The Silences of Home (16 page)

Maybe you’ve been curious; maybe you’ve been reading my letters to your mother. If you have, you’ll know that I haven’t written any in a long time. We’ve been travelling east through empty countryside for the past many months, and I wouldn’t have been able to send a letter even if I’d written one. But now we’re close to our destination: today we met a man on the coastal road who told us that three more days of travel will bring us to Fane. It’s been a fascinating journey, and I must admit that I feel some regret knowing it’s almost over. I’ll describe it a bit, as much for myself as for you. (Your mother the Queen will receive a more formal letter from me, of course, concerning this portion of our travels.)

After we met the two Alilan on the Gelalhad Plain (your mother should have the letters from this period), we passed through several other towns and then came to the city of Dorloy. The local elders greeted us warmly. They do your mother’s work well and seem eager to have visitors from Luhr. After Dorloy our path became much lonelier. We camped in marshland with no company except noisy, long-legged birds (exactly like the ones we named in the first Throne Chamber!), who apparently don’t mind the cold. The marsh gave way to a long stretch of rocky outcrops, shelves and gorges where a river flowed, far below. We lay on the rock as snow fell and watched the stars turning and blazing above us.

It was here, among the river canyons, that we discovered that the Alilan woman was carrying a child. Nellyn noticed first; he mentioned to me that she looked different. I remember he said, “She seems pale and flushed at once.” She and Aldron admitted that they were to have a baby in the early summer. Nellyn and I have enjoyed watching her belly grow beneath her skirts and cloaks. She was ill for about a month—she lay curled on her side in the wagon and ate nothing; will I ever be able to bring myself to do this?—but is much better now. She says she can feel the child moving within her, and sometimes Aldron puts his hand on her and smiles.

I’ve learned no more of them during our travels together than I did while we were in the town on the plain. They left their people because the Alilan did not approve of Aldron’s Tellings; this is all they’ve said to me. I sometimes wonder whether he hurt someone, though I’m not sure why I wonder this. He’s Told for us a few times—just gentle, quiet things, but I can feel something much more powerful beneath them. And he looks so haunted (which, of course, I find compelling—no, don’t laugh at me!). Perhaps the reason for their exile is one that would shame them to admit, for the Alilan are, apparently, a people who value honour and strength as Queensfolk do.

We approached the Eastern Sea from the north, since I wanted to avoid the Sarhenna River. “I cannot,” Nellyn said when I asked him if he would mind passing by his old town again. These were his only words, but I saw the grief in his eyes. (I must admit that this intensity of feeling surprised me. I thought that he’d been missing his village less as time went on.)

The ocean awed all of us. It was midday when we came to the wide flat road that runs along the coastal cliffs. All we could see was icy water and sky, nearly the same silver. I thought of my desert home and of the fountains we Luhrans worship, and I almost wept because this sea was so vast.

As the road led us close to the edge of the cliff, we saw an amazing thing. Below us, drifting near the cliff’s base, was what looked like a range of jewelled mountains—but mountains that
moved
. They were transparent but also colourful—pink, blue, green, which we saw clearly when the sun came out and struck them—and they spun slowly, though we could feel no wind. They’re made of ice, Ladhra—they’re mountains of ice that dance! And they also sing, as we heard when we lingered to watch them. There were delicate high notes and rumbling low ones, and when two mountains touched one another these notes soared. Now, close to Fane, their numbers have increased. How I wish you were beside me to see and hear these wonderful things! You must ask your mother to let you come here very soon.

We turned south on the road and almost immediately met other travelers: fruit sellers and basket makers and families making their way to Fane, even in this deep cold, to seek a different life. And Queensfolk—how excited I was when the first rode past! She reined in her horse to talk to me (it was she who told me the name of the frozen mountains: icemounts). She is from the Pedharhan Woods and is working as a boatwright in Fane and other coastal towns.

So now we’re three days away, and while I’m sorry that this long journey is coming to an end, I’m also excited to begin my life in the second most glorious of Queen Galha’s cities. Nellyn is eager to see the signal tower and learn with me how to tend it (the letters that your mother gave me before we left Luhr—from the current tower keeper—have been very helpful). I think Alea and Aldron will stay with us for a time. Maybe they’ll decide to settle near us; they’ll need a true home once their baby’s born.

