As Echo rode along, the last vestiges of her strange sickness dropped away, to be replaced by a restless, prickly sense of excitement. New and strange ideas were buzzing about in her head.
"Whatever I want I can have," she said. "If I want it hard enough."
She was shocked to hear herself.
"Don't listen to me," she told Seeker. "I'm in a strange mood."
Seeker glanced at her from time to time as they went, but he said nothing.
"Everyone loves me," she said. "But I love no one." Seeker still made no response.
"I don't know what I'm saying," she said. "Something's happened to me. Why don't you speak?"
"Speak to who, Echo?"
"Me, of course."
"And who are you?"
"You think you know so much," she snapped back, "but I know so much more."
Where did that come from? she thought, blushing in the dark.
She was saved from further embarrassment by the flicker of torches ahead, and the sound of chanting. As they rounded a bend in the road, they saw before them a band they took to be pilgrims, though they were not dressed in white robes. They all carried flaming torches in one hand, while in the other hand some wielded whips with which they were lashing themselves, and others waved knives high above their heads, dropping them now and again to stab at their own flesh.
"We are weak, we are wicked, but we bleed!" they chanted as they came. "Let our blood wash us clean!"
They did indeed bleed. Their shirts were bloody and torn.
"Great god, pity us!" they cried. "Turn away your anger from our land!"
When they saw Echo and Seeker approaching, they called out to them.
"You too are weak!" they cried. "You too are wicked! Join us in penitence!"
"Who has told you to do this?" said Seeker.
"No one has told us. We bleed freely!"
"I know him!" cried one of the penitents. "I was there! I saw him on that terrible day! He's the one that made the earth shake!"
"He must be a god!"
At once they fell into a frenzy of whipping and stabbing, their eyes shining as they punished themselves, their voices proudly lamenting.
"See, Lord, the blood on my shirt! All fresh today!"
"Look here, Lord! The scars of the whip never heal!"
"Count the knife holes in my jacket, Lord! Every hole a wound!"
"Stop!" cried Seeker. "I'm not a god!"
"Not a god?"
They lowered their whips and their knives and stared at him.
"Then how are we to appease your anger with our suffering?"
"I'm not angry."
There was a moment of silence. The floggers looked at the stabbers and the stabbers looked at the floggers.
"Some god somewhere is angry."
"Not me," said Seeker. "So you don't need to go on hurting yourselves."
"Not hurt ourselves?" They laughed bitterly at that. "Use your eyes. The whole world is hurting."
One of them spoke for all.
"Some god somewhere must be angry. Don't ask us which god, we're not priests. But I'll tell you this for nothing. It doesn't surprise me. The people have fallen very low. Lower than dirt, most of them."
He gave himself a sharp flick with his whip.
"When we bleed, it makes up for the lowness."
The others nodded in agreement.
"Flogging is elevating."
"And stabbing," said a stabber.
"Come on, friends! On our way! He's not a real god. He's not even angry."
With that, the penitents resumed their flogging and stabbing and set up their chant as they went on down the road.
"We are weak and we are wicked, but we bleed! Great god, feel our pain! Turn away your anger from our land!"
Seeker and Echo continued into the night, which was now all the darker after the glare of the torches.
"You could have stopped them," said Echo.
"I can't give them what they need."
"You mean you won't."
"I have other work to do."
"Other work!" Suddenly her voice was sharp with scorn. "What is it that's more important than saving people from their misery? Why have so much power and not use it?"
She had no idea what she was saying until she said it. But Seeker answered without surprise.
"My power has been given me for one purpose only."
"Who told you so? This Noman, who told you not to love?"
"Yes."
"Why listen to a miserable old man?"
Secretly Echo was astonished at herself, that she dared to speak her mind so freely. But the new force within her was driving her on.
I have life, she thought. I must give him life.
Seeker said nothing, so she spoke again, even more insistently.
"They've turned you into a killer. You go to kill on the orders of an old man who longs to die. But you're not old, you're young—like me. Why aren't you hungry for life? Why aren't you hungry for love?"
Seeker raised his hands to his ears.
"Leave me to do what I must do," he said.
"You're afraid to listen. You're afraid I'm right."
Seeker strode on in silence. Echo rode beside him on Kell, not knowing what had changed in her but filled with a new certainty.
He loves me, she told herself. Only his vow forces his silence.
Then came a further conviction, which was stronger in her than all that had gone before.
I bring him life. I will teach him how to live forever.
They travelled on in silence through the cool night hours until the drooping of Kell's head told Echo that they must stop to sleep. Dimly in the starlight ahead they saw a grove of umbrella pines; and responding to the natural instinct of all creatures to find a burrow for a bed, they lay themselves down within the circle of trees.
Both were unable to sleep. In time the moon rose, and by its pale light Echo was able to see Seeker's face.
"Are you angry with me?"
"Not with you, no."
"I'm cold," she said. "Are you cold?"
"A little."
"I could warm you, if you like."
