“Come, Troi. You miss something having no links with the material. I think I have added most interestingly to the variety of Ziraf. I shall be watching the progress of this new kind of creature with intense curiosity.” With a flourish Krozem vanished even from the perception of his fellow Zem’l.
Troizem growled and also began to fade. Soon all the Zem’l had departed from the shrine, leaving only a shy wind Troi sighing, rustling the needles of the twisted trees.
* * *
Gilzara entered the hut, his face and hands bloody and his body crying out with the pain of half a dozen falls on the dark path. But the pain scarcely touched his mind as he knelt at his wife’s side.
“Javon, it’s happened! We will be immortal! Javon!”
She looked at him torpidly, then something in her quivered, rallied a little. “Gilzara, what do you mean?”
“Krozem gave me what I wanted. He gave me the power to bind my death into a material thing. And he gave me more that – more than I asked for. He gave me the power to bind others’ mortality as well.”
She gazed at him, her breath making tiny noises in her throat. “To bind others? Ah … What if the material thing perishes?”
He gestured distractedly. “Then life will perish. But … ”
“So, then … He left you a way out.” She closed her eyes.
He shook her a little. “Javon, I have the power to make others live. Give me a little time to heal myself and then I will come heal you.”
“Gilzara, Emtash and Zidzod are waiting across the yard. Did you see them?”
His lips drew back. “I saw them.”
“It was for them you were asking.”
His mind was tossing like a storm-churned lake, throwing up bits and pieces of thought. “Not now, Javon. Not first.”
She was looking at him again, something strange, wild, growing in her eyes. “Or not ever?”
He clutched at the sides of his head, fearing it might burst. “I promised not to misuse the power. I need time to decide what is wise.”
Sadly she said, “There is no time.”
“Javon.” His voice sobbed in his throat. “There will be time forever. Emtash is a fool. He will make his whole fastness immortal in his fatuousness. He is not going to die soon. He’ll have to wait.”
She said again, “It was for them you were asking.” Then, “What will you do? Lie to them again?” The gathering in her eyes was intensifying.
“Lie? I – don’t know. Javon, let me work this out as I must!” He clenched his hands against his eyes.
“Gilzara.” The voice whispered at him. “You will begin this favor with a deception. If you do that, I will never accept it from you.”
He looked at her over his hands. “Javon, yes, you will … ”
She was writhing, almost lifting herself. “If you begin this favor with a deception, it will become a curse. It will become a blight that will last not the length of one lifetime but until the mountains wear away … ” She fell back, breathing hoarsely, her wide, wild eyes penetrating him.
He mounted to his feet. “No. Woman, you are mad. I can’t fling this gift about me unconsidered like a handful of stones. The man would misuse the gift!” He turned abruptly, but as he left the hut, he heard the voice behind him sighing.
“Gilzara … ”
In the yard Emtash and Zidzod rose to meet him. “I’m sorry,” he said, surprised at the coldness of his voice. “An extended life cannot be granted to you. Humans, you see, produce too many children. If they were all immortal, the world would be overburdened with their kind and the balance of Órozem would be disturbed.”
“Oh.” Emtash bent his head with a disappointed puff of cheeks. “So that’s it. Well … ”
Zidzod was hugging his arm. “Never mind, Em. It was a good idea. It didn’t hurt to try.”
Suddenly Gilzara did not want to see them standing there. “It would be best,” he said, “if you take your things and leave this holy ground tonight. There are places along the shore where you can stay till morning. Tiloi will show you the way.”
Unquestioning, submissive to his authority, they bent to begin gathering their gear. “Thank you, Lord Gilzara. Thank you for interceding for us.”
He said nothing; he only turned his back on them and reentered the hut.
“Javon, now I will go … ”
Then he saw it. The fire in the fire bowl no longer burned. He stopped, stunned. The hut was lightless and, strain as he would, he could see no tremor in the darkness where Javon lay, nor hear the rale of her breath.
“Javon.” Something began to swell within him. Groping frantically, he found oil, filled the bowl, found flint, kindled the wick.
“Javon.” The light flared, searched out her empty eyes – the eyes that he had last seen with the fey wildness in them.
