And he went on to tell of all that he had seen in the Dream that night. He told of his march to Hulan’s Gate, and he told of the assault on the celestial gardens. He told of the Dragon, of the hammer, of the Gold Gong. He spoke of the falling Dara.
He spoke with great eloquence in his rough Chhayan accent, and even the Hari clan leader listened with attention. The emperor made no interruption, waiting until Jovann finished by saying, “And so you see, Honored Emperor, that if these men must die today then I must die among them. So I beg you for mercy. And if mercy may not be found, I beg for justice and a swift death to us all.”
Sairu, her tears dry upon her face, stared numbly at Jovann. He would not meet her gaze but continued to face the emperor only, awaiting his judgment.
The Anuk nodded once, slowly. Then he turned to Sairu and spoke in a low voice that no other in the room could hear. “My child,” he said, “my daughter. Does this man speak the truth?”
Sairu felt the weight of many lives on her shoulders, and it was a crushing weight. Even so, she found her voice and said only, “He does, Beloved Anuk. He speaks the truth.”
“Very well.” And the emperor faced the gathering again, his brow stern and yet serene. He looked then more like his sister Safiya than he ever had before. “It is the will of Anwar that mercy be shown this dawn. We have survived a bloody night. Let us not begin the new day with more blood. These men will be stripped of their weapons and put under guard. We shall, in days to come, discuss their future and the future of the Chhayan nation under my ruling hand. Juong-Khla Jovann,” he said, fixing his eyes upon Jovann, “you will remain in Manusbau and act as intercessor. You will share the fate of your people, whatever that fate may be.”
Protests were raised along with angry voices. Arguments were put forward, crashing like waves against the bulwark of the emperor’s decree. None of this did Sairu hear.
Suddenly feeling the brokenness of the heart in her breast, she removed an outer layer of her robes and wrapped it around Princess Safiya’s head and body. Then she summoned two slaves, and these helped her to carry the princess from the throne room. She did not look back to find Jovann. She could not bear to.
Jovann watched her go and wondered if he would ever see her again.
So many wounds. Will the blood never cease to flow? Will a mother’s heart never cease to break? Will she ever be whole again?
“Never,” says the Lumil Eliasul, and he holds Hymlumé cradled in his arms. “A heart once broken will never be as it was before. But I will teach you the beauty of broken things, my child. Will you listen?”
Hymlumé, the Lady Moon, bows her head. She is weak with her bereavement, and her Song is so faint that the worlds below cannot hear it. But she says, “I will listen, my Lord.”
The Lumil Eliasul sings. It is impossible to express in mortal languages the Song that passes from his lips, from his heart, washing over Hymlumé in healing. It is the Song of mercy. It is the Song of grace. It is the Song of promise inexpressible. Poets in later years, attempting to put words to that Song so that mortals might comprehend, stumblingly penned words such as these and others:
“Twilit dimness surrounds me,
The veil slips over my eyes.
The riddle of us two together long ago
How fragile in my mem’ry lies.
Beyond the Final Water falling
The songs of spheres recalling
We who were never bound are swiftly torn apart.
Won’t you return to me?
May my heart beat with courage
Before this torrent of shame,
And may I find the warm sweetness of forgiveness
Between the ice and the flame.
Beyond the Final Water falling
The songs of spheres recalling
When the senseless silence fills your weary mind,
Won’t you return to me?”
The Song does not end. It grows, it swells. The remaining stars, hiding their faces from the terror of the Dragon and of their fallen brethren, hear the sound. One by one, their trembling voices catch hold and begin to join in delicate harmonies. Each voice unique and each voice part of the whole. The woven threads reach out to one another and begin to form a pattern, a new dance.
Hymlumé, watching, sees her children, her living children, begin once more, as though newly born, to pace their way across the riven skies. And as they sing, the rendings of Heaven heal, and this healing is made visible even down to the lower worlds, as far as the Near World of mortals.
The End has come. So has the Beginning.
