The Winged Histories (12 page)

“Have we forgotten,” asked Dardh, her cousin and primary defender at the open council held in the fortress of Niva, “the scourge of that accursed folk, the Drevedi, and the manner in which they captured and bore away the daughters of Nain?” Thus did the Nainish princes scorn to seek a link with the conquering western nobles; they claimed the goddess Avalei as ancestress, she who was also the mother of Elueth and of the Drevedi whose wickedness had once shattered the countryside. Naturally there were many who cried that one could not join with the line of kings by claiming to be descended from a vampire; however, only two years previously, Nerod of Beal had proved his rights to that princedom through the same cunning logic. Singheia’s curiously colored fingernails, which a historian of the time compares to “fragments of brown crystal,” were displayed as proof of her heritage, and the wedding took place at Niva without delay: the first between a noble Lath and a noble Nain.

In addition to her strange fingernails, the bride is said to have possessed “eyebrows like ravens’ feathers” (though she probably combed them upward), an army of nine thousand skilled warriors, and a weathered castle crumbling on the shores of the Inland Sea. Her son was that Gara whose true name was either Mavelok or Mavedok but who took the name of the mighty fortress he built in the Haramanyi, from which he defended his lands against the Brogyars, slaying with his own hand the terror of the north, Muisegh of the Boars. Able in war, he was also a brilliant diplomat in times of peace, and successfully protected his domain from the ever-greedy Laths through a combination of diplomacy and belligerence.

“And they who possess the sweet lands of the west,” reads his epistle to his cousin, Aurik of Bain, “with its vineyards and noble breezes, can scarcely be tempted by this country of burning dust and savage hills of ice; though if they please, they may come and take it from me.”

The veiled threat did its work, and in a generation, as the Laths had feared, the Balinfeil was in the hands of the Nains. They did not hold it continuously; they were harried from both the north and the south, and fought many bitter battles in self-defense. Hargilu, the eighth descendant of that house, which had already become known by the name of the Gara-Hiluen, was defeated and slain at Ora, his sisters were forced into shameful exile, and his followers went into hiding in the mountains. For many years we find it hard to trace them, though they always record new births in the precious Book of Singheia’s Children. We see them taking to ships for a time, finding sanctuary with Dauvor the Wielder of Iron, fighting in mountains and drinking out of their helmets. This sad period was ended at last by Merva the Dog—so called by his enemies, though he accepted the title with laughter—who, having prepared the army for rebellion, slew his Lathni lord and claimed his lady, Queen Vaihar, as his wife. Several happy generations followed (“happy” in the sense of those distant times, when kings maimed themselves at games of rings-and-arrows and sustained themselves on pigs’ feet). It was during this period that the fruitful lands in the foothills of the Ethenmanyi became known as “Faluidhen.” Here, in the twilight of Nain, King Brom visited, and was astonished by a purple tablecloth purchased in the west.

He was that great lord known as Brom the Last, not because he was the last of that name but because with him an era passed away, the era of Nainish independence, ancient and warlike values, and the wedhialsu that were once sung every evening. For the reign of his nephew Tandrus coincided with that of Ilherin the Sunny Prince, whose mighty army destroyed the gods of Kestenya, and who attacked the Nainish princes not with arrows, but with objects of fine make, such as the fatal tablecloth of Faluidhen, which now hangs in the castle of Rediloth. Conquered by greed, the Nainish princes fought one another for places in a foreign court and competed to stamp out the language of their fathers. Ilherin’s army was welcomed with banners, and the noble Princess Ridh, who had sought to poison him, was flogged to death. Within three generations the Nainish nobility were speaking the Olondrian tongue, and the word “Telkan” was used as a matter of course. There was great peace and prosperity. “We are all conquered,” wrote Nabien of Bar-Theil, “whether by force, by strategic unions, or by the pleasure of the gods.”

Ivrom closed the book and turned on his back. In the next room his child wailed briefly and then fell silent, soothed by the nurse. He thought of the House of Faluidhen, the House which—if the queen bore a child—would one day see their issue on the throne. A bitter, resentful, grasping House, humiliated by the submission of the Nains, riding toward power on the twin horses of money and marriage. They traded in fruit, in opium, in livestock, in silver, in Nissian slaves, in tobacco, in wool, in timber, and in their own daughters. Ivrom was not surprised when, three years later, the younger daughter of Faluidhen married Irilas, the dashing Duke of Tevlas, adding another knot to the family’s bond with the Royal House—“They’ve been planning it since the girl was born,” he crowed. He shared this opinion with the nurse, as there was no one else about—no one but the child who, though she could talk, was not yet capable of reasoned argument, and knelt at a little table, her drawing pencils before her in a row.

