I gave her an oil lamp with a mica shade to light their way to their room. I saw that both she and her husband touched the god-niche by the door as they left the room. I watched them go down the corridor side by side, his hand on her shoulder, the lion pacing softly after them and the glimmer of the lamp running along the bare stone walls.
I turned back to see the Waylord gazing at the candle, his face very weary. I thought how alone he was. His friends came and went again, and here he must stay. I had thought of his solitude as his choice, his nature, maybe because it came so natural to me. But he had no choice.
He looked up at me. “What have you brought to Galvamand?” he said.
I was frightened by his tone. I said at last, “Friends, I think”
“Oh yes. Powerful friends, Memer,”
“Waylord—”
“Well?”
“This Night Mouth, this Obatth. Did they come here to the house, to Galvamand—the redhats, the soldiers—did they take you to prison, because they thought—?”
He didn’t answer for a while. He sat stiffly, his shoulders hunched, as he did when in pain. “Yes,” he said.
“But is it—is there anything here—?”
I didn’t know what I was asking, but he did. He looked up at me, a fierce look “What they seek is theirs. It’s in their hearts, not ours. This house hides no evil. They bring their darkness with them. They will never know what is in the heart of this house. They will not look, they will not see. That door will never open to them. You needn’t fear, Memer, You can’t betray it. I tried. I tried to betray it. Over and over. But the gods of my house and the shadows of my dead forgave me before I could do it. They wouldn’t let me do it. All the hands of all the givers of dreams were on my mouth.”
I was very frightened now. He had never spoken of the torture. He was clenched and hunched and trembling. I wanted to go to him but did not dare.
He made a slight gesture and whispered, “Go on. Go to bed, child.”
I went forward and put my hand on his.
“I’m all right,” he said. “Listen. You did right to bring them here. You brought blessing. Always, Memer. Now go on.”
I had to leave him sitting there, shaking, alone.
I was tired, it had been a long day, an immense day, but I could not go to bed. I went to the wall under the hill and opened the door in it with the words written in air and went into the secret room.
As I went into it, all at once I was afraid. My heart went cold, my hair stirred on my neck.
That horrible image of a black sun that sucked out warmth and light from the world—it was like a hole in my mind, now, sucking meaning out, leaving nothing but cold and emptiness.
I had always been afraid of the far end of this long, strange room stretching off into darkness. I had kept away from the shadow end, turned my back on it, not thought about it, told myself, “That’s something I’ll understand later.” Now it was later. Now I had to understand what my house was built on.
But all I had to make understanding out of was that tale of a Night Mouth, that hateful image from the people I hated.
And Orrec Caspros tale. A library, he had said. A great library. The greatest in the world. A place of learning, of the light of the mind.
I could not even look at the shadow end of the room. I wasn’t ready yet for that, I had to gather my strength. I went to the table, the one I used to build houses under and pretend to be a bear cub in its den. I set down the lamp and laid my hands palm down on the table, pressing them hard on the smooth wood, to feel its smoothness, its solidity. It was there.
There was a book on it.
The two of us always returned books to the shelves before we left the room, an old habit of order the Waylord had from his mother, who had been his teacher as he was mine. I didn’t recognise this book. It didn’t look old. It must be one of those that people had brought him secretly to be hidden away, to be saved from the destruction of Atth. Occupied with learning all I could of the great makers of the past and the knowledge they had gathered, I had scarcely looked yet at the shelves that held those random, rescued, newer books. The Waylord must have set this one out for me while I went back to the market with Gry.
I opened it and saw it was printed, with the metal letters they use now in Bendraman and Urdile, which make it easy to make a thousand copies of a book. I read the title: Chaos and Spirit: The Cosmogonies, and under that the name Orrec Caspro, and under that the name of the printers, Berre and Holaven of Derris Water in Bendraman. On the next page were only the words, “Made in honor and dear remembrance of Melle Aulitta of Caspromant,”
I sat down, facing the dark end of the room, for if I couldn’t look at it neither could I turn myback on it. I drew the lamp closer to the book and began to read.
I woke there in the grey of early morning, the lamp dead, myhead on the open book. I was chilled to the bone. My hands were so stiff I could barely write the letters on the air to leave the room.
I ran to the kitchen and all but crawled into the fireplace trying to get warm. Ista scolded and Sosta chattered but I didn’t listen. The great words of the poem were running in my head like waves, like flights of pelicans over the waves. I couldn’t hear or see or feel anything but them.
Ista was really worried about me. She gave me a cup of hot milk and said, “Drink this, you fool girl, what are you taking sick for now? With guests in the house? Drink it up!” I drank it and thanked her and went to my room, where I fell on the bed and slept like a stone till late in the morning.
I found Gryand her husband in the stableyard, with the lion and the horses and Gudit and Sosta. Sosta was neglecting her sewing to swoon around Caspro, Gudit was saddling the tall red horse, and Gryand Caspro were arguing. They weren’t angry with each other, but they weren’t in agreement. Lero was not in their hearts, as we say. “You can’t possibly go there byyourself,” Grywas saying, and he was saying, “You can’t possibly go there with me,” and it was not the first time either had said it.
He turned to me. For a moment I felt almost as swoony as Sosta, thinking that this was the man who had made the poem that I had read all night and that had remade my soul. That confusion went away at once. This was Orrec Caspro all right, only not the poet Caspro but the man Orrec, a worried man arguing with his wife, a man who took everything terribly seriously, our guest, whom I liked. “You can tell us, Memer,” he said. “People saw Gry in the marketplace yesterday, saw her with Shetar—hundreds of people—isn’t that true?”
“Of course it is,” Gry said before I could speak. “But nobody saw inside the wagon! Did they, Memer?”
“Yes,” I said to him, and “I don’t think so,” to her.
“So,” she said, “your wife hid in the wagon in the marketplace, and now stays indoors in the house, like a virtuous woman. And your servant the lion trainer emerges from the wagon and comes with you to the Palace.”
He was obstinately shaking his head.
“Orrec, I travelled as a man with you for two months all over Asudar! What on earth makes it impossible now?”
“You’ll be recognised. They saw you, Gry, They saw you as a woman.”
“All unbelievers look alike. And the Alds don’t see women, anyhow.
“They see women with lions who frighten their horses!”
“Orrec, I am coming with you.”
He was so distressed that she went to him and held him, pleading and reassuring. “You know nobody in Asudar ever saw I was a woman except that old witch at the oasis, and she laughed about it. Remember? They won’t know, they won’t see, they can’t see. I will not let you go alone. I can’t. You can’t. You need Shetar, And Shetar needs me. Let me go dress now—there’s plenty of time. I won’t ride, you ride and we’ll walk with you, there’ll be plenty of time. Won’t there, Memer? How far is it to the Palace?”