So, he who holds it may conquer.

Hear, as we heard in our dreaming, Medlo, the scion of Rhees.

CHAPTER FOUR.

JAER.

Years 1158-1163 As for Jaer, the boy went on growing the girl went on growing. Both of them, at once and interchangeably. The only good thing that could be said for it was that there were no other children around to confuse the issue or complicate Jaer's perception of things. Insofar as Jaer was concerned, the world was like this, with bodies that were one way one day and another way another day, puckered first inward and then outward in a particular place, otherwise not much different, changing for no known reason at no foreseeable interval, though always while Jaer slept.

Ephraim and Nathan watched this growing with carefully concealed wonder. There were long night hours during which they would sit before the fire with the wind howling around the tower ledges saying to one another, 'Do you think perhaps ...' or 'Maybe the reason is ..., or 'Let us consider the implications of... By the time Jaer had weathered ten years, all the implications had been considered down to the last possible inference and reason had been piled upon reason to no avail. They understood no-more than they had understood in the beginning, and their lack of understanding was complicated by an approaching need to explain to Jaer that he/she was not, indeed, the norm in a world which would have expelled him, her at once if it had had the least opportunity.

'If Jaer could only control it,' Ephraim complained for the thousandth time. 'If Jaer could determine when it would happen. What will he do, going to bed as a man, a hostler, a member of a caravan, only to wake in the body of a dancing girl? The dangers? The problems? The explanations?'

'There could be no explanations. Who would believe it? Who would accept it? In this world of Gahlians, Separation, Gates and Seals, who would not reach at once for a knife or bludgeon ...'

'But,' Ephraim continued, 'there is still some world outside the Separated world. Just because you and I have spent much of our old lives inside it doesn't mean that there isn't something of the other world still there. If Jaer can get out, past the Seal Bearers and the black-robed minions, and the Temples, and the Separated villages, and the enclaves...'

'If Jaer could get down the canyon, past the falls, by all the guard towers and the patrols with their wagons, and past every barrier between here and Orena (assuming that Orena is still there), Jaer would still be Jaer and have the same problem.'

'Our people would accept him, Nathan. You know they would.'

Nathan harumphed. 'Better he stays here. With us.'

Ephraim shook his head sadly. They had spoken of this so many times before. 'We're old, Nathan. We're so old that the winds of age echo along our ribs and pick at our eye sockets. We could be gone tomorrow. A chill, say, or a little slip on the cliff side. I feel as fragile as a dried flower. I rattle a little in the moving air, but I'm only coherent dust-a shape of what once was. My essence is going.'

'You've been saying that your essence was going for the last twenty years.'

'Well, my fragrance has gone. I'm redolent of decay.'

'I've heard that before, too.'

'The point is,' said Ephraim with some asperity, 'that Jaer can't stay here once we're gone. Not for the love of thee or of me or the memory of his mother or the hope of a patrimony from some unknown source. Jaer could not stay forever alone. Jaer will go. We must be able to feel that we have helped him to survive when that happens. That's all.'

So, for the moment, they stopped discussing it and began to plan ways in which Jaer might survive. They began by matter-of-factly telling Jaer that he/she was unique, a freak, a strangeness. They went on to explain that the world would try to destroy Jaer, and that it was Jaer's business to figure out ways the world could be foiled in that attempt. They made up the rules as they went along, since no rules ever made before would have helped them.

'It's really fortunate for you that all travellers have to wear orbansin,' said Nathan.

'Why?' This was a word of which Jaer was excessively fond.

'Because He From Gahl did not pass away,' muttered Ephraim.

Nathan went on without noticing the interruption. 'About nine hundred years ago, in about 210 TC, a man came from Obnor Gahl and started the Separation. That is, so far as we now know, he was a man, and it is said that he came from Obnor Gahl, an old city on the ancient Rochagamian road, north of Orena near the badlands. He had no name. He was called "He from Gahl," or sometimes Just "Gahl." It was a bad time. The reign of the Axe King had ended just a few years before, and there was disorder and ruin. He from Gahl preached Separation as a way of gaining security and peace, each group to Separate from all others so that they might live only like with like.'

