Sheri Tepper - Singer From The Sea Read online

  Sheri Tepper - Singer From The Sea

  0: Prologue - Dreamtime

  In Genevieve's dream, the old woman lunged up the stairs, hands clutching like claws from beneath her ragtag robe. "Lady. They're coming to kill you, now!"

  She dreamed herself responding, too slowly at first, for she was startled and confused by the old woman's agitation. "Who? Awhero, what are you talking about."

  "Your father's taken. The Shah has him. Now his men come for your blood! Yours and the child's. They're coming."

  The smell of blood was all around her, choking her. So much blood. Her husband, gone, now her father, taken! Dovidi, only a baby, and never outside these walls!

  Genevieve dreamed herself crying, "They're coming after Dovidi? How did the Shah know about the baby?"

  "Your father tell him."

  Endanger his grandson in that way? Surely not. Oh, surely, surely not. "I'll get him. We'll go..."

  "If you take baby, you both be killed." The old woman reached forward and shook her by the shoulders, so vehement as to forget the prohibitions of caste. "I take him. I smutch his face and say he one of us. They scared to look and they never doubt..."

  "Take me, too..."

  "No. You too tall. Too strange looking. They know you!"

  "Where? Where shall I go?"

  "I sing you Tenopia. Go like Tenopia. By door, your man's cloak with his sunhelmet, with his needfuls still there, in pockets." She pulled at the rags that hung from her shoulders, shreds tied together to make a tattered wrapping. "Take this! You tall for woman, so you walk past like man. Malghaste man. Go now!"

  In her dream, she babbled something about getting word to the ship, then she went, thrust hard by Awhero's arms, strong for a woman her age. She fled to the courtyard, to the door through the city wall, a door that stood ajar! She could see directly into the guardpost outside-empty. Never empty except now! It smelled of a trap!

  Beside the door hung the outer robe with its sunhelmet hood lining, behind the door half a dozen staves stood below a pendant cluster of water bottles, like flaccid grapes. She shut and bolted the inviting door, snatched the cloak, a staff, a waterbottle, and fled back through the house to the kitchen wing, calling to someone as she went past the kitchens to the twisting stairs that only the malghaste used. Awhero had shown her the hatchway below, and she went directly to it, struggling into the robe as she fled, draping the rags around her shoulders to make it look as if she were clad only in tatters. As she slipped through the hatchway she heard voices shouting and fists thundering at the door she had barred.

  She came out in a deep stairwell where coiled stairs led up to the narrow alley. The alley led to the street. She went up, and out, head down, a little bent, the staff softly thumping as she moved slowly, like any other passerby. Ahead of her was the narrow malghaste gate through the city wall, never guarded, never even watched, for this was where the untouchables carried out the city's filth. The stained and tattered rags marked her as one of them. Outside that gate a small malghaste boy guarded a flock of juvenile harpya, their fin-wings flattened against the heat, and beyond the flock was a well with a stone coping. The area around it was sodden, and she felt the mud ooze over her toes as she filled the bottle, slung it over her shoulder and walked away on the northern road, still slowly, as any malghaste might go. She did not run until she was out of sight of the town.

  In her dream she was being hunted by dogs. She woke to hear them baying, closer than before. No. No, not dogs. Arghad's hunters came on wings, not feet, and they had pursued her for two days, now. The Mahahmbi had no dogs, but their birds-of-prey had dogs' loyalty to their masters, dogs' ability to track by scent, and they could scream a signal from the sky when they detected their quarry. She had left her smell behind, on towels, on clothing, on all the baby's things. There had been much of her to give the hunters!

  Two nights she had moved over the desert, sometimes running, sometimes staggering,- almost three days she had hidden on the desert sleeping when she could. Through last night, the wind had been from the south, and she had fled into it, blinking its grit from her eyes. This morning, the third morning, it had swung around, coming from the west, and she had lain down on the lee side of a dune, in the shade cast by a line of bone bushes, her head to the north, her feet to the south as Tenopia had done, aware, even through her exhaustion, of the symbolism of the act. Tenopia-songs paid much attention to the interior meanings of simple things. Tenopia: the heroine of women's songs sung by the malghaste in Mahahm-qum.

  Lying with her feet away from the city signified that though matters of her mind were in the city behind her, her survival lay in moving away. Dovidi was behind her, and pray heaven he was safe. The menfolk were there, perhaps, if they were not dead. She could do nothing about any of them, but she might save herself. Any hope of doing so lay south, toward the refuge of the malghaste. If her mind struggled with this, her feet did not, for they staggered southward while she was only half awake, into the long shadows east of the stone dike that belted the base of the dune.

  Long ago, when this world had been volcanic, the edge of a huge surface block had been thrust upright to make a mighty rampart running north and south. Within the block, layers of igneous rock had been separated by thicker layers of softer, sedimentary stuff, now much worn away to leave paths sheltered from the wind by parallel walls, stone lanes she could use now as Tenopia had used them long ago.

