The Right Hand of God (4 page)

How can these people be Pei-ra if they are Aslamen? Why did you call it their secret Name?

But the voice had apparently finished talking with him, and gone back to wherever it came from. Leith couldn't help feeling he was being conditioned by the voice, just like the sheep back home in Loulea Vale, herded in directions they themselves would not have chosen by a taciturn shepherd and his dogs. He remembered the morning he had helped Kurr with the sheep for the Midwinter Feast, and felt a growing sympathy with the sheep when they tried to escape the voice of the shepherd.

As Leith watched, the man with the blazing torch walked towards where the outsiders stood, arm outstretched and pointing. A hundred pairs of eyes gazed at Maendraga as he stepped forward. In the ochre light of the fire the magician looked old, tired, as though he carried a burden too heavy for his back.

He shuffled over to the fire, and flicked aside his robe. From a fold he brought out a carving, about a forearm's length tall: it gleamed in the firelight, visible in the flickering light even from where Leith waited. A carving of a woman, a

young woman, with sadness etched on her face, surpassing in some indescribable fashion any art Leith had ever seen. To one who himself had the soul of a carver, who once carved a replica of his own father from birch bark, the sight brought tears to Leith's eyes. Only too poignantly did he appreciate what that carving must mean to Maendraga the magician. How many nights must he have sat by his fire, alone with his memories, trying to recapture something that faded from his mind, eluded his heart?

Tears streamed down the old man's face as he raised the carving to the heavens, as if in declaration of his undying love. Then, in a moment that cramped the heart with aching, he cast it on the fire; and wept silently.

A young girl with black hair to her waist detached herself from the others and stepped forward. Leith wiped the tears away from his eyes so he could better see her face. She could be no more than eight years old. With a start, Leith realised she must have lived those eight years without a name, and this night must be very important for her also.

Her small face was set in determined lines: below her black fringe her large brown eyes contained no doubt, her wide mouth set in a slight smile. Her hands shook slightly, yet she strode quickly, confidently up to Maendraga, and smiled encouragingly at the stranger who held her Name in his heart.

For an awkward, fearful moment Leith thought Maendraga was not going to respond, that he might even reject the girl, or do something that would see them all killed. But he did not.

Instead, he placed his hands on her shoulders and looked searchingly into her eyes for what seemed like an age. Then, as if satisfied at what he saw, he bent his mouth to her ear and whispered a name.

'Nena.' Even though it had been whispered, Leith imagined he heard it spoken aloud. Lost in beauty, he had no idea the voice he heard was his own.

The girl's smile was immediate and genuine, reflected in the lustre of her eyes. Leith watched her carefully: undoubtedly the islanders would know Maendraga's wife Nena had been an outcast, and had lived among strangers, far from the sacred shores. This little girl may not have known what Name she would receive, but she would have known the story. She showed no shame as she accepted the Name, only pleasure and a determination to be worthy. She too had seen the carving and the tears it brought. Perhaps she even understood what it meant to the old man.

The Burying ceremony continued for some time after this, but Leith, lost in thought, noticed little until he was suddenly shoved roughly from behind, then propelled towards the fire. For a confused moment he thought he was being made part of the ceremony, but the fire burned untended now, and the people had withdrawn into the darkness. Geinor and Graig were somewhere behind him, and Maendraga was nowhere to be seen. If anything, the faces of the Aslamen surrounding him, jostling him forward, were more hostile than they had yet been.

Unease turned to panic. Leith realised this was certainly no part of the Burying. What is going on? Now, when it would have been truly useful, the voice remained silent.

Strong arms steered him past the Burying fire, guided him to the water's edge and thrust him into a small boat; joined there by three Aslamen. Leith resisted the urge to shout. Maendraga had impressed upon him the danger of speaking, the offence it would cause, and Leith did not wish to bring the wrath of these people down on himself. The men cast off, paddled silently but with angry strokes across the moonlit lagoon, then hove to on the seaward side of the reef.

'What—' Leith began, then stopped as a stone-blade knife drew a line lightly across his throat.

He stiffened in shock. A harsh voice rasped in his ear: 'No sound. More sound, I cut out your voice.'

