Nagai stood there, staring at them, through them. There was no anger in his voice, or even accusation. The words were almost toneless, but for a massive fatigue lingering beneath the surface that threatened to bow him.
“You didn’t tell me. You never told me—” his eyes would not focus, even when he looked directly at Pulolu. His throat quivered. “They hurt so much—the Body believed me and destroyed the diseased flesh, but their pain, their fear!”
A hint of pleading crept in now, and his body sagged before he caught himself. “How could you? Why didn’t you tell me how much it would hurt?”
Wamala took an uncertain step toward him, but she stopped short as if she had run into a glass wall.
“Nagai—you don’t need to fear me—”
He looked at her curiously, trying to remember something lost in a jumble of pain.
“Mother? Why…?”
She whined, trying to speak. Fingernails splintered against the air, and she dug at the ground with her feet. “Give me my baby,” she sobbed finally, “Give me your sister.”
Slowly, painfully slowly, he shook his head. “No. All of you must live with the knowledge of what you did, as must I. The children must never know.” He clutched himself, trembling with the effort to remain erect. “Oh, mother, it burns—” He caught himself again, and his eyes focused at last. “I’m taking them. I’m taking them where you won’t find them, and when they’re safe, I will die.”
“But the children!” Pulolu hobbled forward, mouth working numbly. “You have not the knowledge. If you take them, they will never learn enough—”
“That may be true,” Nagai hissed, “but they will still be more than you.” At last he took a backwards step, his chest heaving with effort. “None of you—none of you interrupt me, or try to stop me, or you will die.”
He retreated into the ruptured hemisphere. It healed behind him sluggishly.
* * * *
Pulolu turned to the others, searing them with his gaze. “We cannot allow this thing,” he said weakly. “The children cannot…cannot survive without us.”
“What can we do?” The question arose spontaneously from a dozen throats.
The Eldest looked to the stars, the bright, cold clusters of light that dominated the night sky. “It is Nagai who has proven weak. For the good of the Ibandi, he must die.”
“No!” Wamala screamed. Ashan stood beside her, gripping her shoulders as she twisted.
“You cannot kill my son.” Ashan said. “His is the Power now. None match him in strength.”
Pulolu peered up at Ashan, stared until Nagai’s father turned away from the ancient, pitted face. “Are you of the Body?” Pulolu edged closer, until Ashan gave ground. “Do you speak for the Body, which lives forever, or for Ashan, a bit of flesh which will one day putrefy?”
“I speak…” A great sigh went out of him, like water out of a ruptured skin. “For the Body, of course…” Ashan felt Wamala’s body tense in his arms. “But—but who could do this thing? He refused to even let his mother touch him.”
“Yes…but he had already broken ties with her. There is another, who had just begun to live her bond. Yes, another…”
He scanned the group until he found Weena. Small, bright-eyed Weena, shrinking back from him into an unyielding wall of human flesh.
“No…”
There was silence again, save for the shuffling footsteps of old Pulolu. He reached out a clawed hand to touch her face. “Would you have your people die? Would you doom the children?”
“I wouldn’t…but I couldn’t hurt Nagai.” She fumbled for words. “We are joined—”
“He is no longer Nagai!” Pulolu screamed, his voice rising to a painfully high pitch. “He has allowed his weakness to eat away at him. He was an inadequate vessel for his power.”
Weena tried to run, but strong arms held her fast.
“Would you let the Ibandi die? Would you kill the children, and us, and yourself, that one imperfect organ of the Body might live? Would you thus damn yourself?”
There were tears in her eyes, but they only welled hugely, did not spill, until she shook her head slowly, miserably. Until she heard Pulolu’s grunt of satisfaction.
* * * *
Weena had been washed and anointed. Her skirtlet was dyed in flower patterns, and her cheeks were painted in wedding glyphs. She stood holding a basket of fruits and yellow vegetables, just outside the shimmering barrier. Her small, exquisitely lovely face was expressionless, and there was no trace of emotion in the voice that softly called.
