"I can't die," he told himself. "I'm too special. I'm too clever. I'm too superior. Death is for the little people."
Encouraged by this thought, he determined to risk what anyway he was powerless to stop. Out of pure force of habit, he sought out a clump of bushes. He unlaced his breeches behind the bush and prepared for sweet release.
The explosion startled the rooks out of the high elms but otherwise went unnoticed on that day of explosions. It was the last and the smallest. But it was big enough.
25 Parting
A COLD RAIN WAS FALLING AS THEY BURIED THE ELDER. The Community's cemetery was gone, along with the entire Nom, so the old man's body was laid to rest in the fishermen's graveyard on the hillside between the woods and the sea. He was lowered into the grave, without coffin or shroud, because the Nomana had lost everything. But they sang for him, as they had always sung for every brother and sister at the time of their passing.
"Light of our days and peace of our nights
Our Reason and our Goal
We wake in your shadow
We walk in your footsteps
We sleep in your arms..."
Seeker stood in the rain with the rest, but he did not sing. His heart was heavy with bitter thoughts. He saw Miriander watching him with her grave beautiful eyes, and he knew what she was thinking, and he looked away. He no longer wanted the burden of her expectation. His power was hateful to him. What point was there in being able to dominate all others if the All and Only had ceased to be? The Clear Light had been snuffed out. There was no reason and no goal.
The sweet voices sang on as the rain fell.
"Lead us to the Garden
To rest in the Garden
To live in the Garden
With you..."
It made him angry. They knew as well as he did that the Garden was gone. Why sing on as if nothing had changed?
The brothers and sisters covered the old man's body with earth, each throwing a handful into the grave to the accompaniment of some private words of farewell. Some shed tears. Seeker looked on dry-eyed, tormented by his bitter thoughts.
"This man betrayed you all," he cried, but only in his mind. "It's because of him that our god is dead."
He knew it must be so. Morning Star had seen the color of betrayal. The Elder himself had said, "Forgive me." He had also said, "You'll understand one day."
Seeker did not understand and felt that he would never understand. How could the Elder have sought the end of all he had lived for? What possible purpose could he have had in leading the Nomana out to a futile battle against such a great army? The Noble Warriors did not fight wars. The youngest novice knew that. There was no meaning to it but for a bad meaning, a poisoned meaning. The Elder had become their enemy.
One day perhaps he would understand. But he knew he would never forgive.
After the burial, the brothers and sisters, and the people of Anacrea, and the spikers who had stayed on to help, set about building themselves some shelters for the coming night. Working with borrowed tools, they cut up the timber felled by the Orlans and made small frame houses in the old way. They were glad to be busy, not wanting to look back or forward.
The men cut the main posts and struts. The women wove pliant branches between the struts. And the old people and the children scraped up mud to pack between the woven branches. The steadily falling rain slicked the mud to a gleaming sheen.
Seeker joined the children in gathering handfuls of mud. It was the humblest of the tasks. He wanted it to be known that, for all his powers, he was no better than the rest of them. After a while Echo joined him and worked alongside him without speaking. Her beautiful pale hair was dark with rain and clung close to her head, making her seem even more slender and lovely. From time to time she looked at Seeker, and he knew that she wanted him to speak to her, but he said nothing.
The Wildman had got himself an axe and was splitting logs for the great fire, alongside Snakey. Morning Star was one of the party building the fire. She went back and forth from the Wildman to the fire stack, carrying the split logs in the rain. All this Seeker saw.
When the fire was built, a hollow was dug into one side and filled with wood chips. Here, where the rain didn't reach, a spark was kindled. It smoldered on the damp fuel and issued a plume of white smoke.
Seeker said to himself, "If the fire catches, we will survive. If the fire goes out, we will die." No more than a foolish superstition, but he wasn't the only one to cling to small signs on that terrible day. Like him, everyone was as busy as they could be, in order not to have to speak the words that hung above them like smoke, like a sentence of death: it's over.
He went to the stream that bubbled out of the wood, and plunged his mud-caked hands into the water. By the time he returned, there was a flicker of flame in the heart of the smoking pile. Then came a crackling sound, and all at once the fire burst into life. Now the fire would be stronger than the rain and would last through the night. As if in acknowledgment of its defeat, the rain began to pass, as twilight set in.
The people huddled round the great fire, to dry their drenched clothing. As the heat grew, they backed away, forming an ever-widening ring. Other fires were built from this, the master fire, and so the people of Anacrea and the Community of the Nom, hardly realizing they were doing so, arranged themselves in neighborly clusters that echoed the courtyards and streets of the lost island. The spikers gathered round their own fires, just as they had always lived apart from the settled townships.
Seeker sat alone, within reach of the great fire's warmth but outside the circle. At such a time it would be customary for a pot of soup to be heated at the fire, and baskets of oatcakes to be passed from hand to hand, perhaps with a jar of brandy to moisten the lips; but there was no soup, no oatcakes, no brandy. All would go to sleep hungry tonight.