  North was the sea, where the shepherds pastured their flocks on the seaweed washed ashore by the sea winds. East or west was desert scattered with hidden oases, already occupied by Mahahmbi. When Tenopia had gone southward, however, toward the pole, she had found refuges along the way. If one went far enough, the malghaste said, one might find Galul, mountainous Galul, with forests, shade, flowers, running water. Perhaps it was true. Or, perhaps it was only a prisoner's myth, the Mahahmbi idea of heaven, achieved as a reward for some unthinkable virtue.

  Though the rag-tatters over her sand-colored robe were the best camouflage she could have, though her feet left no lasting tracks in the windblown sand, still she stank of fear, of stale sweat, and of the breastmilk down the front of her bodysuit that had soured before drying. Now the stiffened fabric chafed her with every step, and the odor floated on the still air for the winged hunters to sniff out. When Tenopia had come this way, she had sung to nga tahunga makutu matangi, the wizards of the winds, asking their help in confusing her trail. She knew no invocation to bring the tahunga makutu to her aid. She would have to rely on her own two feet.

  The dunes rose higher on her left, the sand ascended in the path she followed, eventually it rose to the top of the walls, burying the stone lanes. She took a sighting south, on a distant outcropping, and held to that direction, swerving only briefly between two thorny mounds, around another, hearing the shrieks from the heavens fade behind her. The hunters were going off at a northeasterly tangent, getting farther away. When the stone dike reemerged it was only a shallow ridge, rooted in the ribbon of shadow along its eastern side. She slipped into the shade, her feet plopping into it as fish into water, feeling the coolness rise to her knees, hips, to her waist as the wall loomed higher, topping her head at last and continuing to rise in erose scallops and notches. A few yards to her left a parallel wall emerged from the sand, and before long she moved in a blessed corridor of shade and calm air, away from the forge of the sun, the huffing bellows of the wind.

  Both the shadowed lane and the hunters' misdirection were blessings. Perhaps the wind wizards had decided to help her without being asked. Or perhaps Awhero had sent someone into the desert with a sack of the baby's diapers, to draw the hunters away. Several times Genevi
eve had heard either men or birds frighteningly close, but they had always turned aside. She caught her breath at the memory of panic, yesterday's fear adding to this moment's weariness. She bent to ease a sudden pain in her side, aware of an overwhelming thirst. She reached for her waterbottle... Gone. Left where she'd been sleeping!

  She collapsed against the stone, head falling onto her knees, arms wrapped around her head, holding herself together, denying the terror that threatened to erupt in hysterical screaming or laughter or shouts of nonsense. Think, Genevieve, she told herself. Think. The bottle had only a swallow or two left in it, not worth going back for. Besides, if the men gave up on their current line of search and backtracked into the wind, they could still come across her trail before dark. Also, when Tenopia had escaped from the Shah of Mahahm-qum, she had reached a sanctuary on the third evening. This was Genevieve's third evening, and she might already be within sight of the place the old woman called te marae, he wahi oranga. Water or no, better go on than back.

  She stood up again, putting one foot in front of the other, fighting the urge to lick her lips. They were already split and bleeding. Licking them only made them worse. The Mahahmbi wore veils across their faces when in the desert, and they carried unguents for their lips and eyelids. That is, the men did. Women had no need of such stuff, for women did not go into the desert. Except for Tenopia. And, come to think of it, she didn't know what time of day Tenopia had run from Mahahm-qum. Genevieve herself had fled at noon, or thereabout. She might have another half day to go.

  She climbed drifting sand as the walls on either side of her were covered once more. Beyond the dune was an area of gravelly hills, spotted with thorn. She stopped to take her husband's locator from the pocket of his robe and check her direction, following the line into the distance to find a landmark on the horizon. She had come this far from landmark to landmark, south on south, and thank God for the locator, though now, with the sun almost on the horizon, she could almost set a track at right angles to the shadows of the thorn, streaming away to her left, shadows that went down the dune and all the way to the top of another...

  Color! At the shadow's end, a flicker of green, seen out of the corner of her right eye. There, and again. She veered to the left, across the buried walls, and followed her own attenuated silhouette up the dune, gray granules flowing as she slipped, plunged, wallowed the last few meters, struggling to the top on hands and knees.

  Below was the valley described in Tenopia's song, skullstones and dry bones, a dry streambed littered with round white rocks. On the south and east, black-streaked cliffs made a barricade against the sands, underlining bald and wrinkled mountains. Across the dried streambed the walled refuge squatted ugly as a toad, built of the same stone as the cliffs and topped by one stubby tower that flew the long triangle of the banner: a licking flame of green bearing a single gold leaf.

  "In desert, hope is small," Awhero had said. "Leaf is sign of hope, small, almost unnoticed. Yet it holds infinite promise, does it not?" There were no leaves in Mahahm-qum. The banners of Mahahm were black, with a blazing yellow sun, and there was sun enough in Mahahm-qum to make ashes of anything living.

  Light flashed in her eyes, reflected from the highest window of the tower, only a glint. Lenses. Someone knew she was here. She paused, wondering if the gate would open to emit an attacking horde. Or perhaps just one strong man. Either way, she could do nothing about it. Almost three days of walking in the sand had taken her strength. Too little sleep and water had taken her resolve. Fear had taken her will. She floundered downward in another scrambled avalanche and staggered onto the flinty soil of the riverbed. From there it was only a short distance up the equally hard packed slope to the walls.

