HE WHO NUMBERS BUT DOES NOT NAME.

 

IT IS HE WHO HERALDS THE COMING TRAGEDY.

 

HIS FOOTPRINTS LAY ABOUT THE MUDDIED POOL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

--FROM THE  EJEMAH’TERAK,

 

 

BOOK FOUR, VV. 3111-14

 

At the center of the raftered ceiling, hanging down between the six supporting poles, was a massive inverted funnel, cunningly fashioned of wood. Beneath it a circle of earth had been excavated and filled with close-fitting stones, that pit surrounded by a built-up bank of rock, in which a huge pile of firewood had been carefully stacked.

Outside, the great plains of this new Age ran dark to the horizon, the distant mountains touched by the pale light of a tiny moon. It was late now, and the lodge house, finished hours past, was deep in shadow, its wooden walls and pillars, its sleeping stalls and meeting rooms lit only by a handful of flickering lamps, set high up on the inner walls, ancient oil lamps in iron cressets. Several hundred were gathered there in the space surrounding the pit as Eedrah struck the tinder and, raising the long pole, carried the flaming lamp across.

There was a pause as the kindling caught and then a sudden blaze of light. Sparks flew up into the darkness overhead.

There was a great cheer. In the burgeoning light, dozens of smiling faces looked to Eedrah.

“Say something!” Marrim called. She was swollen of belly now; the firelight danced in her smiling face.

Eedrah looked about him; then, casting the pole into the blazing fire, he raised both arms for silence. “Friends,” he began, “this has been a memorable day, a day of new beginnings, and I am glad to be among such company. But lest we forget, I would like to thank one person who, above all others, is responsible for our happiness…”

He turned, looking to where Atrus sat beside Catherine, and extending an arm, beckoned Atrus to join him.

Reluctantly, Atrus stood and came across. There was another huge cheer that went on and on until Eedrah raised a hand for silence.

“M words are brief and simple,” Eedrah said, and, turning to Atrus, he bowed deeply. “On behalf of all here, we thank you, Atrus.”

There were more cheers and whoops from Irras and Carrad.

Atrus looked about him, his expression for that moment stern, determined—the face they knew so well—and then he smiled. “Friends”—he turned, looking to Gat—“brothers…I am fortunate to be here with you tonight. Fortunate to have known you all. But now you must set out on this new venture without me.”

There were cries of “No!” and “Stay!” but Atrus waved them aside.

“This is your world, your experiment in living, not mine. Yet I would offer you some words of advice before we part.”

Total silence had fallen among the watching gathering. Only the crackle of the flames broke that silence as Atrus looked about him.

“When I wrote this Age, I tried to put all my experience, everything I knew about writing, into it. To make it the best I could. Yet even as I labored to do so, I was conscious that for all my skill, I could but do half the job.”

“But this is a wonder Age!” Eedrah said.

Atrus smiled. “I thank you, Eedrah, for your kind words, yet that is not what I meant. I was speaking of the new society you must build. You see, just as we take care to write our Ages, so should we take care to creae—to write, if you like—the social forms and structures that we wish to adopt within those Ages; those elements that create a fair and healthy society. This I see as the one great task confronting you.

“This must be your world, and you must shape it. All I shall say is that you should learn from past mistakes and take what is best, not worst, from those systems you have knowledge of. You have a new start, a fresh chance of living, with new earth to till and new air to breathe. Take that chance, but for the Maker’s sake, use it wisely.”

There was a deep murmur of agreement. Atrus waited until it had died down, then spoke again.

“Tomorrow we leave the past behind. Tomorrow we close a great chapter and begin anew. Yet we must not forget from whence we have come. That was the mistake the Terahnee made.” He smiled. “We are not great lords, as the Terahnee thought they were, but simple men, and we must do as simple men do and build for tomorrow, brick upon brick, stone upon stone. Yet even as we do so, it is beholden upon us to remind our children and our children’s children of what was, and tell them tales of lands that are no more. That is our way, and must remain our way, until the last word is written in the last book.”

Atrus took a long breath, as if about to say more, then, raising a hand, he turned and walked from the circle.

There was a moment’s silence, and then a great cheer went up that went on and on while the flames leapt high into the darkness.

 

 

§

 

 

That morning they returned to Terahnee for the last time.

While Atrus and the others packed, Catherine went to her room in Ro’Jethhe’s mansion. Atrus found her there an hour later, stowing the last few things into her trunk.

“Are we ready?” she asked.

“Almost.” Atrus kissed her shoulder, then looked across the room. There were books open on her desk—Terahnee books by the look of them—as well as her own notebook.

“Still working?”

Catherine barely glanced at him. “Hh-hmm.”

“What are you working on?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Can I see?”

She laughed. “No. Not until I’ve finished.”

“A secret, eh?”

“A secret. Now let me finish here and then I’ll join you.”

“Okay, but don’t be late, Catherine, or we shall go without you.”

 

 

§

 

 

Once Atrus was gone, Catherine crossed the room and, slipping the leather bookmarks back into place, picked the books up and carried them across, placing them carefully inside the trunk.

It was finally beginning to make sense. For a long time she had had nothing but snippets and vague references, tantalizing but obscure, but now, thanks to these ancient Terahnee texts, she was beginning to piece the whole of it together.

The relyimah text was a corrupted one, she knew now, and more than two-thirds of its “prophecies” were little more than doggerel added long after the originals had been framed. Not that there was one single original text of the ancient prophecies. As far as she could make out, there had been numerous so-called prophets in ancient times, back in that original homeland—Garternay—from which both Terahnee and D’ni had split off; and what was known as the Book of Prophecies was in fact a much later text, collecting together many—though not all—of the surviving prophecies.

