The Ordinary (28 page)

The box was beautiful, the wood intricately carved, fragrant with some scent that reminded her of the coast, a hint of salt spray and sweetness. She would find no lock and never bothered to look. For a long time, she simply lay her hands on the carving, the wood accepting her warmth into itself. After a time of study, she could make out the title hidden in the elaborate design; and along the borders of every plane of the box she recognized letters of the akana alphabet, the writing for the Malei, the language of the chant, which Malin had begun to learn.
Kirith Dav Kirin's Book of Our Days to Come,
said the writing. Nothing else.

She put the box in a chest of personal belongings, the key for which she kept herself. It was enough, for now, to have the book, to know what it was and where it was. No need yet to read it, to risk the danger of a sorrow that might be lifetimes away.

There should be a school for immortals, he would tell her. There should be a place to go to learn how to cope with time.

After all her old friends were dead, after everyone she loved, except Uncle Jessex, had passed beyond the mountains, after this happened more than once, more than twice, when the faces of those in the world began to appear more and more as flickering shadows, only then did she understand the long grind of living, the endurance of repetitions that became tedious, then maddening, then numbing, then absent. Faces would come, new friends would come, a person to whom she could speak, in whom she could invest friendship; the list was long, and too painful to recall, beyond those first friends and loved ones, Anli and Mother, Father and the King. The shyness that had consumed her childhood settled into reticence and distance with all whom she met, except those few who passed through the gates to her interior, to the place where she still lived, still searched for comfort. The number of these was never few in any generation, since it was her nature to show love, to receive affection, in private, but always there came an ending to everyone she loved, everyone she knew. So that, after a time, she loved a man or a woman as she loved a flower in spring, maybe more substantial, but equally mortal. In every face of every friend she saw the shadow of time, the wave of it passing through them, their faces growing to a moment of perfection, then sliding slowly toward the ground.

Only Uncle Jessex, mild and placid, grew never older or younger. At times she almost hated him for it. As if he were the cause of the death of all the rest.

Study offered her a purpose, the way of the Prin a release from the world, and she pursued the path with devotion. She learned the Malei, stood in the chant, in that space which was created by the music. However awkward she might be with her fellow chorists outside of the singing, she became perfectly herself in those moments, in the Great Songs of Moving, in the High Akanas of Being. As she moved upward in the ranks of the learned, she studied the Dissonances, Assonances, the Distortions, the Bend of Time, the River, the Last Song Coming, and, most difficult for her, the Tervan Symmetries, the mathematics that one sings, in order to manifest it.

By then, in the flow of the language spoken by mortals, the Jisraegen were called, as often as not, the Erejhen.

You must learn to adapt your speech as people around you adapt, Uncle Jessex told her. You have the capacity, you simply have to keep it fresh, by listening. Though you'll go through a time when that will seem a great burden.

By then, no one called him Jessex anymore. Even though he used the name in his book about the war, people had left off calling him by his human name once the King was gone. He was Yron, the divine sorcerer who stood in Ellebren Tower to move the weather, to govern the Oregal, to keep watch over all of Irion, the new name for Aeryn. Soon enough, his name became Irion, too, so that one could not speak of the country without speaking of him, the terror of children, antagonist of the Yneset, famous as the wizard who sent Drudaen the Raven into darkness, who saved Kirith Kirin from the Untherverthen, who conquered them with his magic, who ruled, now, all the peoples of Irion from the coast to the deepest reaches of the mountains, who kept Cunavastar in chains deep in the bowels of the earth, her sweet uncle who had walked her through his garden and explained patiently the names and habits of all the plants in it, who had taught her to sing Kithilunen, who had called her Mallie.

She came to Inniscaudra after a long absence. For days she had traveled, by carriage and horseback, with her retinue, the steward of her house, a few householders and her bodyguard. She traveled through old Arthen Wood, beneath the high canopy of tree branches that soared overhead layer on layer. As she drew near Illaeryn, she could feel her uncle and the power he was moving. By then she was fully Prin herself, holding a very high rank, and while she could not untangle the words in which her uncle did his work, she could feel the force of him. He must be serious. He meant to make a great change.