As she watches, Hymlumé sees her own place in the new dance, and she longs suddenly to join it. Still she clings to her Lord and gazes up into his face. “My children,” she says, her heart full of the lost ones who fell before the Dragon and his poisonous discord.
“The Song is changed,” says the Lumil Eliasul. “Listen, Hymlumé. Listen to the new harmonies. Listen to the promise I have made you.”
Hymlumé listens. She hears the brilliance, the colors, the shining of the Song. She sees her children dancing. She sees their longing for their lost brothers and sisters, their sorrow at the sundering. But there is so much more than longing, so much more than sorrow. She hears the promise.
So Hymlumé rises up. Though her gown is stained scarlet and her body is covered with scars, she ascends to the High Places, even unto her throne. She too begins to sing the new Song, her voice feeble at first but growing in strength. And below in the lower worlds, as the night nears its end, all eyes see the blood staining the sky washed away. For a moment, all eyes behold the brilliant, crashing power of the Final Water. Then the cleansing flood passes, and the sky, tinged with dawn, is clear. And Hymlumé shines bright as she sings of the promise.
The promise that her lost children will return.
Somewhere deep in the formless mist of the Dream sat the cat. He groomed his paw slowly, taking time over each toe, each tuft of fur between each toe. When he finished one paw, he moved to the next. This accomplished, he stuck out a hind leg and gave it a thorough going-over as well.
Then he lashed his tail. “Just like mortals,” he growled. “No regard for anyone but themselves. Oh yes, let’s all go plunging into bottomless caverns and disappear! The cat? He’ll be fine, not to worry. We’ll just vanish, slip back to our own world, and never think twice about our furry companion. He’ll show up eventually! Or maybe he just won’t. How do you like that?”
With this and more of the same muttered between licks, the cat began to groom the white ruff of his chest. Grooming often calmed his nerves, but it was difficult to calm anything in this place even now, with the sky healing and the Heavens separating once more from the Dream. The cat had never before travelled to this farthest edge of the Between, and he did not know its workings as he did the Wood. He sniffed around for the Path of his Master but could find no trace of it. Only more mist. Only more formlessness.
So he sat and he groomed and he grumbled. He knew somewhere in the back of his head that Kitar priests considered patience one of the Twelve Mighty Virtues. But he was a cat. He didn’t think much of priests . . . or virtues either, when it came right down to it.
Something appeared through the mist. A glow, but a living glow of shining gold, warmer and more real than the sun. The cat turned to it, and it would be difficult to say which emotion dominated his face—delight or dread. For he feared his Master as deeply as he loved him, and he trembled now at his approach.
Through the mist the shining One appeared, and if he wore any solid form at all it was that of a great Hound with an elegant face, slender and powerful limbs, and a coat that shimmered with its own rippling light. But this was only an appearance, and the cat was not one to be fooled by the outer show of an inner truth. For this was the Giver of Songs, the One Who Names Them. This was the Lord of all the Faerie Folk.
“Lumil Eliasul,” the cat said, making a bow after the fashion of his kind. “My Master.”
“My faithful servant.” The shining Hound was as great as a mountain and yet it bowed its head so that it might look with deep, endless eyes into the cat’s face. “Well done, brave soul.”
The cat trembled with delight at this praise. But he was still a cat. “Well, you know, it wasn’t exactly the most tremendous task I’ve ever undertaken. Only crossing between realms of reality, facing the Father of all dragons, battling monsters and devils, and watching the Moon nearly die . . . eh. Give me something to do next time.”
The Lumil Eliasul smiled. Then he asked, “Are you ready to go home, Eanrin?”
At this the cat’s bravado faded. He shrank into himself. And suddenly it was the man who stood before his Master, arms crossed over his chest, head bowed. The light of his Master shone in his eyes, but there was sorrow as well. “I am not ready,” he said. “I—I cannot see her yet.”
“Then I will not ask it of you. But it is time that you moved on.”
