The Memory of Earth (21 page)

“In a dream,” said Elemak.

“I don’t need a dream to tell me that Gaballufix is dangerous when he’s crossed,” said Father, “and neither do you. When I don’t show up at the coolhouse this morning, there’s no telling what Gaballufix will do. I must already be out on the desert when he discovers it. We’ll take Redstone Path.”

“The camels can’t do it,” said Elemak.

“They can because they must,” said Father. “We’ll take enough to live for a year.”

“This is monstrous,” said Mebbekew. “I won’t do it.”

“What do we do after a year?” asked Elemak.

“The Oversoul will show me something by then,” said Father.

“Maybe things will have calmed down in Basilica enough to return,” suggested Issib.

“If we go now,” said Elemak, “Gabya will think you betrayed him, Father.”

“Will he?” said Father. “And if I stay, he’ll betray
me
.”

“Said a dream.”

“Said
my
dream,” said Father. “I need you. Stay if you want, but not as my son.”

“I did fine not as your son,” said Mebbekew.

“No,” said Elemak. “You did fine
pretending
not to be his son. But everyone knew.”

“I lived from my talent.”

“You lived from theatre people’s hope of getting your father to invest in their shows—or you, in the future, out of your inheritance.”

Mebbekew looked like he had been slapped. “You too, is that it, Elya?”

“I’ll talk to you later,” said Elemak. “If Father says we’re going then we’re going—and we have no time to lose.” He turned to Father. “Not because you threatened to disinherit me, old man. But because you’re my father, and I won’t have you going out into the desert with nothing but
these
to help you stay alive.”

“I taught you everything you know, Elya,” said Father.

“When you were younger,” said Elemak. “And we always had servants. I assume we’re leaving them all behind.”

“Dismissing the household servants,” said Father. “While you ready the animals and the supplies, Elya, I’ll leave instructions for Rashgallivak.”

For the next hour Nafai worked with more hurry than he had ever thought possible. Everyone, even Issib, had tasks to perform, and Nafai admired Elemak all over again for his great skill at this sort of thing. He always knew exactly what needed to be done, and who should do it, and how long it should take; he also knew how to make Nafai feel like an idiot for not learning his tasks more quickly, even though he was sure that he was doing at least as well as anyone could expect, considering that it was his first time.

At last they were ready—a true desert caravan, with nothing but camels, though they were the most temperamental of the pack animals, and the least comfortable to
ride. Issib’s chair was strapped to one side of a camel, bundles of powdered water on the other. The water would be for emergencies later; on the first part of their journey Father and Elemak knew all the watering places, and besides, an autumn occasional rain fell on the desert, and there would be ample water. Next summer, though, it would be drier, and then it would be too late to come back to Basilica for the precious powder. And what if they were followed, chased into untracked sections of the desert? Then they might need to pour some of the powder into a pan, light it, and watch it burn itself into water, taking oxygen from the air to accomplish it. Nafai had tasted it once—foul stuff, tinny and nasty with the chemicals used to bind the hydrogen into powdered form. But they’d be glad of it if they ever needed it.

It was Issib’s chair that would bring the least gladness. Nafai knew that this journey would be hardest on Issya, deprived of his floats, and bound into the chair. The floats made him feel as though his own body were light and strong; in the kchair, he felt gravity pressing him down, and it took all his strength to operate the controls. At the end of a day in the chair Issya was always wan and exhausted. How would it be for day after day, week after week, month after month? Maybe he would grow stronger. Maybe he would grow weaker. Maybe he would die. Maybe the Oversoul would sustain him.

Maybe angels would come and carry them to the moon.

It was still a good hour before dawn when they set out. They had been quiet enough that none of the servants had been wakened—or perhaps they
had,
but since nobody asked them to help and they weren’t interested in volunteering for whatever mad task was going on at this hour of the night, they discreetly rolled over and went back to sleep.