The Jugom Ark flared in his hand, reminding him of its power. For a moment he considered using it against his captors - stabbing them, slashing them, driving them away with the weapon of the Most High. He even raised his hand fractionally.

No, he told himself, no. It's not that kind of weapon. If I ask the Most High for help every time 1 get into trouble, I'll end up a servant with no control over anything. So he sat there, bleeding from the neck, trying not to move, not to give offence, but knowing he had offended, and he continued to offend.

Another canoe pulled alongside and Maendraga clambered in beside him. 'Listen carefully to me, Leith,' said the magician in an urgent whisper. 'The Aslamen want to know why you spoke a name on the sacred island. They want to know why you stole someone's Name.'

For a moment Leith was at a loss, and again he considered using the Arrow, or asking the magician to cast some spell that might save them. Then he remembered the moment Maendraga had spoken the name, remembered watching, remembered how it had affected him, remembered the Name being spoken aloud - and suddenly his transgression became clear. No use arguing it had been unintentional, done out of ignorance. He had spoken where it was sacrilege to speak. He nodded, summoned up enough saliva to enable him to speak, and waited until the knife eased away from his throat.

'I was caught by the moment,' he said simply. 'I saw the girl receive her Name, and I spoke it aloud without realising.' He turned to face Maendraga. 'How can I be sorry for that? Should I apologise for being moved?' It was a reckless reply, he knew, but it brought a grunt of understanding from at least one of the men surrounding him.

'You are First Man,' said the voice of the man holding the knife. 'You say you were first, but you were last. You came to our island and broke our rules. When we break your rules you kill us all. What should we do to you?'

In that moment, as the Aslamen waited for his answer, Leith's mind turned over the puzzling thing the voice had said during the Burying ceremony. 'He called you Pei-ra. He said it was your secret Name. I saw your battle mounds in the hills of Astraea, and took sable armour for myself. I—'

The Aslamen backed away from him, thrusting themselves towards the stern of the canoe and nearly swamping it, forgetting their seamanship in their haste. The eyes that stared at him in shock were rimmed with fear and loathing.

'The burial mounds ... they remain?'

The question was hesitant, and layered with a number of undercurrents. Anger that one of the despised First Men had something they wanted, fear of the answer he might give, shame at the reminder of their debased state and the loss of their homeland, all were mixed into the few words spoken.

It did not seem possible that Leith might read such great significance into those words, but he did. He told himself it must be the Arrow, that possessing the Jugom Ark gave him magical insight into the words of others. After all, he reasoned, how else had he bested the King of Nemohaim but a few days earlier?

'The Pei-ra lie untended and unregarded in the land of

Astraea,' Leith said, almost dreamily. 'The land is uninhabited, while the Tabuli and the Nemohaimians go about their business elsewhere, having forgotten their quarrel with you.'

And, hoping his insight ran true, he added: 'There will be no one to interfere when you return to bury the many, many Names in the great fires you will set there, and the Pei-ra will have their Name restored once more.'

Is this your story? he hissed a thought, but there came no answer.

Maendraga looked at the youth with something approaching awe. The Aslamen - the Pei-ra -

began to mutter among themselves, and there was no more talk of what ought to be done with Leith.

I'm still doing it, Leith realised. Still gathering. Someone from the Pei-ra would come to Instruere, to be part of the salvation of the First Men . . . He wasn't understanding fully, he did not have the whole picture; something greater, perhaps, than he yet. appreciated was still to unfold. Nevertheless, as he watched the men talking with each other, still reluctant to meet his eye, he was content.

That night the Pei-ra held a meeting on the sacred island and, for the first time in a generation, voices were raised above a whisper in that place, and something other than Names were spoken. Leith, Maendraga and the two Nemohaimians were excluded, but needed no interpreter to tell them what topic dominated the energetic discussions they could see and hear from the other side of the lagoon. Children talked with the women and the men as the fires burned on into the early morning. Then, as dawn smudged the sky with a pale light, a great cry rang out across the water and the Pei-ra sprang for their canoes.

'They're leaving for Astraea?' Leith said, surprised at the lack of preparation. 'Just like that?'

