‘South,’ said Kelner. ‘That is the way they go. South.’
‘Will Sybil find them, Teras? Does she know enough?’
‘My daughter has never trusted her, remembering her treatment of Mawen. Teraspelion has kept the deep ways her own. I do not know what Teraspelion knows, but we may all pray that she knows enough to keep them safe.’
They rested in the tall grass, too weary to eat or drink. Terascouros spoke somewhat of the rule of Taniel, connecting that to Sybil, and the talk started some small searcher scurrying endlessly through Jaer’s head, a seeker for clues to mysteries. In Jaer’s weariness, the lives within her began to grow and swirl, to discourse among themselves, build relationships anew, discover common knowledge. Jaer fought them down. Out of the wallet at her side she took the quest book to read it with ostentatious concentration. ‘I will be Jaer,’ she said to herself. ‘For a time, only Jaer. I will not be some mythic thing for them to follow like a beacon.’ In her fatigue, she believed these thoughts were hers alone. She did not follow the image of the beacon into the mind of the mariner who had given it; instead, she read the book which she already knew from memory.
Meanwhile, Terascouros crouched across her bent knees, eyes shielded beneath her arms, trying to send her mind up and out to search the area behind them. There was a pressure, a great and hideous weight which bore her down. She struggled against it, straining, rose at last to bob upon the surface of whatever it was which oppressed her. On this surface she could move away toward Gerenhodh, could come close enough to see the outer halls.
There was only cold emptiness filled with automatons, black-robed ciphers moving endlessly through the abandoned corridors, faceless processions without beginnings, bodies pressing into every crevasse of stone. Each face was a blank circle of flesh, as alike to the next as though stamped out by a machine, teratoid and horrible. The weight found her once more, crushing her soul from her. An intention had found her, a someone, a something. She gasped, felt arms around her as Medlo and Jaer drew her out of the trance and into the grassland once more. She clung to them.
‘Oh, they are there,’ she gasped. ‘The halls are full of them, but I cannot see clearly. Something prevents me.’ Exhausted, she sank into sudden sleep. They wrapped her in a blanket and pulled her near the fire they had built. Even in her sleep she could sense the presence which searched for her, heavy and indomitable. In her sleep she vowed against it. ‘You do not want me to see,’ she dreamed. ‘But I will see, in spite of you.’ Dreams went into the void, and she only slept, mouth open, breath rasping in the quiet air.
Far behind them in the deep caverns of the Hill, others sent their minds roving into the dusk behind a screen of song. Old Aunt and her Council joined together to thrust through the weight above them, to see those who stood on the slope of the Hill, lit by torchlight, red robes in red light, red like blood, the colour of new wounds. With them was a woman, fury boiling from her like steam.
She was being questioned by a red-robed creature of Gahl, one with a voice like acid. ‘There is no place of a Sisterhood here,’ it said. ‘Nothing here but stony ways. No persons, no maps, no books, no secrets of the ancient times. We have come as we said. Your part of the bargain must be kept.’
‘They are here, Lithos,’ Sybil snarled. ‘I can feel them on my skin like dried candle grease. When I move, I feel them crack and splinter. They are here.’
‘Where then? Show us how, where, into what crevasse our creatures must go, into which hallway we do infiltrate our own. Tell us, Singer, and the bargain is kept.’
‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know! They have moved things, changed things. Get the hordes out of here and let me look. Let me search. Your mindless minions can only press and press; they cannot use their eyes.’
‘But you can? You can find those who destroyed Murgin? Those our Master has bid us find? That one we seek?’
‘I can if you will leave me alone. I can use my vision. I will use it to bring ruin on those who would dare set me to the silence. They have dealt always with sycophants and fools, with grovelling witlings. They have held Power in their hands only for the holding, never for the using. They have not done, planned as I will do. Yes! This vision is something I will use.’
‘Ahhh. Then the hordes may move south, to that place they must go, soon, in time. And you will use your vision, in time. When we know that you are truly one of us, Singer, woman, in that you are woman no more …’
Those below caught only a glimpse of Sybil’s face, obdurate, so full of pent fury it did not show fear even now. Then the weight came down upon them, a weight which bore their minds into the deep caverns, no more knowing of their presence than an elephant might be aware as it crushed ants. The Sisters sang, softly, softly, raising the pressure away from themselves, making a safe place beneath that crushing force, a safe, silent, secret place, warm and lamplit beneath the cold horror in the Hill.
Only then did they separate their minds to stare at one another in disgust and sickness.
‘Sybil,’ said Old Aunt. ‘The silence we set her to was as nothing to the silence they will bring upon her.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE NORTHERN WAY
Days 1-14, Month of Thaw
Thewson and Jasmine rode south into a chill morning accompanied by two men
