Chapter Fourteen

The Night Market

The next day we traveled farther into the Valley. And a message ran out from Kovyan’s radhu in every direction, announcing the Night Market. It would be held outside the village of Nuillen, almost on the eastern edge of the Fayaleith. The news traveled to Terbris, Hanauri, Livallo, Narhavlin, tiny villages in the shadow of towers overgrown with moss. We followed in a carriage, jouncing along the graveled roads. Miros drove, and I sat beside him on the coachman’s seat. Sometimes we stopped by the roadside and drank milk from heavy clay bowls, waving our hands to drive away flies in the shade of a chestnut tree, and the young girls who sold milk spoke to us with the glottal accent of the country, clicking their tongues when Miros teased them. They urged us to buy their pots of honey and curd, or strings of dried fish. One of them tried to sell us the skin of an otter. They had lively eyes and raggedly braided hair, always in four plaits, sometimes with tin or glass beads at the tips.

At the crest of a hill, we passed beneath the famous arch of Vanadias, the great architect of the Tombs of Hadfa. The pink stone glowed against the sky, carved with images of the harvest, of dancers, children, and animals entwined with bristling leaves. The intricacy of the carving filled me with awe and a kind of heartache, such as one feels in the presence of mystery. In the center of the arch were the proud words “This Happy Land,” and beyond it the very shadows seemed impregnated with radiance.

At night those shadows were deep and blue, the radhui immense and silent, and the whole world had the quality of an engraving. The carriage trundled past temples and country villas, their white shapes standing out against the darkness, each one spellbound, arrested in torrents of light. A healing light, cool as dew. We passed the famous palace of Feilinhu, standing in nacreous grandeur against the dark lace of its woods: that triumph of Vanadias with its roof of astounding lightness, its molded, tapering pillars of white marble. Miros stopped the horses and swore gently under his breath. The palace, nocturnal, resplendent, stood among palisades of moonlight. Even the crickets were silent. Miros’s voice seemed to rend the air as he spoke the immortal first line of Tamundein’s poem:

“Weil, weil tovo manyi falaren, falarenre Feilinhu.”

Far, far on the hills now are the summers of Feilinhu,

the winds calling, the blue horses,

the balconies of the sky.

Far now are the horses of smoke:

the rain goes chasing them.

Oh my love,

if you would place on one leaf of this book

your kiss.

We watch the lightning over the hills

and imagine it is a city,

and the others dream of its lighted halls

smoking with wild cypress.

Feilinhu, they say,

and they weep.

And I weep with them, love, banquet,

sea of catalpas,

lamp I saw only in a mirror.

The moon is escaping over the land

and only the hills are alight.

There, only there can one be reminded of Feilinhu.

Where we saw the stars broken under the fountain

and saddled the horses of dawn.

And you, empress of sighs:

with your foot on the dark stair.

And she, my empress of sighs. Where was she waiting now with her ravaged hair, her deathless eyes, her perfect desolation? Waiting for me. I knew she was waiting, because she did not come. My nights were silent, but too taut to be called peaceful. Jissavet waited just beyond the dark. The night sky was distended in my dreams, sinking to earth with the weight of destructive glory behind it. In one of those dreams I reached up and touched it gently with a fingertip, and it burst like a yolk, releasing a deluge of light.

People traveled together in little groups along the roadsides, talking and laughing softly, on their way to the Night Market. There was no sign of the Telkan’s Guard. I blessed Tialon privately: she must be doing all she could to keep me safe. Fireflies spangled the grass, and a festival air filled the countryside, as if the whole Valley were stirring, coming to life. At the inn in the village of Nuillen, in the old bedrooms divided with screens, the sheets held a coolness as if they had just been brought in from the fields.

We spent two days in Nuillien. During that time the inn filled up until, the landlord told us panting, people were sleeping under the tables. From the window of my room I could see little fires scattered over the square at night, where peasant families slept wrapped in their shawls. On the evening of the Market, music burst out suddenly in the streets, the rattling of drums and the shouting of merry songs, and Auram came into my room bearing a white robe over his arm, his eyes alight. “Come, avneanyi,” he said. “It’s time.”

