Authors: Alice Borchardt
He felt a cold anger mixed with a ghostly yearning and longing.
“I loved the night.”
He heard the words even though he knew it was not Ustane doing whatever she did to speak. The voice was a young girl’s, and it seemed to come from a great distance, like a sound carried by the wind.
Ustane signaled the bearers again, and they started off. He found they were on a stair, a spiral stair with broad, shallow steps.
“We are going down to the very bottom,” Ustane said.
Down. The king closed his eyes and his senses said
up.
He opened his eyes, and they still said up. The litter was tilted, his feet higher than his head. A stair. But a stair is between one level and another. All around him, the crypt, the forest with trees of stone and leaves of enduring fire at the roof stretched out. But perhaps it was a stair, because the floor of the crypt undulated, the pillars set like a forest on a hillside.
Then they broke into the light and the evening sun almost blinded him. The crypt was gone. Instead, they were carrying him through a forest. The trees were huge. Never had he seen such things. Their roots were as thick around as his body, and those were the small ones. The tombs . . . yes, the tombs were still there, but they were broken and misaligned as the massive roofs of the giant trees tore them up the way an old oak tips up a pavement. Some were canted so far up that they seemed to rest on their sides. Others were buried under the spreading mass of a tree’s giant trunk as it grew over it. Others were buried in a litter composed of fibrous red bark, small needles, broken branches, and almost absurdly small cones.
What majesty,
he thought. They were, those trees, majestic, towering so high the tops were lost in the cloud of high coastal fog. They grew on a slope that stretched down to the sea. The evening sun drove shafts of orange, golden light down among the giants and the whole hillside was dappled with its warm light.
“We are nearing the bottom,” Ustane said.
He was wondering where she was or thought she was when the litter bearers came to a stop beside an open tomb. It was half-filled by loam, the soft, thick bark, leaves, and cones of the giants above. It had a good smell.
They lifted him from the litter and again he cried out as they moved him to his bed. It stood directly in the shadow of one of the trees. Ustane gave another command and the two litter bearers lifted a broken stone lid.
He lay in a stone box, but the lid they placed over him was shattered and covered him only to the waist. But it shut with a satisfactory grind of stone on stone.
Then she and the golems departed and left the king lying there, still in pain, but at peace, listening intently and lovingly to the music of wind in the forest and the sea on the shore.
The very look of them jolted me. Mine, or if you like, the one that tried to kill me, had filed teeth and a face crosshatched with blue scars. But my father knew what he had been doing when he gave me my armor. Filed Teeth’s first underhanded thrust skidded on my belly, and I slammed my sword hilt into his temple as hard as I could. He looked dazed, but wasn’t knocked unconscious, and going down, his teeth fastened on the wrist of my sword arm.
They weren’t ornamental, those teeth. He wore some sort of blades fitted to them; they slashed through my armor and a savage pain shot up my sword arm. I almost lost my grip on the hilt.
But someone—Albe—thrust a dagger into my left hand. I shoved the blade into his left eye. He let go of his grip on my wrist to scream and fell away.
I whipped around and Tuau was showing his worth. He was on the back of the most gigantic man I’ve ever seen, trying for a kill-bite. He was failing, because the giant’s muscles were so massive, his fangs were caught in the blubber covering the neck and shoulder.
Cateyrin didn’t hesitate, even though Meth hung back. She threw herself, rolling, at the huge man’s legs. He fell, belly flopping, behind her. He fled.
Albe snatched back her dagger from my hand, but Cateyrin hissed frantically, “No! No! No! Don’t stay and try to finish them. We’re very close to my home and the noise will draw more of them. They’re everywhere and prowl all the corridors by night.”
Tuau gave a dreadful scream of fury that echoed all around us, bouncing off the black glass walls and the broken roof.
“That may help keep them off,” he said with some satisfaction as he licked his bloody chops.
I chose to believe Cateyrin. “Go! Go! Go!” I shouted.
“I want some red meat,” Tuau yowled.
The filed-tooth one was dying in convulsions. The big man was up; he took a look at his companion, then, at the rest of us.
“Cateyrin, you lead. Now go! Move!” I commanded.
Tuau opened his mouth to protest. I think he wanted to eat the one with the filed teeth. Albe caught him a smack across the backside with the flat of her sword.