Redstone Path was murderously treacherous, but the moonlight and Elemak’s instructions made it possible. Nafai was again filled with admiration for his eldest brother. Was there nothing Elya couldn’t do? Was there any hope of Nafai ever becoming so strong and competent?

At last they crossed Twisting Path, right at the crest of the highest ridge; below them stretched the desert. The first light of dawn was already strong in the east, but they had made good enough time. It was downhill now, still difficult, but not long until they reached the great plateau of the western desert. No one would follow them easily here—no one from the city, anyway. Elemak passed out pulses to all of them and made them practice aiming the tightbeam light at rocks he pointed out. Issib was pretty useless—he couldn’t hold the pulse steady enough—but Nafai was proud of the fact that he held his aim better than Father.

Whether he could actually kill a robber with it was another matter. Surely he wouldn’t have to. They were on the Oversoul’s errand here in the desert, weren’t they? The Oversoul would steer the robbers away from them. Just as the Oversoul would lead them to water and food, when they ran out of their traveling supplies.

Then Nafai remembered that this whole business began because the Oversoul wasn’t as competent as it used to be. How did he know the Oversoul could do
any
of those things? Or that it even had a plan? Yes, it had sent Luet to warn them, and had wakened Nafai to go hear the warning, and had sent Father his own dream. But that didn’t mean that the Oversoul actually had any intention of protecting them or even of leading them anywhere except away from the city. Who knew what the Oversoul’s plans were? Maybe all it needed was to get rid of Wetchik and his family.

With that grim thought, Nafai sat high above the desert, his leg hooked around the pommel of his saddle, as he searched in all directions for robbers, for pursuers from the city, for any strange thing on the road, for signs from the Oversoul. The only music was Mebbekew’s complaints and Elemak’s orders and the occasional splatting as the camels voided their bowels. Nafai’s beast, oblivious to any worries except where to put its feet, continued its rolling gait onward into the heat of day.

With the moon up, it was much easier for Luet to find her way back into the city than it had been for her to get to Wetchik’s house. Besides, now she
knew
her destination; it’s always easier to return home than to find a strange place.

Oddly, though, she didn’t feel a sense of danger until she got back into the city itself. The guard at the Funnel Gate was away from his post—perhaps he had been caught sleeping, or perhaps the Oversoul made him think of some sudden errand. Luet had to smile to herself at the thought of the Oversoul troubling herself to make a man feel an urgent need to void his bladder, just for Luet’s safe passage.

Within the city, though, the moon was less help. In fact, since it hadn’t yet risen very high, it cast deep shadows, and the north-south streets were still in utter blackness at street level. Anyone might be abroad at this hour. Tolchocks were known to be abroad much earlier
in the night, when there were still many women abroad in the streets. Now, though, in the loneliest hours before dawn, there might be much worse than tolchocks about.

“Isn’t she the pretty one?”

The voice startled her. It was a woman, though, a husky-voiced woman. It took a moment for Luet to find her in the shadows. “I’m not pretty,” she said. “In the darkness your eyes deceived you.”

It had to be a holy woman, to be on the street at this hour. As she stepped from the dark corner where she had taken shelter from the night breeze, the woman’s dirty skin showed a bit paler than the surrounding shadow. She was naked from face to foot. Seeing her, Luet felt the cold of the autumn night. As long as Luet had been moving, she had kept warm from the exercise. Now, though, she wondered how this woman could live like this, with no barrier between her skin and the chilling air except for the dirt on her body.

Mother was a wilder, thought Luet. I was born to such a one as this. She slept in the desert when I was in her womb, and carried me, as naked as she was, into the city to leave me with Aunt Rasa. Not this one, though. My mother, wherever she is, is not a holy woman anymore. Only a year after I was born she left the Oversoul to follow a man, a farmer, to a hardscrabble life in the rocky soil of the Chalvasankhra Valley. Or so Aunt Rasa said.