He was splendidly dressed in a surcoat embroidered in gold, its ornamental stiffness softened by the fluid lace at his wrists. Above the glow of the coat, rich bronze in the firelight, the flat white triangle of his face floated, crowned with dead-black hair. He looked at me with delight, as if I were something he had created himself: a beautiful portrait or gem-encrusted ring. His exaltation left no room for the human. I saw in his shining, ecstatic, ruthless eyes that he would not be moved no matter how I suffered.

“Come,” he said with a little laugh that drove a chill into my heart. “You must dress.” I undressed in silence and put on the robe he had brought for me. The silk whispered over my body, smooth and cold like a river of milk. Afterward he made me sit down and tied my hair back with a silver thread.

The mirror reflected the firelight and my face like a burnt arrow. Under the window a voice sang: “Gallop, my little black mare.”

“Have you been studying?” Auram asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you committed it to memory?”

“Yes.”

My glance strayed to the ragged little book on the table. The Handbook of Mercies, by Leiya Tevorova. Auram had brought it to me wrapped in old silks the color of a fallen tooth. “One of the few copies we were able to save,” he said, and he pressed it into my hands and urged me to memorize the opening pages. This was the book Leiya had written in Aleilin, in the tower where she was locked away, in the days Auram called the Era of Misfortune. A handbook for the haunted. I turned away from it and met Auram’s eyes in the glass.

“Come,” he said. “You are ready.”

The yard was full of people: word of the avneanyi had spread, and now, seeing Auram and me in our vivid costumes, the huvyalhi pressed forward. “Avneanyi,” someone cried. The landlord struggled through the back door and ordered the stableboys to clear a way to the carriage for us. A careworn man with a sagging paunch and protuberant blue eyes, he looked despairingly at the crowd, which was still pouring in from the street, then flung himself into their midst, moving his thick arms like a bear. “This way, telmaron,” he bawled. “Follow me.” Auram stepped forward, smiling and nodding, gratified as an actor after a successful play, holding his hands out so that the people could brush his fingertips. No one touched me: it was as if a shell of invisible armor lay between them and the glitter of my robe. “Pray for us,” they cried. Above us the sky was dancing with stars. When I reached the carriage my knees gave way and I almost sank to the ground. Someone caught my arm and supported me: Miros. “Hup!” he said, holding open the carriage door. “Here you are. Just put your foot on the step.”

I crawled inside.

“Avneanyi. Avneanyi,” moaned the crowd.

Auram joined me, Miros closed the door, and the carriage started off. All the way to the common I had the priest’s triumphant eyes on me, the cries of the huvyalhi ringing in my ears. At the Night Market I stepped down into the grass beside a high tent. Its stretched sides glowed, warmed from within by a lush pink light. All the moths of the Valley seemed gathered round it, and before it sprawled the booths, flags, and torches of the Night Market.

A great crowd had gathered about a wooden stage in front of the tent, where an old man sat with a limike on his knee. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, a crag in the torchlight. He cradled his instrument and woke the strings to life with an ivory plectrum.

“I sing of angels,” he called.

Auram held my arm. “Look, avneanyi!” he whispered, exultant. “See how they love angels in the Valley.”

The crowd pressed close. “Anavyalhi!” someone shouted. “Mirhavli!” cried another; and the word was taken up and passed about the crowd like a skin full of wine.

“Mirhavli! Mirhavli!”

The old man smiled on his stage. His face glittered, and his voice, when he spoke again, was purified, strained through tears. That voice melted into the sound of the strings—for though limike means “doves’ laughter,” the instrument weeps. In these resonant tones the old man told

THE TALE OF THE ANGEL MIRHAVLI

Oh my house, oh men of my house

and ladies of my home,

come hearken to my goodly tale

for it will harm no one.

Oh fair she was, clear-eyed and true,

the maiden Mirhavli.

She was a fisherman’s daughter

and she lived beside the sea.

She sat and sang beside the sea

and her voice was soft and low,

so lovely that the fish desired

upon the earth to go.

The fish leapt out upon the sand

and perished one by one

and Mirhavli, she gathered them

and took them into town.

“Now who shall wed our maiden fair,

our lovely Mirhavli?

