Seekers mask, p.40
Seeker's Mask, page 40
part #3 of Kencyrath Series
"Marc."
"That's right." He gave Jame a sharp, surprised look. "A nice boy, that, despite everything. Big for his age."
"He still is."
"That's all ancient history," said Kirien impatiently. "Index, for the last time, will you ask your friend to stop this?"
"No! Dammit, I've done all I can!"
Jame wondered at his tone, at once exasperated and obscurely excited.
Even more, though, she wondered about the Merikits' purpose. There was something more to it than Sonny and the Snake, something that she should be able to guess, based on what she had seen and heard over the past few days. The Merikit were trying to combine two ceremonies this time, the first to quiet the Snake, the second...the second....
She groped after the thought though a sudden haze of fatigue. The others' voices grew dim. Too damned long without sleep.... But then she was struggling back to the surface, away with a shudder from Ashe's cold, supporting hand.
"Trouble," said the haunt singer.
"You want this ceremony to continue, don't you?" Kirien was saying to Index, almost gently, but with a stir of power that made Jame's scalp crawl and Jorin growl in the corner where Kindrie held him. "You claim to be an authority on the Merikit, but the truth is that you have never before been permitted to witness a major seasonal mystery."
Index sputtered. "One needn't...Grindark rituals...Nekrien mythology...if one draws intelligent comparisons...."
"But that isn't first hand experience, is it? For eighty years, since Kithorn fell and the hills were closed, you've been denied primary research, reduced to cataloging the details of others' work. Now comes this opportunity."
"Nothing happens by accident!" the old man cried. Before, he had sounded as defiant as a child trying to snatch a forbidden treat. Now he was backing away, as if from an assault for which his defences were proving unequal. "A chance like this...."
" 'Chance' implies 'accident.' "
"Knowledge is everything!"
"Certainly, scrollsmen have died for it before, and killed."
So might this inexorable inquisition, slicing away the self-deceptions necessary to the old man's self-respect. At last Jame understood Ashe's concern: Anxiety had pushed the young scrollswoman into the academic equivalent of a berserker flare—a ruthless drive to lay bare the truth, regardless of the cost.
"Kiri...." she said, awkwardly, out of her depth, "this isn't helping."
Cool, unblinking eyes turned on her. Their attention, focusing, drove her back a step. Too late, she realized that here lay the Shanir power not only to demand the truth, but to compel it.
"Helping what? Do you contend that self-knowledge is not of itself a worthy end?"
Jame winced, remembering the awful revelation of her own soul-image. "Perhaps," she said, "we can't endure to know ourselves too well. Perhaps...the truth can sometimes destroy."
"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be," said that implacable voice. Could any Arrin-ken have spoken with more authority? "Of what would you chose to remain in ignorance?"
Involuntarily, Jame started to answer, but then she stopped herself, swallowing hard. She felt a horrible sinking inside, as though fatigue had eaten out her heart and all was crumbling in toward darkness. Dammit, she would not be forced back into her own shadows. In a curiously detached way, she felt her anger try to spark an answering berserker flare, but exhaustion had dampened the tinder. She didn't even have the energy to argue, leaving...what?
"If I had a choice," she said, reaching up, "I would ignore this."
The mask came away in her gloved hands.
Kirien blinked. "Oh," she said, in a small voice.
"Effective," Ashe remarked. "As a point of debate, though...."
"Agreed." Jame resumed the mask with fingers grown suddenly clumsy with fatigue. "It lacks subtlety. But then so did M'lady Kallystine."
Kirien had turned on Kindrie. "Healer, why haven't you done something about this?"
"Because I wouldn't let him," said Jame. "I may be a nemesis, Kiri, but I won't be his. Oh, hell...."
She put a hand on the anvil to steady herself. Her reserves had been almost exhausted before. Resisting the Jaran had nearly finished her. Still, in justice to her cousin she must explain and did so, haltingly.
"When did you last rest?" Kirien demanded. "An injury like that requires dwar sleep. Lots of it."