“I am here, Nagai. I am yours. I will enter your world, or I will die. The choice is yours.” She waited long anxious heartbeats, then took a short step forward, then another, until her balance committed her to the final step, and she crossed the barrier. At first there was searing heat, and light so bright it turned closed eyelids into sheets of flame. Then she was through.
It was cold within, and very dark. Each exhalation fogged and hung in the air like pale butterflies. She waited for her eyes to adjust.
At last she could see a few small, still figures—the children of the Ibandi. They lay splayed about as if in exhaustion, limbs and torsos overlapping in a giant sprawl. They made no movement or sound.
In the middle of them, cross-legged and staring at her emptily, sat Nagai.
He seemed not to be breathing at all, merely sitting, waiting, his face the face of a dead man. His mouth hung slack.
Weena stepped over the unmoving form of an infant, one part of her mind trying to ignore the way it was curled up on one side like a tiny corpse. The other part tried to identify it. Whose child was that? Whose puffy-cheeked baby? It lay in dreamless sleep. Protected from knowledge, from pain and fear by the ashen figure of Nagai.
His eyes were red and wide. She stepped over a final child and held her basket of fruit out to him. Her body was racked with chills.
Slowly, as if the impulses crawled along his nerves like spiders climbing webs, he pulled his mouth closed.
His voice was a faint rattle. “Why…” he said, then yawned torpidly. “Why have you come?”
“I came—”
One hand worked its way up out of his lap, a single finger raised. Her words jammed in her throat like chunks of splintered bone.
“No lies,” he hissed.
The urge to turn and run was a physical thing, tugging at her like snare lines. She felt the cold penetrating her body, numbing the marrow.
“It is not safe for you, here,” Nagai said, each word heaved out with a sigh.
“I came…because I am yours. You are mine. We are pledged.”
For all the change in his visage, she might have been squawking or squealing instead of speaking words.
Then…something crept into his eyes that she had never seen in him, or any other being. A longing or need beyond the need for food or shelter or even breath. A deathly fatigued desperation. “I wish…” Then he dropped his head to the ground. “No, you must leave.”
She knelt before him, setting her bowl down, and brought her face very close to his. “We belong to each other.”
“No…” he said, trying to find the strength to turn away.
The muscles in her arms trembled as she came closer, lifting his chin to gaze at him.
She felt his need. Smelled it, sweet and sour in her mind. It rang in her ears like the rushing blood of a burst heart. Like a torrent rushing to fill the void she came to him, and all thoughts were swept away.
Still he fought, for an instant more he fought to control himself, then something shattered. Tears spilled from his eyes and he reached for her hungrily, felt her warmth melting the ice that filled his belly, felt himself drifting, soaring…
* * * *
Weena awoke first. She twisted away from Nagai’s sleeping body and clutched a hand to her stomach, sobbing in the darkness.
Nagai’s peaceful expression made the pain recede for a moment, then she remembered why she was there. Weena reached into the
basket, under the cool firm shapes, and pulled the knife. She curled her fingers around it carefully. An iron blade, wound with fiber at the hilt, five inches of edge and point nestled in her fist.
Gasping now, she got one hand braced on Nagai’s shoulder and levered him over onto his back. Voices screamed in her ears, fingers of dead hands crawled up the lining of her stomach.
Fear like this never dies, unless…
For the last time, she bent over and kissed him on the throat on the warm hollow so recently discovered. He slept on, peacefully.
Then she raised her hand, screaming her pain and sorrow, and drove the knife with all her strength up under the ribs and into her heart.
* * * *
Nagai awakened slowly, listening for the voices, feeling for the cold, or the crawling fingers, but there was nothing. Without turning, he knew what he would see.
Weena lay curled on her side, her face calm now. Her hands still grasped the knife buried under her ribs. He brushed her cheek, walking its roundness to the long curve of her neck.