For she doth make the very fish

to leap out of the sea.

“Is there a man, a marvelous man,

a man of gold and red?

For otherwise I fear our daughter

never will be wed.”

He was a man, a marvelous man,

a man of gold and red;

he wore a coat of scarlet

and a gold cap on his head.

He saw the village by the sea

and swiftly came he nigh.

It was a Tolie, and clouds

were smoking in the sky.

Tall as a moonbeam, thin as a spear,

and smelling of the rose!

And as he nears the door, the light

upon his shoulder glows.

“Now see, my child, a bridegroom comes

from a country far away.

And wouldst thou join thy life to his

in the sweet month of Fanlei?”

“Oh, no, Mother, I fear this man,

I fear his bearded smile,

I fear his laughter, and his eyes

the color of cold exile.”

“Hush my child, and speak no more.

My word thou must obey.

And thou shalt be married to this man

in the sweet month of Fanlei.”

She followed him out of the door,

the maiden Mirhavli.

She saw him stand upon the shore

and call upon the sea.

“Mother,” he called, and his voice was wild

and colder than sea-spray,

“Mother, your son is to marry

in the sweet month of Fanlei.”

And straight his scarlet coat was split

and his arms spilled out between.

An arm, an arm, another arm:

in all there were thirteen.

“Oh Mother, Mother, bar the door

and hide away the key.

It is a demon and not a man

to whom you have promised me.”

They barred the door, they hid the key,

they hung the willow wreath.

He came and stood outside the door

and loudly he began to roar

and gnash his narrow teeth.

“Do what you will, for good or ill,

your child must be my bride,

and I shall come for her upon

the rushing of the tide.

“Do what you will, for good or ill,

ye cannot say me nay,

and Mirhavli shall married be

in the sweet month of Fanlei.”

And now the merry month is come,

the apple begins to swell,

and in the air above the field

the lark calls like a bell.

They barred the door, they hid the key,

they hung the willow wreath,

but the sea went dark, and the wind blew wild,

the sky with smoke was all defiled,

and the monster stood beneath.

“Now give to me my promised bride

or I will smite ye sore.”

The villagers stood about her house

and kept him from the door.

He rolled his eyes, he gnashed his teeth,

he stretched his arms full wide.

“I shall come again at the good month’s end

to claim my promised bride.”

And then he struck them all with woe:

a stench rose from the sea,

and the fish no longer left their bed

at the song of Mirhavli.

The earth dried up, the green grew not,

and all were parched with thirst,

and Plague in his white dress stalked the streets

and a gull flew over with swift wing-beats

and cried, “Accursed! Accursed!”

And at last a wave rose from the sea

like the horns of a rearing ram,

and half the village it swept away

like the bursting of a dam.

“Alas, alas,” the maiden wept,

“the gods have abandoned me,

for an they had not, our house had gone

to the bottom of the sea.”

Now she has braided up her hair

and put on her broidered gown.

“In the morning I go to my betrothed”

she said, and laid her down.

And in the morning she rose up

and went down to the sea.

And she sang a song to comfort her,

the maiden Mirhavli.

And so like starlight was her song,

like a light that cannot wane,

that those who watched her hid their eyes

and their tears fell down like rain.

But the demon rose from the boiling sea

and his arms writhed to and fro.

“Cut out her tongue, for I cannot take her

while she singeth so.”

“O demon, I shall not sing again.”

But his great arms thrashed the sea,

and the people wept as they cut out the tongue

of lovely Mirhavli.

But as he bore her across the waves

with blood upon her lip,

the prayer that is not formed of words

’gan from her soul to slip.

The prayer most pleasing to the gods

was melted from her soul.

The sky grew bright, the wind blew soft

and the sea began to roll.

The great sea clasped the demon

and the maiden from him tore.

“My promised bride!” the monster cried,

but the good sea bore her on the tide

and carried her to shore.

The monster with his mother fought

in her waves so steep and high,

but at last his strength began to fail

and he foundered with a cry.

The monster with his mother strove

in her waves so high and steep,

but at last he gave a dreadful roar

and vanished in the deep.

