The Magister stepped forward in the dawn to cradle Jaer in powerful arms. ‘So we have a child now, Taniel. Yours ana mine.’
‘Yours, Omburan. Not mine.’
‘Ours. The child’s mother, Jaera, I honoured, honouring you, Taniel. She was held in my being as no other has been held, given peace such as no other has known. She would have counted the cost not too dear, had she known the cost. Part of the price paid to her was that she never knew. And this is our child, newborn, all the past burned away in the making and breaking of the Gate.’
‘It is too late for me.’
‘No. You will learn. Jaer will learn. We three will make a day together to sing the name weeping of Jaera of the Isles.’
The Magister took them away, in a direction Terascouros could not see. When they had gone, she gathered up the things they had left so casually behind. The Vessel, die Sword, the Girdle, the Crown. So many, so wondrous, left with so little ceremony. Carefully she packed them away to be carried home to Gerenhodh. Hazliah would take her there. They would sing the Song of Comfort for Hazliah. Then she would go with him to Orena to see it, to meet the little people, to meet Leona’s son. Busily she worked, remembered, and wondered curiously.
In the Lion Courts, a shaman planted seedling trees. New grass poked through slabs where the casde of Rhees had once stood. In Lakland, a man remembered a dancer he had once seen. In Anisfale, the heath bloomed bright about a stone which bore Fabla’s name. The deep songs of earth sang on, and in that song were all of earth’s creatures made whole.
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Also By Sheri S. Tepper
Land of The True Game
1. King’s Blood Four (1983)
2. Necromancer Nine (1983)
3. Wizard’s Eleven (1984)
Marianne
1. Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore (1985)
2. Marianne, the Madame and the Momentary Gods (1988)
3. Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse (1989)
Mavin Manyshaped
1. The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
2. The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
3. The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)
Jinian
1. Jinian Footseer (1985)
2. Dervish Daughter (1986)
3. Jinian Star-Eye (1986)
Ettison
1. Blood Heritage (1986)
2. The Bones (1987)
Awakeners
1. Northshore (1987)
2. Southshore (1987)
Other Novels
The Revenants (1984)
After Long Silence (1987)
The Gate to Women’s Country (1988)
The Enigma Score (1989)
Grass (1989)
Beauty (1991)
Sideshow (1992)
A Plague of Angels (1993)
Shadow’s End (1994)
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (1996)
The Family Tree (1997)
Six Moon Dance (1998)
Singer from the Sea (1999)
Raising the Stones (1990)
The Fresco (2000)
The Visitor (2002)
The Companions (2003)
The Margarets (2007)
EPILOGUE
THEWSON AND JASMINE
Thewson found himself among stony mountains in a wild and desolate place. The earth around him was fused, as though by a bolt of lightning, into glassy nodules. He picked up three of them, recognizing them for what they were.
When he came out of the mountains, he had the three stones in his belt pouch, smooth and dark, with a golden light dwelling deep within. He came to the town of Txibbias, not speaking one word that they understood, nor they one that he could comprehend. They were workers in gold and silver in Txibbias, exporters to the City of the Mists and to the great seaports of the east, and it was to one of the foremost among the artisans that Thewson made his needs known. He wanted the stones polished and set into a simple circlet of sea silver. He drew the circlet on a fragment of hide with a burned stick, but offered no payment.
The artisan attempted to ignore him, but Thewson was not one easily ignored. By signs he conveyed willingness to guard the premises, to hunt, to guard the caravans which went east and north along the sea. At last the artisan allowed him to sleep between the inner and outer walls of the shop, only to find him there one morning, bleeding and exhausted, sitting on a pile of what had been an armed band of robbers who had thought to steal from the artisan in the night.
From that time on, Thewson slept within the inner walls, was well fed and armed, and had the strange stones handed over to the lapidaries for polishing while the artisan drew design after design for the crown. Thewson would not have it embellished, long though the artisan pleaded for only a few simple curlicues or a delicate wreath of flowers. Only when the artisan finished, Thewson bowed deeply before the startled artist and took himself off–eastward with a caravan.
He travelled with the caravan for a season, two, almost a year, crossing and recrossing the lands to the west of the great sea. There was nothing familiar: no language, no custom, no costume, no line of distant hills or river valley. Then one day he found himself staring at a child’s face which peered at him from the back of a wagon, a woven lappet across its forehead in a design which Thewson knew. Though he stumbled still in die language of the place, he could ask ‘where’ and learn ‘there,’ die City of the Mists, the Temple of Our Lady.
The city was very beautiful, delicately coloured, with graceful towers softened and pillowed by trees.