The Children were waking. They rubbed their eyes with tiny fists, and yawned. Olo touched Weena, uncomprehending but unafraid. He stood, and picked up one of the babies.
Nagai gathered up their mana and exhaled a thin, even stream. The dome about them began to glitter, then glow. It burst into sparks and dissolved.
The Mothers and Fathers stood outside the shielded area, clustered, silent, staring.
No movement, no challenge. Nagai felt nothing for them. The strands, the slender strands that had bound him to the Ibandi were broken, lost forever.
Without a word, the children formed into a ragged line, the largest carrying the smallest. All heads were directed toward Nagai, at the head of the line.
Mothers sang to their infants, Fathers threatened and promised, but all eyes remained on Nagai. No parent could cross the thin, shimmering barrier that surrounded the line.
Pulolu spiderwalked to the front of the line, his mouth working silently. “You dare not!” he screamed at Nagai. “What you do is sacrilege!”
Nagai’s gaze was focused on the horizon and beyond. Without glancing down at the Eldest he said: “Sacrilege? And what of the task you set me to?”
The old man flinched back, “It was for you! It was for the children.”
“You lie,” Nagai whispered. “It was for your fear.”
“They will be separated from the Body.”
“Your fear has already done that. There is no route to the Body through you.”
“Many will die…”
“We all die. To go is to die. To stay with you, in this place, is worse.”
Without another word, they walked from the village of the Ibandi, toward the mountains to the north. None tried to stop them. Nagai passed his mother and father on the way out. Wamala swallowed and looked away from him, but his father nodded shallowly, almost imperceptibly, and Nagai found the trace of a smile to give them.
“Nagai!” Pulolu screamed, waving his stick. “May you rot in the sun! Ibandi damn you for what you do here! May your belly crawl with worms—”
The line moved on, out of the gate and the village, out of sight of the Ibandi forever.
* * * *
Judith stopped talking and swallowed hard. Ronald was sunk back in his chair and gazed at her over the top of the candle that now burned low in its holder.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “And what happened then?” he asked uneasily, “What happened to the children?”
“They suffered. Some died of exposure, some starved. Some merely sickened.” She retreated back from the candle flame until her face was lost in shadow, and her voice sounded like a thing from the dead, distant past. “Nagai and the older children coped as well as they could. Some of them were adopted by other tribes. Some fell prey to slavers…” The words drained away. Her eyes were reflecting pools within the shadow, and he could see that her hands were knotted and tensed until they seemed to fuse with the chair arms.
Ronald felt something cool brush the back of his neck, and warmed it with his hand. He smiled warily. “Well…that’s really something.” A broader laugh, now. He tried vainly to pierce the darkness that shrouded the reflecting pools. “It’s sure a lot different from the other stories…” He half-rose from the chair, glancing at the door, to his wristwatch, to her unblinking eyes. “I guess I oughta be going now—”
“No. It is not a story. It is true.” Her voice was a whisper that carried clearer than a shout, and there was a terrible, acid, churning in his stomach. “It is true. The story has passed from husband to wife, from mistress to man, for more years than I can guess.” Now she leaned out of the shadow, and the light made her face seem all grooved shadow and burning eyes. “And the knowledge—what is left of it, has passed, too—”
Ronald felt the breath rasping in his throat and stood, horrified.
“It’s true, Ronald, it’s true.” Her voice was begging now, the words tumbling out like children’s blocks. “And there is only one obligation—to pass it on. I received it from Josh. I told him that I couldn’t do it, couldn’t pass the gift to a man I wasn’t married to. He never pressured me. He knew…”
She stood facing him, her body shaking. “But my time is coming, I can feel it now. And I know that it would be wrong to die without passing on what is left of the gift. The Vision.”
