CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
TCHENT
Days 14-16,
Month of Wings Returning
It was a city which had given up all pretence as habitation, a city remade as sculpture in which the forces of wind and sand, bird, beast and flower had operated, resisting here, giving way there, until what remained was neither natural nor intentional but an amalgam of both which was greater than either. Medlo thought the word ‘romantic,’ while Terascouros brooded over ritual words which, while more esoteric, meant the same thing.
Jaer thought no words at all. Within him the hosts of himself, changed by his change, began a slow dance of recognition and identification. What he saw was not the static vision of the ruined city but flashing images of the city as it had been envisioned, built, ruined, rebuilt and ruined yet further by the slow passage of years.
There were towers, some half collapsed, others whole, walls rearing in proud bulwarks, others subsiding under drifts of blossom and sharp green, vast outreaches of masonry looming in cliffs above areas half paved, half forested. Copses arranged themselves against empty arches, curving lines of stone mocking a curving arch of branches, the movement of one playing against the still bulk of the other. Medlo thought ‘contrived.’ Terascouros in words other than this thought much the same thing.
They looked past the city to the plains stretching eastward and endless. There was no barrier there. Beyond Tchent was the Concealment, yet nothing was concealed. Jaer brooded, more worried by this openness than he would have been if the way had been barred by walls of stone. His eyes were caught by glints from the setting sun across ancient windows, glazed still in defiance of time. Water winked at them, too, from a plaza. They felt empty flasks and let the horses move toward it.
At this end of the city, no wall was higher than their heads, and they threaded their way to the paved court above a monumental stairway. At its foot an avenue ended against a half-ruined tower. Trees had rooted high upon it and had grown there to thrust flowered branches through ancient fretwork where bells hung. A branch, moved by the wind, struck sound, softly plangent, echoing silver across the city as the light died. When it had gone, the tower became a forested hill, an outcropping of some alien world, sharply black against the dimness of stars. Birds called querulously before settling into silence.
The pool of the long dead fountain held clear water. Jaer stopped with his hand half to his mouth. ‘There is no trash in this pool. No ancient soil, no autumn leaves.’
‘We aren’t the only travellers in the known world,’ said Terascouros calmly. ‘Others come through Tchent; some may be here now, friendly or unfriendly. A small matter to clear a pool or two in order to have clean water. I would do so if I came this way often.’
‘Friendly or unfriendly is a wide range,’ remarked Medlo. ‘Let us sleep under cover.’ And he led them away to a partly roofed tumble. Of the three, only Jaer stayed long awake, listening to the wind as it prowled the streets, listening to the voices inside himself as they spoke of this city, exploring it while he lay motionless.
On the morn they wended eastward through the city, up and down long staircases, past blank-faced buildings which had housed the fabled archives of Tchent. It was evening before they came to the eastern outskirts of the city to repeat the previous night’s camp in a sheltering tumble. Again, Jaer lay sleepless into the night hours, hearing the calls of owls and the widely spaced ringing of the wind-struck bell.
When they rode out of the city, east, in the morning, they began to feel the Concealment. The air grew heavy, burdensome, leaving them gasping for breath. The horses struggled to go on, could not until the travellers walked and led them, struggling step by step, wading through air as though it were heavy liquid. At last the pressure eased, and they mounted to ride forward – to find themselves riding back into the eastern outskirts of Tchent. Sun gleamed high above the ivory and green of the city. When they turned to look eastward, the plains stretched to the horizon with no visible barrier.
‘Well,’ said Medlo. ‘Shall we try it again?’
‘Something hot, first,’ pleaded Terascouros. She was holding to the saddle with both hands, lips blue. Though both Jaer and Medlo had helped her in the travail, her body lacked their young strength and had been pushed to its limits in the effort to breach the Concealment. ‘Even then, it may be I will wait for you here while you try again. I do not think I can …’
‘Not I,’ said Jaer. ‘It will not change. We may do it over and over until the horses refuse to move, but it will not change. The Concealment conceals nothing, and everything. I need to rest and think.’
He mused while they brewed tea, for Terascouros. ‘Something gets through, somehow. The thing that pursues me is through there, yet it reaches here.’ His eyes were caught by a distant flicker of bright colour against the skyline, and he hissed to the others as he kicked dirt across the fire. ‘There are Gahlians coming down the hill to the north. Bring the horses.’ They moved swiftly to lead the horses through a collapsed doorway into a nearby tower. Stairs wound up to an observation platform under the crumbling roof, and after a hesitant testing of each tread, Medlo and Jaer wound their way upward to lie on the platform and peer out through narrow slits in the masonry.
There were red robes, a few black robes in attendance, riding beasts of a kind they had not seen before, and some other riders who seemed to flash in the light as though armoured. The procession came into the city, down the distant staircase above the avenue, and down that avenue