He slapped his desk. “The second goose is slaughtered,” he shouted, “
and sizzling in her fat!
” His own vulgarity delighted him; he felt impatient when the child stared at him in dismay and the nurse replied with a barely perceptible nod. This nurse was a pale, awkward peasant from among the king’s olive growers—capable, Ivrom thought, but very dull-witted. It was his fate to be surrounded by people who did not understand him, to never, never discover his own people. . .

“
A winter goose,
” he cried coarsely. “
For Tanbrivaud!
” It was the Feast of Lamps; Tanbrivaud Night was only five days away. The windows were closed against the chill, but still the sound of the wedding celebration seeped in from the Tower of Mirrors. The child could hear it as she lay in bed. Her nurse lit the little red lamp and told her a story about an enchanted goose. While in the next room her father paced alone, laughing and shouting. “Breast meat! Oh, so tender!” It was her first memory.

But we are not concerned with the child’s memories. We are concerned with him, with his genius. He had begun to write. He had begun, carefully and with pain, to collect the lines written on the Stone and record them in a white book. He submitted each phrase to Elarom for discussion, and to the small group that had gathered around the old man: volatile, nervous, yearning people, mostly failed priests and priestesses of one sort or another, who looked lost, like strange paupers, in their black robes. When the weather was fine they sat on a terrace, arguing and sweating. The devotees of the Stone had pockmarked skin, dandruff, bad breath, bad teeth. There was an exquisite thrill in watching their faces in the shade of a rare fern tree whose starry blossoms were meant to adorn a noblewoman’s
sash. And there was an exquisite humiliation in asking them to critique his work, to correct his usage of one of the many languages found on the Stone, to offer suggestions which Elarom might approve, nodding quietly, his eyes melancholy and full of light. Sometimes, when they worked in the room of the Stone, one of Ivrom’s colleagues discovered a line of writing—then Ivrom would rush forward, pushing the others aside, pushing aside even the one who had found the frail, etched trace, in order to put his hand on it, to mark it with his touch. This was his right, because he felt more than the others, he suffered more cruelly. The others read, yes, they studied—but they also laughed. Sometimes, from his high window, he saw them playing at dakavei on the lawn, gawky as crows running over the grass.

And if his lip twitched in contempt when he watched them chasing a ball, how much more did he despise Ahadrom II, who rode, hunted, attended obscene comedies at the theater, and danced, holding his wife gingerly as if he feared she would sting!
The blood of their souls floods the marble ballroom—when they dance there, they shall slip
. These were the words of the Nameless Gods! Words carved into the Stone and flung down into the wastes of Ulunith where Elarom had found them in the snow. Elarom had nearly died in retrieving these words. And Ahadrom II, Telkan of Olondria, who had had the great good fortune to be born at Ashenlo, who had crept, as a boy, into the room where the flower of the age lay recovering from frostbite—Ahadrom danced because, he said, he was king. “I can’t get out of it,” he said, seated on a stool in the room of the Stone with his knees splayed out, turning and turning his skullcap in his hands. His big, pallid, sad young face with the firelight playing on it, the cropped black hair already growing thin . . . and the robe he wore when he came here to work, but not to official functions, not to parties: on those occasions he put on his plain black suit. The iron ring of the Telkans shone on his finger.
And the lifeless metals with which they adorn themselves will avail them not, though they flash like a dragon’s scales.