That had been five, maybe six thousand years ago. And then had come the split and a period of forgetting so traumatic and so violent that it was a wonder anything survived to tell that tale.

Atrus, she knew, would have been angry with her had he known what she was doing. He did not believe in fate and counted the prophecies a lot of superstitious nonsense. As she, at first, had done. But circumstance had changed her mind.

A year ago, at the same time Atrus had begun work on his new Age, she had begun a deeper, more serious investigation into the matter, gathering together everything she could find on the subject, sifting through that great pile of books until she had established what was genuine and what were later additions to the canon.

But now time had caught up with her. It was time to leave Terahnee, even as she had begun to make sense of what had happened here.

Et even that, she knew now, was as it was meant to be, for time was a circle, and the circle was about to be closed.

She closed the lid of the trunk and tightened the leather straps, then went out into the hallway and called for Irras and Carrad to help her carry it.

Time. It was indeed time.

 

 

§

 

 

The sun was beginning to set as they gathered in the ruins on the top of the great plateau. Most had gone through already to the new Age, but a handful still remained, along with Hersha and the old man, Gat, who, with a party of relyimah, were to help in these final moments. A new vault had been built over the old book chamber. Two holes had been cut into its top surface: one a narrow octagonal well, the other a kind of entrance, shaped like a huge arrowhead. Beside the vault two huge pulleys rested, from each of which dangled massive chains of nara, the final links of which were pinned into the marble-smooth surface of a massive wedge of stone.

Two teams of fifty relyimah waited in harness, watching as Atrus went over to greet Hersha and Gat.

“The time is here,” Atrus said solemnly.

“So it is,” Gat said, his long face pushing the air. “We thought you should know, Atrus. We have renamed this Age. Today it is Terahnee still. But tomorrow, when we wake, it shall be known as Devokan.”

“Hope…” Atrus said, translating the ancient D’ni word. “That is a good name for a world.”

Gat nodded. “We work to build a better, simpler world.”

“And no more like Ymur!”

“No, thank the Ancient words!” Old Gat grinned blindly at Atrus for a moment, then his face grew more somber. “It is a sobering lesson, Atrus, to know that gaining one’s freedom is but the first step to achieving it. Nor did I guess how hard we would have to work simply to keep what we had gained. In that Ymur helped us, though he did not know it or intend it. He sent a warning to us. We have formed a great council, you know.”

“I heard,” Atrus said. “Oma told me.”

“Oma has been a great help. And Esel, too. We shall miss them greatly.”

“We shall be here in spirit, Jidar N’ram.”

“That is a comfort, Atrus, but we must learn to govern ourselves now—to be our own masters.”

“Then let us do what must be done.” He took Gat’s hands. “I am sad, old friend, and yet in my heart I know this is for the best. The child must go his own way, no?”

“So it is, Atrus. So it is.”

 

 

§

 

 

In the last light of the last day of Terahnee, nine dark figures stood atop the vault, cloaked and bare-headed at the end. Stepping out from among them, Eedrah placed the ancient Book into the carved niche within the receptacle they had fashioned, reverence in his every gesture. He stepped back and, at a signal from Atrus, Irras and Carrad began to let out the chains, lowering the Book into the deep shaft. As it touched bottom, they let go, watching, fascinated, as the fine links slithered into that eight-sided darkness.

There was a moment’s stillness, and then the great slabs, which had stood like huge stone petals about the shaft, folded down, the last of the nine—a small octagon in itself—tilting over and slotting into place like a capstone, the joint between it and the others so fine, so perfectly made, it could no longer be seen.

Atrus knelt, examining their work; then, satisfied, he stood and turned back to the company.

“Sealing these Books in stone is not as secure as the entrusting of Books between friends. Yet today we do more than safeguard the Ages. We return symbolically to that very first day, ten thousand years ago, when the great Linking Books between D’ni and Terahnee were first sealed. So it was, and so it must be once again. And so we leave this land of hope, to find our own separate destinies.”

Atrus turned, looking behind him at the dying sun.

A bird called, high and sweet in the silence.

They stood there, watching him—Catherine; and Eedrah and his young wife, Marrim; Carrad and Irras; Masters Tamon and Tergahn; and lastly young Allem, from Averone, who had left her parents in her native world to be Marrim’s pupil.

D’ni was once again sealed from Terahnee, the two Ages as inaccessible to each other as lands behind a mirror. A dream under stone.

For a moment longer they stood there, the silence engulfing them, each of them awed by the significance of that moment. The ancient ruins lay all about and below them even as the great world of Terahnee sank slowly into darkness. Then, as the twilight shaded into night, Atrus turned and descended into the vault, the others following in silence, Eedrah alone pausing briefly to turn and look back before he, too, went down into the lamp-lit interior.

The moon now shone.

At a signal from Hersha, the relyimah began to strain, hauling upon the great chains, five thousand years of practice perfected in the ease with which they raised the capping stone, that massive arrowhead swaying gently as it lifted.

Slowly it rose, swinging up and over the vault, Hersha directing his volunteers with quiet, patient words. And then slowly, very slowly, it came down again, hovering an instant, and then sliding into the waiting gap with a sigh of polished stone against polished stone.

It was done.

Silent as shadows they stole away, leaving the two ancients alone upon the plateau. They were still a moment, both blind and seeing eyes staring at the great vault that sat amid the ruins, and then they, too, turned away.

Shadows on the silver. And silence. The circle closed.