If you begin this favor with a deception, I will never accept it from you …
He knelt to touch her – to touch the enormity of her stillness. “Javon. Wait … ”
Desperate, he struggled to his feet, stumbled to the door. He could catch him, the Headman of Greivat …
Emtash and Zidzod were just leaving the clearing, with Tiloi beside them bearing a torch. Emtash’s shoulders were lifting in a resigned shrug. “It turned out Verkoi was right about one thing,” he said. “It really was too presumptuous to think of asking the Zem’l for immortality.”
Gilzara stopped, glaring after them. A sound was rising in his throat. It was too presumptuous. But it was too late.
He turned back into the hut. Javon lay as he had left her. He knelt, lifting her, gathering her body in his arms. “Javon, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. I would never have asked for immortality if I had thought I couldn’t have you at my side.”
Holding her, he rocked back and forth, the sobs gathering, keening through him, like winds keening in a lightless cave. Even when there was no more strength in him to keen and the body in his arms was growing cold, he continued to crouch, numb, feeling something shrinking together in his breast, dry and still.
Finally he stirred, laid Javon back into the nest of furs, bent over her. “I swear by Ziraf the High Dreamer that I will atone for this.”
He straightened the wasted limbs, laid the eyes to rest, smoothed a robe over her.
“I accepted Krozem’s blessing and by doing that, I accepted the stricture to use it. I will not let this curse on my life become a curse on all humankind – I will turn it into a true blessing for all our kind. I will not fail Krozem’s test. I swear it to you, Javon.”
Reaching for the flint blade that he used to shave tinder, he gathered up the braid of ash-dark hair that lay over Javon’s shoulder and cut it off near the roots. For a moment he continued to kneel, looking at her, until the dry, numb knot in his breast loosened briefly, heaved into a final sob. “But the years, Javon – all the years that I must live – are going to be bitter with loneliness.”
* * *
When Tiloi returned from conducting the visitors to Svantov’s house, she found herself nervous, sensing an undercurrent, some swaying of vibration in the core of things that she could not comprehend. Instead of going to bed, she sat down against the outer wall of her hut with the fire out and stared across the moon-washed garth. Soon she saw movement at Gilzara’s hut; the bent, limping form of the old man emerged and vanished into the darkness. Pity stabbed her; the poor man must be worn to the bone after such a day, and yet it seemed there was still something he must do. She wondered if she should go sit with Javon, then decided against it. If Gilzara had wanted her to come, he would have called to find out if she had returned.
She settled uneasily against the hut and began to doze. Sometime later, she was startled out of a sounder sleep. She saw a man – tall, well-knit, of youthful bearing – spring into the clearing and enter Gilzara’s house. Frozen with fear, she continued to watch until he emerged carrying a bun
dle in his arms and disappeared from sight. That was too much for Tiloi; squeezing her eyes shut, she pulled a shawl over her head, crawled into her hut, and did not come out again until daybreak.
In the morning the keepers of the shore of Tin-Arul Island discovered that a coracle was missing, and when they went to inform Gilzara, they could find neither the Shrine-Guardian nor his wife. Then a tearful Tiloi told them what she had seen.
After some hurried counsel, the elders of the priests’ colonies concluded that the eccentric, reclusive Shrine-Guardian had troubled Harzem one time too often, that the Zem of Darkness had destroyed him and then come in the shape of a stalwart young man to seize his wife. Everyone accepted this explanation, although no one could answer why Harzem should have stood in need of a boat. But, as the boat was later found drawn up in the brush on the mainland, it was decided the two incidents were unconnected.
Forty years later, a tall, slate-blue man in the prime of life appeared on the Island of the High Crown. He called himself Gilzara, and some of the older priests, eying him uneasily, asked him if he were the grandson of a priest who had once served there. With a remote smile, he replied that he doubted it. And when they felt the fathomless, silver-shot sapphire of his eyes brooding upon them, they doubted it, too. Such eyes could belong only to one who has looked into still, waterless places where no created being should dare to go.