'He came first to Soolenter,' murmured Ephraim. 'Up in the Savus Mountains ...'

Nathan went on. 'It seemed to make sense to people weary of the confusion and violence. That first city began to split up on the basis of what was it? skin colour, I think. Then, later it split again on the basis of something else, accent, or eye colour, or food habits, or anything at all. Each section walled itself off from the others into an enclave. Some groups moved out of the city entirely to set up small communities by themselves.'

'The first Separated villages,' nodded Epraim. 'The very first ones.'

'He From Gahl, had... followers, I guess. Minions. Acolytes? No, not acolytes. That has a religious meaning to it, and Gahl wasn't preaching a religion... exactly. The minions came from this place and that, all different, but they became all the same. They built a "Temple of Separation" in Soolenter. Again, we shouldn't call it a temple. No worship is done there, so far as we know. But that's what the Gahlians called it. Perhaps that's the only word they had. They might-have said "armoury" or "redoubt" and have made more sense....' Nathan's thoughts seemed to carry him away into a painful silence, and Jaer did not say 'why' or 'what happened then' for several minutes. At last Nathan sighed and went on.

'Well, there was still a need for trade. Food had to be transported from one place to another. Fuel had to be moved, and metals. None of the enclaves or villages were completely self-sufficient. In order that no person "offend" another person by appearing different or strange, it became the custom to wear orbansin. There's one in the wardrobe. In a sense, an orbansa is a wardrobe, a robe that wards others away. It covers everything, head to heel. They are worn by anyone moving among enclaves or villages traders, sailors, any travellers at all.'

Ephraim interrupted, obviously thinking about something else. 'Gahlism might be called a political system, Jaer, of a very ancient kind. Or a secret society of some kind, since they do not tell outsiders what it is they believe, or intend, or allow others in those so-called Temples....'

Nathan went on doggedly. 'There were some people who thought that Separation was a dangerous, wicked teaching. The Sisterhoods felt so, and the people in Orena. In Orena we have always had many differences, of color, of ideas, of languages. We were all alike in one way, however! We all thought Gahlism would pass. We said it couldn't go on. For hundreds of years we said that. But, it does. Now there are "Temples of Separation" from Obnor Gahl to M'Wandi, all the way up the coast of Dantland, into Jowr and Sorgen, in Howbin and Tharsh.'

'Up much of the River Rochagor. Into the old cities of Labat Ochor and Gombator let me see, they call them Tiles and Tanner now.' Ephraim ticked them off on his fingers. 'There is one here on this island, in Candor, and ships of the black robes have been seen headed toward Cholder and Folazh.'

'Everywhere,' said Jaer dispiritedly.

'No. Not in the high north, yet. The Laklands may well be free of them still, and the peninsula of Methyl-Drossy. Also, they had not gone far south.'

'Almost everywhere,' amended Jaer. 'Almost everywhere I will have to wear those robes.'

'Orbansin, yes. Though an orbansa is not always protection. The more minions of Gahl there are, the more difficult it is to travel anywhere. There are "Temples" everywhere, monitoring the "Separation" to see it is correct They keep making the rules more strict, more detailed. They order certain people cast out or given to them.' Ephraim stumbled over the words as though he had something foul in his mouth. 'And we from Orena go on collecting languages and cultures which are disappearing. The smaller the group, the less chance it has of survival, and those who carry the Seals of Separation seem always to work toward smaller and smaller groups, taking more and more of the people away.' There was a long, sad silence and then Nathan changed the subject abruptly.

Jaer accepted it all with a patient puzzlement. Jaer was unique. There was no other child, so far as Jaer was concerned, in the universe. The moving flecks at the bottom of the cliff were not truly people, not creatures identifiably similar to himself/herself. Ephraim and Nathan were not like Jaer, either. They had told him that he/she was alone, but there are no degrees of aloneness. Not that Jaer said that to himself, merely that it did not seem to matter as much to Jaer as it did to the men.

