The Ghost Sister (24 page)

Despite the events she had witnessed, Shu had still managed to deceive herself, a sleight of eye on the part of a culture: the somber buildings and elegant interiors, the art and books and clothes, Mevennen's vulnerability and the
remote, tense gentleness of Eleres's manner. Everything had concealed the darkness within, and yet it had always been in plain view: the child's body across the saddlebow, the whip of hatred and violence lashing across the hearing chamber. She had seen it all along, but she had failed to truly accept it, preferring in her subconscious thoughts to view the savagery which underlay this society as some kind of anomaly, an aberration rather than an integral aspect of the culture. She had remained wrapped in her academic detachment, cushioned by analysis and method. Only that morning she had been told:
we are more than animals, and therefore less, and that is our great grief and sorrow.

Shu Gho felt that sorrow now: a great well of dismay occupying her heart.
Yes
, she thought,
Eleres foresaw the truth. I have learned something today. And if I
'
m right, this is what the generator does, integrally, to these people. But even in spite of that, even now, we
'
d still be wrong to turn it off.

She slipped down passages, and glided through rooms, looking for a place where she could keep out of the way. Even to herself, she seemed to have become curiously insubstantial, diminished by anticipation. At last she stepped through a door into an empty room and took the communicator from her pack. By now, she had almost given up hope that the thing would ever work again, but she punched in the coordinates nonetheless, holding the device grimly to her ear like a shell. Still nothing, only a faint hissing as the device tried to connect, and failed. Angry that she hadn't tried it before, Shu reset the coordinates for the orbiting ship and waited. Behind her, a voice said, “Ghost? What are you doing?”

She turned. Eleres's face was even paler than usual, the color of rain, or a dove's wing. Scratches down his cheek showed livid against the gray skin and Shu frowned.

“Shu,” she heard herself say, unnaturally loud. “My name is Shu Idaan Gho.”

“Shu,” the young man said, unsmiling. “Like a whisper. A
good name for a ghost.” He was as tense as a drawn wire; she could see it in the set of his shoulders and the rigid line of his back. He walked across the room and sat down in a nearby chair, looking up at her with something like challenge in his eyes. “Are you satisfied, now?”

“What?”

“That Sereth has paid for what she has done to your spirit kindred.”

“I'm sorry,” Shu said. “I really don't understand.”

“She has made herself nameless, from guilt.”

“Nameless?” She must sound like the worst kind of fool, Shu thought, echoing everything he said.

“She has cut out her name,” Eleres said deliberately, his eyes still on her face. He held out an elegant hand and, with the other, made a sudden decisive motion across the base of the thumb. It was then that Shu noticed the tattoos. Without thinking what she was doing, she sat down beside him and took his hand in her own. It felt cool, and fine boned. Eleres caught his lower lip between sharp teeth and his fingers curled, but he did not snatch his hand away or reach for the sword. Shu turned it over, noting the curving blue lines which banded the fingers.

“That's your name?” she asked gently.

“Ah, I forgot,” Eleres said, with a touch of irony. “You are here to learn … Yes, that is my name, and my house, and the marks of the world. Can you read it?”

“No, I can't. Why is your name written on your hand? For identification?”

Memory tugged at her: ancient wrongs in the history texts, numbers branded on the wrist. This place conjured darkness, but he said only, “To remind me of who I might be.” His gaze met hers. “In case I forget.”

“And Sereth has—mutilated herself? Cut off her name, to pay for the child's death?”

Wearily, he dropped his head in what Shu presumed to be assent. “To show publicly what she has done, to bear the
shame. Because it was as something less than human that she committed her crime, and thus she shows it now.”

“She's denying herself human status because of what she did? How—I mean, what will happen to her? Will she be ostracized, driven out?”

The thought of the beautiful Sereth becoming some hunted wild creature was a dreadful one, but Eleres firmly withdrew his hand and said with impatience, “
Nothing
will happen to her, if I have anything to do with it. I'll treat her in exactly the same manner as I always have; she is my cousin and I love her, no matter what she has done or thinks to demonstrate. Hessan's clan must do as they see fit. And now.” He raised his head as the clear note of a bell sounded throughout the house, and he gave her a chilly look. “And now it's time for the funeral. I can't delay here.”

