Jango (35 page)

"He did the best he could."

"The Nomana don't make war! Why was the Nom abandoned?"

Suddenly remembering, he leaped to his feet.

"There was a traitor in the Nom!" He turned on Miriander, his eyes burning. "You! Was it you? Are you the traitor?"

"No, Seeker," said Miriander.

"You, then? Is it you? Or you?"

He turned from Noma to Noma, his fierce gaze hunting for an enemy to fight. They all shrank back, shaking their heads.

"Where's Narrow Path? He's the one who told me. He must be the traitor!"

Morning Star was watching the dying Elder. She saw something there that none of the others could see.

"Seeker," she said quietly.

"We've lost everything because of one man!" cried Seeker. "Our god is dead because of one traitor in the Community!"

"I know who the traitor is."

"I'll tear him to shreds!"

"He's lying before you."

Seeker looked down in consternation.

"The Elder?"

Morning Star nodded.

"It can't be!"

He dropped once more to his knees beside the dying man. As he did so, the Elder's eyes flickered and opened. Seeker beseeched him.

"Help me, Elder. Tell me who has betrayed the Nom."

The Elder's lips moved. Seeker put his ear close, to catch the faint words.

"Forgive me..." he heard. "You'll understand ... One day..."

Seeker felt a great heaviness tighten about his throat. The old man's eyes closed once more. The breaths that had expelled those last few words were his last.

Seeker rose to his feet, his face drained of all expression.

"What did he say?" asked Miriander.

"Nothing," said Seeker. "He said nothing."

Soren Similin knelt down by the riverside, and cupping water into his hands, he drank as much as he was able. The water escaped through his fingers and soaked his garments, but still he drank on. Then when he could drink no more, he rose to his feet and set off walking as fast as he could. He wanted to avoid standing still. He knew that as soon as he relaxed his muscles he would want to pee. And he must not pee yet.

It had never been an issue in all his life before. He could go for long hours without peeing at all, when his mind was engaged on some pressing matter. But now, when he understood with hideous clarity that he must not empty his bladder, all he could think of was how desperately he wanted to do just that.

He cursed himself again, as he had been cursing himself ever since he had worked out the monstrous details of Ortus's revenge. Why had he not anticipated this? He had known full well that the charged water exploded when exposed to the air. Why had he not stopped to think that what goes in must sooner or later come out?

His only defense against the coming catastrophe was to dilute the charged water within him with plain water. He had drunk all he could. Now he could only hope that the river water would make its way through his system before the need to pee became irresistible.

As he walked he cried out to the savanter who had controlled him for so long.

"Mistress! Help me!"

But there came no answering voice in his head.

Next he appealed to the Radiant Power, the sun god in whose name he had ruled, knowing full well that there was no such god: but desperation makes believers of all men in the end.

"Great Power! Help me!"

As if to spite him, a dark cloud swept by overhead, casting him into ever deeper shadow on this dull winter day.

So then he called to the first gods he had ever known, the father and mother who had raised him in a humble town in the north, the father and mother he had never thought to see again, because they were the little people he had outgrown.

"Mama! Papa! Help me!"

When there was no one left to turn to, and his bladder was at the point of bursting, he stopped calling for help and threw all his hope into his luck.

"I can't die," he told himself. "I'm too special. I'm too clever. I'm too superior. Death is for the little people."

Encouraged by this thought, he determined to risk what
anyway he was powerless to stop. Out of pure force of habit, he sought out a clump of bushes. He unlaced his breeches behind the bush and prepared for sweet release.

The explosion startled the rooks out of the high elms but otherwise went unnoticed on that day of explosions. It was the last and the smallest. But it was big enough.

A
COLD RAIN WAS FALLING AS THEY BURIED THE
E
LDER.
The Community's cemetery was gone, along with the entire Nom, so the old man's body was laid to rest in the fishermen's graveyard on the hillside between the woods and the sea. He was lowered into the grave, without coffin or shroud, because the Nomana had lost everything. But they sang for him, as they had always sung for every brother and sister at the time of their passing.