The country around the Three Hills teemed with traffic, though the road was clean and well kept, patrolled by horsemen wearing the new civil guard uniforms, much less elaborate than the older styles. She made her way among the carts and carriages on a horse she had bought in Moffis, a village south of the woodland. Animals rarely inspired real affection in her and so she had never grown fond enough of a horse to keep it close by, as her uncle did. Borrowed, bought, or rented horses suited her fine. Her party had stabled the carriage at her house in Teliar, preferring saddles for the northern routes where the roads could be rough. She found the travel disagreeable but had no second voice to help her sing them to their destination any faster. Nor was she in any particular hurry, once the feeling of foreboding had set in.

But now she was here and would learn what all these rumors were about. Her uncle, it appeared, was telling people he meant to change the sky.

She could feel his presence in the tower, had been aware of it for days, but now the sense of him was acute. The tower was one vast engine moving toward some end she could not fathom, the summit standing out starkly against the bare blue of the day. From where he stood, he would see in all directions, she could almost imagine it herself. As the horse carried her forward, she wished she might be up there with him, to feel whatever he was feeling, to know at least a part of what he knew.

Something was changing in her, too. She could feel it. After so many years, something new was coming.

He kept rooms for her here, always dedicated to her use, no matter how long she had been absent, and the House Steward who met her at the gate led her along the Falkri Road on horseback, accompanied by several liveried members of his own staff, something of a procession. Malin's riders started a song, something she had heard a good bit when she was a child, a drinking song from the North Fenax, “Harley the Del.” The bouncy melody made her smile; ahead of her, very erect, the back of the House Steward undulated this way and that with each motion of the horse.

Malin's thighs were sore and chafed; she let the pain stand without correction and endured it. Lately use of the chant to alleviate her own aches and pains had begun to feel uncomfortable, so that she had suffered the whole trip without using akana to ease her rest. The strain had told on her through the days and she could feel the weight of her own bones; she wanted to sink into a nice bed and maybe wake for a hot bath and wine whenever Uncle Jessex could see her. She left the horses and luggage to the people who were there to manage them and followed the House Steward into Evaedren, the Tower of the Twelve.

She had known these rooms, high and airy, bright with windows, the stonework lacy and light, since she was a child; whenever she came here she was reminded of her mother, who lingered like a ghost in the corners. When the House Steward withdrew she was alone, closing the doors quietly, opening the windows, taking a deep, long breath of the air, looking over the treetops of Illaeryn, the Three Hills glowing in the afternoon light. Late in the summer, the forest had a faded, tired look. Clouds had begun to gather over the mountains, and the wind changed to come from there.

Somewhere in that brightest part of the haze overhead was the sun, one of the four suns of the known sky, though on a cloudy day it could be hard to tell one from the other. Uncle would replace them with one sun and heavens that moved with the regularity of a clock; Uncle would do this because it was the destiny of the people of Irion to move beyond this world into the realm of worlds where all the skies moved like clocks. He had been hinting his plans in bits and pieces for a century or more.

This had something to do with the King's Book, something to do with what God herself had told the King about what was coming. Malin's copy of the book still rested safe in its sealed box; she kept it here, in her father's old rooms in Inniscaudra, locked in a safe in the room he had used as his study when he was visiting. The temptation to send for it, to try to open the book and read the pages, became acute, but she resisted, pacing the length of the room, listening to gusts of wind splash against the windows.

The sky was like an immense contraption, moving as precisely as the machines the Tervan made for keeping time or for digging in the deep places of the world. Could it be possible? A veil, he called it. “We shall part the veil and see the sky, or one version of it, anyway.” She had the letter he had written her in the bag she kept near her person; she unfolded it and read the words again.

What could he mean by that, the real universe? The words had brought a tiny clutch of fear when she first read them a month ago in Montajhena; even now they made her uncomfortable.