Echo watched Seeker and saw his unhappiness and wondered at it. She had witnessed his extraordinary power in action. She could still feel the way the ground had kicked beneath her, she could still hear Kell's terrified braying call as he fell, she could still see the sight that had met her eyes moments later—a battlefield stilled by one blow from one man. And that man barely more than a boy. Such a one could command all the world. Why then was he alone and sad? His island home was gone, but all its people were safe. And as for his god—Echo had never had a god of her own, and she found it hard to imagine what it was. Maybe Seeker's god was dead, but his power remained, and surely that was what mattered.
That gave her an idea.
"Do you mind if I sit with you?"
"I'm not good company," Seeker replied.
"I don't mind."
Echo settled herself down cross-legged by his side, facing the fire.
"I have to thank you. When you made the Jahan kiss my hand, that was the best moment of my life."
Seeker looked at the distant fire and said nothing.
"If you'd killed him," Echo went on, "that would have been even better. I don't know why you didn't. He lost. He should die."
Seeker shook his head.
"He's not my true enemy. My true enemy hasn't lost."
"What true enemy?"
"There's someone."
He fell silent, not wanting to explain. "Then kill him, whoever he is. No one has as much power as you. You can do whatever you want."
"There's nothing I want any more," said Seeker.
"What! That's impossible!"
Echo herself wanted so much, so intensely, that she could only think Seeker spoke this way out of weariness.
"You think there must always be more to want, do you?" he said.
"Yes. Of course."
"What do you want?"
She was about to say she wanted to be home again, when she realized there was something she wanted much more.
"I want to do something," she said. "I don't know what. Something good and strong. Then I'll be good and strong, too."
"Aren't you good? Aren't you strong?"
"No
. All I care about is myself."
Seeker looked at her in an odd half-attentive way, but he said nothing.
"If I had your power," she said, "I'd do such things!"
"And then what?"
"Then what? Then nothing. Then, we just live."
Seeker shook his head.
"That's why there has to be a god," he said. "Just living isn't enough."
"There is a god," said Echo. "You just aren't looking in the right place."
"Where am I to look?"
She pointed one slender finger straight at him.
"At yourself."
This was her idea. Seeker had the power to move the world. Why should he not be a god?
"Me?"
"Only a god could do what you have done."
He laughed softly, with an edge of bitterness.
"Me? I'm no god!"
"How do you know?"
"Because I've seen the true god. I've seen the All and Only."
"You could still be a god."
"No. Believe me, I'm no god. I'm just—"
He hesitated, unsure how to describe what he now felt himself to be.
"I'm just somebody with something given him to do."
Echo reached out and touched his arm, to make him look at her.
"Let me go with you," she said, "wherever you're going."
"No," said Seeker. "I have to go alone."
"Why?"
"Because I won't come back."
Echo looked into his eyes for a long moment, and she knew then there was nothing more she could say. She rose to her feet.
"If you ever pass through the Glimmen," she said, "look up into the trees above you. Call my name."
All this time, Morning Star had been sitting with the main band of spikers, beside the Wildman and Snakey. The spikers were in high spirits despite the lack of food and drink. Never before had so many spikers come together as a unified force and fought as an army and been victorious.
"We're the top dogs now," Snakey was saying, spreading his hands in the orange glow of the fire. "The ones whose homes get burned, the ones who tramp the road and beg for food, the thieves, the bandits, the cutthroats. You got yourself a wolf pack for an army, Chick."
But alone among the spikers, the Wildman was not rejoicing. In the heat of the battle, he had burned with the bright light of ecstasy. Was he not a warlord, at the head of his own mighty army? Then the world shook. Then the world changed. Anacrea was no more. The Nom was no more. The Garden was no more. How now was he to find his peace?
The great warlord Noman had conquered the known world, but he had not stopped there. Caring nothing for danger to himself, smashing every rule and every prohibition, asserting his will as his right, he had burst his way into the unknown. There the Wildman longed to follow.
That dream was now ended.
He looked up and saw Morning Star watching him.
"Heya, Star."
"Very quiet, Wildman."
"You too."
"Me too."
"Bad work today."
He gestured at the night sea, towards the place where the island of Anacrea had been.
"I still can't believe it," said Morning Star.
She looked out into the emptiness of the night, and she too grieved. For so long her young dreams had flowed towards the secret green light of the Garden. Now she too must find new dreams.
"What will you do now?" she asked the Wildman.
"Who knows?"
"You got yourself an army."
"Thanks to you."
"Can I come with you, wherever you're going?"
"Sure you can," he said. "We're friends."
Friends.
"As to where I'm going," he said, "I guess it's Spikertown for now."
"Spikertown's as good as anywhere."
And anywhere's good for me, she wanted to say, if you're there.
