Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time (29 page)

But he only stood thigh-deep in the Endless River. He waded toward the shore. He saw Ai Hanlo through some reeds. He climbed onto the bank and turned away from the city, and kept going until at last he came to the land of Nagé.

He never stole again. He apprenticed himself to a scribe, and in time read many books and pondered many mysteries. Eventually he married a woman of that country and loved her deeply, and lived with her all the days of his life, confiding in her all things except what he had seen in the palm of his hand as he sat in the shop of Manri the bell-maker.

BETWEEN NIGHT AND MORNING

Between night and morning, in the last dark hour, Velas Ven sat in a tavern, in a back street of Ai Hanlo, thinking deep thoughts as his wine swirled slowly in his cup. He was a storyteller of great renown. Wherever he went, people would cry out, “Velas! Velas! Speak to us of wonders!” Sometimes he would hire a boy to go before him, alternately blowing a trumpet and shouting, “Gather and listen! Velas Ven is coming!”

But now he sat in this tavern, in a booth by the window, alone but for the taverner who had fallen asleep at the counter, alone with his thoughts. He wanted to be a philosopher. Storytelling was just bright colors. It was not enough. He wanted to know how there could be any meaning or purpose to life in the time of the death of the Goddess, when even the foremost of men, the Guardian of the Bones of the Goddess, could only listen as the last echo of her dying faded away. Soon the very last holiness would be gone from the world. He wanted to know how history could continue, how mankind could ever hope for more than endless stumbling in the dark, groping for a future when there would be no future. Velas Ven wanted to be the one to discover the light.

Tonight was a night of festival. He scarcely noticed, there in the tavern, in the darkness. He was oblivious to the revelers outside, to the music and laughter and shouting which could still be heard even at this hour. He knew that even now a huge double statue of the Goddess in her Bright and Dark Aspects was being carried slowly through the city to the sound of flutes and rattling tambourines, to the flash and acrid smell of burning powder.

The statue was nearby. It had to pass along every street before dawn. That was the custom. The sounds from outside grew louder. But he was like a disembodied spirit, barely able to perceive the world of men, trying to withdraw further.

He drank, and his thoughts closed around him like shadows.

A short time passed and his gaze drifted to the dim figures he could see through the translucent glass of the window. There was a burst of light, then applause, and people running. Voices rose in an almost raucous hymn.

The main body of the crowd moved on. There were only a few stragglers left when Velas saw, quite distinctly through the glass, an old man in a ragged cloak. He seemed to swim in a black and gray haze, and the glass distorted the light of the lantern he carried into wavering lines, but he himself was quite clearly visible, as if, just for him, the glass had become impossibly clear.

The man raised his lantern, illuminating his own face. He gazed directly at the seated Velas Ven. Their eyes met, and the storyteller was dazzled, as a rat is by the gaze of a snake, but in a different way, too, for he was not afraid. He slid from his booth in trembling expectation. He saw in that gaze, in those eyes, a revelation, and he knew it for what it was.

He ran out of the tavern. The cold air was a shock. The sky was dark, filled with brilliant stars. Far away, bonfires burned. The celebrants had moved on. He was almost alone in the lane.

The old man hesitated for a moment at the edge of the receding crowd, then passed from sight. Velas ran after him. Soon he was surrounded by people, pushing his way through. White-clad girls and black-glad old women pressed against him, the girls holding black candles, the old women white ones. They sang. They asked him for coins. He put a copper in the first palm his hand met, then struggled to break free.

Then he was face to face with the man with the lantern and again, even though he was no longer peering through glass, only this one figure was clearly visible. The rest were gray blurs. The sounds of the festival receded to a faint murmur. Velas moved through the crowd as if through smoke. He stood within arm’s reach of the lantern bearer.

The lantern flickered in the wind.

“Reverend Father,” he said, making the gesture of respectful address with his right hand. “Have you come to tell me something?”

But the other did not speak. He walked swiftly away, his footsteps echoing, the flame of the lantern sputtering. The people around him, the revelers, were like swirling mist.

Velas followed. They walked for what seemed like hours, but time was suspended, and the night did not end. They passed through many districts of the city, crossing the great square of the fountain, walking along the base of the wall of the Inner City, beyond which no common man may go. They wound their way among the tall, silent stone figures in the Garden of Statues. The lights of the festival were faint flickerings, like lightning on the horizon, and the celebrants were only half-glimpsed shapes, moving shadows, suggestions of sound. He was alone, but for the stranger who led him.

Once, the old man turned and looked back at him. When he saw that face again, and those serene, terrible eyes, only that gaze and the memory of it were real to him. He followed, through a city of illusions.

At last they turned down another narrow lane and came to another tavern. The old man we down a short flight of stairs. For an instant, the lantern disappeared around a corner. Velas ran after him, slipping on the muddy, wooden steps, catching hold of the railing. Wood creaked. At the bottom he splashed through an inch of water, then came to a door.

There was nowhere else the stranger could have gone. Velas banged on the door. From within came sounds of revelry and laughter, tankards banging, a stringed instrument being played.

He shouted again and the door swung inward, and he couldn’t hear his own shouting. The sounds were larger than life, like thunder. He staggered into the room. Smiling faces pressed near his. Hands caught hold of his arms, steered him to a bench.

“Wait!” he said. “I can’t stay here! I have to go! I don’t understand—”

The laughter only got louder. A cup was placed in his hands. He looked around for the old man with the lantern, but could not find him. He tried to rise, but was pushed back down into his seat. Two or three laughing, red-faced fellows took hold of his forearms and raised his cup to his mouth. He drank deep. The wine was stronger than any he had ever known.

