~*~
My new clothing is clean and fresh. Though the long coat is of leather (wonderfully soft and warm), the trousers and the shirt are woven; and as they have never been worn, they are harsher than what I am used to against my skin. Ty said they will wear through in time, if I am so keen on holes.
I bear this new clothing now, and in the day I must bind my hair at the nape of my neck to hide its length, and whenever I might be seen by a stranger from off the ship I must wear the eyepatch to hide my new demon. I do not look like kretchin any longer. Ty said I am no longer kretchin, and I almost want to believe him, but I know that it is only a disguise. I remember who I am by the harsh feel of new cloth against my skin, and by the stray curls of my hair so short that they will not be bound, and by my fear of things or people I don't know.
There is a crew on this ship, besides Ler and Rih; they are not many, but they are always nearby. Their names were given to me when we came aboard, but slipped my mind almost at once. I would not look at their faces. Too much happened before that (I will not think of it, I will not) and I was afraid of them as I am always afraid of anyone I do not know. I think that fear has worsened. I will speak with Ty, because I know him already, and I will speak with Therrin and with Rih because they are both friendly and eager to know me; but I keep my distance from Ler's crew, and they keep theirs from me.
I spend my days by the side of the ship, where I mustn't run far to spew into the sea if I must. Ty remains near me, though his reasons are his own. He sits still and silent, watching the waves.
It is not long before Ler and Rih and Therrin come to him, all together, for an explanation; and I listen to their talk, hoping that it will distract me from thoughts of things I must not think of and calm my stomach.
“Thank you for saving me,” says Therrin; “but why did you?”
“You had better start at the beginning,” says Ler, crossing her arms. “I have been waiting too long to hear this story.”
Ty explains. He starts at the beginning. I have heard much of it before, but I listen all the same, glad to think of something other than my own plight.
“Some six or seven years ago I agreed to give up my life on this ship in favor of wandering Thilua alone, and on foot. I took the chance to learn about any legends I could. This was one of those I heard:”
He tells of the gate to another world, hidden somewhere in the sea. He tells of the time one thousand years ago when something, something mighty but now forgotten, came through it – and he tells that this force was driven through the gate by a man of that other world. That man set the thing to destroy the city under the sea, which still glimmers beneath the waves but now can do no more than glimmer.
The people of Thilua hoped to defend themselves, and so the most talented among them went to meet the thing in what is now the stone plain. They came from the Mountains and from the Desert and from that place where they gathered; and there they were joined by others from the strange world, who had followed the thing and the man who controlled it through the gate, and hoped to destroy him here. So there was quite a gathering of them, all with their own talents, and together they bound the thing inside a temple and set it to sleep for a thousand years. Without it the man was easily slain.
The spell of binding killed nearly all who helped to cast it, and was less merciful still to the land around it, which flattened and died and turned all to stone. This is how the stone plain came to be, Ty tells us. Some of the people who lived there fled to the Mountains or to the Desert, but many more died. Those who could not flee were turned to stone, and by the time one hundred years had passed their bodies had vanished into the endlessly flat land, so that nothing at all was left to mark that they ever were.
The few who had aided in the binding and lived knew that their spell could not last forever: there was one among the strangers who had the power of prophecy, and she spoke that the thing must wake in one thousand years' time. It would be woken – and freed – by an orphan of both worlds, one born of the guardian, so she said. The thing that was bound would call to this person, when the time came.
The strangers from through the gate took this knowledge and returned to their home, and they were never heard from again. The Thiluans took this knowledge and fled to the Desert. They saw that the stone plain was stopped at the river, and so they called it the River Saluyah, for Saluyah means guardian in the old language. They hoped that the river might save them from whatever bane their binding had wrought. And they built a city there, to defend against the thing which was to wake in a thousand years, and this they also called Saluyah.
Now the prophecy is all but forgotten, though the time has nearly come for it to pass. Not even the Namers in the temples remember that Saluyah was built only to defend against that thing which may soon wake.
Ty found this legend very interesting, for many reasons, and he hoped to learn more, perhaps even to see it fulfilled. He decided to search for any sign of this orphan of both worlds – and he thought that perhaps the “guardian” was the city of Saluyah, so he centered his search there. But he had no luck with it, and though he did not forget to keep an eye out, he was soon turned to other tasks.
Some two or three years back, he spoke to Aharyin the Bard in search of more legends. I start as I hear this, knowing that few who are not kretchin will speak to Aharyin; but Ty has surprised me many times. Perhaps it is because he does not hail from the Mountains that he does not understand that kretchin are not to be spoken to, not to be learned about, not to be understood.
Aharyin told him of a noble bastard in Saluyah who was blessed by Snake – just as he told me, and all the kretchin in Therwil, and perhaps all kretchin all over Thilua. Snake is a kretchin god. It is important if any noble is blessed by him, even a noble bastard.
The thought of a noble bastard blessed by Snake intrigued him, and the mention of Saluyah reminded him of the thousand years' prophecy. He wondered if perhaps the “two worlds” were the world of nobles and that of commoners, and if this might be that child, but he thought this unlikely enough that he did not pursue the tale – until he met me.
I do not like to hear this part of the story. It must be rife with mentions of her, and I do not want to hear them. Still, I am quite near him, and I cannot avoid hearing. I turn my demon-eye to the limitless sea, and I sit very still, and I hope that the words may wash over me without striking.
He tells how he found two wanderers in the Desert, “a young noblewoman and a slightly younger boy dressed as kretchin,” attacked by an insect. I will not remember. I will not. I will treat this story as though it had nothing to do with me. I must.
