In the Ruins Page 6

  Sanglant shakes his head, eyes narrowed, and for an instant his shoulders slump, as though he has been defeated. “I don’t know.”

  “Will they return?”

  “I do not possess foreknowledge, Lewenhardt.” Hearing his own words, thinking them, he smiles sharply and urges his mount forward on the path. “Best be grateful they survived the blast. Best to wonder why they fly toward the heart of the cataclysm.”

  She spins upward on the wind and finds herself aloft, flying with griffin wings. Her sight is as sharp as an eagle’s.

  Was she not an Eagle once? She learned the gift of sight and it inhabits her even in her dreams as she floats between dreaming and waking on the last fading swell of the aether as the aftershocks of the cataclysm rumble away into nothing. The breath of the heavens long spilled its respiration into the lower world through the thread that bound the exiled land to its root. Soon that road will be pinched closed.

  Will the magic of Earth fade, no longer fertilized by that rich vitality? Aether is an element like the other four, woven through the very fabric of the cosmos. Surely some breath of aether remains on Earth.

  Yet knowledge of the future is closed to her, because she is grounded here. It isn’t even shadows seen beyond a translucent shroud; it is an impenetrable curtain. Only the elementals who breathe and respire in the pure aether can see forward and backward in time. Only God can know past, present, and future as if it is all one.

  Did her mother know what fate awaited her? Did she go willingly into that darkness, or did she fight it?

  Did she love my father anyway?

  I’ll never know.

  The landscape skims past below, a blighted roll of dusty hills and tumbled forests. Now and again a village passes beneath her sight, roofs torn off, fences down, dead animals floating in briny pools. With each league as they move southeast the land’s scars grow more noticeable. Trees are burned on one side, those that still stand. The ground is parched and bare. They have turned south and she smells the sea. Waves lap lazily against a battered shoreline. They pass over a ruined town whose stone walls have fallen into heaps. A cockroach scuttles along the stones. No. It is a person, small and fragile but somehow still alive. Then the town falls behind.

  So close to the sea nothing moves except the wind through what remains of vegetation. Out in the water she sees the smooth back of a mer-creature split the surface and slide beneath.

  Is it Gnat, or Mosquito?

  The griffin shrieks, and banks to the right in a wide circle. Below, marching along parallel to the shoreline, walk human figures. So many! Two thousand at least, or four or ten, impossible to count so many. It is a refugee host strung out in double or triple file and marching into the worst of the devastation. There are many children and old people among them. It seems there are more groups coming up from behind, all moving in the same direction.

  She wants to cry out. She wants to warn them: “Turn back! This way lies ruin!” But she has no voice.

  And then she truly sees them.

  By face and feature they are Ashioi. Where have they come from? There were not so many children among the exiles as she sees in this company. The larger help the smaller. The warriors march in the van and at the rear to guard the helpless, who are also the most precious. They are well dressed in tunics and knee-length cloaks, their warriors in fine armor and brightly painted masks.

  The Ashioi she lived among, however briefly, were so poor that none had more than a rag or worn skin to cover themselves with, not even the warriors. That’s why she sleeps beneath a covering woven of reeds. Eldest Uncle doesn’t even have a spare tunic to gift her so that she might not sleep, or wake, naked. All the animals died in exile, and toward the end even the fields of flax withered.

  These are not the same people. Yet who else can they be?

  Ahead, the ground raises up to mark the blast zone. To the northeast the earth steams, but along the shoreline the way remains barely passable because the sea has cooled the fire out of the depths. The earth lies quiet. The Old Ones have withdrawn their power. All that is left is the wasteland. On the strand a boat lies beached. A single figure rushes, shouting, to greet the refugees.

  Her sight tunnels. She fixes on her prey, and recognizes her: Sanglant’s mother, who is also Eldest Uncle’s only daughter. Kansi-a-lari runs forward, then stops short, staring at the man who leads the rest. Her mouth drops open. She exclaims aloud, and he laughs, mocking her.

  “So you are the one!” he says. “I met your son. But I did not believe him. Greetings, Daughter.”