"
Light of our days and peace of our nights
Our Reason and our Goal
We wake in your shadow
We walk in your footsteps
We sleep in your arms...
"

Seeker stood in the rain with the rest, but he did not sing. His heart was heavy with bitter thoughts. He saw
Miriander watching him with her grave beautiful eyes, and he knew what she was thinking, and he looked away. He no longer wanted the burden of her expectation. His power was hateful to him. What point was there in being able to dominate all others if the All and Only had ceased to be? The Clear Light had been snuffed out. There was no reason and no goal.

The sweet voices sang on as the rain fell.

"
Lead us to the Garden
To rest in the Garden
To live in the Garden
With you...
"

It made him angry. They knew as well as he did that the Garden was gone. Why sing on as if nothing had changed?

The brothers and sisters covered the old man's body with earth, each throwing a handful into the grave to the accompaniment of some private words of farewell. Some shed tears. Seeker looked on dry-eyed, tormented by his bitter thoughts.

"This man betrayed you all," he cried, but only in his mind. "It's because of him that our god is dead."

He knew it must be so. Morning Star had seen the color of betrayal. The Elder himself had said, "Forgive me." He had also said, "You'll understand one day."

Seeker did not understand and felt that he would never understand. How could the Elder have sought the end of all he had lived for? What possible purpose could he have
had in leading the Nomana out to a futile battle against such a great army? The Noble Warriors did not fight wars. The youngest novice knew that. There was no meaning to it but for a bad meaning, a poisoned meaning. The Elder had become their enemy.

One day perhaps he would understand. But he knew he would never forgive.

After the burial, the brothers and sisters, and the people of Anacrea, and the spikers who had stayed on to help, set about building themselves some shelters for the coming night. Working with borrowed tools, they cut up the timber felled by the Orlans and made small frame houses in the old way. They were glad to be busy, not wanting to look back or forward.

The men cut the main posts and struts. The women wove pliant branches between the struts. And the old people and the children scraped up mud to pack between the woven branches. The steadily falling rain slicked the mud to a gleaming sheen.

Seeker joined the children in gathering handfuls of mud. It was the humblest of the tasks. He wanted it to be known that, for all his powers, he was no better than the rest of them. After a while Echo joined him and worked alongside him without speaking. Her beautiful pale hair was dark with rain and clung close to her head, making her seem even more slender and lovely. From time to time she looked at Seeker, and he knew that she wanted him to speak to her, but he said nothing.

The Wildman had got himself an axe and was splitting logs for the great fire, alongside Snakey. Morning Star was one of the party building the fire. She went back and forth from the Wildman to the fire stack, carrying the split logs in the rain. All this Seeker saw.

When the fire was built, a hollow was dug into one side and filled with wood chips. Here, where the rain didn't reach, a spark was kindled. It smoldered on the damp fuel and issued a plume of white smoke.

Seeker said to himself, "If the fire catches, we will survive. If the fire goes out, we will die." No more than a foolish superstition, but he wasn't the only one to cling to small signs on that terrible day. Like him, everyone was as busy as they could be, in order not to have to speak the words that hung above them like smoke, like a sentence of death: it's over.

He went to the stream that bubbled out of the wood, and plunged his mud-caked hands into the water. By the time he returned, there was a flicker of flame in the heart of the smoking pile. Then came a crackling sound, and all at once the fire burst into life. Now the fire would be stronger than the rain and would last through the night. As if in acknowledgment of its defeat, the rain began to pass, as twilight set in.

The people huddled round the great fire, to dry their drenched clothing. As the heat grew, they backed away, forming an ever-widening ring. Other fires were built from this, the master fire, and so the people of Anacrea and the Community of the Nom, hardly realizing they were doing so, arranged themselves in neighborly clusters that echoed
the courtyards and streets of the lost island. The spikers gathered round their own fires, just as they had always lived apart from the settled townships.