He summoned an elemental of wind and sand, and saved the travelers. The noblewoman was impressed with his skill at conjury and asked him to summon her a demon, and to act as guide and bodyguard until he did. At first he would not agree, but he learned that she wanted the demon to kill the woman who had born her false betrothed a child. So he saw that the noblewoman was after the mother of that famous noble bastard, and so he agreed to escort her to Saluyah, because he was curious.
He soon learned that both the nobleman and his lover were dead, and his suspicions rose. He visited the temple at which the child was born in order to learn more.
He tells what he learned of the child's mother, of her strange appearance, of Kerheyin's devotion to her. Therrin is eager to learn all she can of them, for she knows that she is the child whom she wanted to kill, and so she knows that Kerheyin of House Lithuk must be her father, and the stranger from the sea her mother. She wants to know everything.
And Ty tells her all he knows – that the woman's hair was white as snow and that her eyes shone silver, that she could not or would not speak, that she arrived in Saluyah by boat, and so “the fools thought her Anarian, as though Anarians were not as human as they.” He tells her that the birth was difficult, that it killed the woman. He tells her that the Namer was asked to give the Sea-Father's blessing that the mother find her way, and to cast t
he body into the River Saluyah.
He tells her that Kerheyin swore to love her for all eternity, and that when she was dead he took the babe away. To his aunt, Ty surmised. I remember hearing that an aunt of Kerheyin's wed an assassin of another House and lost her nobility, but I try to quench that thought as soon as it comes, not wanting to think of whence it came.
When the child was safe in this aunt's arms, he must have returned to the temple, and somehow left his servant and steed behind – or perhaps it was the servant who took the child away – and Kerheyin walked to the River Saluyah and drowned himself therein. By the time the servant was able to find him and pull him out of the River and bring him home to his mother who is a healer, it was too late.
“That is all I know of them,” says Ty; “might I continue?”
The child was blessed not only by Snake but by another power, unknown to the Namer. Ty heard this and remembered that the thing trapped in a temple deep within the stone plain was to call to its Chosen one, and he could see that it was not at all unlikely that the mother had come from through the gate; and so this child was an orphan born of both worlds and in Saluyah, the guardian city.
Knowing this, he saw that he had done a wrong in saving us (no, them, it must be them; I am not a part of this story, I cannot be, I will not be), for the noblewoman intended to kill this child. If he had not meddled she might have died in the Desert. In saving the strangers he had doomed the child who was Chosen, and so doomed the prophecy. This was a wrong that needed righting, he says. Now he traveled with them only that he might betray them.
So with them he journeyed to find the child, first to Qualin and then on to Quiyen, whither they learned that it had been moved. There he learned that the child was certainly not all of this world, for she aged far more quickly than a human child, and was hardly a child at all anymore. He had been nearly certain before, but now he knew beyond a doubt that she was the one Chosen by the thing in the stone plain.
And that child was Therrin, and the kretchin boy was me (no – no, he was Arrek, he was only Arrek), and to save them both he fled with them to Ler's ship. The rest, everyone knows.
So Ty finishes his story, and there is a silence as they think on what we have heard. At last Ler speaks: “So, Therrin, you're this Chosen one. Will you travel to the stone plain to set free that which is trapped?”
She does not answer at once. She sits and she looks at her hands, and at her skirt, and at the planks beneath her, and at the waves that carry the ship.
“I... I do not know,” she says at last. “I am curious to see what sleeps in that temple. But now that I know whose child I am, I would seek out their homes, and learn more about them – particularly my mother, who came from that other world. I would so like to see it!
“Also it is death to venture into the stone plain without a better idea of one's purpose. I do not know how to free this thing, whether I would or no, so perhaps I ought to learn more before I attempt it. Perhaps there is something I could learn in my mother's world. So I would journey thither, if I can: to the gate between worlds; and if this means I cannot free that which sleeps, perhaps I am not the child of the prophecy after all.”
“We cannot take the time to bring you thither by ship,” Ler says; “but we shall take you to the Island, and the gate will not be far. If you are able to pay, we can provide you with a boat and supplies with which to reach it.”
“Thank you,” says Therrin. “But I don't know how to find it.”
“I will guide you thither, if you would have me,” says Ty. “I, too, would know what lies beyond the gate.”
“Then I accept your offer of aid, and thank you for it,” she says.
There is another moment of silence. I hang in it, afraid to fall, with the ship still moving all around me. Then Rih turns to me, saying: “And what of you, Arrek?”
I fall.
His question fills my mind and I don't know what to say. I cannot go to Anaria. I cannot go to the Island. I cannot return to Thilua. I cannot remain here. I begin to shake my head, to cower, to hide, to hope that they will forget me that I must not answer; but no. I must be strong. I am Arrek now and I will be strong. I whistle to Snake for strength and I make my voice as loud and as steady as I can, and I say to them: “I do not know.”
“Come with us, then!” Therrin says smiling. “Surely one more among our number will help, if only so we have an easier time of it watching our backs. And perhaps your strange eye will be of aid to us.”
“Likely,” says Ty. “The demon is not fooled by tricks of light. It sees what is there.”
“Thank you,” I say, so glad for a place to go that I don't stop to consider. “I hope I can be of aid to you.”
So it is decided: they will go to the Island for a boat and supplies; and thence they will travel to the gate between the worlds, and pass through it; and in this other world they will seek knowledge of the thing which sleeps deep in the stone plain, which Therrin is to wake. And I shall go with them.