Ephraim to Nathan: 'There's another thing. The child is not always the same person, whichever sex he/she is. She was a little slender thing last week, with dark hair and a kind of hazy look, a way of fluttering her hands. Then yesterday the girl was stouter, did you notice? With a habit of plunking her feet down.', 'You would have thought them sisters.'

'Oh, yes. Perhaps. I don't mean they seemed unrelated. But one would think she would be at least the same person each time.'

'Why would one think that?'

'Because it's reasonable. Logical.'

'And what in the name of devils has reason or logic to do with it?'

The old men did not neglect Jaer's education. They taught him/her to swim in the pool above the falls; to sew; to shoot with a bow; to speak five languages rather well and several more a little; to read and write; to walk silently; to use an axe; to tie knots; to draw a map and read one; to count and calculate; to play the jangle; to kill game and skin it and tan the hide; to tell directions by the stars; to build a fire with nothing but wood, a knife, and a shoelace; to keep clean; and that there were no answers to some questions.

'I wish you wouldn't tell me once more you don't know,' Jaer grumbled.

'But I don't know,' said Nathan. 'What's more, probably no one knows. I wish you'd quit asking questions that have no answers.'

'What are women like?' asked Jaer impishly.

'What do you mean, what are women like? I've shown you pictures and explained the anatomy....'

'I mean, what are they like?'

'I don't know.'

Or, on the sun-warmed stone in the early morning, as Ephraim smoked a pipe after breakfast: 'Why do you live here, Ephraim? Why did you leave Orena?'

'We thought it was important to record things.'

'What kinds of things?'

'Knowledge. Books. Languages. Whatever we can find that's left from the Second Cycle or early Third Cycle. Maybe even something from the First Cycle, though that's only a collector's dream. We collect whatever we observe.'

'But why do you do that?'

'Because otherwise it would all be lost. The people down in the valley have lost a lot in the last twenty years. They've lost songs and weaving patterns. They've forgotten most of their history. They have forgotten how to rotate crops and use fertilizer.'

'Are you going to teach them what they've fogotten?'

'No. I'm not going to teach them anything! Go do something. Go read your history. Stop asking questions for a while.'

Jaer read the history for a while. First Cycle: a time of mystery and prehistory, full of wizards that some called devils with great powers that no one understood. Destruction. Cataclysm. AH the wizards departing except a few left in the great city beside the Eastern Sea. 'Tharliezalor,' chapter Jaer, 'Tharly-ay-za-lor, beside the Eastern Sea.' Boom, boom, a punctuation of heels against the wall over his bed. Jaer often read upside down. 'Then everything went to pot? he said, quoting Nathan. 'To pot.' After the wizards left, the rest of the world seemed to fall into disorder and darkness.

Then the Thiene, the Thousand, came out of Tharliezalor to pick up the pieces. It was they who had brought the archivists out of Tchent, they who had taught the people how to read, they who had started numbering the years again, they who had started the Sisterhoods. Reading about the Thiene always made Jaer feel itchy behind the eyes, as though there were something he/she should know which was not in the books anywhere. Jaer rubbed at the itch fretfully, rolled over to rearrange the book.

Second Cycle: the Thiene roaming around, putting things in order, then disappearing. Maybe. Ephraim had said once there was a Remnant in Orena, but Nathan had said 'Hush' in an odd voice. Something itchy there. Maybe the Remnant wasn't the Thiene at all. Maybe it was wizards. Not likely. Jaer sighed. Nothing much after that in the Second Cycle except the Akwithian kings and their dull battles. Pride, Nathan had said. Pride and folly. Well, old Sud-Akwith had tried to enter the Thiene's city of Tharliezalor even though the archivists at Tchent told him he mustn't, but he found nothing there but horror and awfulness. 'He was very fortunate to have come out of it with a whole skin,' Jaer commented primly, quoting Ephraim. The book had a picture of serim, bloody fangs dripping beneath stony eyes. 'Very fortunate,' Jaer said again, turning the page in some haste.

