Whatever it was that was in the forest had laid claim to the souls, after all. They were not for the having.
A sleepless night had followed then, too, and a burgeoning awareness like a slow sunrise. He was no longer young. Who knew how many seasons or years the blessed gods would have him see? And with the letter, after, had come certainty. He knew what was asked of him, and he would not go down into whatever travelling followed the dropped cloak of mortal life with these wrongly taken souls charged against his name.
One was still gone from him; one—his first—had been given back. The others were in his pack now as he walked in rain, carrying them home.
What lay waiting for him among the trees he did not know, though he had taken something not meant for him, and balancings and redress were embedded at the core of his own art and the teachings he had studied. Only a fool denied his fear. What was, would be. Time was running, it was always running. The gift of foretelling was not a part of his craft. There were powers greater than royalty in the world.
He thought of the young queen, sailing. He thought of Linon: that very first time, bowel-gripping terror, and power and awe. So long ago. The cold rain on his face now was a leash that tethered him to the world. He passed through Megarium and reached the walls and saw the road ahead of him through the open gates, and had his first glimpse of the Aldwood in the grey distance beyond.
He paused then, just for a moment, looking, felt the hard, mortal banging of his heart. Someone bumped him from behind, swore in Sarantine, moved on.
‘What is it?’Tiresa asked. Quick one. A falcon.
‘Nothing, love. A memory.’
‘Why is a memory nothing?’
Why, indeed? He made no reply, went on, staff in hand, through the gates. He waited by the ditch for a company of horsed merchants to pass, and their laden mules, and then began walking again. So many autumn mornings here, remembered in a blur, striding alone in search of fame, of knowledge, the hidden secrets of the world. Of the half-world.
By midday he was on the main road, running due east, and the great wood marched with him, north and very near.
It remained there through the days of walking that followed, in rain, in pale, brief sunlight, the leaves wet and heavy, almost all fallen, many-coloured, smoke rising from charcoal pits, a distant sound of axes, a stream heard but not seen, sheep and goats to the south, a solitary shepherd. A wild boar ran from the woods once, and then—astonished in the sudden light as a cloud unsheathed the sun—darted back into dark and disappeared.
The forest remained there in the nights, too, beyond shuttered windows in inns where he was remembered by no one in the common rooms and recognized no one after so long, where he ate and drank alone and took no girls upstairs as once he had, and was walking again with the day’s first eastward breaking.
And it was there, a boy’s stonethrow from the road, towards evening of a last day, when an afternoon drizzle had passed and the westering sun lay red and low behind him, throwing his own long shadow forward as he went through a hamlet he remembered—shuttered at day’s end now in the cold, no one at all in the single street—and came, not far beyond, his shadow leading him, to the inn where he had always stayed before going out in the dark before sunrise to do what he did on the Day of the Dead.
He stopped on the road outside the inn, irresolute. He could hear sounds from the enclosed yard. Horses, the creak of a cart being shifted, a hammering in the smithy, stablehands. A dog barked. Someone laughed. The foothills of the mountains that barred access to the coast and the sea rose up behind the inn, goats dotting the twilit meadow. The wind had died. He looked back behind him at the red sun and the reddened clouds along the horizon. A better day tomorrow, they promised. There would be fires lit inside the inn, mulled wine for warmth.
‘We are afraid,’ he heard.
Not Tiresa. Mirelle, who never spoke. He had made her a robin, copper-chested, small as Linon. The same voice all of them had, the wry, patrician tones of the jurist by whose new-laid grave he had done his dark, defining ceremony. An unexpected irony there . . . that nine souls of Sauradian girls sacrificed in an Aldwood grove should all sound, when claimed, like an arrogant judge from Rhodias, killed by too much drink. Same voice, but he knew the timbre of each spirit as he knew his own.
‘Oh, my dears,’ he said gently, ‘do not be fearful.’
‘Not for us.’ Tiresa now. Hint of impatience. ‘We know where we are. We are afraid for you.’
