A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel Read online

She looked at me and smiled. “You know it.”

  “I saw it in Bain.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Only a line or two. I read what it says about angels.”

  A faint color warmed her cheeks. “Well. I’ve just read to you from the chapter on reading.”

  Reading, she said: this was her proposal. The passage she had read to me had dropped from the mouths of gods. The words were etched in the Stone her father’s late master had found in the desert, where he had traveled at the bidding of a dream. To read the Stone, to take down the words, was her father’s life’s work, and her own work was to assist him. The chapter on reading was one of the first they had written down. She told me her father had groaned when he understood it, curled on the floor, as if in labor with the beauty of the blessing.

  She said she would read to me.

  “A fine idea,” I said. “What is it supposed to do?”

  She frowned, not offended but examining the question. Her face wore an inward look, as if she were listening. “I think,” she said at last, “that what troubles you is an imbalance, a lack of order. And written words possess order, much more so than the words we speak. I believe you should read without stopping, read everything you can. And when you are tired, I will read to you. The method has had some success. I’ve tried it with others. One of them has now returned to her family.”

  “I haven’t known many who read more than I,” I told her. But I lay on my back, and she stood up and bent over me with a gilded pen.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said. She made two dots above my brows and measured the space between them with a piece of tape. Her lips pressed together in concentration. The touch of her hands was firm, though she was so thin. Her clothes had a dry smell, like earth heated by the sun. When she had finished, she jotted a few lines in a notebook from her box. “Ura’s Conclusion,” she explained. “On the effect of thought on the blood. It’s never been proved.”

  She went to the bookshelf and crouched to read the titles. “Have you read any of these?”

  “You’re not going to read prayers? To guide me in the ways of the Stone?”

  She smiled at me over her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter what we read, but I’d rather not bore you.” She looked at the titles again. “Let’s try this. A Soldier’s Memoir.”

  She brought the thick volume with her to the bredis. The print was too small for her to read comfortably, so she took a pair of spectacles out of her box. They dangled from a chain she wore like a necklace. She pressed them onto her nose, opened the book at random, and began.

  Of course it was an honor to fight under her, for which I thank Him Whose Face Is Hidden. I remember the midnight watch and how we would see that the lamp was still burning in her tent, or in the tent of one of her concubines. She took all forty-seven of them with her wherever she went, and they did not complain, although some of them were just boys, and their skin was chapped like ours was in the winter and if there was no wood to heat water they went without bathing just like we did. . . . But Ferelanyi was never the same after Drunwe died that spring, although she still had forty-six concubines to console her, which is why we soldiers say, if something in life has lost its savor, “it is just like the forty-six concubines of the general” . . .

  Naturally, the treatment was a failure.

  Still Tialon’s voice filled up the hours, and I waited for her with more impatience every day. I never heard her coming. She always knocked, then peered around the door, smiling and hesitant, carrying her box.

  Clarity, I thought. Clarity and music. Her voice was low, expressive, not bell-like but vibrant like the limike, the Olondrian dulcimer. She read me the lyrics of Damios Beshaid and the letters of Skendho the Literate, the Brogyar chieftain who had asked to be buried under the Telkan’s library. She read me the plays of Neavandis the Poet with great animation, altering her voice and features to suit the characters. She was disappointed to see no change in me. After a week I no longer needed to shake my head. She could read my face.

  “Don’t give up,” I whispered.

  She smiled. Her hand strayed toward my pillow, toyed with a wayward string. Propriety or shyness prevented her from touching my hair. Instead she tugged at the string until it broke. She brushed it against her skirt, where it clung, a strand of white against the black.

  “Tell me something,” I said, afraid she would go—afraid she would slip away to the place where she lived the rest of her life, a happy and structured region built of bookshelves, enlivened by colored ink, far from the drab misery of the Houses.

  “All right,” she said.