He raised his hands to his ears to block out her sound, drowning, terrified of the old woman who stood before him, craving something he could never give. “No! This is a lie.” Suddenly there was understanding in his face, and he lowered his hands. “God, Judith. Oh, Lord, I should have known. Living here alone…I know how attached you were to Uncle Josh.” He spoke quietly, pityingly. “I can find someone for you to talk to—”
She shook her head sadly, and reached into a side pocket, pulling out a seed, a single, small, yellow seed. “I knew you could not believe. Neither did I, at first. I must show you what I can.”
T’Cori sat on the table, licking her paw, and didn’t flinch as Judith took her in a withered hand. The kitten curled there, purring.
Judith milked her cheeks several times, then spat into her right palm, onto the seed. Then she closed her eyes and relaxed, humming almost imperceptibly.
T’Cori’s purr deepened, and it looked up at him, eyes half-lidded. Its head grew heavy and it snuggled down into her left palm with a sighing growl.
For a few seconds there was nothing. No sound, no movement. So still was Judith’s body that Ronald wondered…
Then the seed, in the small pool of clear fluid began to split. A slender tendril of stalk worked its way out as he watched, and a gossamer network of root pushed free from the opposite side. In the space of two minutes it reached a length of five inches, absorbing the liquid in her palm until it lay there, dry and impossible, a tiny plant barely five minutes old.
The room whirled around him. She opened her eyes. There was no madness there, no lust, no danger. It seemed that they were windows to another time, a time when miracles were commonplace, and where Ronald had never walked except in dreams.
“You…” he licked his lips with the dry tip of his tongue. “You can teach me this?”
She shook her head. “No. I must teach you. Please, Ronald. There is no one else to give it to.”
He leaned on the top of his chair, feeling his youth and strength, seeing the life stretching before him like an open road. And suddenly he saw her, truly saw her, not as an aging, weathered body, but as a spirit cloaked in human flesh, a spirit joined to a heritage stretching back to prehistory. A spirit begging him to help keep that heritage alive.
“What…what must I do?” he said at last, his voice unrecognizable.
She nodded, and gently deposited T’Cori on the table, and with the same hand cupped the candle flame. A whiff of breath and it wavered sharply, then died.
She faced him across the gulf of darkness and years, and held her hand out to him. Ronald looked at it uncertainly, then w
atched his own reach out to take it. Her hand was firm, and dry. And warm.
Strength
Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon
Night still held the western horizon when Shalindra found the dead sea-unicorn. It stretched sleek amid kelp, timbers, and storm-drowned birds. The sorceress knelt in the wet sand. Zaerrui had mentioned that once, in his travels a hundred years ago, he had seen a cup carved from such a horn. A king drank from it to ward off poison.
One of the beast’s great brown eyes stared skyward at the wheeling gulls. Soon they would land and feast. Shalindra stroked the flank—cold in death, but not fish-slimy. What must it be like when alive?
Behind the ragged peaks of the Heewhirlas the sky glowed pale. This early, Shalindra walked the beach alone, but soon the townspeople, too, would be out searching for gale-brought treasure.
Doubtless any of them would offer her the horn but doubtless, also, he would exact a price: most likely a healing spell. Those were failing everywhere. She must hoard her magic, in hope of making her son Llangru strong, or at least controlling the tremor in his hands so he could learn to write.
She sighed and looked down at the huge dead beast. The spiral horn measured a good cubit longer than Shalindra stood tall. She pulled. It held fast.
She needed a saw sharp enough to cut bone. There was probably one back at the library, but to find it would take time. Meanwhile someone else might claim her prize. Best not to squander power on a warding spell; best, instead, to hurry.
In her haste, stumbling over the littered beach, she almost fell across the man.
He lay tangled amid seaweed, his hair sand-grimed, his clothing drenched. For a moment she thought him drowned. Then his chest moved.
Shalindra stepped back a pace. Whence could he have come, if not from the sea? The fingers that dug into the wet sand were unwebbed, and the last merfolk had vanished years ago. No visitors came to Tyreen since the glacier had sealed Icehold Pass. This was no merman, but neither was he of her country. His rough dun tunic was of foreign cut, and he was stockier than folk from hereabouts.