Vanek, hazarding between the lines, his latent telepathy questing, arrived at that strange nexus of the random psychic, sensitive of everything without even a phrase to describe it or a shred of proof. Therefore he emptied his studio, and awaited those Rehger regretted might be visited upon him.
There had been a third paper for the Corhl. Vanek, not scrupling, slit the wax and read favorable wishes to Chacor, a farewell, a suggestion that Chacor might be wary of telling anyone the real details of past escapes in Alisaar: It seemed the white Lowlanders were coming to be mistrusted.
The onslaught of rain had unsettled the city. Out on the avenues, the voices were still complaining, and awnings being shaken.
Vanek, having bolted and barred the studio doors, went up the stair.
The unfinished marble was in its accustomed position, and veiled in its cloth as Rehger always left it. More than a year, Vanek’s Lydian apprentice had worked on the stone, constantly refining and smoothing, only sometimes prizing a little of the material away. He had selected the piece himself, and split it off under Mur’s instruction—not to gain dominion over the stone—but rather to liberate some psyche trapped within.
Vanek, rather as he had slit the wax on the third letter, now raised the veil.
From the door, the marble’s progress was not visible. But coming around the slender block, you found the mystery had begun. A face, an exquisite throat, a fountain of hair, had been assisted from their chrysalis.
The silver maidens cast at Sheep Lane had had something of this. Yet they were beings in loveliest slumber. Frozen in her marble, this creature was at the threshold of wakening. A beautiful unhuman girl, drawn from hibernation in the melting snow, all whiteness, skin and hair and eyes, like a woman of the Amanackire, the Shadowless Ones, resurrected out of the winter ground.
The whiteness of Hamos—Yennef had pictured it extensively that afternoon before the fourth hour.
It was a black city, built of local stone; white marble came from the north, and they did not use it, there. The whiteness was in furnishings, the jewels, the garments, the albino pigment of the citizens. It was uncommon to see any Lowlander about in Hamos now darker than the palest blond. More often, you saw the golden eyes, but not so often as the eyes of ice. Snakes, too, abounded in Hamos. They were carved on pillars and lintels, worn in enamel on necks and limbs and waists. Or, they were living. They eddied from crevices in the walls and paving to sun themselves. There was a penalty at Hamos for any Vis killing a snake. The amputation of a finger from the offending hand. (This was a witticism. The hero Raldnor had been missing a finger.)
You saw Vis in Hamos, but they were always traveling. There were only a handful of inns that would shelter them, and only particular sections of the city where they might go. For those who wished to worship Anackire, the temples had an outer court and slab without a statue. It was the rumor there were no icons of the goddess any more in Hamos, and her sister sanctums. They formed the image by power of will, out of the fires they burned before the altars.
The Plains generally did not seem pledged to the fears, now rife elsewhere, of Amanackire militance, and even Hamos did not. Hamos was not of the world. Though there were said to be occult colleges, they were concealed, and if sorcery was positively practiced they gave no sign. Even the Shansar magics and the Vathcrian magics current in the goddess temples of all the Middle Lands, and of Var-Zakoris, Karmiss Lanelyr—were lacking.
Having written three letters, Rehger went directly to his lodging. Yennef walked beside him. They had agreed, unspoken, to end the discussion of alarms and tortures. Yennef had plans to avoid Galutiyh, but did not speak of those either. Rehger had other arrangements to make before departure.
In the succeeding hour then, they exchanged geographies, and a few insights of their separate lives, which was more than had been managed at the first meeting. It no longer seemed stilted to them to remain together, but neither was it natural.
“The artisan’s wristlet will be handy to hide the snake mark. They still curse Amrek in the north.”
Yennef had drifted into the service of the Council of Dorthar. He had done so many things, none of which had left any milestone. Long lost was the excursion among the mountains above Ly Dis. He had picked up the tale which sent him there in several forms, and repetition more than credence had driven him after it.
“It was suggested an Amanackire flying chariot had crashed there, on some upland valley. You’d even hear this from Vardish soldiers over the border, when they were drunk enough. I know, I served with them. It was a hoary old fable and had got itself adopted. A magician’s chariot of the skies, mind you. Winged, maybe. Dorthar has something of that sort, too. The dragons who carried the Vis to earth and made them kings. Well, it wasn’t that I believed in it, but it seemed the tree of falsehood might just have a root. I wanted to make my fortune, chance on some treasure trove. Months I went up and down those gods-forsaken crags. Then I found the treasure. Tibo. But never any chariot.”
No milestone but one, Yennef thought then. Flesh and blood. All the wandering and the deeds had been self-defeating. Years like dice thrown away. And now the milestone itself—Rehger—would throw in his own game. Because he had fancied a Lowlander girl, once, and so been snared in yet another legend, leaky as a sieve.
But they had been through all that. Yennef did not protest again. (His own father had been full of experienced admonitions, on the rare occasions when they spoke.)
The Lan made his exit from the apartment house an hour before the Lydian did so. At parting, each man grasped the other’s hand. It was a mockery of gesture, but they could not sustain any other. At least they had done that much. And his mother’s dead. I wont have to account for him to her. Yennef thought wryly: To no one, for anyone.
Rehger seated himself on a bench before the Artisans Guild Hall.
After the rain, the afternoon had redoubled itself and blazed on Moiyah. The sky seemed blasted of color, and white slices of heat and blackest shadow checkered the square.
There was the same feeling of similarity, or re-enactment, which had come on him at Vanek’s studio, when the Dortharian pranced into the upper room.
As the brass bell of the guild rang for the fourth hour, Rehger saw a lone figure walking toward him in slow easy strides, and whistling.
But no, the steps were feline, and over there, under an arch, ten or so of Galutiyh’s riff-raff were waiting with zeebas.
“Rehger,” said Galutiyh, in astonished delight. “Rehger of Ly Dis.”
Rehger stood up, and diminished him.
But Galutiyh, having gone about with Yennef, would be used to that.
There was a coast road northward, to the fort and the border. The soldiers used it, you could see both ways for miles.
The mendicant pot-seller therefore, on his skewbald zeeba, did not himself attempt the road until Moiyah’s gates were being shut for the evening.
Yennef, who had tossed clues to his fake purposes all over the city, had no idea of trotting over a skyline and smack into the Dortharian’s arms. A little before midnight, however, from a coronet of brush and thorn, he did have the charm of seeing the camp-fire only three hundred paces away at the roadside.
“Honey dreams,” said Yennef to the twisted soul of Galutiyh asleep. And felt two decades slip from him, as if he could go back.
But there was only forward, up the mountain and down, and it was a shame that Tibo had grown slack and dry, had wasted and died, in Iscah.
When the dark came, Vanek woke. He had fallen asleep in the chair he had brought in, across from the unfinished marble. It did not seem so very late. Bright windows shone beyond the window of the workroom, the noises of the nocturnal city had a soothing constancy. A night like any other.