“Look,” Shu said urgently. “I'm afraid this can't wait. I have to get back to my companions. It's more important than you realize—”

“My sister is important to me,” Eleres snapped, as though she'd questioned it, and she realized that he had misunderstood.

“At least help me to
leave
this place—” Shu started to say.

But Eleres turned on his heel, saying abruptly, “We'll talk later. Perhaps then I might give you what you want.”

“No, wait—” Shu cried, but he was already through the door.

The box containing the child's body was brought out of the cold room and taken through the back ways of Tetherau to the landgate, then out onto the marked way that led into the hills. The funeral grounds were four
ei
or so from the town. The morning's rain had passed, following the storms of the previous day out to sea, and the red leaves of satin-
spine dripped water. The air was scented by the metallic odor of rain, and the ground underfoot was slippery with mud. Most of my attention during the short journey was spent on keeping my footing on the treacherous earth, although the
satahrach
'
s
recitation of the
edrada
liturgy provided a constant monotone, like the sound of running water in my ears, and at last the world became reduced to the slithering steps of one foot in front of the other, and the repetitive chant of the
edrada.
The roads to the funeral grounds were used mercifully seldom, according to Jheru, and they had become overgrown, trailing with ottargrass and the hard, twining stems of aipry But as we climbed higher among the trees, the going became easier and at last we came out on a stony slope before the low cliffs that ringed the foothills of the Otrade.

Far below, the towers of Tetherau rose like pins against a still sea. The round hump of Pemna poked out of the milky water, and now we could see beyond to
ei
upon
ei
of pale ocean vanishing in a haze. A boat, minuscule from this height, etched a winged wake across the dappled surface. Ahead, the lower reaches of the Otrade rose up, bare rock for the most part, marked only by the purple wash of moss. The rocks in these parts were many colored: red with iron, mauve and gray with other ores and minerals. The range reared up from the lowlands in a series of crumpled steps, ending in a great crest too old to form peaks but worn down by the passage of glaciers to a wall, its parapets laced with snow even at the height of summer. It was known as Ember ai Elemnai, the Spine of the Serpent, or less poetically, Snakeback. It rode the land for three hundred
ei
, splitting Memeth from Medren, and this was its beginning.

As I gazed up to the ridge's end, the crest of snow along its summit was lit by the touch of a sun that we could not see and it burned in the clear air like a flame. Below the snow line, the subtle shadows of the rock were thrown into sharp relief: black from gray, amethyst from softer mauve,
and a bitter rusty crimson. A flock of black winged birds floated down the rock face, turned as one, and wheeled down to be lost among the crags, small as leaves in the wind. It was as quiet as the end of the world.

I looked around at the family fromTemmarec. It was late in the afternoon, now, and the sun at last emerged from the cloudbank in a blaze. With this low, intense summer light the faces looked graven and unchanging. The sun fell on their garments: moss-green, gold, black brocade, crimson and blue, darkened by the red sunlight to the colors of a bird's wing or the carapace of an insect. Their eyes were metal-bright, waiting.

The
satahrach
of Temmarec, the old man called Rami, made his slow way to the front of the crowd, still chanting the
edrada
which, I realized now, had never ceased. The night before, when we had been introduced, I noticed that he had some complaint of the lungs, caused perhaps by waterfever, or medrusy that attacked the chest wall. His breath wheezed in his throat, laboring to reach his lungs. Now, in the higher country, it was easier to breathe. We had left the sodden woods behind and up here the rain had not lasted. The air was dry and warm, with only a light breeze. The
satahrach
'
s
voice, as it brought forth the
edrada
, was as clear as a girl's and rang out the long notes like a bell. It sailed up into the hills, and echoed far away among the cliffs of the Otrade. In mid-note, the song broke and in the hanging silence the
sa-tahrach
made a preemptory gesture. The box containing the child's body was carried forward. Ahead, a gap in the rock face led through to the funeral ground. Jheru and a sister, Heluet, drew sabers and accompanied the box through. My hand lingered close to the hilt of my own sword; funeral places are rarely lonely. I waited until Sereth, dressed in the long gray robe of the penitent, passed through, feet bared and a bloodstained bandage bound tightly about her mutilated hand. I followed her. The family of Temmarec walked behind.