I know that I’ll be able to send this soon; that I’ll soon share stories with Queensfolk who’ve also met your mother, and perhaps you; that Nellyn and I will soon have a place that’s ours. A second life is beginning for us now—and I want to share my excitement with you as I always have. “You have such trouble expressing your emotions, Nara”—I can hear you saying this, can almost imagine you rolling your eyes at me. Allow me my giddiness, will you? I’m happy. And the only thing that would make me happier would be to unfold a piece of parchment and see your writing upon it. . . .

“Look!” Aldron cried. He tugged the horse to a stop and stood up at the front of the wagon. Lanara was already on her feet beside him. They had drawn back the canvas that covered the wagon’s interior, since there had been no snow in days, and the sky was clear and blue. Nellyn helped Alea up onto the inside bench and held her arm as they too looked down at the sloping road and where it led.

At first Alea saw only colours: lines and splashes and swathes that had no form because there were so many of them. She blinked and peered, and gradually saw shapes she knew. The blinding gold was pointed roofs sheathed in metal; the red scattered among the gold was roofs lined with tile. Scarlet, blue, green, and yellow were the houses themselves, tiny and vivid as distant flowers. A river snaked among the houses, and its ice-churned surface was silver in the sunlight. The river’s blur ended at the sea. Its water was enclosed here, drawn smaller on either side by arms of cliff.
A harbour
, Alea thought. Another word—like “ocean”—that she had heard and used, until now, without having seen its reality. Icemounts ringed the outside of the harbour, sealing it; within was a forest of naked trees. As she thought,
Ships
, her baby jabbed her, very high, nearly at her ribs. She poked the place herself, with three fingers; she felt something hard and pointed that lingered a moment, then drew away.
Well, dearest
,
here we are—thank the Twins. A bed will be wonderful after this wagon that has no walls except flimsy cloth ones, and no paint, and no iron stove to truly warm us. . . .

“Seen enough?” Nellyn asked, and Alea smiled at him. He lifted a hand to help her down—but as she reached for it, the wind shifted and she heard a sound. A low, steady booming, faint but suddenly audible.

“No,” Lanara said, and they all looked at her. She was open-mouthed, pale in the sunlight that turned everything else to colour and shining. “No!” she said again, the word a wreath of steam on the air. Nellyn walked along the bench until he could touch her back. She twisted round and dug her fingers into his shoulders.

“A Queensbell,” she said. “I’ve heard one twice: after Galha’s mother died and after a group of Queensfolk was killed by rebels in the north. It rings only to tell of danger and death in the Queensrealm. Nellyn. . . .” She turned back to the town below them.

“Maybe it’s a different bell,” Aldron said. “Warning a ship away from rocks, or—”

“No. That kind’s higher, more like music. I know what this one is.”

Another sound swelled behind them—a sound so familiar that Alea wrenched herself around on the bench, thinking for a moment that she would see someone she knew. Even as she looked she felt foolish and lost—for it was three Queensfolk galloping, bent low over their horses’ necks. Lanara shouted after them, but her voice disappeared beneath the pounding of hoofs. The ice that filmed the road was cracked and scattered by their passing.

“Hurry,” Lanara said as the riders dwindled on the road. “I must know what’s happened.
Hurry
.”

Aldron flicked the reins and the wagon lurched forward. Alea burrowed a numb hand beneath her two cloaks and three blouses and pressed it against the taut skin of her belly.
Where are you, little one? Let me feel you—please
—but she felt nothing except the jolting of the wagon, and the wind that rang with grief.