“You heard my lady! Move! Now!”
Tuau gave her a glare murderous enough to burn the bark off a tree, but did as he was told.
There were all sorts of noises from the fog around us, but we ran for about another hundred yards. Suddenly, the roof above us was intact again and the collectors of starlight filled the damp corridor with silver light.
“Here!” Cateyrin said, and dove for a dark spot in the corridor wall.
It was a hole—we had to duck to enter it. But once inside, we found we could stand upright, though the roof was only a few feet over my head. I could reach up and touch it.
The starlight collectors were here, also, and the narrow passage was filled by a blue haze.
“Cateyrin?” I asked. “The passage we just followed is open to the sky, but this one isn’t. How can the light get in here?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. The people who built the city just did it that way.”
“I wonder if they were people?” Albe asked. “It seems to me only gods could . . .”
“I am footsore and weary,” Meth snapped. “Let’s just see if your mother is really glad to have you back.”
The passage was so narrow we had to go single file. Cateyrin led, Meth followed, Tuau, Albe, and I brought up the rear. Tuau was pacing along beside Albe.
“Think she will let us in?” Tuau asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Albe said. “We can overnight here. I’ll bet you can kill something enough for your dinner at any rate. And my lady and I can hold this snake tube against all comers, if we must. I have enough loot in my pack to pay for food and some sort of lodging come daylight.”
Tuau hissed viciously. “I had my supper all warm, twitching and leaking blood on the floor. But you and your nasty-tempered mistress made me abandon . . .”
This was as far as he, and we, got. We had come to an iron portcullis. The passage widened a bit at this gate, and we gathered in front of it. Tuau hissed, spat, and clawed at the iron grating.
“Oh, be quiet,” Albe said. “Just relax and I’ll scratch your neck and behind your ears.” She suited action to the words, and Tuau began doing shoulder dives against her legs, purring.
Cateyrin rattled the gate loudly. “Mother! Mother! I’m home!” she shouted. “I’m home. Let me in.”
At first, no one came. I noticed Albe glance apprehensively back down the narrow passage.
“I don’t understand what’s keeping her,” Cateyrin said.
Meth spoke up then. “Yes. Well, I can. She probably thinks you’re a ghost come calling . . . and even if you can convince her you’re alive, she will probably repudiate you for disgracing her family and failing in your duty to—”
That was as far as he got, because we saw a light appear beyond the gate. When it drew closer, we saw a woman with a wax light in her hand.
“Oh, my God!” she breathed when she saw Cateyrin. “Oh, my God! Daughter, sweet daughter mine. I knew she didn’t predict your death, but I couldn’t see how you could escape.
“Akeru!” she exclaimed, catching sight of the cat. “How? . . . Fighting women!” She glanced at Albe and me.
“Mother, they’re friends of mine. They helped me! Let us in. Please!” Cateyrin stretched her arms through the grating.
“Pull back, Cateyrin. I’m doing just that.”
The portcullis rose. We slipped through and it dropped behind us. We hurried into another corridor, this one dark but for the wax light Cateyrin’s mother carried. The walls glittered oddly.
I stretched out my hand to touch them, and Cateyrin whispered, “No! No! They’re sharp.”
Indeed, my armor leaped out to protect my fingers.
“We can pull the walls together,” Cateyrin explained. “And the crystals will slice any intruder to shreds.”
“How do you do that?” Albe asked.
“I don’t know,” Cateyrin admitted. “My mother is the ruler of this house. She does it. Before she dies, she will teach the secrets to me, now that I am past the danger of death among the mariglobes.”
The passage ended in a round, domed room. The shape and furnishings of the room were both familiar and unfamiliar to me. The central ceiling fixture concentrated the starlight as the ones in the corridor had, but the light was bright only near the domed eye itself.
Yes, I thought of them as eyes because that’s what they looked like—a giant dragonfly’s eye peering down at us. There were other lamps in the room, and the pale light from the dragonfly’s eye was caught and reflected in them. They were of amber glass and so their light was warm.
