Chapter 35
It took me a great while to walk the long distance to the shrine of Master Gaddar. My body ached from such a long day of journeying—as well as from the magnitude of all I’d witnessed, and Tauri’s castigation.
I found her sitting alone before the towering, unearthly statue of Gaddar. She had always seemed a small woman to me, but she seemed especially tiny now, dwarfed and bent under the blind gaze of that figure.
“You are back, Din,” she said softly as I approached.
“Y-yes, ma’am,” I said shakily.
“And you are alone.”
“Yes.”
“Hm.” She cocked her head, as if contemplating a mildly tricky riddle. “And from the sound of your voice, you saw what awaited you there in the cup of heaven?”
“Y-yes, ma’am. I—”
“And Tauri? Does he know?”
I said nothing.
She turned to me, eyebrows raised above her blindfold. “Does he know all?”
“You…expected he would?”
She turned back to the statue. “I did say he was terribly important, and terribly smart. No fool he! That is for certain.”
I stood there looking at her for a long while. Then I slowly sat down next to her. “What shall happen now, ma’am?”
“What happens now is up to the delightful Commander Tauri,” said Ana. “But I know he has just been handed a great gift—a dagger he can soon plunge into the heart of all the flesh industry of this Empire.”
I stared into the bare earth at my feet, stunned into silence.
“How would the cattle trade support itself,” mused Ana, “if it could no longer force so many creatures to harvest our crops? For an urhosi cow takes a great deal of feed to nourish itself. And I doubt if the Apoths and the Orbiis and all the rest of them will take delight in learning of the true web’s origin.
” She sniffed. “I expect they’ll keep it all very secret. The public shall not know.”
“I admit, ma’am,” I said softly, “I struggle to imagine a world in which we abandon the use of the web…”
“Cynical—but true. The Empire is terribly resistant to change. We have learned to augment beasts to be our servants, and it shall be a hard thing to step back from such an innovation. Should we abandon it, or reduce it, or change its application? Or will we do nothing at all? I can’t say.
I suppose we’ll just have to find a way to muddle through, eh?
That is the Empire’s great talent—muddling through, satisfying no one, but… surviving. More or less.”
“And Tauri’s…revelations about your own self, ma’am?”
She grinned nastily and shrugged. A sheen of sweat shone on her brow: to touch upon this subject pained her, surely.
“I don’t know what you mean, Din! But I believe Tauri shall now have to do some very tricky math.
Can he press his case against the cattle trade while also spreading wild rumors about the woman who put the dagger in his hand?
I rather doubt it. And more, he is a smart fellow, and knows he now dances beside—how shall I put it?
—very deep waters, with very nasty things in it.
He will not be eager to go for a swim. Or is that metaphor not tasteful to you now? ”
“You knew all, then.”
“I guessed. Others needed to see. That is why you’re here, yes? To behold what others cannot.”
There was a great silence.
“Why did they do it?” I whispered.
“The Daljen? Oh, well, because they thought themselves superior. And can you blame them? They were stronger, faster, wiser…And then, one day, they looked out upon the race of mortal man and saw little more than livestock awaiting their ministrations. I am sure they thought it a very sensible thing, to contort common folk into mindless tools to better reap the harvest. The Daavir, however, felt that freedom was an inefficiency worth tolerating, and acted accordingly.” A cold smirk.
“The bitter irony here is that in but a few decades, other tribes of the first imperials would develop methods of yielding greater food and resources—so much so that they soon dwarfed all the harvests of the Daljen! They hardly needed to enforce such horrors at all. But back then, of course, they did not dine so greatly upon flesh. Different appetites demand different compromises…So. Here we are again.”
My eyes quaked, and a memory came swimming up: the stone statue I’d glimpsed in the wood, of the giant hand, and the figure in its palm, arms raised in supplication, and the words upon its chest—Let the wayward mind bloom.
Then another memory flashed behind my eyes, and I recalled Velona’s comment: They were the shepherds, and we their flock. She had said this with such awed ecstasy, yet how awful the words tasted to me now.
“I…I cannot imagine such a choice,” I said. “How could you come to look upon your neighbor, and dream of their slavery?”
“Is it truly such a reach for you, Din?” asked Ana.
“You are a deeply augmented person. In many ways, you are superior to a common man. You not only remember all, but you learn far, far faster, for you recall your lessons perfectly. Do you not struggle with the division between yourself and your very kin?” With a twitch, she turned her hard, pale face to me, her expression inscrutable between her blindfold.
“Or, consider the distance between myself and you. Are we equals? Or are you my Coral, capering about as I play a tune upon my pipe?”
I glared at her, but then considered it. “I like to think we are equals, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“Because if we weren’t, you wouldn’t have had me see what was in the well. You wished me to make up my mind about it. Which leads me to believe you want my mind to be my own.”
“Hum! Perhaps you’re right, boy,” she said. “But…the web is a clumsy tool, really. If a being was advanced enough, they could influence and control you in countless unseen ways, without ever having met you…and without your even knowing it was happening at all.”
“I…struggle to imagine how that could be possible, ma’am.”
“Yes. That’s rather the problem, isn’t it?”
Again, a soft rain began to fall. The gray, shimmering veil swept over us, turning the statue above into a hazy blur.
“When we first entered the wood,” I said, “I’d thought the altered forest and the Touched Site was an attempt to hide the crimes of the Daavir. But this isn’t so, is it?”
“No, I believe you are right,” said Ana.
“I rather think they sought to hide the works of the Daljen. They didn’t want anyone trying this mad shit again.
Better to let it go forgotten—yet now we’ve dug it up again.
” She extended her hand, allowed a smattering of raindrops to pool in her palm, and tipped it over into her open lips.