  “Daughter?” Her fierce expression clouds and her brows pinch together with confusion as she stares at the prince, who is certainly younger than she is. “Why do you call me—”

  “Look! Look up there!” Behind him, a warrior wearing a fox mask lifts her bow, draws it deep, and looses an arrow.

  “Hai!” cried Liath, jerking upright, torn right out of sleep and startling Eldest Uncle, who sat, as usual, bending and plaiting supple willow into a large basket.

  “Ai, God!” she said a moment later in frustration, pulling the mantle around her as Eldest Uncle chuckled. “Is there nothing I can clothe myself with?”

  “Indeed, Daughter, the women have concerned themselves mightily to please your modesty. See here.”

  Out of a second basket he lifted a folded square of cloth as though it were more precious than gold. “In the vaults beneath the council chamber the last treasure has been removed, oil and grain stored against the final drought, bronze tools, cloth, and the scrolls sacred to He-Who-Burns.”

  The cloth was undyed although a trifle yellowed with age, and finely woven out of a thread whose softness she did not recognize. When she unfolded it, she discovered a sleeveless tunic that reached to her knees. She quickly slipped it on. It was shapeless, two rectangular blocks of cloth sewn together along the sides and shoulders, but functional enough to give her the confidence to test her legs. She tied the mantle on over it, then walked to the river to drink her fill. Berries ripened in dribs and drabs along the banks, and she ate until her fingers were stained purple although the berries tasted tart.

  “I’m so hungry! Ugh! I’ll give myself a stomachache with this.”

  “You’re feeling better,” said Eldest Uncle, who had followed her. She saw no sign of Falcon Mask and Buzzard Mask.

  “Stronger, too. I dreamed …”

  A horn’s call sounded to the north.

  “It wasn’t a dream! Come quickly!”

  While she slept, they had fixed a rope bridge over the rushing stream, three thick ropes strung taut between trees, with one for the feet and two above to hold on to. She got the hang of it quickly, balancing as she crossed with her bow slung over her back and Eldest Uncle behind her. The flower trail had bloomed in sickly patches of color, covered by a skin of ashy gray dust that coated leaves and stones. She shaded her eyes, then lowered her hand.

  “There’s no sun,” said Eldest Uncle. “I remember sun from my youth, but we’ve seen the sun no more than two or three times while you slept and then only for a brief span.”

  “How long did I sleep?” They walked into the shade of the pine forest. Fallen needles squished under her feet. Before, everything had been so brittle. Now it seemed spongy.

  “Ten nights. Eleven, perhaps. I lost count. The days are hazy, and the council argues.”

  “Look.” She pointed to the watchtower. Falcon Mask perched on the uppermost wall, peering west.

  Buzzard Mask saw them and came running. “Who are they?”

  “Who are who?” Eldest Uncle replied.

  Buzzard Mask had a youth’s voice, not quite sure that it had broken. “There’s an army coming along the White Road! They’re not dressed like us, but many wear warrior masks.”

  Liath ran to the watchtower and clambered up beside Falcon Mask. The young woman looked at her, surprised, then grinned and sidled to one side to make room. Young and bold, she did not fear heights, but for Liath it was dizzy-m
aking to crouch up here with sheer wall and steep hillside plunging away below. Yet that giddy feeling was no worse than the sight of the desolation she had wrought, off to the north, the wasteland that was the aftermath of the eruption that had killed Anne and her people, most of them guilty of no greater crime than loyalty. What manner of man would refuse the summons of the skopos, after all? Yet Anne had not cared for their virtues, or their sins; they were pawns, nothing more, and pawns are sacrificed.

  On the road, the lead group came into view beyond a straggle of trees, then was lost again behind foliage. Eldest Uncle spoke a word and crumpled to his knees. He would have fallen if Buzzard Mask hadn’t leaped to his side to support him.

  “What is it, Uncle? What ails you?”

  “I am struck,” he said to the youth. “I am hit.”

  “Get their attention,” said Liath to Falcon Mask.