"Not dwar. It'll set the scar."
"Oh, I suppose you'd rather just drop dead. Fools who won't sleep sometimes do. Listen. Nothing will happen here for...how long, Index?"
"An hour," said the old scrollsman sulkily. "Maybe two. If you'll accept a mere, informed guess."
"Very well. Until then, lady, you'll sleep, if I have to hit you over the head with a brick."
Jame laughed. "I have already been hit quite often enough, thank you," she said with careful enunciation. "Wake me when the fun starts."
She lowered herself stiffly to the floor by the west wall, finishing with a thump as her legs gave out. "Oh, my," she said, gathered Jorin in her arms, and tumbled over, fast asleep. The ounce licked her chin, then stretched out beside her with a deep sigh.
Ashe stood over them. " 'Nemesis,' " she repeated softly.
Kirien regarded her with alarm. "We still don't know that for certain, nor yet what kind, if it's true. For pity's sake, Ashe, if you still have tests in mind, postpone them. Haven't we enough trouble as it is?"
The haunt singer didn't reply.
"Ancestors know," said Kirien, after a pause, " she's got trouble enough. That face...! Well, healer, what are you going to do about it?"
Kindrie's white head jerked up. "L-lordan, she told you...."
"And I believe her. She was right to point out the risk. Now it's your decision whether to take it."
If Kindrie could have shrunk farther back into his corner, he would have, loathing himself all the more. After all, the young scrollswoman was only asking what he had already tacitly volunteered to do by coming down after the Knorth. Even then, though, he had doubted his ability to succeed, and been relieved to escape the test. Now it seemed that he hadn't. Dammit, what had happened to his nerves? Maybe he wasn't a hero like his two pure-bred cousins, but neither last winter had he been so very craven. No, just foolish, plunging into one misadventure after another through sheer ignorance, protected by the ability to heal himself of virtually anything. Now he knew where the risks lay, and, thanks to Ishtier, what their true costs were. Without the priest to unlock the way, perhaps he would never know the healing peace of his soul-image again.
If not, then what? Hide in dark corners the rest of your life?
No. Whatever he had lost, he had gained two things which he had never thought to have: a house and a name. He must try never again to be unworthy of either.
Get up, then, Kindrie Soul-Walker, and walk.
As he rose, his joints cracked like an old man's, full of shooting pains. This, too, was the mortality which Ishtier had made him taste. The others made way as he circled the anvil and crouched stiff-kneed by the Knorth. His hand, reaching out, shook. From her slow breath, she was already deep in dwar sleep. All barriers would be down. This was like standing on the edge of a precipice, all darkness below but in it lurking that monstrous house, that cold, blighted hall.
Take the plunge, Knorth. Go.
He touched her face.
II
The red clouds began sluggishly to stir over the square, crimson patches silently appearing and disappearing, streaks of blood and fire swirling at the touch of no breeze felt below. The elders crouching each in his corner might have been so many fantastic statues, the "woman" and the feathered man hardly less so. Outside the square, the onlookers also stood motionless. All the workers had gathered at the southern corner, the challenger as if by chance keeping out of sight behind them. At the northern corner, in solitary splendor, even the big Merikit had lapsed into an expectant if morose silence.
Kirien wondered what they were waiting for. How much did any Kencyr, even Index, know about these wild hill-folk who had occupied the Riverland before the Kencyrath, before the old empires? If knowledge was power, surely this was its opposite. Therefore, she must also wait—for the Merikit to start, for Mount Alban (please, God) to escape, for the healing to finish.
"Why is it taking so long?" she burst out, speaking despite her anxiety barely above a whisper. "Obviously, no major muscles or arteries were cut. Early attention would have healed it without a trace. Even now...! How long does deep healing usually take?"
"How long...is a dream?"
"Ashe, please: no riddles."
"Rather, a metaphor...as are all dreams and soul-images. To a healer at work...time is subjective."