He stayed on Tin-Arul for a while, setting up a colony and taking young Kair’l under his tutelage. Later he built a fastness high beneath the glaciers of Zhinthá and taught there; they called him the Wizard of the Starbell, and then the High Wizard, because he had mastered powers of change, insight, and illusion that no human had dreamed possible. And those whom he accepted into the rigorous discipline of his inner circle emerged changed – seared and shaped by a sharing of the secrets that had shaped their Master.
But when he first came to Tin-Arul and was more accessible, a young priest who was serving him reported that he wore about his waist an odd token – a girdle braided from ash-gray human hair.
* * *
As for Emtash, he went back to Greivat Fastness and lost no time in visiting Wagmi. Standing on the bank (or rather sitting on a stone, because the journey to Tin-Arul had wearied him a bit), he said to the Troi, “You see, the Zem’l can’t make humans live forever, because there would be too many of them born and the world would get crowded. So the Shrine Guardian said.”
Wagmi, listening with his chin nestled in his green, watery hand, said, “What possessed you to ask that old man to intercede for you, of all the priests?”
“How do you know which one I saw?” asked a surprised Emtash.
“Murush visits me. She’s a wind Troi who blows around the High Crown.”
“Oh. Well,” said Emtash, a little disgruntled, “I asked who had the most power to call the Zem’l and they told me, Gilzara-ka-Javon the Shrine-Guardian. I wanted the best.”
Wagmi’s rock-colored, liquid eyes did not change. “Of course you did.”
“Now I’m having to put up with Verkoi calling me a fool once every eye-blink. Zidzod is pouting a little. But all that will wear off.” He chuckled. “Actually, I’m a lot more fortunate than that Gilzara. He is a hundred twenty-three and I’m only ninety-five. Why, I’ll see another seven grandchildren born before I’m as old as he is. And his servant said his wife is dying. Zidzod certainly isn’t. Her nose may be dropping onto her chin, but she’s as spry as a marmot – as spunky as when she was sixty.” He slapped his thigh. “Yes, it’s certain I’m a great deal more fortunate than Gilzara.”
Wagmi’s head was swaying gently up and down. His eyes had grown softer, melting into leaf-light. “You’re right, friend human,” he said. “You are immeasurably more fortunate than Gilzara.”
After a while Emtash said goodbye to the Troi and stumped back down the mountain swinging his stick. Wagmi watched him from under the weed fringes of his eyebrows until he was out of sight. Then, bubbles dancing away from his mouth on the breeze, he sighed for the absurdity of Krozem’s creation and began to slide into the Mistgel, melding and merging with its flow until only the stones and the creeping rock snails sensed the presence of a spirit who was wiser than themselves.
The End
Other Books by Lorinda J. Taylor
The Termite Queen
In this 2-volume novel a team of 30th-century Earthers makes first contact with a species of intelligent termites called the Shshi. During the mission, the leader of the team and the linguistic anthropologist responsible for communicating with the aliens fall in love. Meanwhile, the Shshi are embroiled in a conspiracy to overthrow the fortress’s leader. Ultimately, the two plotlines come together in an explosive climax.
Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder
In this novella, set 30 years later than The Termite Queen, a team of anthropologists makes first contact with a truly bizarre intelligent lifeform.
The Labors of Ki’shto’ba Huge-Head:
A Series
Volume One
The War of the Stolen Mother
The Shshi Champion Ki’shto’ba Huge-Head and the Remembrancer Di’fa’kro’mi set out on an epic quest to reach the sea, acquiring eleven other Companions during their journey. In their first adventure, they are drawn into a war between two fortresses, a war that has lasted for nine years and seems destined to end in disaster.
About the Author
A former catalogue librarian, Lorinda J. Taylor was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and worked in several different academic libraries before returning to the place of her birth, where she now lives. She has written fantasy and science fiction for years but only began to publish in 2012. Her goal is to write compelling fiction that delivers an emotional impact and leaves her readers with something to think about at the end of each story.
The reader can learn more about the author’s writings, ideas, and constructed languages online at
https://termitewriter.blogspot.com
https://termitespeaker.blogspot.com
https://remembrancer.conlang.org
All of Lorinda J. Taylor’s books are
and in print editions at online retailers
(except “The Blessing of Krozem”)
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