The voice of the ancient troubador went on: it told of Mirhavli’s wanderings, and of how the Telkan discovered her fainting in the Kelevain; it told of his love for her, the jealousy of his queen and concubines, their false accusations, and how Mirhavli was wrongly condemned to death. It told, too, of the miracle: her voice restored, rising over the sea. It told how the Telkan begged her to return, and how she refused, and was taken up alive by Ithnesse the Goddess of the Sea, to live forever in paradise:

Oh sweet it is to be with thee,

and sweet to be thy love,

and sweet to walk upon the grass

while the dear sun shines above.

Oh sweet it is to tread the grass

while the dear sun shines so bright,

but sweeter still to walk the hills

of the blessed Realm of Light.

As the song ended, a sense of unreality seized me, a curious detachment. It was as if the music had carried the world away. I gazed at the torches that twinkled all the way to the horizon, and found them strange. Then, with a start, I realized that my companions were quarreling.

Perhaps I was slow to notice because they were arguing in a foreign tongue: in Kestenyi, the language of Olondria’s easternmost province. I recognized its hissing sound, for my master had taught me the one or two words he knew, and I had heard it among the sailors of the Ardonyi. I turned. I could see Miros gesturing, angry in the torch glow. The priest was hidden from me by the wall of the carriage. Suddenly Miros changed languages, saying distinctly in Olondrian: “But how can you refuse? What gives you the right?”

The priest answered sharply in Kestenyi.

“Curse your eyes!” said Miros, hoarse and vehement. “Even my mother wouldn’t refuse me this—”

“And that is why you have been separated from her,” Auram said flatly. “She means well, but she is weak. Her influence over you has never been of the best. It is common for women to spoil their youngest children.”

“Don’t talk about her,” Miros said. “Only tell me why you refuse. What harm can it do?”

Again the cracked, pitiless voice answered in the eastern tongue. The priest’s hand appeared beyond the edge of the carriage, jewel-fingered, trailing lace.

Miros shouted, and I suppose he was told to lower his voice, for he continued in a wild, strained whisper, a passionate outburst of Kestenyi which his uncle punctuated with brief, crackling retorts. Then it seemed as though Miros was pleading. I backed away from him, toward the tent. “Uncle!” he said in Olondrian. “You were young once—you have experienced—”

“You have said enough,” said the priest in a cold rage. He whirled around the side of the vehicle, stalked toward me and took my arm.

“Wait!” cried Miros. But the priest dragged me forward toward the door of the tent. When I looked back, Miros was clutching his hair in both hands, his eyes closed. Auram pulled the tent flap aside and we entered the rosy light, and I did not see Miros again until after the fire.

Lamps burned on tables inside the tent. There was grass underfoot, its dry autumnal odor strong in the warmth. There was also, in the center of the space, a high carved chair—brought from a temple, I guessed, or borrowed from some sympathetic landowner of the district. How swiftly they must have ridden to place it here, so that I might sit as I sat now in my white robe, my hands clamped tight on its lacquered arms. Auram was himself again, forgetting his quarrel with Miros. He traced a circle on my brow and whispered joyfully: “It begins.”

He went outside. Dear gods, I thought, what am I doing here?

There was a pause in the murmur of the crowd that had gathered before the tent. I only realized how loud that droning had been when it stopped, as one becomes aware, in a summer silence, of the music of cicadas.

Auram’s voice rose harsh and pure. “Children of Avalei! Children of the Ripened Grain! Who would hear an avneanyi speak?”

“I, veimaro!” cried a woman’s voice. “I and Tais my daughter.”

“Come then,” said Auram impressively. “He awaits.”

He led them in: a girl, a woman in wooden slippers, a bent old man. “Avalei hears you,” he said, and went out.

The woman sank down and advanced on her knees, pulling her daughter behind her with some difficulty, for the girl would not kneel but walked stiffly with a fixed gaze.

“Avneanyi,” the woman sobbed. She put her hand over her face. It was clear that she had not intended to address me in tears.

I clutched the arms of the chair. After a moment she regained control of herself and looked up, still shaking, drawing her arm across her eyes. “Avneanyi,” she moaned. “You must help us. It is for the sake of a child. A little child—you know how Avalei loves them.”