He hadn’t expected that. Found he could think of nothing to say. He looked back along the road again, and then east, ahead. No one riding, no one walking. All sane mortals drawing themselves now within walls at day’s end, barred windows, roofs, fires against the cold and nearly fallen dark. His shadow lay on the Imperial road, the shadow of his staff. A hare startled in the field and broke, zigzagging, caught by the long light, down into the wet ditch by the road. The sun and the western clouds above it red as fire, as the last of a fire.
There was no reason, really, to wait for morning, fair as it might prove to be.
He walked on, alone on the road, leaving the lights of the inn behind, and after no very great distance more came to a small, flat bridge across the northern roadside ditch and knew the place and crossed there as he had years ago and years ago, and went through the wet dark autumn grass of that field, and when he came to the black edgings of the wood he did not pause but entered into the weighted, waiting darkness of those ancient trees, with seven souls and his own.
Behind him, in the world, the sun went down.
DARKNESS LASTED in the Aldwood, night a deepening of it not a bringing forth. Morning was a distant, intuited thing, not an altering of space or light. The moons were usually known by pull, not by shining, though sometimes they might be glimpsed, and sometimes a star would appear between black branches, moving leaves, above a lifting of mist.
In the glade where blood was shed each autumn by masked priests of a rite so old no one knew how it had begun, these truths were altered—a very little. The trees here gave way enough for light to fall when the tendrils of fog were not hovering. The noontide sun might make the leaves show green in spring or summer, red-gold as they were claimed by autumn frosts. The white moon could make a cold, spare beauty of the black branches in midwinter, the blue one draw them back into strangeness, the half-world. Things could be seen.
Such as the crushed grass and fallen leaves and the sod where a hoofed tread that ought to have been too massive for the earth had fallen, just now, and had gone back among the trees. Such as seven birds lying on the hard ground, crafted birds, artifices. Such as the man near them. What was left, more truly, of what had been a man. His face was untouched. The expression, by the moonlight which was blue just then, serene, accepting, a quiet laid upon it.
He had returned of his own will: some weight had been given to that, allowance made, dispensation. The body below was ripped apart, bloodily, from groin to breastbone. Blood and matter lay exposed, trailed along the grass away, where the hoofprints went.
An old, worn traveller’s pack lay on the ground a little distance away. It had a wide leather strap, Esperanan, worn soft.
It was silent in the glade. Time ran. The blue moon slipped through empty spaces overhead and passed away from what it saw below. No wind, no sound in the bare branches, no stirring of fallen leaves. No owl called in the Aldwood, or nightingale, no rumbling tread of beast, or god returning. Not now. That had been and had passed. Would be again, and again, but not tonight.
Then, into such stillness in the cold night, came speech. The birds on the grass, and yet not them. Voices of women were heard in the air, in the darkness, soft as leaves, women who had died here, long ago.
Do you hate him?
Now? Look what has been done to him.
Not only now. Ever. Before. I never did.
A quiet again, for a time. Time meant little here, was hard to compass, unless by the stars slipping from sight as they moved, when they could be se
en.
Nor I.
Nor I. Should we have?
How so?
Truly. How so?
And only look, said Linon then, her first words, who had been first of them to be claimed and to return, look how he has paid.
He wasn’t afraid, though, was he? Tiresa.
Yes, he was, said Linon. A breath in the stillness. He isn’t, any more.
Where is he? Mirelle.
No one answered that.
Where are we to go? asked Mirelle.
Ah. That I do know. We are there already. We are gone. Only say goodbye and we are gone, said Linon.
Goodbye, then, said Tiresa. Falcon.
Goodbye, whispered Mirelle.
One by one they bade farewell to each other, rustling words in the dark air as the souls took leave. At the end, Linon was alone, who had been first of all, and in the quiet of the grove she said the last words to the man lying beside her in the grass, though he could not hear her now, and then she spoke something more in the dark, more tender than a farewell, and then at last her bound soul accepted its release, so long denied.
And so that hidden knowledge and those transmuted souls passed from the created world where men and women lived and died, and the birds of Zoticus the alchemist were not seen or known again under sun or moons. Except for one.
