Echoes of the Goddess. Darrell Schweitzer

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СКАЧАТЬ I am pleased, in a simple way. Now your song is part of the great dance which is our world. For this I am grateful.

      “No, no, do not ask anything more. No questions. No wishes, no granting of boons. It is not like that. Do not presume to raise yourself any higher than you are, for it cannot be done. We are of the substance of the Goddess, whose nature and death even we cannot understand. Your words have no meaning. They cannot encompass such thoughts as would be meaningful to us.

      “I wish you no ill, Ain Harad. In a small way, you have pleased me. But now, think of something else from your own world. Think of a lady who holds a beautiful songbird in a cage. After a time, she has heard its song and grows tired of it, but she does not hate it. Therefore she sets it free. Think now, focus your mind, on the world from which you came, to which you must return. The door to the cage is open.”

      * * * *

      —and flying on wings of light, the two of them soared or descended or moved in some direction which Ain Harad’s mind could not grasp, through the center of the great, burning rose. He felt the Lady’s hand on his. There was an illusion of solidity and warmth, though in some abstract way he knew it was an illusion even as he experienced it.

      He thought of stony hillsides and grass-filled plains, of rivers and forests, of men and their noisy cities, of marching armies, ships under sail, of gulls drifting on columns of air; of the winter when a dog snatched his slippers and he had to run after it, out into the darkness in his bare feet. As he recalled that particular sharp, clear sensation of cold, the familiar world became more substantial to him, more tangible. He smelled the smoke of a hearth fire. He reached out with his mind, grasping the place of his birth, his home, his parents’ house, with all his, drawing himself toward it, like a moth toward a distant light.

      For just an instant he had a vision of something else, of a realm equal and opposite to that of the Bright Powers, where a dark rose gleamed at the world’s heart, facing into the night, but the Powers dwelling there were no more as his father had described them than the running deer or the stars of the midnight sky can be described by the worm that crawls in the mud.

      The Lady led him inward, his beacon on the dark way, until at last he seemed to be rising from the depths of a murky sea. There were pinpricks of light above.

      Imperceptibly, his motion stopped. There was solid ground beneath him, and his body seemed solid once more. He held his lyre in his hands, and stood, rather unsteadily, in the middle of a flat, grassy meadow under a clear midnight sky.

      Light flickered behind him and he turned, and beheld for the briefest instant the image of the Bright Lady, like a candle flame snuffed out. He was sure—he forced himself to believe—that she was smiling. Then he was alone and blind in the darkness. It was a long time before his eyes adjusted and he could again see the pale stars overhead.

      * * * *

      Ain Harad walked out of that field, into a town where a strange tongue was spoken. The people there saw by his manner, by the look in his eye, that he had been touched by something beyond nature. They provided him with food and drink, did him reverence, and hurried him on his way. He passed thus through many lands, unmolested but never encouraged to linger, seeking his home.

      For a long time he delighted in the simplest things, the feel of the dusty road beneath his feet, the good green woods, the chatter of birds as they heralded the day’s dawning. Sometimes he would sit for hours by a stream listening to the rushing waters, or watching tiny fish in a pool. He had words of cheer for all he met, but most folk avoided him, taking him for a holy pilgrim deep in thought, or else a Power clothed fleetingly in material form, or else merely a lunatic.

      More than anything else, in those days, he wanted to see his parents again. This drove him on. He thought of his brother Zadain, off in the wars. He even thought of herding goats with more a sense of regret than not.

      As long as he focused his mind on such things, he continued on his way. But one evening, after a long climb up a steep mountain road, he paused at the summit to watch the sunset, and the fading light reminded him of the Bright Lady and her kingdom.

      It was as if he had awakened from a stupor. The memories came flooding back, overwhelming him. With them came a flash of pride. He would be the greatest of all singers when he told of the Lady in song. He would be, indeed, her equal. She had said otherwise, but she was wrong about that, he was certain.

      The memories filled his mind. He went deeper into his trance than ever before. That last, detached part of his consciousness was also filled, like a final housetop submerged in a flood. He thought of his parents and his homeland no more.

      He came down the mountain singing. The music was far stronger than any human music. It sustained him. He knew no need of food, drink, or rest. Wild beasts bowed down before him, and, yes, the stones wept.

      The people of towns and cities left their homes to follow him, scarcely aware of what they were doing. The strange procession trampled fields of crops and interrupted battles, yet no voice was raised in protest. He crossed stilled seas, walking on the water, and the great masses followed in ships, on rafts, anything they could contrive. Islands were depopulated as they passed.

      When at last he came into his own country, the folk of Randelcainé saw before them the largest army ever assembled. The dust from these countless feet filled the sky. This throng joined with another, streaming out of the holy city of Ai Hanlo, as all were drawn to the boy’s music and to his singing.

      Beneath Ai Hanlo Mountain, the bones of the Goddess stirred.

      Then the Guardian of the Bones, lord of the city, called together what few of his counselors who had not already joined the listeners, and said:

      “In the days of our forefathers, the body of the Holy Goddess plummeted from heaven, trailing light across the sky like a comet, crashing deep into Ai Hanlo Mountain. Out of the chasm made by that fall, the newly formed Bright Powers, fragments of the Goddess, swarmed like bright bees, filling the nights with glory. Out of it too came the Dark Powers, enshadowing the days. Men died in ecstasy and terror, their minds and their hearts overwhelmed. It seemed all mankind would perish. It was only when the Powers had fled away, and the first of the Guardians had contained the bones in a vault and closed up the chasm by desperate magic that the survivors could return. Each guardian tells this to his successor, but now the danger is so great that I tell you.”

      “Has another goddess fallen from the sky?” someone asked.

      “No, but a similar duty is upon me.”

      So the Guardian went forth, dressed the half-white, half-black vestments of his office, with his staff of power in his hand and wax plugs in his ears. It was the first time in centuries that the feet of a guardian had touched the streets of the lower city which surrounds the base of Ai Hanlo Mountain. He walked past deserted shops and houses, then out the Sunrise Gate, onto the plain. So great was the crowd that it took him many hours to get within sight of the singer. He stepped over the corpses of people who had been entranced by the music of Ain Harad, but not sustained by it, and so had perished of hunger and thirst, and, as of old, of ecstasy.

      When he stood before the blank-faced lyre player, he spoke a word that only the Guardian may know, and held aloft a reliquary containing a splinter of the bones of the Goddess.

      Silence struck the crowd, as if the spinning world had suddenly snapped to a halt. All stood frozen in shock. For Ain, returning to himself, it was the most exquisite of agonies to be wrenched from his contemplation of the Bright Lady. But some remembrance of his former life came to him and, dazed, not sure of where he was or how he can come to be there, СКАЧАТЬ