“The Empire has changed enormously in the five centuries since. We’ve grown stronger, we grow resources at unprecedented rates, we fend off the leviathans year after year—more or less—and, perhaps most of all, we have gone from a few hundred folk bearing the blessings of alterations to thousands upon thousands.
Though the first imperials were great in their own way, we are far more civilized than those first wild, mad centuries.
But…the temptation to believe one’s self superior does not appear to fade.
And what we do to the beasts in the field we may still one day do to our very kin. ”
“But the Daavir resisted the temptation, didn’t they?” I asked. “And they destroyed the Daljen as punishment.”
She laughed lightly. “Oh, no, not quite, Din. The Daavir were no righteous vindicators. They were pragmatists. Slavery and the domination of the will make a very poor foundation for a people. Slave states fester, stagnate. Then topple. Many of the elder race sported a keen eye and great cunning, but the Daavir had an unusual talent—with one intuitive glance, they could peer into the past and future about them, and judge with precision. They saw what awaited the Daljen and chose another path.”
“What path did they choose?” I asked.
She opened her mouth to answer. Then she shut it and tilted her face to the rain.
“It is getting quite wet, Din,” she said. “Please, find me some shelter, and wave down a carriage so we can return to town.”
—
Together we walked our way back along the path through the wood, Ana gripping my arm as I trudged forward on aching feet, the Orbiis mask upon my face to keep the fumes from my mind.
I gave her my shootstraw hat to keep the rain off her head, then sighed deeply, wondering what it would be like to return to Lacanthim after all this.
“Stupid boy,” Ana said softly.
“Beg pardon, ma’am?”
“I did tell you not to get involved with him. I knew how it would end! How often must I prove my brilliance to you, and yet still you ignore it!”
“I am a simple thing, ma’am,” I said. “I suppose my heart is simple, too.”
“That is not true. Yet you may take a rest, if you wish, Din. I shall give you two weeks’ leave.
I suspect you will need it to help your sister, and her betrothed.
It is no easy thing to start a new life, especially when your old one has broken asunder.
Perhaps you shall have to go home with her for a time—though I can understand if you are reluctant to do so.
Seeing one member of your family can be hard, as I can attest. Seeing all of them at once, I imagine, is quite another thing. ”
I thought about that. “A question, ma’am.”
“Yes?”
“You said that as engravers mature, their memories can take on personalities. Visages. Appearances.”
“Some do. What of it?”
“Well—do they change much? Or do they always stay the same person?”
“What a very strange thing to say! No. No, I do not think they change. Why do you ask?”
“Just a question.”
She tilted her head toward me, as if she could hear the fluttering of my heart. “Fine, then! I shall leave you your secrets. I know I’ve no shortage of my own.”
We ambled along, my heart heavy with what I’d seen, and my head full of worries for what I might see next. For I felt Ana was right: it seemed all too likely that Fotia and Ippeas would flee Lacanthim and recuperate with my own family in the little town of Rimula, with my sisters and grandmother.
They would ask me to follow them, and I was not sure I could. Partially because of all the resentments and memories I held from those unhappy days—but also because of this latest development.
I recalled that first night I’d met Fotia, and she had said: Do you remember what Mother looked like, Din? I don’t. All I had was that stone in the wood, and little more.
Yet I did recall our mother. She sometimes returned to me in fragments and remnants, like tea leaves washing into one’s mouth at the last sip. Tiny snatches and slivers, embedded in my soul just like the smell of a Tala rain.
And now, of course, I had seen and heard her more recently.
Why, I wondered, of all the faces my memories could have chosen, had they decided to manifest with the face and voice of my mother, dead for nearly two decades now?
Why choose to appear as her, seated upon the bed of the Green Drover, smiling so earnestly at me?
And how could I return to my family with her ghost haunting me so closely?
I did not know. Perhaps I’d muddle through, just as Ana had said the Empire so often did.
“I’ll fetch a carriage,” I said as I helped Ana to a bench outside the forest. “I will be glad to be rid of this place.”
“The forest?” asked Ana. “Lacanthim? All of it?”
“All of it,” I said. I shuddered. “But especially the forest, and these statues. They disturb me greatly—especially the shaping of their faces.”
“I see!” said Ana cheerily. “Do you know, I did something very unusual for me, Din—I took off my blindfold in there! Let myself peep at old Gaddar, still sticking his cup out after so many centuries like a beggar at the corner.”
“And what was your opinion?”
She grinned. “I’ve seen stranger!”
I frowned, unsure what to say to that, and far too tired to try. “Give me a moment to see if I can flag down a rider for us, ma’am.”
“Take your time. I shall smell the grasses, and listen to the rain and the chirruping of birds, and meditate upon many things.”
I trudged down the road, legs aching and sore, all the sky leaning upon my mind.
After about a half league, I stopped. Turned. Looked back at where Ana sat, no more than a dot by the road.
Her words echoed in my head: I’ve seen stranger!
But that, however, would imply she had encountered another like Gaddar.
Fotia’s voice echoed in my mind: No one’s seen the emperor in over two hundred and fifty years. Hasn’t said a word or stuck his head out of his Sanctum since he went in. But—I wonder…in there, does he look like that strange thing? Or is he even stranger now?
Was she truly suggesting she had met the emperor? It seemed mad, but—what other conclusion was there?
Then my memories shifted and quaked in my mind, and a recent comment of hers came back to me: Seeing one member of your family can be hard, as I can attest…
And what member of her family could she have meant? There was no other of her kin, as far as I knew, unless…
I gazed back at her. I half wanted to sprint back down the road and demand answers to my many questions. Instead, I sighed and returned to the main road to wait for a rider.