WHEN AUTUMN CAME round again, in a mortal world greatly changed by then, those coming at dawn on the Day of the Dead to perform the ancient, forbidden rites found no dead man, no crafted birds in the grass. There was a staff, and an empty pack with a leather strap, and they wondered at those. One man took the staff, another the pack, when they were done with what they had come there to do.
Those two, as it happened, were to know good fortune all their days, afterwards, and then their children did, who took the staff and the pack when they died, and then their children’s children.
There were powers greater than royalty in the world.
‘I should be exceedingly grateful,’ said the cleric Maximius, principal adviser to the Eastern Patriarch, ‘if someone would explain to us why a cow so absurdly large is to be placed on the dome of the Sanctuary of Jad’s Holy Wisdom. What does this Rhodian think he is about?’
There was a brief silence, worthy of the arch, acidic tones in which the comment had been made.
‘I believe,’ said the architect Artibasos gravely, after a glance at the Emperor, ‘that the animal might be a bull, in fact.’
Maximius sniffed. ‘I am, of course, entirely happy to defer to your knowledge of the farmyard. The question remains, however.’
The Patriarch, in a cushioned seat with a back, allowed himself a small smile behind his white beard. The Emperor remained expressionless.
‘Deference becomes you,’ said Artibasos, mildly enough. ‘It might be worth cultivating. It is customary—except perhaps among clerics—to have opinions preceded by knowledge.’
This time it was Valerius who smiled. It was late at night. Everyone knew the Emperor’s hours, and Zakarios, the Eastern Patriarch, had long since made his adjustments to them. The two men had negotiated a relationship built around an unexpected personal affection and the real tension between their offices and roles. The latter tended to play itself out in the actions and statements of their associates. This, too, had evolved over the years. Both men were aware of it.
Excepting the servants and two yawning Imperial secretaries standing by in the shadows, there were five men in the room—a chamber in the smaller Traversite Palace—and they had each, at some point, spent a measure of time examining the drawings that had brought them here. The mosaicist was not here. It was not proper that he be present for this. The fifth man, Pertennius of Eubulus, secretary to the Supreme Strategos, had been making notes as he studied the sketches. Not a surprise: the historian’s mandate here was to chronicle the Emperor’s building projects, and the Great Sanctuary was the crown jewel among them.
Which made the preliminary drawings for the proposed dome mosaics of extreme significance, both aesthetic and theological.
Zakarios, behind his thick, short, steepled fingers, shook his head as a servant offered wine. ‘Bull or cow,’ he said, ‘it is unusual . . . much of the design is unusual. You will agree, my lord?’ He adjusted the ear flap of his cap. He was aware that the unusual headgear with its dangling chin strings did no favours to his appearance, but he was past the age when such things mattered and was rather more concerned with the fact that it was not yet winter and he was already cold all the time, even indoors.
‘One could hardly fail to agree,’ Valerius murmured. He was clad in a dark blue wool tunic and the new style of trousers, belted, tucked into black boots. Working garb, no crown, no jewels. Of all those in the room, he was the only one who seemed oblivious to the hour. The blue moon was well over to the west, above the sea by now. ‘Would we have preferred a more ‘usual’ design for this Sanctuary?’
‘This dome serves a holy purpose,’ the Patriarch said firmly. ‘The images thereon—at the very summit of the Sanctuary—are to inspire the devout to pious thoughts. This is not a mortal palace, my lord, it is an evocation of the palace of Jad.’
‘And you feel,’ said Valerius, ‘that the proposal of the Rhodian is deficient in this regard? Really?’ The question was pointed.
The Patriarch hesitated. The Emperor had an unsettling habit of posing such blunt queries, cutting past detail to the larger issue. The fact was, the charcoal sketches of the proposed mosaic were astonishing. There really was no other simple word for it, or none that came to the Patriarch’s mind at this late hour.
Well, one other word: humbling.
That was good, he thought. Wasn’t it? The dome crowned a sanctuary—a house—meant to honour the god, as a palace housed and exalted a mortal ruler. The god’s exaltation ought to be greater, for the Emperor was merely his Regent upon earth. Jad’s messenger was the last voice they heard when they died: Uncrown, the lord of Emperors awaits you now.