Leish no longer looked like himself. Sometimes, in the shadows of first light or dusk, Mallesh’s gaze would fall on his brother and continue on before snapping back again.
I do not recognize him any more
, Mallesh thought.
I do not know him any more
. This Leish was a gaunt, stooped man who kept his head lowered as if anticipating a blow. His skin looked worn, even though Mallesh soaked it every day in the mud and water the selkesh gathered from the jungle that had trapped them since they left the sea. Others were ailing as well, and several had died, their bodies weakened from the ocean voyage and unable to absorb the fruits and water of this strange land. Leish was not like them, Mallesh knew; he was not tormented by an ailment of the body but by the song he heard in his mind.

“I can hear nothing else,” Leish had said a few days after they had hidden their boats along the coast near their landing place. “Not our land or the sea we crossed. Not even this jungle. I can hardly hear the words I speak aloud. Can you hear me? Mallesh?” His hands sought and gripped Mallesh’s until he tugged them away.

Mallesh heard what all the selkesh but Leish did: the hot dry place beyond the jungle, and the hum of the water and people there. But to Mallesh and the others the notes were one great noise. He tried to separate the strands, to see them clearly, each alone—but he could not. Only Leish saw them; so it was Leish who led the selkesh army.

“I hear the water beneath the sand. I hear how it will take us to the tall city.” His eyes were wild. Mallesh tried, once, to recall what Leish had looked like beneath the water of Nasranesh, spinning in bubbles of laughter as Mallesh pursued him. He could not remember; it was as if this Leish had never smiled or swum. Mallesh said to the others, “My brother will guide us to our new place”—but he thought,
This is not my brother
.

The selkesh scrambled after Leish, over fallen rotten trunks and through pools of stagnant water. When he halted, they halted with him. Mallesh watched them watching Leish, and he shuddered because he thought he might hate this man who was no longer his brother. “Follow me!” Mallesh cried, so loudly that they would have to look at him. They did, though quickly, glancingly—so he called even more loudly, until it seemed he had no voice at all beneath the strangling leaves and vines.

He tended to Leish at night—washed his flaking skin, placed slivers of fruit between his lips. And Mallesh spoke to him, his voice lowered to a whisper he knew no one else would hear. “We’ve met no people since those fishers on the coast, whom you told me not to kill. There’s been no one else. Why? Why are there no people in this land?” Beasts howled and water dripped onto broad flat leaves. “And when will this cursed jungle end? Are you silent now because you no longer have answers to give me?”

Mallesh whispered, night after night—until one night Leish lifted his head and said a word. Mallesh drew back from him sharply, so that water sloshed in the skin he held. They were kneeling within a ring of plants whose stems and leaf veins glowed silver. Leish’s eyes were wide and bright. He rasped the word again, and this time Mallesh heard it.

“Tomorrow.”

Mallesh had imagined hearing this word; he had felt a surge of excitement and joy in his imaginings. Now, on his knees in the jungle mud, he heard the word and looked at the man who had spoken it, and he felt only dread.

The selkesh army came to the edge of the jungle at dusk. The massive trees had been dwindling around them all day. Now they were gone, replaced by crooked cacti and jumbled boulders and sand that seemed scarlet, washed by the sky. A road curved away beside them, leading around the jungle, and stretched out broad and flat before them. The road glittered. The selkesh discovered when they set their feet upon it that it was made of crystal-flecked stone.

Mallesh noticed none of this, when he stepped beyond the last straggling line of trees; he saw only the sheen of what lay at the end of the road.
Towers
: now he knew what this word meant, though they were still small with distance. A smooth and gleaming wall (a word that until now had meant something crumbling beneath the sea, or short and squat and made of river stones, mud, reeds). And there beneath what his eyes showed him was the song of this place, abruptly clear after weeks of confusion. Water and green, above and beneath; gentle, delicate notes spread amongst the roar of sand.

Mallesh laughed. His men turned to him, some of them beginning to smile. He cried, “Behold, children of Nasran, our home in the west! Hear how it shines—hear how it calls to us, awaiting us as Nasran foretold. We hear its glorious song as no others can. Truly, we have been chosen for greatness!” He paused to draw breath from his heaving chest. “Let us stay here until we are all assembled. We shall linger for a time among the trees and decide how we will approach—for until now I have not seen this city and so have not been able to—”

Mallesh stopped speaking as Leish brushed past him. Leish, tall and unbowed, walking, not shambling. He strode out almost to the road and stood there alone, dark against the sky that was ablaze. The selkesh watched him. Mallesh felt the weight of their awe and expectancy, and he trembled with anger—but he, too, watched Leish. And when Leish did not move, even as sunset faded into blue-black and stars, Mallesh went to stand beside him.