The gap into the ground was narrow, though not long. In one or two places it was necessary to edge sideways, and the walls of the gully stretched far and crooked above my head. As I eased my way through, a thin shower of gravel pattered around me and when I looked up, sharply, a face was looking down. There was a brief flurry of movement at my side as people realized they were observed. The face swiftly and silently withdrew. It was a narrow, pointed visage, framed in matted hair, swollen eyes, and small teeth tusking beyond the lips. Only a child, but the man next to me swore under his breath to the Deletra Way, the meridian of the mountains. Nerves were on edge. I confess to some relief when the funeral ground opened out before me.

The ground was a wide basin between the cliffs. The stone columns which bore the pyres rose out of a bone-littered floor. Small predators, the eri which haunt these places like mottled, liquid-eyed spirits, scattered out of our path. They were wary, but not too alarmed, for one slunk back to see what I might do, and when I stepped toward it, it hissed and its narrow lips coiled back from its pointed little teeth. I held out my hand and clucked encouragement to it, but it would come no closer. At the far end of the ground, a pyre still smoldered, the remnant of a recent death inTetherau. A thin trail of smoke drifted up into the bright hills.

People were placing offerings of food—the meat that signifies blood for blood—on the ritual wheels that flanked the new pyre. We waited in silence while the
satahrach
and Hessan placed the little box upon the rickety structure, using long hooked poles to settle it. Branches were tossed after it, and then it was fired. The family crowded forward, listening to the first crackling breath of the flames. After the recent rain, the wood was still damp, and hissed and sputtered. The
satahrach
spoke a single word into the crackling silence, an old word, one of the first that we as humans spoke at the beginning of history: the word of passage from the world. It was spoken only once, but it was taken up by the wind and
grew to fill the smoking air, growing and spinning until the firewood caught at last and the box exploded in an upward torrent of sparks. They were borne on the beat of the word into the mountain air, the incandescent fragments of the last of a life, and behind me a voice rose up in a thin mourning song. The spirit of the child was carried up on a current of fire, and ran along the breath of the mountains, and I felt the tides of earth and water rising up under my feet to meet it.

The
satahrach
cried out, a vast humming note sang in my blood, my vision blurred, and all the powers of the land ran through me. I was the medium of its passage; it struck me as though I were a bell, and in the quietness the world fell away, speeding from me, and the lands of the dead opened up in its place: eresthahan, the lands of fire. Fear filled me, and the terror of death. I heard my own breath tearing its way from my throat. The child's spirit ran before me, dodging between the fires near the gate, whirling in a cloud of ash, and then was gone. The gap closed; I was back in the world. My honor charge was complete. And if Mevennen and the ghost spoke the truth, then the way was clear for me to see my sister again.

My skin felt scorched and I ached as though bruised. A red-hot coal fell spitting from the pyre; I saw Sereth pick it up in her good hand. Her fingers closed over it convulsively. She was still far into the world. I shook my head, trying to clear the ringing in my ears. Someone placed their hand on my arm; it was Jheru. I looked into his wellwater eyes and the shock of them was like a fire doused. The blue gaze sent a coolness through me and when I took a gasping breath it was of the clean air of the mountains. Sun glanced off the snow-laced slopes of the distant Otrade. A last greasy coil of smoke tumbled into the upper air and was lost.

“Come now,” said the
satahrach.
He held Sereth's uninjured hand, seemingly untouched by the coal, firmly in his own.” Time to go.” The old man marched to the entrance in the rocks, shouldering his dazed relatives out of his way
with some impatience. Carrion was already coming, drawn by the funeral fire; the dark wingbeat of vhara sent a last shower of embers scattering among the bones.

Outside the ground, the land was dry with no trace of the rains remaining. The sun floated, twice its size, over the sea, and our shadows ran long before us in the golden light. The air already breathed the summer's end; the shorter russet days, and chill air before the dawn. The
satahrach
was striding ahead, taking Sereth with him. I followed them down, to Temmarec.