She had time for eshan before a knock sounded on the door; the minutes of peaceful meditation cleared her head and the troublesome thoughts eased into perspective. A body breathing balances itself, one of the sayings from the novice teaching books. Not always true, in Malin's experience; sometimes a body breathing only tried to reach balance, without success. Today, though, a feeling of calm did proceed from the deep, slow breathing. A few minutes of that and she felt nearly herself again.

She had brought Girek's reports and the long manuscript from Forthing on changes in the novice curriculum proposed for the Montajhena school and the school in Cordyssa, and set about reading those, after conferring a moment with Erinthal, her steward. The work never ceased, documents and letters to be answered, people who wanted to see her or write her; the same clutter of business that had repelled her when she was young and trying halfheartedly to be Queen of Drii. Work came naturally now, and so did the exercise of authority, which had seemed so strange to her before. Now that she had lived so long, it felt perfectly ordinary that she should give instruction and make decisions.

A stir below, that she could hear through the window. From her trance she focused her seeing; the courtyard was veiled by the arrival of someone, and beyond the courtyard pulsed the presence of her uncle. He would feel her own chanting and meditation, too, though, no doubt, he had already known she was here. These veils in the courtyard, however, had a feeling of Tervan stuff; someone was using stones of unseeing there, and while Uncle Jessex could likely see through them, Malin perceived only a haze.

She could feel, after a while, the edges of a presence, someone Tervan, a sense of age, of time, but nothing more. Malin was only one guest in the Twelve Tower, or so it appeared. One of the old Tervan, outside of Jhunombrae? One of the immortals?

If she could sense so much through a veil, it would be like glass to Uncle Jessex. Which meant, of course, that this person was his guest. There were usually Tervan about Inniscaudra, but not in veils of magic. Someone from the Tervan city with whom uncle was doing business. Explaining his proposition about the sky.

At last Malin did dissolve out of those thoughts into a moment of peace; thinking about the sky and breathing, thinking about nothing and breathing. She sat quietly and was able to open her eyes to see the sunset, all fires and clouds. She smelled moisture in the air, the change of wind that might mean a storm coming. She could hear her uncle's voice, the undercurrent of his singing, as if he were close by.

A rapping at the door, followed quickly by Erinthal and two of the householders with Malin's trunk. “Try not to bang it about in front of her ladyship,” Erinthal said, gesturing to her. “She wouldn't like to think you'd been playing bouncy on the stairs with it.”

“I'm sure these folk have been very helpful. Remember to give them something for hauling that heavy thing.”

“She speaks of it as if she didn't pack it herself,” said Erinthal, pinching his nose and mouth into a frown. He looked so old these days, and planned to live to be two hundred, he'd already sworn. “As if she didn't stuff every book in Turis right into the middle of it.”

“Leave off about my packing, Erinthal. Is the book in the wooden box in there, too?”

“You might know it is since you put it there.”

“I don't always have such a good memory, you know.”

“I do.” Erinthal sniffed. “It's there.” He was handing coins to the householders, a sturdy man and woman in brown breeches, both of them. Erinthal dropped the coins into their palms as if the act gave him physical pain, and he winced and put the purse away. “Mind you fetch up the rest and leave them on the landing, the small ones. Or my mistress will do something very unpleasant to you.”

“Don't threaten people, Erinthal,” Malin said. “It's bad form.”

“But it's good practice.” He closed the door, stooping over the trunk's lashings, working them patiently with his fingers.

“There's hot water in the samovar, if you want tea,” Malin said.

“That sounds pleasant.”

“Shall I set you a cup to steeping, while you fetch me my wooden box?”

“The King's Book?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to open it?”

“No. I still don't know how. But I want to hold it.”

For a moment, his expression was the same that had endeared him to Malin years ago, the years melting away as curiosity made his face vibrant. “Your uncle could tell you how to open it.”

“Yes, I'm sure he could.”

“Don't you want him to?”

She shook her head. “No. I don't think I should be able to read the book till I can open the box myself, without any help from Uncle Jessex. Uncle Irion, I mean.”