  She spoke of Neavandis, the great poet-queen. “One of her legs was shorter than the other. Only slightly, but still, she never walked. Her servants carried her in a special chair—it’s in the treasure vaults here. It’s called the Chrysoprase Seat. The Old Teldaire used to bring it out on the date of Neavandis’s death; I saw it several times as a little girl. It’s covered with bright green gems, the color of sour apples. It’s very lovely.” She paused, pulled the bredis away from the cot, and faced me.

  “They say she had a lover,” she went on, thoughtful, her arms about her knees. “A groom from the Fayaleith. He was hanged for laming one of the king’s war-horses. Now, of course, everyone says he was hanged out of jealousy—the king was Athrin the Pallid, famed for his cruelty. But they also say that Neavandis poisoned one of the king’s dancing girls, the one called ‘Feet like the Palm-Leaves.’ So who can say? ‘For there are more things under the Telkan’s cloak,’ as my nurse used to put it, ‘than one could name from now to Tanbrivaud Night.’”

  She pushed a tawny curl behind her ear and smoothed it down. Strips of shadow hung about her face. “It was on Tanbrivaud Night,” she said, “that they hanged Neavandis’s lover. He had been granted a last request, according to custom. He asked that he might be executed on Tanbrivaud Night. It was a severe blow to the king, who was superstitious—for those who die on Tanbrivaud Night, they say, can easily pass from the Land of the Dead to this one, and many of them become Angels of Persecution.”

  “And did he persecute the king?” My voice was very soft.

  “It is not known. It is more likely that he persecuted the queen. For though she wrote several more plays, including The Young Girl with Flowers, and a ninth volume of poems after his death, she began to chew milim leaves—a hereditary vice—and died at the age of fifty, as you know.”

  “You don’t believe in what you’ve just said—Angels of Persecution.”

  Her eyes held mine, steady and clear. “No, Jevick.”

  “Then how can you explain it? And don’t say madness. Don’t.”

  A tiny sigh escaped her, slight as a memory of breathing.

  I shifted away from her, facing upward toward my plaster sky. But she sat so still, for so long, that at last I turned back again. She was gazing at the foot of my cot, intent. “It would be too easy,” she murmured. “Angels. For the gods do not speak as we speak.”

  And how did the gods speak?

  In patterns; in writing.

  But sometimes it seemed she could not hear them. Her manner was sharp and nervous; she banged the door behind her. She pressed her pen hard above my eye, scowling into my skin, locked in a fruitless effort to prove Ura’s Conclusion. She thought there should have been some change, an increased heat in my bloodstream, an expansion of the brow, however slight.

  “Do you listen when I read? Do you, Jevick?”

  Once a tear dropped from her eye and landed on one of my cuts. It stung.

  The Gray Houses are not cruel. They are kind. Each day begins with an outing for those not too distraught to stand and walk. Down the wide hall, where the lamps are always lit, each in its netting of wire, then out the big double doors into the garden. The garden is rough, a mere slope of grass surrounded by a wall. The sea is invisible but seems to be reflected in the sky. The air lively with iodine, strong. Once, at the bottom of the slope, the woman with bandaged hands
found a gull with a broken wing.

  Tialon came to see me there one morning. I sat against the wall with a book, and her long shadow darkened the page.

  “Jevick,” she said. “How are you?”

  I squinted up at her. “As you see.”

  She sat beside me and laid her box in the sparkling grass.

  “You’re early,” I said.

  “It was so lovely outside, I couldn’t stay in.” She was in a blithe, expansive mood, leaning back to look up at the sky. “Everything is starting to smell of autumn, though it’s still warm. It smells like stone, like in the old song. Do you know it?

  Autumn comes with a whisper, smelling of stone.

  I grow sad.

  The days are coming when we will make a tea

  of boiled roots.

  Losha, Losha!

  What have you done with the flower

  that was my heart . . .”

  She gasped with laughter: “At this point the song grows mawkish, really terrible! I only like the first lines, autumn, whispering, smelling of stone. . . . What are you reading?”

  I held up my copy of Olondrian Lyrics.