He made no objection, so she wriggled close to him and laid her head in the crook of his arm.
"Am I warming you?"
"Yes," he said.
"And you're warming me."
She smiled in the night, happier than she had been for a very long time; and so smiling, she surrendered herself to sleep.
15 The Waterfall
WHEN MORNING STAR WOKE, SHE HAD NO IDEA WHERE she was. All round her was the darkness of night, but this was not her own private darkness, which she so dreaded. This was the world's night, which glowed with quiet colors. Above her reached broad bars of amber. Round her, walls of dark blue. A door glowed with the blue-red tones of a damson.
So she remembered. She had been imprisoned here by Caressa. She lay still and listened. No sounds of any kind. The Orlans were either asleep or gone.
No sounds of soldiers, but there were other sounds. The colored night was singing, a faraway round like the voices of children repeating the same lilting phrases, one after the other, a weave of sweet high song. Morning Star felt as if all her senses had been magnified, so that even under the blanket of night she could see and hear for miles. It seemed to her that no living thing could elude her notice; that she could hear the soft breathing of rabbits deep in their burrows, and see the turquoise sheen on the breast feathers of pigeons in the trees.
I could see him, too.
Seeker was out there somewhere in this glowing, humming night. She needed only to see far enough.
Climb the tower.
It came to her as an urge more than as a plan. The tower was ruined and dangerous, its flights of stairs only half supported by its fragmented walls, but this was the way to the top. So Morning Star began to climb.
The darkness made it easier, because it turned the drop below her into a pool of dark blue. The air on either
side was deep green and cushiony. She climbed boldly, feeling her way with her hands, marvelling at this new world. Above in the square of sky shimmered the first faint gleams of the coming dawn.
She kept close to the walls and made her way safely from step to step, feeling the treads shift beneath her weight. After the third flight, she reached a point where one side of the tower had crumbled away. Here the stairway, making its circuit of the walls, reached out into open air, supported by nothing more than its own structure.
She felt the nearest exposed tread with one foot and judged that it would hold her. She pressed on it. It creaked but did not break. She stepped fully onto it, and from there to the next step. So up and out she climbed, into the open air. As she stepped on the last of the unsecured treads, she reached for the solid stonework ahead and misjudged the distance. She stumbled and righted herself, kicking back hard on the stair. It gave a sharp crack. She grabbed for the branches of clinging elder and pulled herself onto the stone supports. The stair sagged behind her, and for a moment the entire timber structure hung in the still dawn air. Then it leaned and broke and fell crashing to the ground.
No way down now. But Morning Star wanted only to go up and to be at the top to greet the rising sun; so on she went, no longer fumbling her way forward, stepping lightly and rapidly from tread to tread. The stairway rocked beneath her, but she passed too quickly for it to give way.
The sky lightened as she climbed. The sun had still not shown itself above the eastern mountains as she pulled herself at last onto the platform on the top of the tower. She stood up, holding on to the topmost branches of the climbing elder, and drew a deep calming breath and looked round.
A long stripe of the palest primrose yellow was spreading across the horizon. Below lay the gleam of the great lake and the silver thread of the river running to the sea. To the west loomed the dark mass of the Glimmen. To the south, the hills where she had been born and the plains where the people of the Joyous would soon be waking. And all round the humming song, growing ever louder, filling the air.
She heard a bird call, and another, and knew then that there were birds singing everywhere and that their song was part of the waking world's song. She turned east again, feeling a tingling on her cheeks, and as she did, the sun rose. With the burning scarlet disc came an explosion of colors. The sky turned crimson and gold, and the land was lit amber and purple, and all that had been submerged in the deep colors of night now began to glow with new life. She gazed in wonder at the beauty of the world and heard the triumphal song of the new day carolling in her ears.
Somewhere out there was Seeker. She scanned the land more slowly now, her gaze taking in villages and early travellers on the roads, looking for the color that only Seeker possessed. She let her eyes idle, and listened to the singing of the world, and wondered why she had never heard it before.
The Beloved has woken me to joy, she thought, then smiled with happiness. Seeker would hear the singing too, when she brought him to the Joyous. He too would share her happiness.
Then, through the leaves of the clinging elder, she caught the faraway flicker of gold she had been looking for. It came from the northwest, close to the walled road. She looked intently, memorizing the location so that she could find it again on the ground. There was the road, and near the road, a group of spindly trees, and between the trees, the sparkle of gold aura that could only be Seeker.
She parted the high branches of elder and leaned over the parapet of the tower, wanting to be closer to him. As she did so, she saw the distances shrink and the colors of the land race towards her. She pulled back, alarmed, and shut her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, she found something strange was happening to her. The colors were closing in. The experience wasn't unpleasant. In fact, it was beautiful; but it was also frightening because it took away all measures of space. She no longer felt as if she looked down on the land from a high tower. The land was right there, before her. If she reached out a hand, she could touch it. Only it was no longer solid. It was made of color.
