That night he asked Terascouros, ‘What would happen if all the Sisters sang, at once, in one place, the Songs of Dismissal?’
Terascouros smiled. ‘We have always been taught that the world would end, Medlo. Some of us even believe it.’
Jasmine was as near to tone deaf as made no difference, but she identified the gardeners among the Sisters and men in a moment, following them out to the gardens which lay at the end of long, wandering tunnels in hidden hollows of the hills. There were orchards as well, and grain fields, all hidden away in folds and valleys of the southern Savus Mountains. There were no roads in or out, but the tunnels were wide enough for small wagons and sturdy ponies to traverse. She watched the Sisters at work and play and at their flirtations and romances in the fields and under the orchard trees. Surprised, she wondered aloud whether sworn virgins ought to act so.
They laughed and took her to the nurseries to meet the babies and to the caves where most of the children lived.
‘Love and the delights of love are gifts of Earthsoul,’ lectured an elderly woman with twinkling eyes whom Jasmine had noticed for a certain forthright lewdness. ‘We do not throw the gifts of Earthsoul away or return them unused. It would be an insult to the Powers.’ She was firm about it, but there was laughter around her mouth. Jasmine thought bitterly of the Elder Sister in Lak Island and spoke no more of holy virgins.
Jasmine sat in a window cleft with Terascouros, warm in the westering sun, mending stockings while Terascouros talked of the Sisterhood. ‘It was the Thiene who started it, back at the beginning of the Second Cycle. The First Cycle had ended in destruction and barbarity. The wizards who had caused all the trouble – so it was said, though others said not at all, it was the wizards who picked up the pieces – had gone. That was the Departure. Then, after unnumbered years of confusion and despair, the Thiene came. I think, personally, that they were wizards also, the ones who had refused to go away. At any rate, they came, out of the east, perhaps from Tarliezalor itself. They came, dug the archivists out of Tchent and set them teaching people how to read and write once more, started the Sisterhoods, explored, built, taught. The one the Sisterhoods knew best was Taniel.’
‘I’ve heard the name in Lak Island.’
‘As you should have. The nunnery there was once a Sisterhood like ours. Later she came to be called Taniel of the Two Loves because of the two Thiene who loved her-Omburan and Urlasthes.’
‘Oh,’ said Jasmine, eager for romance. ‘Tell me about them.’
Terascouros shook her head. ‘I can’t. It is forbidden to speak of Urlasthes because it is forbidden to speak of the Remnant in Orena.’
‘Forbidden? I didn’t think you were forbidden to speak of anything, Terascouros. Or at least I didn’t think you would pay any attention to forbidding.’
The old woman made a little grimace. ‘Well. Say it is unwise to speak of them. It is like – oh, saying the name of someone you dislike in a crowded room. A kind of silence falls, and the one you spoke of hears you and looks across the room at you with enmity. So, to speak much of the Remnant brings a kind of attention we would prefer to avoid. Not from the Remnant. From another.’
‘Well then, tell me about the other one!’
‘I can’t tell you much about Omburan. He became … became a mystery, a wonder. And then, we really don’t know that much about him—only what stories came from Orena after the Concealment.’
‘Surely you can tell me something,’ Jasmine begged, fishing the darning egg out of the sock and then making a face as she found still another hole. ‘Come, now, Terascouros, you can tell me something about the Concealment.’
‘What can I tell you except what everyone knows? The Thiene lived in Tharliezalor – perhaps since the time of the wizards. It was the unnumbered years, darkness and ignorance all around. Something happened in Tharliezalor, a terrible thing, a dreadful thing, an ill for which there was no cure. Then the Thiene came out of Tharliezalor; a few, called the Remnant, went to Orena. The others, the thousand, went into the world to work and teach. Behind them they left an almost empty land, and so it stayed until Sud-Akwith went there.’
‘I know that story.’ Jasmine sighed. ‘Medlo tells it all the time, Sud-Akwith and his boring sword. Oh, very useful at the time, no doubt, but I do get tired of hearing about it.’
Terascouros went on patiently. ‘When Sud-Akwith went there, he wakened the horror. The people who were left in the east, or who had gone there, fled as though chased by devils. Now no one can go into the east.’
‘Why can’t they? What is it, the Concealment?’
‘For heaven’s sake, child; I don’t know. I’ve never been further east than Lakland.’
‘Then tell me about the Sisterhoods. Why did Taniel start them?’
‘Because they were to prevent what had happened in the First