“Oh, is it?” the cat-man looked up sharply. “I—I rather thought—Sairu, my charge, she has experienced quite a loss just now. She’s a strange little thing, and they’ve done strange things to her, forming her into what she is. It nearly killed her when her mistress was taken. And now that lady has vanished into the Deeper Dream, perhaps never to be seen again . . .”
“She will be seen again. Only not by Masayi Sairu,” said the Lumil Eliasul. Then the golden Hound—who stood as tall as the man or taller—inclined his head gently so that once more his servant must look into his eyes. “Do not fear for your charge. She is in my care and keeping, held within my heart. She will never forget you and what you’ve done for her. And one day you and she will be reunited.”
“Beyond the Final Water?” the cat-man asked, a trace of sadness in his voice.
“Yes. And perhaps sooner than that,” said his Lord.
“May I take leave of her before I go?”
“Of course you may, Eanrin. Of course you may.”
And at the words of the Lumil Eliasul, the Dream around them moved, as though in obedience, and presented a door before the cat-man. A small red door painted with flowers, made to slide back in grooves. It was not a door the cat-man recognized, but he knew at once that it was a gate from the Dream back to the Near World where his charge waited.
“Thank you, my Lord,” he said, turning. But the Lumil Eliasul was already gone. This both relieved and saddened the cat-man, for though he feared the face of his Master—the face that revealed too many truths a cat finds difficult to acknowledge—he loved that face even as he loved his own life.
He slid back the door and gazed into a hall gilded and hung with tapestries depicting serene landscapes of lily ponds and tall cranes. Frowning, the cat-man stepped inside and felt the Dream disappear behind him and the Near World close in all around. He sniffed the air, uncertain for a moment which way to turn.
A too-familiar sound burst upon his ears.
“Oh, Dragon’s teeth!” the cat-man growled, and whirled just in time to see a pack of barking lion dogs careen around the corner and tear into the hall. Their little claws scraped and scrabbled on the polished floor, and many fell in fluffy bundles, only to leap up and continue their mad chase, snarling like the very Black Dogs themselves! For an instant the cat-man felt the fur on his neck rise up and his body prepared to run.
Then he saw that which the lion dogs chased.
The raven—or rather, not a raven at all, only something wearing a raven’s guise—flapped and fluttered its tattered wings, keeping just ahead of the oncoming pack. It roared and rattled in the most un-birdlike voice, and its red eyes darted with furious fire.
It flew right at the cat-man’s head, and he ducked only just fast enough to keep from losing an eye. Lion dogs swarmed around his ankles, their whole furry beings fixed upon their prey. The cat-man whirled about, his red cloak sweeping behind him, and saw the raven fling itself at a shuttered window, scraping with scale-clad claws as it sought to escape. Its wings beat the glass with such force, the pane surely must break. Below it, the dogs yipped and leapt, eager but ineffective.
The cat-man smiled grimly. Then he made his way to the window, pushing through the swarm of dogs, some of which tried to climb his legs in their urgency. The raven screeched in an unholy language as the cat-man caught it by the back of the neck and held it above the milling pack.
“They have ways of dealing with devils in this country. Do you know what they are, demon-bird?”
With these words, he tossed the raven to the floor.
In the darkness the young dragon lay collapsed upon nothing, his mangled hand clutched to his chest. Here in the Between of all worlds and realities, he was lost . . . but no more lost than he had ever been. He realized this now, with his fire sunk so low, though he would forget it soon enough when the furnace returned.
How tired he was. How spent. How broken.
He recalled his mother. He could no longer see her face, for dragons cannot maintain memories of loved ones for long. When he had burned a few more times, he would forget her completely. But now he remembered. Not her face, but the smell of her. The warmth of her. The comfort of her. Even this comfort was hollow, for although she had loved him with a passion few mothers could equal, she had breathed her hatred into his soul.
Hatred of his father. But that father was gone. The young dragon couldn’t remember him at all. The only father he knew now was the Dark Father. And the Dark Father slept deep down below in the Dark Water, bound to the Gold Stone.