“Please stand,” I said, but she would not. She looked at me wonderingly, as if my slight accent increased her awe. Her daughter, still standing, gazed at the tent wall.

“It’s my grandchild,” the woman said. “My daughter’s son. A little boy—three years old when we lost him a year ago.”

“I can’t,” I said.

She looked at me eagerly, her lips parted.

“I can’t promise anything,” I amended. “But I will try.”

“Thank you, thank you!” she whispered with shining eyes. “Thank you,” the old man echoed behind her, seated cross-legged on the grass. And I looked at one of the little red lamps. I listened to my heart until it grew steady. And I conjured up Leiya Tevorova’s words like a smokeless fire.

The Afflicted must sit facing in the direction of the North, which, though it be not the Dwelling-Place of the Angel, is yet the place which draws the Spirit to it with its Vapors, and thus may keep it lingering in its Environs. The Afflicted must then bring to mind a certain Wraith or Image which shall have the form of a Mountain of Nine Gorges. Each of the Gorges shall be deep, ragged, and abysmal, and filled with brilliant and icy Vapors withal. The Afflicted must pursue this Vision until it is well attained, building up the Mountain Stone by Stone. When he has achieved it, he must cause, by an action of Mind, a Tree to grow from each of the Nine Gorges. And the Nine Trees shall have a golden Bark, and various Limbs, of which there shall be Nine Hundred on each Tree: one hundred of Ruby, one hundred of Sapphire, one hundred of Carnelian, one hundred of Emerald, one hundred of Chalcedony; and one hundred also of Amethyst, Topaz, Opal, and Lapis Lazuli; and these shall flash with a most unusual Splendor. When the Afflicted has mastered this—the Gorges, and the Trees, and the Branches which are nine times nine hundred in number—then will he be dazzled most grievously by virtue of the Radiance of that Image, which he will maintain through sore Travail. And when he is able to look upon it without Agony of Spirit, then must he bring into his Vision miraculous Birds, of which there shall be nine hundred on each of the Branches of the Nine Trees; and each Bird shall have nine thousand colored Feathers. On each of the Birds one thousand Feathers shall be jetty black, one thousand white, one thousand blue, one thousand others yellow; and one thousand each of red, green, purple, and bright orange; and one thousand feathers shall be clear as Glass. The Afflicted must perceive these things at once: the Mountain, the Gorges, the Trees with all their Limbs, and the colored Birds. Then shall there come a moment of most dreadful Suffering, which shall be sharp, white, and heated as if in a Forge. And when that Moment has passed, the Afflicted shall no longer see the Mountain, nor any of the things he has lately perceived; but another Vision shall take its place, an unfamiliar Image which shall take a form such as that of a Wood or a Cave. Then shall the Afflicted enter the Cave, or the Wood, or the Strange House, or whatever Image is by him perceived; he shall walk until the Image grows obscured with a gaping Darkness. And in that Darkness he shall meet the Angel.

“Jissavet,” I said. “Answer me.”

The red lamp burned, and the angel arrived. She stood there in her shift, her shoulders bright as dawn. Her bare feet tore the fabric of the air. Sparks clung to her plaits; her inimical light engulfed the glow of the little red lamp. A veiled light, certainly less than what she was capable of, but still a light intrinsically hostile to life. In the islands we say that death is dark, but I know there is a light beyond that door, intolerable, beyond compare.

“Jevick,” she said. Her absorbed, caressing voice. Her expression of longing and the wildness in her beautiful brooding eyes. She raised her hand, and I stiffened and closed my eyes, expecting a blow, but she did not strike. “Jevick,” she said again: a glass shard in my brain.

Words came back to me, whispered prayers, ritual incantations: Preserve us, O gods, from those who speak without voices. With an effort of will, my eyes tightly closed, my head pressed back against the chair, I forced myself to say: “I have a question.”

“I will tell you everything,” she said. “I will tell you everything that happened. You will write it for me in the vallon.”

I opened my eyes. She hung in the middle air, her hand still raised in an orator’s gesture. All about her gleamed a soft albescent fire. She smiled at me, stars falling. “I was waiting for you. I knew you’d call me. You are that rare thing, I said: a wise man from the islands.”