Wildman rose to his feet.
"Get some sleep," he told her. "Been a long day."
He walked away into the trees.
Morning Star turned and looked into the darkness behind her and saw that Echo Kittle was no longer talking to Seeker. He sat alone, his arms wrapped round his knees, gazing into the night. She caught the faint shimmer of his colors and knew that he was unhappy.
She went to him and sat down by his side. She took his hand and held it in hers, to show she shared his grief at all they had lost. There was no need for words.
The fires blazed on into the night, and one by one the drowsy children were carried away to sleep in the huts, and one by one the others followed. Then, as the stars began to show in the breaks in the clouds above, Morning Star fell asleep, her head on Seeker's lap, there in the open air. Seeker watched her as she slept, and saw the dying firelight flicker on her cheek, and allowed himself, just once, to stroke her hair.
Shortly before dawn a little group of people came to Seeker and sat before him: Chance and Miriander and his brother, Blaze, and other members of the Council of the Nomana.
"You know what we come to ask," said Chance.
Seeker knew.
"No one has ever had so much power. You must be our leader now."
"I don't want the power," said Seeker. "If I could let it go, I would."
"It's been given to you for a reason," said Miriander.
"I was given the power to save the Lost Child," said Seeker. "What use is my power now?"
Others joined them, black silhouettes gathering round, rimmed by the faint glow creeping into the dawn sky. Seeker's father and mother came forward for the first time since the battle and knelt before him. They looked at him with frightened eyes.
"My sweet boy," said his mother, her voice trembling. "We're all so afraid. Only you can help us now."
"We didn't know," said his father. "But we know now."
Seeker reached out to his mother, and he kissed her and embraced her. He kissed his father too, and saw in his father's eyes an uncertainty that had never been there before. How could it be otherwise? He had lost his entire world: his social position, his daily routine, his purpose in life, all turned to dust along with the honors board on which his name had been painted in gold letters.
"I told you, my boy," said his father, coughing a little as he spoke. "Do you remember? I said you weren't the same as the others. I said you were superior to them. You see, I was right."
"Yes, Father. You were right."
The crowd round them was growing all the time.
"Little brother," said Blaze, "everyone's waiting for you to speak."
"What am I to say?"
"Tell them you'll protect them from danger. They're frightened. Tell them we can rebuild what we've lost. Tell them there's a future."
"I see no future."
"Then pretend."
Seeker looked at all the faces turned towards him, and he saw there the fear and the longing. He couldn't tell them what Blaze asked of him.
Miriander watched him and understood.
"You've been given power without limits," she said. "There must be a reason."
"I was given the power to kill the savanters."
"And have you done so?"
"There're two still alive. But what does it matter now? The All and Only is gone."
"You do have a future, Seeker. But you don't know it yet."
"When will I know it?"
"You must wait. You're not lost. You're just young."
"Young?"
This simple word struck deep. It expressed exactly what Seeker was feeling: that he was still a novice, still a disciple. He wanted a teacher. He wanted a father so that he could still be a child for a little longer.
"But you will grow older," said Miriander. "And day by day, year by year, you'll come to know more and more. Then one day you'll look back and find that you had a future all the time, because now it's become your past."
Her words gave Seeker some comfort.
"So it doesn't matter that I feel this way?"
"Live your l
ife simply and in the truth."
There were the faces all round, waiting for him to tell them what to do. Seeker drew a deep breath, and addressed them.
"Give me a little time on my own," he said. "Let the sun rise. Then I'll speak."
He went alone to the stream to wash away the dust of the night and to drink. He felt hungry.
He crossed the encampment and crunched over the shingle to the shore. Here an early fisherman was up and rigging his boat for the day's work. Seeker came to a stop by the sea's edge and looked out at the dark horizon.
"Clear day dawning," said the fisherman.
"Yes," said Seeker.
"Maybe the world's coming to an end. But it's not ended yet, and there's still fish in the sea."
He took hold of his boat and began to haul it into the water.
"You want a hand?" said Seeker.
"That would be kind."
So Seeker helped him, and between them they got the fishing boat into the shallows. The fisherman then opened a tin box and took out a breakfast of nut bread and smoked fish, which he shared with Seeker.
"Not enough for everyone," he said, "but enough for two."
Every mouthful Seeker ate was delicious.
Light began to spread across the eastern sky.
"Time to get wind in my sail," said the fisherman.
He gave Seeker a friendly wave, pushed off from the shelving beach, and slipped out to sea in the freshening breeze.
Seeker remained on the beach, watching the approach of dawn, thinking of nothing. The clouds of the previous night had dispersed, leaving only a low bank on the southern horizon, which now began to glow rose pink with the light of the not-yet-risen sun. It reminded him of the day he had stood by the Elder's side on the high overlook of Anacrea, and the Elder had said, "Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the horizon?"
Other lands.
And does the Clear Light shine beyond the horizon?