For worshippers to feel awe, sweep, immense power above them . . .
‘The design is remarkable,’ Zakarios said frankly—it was risky to be less than direct with Valerius. He settled his fingers in his lap. ‘It is also . . . disturbing. Do we want the faithful to be uneasy in the god’s house?’
‘I don’t even know where I am when I look at this,’ Maximius said plaintively, striding over to the broad table surface where Pertennius of Eubulus was standing over the drawings.
‘You are in the Traversite Palace,’ said the little architect, Artibasos, helpfully. Maximius flashed him a glance etched in rancour.
‘What do you mean?’ Zakarios asked. His principal adviser was an officious, bristling, literal-minded man, but good at what he did.
‘Well, look,’ said Maximius. ‘We are to imagine ourselves standing beneath this dome, within the Sanctuary. But lying along the . . . I suppose the eastern rim, the Rhodian is showing what is obviously the City . . . and he is showing the Sanctuary itself, seen from a distance . . .’
‘As if from the sea, yes,’ said Valerius quietly.
‘. . . and so we will be inside the Sanctuary but must imagine ourselves to be looking at it from a distance. It . . . it gives me a headache,’ concluded Maximius firmly. He touched his brow, as if to emphasize the pain. Pertennius gave him a sidelong glance.
There was a little silence again. The Emperor looked at Artibasos. The architect said, with unexpected patience, ‘He is showing us the City within a larger meaning. Sarantium, Queen of Cities, glory of the world, and in such an image the Sanctuary is present, as it must be, along with the Hippodrome, the Precinct palaces, the landward walls, the harbour, the boats in the harbour . . .’
‘But,’ said Maximius, a finger stabbing upwards, ‘with all respect to our glorious Emperor, Sarantium is the glory of this world, whereas the house of the god honours the worlds above the world . . . or should.’ He looked back at the Patriarch, as if for approval.
‘What is above it?’ the
Emperor asked softly.
Maximius turned quickly. ‘My lord? I beg your . . . above?’
‘Above the City, cleric. What is there?’
Maximius swallowed.
‘Jad is, my lord Emperor,’ said Pertennius the historian, answering. The secretary’s tone was detached, the Patriarch thought, as if he’d really rather not be forced to participate in any of this. Only to chronicle it. Nonetheless, what he had said was true.
Zakarios could see the drawings from where he sat. The god was indeed above Sarantium, magnificent and majestic in his solar chariot, riding up like sunrise, straight on, unimpeachably bearded in the eastern fashion. Zakarios had half expected to protest a prettily golden western image here, but the Rhodian had not done that. Jad on this dome was dark and stern, as the eastern worshippers knew him, filling one side of the dome, nearly to the crown of it. It would be a glory if it could be achieved.
‘Jad is, indeed,’ said Valerius the Emperor. ‘The Rhodian shows our City in majesty—the New Rhodias, as Saranios named it in the beginning and intended it to be—and above it, where he must be and always is, the artisan gives us the god.’ He turned to Zakarios. ‘My lord Patriarch, what confusing message is there in this? What will a weaver or a shoemaker or a soldier beneath this image take to his heart, gazing up?’
‘There is more, my lord,’ added Artibasos quietly. ‘Look to the western rim of the dome, where he shows us Rhodias in ruins—a reminder of how fragile the achievements of mortal men must be. And see how all along the northern curve we will have the world the god has made in all its splendour and variety: men and women, farms, roads, small children, animals of all kinds, birds, hills, forests. Imagine these sketched trees as an autumn forest, my lords, as the notes suggest. Imagine the leaves in colour overhead, lit by lanterns or the sun. That bull is a part of that, a part of what Jad has made, just as is the sea sweeping along the southern side of the dome towards the City. My lord Emperor, my lord Patriarch, the Rhodian is proposing to offer us, in mosaic, upon my dome, a rendering of so much of the world, the god’s world, that I am . . . I find it overwhelming, I confess.’