'No, they won't go for a long time yet,' replied Geinor of Nemohaim. His voice, unused during the long evening and night, sounded reedier than ever. 'They will wait until the turning of the winds later in the year, when the summer is over and the rains come. They could not easily sail to the coast of Cachoeira with the wind from the west, as it will be for months yet.'

'Well, where are they going, then?'

The old counsellor paused over his reply. 'I know not, but guess that the Aslamen will travel to their own islands to bring their people the news. You did not think these few were all of the Aslamen, did you? They occupy a hundred or more islands spread across the southern Wodhaitic Sea. It will take them many weeks to prepare.'

Geinor continued, hands clasped firmly together in front of his tunic like a young boy accounting for displeasing his parents. 'Were this to have occurred without our knowledge while I was responsible for Nemohaim's intelligence network, the king would have dismissed and exiled me instantly. It is - was - my business to know everything about the lands and the people who surround us. I have to admit to having given the Aslamen little or no thought.

That they are in truth the Pei-ra come to live in these islands is something neither I, nor anyone else in Nemohaim, would ever have guessed.'

The man was obviously having trouble not behaving like a functionary of the Nemohaim court. It was as though he looked for someone to whom to apologise for his oversight.

Leith turned to the magician. 'Did you know?'

Maendraga nodded slowly 'I ought to have. My greatgrandfather was the last Guardian to encounter the Pei-ra,

and he told us terrible tales of the wars that ravaged Astraea. One or two of the Pei-ra escaped into the Almucantaran Mountains, and he cared for them until they died or were well enough to leave.

'Leith, I don't think you realise what you've done. Now that you've told them Astraea is uninhabited, the Aslamen will try to return to their ancient home. I have no doubt they will succeed, and I also have no doubt they will be seen. What will happen when some fool from Tabul or Nemohaim - no offence, Geinor - decides that if the Pei-ra want Astraea enough to return from the dead, then he wants it too?'

'It'll be a bloodbath,' Graig said sadly. 'Like it was last time, like Vassilian on the Plains of Amare, like it always is.' He glanced at the Jugom Ark which, though subdued, still commanded his attention as it had since the day he intercepted Leith and Maendraga on the road south of Bewray. 'Unless something can be done about it.'

But Leith no longer listened. He did not see how all this could possibly be part of the task that lay ahead of him. Uniting the Sixteen Kingdoms of Faltha would be difficult enough without concerning himself about the Pei-ra - or the Children of the Mist, or the Widuz, or the Fenni, or the Fodhram, or any of the losian who lived on the margins of Faltha, regrettable as their plight was. The Bhrudwan army was coming, and he and his friends, scattered as they were across southern Faltha, represented Faltha's best hope - maybe Faltha's only hope - of turning them aside.

Though the ocean had many moods, and showed them all to the seafarers, Leith and Maendraga never felt unsafe. The Pei-ratin navigator exuded an air of confidence in, even command of, the sea. It was as though the Wodhaitic forbore

to trouble them, respecting the seamanship of the men from Pei-ra and the artistry of their navigator. Certainly, the dark-skinned Pei-ratin revered the sea, almost to the point of worship; and surely no deity would willingly take the lives of such a devoted subject. Or perhaps the vast open ocean feared to offend the even vaster power held within the Jugom Ark. Whatever the reason, the Wodhaitic Sea declined to trouble the fragile canoe, preserving its inscrutable serenity, venting its puissance on some far-distant shore.

Little talk disturbed the silence on the boat. While the pilot at least had a rudimentary grasp of the common tongue, and Leith had much that was needful to discuss with Maendraga, the overwhelming majesty of the sea kept them quiet, leaving the youth from Loulea to deal with the poignancy of his memories. His birthday had passed him by somewhere on the long journey. He had lost track of the days somewhere south of Instruere, probably in Hinepukohurangi, the land of Mist, or perhaps in the Valley of a Thousand Fires. Though now seventeen, of an age where boys in his home country of Firanes became men, left their parents' house and 'took to the land', he was by no means ready to bear the burdens the peril of Faltha thrust upon him. By intuition -Leith was still reluctant to put a name to his inner voice -