Soon he was caught up in the frantic celebration, forgetting everything except the single moment in which he lived. He stood on a table and proclaimed his tales, the most wondrous he knew, embellishing them as he spoke. There were raucous shouts, ridiculous suggestions. He incorporated them into the tale, and it grew like a living thing, writhing like a serpent even as it was created.

Later, amid as much noise as ever, he somehow came to be on the floor under a bench with a naked woman in his arms. They made love there, laughing.

Still later, another woman, fully clothed, caught him by the ankles and dragged him out from under the bench. He was laughing, too, as she helped him straighten his garments, and as she hustled him out of the tavern, up the stairs, and into the street.

The hour had not changed. The festival continued. The unmoving stars shone brilliantly in the dark sky.

The woman grabbed him by the shoulders, turning him around.

“I am not angry with you,” she said. “I knew what kind of man I married. I wanted you. I knew you would still be ready for me.”

In the back of his mind, Velas Ven was aghast, for he did not know this woman, and he was sure he was not married. But he was carried along by sensations more intense than anything real. His mind was working strangely. He had become detached from what was happening for just an instant, and then he sank completely into each experience and knew no future or past, or any abstraction. He lived in an eternal now.

The woman who seemed to be his wife led him to a fine house. Servants met them at the door and took his cloak. Others conducted them upstairs into the bedchamber, then retreated hastily. He made love again, to this woman whose name he couldn’t remember, but whom he was sure he had known for many years. He remembered many things as they lay side-by-side afterwards, very few of them from the life of Velas Ven the storyteller. He was settling swiftly, gently, into someone else’s life.

The woman stroked his hair.

“My Odanek,” she said. “Could I ever have wanted anyone else? I have lived all my life to be the wife of Odanek. He is greater than all other men.”

He wondered who Odanek was, but soon forgot about it, caught up in the mere sensation of being there in that bed with that woman.

Much later, after she had gone to sleep, he got up to relieve himself. He couldn’t find the chamber pot, and it occurred to him that he didn’t know his way around this house. So he went to the window and opened the shutters.

No time had passed. It was still that same, last hour of the night. The stars shone. The festival went on.

In the street below, the old man stood with the lantern, gazing up at him.

Behind him, the woman muttered, “I love you, Odanek.”

He turned to look, and saw that she had someone else in her arms.

Suddenly he was afraid and filled with shame. He was an intruder, terrified of discovery. The woman and her lover did not seem to notice him, so he carefully gathered up his clothing and crept out of the room. He dressed in the hall outside, looking every way. No servants appeared. He made his way down the stairs and out of the house.

He shivered in the night air, suddenly aware that he had forgotten his cloak. But he didn’t dare go back for it. He hurried around to where he had seen the old man.

Someone was relieving himself out the window.

“Odanek, come back to bed,” came a voice from within.

Velas heard a footstep. He turned just in time to see the lantern disappearing around a corner. He ran to follow. Again he met that awful gaze, and nothing else seemed real. He drifted through the insubstantial city.

* * * *

The stars gleamed overhead. He ran in darkness after the stranger, pushing his way through a crowd that was alternately solid and indistinct. He saw the lantern drifting into a walled garden and followed. Once inside, there was no trace of his quarry.

“Papa! Papa! Come play with us!”

He looked down in astonishment. Two little girls, six or seven at most, tugged at his trouser legs. He did not know them. They could have been any of the city’s countless children. They carried paper lanterns, as children often did on festival nights.

“Papa! Come!”

He made his way along a winding path between hedges, to a circular lawn with a fountain in the middle of it. Palely glowing night flowers, planted in concentric rings around the fountain, swayed gently in the night breeze. Water splashed.

“Papa!”

Three more children ran to greet him, two more girls and a boy. He did not ask their names. He merely followed them.

One of the girls got out a flute and began to play. The others took him by the hands and danced in a circle, turning him slowly at first, then faster, swinging their paper lanterns. Light washed over the hedges, over the fountain. The night flowers glowed more brightly when the light touched them. The splashing water flickered through the air like a rain of luminescent pearls.

On the waxed paper sides of the lanterns were black silhouettes of birds and beasts. Somehow, by a trick of light and shadow, they came alive, separating themselves from the lanterns. It seemed that great black birds whirled in the sky overhead, while black leopards crept through the hedges, their eyes glowing like coals.

Then he was aware that the children had let go of him. He staggered dizzily.

They were dancing around someone else.

“Papa! Papa!”

“Come children,” said the other man. “Your mother wants you home now. Kavni, Ushias, Raedmon, come on.” He herded them away. “You too, Surren.” The girl with the flute stopped playing and hurried after them.

No one seemed to notice Velas Ven. He was invisible to them. It was only when he stood alone in the garden once more that he realized that the other man’s voice had sounded very much like his own.

He had not seen the other man’s face.

Then he was not alone. The old man appeared across from him, on the other side of the fountain, holding the lantern.

“What spirit are you?” Velas demanded. “Why have you come to me?”

The other merely turned away. Velas followed.

* * * *

Later still, but after no time had passed, in the same hour, he stood guard on the vine-covered, decaying battlements of the Inner City, gazing into the night, out across the vast array of the Outer City below, where the light of the festival moved among the houses like some glowing, amorphous animal. Beyond, starlight reflected in the broad expanse of the Endless River, and beyond that fields and distant mountains were hidden in the darkness. The air was so clear that he could even make out some of the distant peaks, darker than the sky, blotting out a few stars along a jagged horizon.