"Not entirely," said Index, screwing up his clever, monkey's face. "How long can a dream seem to last—a minute, a day, a lifetime? Sometimes, a healer ages accordingly. Why, I know one young chap who gained a century overnight."
As he spoke, he shot Kirien a malicious, sidelong look—his revenge, she thought, for having scared him so badly before. Not that she blamed him. What had possessed her, to have been so tactless? Oh, it had been exhilarating at the time, as debate so often was, but afterward...!
Still, the old bastard would raise a subject about which she had been trying very hard not to think.
Facts before theories, practical needs before speculation. She had said as much before to Ashe in conference, and had acted on it in pressing Kindrie to deal with Jame's injury. Still, a healer and a nemesis....
Should she have forced two such people together, against the wills of both? What if they could only be mutually destructive? She wished she could see Kindrie's face, but his hair hung down over it, stained by the sullen light to a bloody fringe. His thin, sensitive fingers rested on the other's masked face with a moth's trembling touch. That fragile contact reminded her how precarious the balance between them must be. She flinched as Jorin whimpered and twitched, as if he were straining to plunge as deeply into sleep as his mistress. This time, however, she and the healer had gone where he could not follow.
"Listen," said Ashe softly.
Outside, at a distance, someone was shouting. That voice, although faint, carried as across a battlefield, an insistent rally-cry: "K-north! K-north!"
Back in the shadows, the breathing changed.
II
The red clouds began sluggishly to stir over the square, crimson patches silently appearing and disappearing, streaks of blood and fire swirling at the touch of no breeze felt below. The elders crouching each in his corner might have been so many fantastic statues, the "woman" and the feathered man hardly less so. Outside the square, the onlookers also stood motionless. All the workers had gathered at the southern corner, the challenger as if by chance keeping out of sight behind them. At the northern corner, in solitary splendor, even the big Merikit had lapsed into an expectant if morose silence.
Kirien wondered what they were waiting for. How much did any Kencyr, even Index, know about these wild hill-folk who had occupied the Riverland before the Kencyrath, before the old empires? If knowledge was power, surely this was its opposite. Therefore, she must also wait—for the Merikit to start, for Mount Alban (please, God) to escape, for the healing to finish.
"Why is it taking so long?" she burst out, speaking despite her anxiety barely above a whisper. "Obviously, no major muscles or arteries were cut. Early attention would have healed it without a trace. Even now...! How long does deep healing usually take?"
"How long...is a dream?"
"Ashe, please: no riddles."
"Rather, a metaphor...as are all dreams and soul-images. To a healer at work...time is subjective."
"Not entirely," said Index, screwing up his clever, monkey's face. "How long can a dream seem to last—a minute, a day, a lifetime? Sometimes, a healer ages accordingly. Why, I know one young chap who gained a century overnight."
As he spoke, he shot Kirien a malicious, sidelong look—his revenge, she thought, for having scared him so badly before. Not that she blamed him. What had possessed her, to have been so tactless? Oh, it had been exhilarating at the time, as debate so often was, but afterward...!
Still, the old bastard would raise a subject about which she had been trying very hard not to think.
Facts before theories, practical needs before speculation. She had said as much before to Ashe in conference, and had acted on it in pressing Kindrie to deal with Jame's injury. Still, a healer and a nemesis....
Should she have forced two such people together, against the wills of both? What if they could only be mutually destructive? She wished she could see Kindrie's face, but his hair hung down over it, stained by the sullen light to a bloody fringe. His thin, sensitive fingers rested on the other's masked face with a moth's trembling touch. That fragile contact reminded her how precarious the balance between them must be. She flinched as Jorin whimpered and twitched, as if he were straining to plunge as deeply into sleep as his mistress. This time, however, she and the healer had gone where he could not follow.
"Listen," said Ashe softly.
Outside, at a distance, someone was shouting. That voice, although faint, carried as across a battlefield, an insistent rally-cry: "K-north! K-north!"
Back in the shadows, the breathing changed.