“What do you think of our new place?” he said, just loudly enough that some of those behind them could hear. Normal words—words that would shape and strengthen.

“Our place?” Leish’s voice was still rough, but it sounded familiar now, like the seasong Mallesh could still hear, faintly, behind them. He cleared his throat.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I can imagine how Nasran felt when she led our ancestors out of the ocean and beheld the earth and trees for the first time My joy too is—”

“Mallesh,” Leish said. He turned and Mallesh saw tears in his eyes and in the new, deep creases of his cheeks. “Do you remember when you were a child and you first saw the place whose song you’d only heard before? Was it the northern river branches?”

Mallesh frowned. “No. The spring that begins on the slopes of the mountains.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked back at the city, which was just a blot against the sky.

“Do you remember how you felt when you saw the spring? That place you’d only heard until then?”

“Excited,” Mallesh said. “Of course. I don’t remember, exactly.” Though he did, suddenly, vividly, and his heart began to hammer as it had when he was eight and full of wonder. “But why ask me this?” he went on quickly, digging his fingers into his upper arms. “You should be thinking only of what is happening now—especially since you’re obviously stronger. And why is this? Why are you stronger—what do you hear? What—”

“Mallesh,” Leish said, and Mallesh stiffened at this second, gentle interruption. “I remember what you said when you saw your first song-place. You told me that it was so beautiful you could hardly look at it, and that you wanted to protect it forever. That’s how I feel about this place. Now that I can see it.”

“Excellent,” Mallesh said before Leish’s words could echo and twist in his head. “Then we desire the same thing.” He looked away from his brother’s eyes. “Now that you’re feeling better, you’ll be able to assist me in planning our attack. I’ll send some scouts in to discover what they can about the central building—and I plan on a night approach, perhaps a group at a time. . . .” He squinted into the distance, but the city was invisible. Wind hissed across his skin. It was very cold, and he rubbed at his forearms.
We’ll go back among the trees where it’s warmer. Maybe make a small fire. Use the last of the mud and refill our waterskins—who knows when we’ll find
—

“Help,” Leish said. “Help me lie down—I can’t. . . .” He wobbled, then sagged. Mallesh caught and clutched him.

“He is much recovered,” Mallesh called as he led Leish back to the sheltering trees. “He will soon be himself again.” The nearest selkesh murmured this news to the ones who stood behind them. Mallesh heard his words shiver and change and dissolve away from him.

“Can you hear a way in?” he whispered a few moments later, as he dribbled water onto Leish’s bare arms and chest. “Is there somewhere closer that we can all stay until we’re ready?”

Leish was silent for a long time—long enough for Mallesh to soak his skin and wrap his clothes back on. “Yes,” Leish said at last, so softly that Mallesh could hardly hear him. “Tomorrow.”

Baldhron was sure the Queenswoman guard hadn’t seen him, even though he had set a statue rocking on its base as he squeezed behind it. He pressed his back against the corridor wall and his cheek against the ivy-wound likeness of the Eighteenth Queen. After a few moments he eased his face around the statue and parted the ivy with his left hand. As he watched, the Queensguard stretched, twirling her bow by its tip, then scraped at a crack in the wall with her dagger. She straightened when she heard (as Baldhron did) the sound of sandals slapping on stone. The door beside her opened only an instant later.

Ladhra did not even glance at the Queensguard as she walked into the hallway. Baldhron waited until the guard had gone back to chiselling at the wall before he slipped out from behind the statue and followed Ladhra.

“My Princess,” he said when he was a pace behind her. She flinched and half-turned, and he smiled.

“Baldhron,” she said. “Not content to ambush me in the Queenswood, now? Careful—I’ll have to warn my guards about you.”