  “There are so many! And more behind them! I’ve never seen so many people!” The young woman wavered. She was unsure, reluctant. “Is it safe?”

  “They are your own people.” She scrambled back down and knelt beside Eldest Uncle, who seemed too weak to rise. “Is it your heart?” she demanded, terrified that he would die right then.

  “It is my heart.” He wept silent tears as the procession reappeared on the White Road below them. It was strange to watch with the steep hillside and ragged forest on one side of the chalky ribbon of road and on the other the scarred, barren earth stretching north as far as she could see. These refugees were caught between two worlds, it seemed, as they had been for centuries.

  She walked down the slope to meet them. Her hair was all tangles, and sweat and grit slimed her body.

  I should have stopped to bathe.

  Stepping onto the White Road, she faced their approach. The line of marchers wound away beyond a curve in the path, hidden behind trees and a distant ridgeline. They were the same people she had seen in her dream. The man leading them wore a crested helmet unlike the animal masks worn by the other warriors. He had a proud, handsome face, terribly familiar in a way she did not understand. As they neared and saw she did not mean to move, he raised a hand and halted and the others slowed to a halt behind him. He looked Liath up and down while a fox-masked woman beside him glared, but it was Sanglant’s mother, in the front, who spoke first.

  “Liathano! Where is my father?”

  Liath gestured.

  “This one?” asked the handsome man. “This is your son’s mate whom you spoke of?”

  His gaze followed her gesture, and he looked toward the old man being helped down the steep slope by young Buzzard Mask. A cool wind out of the north rustled leaves. Out in the wasteland, dust funneled heavenward until, all at once, the wind’s hand dropped it and a thousand million particles pattered to bare rock.

  “Lost to me,” he breathed. His spear clattered to the ground unheeded beside him, and he leaped forward like a hart and dashed up the hill, not many steps, after all. They were so close; they saw each other clearly. Liath ran after him, but when he stopped two paces from Eldest Uncle she stopped, too.

  She stared, seeing it for the first time and understanding why the young man looked familiar. The daimones of the upper air can see forward and backward in time because time has no hold on them; they live above the middle world where time’s yoke subjugates all living creatures. She had a moment’s dislocation. For a moment, she saw as did her kinfolk: youth and age, what had been and what would become.

  Eldest Uncle and the young warrior were the same man, but one was old and one was young.

  Eldest Uncle covered his eyes and trembled. The other shook his head like a madman.

  “Brother!”

  “How can this be?”

  It was only a whisper. Two whispers. She did not know which one spoke. Buzzard Mask released his hold on the old man, and the young one took a step toward the old one and as of one thought they embraced, holding tight, two creatures who in their hearts are one.

  “Do you understand it yet?” asked Sanglant’s mother. As she came up beside Liath, she indicated the men with a lift of her chin. She laughed, but not kindly, sensing Liath’s bewilderment.

  “Why do you dislike me so much?” Liath asked her.

  “I don’t know. I just do.”

  “How can you dislike someone you don’t know?”

  “I had to listen to my son talk on and on about you in the days we were together—you, and battle. Those are the only two things he’s ever thought deeply about, if a man can be said to think deeply where his cock is concerned.”

  “You don’t like your own son?”

  “He’s not what I wanted.”

  Liath smiled sharply, wishing she could intimidate others with clever words and the stiffening of her shoulders, as Sanglant could. “He’s what he is, no more and no less than that. If you don’t like it, you missed your chance to make him something else, didn’t you? He is Henry’s son, not yours.”

  “Born of humankind,” said Kansi with a sneer.

  “Look!” cried Falcon Mask from the wall. She had braced herself with one hand on the highest course of stone as she rose, balancing precariously with drops before and behind. She pointed at the heavens.

  The two men released each other, stepping back from the embrace to stare as one at the cloudy sky. How strange it was to see a man both old and young, the same man, as if time had split him into two parts and in its circular discursion finally caught up with itself. There was a wink of light against the clouds as quickly gone.

  “We saw two griffins,” said the young man. “But our arrows scared them off.”

