Later, none of them could make words to remember what happened then. They could recall only pictures of shapes and shadows.
There was firelight which was orange and amber, lighting and hiding, disclosing and shading. There was rock gleaming like metal, then as if furred with lichen. Trees, giving back the light from leaves in reflected fragments, then taking the light up into velvet darkness. All shifting, all wavering. Hard and soft, sharp and dull, real and imaginary, one following the other, one after the other, endless images.
There was the Keeper, or acolyte, or whatever it was or had been or titled itself. There was no hair on the Keeper anywhere. All the hair had been cut away. Only scars were there, thick and stiff, like the wax of candles poured layer on layer, angry red, as though the cutting had been done many times. It had no sex, only a roughness between the legs where the scars were, and a roughness on the chest where more scars were. No eyebrows. No hair beneath the arms. Only scars.
It could not say whether it was a woman or man, or had been girl or boy. It did not know. It knew only that the pain would end when it had been paid in kind, by another. When this one could ‘recruit’ another to suffer equally, then this one would be allowed to die, to go to that place it had been promised. But the account seemed never to be paid. It cried that it had brought others, more than one, many. Still the account was not balanced. They did not suffer enough. They had not yet lived long enough with the pain. So, this one said, it would go on bringing others – recruiting others – to Murgin.
At last the gryphon reached out and separated it from life with one great claw, and quiet came.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
INSIDE MURGIN
Year 1168-Winter
Jaer was drugged during most of the trip to Murgin. She came to herself from time to time to see the trunks of trees plunging past or to see firelight or to hear the clatter of hooves over stone. No one spoke to her. During most of the journey she dreamed.
She had come, she dreamed, with Medlo and Terascouros – there may have been others, shadowy at the edge of her vision, but it was hard to see—to a place near a great sea; a city, not ruined but old, placid, sun-warmed, and so quiet that the sound of voices was an interruption. There was a broad river, a bridge, and at the end of the bridge a domed building where Jaer stood and watched as figures moved in and out of a wide hall. The floor of it sloped down on every side to centre on a pit filled with flashing lights and metallic gleaming.
Jaer could see high, narrow tables among the flickering lights – six, seven. Men and women moved among them, speaking to one another with laughter and excitement.
‘Audilla, will you care for me still?’
‘Talurion, don’t act the fool at a time like this!’
Beside Jaer – and those other shadowy ones – stood a man and a woman, not looking at one another, their faces blanked with a kind of melancholy which Jaer, even in the dream, thought strange and out of place. The man was speaking in a soft tenor voice, not so high as to seem effeminate and yet with delicacy, Taniel, why won’t you join us?’
Taniel. Jaer remembered that name from lessons with Ephraim and Nathan. It was an important name, but Jaer could not remember why.
She who answered was slender, tall, dark hair gently curved around her ears and across level brows. She made a gesture of frustration. ‘Urlasthes, you have asked and asked, and I have said and said …’
His lips mocked a smile. Taniel of the Two Loves, is that it? Omburan, again?’
‘Omburan, still. You know how he feels about this!’
‘You know, my dear, eventually you must choose between us.’
‘You know, my dear, that I will not. That’s why I won’t take part in this … this thing you’re doing. I don’t want to be … so changed.’
‘Not even for the better?’ Urlasthes watched her face closely, reached out to stroke her hair. ‘No, I see you are not moved by the possibility of betterment. Well, when you have seen – perhaps?’
‘When I have seen. Perhaps, when he has seen, even Omburan…’
The other laughed, harshly. ‘I will be above jealousy soon, Taniel. Beyond it. At this moment, however, I can still feel it enough to resent that.’
‘If you will be above jealousy, Urlasthes, perhaps … you will be above love as well.’ She clung to him, and he calmed her as he might a child.
‘Nonsense. We will be able to love more. Well, now is not the time to argue it. They are ready. See, Audilla is beckoning. Wait for me here. I will see you … after.’
He joined those who were stretching themselves upon the high tables. Others moved around them, speaking quietly, as though in a ritual, a litany of numbers and lights. To one side was a vast tube or jar, bound around with hoops of shining metal and connected to the wiry tangle. The place fell silent. Still. One tiny movement by one of the attending figures, a small lever moving in a slot from one side to the other, and then a hum, as though something living had wakened deep in the earth.
Those who lay upon the tables began to shine, glowing from within. In the great jar darkness gathered, a grey mist, rolling, thickening, curdling upon itself as a storm cloud curdles. On the tables the figures shone brighter, beautiful in their shining, and more beautiful still until
