MAGISTER
Year 1169 – Later Winter
In the brightness of morning, Magister Omburan walked between two of the places of the world. High on the eastern face of the Palonhodh, at the midpoint of a long, east-west ridge, an outcropping of stone towered in the form of a hooded figure facing south. Shadows moving beneath the craggy hood created a vast and commanding face, and at the feet of the figure a spring bubbled into a moss-edged cup of water-smoothed stone. Bare, shivering trees surrounded the clearing, and a great slab extended its lichenous mass over the pool to shadow the water.
Magister Omburan knew this place, this concatenation of stone and water, of grass blooming with violets in spring and with tiny, purple asters in the fall, of white-trunked trees. He knew its numen, its identity, singular and unique, and the name of its inhabiting spirit. He spoke this name, a sound in which stone, water, leaf and tree were included, each in its own relationship to all the others, and the numen replied:
‘Magister. Omburan. Contentment in time.’
‘Contentment in time, Dweller.’
‘Walk in earth, Magister.’
‘I walk in earth, Dweller, speaking of long growth.’
The dweller, too, spoke of long growth, of the accretion of slow ring upon slow ring within the trees, the swifter unfolding of bud to blossom, the away and return of birds. Magister Omburan waited, untiring, feeling with the numen the eastward roll upon the wheel of the humming earth. Noon came as they spoke, the hot light filtering through the Magister’s silver flesh and across the blue feathering of his wings and crest.
‘A troubling, Magister.’
‘Troubling?’ Magister Omburan bent his attention toward the dweller, uttering a word of contrition and shame for his distraction, his failure of concentration.
‘Men, Magister. Troublers. They come singing the names. They weep. They go.’
Magister Omburan meditated upon this as the afternoon moved into evening. So they had come, singing the names, weeping. Many the seasons since that had last occurred; long the sunpaths and moonpaths; countless the leaves. Those who had come singing had not known the earthways, could not move as the Magister did, for to do so required knowing the names of the places, their limits and connections, their true sounds. When still learning, Omburan had come to this place to sit yearlong in the shadow of the looming stone as the water spoke. Another year had been needed to learn the way into Dalisslintoro-oa, next numen to the south. Only Omburan and a few others could walk in those ways, for only they had taken the time to learn the names and the places. Only one people, then, could have come singing the names – those to whom the names had been given.
‘We have long awaited troubles, Dweller.’
‘Will this being unbecome, Magister?’
‘As Earthsoul wills. As we may prevent.’
The water burbled up and flowed away. Small flowers sprang up in the grass where the Magister had moved. Night had come as they spoke. As Magister went southward he heard the Dweller in Dalisslintoro-oa respond to the Magister’s greeting.
‘Long have you walked in earthways, Magister.’
‘Long has Dalisslintoro-oa bloomed and grown and leaf-folded, Dweller.’
This numen knew beeches rising massively in green-trunked towers. Here the streamlet ran between flowering banks, and the great stone watcher gazed down on an ancient dolmen. Night swirled around the Magister’s black hide, hid his huge dog feet, reflected starlight from his long white fangs and gleaming eyes. There were shapes and suitabilities for days and others for nights, forms for spring and others yet for fall.
‘Trouble, Magister.’
‘So say all the Dwellers, Dalisslintoro-oa.’
Magister sent his perception northward, the way he had come. The lands had been disturbed there, and many ancient dwellers had gone. He named them in memory, listing them among the cherished ones, reminding himself of their names in sorrow. Men had come in the north. Some heard the word of Earthsoul and made gardens. Others made barrens, holes in the fabric of earth, deadly places. No earthways were left there. The air burned, the stone was silent. Water was a curse there, and a filth and a defilement.
‘It is grieving to unbecome, Magister.’
‘It is grieving, Dweller.’
Dawn soaked upward into the darkness, north and south along the horizon of sparkling lakes and marshes to the east of Palonhodh. Early light shifted the shadows beneath the craggy hood of the watcher, making the shadowy features move and blur as though the shadowed lips uttered a command. Upon the dolmen a complex symbol gleamed as if drawn by slender fingers in a dew upon the stone. As the sun rose higher, the symbol dried, the last drops fading toward the south where Magister Omburan had gone. There, far and white against the southern sky brooded the hoary head of Gerenhodh.
BOOK II
The Gate
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE AWAKENING
Year 1169 – Early Spring
Winter moved north from the Hill of the Sisterhood; the Choir of Gerenhodh sang stillness upon the ghosts of Murgin. They roiled beneath this imposed quiet with ominous malevolence. Jaer slept as though forever; and the travellers gathered on a sunny ledge near the kitchens to fret away their impatience and drink midmorning tea. Old Aunt was with them, croaking hoarsely over her mug as Terascouros muttered angrily at her.
‘You can’t go on, Aunty. Let the others sing the ghosts quiet without you for a day or two. Within the week you’ll all be hoarse, and what’ll the ghosts do then?’
‘We do not know what they will do at all,’ the old woman cawed, grimacing at her own harsh voice. ‘We seek only to keep them quiet for a time, Teras, until our plea for help can be answered.’
‘Help!’ Terascouros made a mocking face. ‘Rituals that haven’t been used for a millennium.’
‘Rituals that haven’t been needed for a millennium,’ the Old Aunt corrected. ‘But taught to us by Taniel – taught to her by Omburan, so it is said – to be used at need.’
They had argued the matter since the morning after the Council