Then all the people who lived near Tharliezalor came running out of the East, running away from something they couldn't se or talk about. People tried to go there, to see what was Wrong but couldn't get there. All the east was behind the Concealment. It didn't do any good at all to ask Nathan or Ephraim about the Concealment. They said they didn't know. Maybe someone in the Sisterhood might know, they said, but no one in Orena did. ('No one?' Ephraim had asked, in that odd voice. Nathan hadn't answered.) Then Sud-Akwith threw his sword away. Widon the Golden went into the north. Then everything went to pot again. Until the Third Cycle. The Axe King. More battles, altogether meaner and nastier, and then Gahl. Jaer put the book away in disgust. The things he really wanted to know weren't in the book, weren't in any of the books.

Later: 'Nathan, why won't Ephraim teach the people what they've forgotten?'

'Sometimes when Ephraim is taking his bath, you take a good look at his back and legs. That's what happened to him the last time he tried to teach people what they'd forgotten.'

Jaer did so. The scars were old, but deep and close together as though the flesh had been repeatedly cut to the bone.

And again, later: 'Nathan, are you and Ephraim going back to Orena? Are you going to take all the things you've written down?'

'The records will go into the vault here, Jaer. This tower was built by the wizards at least / think so. It is protected more powerfully than even Ephraim or I can understand, and we've made a bit of a study of the matter. The people of Orena know where this place is, this place and others like it, places older than our histories but seemingly made for this purpose. As for us, well, we would have gone away on a journey of our own long since if we hadn't had a child full of questions to look after. We were going to leave the summer we found you.'

'Why didn't you just take me and go?'

'If we had gone alone, just the two of us, likely only one of us would have survived the trip. With a baby, it's likely none of us would have made it. It's hard to hide a baby, even under an orbansa. Babies cry, you know. They get hungry at inconvenient times. Certain people out there, certain creatures out there, seem to have an appetite for babies and young ones.'

'They'd have killed me, huh?'

'They'd have done that, yes. Or worse. Now Ephraim says he's too fragile to go.'

'I know. He says the wind plays in his bones.'

'His bones remember pain. That doesn't make things easier.'

Jaer thought long on this, unsure whether to be glad that the old men had thought enough of the baby to give up their journey or sad that they had given up so much. It was a thought which came back at intervals as Jaer learned and experienced what the place afforded. In the forests there were many birds and beasts, some of them belonging to that group of beings which the old men called 'mythical.' They were always amused when Jaer said he had seen some of that kind, rather as though they thought he was creating stories for them. Jaer was not sure how to react to this attitude, nor was he sure about the difference between the 'mythical' creatures and the others. He treated them all with the same polite caution. He did note one seeming difference. Mythical creatures were not generally considered edible by the other kind.

And then, too, there were the strange happenings. Once in a great while Jaer could tell what it was the old men were thinking. They called this 'being psychic,' and they explained that it was an unreliable talent which people had had, more or less, always. Starting a fire without using his hands was something Jaer could do now and then, when he felt like it, when no one else was around. He never mentioned this to either Nathan or Ephraim, somehow knowing it would upset them.

One thing he did mention to Nathan from time to time was the strange dreams he had, she had, often though not always at the time the body changed. She saw herself in a place of towering stone which seemed to breathe with ominous life. Beside her strode a man, black, his hair flowing behind him in wild tails, carrying a shaft of silver fire. There was a woman with them, dancing. Jaer dreamed, sometimes, of another woman, one who walked among huge beasts with her hands on their heads, calm with contained fury and crowned with gemmed light. Jaer dreamed of an old woman, too, who in some strange fashion was dreatning of Jaer. When told all this, Nathan laughed and told Jaer to forget the dreams, that they were only sleep visions, the endlessly active mind sorting through the day's memories to store them away.