  She gazed at it for a moment without speaking. Then she advised me in a taut voice: “That’s a rare copy. Old. You must take good care of it.”

  She sat with her back to the wall, suddenly subdued. I was not used to seeing her in such brilliant light. Her eternal dark wool appeared dusted with radiant powder; the chain of her spectacles dazzled me. I could not tell whether her lips were trembling or whether it was a trick of the sun.

  All at once she said: “Tell me about your island.”

  “My island.” The question was so unexpected, I stammered.

  “Yes. What do you eat. What are your houses like.” She counted on her fingers, not looking at me. “Who are your lords. What are the names of your seasons. How do you dance. Anything. Tell me anything.”

  “My island is called Tinimavet.”

  “Go on.”

  “We are farmers and fishermen, for the most part. Some of us grow tea. To be a tea-picker, you must first prove that your hands are as tender as flowers. For this reason it is usually work for young girls. . . .”

  I faltered into silence. She had put her face in her hands; her shoulders were shaking.

  After a moment she bent to her writing box. She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, then crumpled the handkerchief back among her books and papers.

  Still she did not look at me. Her profile looked peeled and wet. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No—It is—”

  She held up a hand, cutting off my words. “Inexcusable,” she said. “It is inexcusable, and I have no excuse. Let me ask—how old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Twenty-two.” She looked at me, her eyes wet and green as celadon. “You are very young. I think that you have not built anything yet?”

  I thought of my life: lessons, a journey, an angel. I shook my head.

  “No,” she murmured. “I thought not. It is dangerous to build. Once you have built something—something that takes all your passion and will—it becomes more precious to you than your own happiness.You don’t realize that, while you are building it. That you are creating a martyrdom—something which, later, will make you suffer.”

  She shifted position on the grass, yanking her skirt into place. “Some would say it was built for me,” she muttered. “And it is true, or partially true. I have never had a silk dress. Since I was eleven I’ve made all my clothes myself. Not even my nurse was allowed to help me. You should have seen some of my clothes—the skirts crooked, the armpits sagging or too tight. . . . And no one laughed. They did not laugh, because they were afraid. Afraid of my father and the Telkan. That made it worse for me. I was more alone. . . .”

  She twisted a finger in the chain at her neck. “I don’t know anything about it,” she whispered. “All that I reject. Those things forbidden by the Stone. Fine clothes, dances, wine, the season of bonfires. I’ve never been to a ball. I’ve never been anywhere but the Library of Bain. Or yes—I went to the Valley once. Once! To the city of Elueth, where my grandfather had died. I was thirteen years old, and so frightened! So frightened I hardly remember the ride in the wagon, the look of the country. We had to relieve ourselves in the grass—it terrified me! And since then, never. I have no jewels but a necklace my mother left me. And I have never worn it, Jevick—not ever. Now you will ask: what does it mean? What have I built? If I’ve never decided—if I’ve only agreed with what was decided for me—”

  I shook my head, but she seized my wrist and squeezed it fiercely, twice. “Don’t pretend.”

  Then she released me. The blood flowed into my wrist; it throbbed.

  “Ura’s Conclusion!” she said with a harsh laugh. Tears filled her eyes again. “My father was right. It’s nonsense. I only thought if I had something of my own . . . I’ve never been to sea. I’ve never been to a foreign country. I’ve only read about it. I’ll never go now. Do you hear me? I’ll never go. But I have built something. You—you—”

  She pointed at me, trembling. Her anger shocked me. “Where did you learn Olondrian?” she snapped.

  “Olondrian? At home. I had a tutor.”

  It was as if I had dashed her with water. For a moment she froze; then she seized her writing box and got up.

  “Tialon!”

  She walked away swiftly over the dewy grass. She did not come to see me the next day, or the next.

  Time unrolled in the Houses, monotonous as a skein of wool. I was known as the Islander and was almost a model patient. I ate my food. I took the required walks. The nurses liked me, and so did the patients: once the man with the scarred head gave me an autumn crocus.

