Consorts of Heaven (24 page)

Einon had to admit his plan was not entirely sound, but cast adrift without the resources of the Tyr and unsure what perils awaited him, it was the best he could do. Sais agreed to take the note for him after Einon admitted, ‘I may have enemies in the Tyr, but I also have friends.’

 

The lodging house was run by a spry old widow named Ebrilla, who shared her home with a cat called Palfau. Kerin thought the cat a good substitute for a husband: more useful around the house and unlikely to answer back. The only other guests were Gorran, a sallow lad with a harelip, and his father Meilyg, who had travelled to the City from the Eastern Marches so Gorran could take the acolytes’ examinations.

Ebrilla was delighted to have a skyfool grace her house, and insisted on moving Meilyg and Gorran to a back room so the priest and the skyfool could have the two larger rooms facing the street. The easterners complied without complaint. Though Gorran and Meilyg had already eaten, she cooked a fresh meal for her new guests, and when Damaru picked up a handful of rice grains and squashed them into Ebrilla’s well-scrubbed wooden table, she just smiled indulgently and made the circle. Kerin wondered if their hostess would be quite as happy if Damaru failed to find the latrine, as had happened a couple of times on the journey.

The next day they went out early to register as visitors, a process which, Kerin was unsurprised to find, cost money. Einon pointed out the imposing building, but stayed well away from the stern-faced monitors who stood guard on either side of the door. Sais gave his name as Sais am Dangwern, which caused raised eyebrows all round, but they had no problems getting their official badges.

Then, it being Sul, they went to the local capel, where Einon joined them, somewhat to Kerin’s surprise. She had assumed he would go up to the Tyr to worship with his fellow priests, but when she mentioned this, he said he didn’t wish to leave Damaru alone in a strange place. His reason seemed odd, and she wondered if Sais knew more of his true motivations, but she did not ask. Sais had been very quiet since arriving in the City, more distracted than ever.

After capel, Kerin offered to help Ebrilla, who was more than happy to talk about the City and the skyfools’ presentation and public testing. Kerin was dismayed to find that only the appointed guardians could accompany the boys at these events, but Ebrilla patted her hand solicitously and said, ‘Do not fear, your boy is bound to triumph. Tis a special year, for when she accompanies the Consorts on Sul Esgyniad, the Cariad will also petition Heaven to send the red rain - the end of the winnowing times are in sight, praise be the Five!’

 

Kerin spent all her free time with Damaru, who had started acting up - maybe because there were so many strangers, or perhaps because he sensed the impending separation. He rearranged objects in the house, much to everyone’s annoyance, and refused to eat at mealtimes, instead demanding food at odd hours. In a bid to distract him, Kerin encouraged him to wander the City with her. She tried to fix the memory of him in the places they went together, so that when he was gone and she remained, she would be able to look back on this time.

But City life would take some getting used to: the very air was different - hotter, drier, smellier. Neither of them was used to the huge crowds of strangers, and Kerin wondered how she would ever understand the complex divisions between guildsmen and nobles, craftsmen and priestly servants.

Damaru led her along wide bustling thoroughfares and into pokey back streets where rats scrabbled through piles of refuse. In the great square in front of the Tyr’s main entrance they watched acolytes chanting the Traditions from memory. They saw the painted women of the Stryd Putain, and Kerin shuddered at the maimed and deformed men sitting listlessly before wooden begging bowls in the lower City. The wind often brought the stench of smoke and they frequently passed carts taking bodies to the pyres that burned night and day.

Yet as well as poverty and suffering, they also saw great affluence: markets and shops with wares that put the star-season fair to shame, and individuals flaunting their wealth, bedecked in finery and travelling in miniature carriages pulled by burly bondsmen. Even the moderately wealthy displayed extravagant fashions: many men’s shirts had far more buttons than were needed just to keep them fastened, and women often wore several layered skirts, each in contrasting colours, with the outer ones pinned up to show off those below. If the panelled jackets of the young people were anything to go by, then embroidery was prized. She discussed with Ebrilla the possibility of setting herself up as a needlewoman once Damaru had gone to his fate; it would not be such a bad life.

They saw little of their travelling companions. Einon and Sais were either closeted in their rooms, or off on unknown errands in the City, and Fychan was spending much of his time in the local hostelries, returning late every night stinking of ale and cheap scent. He did offer to take a turn looking after Damaru, but Kerin declined, suspecting it had nothing to do with consideration and everything to do with having it known he was a skyfool’s guardian.

When Fychan first wore the shirt Kerin had made, Sais went deathly white. Kerin would have been pleased to see him so upset a few weeks ago, but no more. His reaction had nothing of envy and everything of shock, as though the shirt were a thing of the Abyss. But he remained quiet and withdrawn, and as the time for Damaru’s presentation approached, Kerin’s mind was filled with the upcoming sorrow of bidding goodbye to her son forever.

His name was Jarek Reen. It came to him that first morning in Dinas Emrys. He woke up and he knew who he was - or rather, he knew who he had been before he came to this world. He had already adjusted his worldview in the face of his new knowledge. He was taller and weaker than the people here because he came from a world with lower gravity. The night sky was probably so bright because this world was near the galactic core, and the falling stars of star-season weren’t divine semen, they were meteors burning up in the atmosphere as the planet moved through a patch of space debris. The miraculous lights that gave the City its name, and Einon’s lantern, were rare examples of technology on an otherwise lo-tech world.