Cateyrin’s mother gestured with her hand and a warm, golden light spread through the room. It was very beautiful, round as my people’s dwellings are, the walls hung with jeweled tapestries in silk, velvet, and cloth of gold and silver. Vibrant as the arts of the Painted People are and however wonderful their tapestries, they could not compare to these. Some were representational, and on them birds took flight forever. Fish leaped, flowers budded and bloomed, and trees textured in threads bent their heads before the wind.
Others were abstract, as are the ones the Painted People weave to represent the events of a lifetime. Each man or woman has his own and they can be read as the house posts can. Here is sunlit gold—a prosperous marriage. There, a splash of scarlet, a dangerous childbirth. Or for a man in battle, gray and white for sorrow and death. Bone is white, the winter sea gray-blue, the winter sky silver-gray.
I but illustrate an art that now is vanishing and being forgotten even among the Painted People. And families no longer care that once they sat and ate, made love, worked, and lived their lives surrounded by the woven records of those who brought them and their families into being, tilled the earth, fished the sea, fought, and loved down the ages until they created the times we live in.
But I could see from the tapestries in this room that however distantly related Cateyrin’s people and mine were, we were kin. Hides that looked like those of the beasts we had seen coming into the city covered the floor, and cushions of damask, silk, linen, and fine, very fine, wool were scattered about the floor and around a black, round table surrounded by benches. Both table and benches resembled the low furniture found in chiefly houses among my own people.
Cateyrin was embracing her mother. Her mother was murmuring, “Sweet, sweet baby. My little love. My honey bun. I was so afraid. God, I was so afraid.”
“Why?” Cateyrin asked. “Didn’t Nest say she didn’t see death? I don’t see what you were worried about.”
Albe chuckled. “Young one, maybe your mother’s faith isn’t as strong as yours.”
Cateyrin managed to look prissy. “Everyone knows Nest has a powerful geis and her predictions all come true.”
“Madame.” Albe bowed. “We are sorry to intrude upon you unannounced, but circumstances prevented us from adopting a more formal course of action. I am Albe of the Out Isles. My lady here is Guinevere—affianced bride of Britain’s King Arthur. Meth, I believe you know. And our friend is Tuau of the Akeru, who is an—Oath Cat.” She tried out the words. “Yes, I think that best expresses it. Oath Cat of my lady, Guinevere. As I am an oath woman of hers and bound to take her head should she fall into disgrace or death.
“As you can see, we are no mean personages and can offer reciprocal hospitality should you visit among us. Though,” Albe added, thoughtfully, “just how you would accomplish such a journey is not at present clear to me.”
“I am Ilona, member of the College of Seers.” Cateyrin’s mother’s answer was equally formal. “And since you bring my beloved daughter home to me, you are honored and doubly welcome here as my guests.”
“Mother, we’re rich!” Cateyrin said. And snatching the sack with the boxes of mariglobes in it away from Albe, she showed them to her mother.
Ilona didn’t look pleased. She looked very disturbed.
“What’s wrong, Mother?” Cateyrin asked.
Albe spoke up. “Cateyrin, give your mother a chance to . . . understand what has happened. I think some food and rest might . . .”
“Yes, yes,” Ilona said. “Please.” She indicated the table and low benches around it.
Meth began unarming himself. He was cursing under his breath. Cateyrin went to help him. Ilona left.
“Yes, you’re rich,” Meth said bitterly. “You and your mother. But what about me? I’m an outcast now. Cut off from my friends, companions, and kin.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Cateyrin snapped back. “We’ll go equal shares with you and maybe you can use your part to found your own—”
“I liked my life!” He sounded furious. “I was a trusted member of the
tuath
. Now where will I go? What—”
“Oh, stop! Just stop!” Cateyrin snapped. “From the very first, you’ve been acting stupidly, trying to give back the . . .”
Most of his armor was off now, but he was still wearing one of those ugly gauntlets, and he drew his hand up, readying himself to backhand Cateyrin across the face. Before he could act, Albe had his wrist twisted up between his shoulder blades.
“What?” she asked. “You are a guest here. Would you insult the mistress of this house by abusing her daughter?”
Then she released him. Cateyrin drew back; her nose was still bruised and sore from Meth’s earlier blow. Without saying anything further, she left, following her mother into what I surmised must be another room. Meth took one of the benches at the table. He didn’t speak, but sat and looked sullen.