  Hope leaped in Liath’s heart, but she said nothing.

  Eldest Uncle rested a hand on the other one’s shoulder, taking strength there, and gazed at the procession waiting on the White Road. “Who are these? Where have you all come from?”

  “We were caught between the worlds in ancient days. Now you have returned, and we are released from the shadows.”

  “There are more of you?”

  “I was with one group, but we met up with many others. There are more, still, coming this way.”

  “All those sent to the frontier before the end,” said Eldest Uncle.

  “What do you mean?” asked Sanglant’s mother and Buzzard Mask at the same time.

  “I must sit down,” he said apologetically, but it was the young one who helped him up to the tower most solicitously, who sat beside him, staring intently at his face as though to memorize every wrinkle and crease.

  “I never thought to see you again,” said the young one. “I thought you were lost to me.”

  “I, too. I despaired, but then I lived.” They had an easy way of touching, a hand placed carelessly on the other’s knee or shoulder. It was as though there was a misunderstanding between them and they had forgotten that normally there is an infinitesimal space between one body and the next, that which separates each solitary soul from another.

  “You are old.”

  “I am eldest.”

  “Not bad looking, for an old man! Not like that warty, flabby old priest of a Serpent Skirt.”

  They laughed together, almost giggling, suddenly younger than their years, boys again. Brothers. Twins.

  “Don’t you see what this means?” demanded Sanglant’s mother with fists on hips, looking disgusted as she watched them slap each other’s arms. “More will come from the north! Cat Mask’s army will grow. We need not fear our enemies any longer, not with such a force.”

  “Cat Mask’s army?” asked the young one, turning away from his brother. “Who is Cat Mask? What has he to do with me?”

  “Hsst! She-Who-Creates has much to answer for! Will you strut and preen like the rest of the young men and fight for command like so many pissing dogs?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You are my daughter by blood. My niece. Do not speak so to your elders, young one!”

  “You are younger than I am! I have a grown son! I can speak any way I please!”

 
“Evidently your daughter more than mine, Zuangua,” said Eldest Uncle with a wheezy laugh. “Quick to temper, slow to wisdom. Both impatient. So I named her, remembering you.”

  Instead of answering, Zuangua rose and stared north, a gaze that swept the horizon. Now Liath saw the resemblance to his twin brother, to his niece, and to Sanglant. The lineaments of his face had the same curve and structure. She felt the warmth of a mild, woken desire, seeing him as an attractive man. Until he looked straight at her. His expression shifted, the tightening of lips, the merest wrinkling of the nose, but she felt his scorn, she knew that he recognized her interest and rejected it. Rejected her.

  His sneer scalded. She wasn’t used to indifference from men. She hadn’t desired or sought their interest, truly, but she had become used to it. Even King Henry, the most powerful man she had ever met, had succumbed.

  So I am repaid for my vanity, she thought, and was cheered enough to smile coldly back at him.

  He turned away to address his brother. “We will return, all of us who were caught beyond the White Road when the spell was woven. We who were once shadows are made flesh again. We want revenge for what we suffered. We will return day by day, more coming each day until we are like the floodwaters rising. Once we are all come home, we will make an army and destroy humankind. Our old enemy.”

  “We are stronger than I thought!” murmured his niece. “Already more have joined the march than survived in exile!”

  “It is not the right path,” said Eldest Uncle.

  “So you have always claimed, but see what they did to us.” Zuangua gestured toward the barren wilderness. “This is what humankind made—a wasteland. You are old. Our people are diminished. Kansi said so herself, and if these rags are the best you have to wear, then I see it is true. The humans are many, but they are weak and the cataclysm has hurt them.” He touched the stained cloth that bound his shoulder. “Their king gave this wound to me, but I killed him. He is dead and your grandson risen in his place.”

  Risen in his place.

  Liath took a step back. The others did not notice, too intent on Zuangua’s speech.

  “He seeks an alliance. We did act in concert when his need was great, but now we must consider him a danger. We cannot trust humankind.”