Rediscovering his name should have been the final piece of the puzzle, but despite his initial excitement, the memories still felt patchy and distant, as though they belonged to someone else. Though he knew he was Jarek, he still thought of himself as Sais.

When he saw Fychan wearing the shirt Kerin had made, it triggered another revelation: it was made of
smartchute fabric
- and that meant he had come down in some sort of emergency escape vehicle; the ’chute had somehow failed and he’d crash-landed in the mere above Dangwern.

He had no idea . . . There was still so much missing. He knew
what
he had been before he came to this planet - a freetrader, transporting specialist items between star-systems - but he had no idea
how
he ended up in this particular system. That memory didn’t exist, almost as though it had been excised.

He worked alone, so it was unlikely anyone knew he was here. He might have managed to send off a distress call, so perhaps someone was on their way. Or, he thought wryly, perhaps they’d already turned up at Dangwern - that would give the villagers something to talk about! But he’d seen no sign of offworld influence at all. People here thought they were alone in the cosmos. This place was a real backwater.

Sais wondered if he had abandoned his ship in orbit - if so, it might still be up there. Certainly there must be
something
up there, given the Consorts apparently ascended the ‘silver thread’. Not many planets still had beanstalks; advances in grav-tech had made them pretty much obsolete, but that didn’t mean they didn’t work: he could use this one to get up to orbit and off this planet himself. Well, in theory - two obvious problems sprang to mind: he had no idea what he’d find at the top, and there was a rock fortress full of hostile priests at the bottom.

Sais was desperate for someone to talk to, but even if Kerin had managed to forgive him for breaking her heart, he couldn’t begin to imagine her reaction to discovering her world wasn’t what she thought it was.

He spent a couple of days walking the hot, reeking streets of the City, checking out ways into the Tyr. There were five main doors, and a number of smaller service entrances, and he investigated all of them, from the wide processional avenue in the main square to a small wooden door set into the rock wall at the end of a dead-end street. Every entrance was either locked, guarded, or both.

There were plenty of windows, many with balconies, higher up the slope, presumably belonging to priests whose status got them a room with a view, but the near-vertical rock face made them a non-starter.

As well as checking out his options, Sais also tried to put together the pieces of his old life. Sitting in his room that evening, the shutters thrown wide against the muggy night air, he remembered the name he’d called out in his delirium: Nual. He still had no idea who Nual was. Was this person the key to what had happened to him?

The bruised sky darkened into night and lights came on outside. As the first fat drops of rain began to fall, he decided to ask for Einon’s help one last time. The priest had suggested another Cof Hlesmair session several times since they’d arrived in the City. Now fully aware of how far outside Einon’s idea of normality he fell, Sais had fobbed him off - but if he wanted to get back the parts of his past still lost to him, Einon might be his only hope.

He found the priest in his room, poring over his papers. At first he looked flustered, but he was quick to agree.

They sat opposite each other as they had before, and this time Sais took the lead. Rain hissed on the shutters, and the flame of the lamp between them danced in a sudden draft. ‘I’d like you to try and find out about somebody called Nual,’ he said.

Einon frowned. ‘Nual? I think, ah, I think you said that name during one of your bad dreams.’

‘Really? Can you remember when?’

‘Sorry, no. Those inns have rather blurred into one. Do you think this individual was, ah, important to you?’

‘I do.’ Sais was apprehensive about focusing on something from one of his nightmares, especially given the unpleasant reaction they’d got when they’d tried to find out who mattered to him now, but he had to complete the picture, to find out who he really was.

‘Then we must ask, and see what comes of it,’ said Einon firmly.

Sais slipped into the trance easily, his mind now attuned to Einon’s voice—

Every image, every thought, was blotted out by the vision of void-dark eyes boring into his mind, stripping his soul bare. He wanted to fight, but he was too weak.

Some part of him was aware of someone calling out, ‘Return! Return!’

He tried to open his eyes, to focus on the voice.

Failed.

Oblivion.

Kerin had left the shutters in their room open so Damaru could watch the patterns the falling rain made in front of the light-globe across the street. She was sitting with one of his hands clasped in both of hers, heedless of the splashes coming over the sill onto her lap, when a scream pierced the night. She had not believed a human voice could hold so much horror and madness—

Damaru started as she jumped up. She grasped his shoulders, looked into his eyes and said, ‘Damaru, you
must
stay here until I come back. Do you understand? Stay here!’

When she was sure that he did understand, she ran across the hall to the priest’s room, where the terrible sound had come from.

Einon stood against the far wall, shaking. Sais lay on the floor, thrashing about, his heels banging the wooden boards, his head whipping from side to side. Kerin recognised this as a fit, such as Damaru sometimes suffered, and rushed over to him.

Sais’s teeth were clenched, his eyes rolled up, and shivers ran up and down his body in waves.

She called out, ‘Einon! Pass me the pillow from your bed -
now
, please! We need to stop him hurting himself.’

The priest grabbed the pillow and thrust it towards her and Kerin slipped it under Sais’s head. Pink-tinged foam bubbled out of his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue. Kerin checked, relieved to find he had not swallowed it and could still breathe freely.