “We will work now. I should not have told you of my dream. It was a foolish thing to do. Sit and write my words.”

Danarion did as he was told, and while Chilka moved the pen over the pristine paper he retreated behind the Sholan and began to consider ways of reaching the Lady who dwelt like the Lawmaker himself, alone and unapproachable.

The morning wore on. Several times Yarne ceased his musings and came to the desk, asking to have read back to him what had been written. Each time Danarion watched him closely, the pulse in his throat, the empty eyes, the breath of cold as he leaned toward him.

Noon came, and Danarion's preoccupied glance strayed to the small silver knife used for slicing paper which was lying under the lamp's steady flame. He picked it up and made a show of drawing a sheaf toward him. Yarne paused and came to the desk. “Seeing you have come to the end of the page, we can stop here,” he said. “My sister will be sending for me soon.” He put out a hand, and Danarion swiftly changed his grip on the knife and drew it savagely across the unlined palm. He sprang up, ready words of excuse and apology on his lips, but they died unspoken. Yarne did not so much as flinch. He looked at his palm, flexed the fingers, and smiled. “You will have to sharpen it again if you want it to cut paper,” he said calmly. Danarion stared back at him. The wound was ugly, a bone-deep gash from wrist to forefinger, but it did not bleed. The lips were dry where they had parted, and the flesh within was purple. Yarne drew the fingers of his other hand across it, and before Danarion's startled gaze it closed, leaving no scar. “Don't look so terrified, Chilka,” Yarne said affectionately. “It was my fault for getting between knife and paper. No harm is done.”

Far down in Chilka's body Danarion felt his fire dim. Small things impressed themselves vividly upon his consciousness: the sound of the snow hissing against the window, the lamplight pooling like a golden net on Yarne's long hair, the rustle of paper under Chilka's shaking hand. Yarne was not mortal, for there was no blood in his delicate blue veins. He was not immortal, for he had not prevented the knife from piercing his skin, nor did he have the golden blood of the sun-people. The beat of his throat, so strong, so indicative of the warm, dark runnels of life Danarion knew so intimately in Chilka's own body, was a sham, a deception. For Danarion knew what Yarne was. He was a dead man, a corpse like those rotting on the Mountain of Mourning, and whatever inhabited him was no longer human. “I dreamed that I was dead,” he had said, “that I had died a thousand times, over and over …” Danarion's eyes dropped to the knife. It was clean and dry. He released it, and it fell against the lamp with a tinkle. Yarne continued to stand motionless, the sympathetic smile still fixed on his exquisitely formed mouth, and the silence in the room deepened as Danarion searched his own vast knowledge with a reckless speed that bordered on panic. What are you?

Then from some invisible shadow the bell chimed, sweet and loud. Yarne reached out and laid a hand on Chilka's. “Go and eat with your son,” he said. “I must go also. Don't forget to cover the ink. I will see you in two hours.” He went out, the cloak brushing the floor with a soft swish, the boots clicking. Danarion looked at the knife again, and it seemed to grin up at him with insolence. Unsteadily he walked to the window and, opening it, leaned out, letting the tart, cold air rush over him. Snow settled eagerly on his black hair and began to sift against his shirt. He could see nothing of the city sprawled out below him, but every sound was magnified in the cold air. I have never seen him eat, he thought suddenly. Like us he has no need of food. I prepare it and go away, and when I return, the dishes are scoured. Something else sustains that body. Something powerful forces life through the ancient limbs, moves the tongue to speech, lights whatever memory is left, but whatever it is, it does not operate as I do in Chilka. Not with compassion.