The mind raged, drew itself into fury, spat fire. ‘Fabla,’ raged the mind. ‘Cannot even her marker lie in peace on the moors of Anisfale?’ The mind recoiled, shocked, flowed around its own rage, isolated the anger, cushioned it and bound it, carried it away toward the east, toward Lak Island. It went into the dawn, over wooded valleys and down the long river courses to the endless freshwater lakes of the eastern plains. The city of the island lay quiet in the dawn, the primeval bulk of the convent and Temple dark and tenantless, the city walling itself into enclaves with walls half built, the sound of bell and drum from a newly built Temple of Separation filling the streets as water fills a bowl. Deep under the convent, in the immemorial cellars, at a door so old that its hinges fell away in reddened dust, the mind found several women in the garb of nuns stealing away from the city, under the walls, down long root-dangled muddy tunnels to the distant countryside. With them went a child.
On the floor of the sanctuary, white and still in a pool of clotted blood, lay Eldest Sister, true to her vision of the Goddess, cut down by the robed ones who now searched the maze-like corridors for other life. There was none. Behind the fleeing women in the tunnels, dirt fell in a tiny avalanche, hiding their footprints. ‘Hu’oa,’ the mind breathed gently. ‘Flee swiftly. Get away.’
The mind came up from Lakland, peered south and east, toward the city of Tchent and the lands beyond the Concealment, encountering a wall of stubborn darkness, of amorphous shadow, of quilted mist, layer on layer, impenetrable. From this hidden place flowed malice, evil intent, a kind of horrid hunger as though something licked at their souls with a loathsomely coated tongue and breathed on them with a rotting, leprous breath. The mind retreated, burned as by a corrosive acid, and fled swiftly so that the towering, watchful darkness in the east should not follow them back into the Council chamber.
Medlo and Jasmine wept, the one for a loved land lost, the other for a child endangered. Thewson’s jaw was clenched tight and his eyes blazed. He had not loved the old shaman, but he had honoured him and had honoured the great tree. Leona’s pale gaze was fixed on the far wall of the cavern, expressionless and hard.
Out of the silence came the whispery voice of the Old Aunt who had called peace upon the Council.
‘You have seen, travellers, and we with you. In our previous search we saw the city of Murgin fall. Some of us saw the creatures you described. Some of us saw – other things. All of us now know that forces, powers, something came at your call, something we do not know, have not learned of, do not recognize. Long have we served the True Powers, these thousands of years. Long have we been true to Taniel who began our order. Long have we served those who guard and guide, those Masters of our earth; in metaphor, in symbol we have served. Now, we see symbols walking, metaphors sprung to life and moving upon cities.
‘Long have we repudiated – that, all its works, all its darkness, all its ancient shame; yet the darkness and shame remain. We are caught upon a battlefield, ill prepared for battle, unsure of the identities of the antagonists, sure only that we are opposed to – something.
‘Murgin is destroyed, and its pitiable wraiths now surge in the shadows, lost, unable to rejoin, Separated indeed as their doctrine insisted and yet not, we think, as they hoped. For what is left of them, we weep.
‘And now you come to say the Sai Surrah is come, the Lasurra sai who sleeps, and sleeping changes, and is now male, now female as was foretold by the Woman of Hanar a century and a half ago. Such wonders! So, Sisters, travellers, hear the words of this Council. Until the Sleeper wakes, we wait. And when the Sleeper wakes, we will take up our weapons, contemptible though they may seem to the powerful. Rest then, for it may be long and long before we rest again, or it may be too short a time until we rest forever.’
They went forth from the chamber in twos and threes, not talking, each searching the faces of others with fearful, resolute eyes, as though to memorize and keep forever the appearances of this time. Old Aunt came to the place where the travelers stood.
‘Teras, I have sent the singers into the wilds.’
Terascouros looked puzzled. The old woman shook her head almost impatiently. ‘The seven singers …’
‘To sing the names, weeping? Aunt. You would call for help with rituals which haven’t been used for a thousand years?’
‘Rituals given us by Taniel, to use in a time of need. Yes. What else would you have me do? What you may do is ray that there is one remaining in the wilds who will ear.’ And she went into the corridor, nodding to herself. Terascouros shepherded the others away to the place where they slept.
Jasmine asked, ‘Where was Sybil? I didn’t see her.’
‘Sybil was wrong,’ said Terascouros. ‘Wrong out of pride, out of ambition. In the Sisterhood, if one is wrong, one is set to a long silence. One may be mistaken and still hold honour and place, but one may not be wrong. We may see her again, but we will not hear her voice in our lifetime.’
In this Terascouros was herself wrong.
CHAPTER