The young dragon gnashed his teeth in despair at what was forgotten, for even the memory of pain is better than oblivion.
His brother’s face he remembered. That one he would not forget so soon, for his was the face he hated most, and hatred lived well in his fire.
The ring upon his torn hand glowed suddenly. Its brilliance cut through the darkness all around, revealing only more darkness. But now the darkness had focus, had purpose, for it could surround that light. The stone blossom of Hulan’s Garden pulsed with rich flame deep inside, a flame that was not fire but Song. And the young dragon stared down at that stone. He recalled the lovely form and lovelier voice of his Angel.
And he recalled her final words: “I never want to see your face again.”
He howled in agony, and the darkness swallowed up the sound and fed upon it. Never was a soul more abandoned to grief, to rage. Never was a soul more alone.
Then suddenly he was not alone.
“Sunan,” said the Lumil Eliasul. “I know your name.”
The young dragon dared not look up. His body shook with the pain of his loneliness, but he would not give up that pain. “That is no longer my name,” he moaned. “I have no name.”
“You have only forgotten it. But I have not.” The Lumil Eliasul knelt and took the young dragon’s wounded hand in his. He lifted it up, displaying the ring of opals for both of them to see.
“One day, Sunan,” the Lumil Eliasul said, “I will claim this for my own. But I leave it to you now, a final guiding light through this torment. And I grant you a gift as well. Until the time comes for your reclamation, I give you sleep.”
The young dragon closed his eyes. Then he, like his Dark Father, slipped into a deep slumber of ages, not to wake again for many generations of mortal men. But unlike the Dark Father, the young dragon slept without dreams.
And he wore the gift of a heart upon his hand.
On the Masayi grounds, all the Golden Daughters gathered and made final reverence to their Golden Mother. No one questioned who would step into Princess Safiya’s place, for all knew that Princess Safiya was irreplaceable.
But they did wonder at the presence of Masayi Sairu, their sister.
Sairu stood at the head of the Golden Mother’s body as it lay upon the pyre. She set a wreath of red chrysanthemums across the Mother’s brow, then bowed her head as she offered a long, silent prayer. The Golden Daughters watched her from behind tear-laden lashes, curious even in their sorrow. One or two of the youn
ger ones whispered questions to their elders, saying, “Was she not given to a master? Why is she here? Where is her master?” The elder sisters hushed the younger. Nevertheless, the same questions were bright in their eyes.
But Sairu, unaware, heard only Princess Safiya’s last words soft in her ear: “You were born to make life.”
Not to guard it. Not to take it.
To create it.
Sairu wondered even as she stood in prayerful attitude if perhaps the end of the Golden Daughters was at hand. And she wondered if perhaps this end was best. She thought of her sisters who had gone before her. She thought of Jen-ling, her life vanished in service to a distant prince. She thought of the lives those sisters would take, and of the lives she herself had taken in this agony of devotion.
“You were born to make life.”
She finished her prayer, whispering at the last, “Beyond the Final Water falling, the Songs of Spheres recalling . . .” Then she stepped back and allowed a weeping slave to take her place, to light the funeral blaze. Rejoining her sisters, Sairu stood and watched as the fire consumed all, and smoke and incense rose to the healing heavens.
Someone tugged at her sleeve. She turned to meet the questioning gaze of a younger sister. “Sairu, where is your master?”
Sairu did not answer. She blinked slowly and faced the pyre again, and this was answer enough for all her gathered sisters. She had failed. The best, the brightest, the most favored of their number. And she had failed. A shudder ran through the heart of each girl present, and they could not look upon Sairu again.
Anwar had already risen to his zenith when Sairu, her back turned to the glowing embers of the funeral pyre, made her way alone back to the Chrysanthemum House. It saddened her to realize how unfamiliar that house had become. As she slid back the door and passed silently down the corridors to her own private chambers, she found herself thinking of the lepers’ huts in Lembu Rana.