Jaer did not believe this, knowing that nothing in the visions could be found in his day's doings or readings, but in time he did forget it. Nathan forgot it, too, or did not know he had not. The images Jaer had spoken of, though haltingly, were compelling and could not have been altogether forgotten.

So life went on, and sometimes he/she was happy, bubbling with the joy of being healthy and alive in a world full of wonders. Always, however, something hovered just at the edge of that world, staining it, threatening it. Ephraim did not name it. Neither did Nathan. Only once in a great while, one of them would say, 'I think it stems from ... that,' with the word 'that' said in a whispering spit as though it meant something unutterably foul. Jaer puzzled over this. 'We dare not go,' Ephraim said. 'Because of that!' His tone was such that Jaer could not ask about that. It was something which included the Keepers and the Separation and the Temples, the far off fields, no longer tended, going back to thistle and thorn. It was a shadow beyond the things one could see or define, something to the east, he thought, beyond the Concealment, beyond the ruins of Tchent. The Thiene were in it somehow, and the ancient times, and the name Taniel.' Jaer learned not to think that as he had learned not to cry in that certain way, for to think it seemed to invite the shadow's attention.

So, Jaer grew, and learned, and waited, and pondered, and was not more impatient for life than was bearable. The years passed, and Jaer was ten.

CHAPTER FIVE.

LEONA.

Year 1163 Deep within the sullen moors of Anisfale lay the lands and leaseholds of the family Fathra, and deep within that family lay the fate and future of lean-limbed Leona, third daughter of a third daughter, fifth child of a fifth child on the father's side, doubly unlucky, therefore utterly without honorable position. The family was so disgusted at her birth that they did not even have new-made the traditional birth-gift of maidens, the circlet with which her hair would be bound until marriage. Instead they found one in some ancient storage room of the fastness and dusted it off, out of fashion though it had surely been for generations. Though the error had been her father's (he might, after all, have restricted his attentions to one of his other wives, getting his unlucky fifth upon Oroneen, fourth daughter, for whom it would have been only a second birth, or upon Panaba, who had already born nine and was, herself, twelfth daughter) it was Leona who would suffer for it. She was consigned at birth to a long spinsterhood, a withering away in the caring for other children and other households than her own. She would never need to give her maiden circlet to a husband, therefore she did not need one suitable for giving.

Leona could not recall when she first became aware of being a child unwanted who had arrived untimely. It was simply something that was known by everyone, herself no less than they. She was not mocked for it, nor taunted. It was as though she had some kind of deformity which disqualified her for life but did not, unfortunately, seem likely to kill her. Slender she was, as lovely as a sapling in spring, lithe as a reed and as graceful as blown grass. Still, she would never marry, never bear children. Out of politeness no one mentioned it, but no one would have been fool enough to say that it didn't matter.

Whether she sensed this early or not, she never looked at any boy or man with favour, preferring instead the lonely muted swell of the moors, or her own company, or the love and companionship of certain of the women of the family. She loved first a sister, then a young aunt, and finally a cousin whose lineaments were much like her own, Fabla. When with Fabla, Leona could forget or simply not think of her maimed life, which she carried day to day as she might have carried a twisted spine or a withered limb. With Fabla, or sometimes when alone on the moors, she could feel as though she had been born anew, translated into another life, another body, a being not her own. Once in a while, alone on the moors with the sun riding low in the west to look under the edge of the cloud blanket and the green of every herb and tree shattering, jewel-like, in that light, with the high call of a hawk creasing the last light with a knife edge of sound-why, then she would feel suddenly born into that new life with every thump of her heart pumping light into her veins until she glowed.

Or, with Fabla, at planting and harvest, lamb-fall or shearing, carding and weaving, in all things done by the women of Anisfale in which they two were together, when they sat alone by the fire with their spinning wheels echoing the fire voice and all the other voices of the world silent, with amber light falling on the stones of the floor and moving in dusty corners to make shy, mysterious shapes, then sometimes she would fill with comfort as a glass is filled with wine, the clear gleaming substance of it shading with ruby and rose and amber, until it stands too full to hold more. Or, in the bed with Fabla, curled like a leaf against her, with the sound of Fabla's heart brushing her ear and the feather comforter soft at the side of her face, she might feel the quiet and the warm filling her and flooding her until the pain of being herself washed away on a tide of sleep.