III
A thick, black thread stitched together a fold across the cheek of a death banner. Eye lid dragged down, mouth twisted up, that handsome, arrogant face seemed to sneer at its own deformity.
"Look at us, your precious ancestors. Are these honest faces? Are these kind?"
"Shut up," muttered Kindrie. "I'm not listening."
He shouldn't be talking, either. All that protected him was that his patient slept more deeply than he, although their dwar breathing matched. He must finish and extricate himself before she woke. He concentrated on ripping out that clumsy seam, one stitch at a time. How cruelly tight it was sewn. He worked a finger under the black thread and pulled. His nail split to the quick.
What is there here worth saving? We are a fallen house, a people utterly corrupt. Your house, your people....
His torn nail caught on the tapestry's warp. The moldering strings broke and bled, like ruptured vessels, as he fumbled to retie them.
And what are you, who need us to prove your own worth?
...shut up, shut up....
There. The warp stings were knotted back together and that damned black thread was free. It twisted like a whip-worm in his blood-slick hands, out of his grasp, up his sleeve. He felt it wriggle down to join the seething mass of scars already inside his jacket, inside the naked cage of his ribs. Fifty banners repaired. How many more to go? Row after row of disfigured faces lined the Master's cold hall, watching him askance, their rustle in the dwar wind snide with laughter.
You fatherless fool, you motherless bastard.
Kindrie slumped against the wall. He would never be able to mend them all, thereby restoring this soul-image to health. It had been mortally diseased to begin with. (A fallen house, a corrupt people—"I will not listen!") Perhaps a lifetime spent laboring here...but only a healer with access to his own soul would have the strength to attempt so epic a cure, though it might age and kill him in a night. Kindrie couldn't even control his own physical aspect on this level. That obscene roil eating out his guts—the symbolic equivalent of jewel-jaws in the stomach or of worms, feasting in the grave?
There it was again, that devouring fear of death which had made such a coward of him before. To enter this soul-scape, he'd had to match dwarbreathing with his cousin. It still whistled in and out of him, his jacket acting as bellows to his fleshless ribs. He couldn't stop it. He couldn't wake. Without his soul's reserve, his real body would die of exhaustion in its sleep. At least it would go to a proper pyre. What if no such cleansing flames could reach here? Kindrie hugged himself, feeling the voracious churn within. His mind would be devoured inch by inch by his own fears, as real to him here as maggots in the flesh.
...crawling up his throat, about to spew out his mouth....
"Stop it," he whispered behind clenched teeth. "Stop it, STOP IT!"
What allowed him to swallow that surge of panic, more than anything else, was a nagging doubt. He might not always like Jame, nor did he yet know quite what to make of her, but he no longer believed that she was the monster which Ishtier had claimed. If she really had come from such a vile place as this, it seemed to him that she had long since left it behind. How, then, could it still be the model of her soul? True, the death banners of these fallen Knorth accurately mirrored her injury. Any healer would look first for such a correspondence, and usually be right. They might represent her darkling fear of dishonor, but still....
Had he been tricked into looking at the wrong thing? As his own soul-image consisted of an outer blind and an inner reality—the garden hidden within the priests' college—perhaps hers also was unexpectedly complex.
Think. Remember: that flash of white just before he had first been knocked out of this soul-scape and across a forest clearing—had it only been four days ago? What had struck him? What in this dark, accursed place was white?
One thing only, which he had deliberately avoided: an indistinct glimmer on the cold hearth at the far end of the hall. Graykin, he had thought, thankful that his fumblings hadn't brought that bitterly jealous spirit down on him. It occurred to him now, though, that four days ago Jame hadn't yet given Graykin's soul her grudging permission to occupy this place. What a maggot-seethe of fears that distant fireplace stirred between his ribs, the worse because he didn't know why.
Then find out, his training prompted him. An unnamed fear is an unconquerable one.
Disfigured faces grimaced at him through warp and woof as he passed. Whispers followed him down the hall:...but what about me...and me...and me...? Healer, kinsman, come back...!