  So much for the days—but the nights, the nights. Sleep, we are often told, is the sister of death; for my ghost, it was more like a doorway hung with a silken curtain. She twitched the veil aside with her finger; I jerked like a fish on the line. Then lightning, screams, the swift feet of nurses in the hall.

  I fell out of bed so often they pulled the mattress onto the floor and I slept there as if on one of the pallets of the islands. A nurse sat on a chair outside my door, the same reddish, blunt-nosed man who had come to my aid on my first night in the Houses. When I asked his name, he said I might call him Ordu, which means “Acorn.” Once, when I lay exhausted, watching him clean my vomit from the floor, I asked if he believed in angels. He dropped his rag in his bucket, not looking at me. “I’ll bring you some ginger tea,” he said.

  I wrote letter after letter to the Priest of the Stone, explaining my case and begging for mercy. I wrote to Tialon, asking her to come back. Ordu saw that my notes were delivered; he was an honest man; he told me frankly that no letter of mine would ever reach the mainland. Neither the priest nor his daughter answered my letters, but I went on writing them, for the act kept my mind from veering toward wild thoughts: a pencil pushed into a wrist. I paced in my chamber, barefoot and straggle-haired in my borrowed clothes, constructing logic, arguing with my own thin shadow.

  Some nights the angel did not come, and I slept until Ordu opened the door and called me. After a time, only those mornings could make me weep. Having steeled myself to suffer, I had no defense against the simple light of day. I covered my face with my hands and sobbed.

  All that could calm me then was my two-color copy of the Romance of the Valley. The flaking gilt on the spine, the woodblock illustrations. Felhami Fleeing the Fortress of Beal. The King Encounters a Lion. The creature’s mane deep rose and symmetrical as a wheel. I crawled down into the story, immersed myself in the looping and formal plot, the wintry battles and magical transformations, the witch Brodlian like a slug in the forest surrounded by her four white swine, and Felhami, slain, stretched out on a bed of rue. “Long he rode, and darkness fell, and the moon was his companion.” The lines unchanged for eight hundred years, arrayed in their princely clarity.

  Then one day a card fell out of
the book, marked with a line in a hand I did not know. It said: “Watch for us at midnight.”

  Chapter Ten

  Midnight in the Glass Forest

  A hiss woke me.

  I sat up, hands clawed, every muscle taut, preparing to do battle with the ghost. But she was not there. Instead a shuttered lantern hung before me, emitting a single copper-colored ray.

  I could just make out the fingers that held the light, and beyond them a shadow in a cloak.

  The figure tossed something onto my mattress. “Put these on,” it whispered.

  I felt what had fallen beside me: trousers, a tunic, a pair of woven slippers.

  “Who are you?”

  My visitor raised the light to show me his face. His eyes were shadowed, but his smile was pleasant enough. “A friend,” he said, his voice a breath. “A friend to you, and to the Goddess Avalei.”

  I asked no more questions, but dressed in the dark as quickly as I could.

  When I was ready I stood, and the stranger leaned close to my ear, bending slightly because, like most Olondrians, he was taller than I. “Follow me, and don’t talk until I tell you.”

  “Should I bring my things?”

  He gripped my shoulder briefly. “Not tonight.”

  I followed him out. In the passage, tiny night lamps lined the wall, pale as fireflies. Ordu sat awake in his straight-backed chair. I stopped, but my companion took my arm and drew me onward, saying under his breath: “It’s all right.”

  The nurse averted his eyes. It struck me that he had not answered when I asked him about angels, and I realized that he might have put the card with the strange handwriting into my book. The thought startled me, like a window opening in a dark house.

  My companion led me through the common room, the dim beam of his lantern passing over the low ranks of deserted couches. We went down a corridor to the door, not the one that led to the garden but the other, the gateway to the Holy City. It was unlocked. We passed through like a wayward draft. My guide pulled the door behind us just so far that it appeared shut, but did not allow it to latch. Then we mounted a flight of lightless stairs and emerged onto a walkway where the night air met us, redolent with jasmine.