“Beautiful are the eyes of the holy child,” intoned the woman, “who sees in the darkness and burns with bright fire in the frozen night.”

Luet permitted the woman to touch her face, but when the cold hands started to pull at her clothing, Luet covered them with her own. “Please,” she said. “I am not holy, and the Oversoul doesn’t shield me from the cold.”

“Or from the prying eyes,” said the holy woman. “The Oversoul sees you deep, and you
are
holy, yes you are.”

Whose were the prying eyes? The Oversoul’s? The eyes of men who sized up women as if they were horses? Gossips’ eyes? Or this woman’s? And as for being holy—Luet knew better. The Oversoul had chosen her, yes, but not for any virtue in herself. If anything, it was a punishment, always to be surrounded by people who saw her as an oracle instead of a girl. Hushidh, her own sister, had once said to her, “I wish I had your gift; everything is so clear to you.” Nothing is clear to me, Luet wanted to say. The Oversoul doesn’t confide in me, she merely uses me to transmit messages that I don’t understand myself. Just as I don’t understand what this holy woman wants with me, or why—if the Oversoul sent her—she was sent to me.

“Don’t be afraid to take him beside the water,” said the holy woman.

“Who?” asked Luet.

“The Oversoul wants you to save him alive, no matter what the danger. There is no sacrilege in obeying the Oversoul.”

“Who?” asked Luet again. This confusion, this dread that she must decode the puzzle of these words or suffer some terrible loss—was this how others felt when she told them of her visions?

“You think all the visions should come to
you
,” said the holy woman. “But some things are too clear for you to see yourself. Eh?”

I think nothing of the kind, holy woman. I never asked for visions, and I often wish they had come to other people. But if you’re going to insist on giving me some message, then have the decency to make it as intelligible as you can. It’s what
I
try to do.

Luet tried to keep her resentment out of her voice, but she could not resist insisting on a clarifying answer. “Who is this
him
that you keep talking about?”

The woman slapped her sharply across the face. It brought tears to Luet’s eyes—tears as much of shame as of pain. “What have I done?”

“I have punished you now for the defiling you will do,” said the holy woman. “It’s done, and no one can demand that you pay more.”

Luet didn’t dare ask questions again; the answer was not to her liking. Instead she studied at the woman, trying to see if there was understanding in her eyes. Was this madness after all? Did it have to be the true voice of the Oversoul? So much easier if it was madness.

The old woman reached her hand toward Luet’s cheek again. Luet recoiled a little, but the woman’s touch was gentle this time, and she brushed a tear from the hollow just under Luet’s eye. “Don’t be afraid of the blood on his hands. Like the water of vision, the Oversoul will receive it as a prayer.”

Then the holy woman’s face went slack and weary, and the light went out of her eyes. “It’s cold,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I’m too old,” she said.

Her hair wasn’t even gray, but yes, thought Luet, you are very, very old.

“Nothing will hold,” said the holy woman. “Silver and gold. Stolen or sold.”

She was a rhymer. Luet knew that many people thought that when a holy woman went a-rhyming, it meant that the Oversoul was speaking through her. But it wasn’t so—the rhyming was a sort of music, the voice of the trance that kept some of the holy women detached from their bleak and terrible life. It was when they
stopped
rhyming that there was a chance they might speak sense.

The holy woman wandered away, as if she had forgotten Luet was there. Since she seemed to have forgotten where her sheltered corner was, Luet took her by the
hand and led her back there, encouraged her to sit down and curl up against the wall that blocked the wind. “Out of the wind,” whispered the holy woman. “How they have sinned.”

Luet left her there and went on into the night. The moon was higher now, but the better light did little to cheer her. Though the holy woman was harmless in herself, she had reminded Luet of how many people there might be, hiding in the shadows. And how vulnerable
she
was. There were stories of men who treated citizens the way that the law allowed them to deal with the holy women. But even that was not the worst fear.