  The gate was of heavy, sun-grayed planks, rough hewn from huge trees, fastened with spikes of iron. The wood had come from somewhere else. Somewhere behind the far black line of cliffs? From some chasm among those dun-colored mountains? Or maybe from Galul itself, where water ran and things grew green? Not from hereabout, certainly, for nothing grew in this desolation except black thorn, bonebush, and blood lichen.

  She leaned against the door for a moment, staring at the wall, built of the same ashy stone as the cliffs, equally cheerless and forbidding. A protruding beam high above her head ended in a carved skull between whose wooden teeth a bell rope emerged like a tongue, an oily strand with a loop in the end, slightly above the level of her eyes. Almost too late she saw the stem of thorn woven through the loop. Unwary or desperate visitors would pay with agony for interrupting the labors of those within.

  Genevieve thrust the crook of her staff through the loop and hauled it down, hard. After a long pause, she heard a sonorous clang so remote in both space and time as to seem unconnected to any action she had taken. She tugged again, and again. Two more long delayed and measured tolls of the distant bell. She said to herself, "We will wait to see what happens. We will not lick our lips. We will not have hysterics. We will simply wait to see what happens..."

  Not much. A cessation of some background murmur that had been unnoticeable until it ended. A unison of treading feet, which would have been worrisome had they been approaching rather than retreating. Since the place was not eager to welcome her, she turned her back on it and stood facing outward, searching the sky and the horizons for her pursuers. She couldn't see them, which didn't mean they weren't there. What she could see was the everlasting monotone of the desert gray sand, gray earth, creeping dikes of gray stone among hard gray dunes dotted with the ash white of bonebush, the bleeding scarlet of lichen, the angular thickets of thorn made impenetrable by hundreds of needle-sharp daggers that seeped glistening beads of toxin. The thorn meant more than mere pain. A puncture could fester for weeks before healing. Delganor had told them that, or one of the trade representatives. Everything anyone could find out about Mahahm had been dissected and discussed, and she had listened to all of it, to everything any of them knew about Mahahm. It had not been enough.

  The skeletal lines of bonebushes were less forbidding than the thorn, but more eerie, each branch an arm or thigh bone, each twig a finger bone, always growing four or five together in a patch of blood lichen. The thorn grew only where there were many bonebushes, and the bone-bushes grew only where lichen had established a hold. Now, in the slanting sun, the lichen glowed crimson, as though it were freshly bled onto the soil. She did not want to think of blood. Had Delganor bled? Was the Marshal dead or dying? Cut down by a hundred seabone daggers. Left lying in all that red for someone to find, or not. If she went back to the house, would any of their party be there, lying in their blood?

  She turned back to the gate and rang again. Clang, then again clang, and clang. Three, as before. Temperate, she told herself in a mood of weary fatalism. Not hasty. Not importunate. Merely a measured reminder that someone waited, whenever they got around to seeing who it was, or wasn't.

  "Who are you?" a voice asked, near her ear.

  She swung around, eyes darting, finally locating the tiny sliding hatch in the door. It had opened without a whisper and the person within was invisible in the shadow. The voice was as anonymous as wind, man, woman, child, devil or angel, it could be any.

  She cleared her throat, but the words rasped nonetheless: "My name is Genevieve." She bowed her head and took a deep breath. "In Mahahm-qum, an old woman named Awhero told me to seek Tenopia's haven beneath the green banner."

  "Who are you running from?"

  "Those who were coming to kill me and my baby, men who have already probably killed my husband and father..."

  "Et al," she whispered hysterically to herself. "Et al..." She raised her head to find the hatch closed once more. She waited. After a time she thrust the staff through the loop and clanged again, another measured three.

  This time she saw the hatch slide open. "Don't be impatient. You may enter. The small opening to your left."

  It was a considerable distance to her left, a narrow slot around and behind a great wallowing buttress, like t
he buttocks of some huge animal that had stood forever, pushing up the wall. The passage did not extend through the wall but only into the buttress itself, a slot that only a slender person might traverse, a child, a woman, a young man without arms or armor. She took two steps and a metal grille moved behind her, closing the entrance and leaving her standing in a iron caged space so tight she could not spread her arms. Stone circled her except for the grille at her back and another at her left where a lantern was held by an invisible hand. A woman's voice, perhaps the same voice, said, "Take off your clothing. All of it."

  "This is not hospitable," she said, suddenly furious. "This is what they no doubt wanted of me, that I be naked and helpless."

  A laugh, without humor. "Woman, you do not know them if you believe that, and as for us, we have no designs on your body. We do need to assure that you carry nothing to our hurt, but you may choose. If you like, we will open the grille and you may go out the way you came."

  Fighting tears, she leaned her staff against the stone and took off the hooded robe with its porous, insulated helmet that kept the sun from frying the brain, then the under-robe Awhero had given her. Finally, with some struggle, she removed the silken bodysuit that covered her from throat to below her elbows and knees, laminated to her belly and thighs by the dried breast milk.