Seeker sat alone, within reach of the great fire's warmth but outside the circle. At such a time it would be customary for a pot of soup to be heated at the fire, and baskets of oatcakes to be passed from hand to hand, perhaps with a jar of brandy to moisten the lips; but there was no soup, no oatcakes, no brandy. All would go to sleep hungry tonight.

Echo watched Seeker and saw his unhappiness and wondered at it. She had witnessed his extraordinary power in action. She could still feel the way the ground had kicked beneath her, she could still hear Kell's terrified braying call as he fell, she could still see the sight that had met her eyes moments later—a battlefield stilled by one blow from one man. And that man barely more than a boy. Such a one could command all the world. Why then was he alone and sad? His island home was gone, but all its people were safe. And as for his god—Echo had never had a god of her own, and she found it hard to imagine what it was. Maybe Seeker's god was dead, but his power remained, and surely that was what mattered.

That gave her an idea.

"Do you mind if I sit with you?"

"I'm not good company," Seeker replied.

"I don't mind."

Echo settled herself down cross-legged by his side, facing the fire.

"I have to thank you. When you made the Jahan kiss my hand, that was the best moment of my life."

Seeker looked at the distant fire and said nothing.

"If you'd killed him," Echo went on, "that would have been even better. I don't know why you didn't. He lost. He should die."

Seeker shook his head.

"He's not my true enemy. My true enemy hasn't lost."

"What true enemy?"

"There's someone."

He fell silent, not wanting to explain. "Then kill him, whoever he is. No one has as much power as you. You can do whatever you want."

"There's nothing I want any more," said Seeker.

"What! That's impossible!"

Echo herself wanted so much, so intensely, that she could only think Seeker spoke this way out of weariness.

"You think there must always be more to want, do you?" he said.

"Yes. Of course."

"What do you want?"

She was about to say she wanted to be home again, when she realized there was something she wanted much more.

"I want to do something," she said. "I don't know what. Something good and strong. Then I'll be good and strong, too."

"Aren't you good? Aren't you strong?"

"No. All I care about is myself."

Seeker looked at her in an odd half-attentive way, but he said nothing.

"If I had your power," she said, "I'd do such things!"

"And then what?"

"Then what? Then nothing. Then, we just live."

Seeker shook his head.

"That's why there has to be a god," he said. "Just living isn't enough."

"There is a god," said Echo. "You just aren't looking in the right place."

"Where am I to look?"

She pointed one slender finger straight at him.

"At yourself."

This was her idea. Seeker had the power to move the world. Why should he not be a god?

"Me?"

"Only a god could do what you have done."

He laughed softly, with an edge of bitterness.

"Me? I'm no god!"

"How do you know?"

"Because I've seen the true god. I've seen the All and Only."

"You could still be a god."

"No. Believe me, I'm no god. I'm just—"

He hesitated, unsure how to describe what he now felt himself to be.

"I'm just somebody with something given him to do."

Echo reached out and touched his arm, to make him look at her.

"Let me go with you," she said, "wherever you're going."

"No," said Seeker. "I have to go alone."

"Why?"

"Because I won't come back."

Echo looked into his eyes for a long moment, and she knew then there was nothing more she could say. She rose to her feet.

"If you ever pass through the Glimmen," she said, "look up into the trees above you. Call my name."

All this time, Morning Star had been sitting with the main band of spikers, beside the Wildman and Snakey. The spikers were in high spirits despite the lack of food and drink. Never before had so many spikers come together as a unified force and fought as an army and been victorious.

"We're the top dogs now," Snakey was saying, spreading his hands in the orange glow of the fire. "The ones whose homes get burned, the ones who tramp the road and beg for food, the thieves, the bandits, the cutthroats. You got yourself a wolf pack for an army, Chick."