I swallowed and stumbled on. “My question. My question is for this woman here, this Olondrian woman. Her grandson is lost. Do you know where he is?”

She stared at me from the circle of her light. She was still so small. Had I stood beside her I could have looked straight down on the top of her head. I sat, frozen, on the Olondrian chair, not daring to move. After a moment I managed to say: “This woman’s grandson . . .”

“Grandson,” she said. Her glance was like a needle. It was her glance of startling clarity, which I remembered from the Ardonyi.

Then her voice clashed against my brain in a shower of brilliant sparks. “What do you want? Are you asking me to find him? You dare to ask me that?”

“Not me. These people. Their priest. He said you could answer—”

“Answer! Do you like to see me? Does it please you?”

She advanced, a golden menace.

“No,” I screamed.

“For me it is the same. The same. To enter the country again—that country—among the living—never! I couldn’t bear it!”

She shuddered, throwing off light. I could feel her dread, as strong as my own, the dread of crossing. She clenched her fists. “Write me a vallon,” she said.

“I can’t. Jissavet, these people are trying to help you. They’ll find—they’ll find your—”

“Write me a vallon!”

“Stop!” I screamed, pressing my hands over my eyes. The outlines of my fingers throbbed before me, huge and blurred, the blood in the body like oil in a lamp. Then she was gone.

I came to myself on the ground, in the odor of vomit. “Grandson,” I murmured. A face floated over me, tearful, the face of a stranger. An Olondrian peasant woman. My head was pillowed on her knees. “Thank you, my son,” she sobbed, her fingers in my hair.

“But I told you nothing.”

“We felt her. We saw your torment. Avneayni . . .”

I rolled away from her, sat up after a brief struggle, spat in the grass. My chair lay on its side. Two of the little lamps had gone out; another blinked madly on the verge of dissolution. And we—myself, the woman, and the old man she had brought with her—we looked at one another like the survivors of a deluge. The girl still stared at the wall. She stood in that same attitude, as if exiled from life, when out on the starlit commons a storm arose.

At first I thought it merely the noise of the Market. Some new attraction must have arrived, I thought dully: dancers or a wagon full of clowns. Then, as the woman was helping me stand up, a figure burst into the tent, his dark face wild and sweating. “Fly, fly!” he shrieked. “It’s the Guard!”

Stains on his robe—earth or blood. “The Guard, I tell you!” he shouted, waving hands like claws as if threatening to tear us apart. A moment his shadow chased itself over the walls, and then he fled. As the tent flap opened and fell, I caught a glimpse of fire.

Then we moved. We ran as one. Not for long—the moment I stepped outside, a rushing figure slammed into me, and I fell. A taste of Olondrian soil in my mouth. When I scrambled to my feet the people who had been with me were gone and the earth was on fire.

Heat blew toward me, crackling, lifting my hair.

The booths were burning. People writhed on the ground, flame-laced, and the dry grass turned to smoke.

Against the firelight, horses. They reared and plunged in the air, screaming with fear and rage. Their riders wore helmets and wielded clubs and did not fall. Their huge silhouettes struck grimly, without hesitation, again and again. Near me a girl rolled senseless, firelit blood in her hair.

Screams wracked the night.

The horseman who had struck the girl turned his beast, whirling his club above his head. “E drom!” he shouted. The Stone. His stallion’s hooves knives in the air, his weapon a blur. I ducked, lifted my robe to the level of my knees, and ran.

We were all running, scattered like mice in flood time. We ran for the fields, the nearby woods, and they chased us, exchanging cries like hunters. The history books would tell of the burning of the Night Market of Nuillen, but they would erase the terror, the stench of blood and soot. And the noise—the noise. Running, I struck my foot on a stone and fell with a splash, up to my chin in an irrigation ditch. The sides were steep enough to provide a chance that a horse would not tread on me if I stayed close. I lay flat in the mud, screams in my ears.

I turned myself sideways, wriggled into the side of the ditch, and plastered my body with mud. A little water flowed past me sluggishly, red with fire. Horses flew over like eagles. My eyelids shuddered, stung by smoke. Toward dawn the fire leapt over me, singeing the field, and was gone.