“Ah yes, your guards.” She began to walk again; he hurried to match her stride. “The one back there looks especially fierce. Perhaps she’d yawn in my face?”

Ladhra snapped, “What do you want this time, Baldhron?”

“What I always want,” he said, trying to keep his words light and smooth. “To see you when you’re not surrounded by people. Now that your friend Lanara’s gone, this is an easier thing to do.” Lanara’s departure had in fact profoundly annoyed him. Ever since the arrival of the selkesh, he had included her in his plans of conquest. He would thrust the relevant scrolls into her hands; he would watch her read and crumble.

Salanne, daughter of Bralhon, has died at Queen Galha’s command (from a wound taken in a skirmish, the official account will say). I have determined that her husband Creont suspects that his wife and consort-scribe, Malhan, engaged in illicit relations—but he shows no signs of suspecting the circumstances of her death. Their daughter remains a close confidant of the Princess; the Queen obviously has no desire to extend her revenge to the child. The Queen has not yet punished Malhan. I believe she will not. He is her memory and her future, and she would suffer if he were not with her. Only Salanne and her family will suffer now.

Lanara’s distress could no longer be a component of Baldhron’s greater victory. He chewed at his lower lip, looking away from Ladhra’s face as he did so. He saw that she was holding a piece of folded parchment. “A letter,” he said, steeping his voice in a glee he nearly felt, “from the very same Lanara?”

“No.” She pressed the parchment against her side, frowning. “Not that you need or deserve to know this.”

“Ah,” he said, “I see: you and she have quarrelled? I do hope she’s still able to do your mother the Queen’s good work with wisdom and courage?”

Ladhra rounded on him and stepped forward at the same time, so that he was forced to fall back several paces. Again the wall was at his back. He straightened his spine against the stone and looked at the curve of her dark cheek and the moist gleam of teeth between her lips.

“I have no idea,” she said, and he smelled sweetleaves and mint on her breath, “how you possibly expect me to welcome your company when you persist in being so unpleasant to me. I have told you, both in writing and in conversation, that I do not return your affections. Your insistence on forcing your company upon me is incomprehensible.” She stepped back. A deep, gasping breath escaped him before he could stifle it
. Come, now,
he told himself
, you control these meetings, not her. Show no weakness.

“I never mean to offend,” he said. “Only to impress upon you the constancy of my esteem.”

She made a sound very much like a growl. “Baldhron, I
know
 . . . I know. Please—it would be kinder to both of us if you left me alone. Truly. Just. . . .” She rolled her eyes and turned on her heel, then looked back at him. “And I know you have better things to do than lurk about waiting for me. For instance, shouldn’t you be at your lessons now?”

“My lessons,” he said, “yes, indeed I should—” but she was already walking away from him, very quickly, clutching the letter so tightly in her right hand that the parchment crumpled. He smiled again.

He did not go to his lessons. He was always exhilarated and desperate, both, after he saw her. He could not possibly take himself to the Scribeslibrary, where he would have to bend over carefully selected texts, words that were hollow and wrong, where Galha’s consort-scribe would blather about truth, wisdom, and the glorious line of Queens. No: he would descend to the only place where the perfumed stench of the palace could not reach him.

Pentaran was on guard duty again. “So,” Baldhron said, gesturing impatiently for the man to follow him into the library, “have there been any new entries these past few days?”

“Only a partial one,” Pentaran said, hardly stammering this time. “There are rumours of a Queensfolk revolt in the west—no supplies, some sort of sickness, violent local tribes. Nothing’s been confirmed yet. Calhia’s waiting for word from the scribe in Blenniquant City. There’s been nothing from the palace, of course.”

Baldhron walked out to the middle of the bridge, his favourite vantage point since it was higher than the ledges along the walls. Pentaran sat down at his feet. After a moment Baldhron joined him, thinking, not for the first time,
I must allow a certain degree of equality. Let him think he can be at ease with me, if it makes him more loyal.
He peered down at his reflection, which seemed very close; the water was high now that the autumn rains had come. He and Pentaran were silent. When a splash sounded from the tunnel that led south from the reservoir, it sounded very loud.