‘I have done,’ the sphinx said, spreading a wing against the dawn. ‘But I will ask another.’
‘Is that allowed?’
‘We make our own rules, especially with the unwary. Tell me, Jaer of the Outer Islands: what weapons do you carry?’
Again Jaer thought, again answered. ‘I will tell you what I will, winged one. One weapon binds for a time, one binds forever, and I carry neither.’
The sphinx laughed, screaming at the sky. Wrapped in their blankets, Medlo and Terascouros slept on, unconscious of the wild laughter. In the trees, birds wakened to chorus drowsily at the flushed sky.
‘Now,’ said the sphinx, ‘it is allowed that you may ask one question which I am bound to answer. Think well. Ask well.’
Jaer knew at once there were two questions she wanted to know answers to. One was the identity of her father, the other was where the Gate might be found. She started to ask one of these and said, ‘What is the Serpent’s name?’
‘Ah. So you begin to understand what must be understood before the seeking stops and the fighting begins, Jaer of the Outer Islands. You know what the Serpent’s name is. His name is fury, and quest, and search, and goad. I have answered your question, and I will answer one you have not asked.’ The sphinx turned away, whispering over her shoulder, ‘Each thing carries the cure for its own illness.’
The black stallion had been grazing near where Jaer lay, and he moved now, stamping a foot imperiously upon the earth, eyes swinging toward Jaer and away. Jaer’s eyes flicked up for an instant. When she looked back, the sphinx was gone.
The stallion pushed a soft nose against Jaer’s neck, and she rose to lay her face against the smooth black flank. She saw what had disturbed the stallion. There beside the stream a head of unicorns were grazing on the flowery banks. On an outcropping of stone, a phoenix preened in the early light, feathers glittering like jewels. White hands showed briefly at the edge of the bank, then disappeared into ripples which fled downstream toward the river. Jaer whispered to the horse.
‘We go to Tharliezalor, forty or fifty days to the northeast. We go peacefully because every pattern of my life says I must go there, and because that which searches for me still does not search here in the east. Its eyes are fixed beyond the Concealment, in the western world. It does not know I am here. It will not know until I come to it, where it is, in Tharliezalor.’
The horse made a soft noise with its nostrils, stamped a foot delicately as though in agreement. Jaer hugged the arching neck, glad of the animal warmth, the easy familiarity. The unicorns went on grazing, looking up from time to time with glowing, incurious eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE STONE CITY
Days 16-26,
Month of Wings Returning
Thewson tarried a day in Seathe, most of it spent seated on the foot of Jasmine’s bed, talking about the Lion Courts. He told her of his spear round, dwelling lovingly upon the catalogue of gods, big and little, and the marvels of their various dwelling places. He could not tell her what he did not remember, but the things he did remember both intrigued and disturbed her.
‘When the gods are finished with me,’ he promised her, ‘we will go to the Lion Courts, though little may be left by that time, and build them up again.’
‘We, Thewson?’
‘Ah, you will come there. Do not make mockery. You are my zhuraoli-nunu, the bright fire of my life. You will pick some bride price, Jasmine, and you will come. You and the boy child – and your girl child, too, for Fox will find her.’
‘You think this one will be a boy then?’
‘It will be.’
Perhaps, she thought, the god voices has assured him of it. In that case she was annoyed. They might have had the courtesy to have told her first.
‘I am not sure I like your gods,’ she said, sulking. ‘They use you. They do not consult you or let you say what you would rather do.’
‘Ah, Zhuraoli, Bright Fire, do not insult them. In my land we know many gods, and we know this about them: they pay well for what they take. If they take a piece of a man’s life, they will give such riches in exchange as to make even the Chieftain jealous. We know that!’
‘And what if they take his whole life?’ she asked soberly. ‘AH of it?’
‘Then the gods will pay. If not in this life, then in another. Or in another time. It is so, Jasmine. You think it is not because you have seen people suffer ill with no repayment; but not all suffering comes from the gods. Sometimes it is merely faxomol, foolishness, things men do. That is the difference between men and gods, after all. Gods always repay.’
‘I do not want them to take you, Thewson.’ There were tears in her eyes, and though she tried to hold them, they spilled down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. ‘See, I am weeping like Chu-Namu. You know the song:
‘The wind weeps
where once Chu-Namu wandered
seeking her lover
.
The sun creeps
through seasons time has squandered
and days now over …’
‘Ah,’ said Mum-lil. ‘That is a song I know:
‘Remembered
is she who loving, seeking
,
in deepest sorrow
,
engendered
a story ever speaking
to our tomorrow…
‘Yes,’ said Thewson. ‘All know that song. You sing the sad part where all the women weep and the men look uncomfortable. There is more of it:
‘A kind fate
bound them from separation
,
forever after
.
Beyond Gate
did they find reparation
and heaven’s laughter …:
His voice was a deep, mellifluous bass. When he sang, the windows rattled, and Jasmine found herself smiling against her will. He saw her smiling, and said to her: ‘You will not need to seek for five hundred years, little flower. No. I am not the silly man to go away and leave you without telling