In a way, she knew without ever thinking about it that there was another world of light and warmth and joy to which she might have been born. It never occurred to her that the world of light was one to which she might aspire; her daily sorrow was the reality and her joy was the dream. She never thought that it might be the other way around.

When the family talked of marriage and children and families, it was understood that Leona was not a part of that. When they spoke of wife barter and courting feasts, it was with the shared knowledge that Leona could be interested only as an inconspicuous observer. She was that one born to double numbers for whom no provision could be made.

There were proofs of this attitude more subtle than the general disregard. In Anisfale there were certain rituals which were provided for the people of the moors at various stages in their lives. There were naming ceremonies and dedication ceremonies, to say nothing of those ceremonies of invocation and protection which should have been conducted for her when she became a woman. Perhaps they thought, if they thought, that she was not a woman, for women marry and bear children, things Leona could never do, a number squared on both sides of the bed and therefore impossibly unlucky. The ceremonies invested the family with the life of each member, each member with the needs of the family. But Leona was unlucky; she could require nothing, contribute nothing.

They might have done better to remember why the ceremonies had originated. They were not only pleasant customs, gifts to be given as the people chose and thought proper, but were great and potent weapons with which the families had long defended themselves against an un-remembered danger. Who, hearing the Act of Protection chanted, 'Forfend the beast and the demon from our humanity' would have suspected that the words were anything but metaphorical?

The ceremonies were done for each member of the family, each of the people of Anisfale at the proper time, except for Leona. Those who administered the ceremonies did not think of it, did not notice the exclusion. Leona herself did not think of it. She went on bearing her daily life and rejoicing in Fabla's company.

There came an end to their joy. Fabla was a third daughter, fifth child, and she had a family-brother, Deek-moth. The time came when Deekmoth, as the custom was, chose a wife from another clan and offered Fabla in exchange to Linnos, first child, first son no double numbers there. Fabla cried that she was not willing, but she was strong and bright-haired, fair of feature and soft of voice. Willing or no, she was suitable to exchange for the sister of Linnos and become Linnos's wife. Willing or no she was exchanged and sent away, across the muted moors and into the twilight of the north. Thereafter, she and Leona might meet at festivals or funerals.

Since it was not considered important that wives enjoy their husbands' attentions, it was not remarked that Fabla detested the attentions of Linnos. She conceived in good time and bore a son which was, of course, a first of a first on the father's side and therefore counted a throwaway if it did not survive. Fabla should have recovered in a few months and conceived promptly again.

But she did not. She did not recover from the weakness of birthing but lingered, weakening gradually, between half life and half death, unwilling either to live or to die, unwilling to hold the child or see it gone, unwilling to cry or cease from crying. The women who assisted at birthings did not know what to do. The doctor who was sent for confessed himself at a loss. At last, Linnos sought to return Fabla to her brother, but since this would have necessitated the return of Linnos's sister, Deekmoth was unwilling. Linnos blustered and threatened. He could not take another wife for several years; he could not return Fabla; he could get no good of her while she lay half dead. Finally he sent to the oracle at Stonycroft and was gifted with the words of that old man.

'She may hang as she is between life and death for many years,' said the oracle, 'until someone finds and brings the Vessel of Healing of the Founding Doctor, which would certainly bring her back to living. The oracle did not know where the Vessel might be found.

Linnos said he might go inquire about it after shearing, if he found time. Meanwhile, he found a plump companion at the tavern in Ne'rdale and left Fabla to the care of an ancient crone. And all this time Leona suffered as though it had been she who bore and was ill and could not recover. Her face grew gaunt and lined and her eyes deep-set, and there was not an hour of any day in which she did not long for Fabla. She begged that she might be let go to Fabla, but they would not let her. At last she simply went, without their permission.