“We shall work late,” Elarom said gently. “You may join us after the ball.” Ahadrom wriggled off the stool with a little sob, knelt on the floor, and kissed the old man’s hand. And the other Stone worshipers looked up from their books and murmured in sympathy. Ahadrom, who had been more sensitive than usual since the death of his father, remained bent over Elarom’s hand, his great shoulders shaking, while Elarom, who ought to have spurned the king, kicked him, spat upon him—Elarom smiled, and a faint blush of pleasure warmed his withered cheek. “Your burden is great, my child,” he said. And if the old man was warm from the king’s tears, Ivrom was hot, white-hot, gripping the seat of his wooden stool in both hands, the pressure of his seething blood mounting into his temples so that the figure of the kneeling Telkan swam before his eyes. He must leave the room; he was choking; he was falling into a fit. But he stayed. And mournful, traitorous Ahadrom shuffled toward the door. Useless, stupid Ahadrom, who contributed nothing to their work, slumped off to dance with his barbed and sparkling queen. “A man of dough,” she had said; and she was right. And she would mold him with her fingers and her teeth. She would dip him into a vat of caramel and roll him in colored sugar till he gleamed. And still Elarom would say, “my child.”

But I’m your true child. I’m your child
. Ivrom passed a shaking hand over his eyes. His body felt enervated, as if after a long illness. He turned his gaze to his notebook and the words heaved before him.
For they have set forth in a ship of fools
. “A ship of fools,” he murmured. He was tossing on the sea. He clung to his hatred and it bore him through the waves. Gradually, he discerned the shape of land, the shape of the message: a condemnation, vast and final, of the worship of Avalei.

“It occurred to me that night,” he explained to Lunre, shortly after the younger man had joined the work of the Stone, “that there was a wonderful consistency in the statutes of the Nameless Gods. They condemned wine-drinking, gambling, adornments, gluttony . . .
and many other things, such as popular divination and the interpretation of dreams, which are associated with the cult of Avalei. They condemned all forms of the worship of the body. They condemned superstition and the pursuit of invisible spirits. They urged us to read, to write, to think. To live simply and with grace. In that moment, I saw the future.”

He saw it alone, without the aid of his master or his colleagues. Utterly alone. Impossible to comprehend the burden of that vision. He told Lunre of it quietly, almost casually, seated on the floor of his apartment after a meal. Evening light came through the open door that led to the balcony and glinted on the strings of the limike against the wall. Ivrom was peaceful, leaning back beside the instrument, his throat elongated, vulnerable and still. A small vibration when he spoke. “I saw it, not as a blinding flash, but as an accumulation of solid truth. It rose up like a mountain. It was as real to me as the stool on which I sat. As tangible as the Stone itself.”

He did not speak of the violence that accompanied the vision. How he gnawed his sleeve. The bruise where he struck his fist against the door. The nurse coming into his bedroom with a taper, fearing disaster, the terrified child clinging to her skirt. “Get out, get out!” he roared. He was half naked, streaked with sweat and ink. Broken pens were strewn across the floor. He flung the heavy inkwell at the nurse; it hit the wall, and she retreated with a shriek, dragging the child. His shouts reached them from behind the closed door, muffled, inarticulate. The nurse muttered prayers—prayers to Avalei—she was, after all, a peasant. The words took up residence in the child’s heart; they would be uprooted later. “
Protect us, merciful Ripener of the Grain . . .
”

“Insect! Scum!” he yelled. Everywhere his shadow appeared it took the form of a woman in a rich dark gown. He spun, but could not catch her. He would tear off her jewels, tear down her hair, grind the roof of her House beneath his heel. He would see her people sober and bowed in contemplation, or dead. These noble descendants
of the gods, these pigs, these vampires! He would burn their theater, shred the canopies above their scented beds, put out the lights of Velvalinhu one by one. What is a mantis? It is well known that the female of the species is larger than the male, and that, when she is finished with him, she eats him. The queen had taken offense when a journalist nicknamed her the Mantis; that journalist now languished in Velvalinhu’s dungeons. The king had put him there, though he knew it was wrong. He wept, but he obeyed. And Ivrom craved that power over the king. He craved it, and he would get it. Many years later, the Telkan, whimpering softly, would write the order to burn a school in the village of Nerhedlei. At this school, in the depths of the Valley where the worship of the Ripener was most entrenched, where the half-civilized peasants lived on bais and mushrooms, the eunuchs of Avalei were teaching the autobiography of Leiya Tevorova in defiance of the new law written by Ivrom. The book, considered a classic of Olondrian literature for the writer’s refined and effervescent prose, was among those he had banned because it encouraged a belief in angels, and therefore in spiritual voices other than that of the Stone. Violaters of the new law must be punished. The Telkan would weep at the thought of destroying the school, but he would obey. Ivrom would stand behind him with his narrow hands clasped; their shadow, cast on the wall, resembled an insect’s spiked forelegs.