Is this good or bad? she thought to herself. Am I seeing the world as it really is, or am I going mad?
She looked again for the golden gleam that was Seeker, and it was there before her, now even more abundant, a cascade of gold; more than a cascade, a waterfall. She gazed at it and saw that the gold was the reflection of sunlight on falling water, it was a million dancing, tumbling mirrors of the rising sun, and the waterfall was high and broad—a streaming curtain that filled half the horizon before her. For all its immense size, the waterfall held no fear for her. She put out her hand to let it be splashed by the golden stream, but the waterfall was farther from her than she had at first realized. Nor was it gold alone. All the colors she had ever seen were bursting from that great plunging torrent, it was ruby red and jade green, sapphire and topaz and carnelian, its spray was silver and diamonds. She reached further, wanting to cup her hands in the beauty, wanting to splash her face with the jewelled water. But still it was too far.
So I must fall into it, then.
It seemed obvious to her now that this was why she had climbed the tower. The notion of falling wasn't strange. It had been with her all her life. But always before it had been a terror. Now it was a joy.
You don't know where you end and others begin.
She laughed to think of it. No end, no beginning. Everything flowed into everything else. Why should she not flow into the colors of the waterfall?
But I'm in the waterfall already. I'm falling already. Everything's falling. That's what the waterfall is. Why was I ever afraid? The stream carries us all away.
She leaned out more, reaching her arms towards the waterfall, and still she couldn't quite touch it. So she reached further.
Now, slowly at first, she felt herself begin to fall.
"Here I go," she said to herself, as the colors embraced her. "One perfect dive."
The children found her.
"She's dead," said Burny.
"Nobody goes up a tree to die," said Libbet.
Morning Star was lying in a deep hole in the tree with her eyes closed and her arms open, supported by a hammock of tangled creepers.
"Wake up, lady," said Burny. "Don't be dead."
"Stupid boggy baby," said Libbet.
They climbed the branches and broke the creepers one by one, and so Morning Star slithered by her own weight out of the dense growth to the ground below. Here she lay, motionless. They fetched water from the ditch and splashed it over her. When this had no effect, Libbet took hold of her arm and pinched her.
"Wake up, lady," she said. "We come after you. Don't be dead."
The pinching did it. Morning Star stirred, then opened her eyes.
She took in the little band of grave-faced children and then looked round her at the walls of the old fort, and the fields beyond. Then she looked back at the children.
"What happened to you?" she said.
"Nothing happened to us," said Libbet. "You're the one that got happened. We found you in a tree."
"Where did it go?"
Her voice faded to silence.
"We come after you," said Burny. "First Hem. Then us."
"Hem's gone," said Libbet.
"You got to come back," said little Deedy.
Morning Star's eyes slowly filled with tears. She was remembering Hem; but there was something else, too. Something she had lost.
"She's hurt," said Burny. "She's crying."
"Not hurt," said Morning Star. "Only bruised. I fell from the tower."
They looked up and were awed.
"You fell from up there!"
"What did you go up there for?"
"To look out at the world," said Morning Star. Then she remembered the brilliant colors of the dawn land, and she knew why she had tears in her eyes.
She had lost her colors.
The children before her had no auras. The land beyond them was no longer bright. She was seeing now as all others saw, but to her it was
as if a veil had been drawn over the world. The melting beauty of the waterfall had been her last glory. She had dived into the colors, and now they were gone.
She wept for her lost gift. All her life she had taken it for granted, even resented it; but now that it was gone, she felt stripped of meaning. The only secret that had ever given her value was gone. What use was she now?
"Don't cry, lady," said little Deedy, starting to cry herself.
So Morning Star dried her eyes and rose to her feet, feeling the aching all over her body from the violence of her fall.
"You children must go back," she said. "The roads are dangerous."
"Not to us," said Libbet, drawing her knife.
"We're coming with you," said Burny.
"Hem got lost," said Libbet. "He always makes a muck."
Morning Star looked about her and considered what best to do. She had set out to find Seeker, at the request of the Beloved. Now more than ever she longed to find him. She would tell him all that had happened, and he would understand. She remembered exactly where she had seen his colors and reckoned it was not so far from the old fort. Once she had found him, she would be heading back to the Joyous, which was where she meant the children to go.
"Come along, then," she said. "We're going to find a friend of mine."
***
They saw the Caspian first, near the grove of umbrella pines. The beautiful beast was grazing in the roadside ditches where the grass was sweetest. The children were wide-eyed with admiration.
"Can I touch it? Does it bite? Look at its long hair!"
Morning Star left them to crowd round Kell, who accepted their pokings and pettings with patience. She herself went on to the trees.
It was still early in the morning, and the sun threw her shadow far before her as she approached. The hollow between the pines was also in shadow, and at first she couldn't see if there was anyone there. Then she came closer and saw a hand on the ground, reaching out into the sunlight. She came forward quietly and saw an arm, and then a head resting on a rolled badan. It was Seeker, as she had known it would be. But he was not alone.