Tathea Read online

  She thanked the captain and bade him farewell; then she boarded a small boat and was rowed ashore. She set foot on the wooden pier with an almost dizzy sensation. Imagination and reality blended in damp wind cool to the skin and the firm feel of land beneath her feet. There was nothing of the stillness of the desert here; the place was noisy and bursting, and the brilliance of the sun brought none of the hard, searing heat she was used to.

  She walked slowly along the quay and into the narrow seafront street. Men and women passed her going about their tasks, carrying nets and bales of cotton, strings of vegetables, baskets of fish. Ships were being loaded and unloaded, rigging mended, merchandise argued over. She looked at them curiously. They were a fairer people than the black-haired, black-eyed Shinabari. Their faces were softer. Some of them had gray or sea-blue eyes. Memories of her mother awoke with a sweetness that overwhelmed her. She stood still, the pale buildings swimming around her, the filigree patterns of the nets on the stone merging until she could no longer see their edges.

  She had lost her own child. This was the home of half her ancestry. The cry of the blood should be here.

  “Are you looking for someone?” It was a woman’s voice.

  “What?”

  “Are you looking for someone?” the woman repeated, concern puckering her brow.

  No Shinabari assassin would be pursuing her here. “Yes,” Ta-Thea said eagerly. “I seek my mother’s family. She came from Orimiasse.”

  The woman looked at her doubtfully but without suspicion. Ta-Thea’s foreign, desert face was clear for anyone to see.

  “Her name?” she asked quietly.

  “Tamar of Orwen.”

  “Oh ...” The woman’s face softened. Her dark blue eyes smiled. “Ah, yes. A prince of Shinabar came here nearly forty years ago. They fell in love, and he would not leave without her. He was your father?”

  “Yes.” In spite of herself, Ta-Thea’s heart was racing. Her fingers were stiff, and the blood was pounding in her head. “Can you tell me where I can find those of my mother’s people who still live here?”

  The woman guided her willingly, and within an hour Ta-Thea was being made welcome in a high-towered house whose walls were a pale peach color in the reflected sunset.

  It was the house of her mother’s elder brother. His hair was streaked with white and his eyes as gray as the clouded sea. He spoke softly, but there was a sudden laughter in him, and he masked his opinions for no one. His wife was less open. What was hidden in her nature was too deep to be learned in days, or even weeks. Neither of them pressed Ta-Thea for an account of her journey. They did not even ask her why she had come to the Lost Lands. Perhaps her presence in their house was answer enough.

  She was grateful for their kindness, but for days she felt a loneliness so great it was all she could do not to weep. She wished to be alone to give way to the torrent of emotion inside her, and yet she also sought company to keep her thoughts at bay.

  She walked where her mother had walked before her, saw and touched the things she had, feeling her presence close, the only tie left with love. She wandered along the shore and knelt at the tidal pools where marvelous creatures of every imaginable shape swam, all so small she could have held them in her cupped hands. Later she climbed the cliff tops and stood in the hollows where the sea pinks blew in the wind. She drew in great breaths of air so sweet she thought that as long as she lived the cry of gulls would bring it back to her mind.

  She stared at the horizon. It was the edge of the world. No man knew what lay beyond it. It was like the rim between life and eternity. She looked down a thousand feet to where the waves broke with a force that sent white spume fifty feet up into the air, dazzling in the sun, then fell back again into the cauldron of the blue-green water seething below.

  Other days she walked along the pale sand on the lea shore amid the sweet, clinging scents of yellow sea lupins and wild asphodel and watched the light shimmering through the clear, shallow water.

  Eventually she was ready to seek the priest and perform the ceremony to honor the dead. She could not do it in the Shinabari way. There was no one here who understood it. But then Shinabar had betrayed the dead.

  She found the priest in a headland overlooking the town. He was an elderly man with a broad forehead and thin white hair which was tousled by the sea wind. There was a mildness in his features as he listened to her, the look of a man who was not placid by nature but who had learned patience and conquered self-will.

  “I will take you to the Garden of Shells,” he said gently, grief and compassion in his eyes after she had told him her purpose. He turned and walked up the long path that climbed the western cliffs overlooking the last sea. His twilight blue-gray cloak fluttered as the wind caught it, and his sandaled feet were silent on the warm earth.

  She followed him steadily higher and higher in the sun and the wide sky. The grasses caught at her ankles. The air smelled unlike anything she had known before. It was at once bitter and fragrant.

  At last they came to the crest of a hill whose face had been sheered away by the tides of eternity, falling in a giant wall down to the sea that bounded the world. She looked down in amazement. In a shallow dip a few steps below nestled a garden, not of flowers but of pieces of ancient wood bleached by sun and scoured by salt into bone-pale beauty and subtle shape as smooth as ivory. Between them lay a myriad of shells, each one perfect, in every shade of the sky from the pearl of dawn through the fire of sunrise to the violet of night. Each was half of a bivalve; not a single pair was complete.

  The gulls wheeled and cried above, soaring in the currents of air, wings white against the burning blue of the sky. Far below them the surf boomed and echoed on the rocks, half lost in the singing of the wind. From the folds of his robes the priest took a linen bag and thrust his hand into it. He brought out eight perfect bivalves, spread wide like frozen butterflies.

  “Tell me of those you loved,” he invited her. “What in them was most beautiful to you, and most precious?”

  She began with her mother. This was her place. A hundred things came to mind, both of joy and of sorrow: her delight in the loveliness of the tiny things of the world, the light in the dewdrop, the petals of a flower. Her laughter at the absurd rang like a paean of belief in life. But one virtue outshone all others: courage.

  “She taught me,” said Ta-Thea, “that if you do not have courage, all other virtues may be lost because you cannot keep even love if you are not prepared to fight for it, to endure the hurt it brings, and hold on no matter the cost.”

  “Then tell me what gift you will give to mankind in her name.”

  Her mind reeled. It was utterly beyond what she had imagined. No Shinabari priest would have asked such a thing. He would have spoken of rituals, orisons. But there was a purity in this that was intensely satisfying. Gradually a slow sweet peace spread inside her.

  He saw her silence and understood it.

  “Then give your time to the weary, the sick, the maimed in mind or body,” he said gently. “Serve them one day for each new moon, in your mother’s memory. Mourn with those who mourn, keep watch with those who are alone, and listen to their tale. Covenant with me here in this place that you will do so.”

  “I do!” she answered without hesitation.

  He held out a handful of shells, delicate, perfectly formed and polished clean. “Choose one.”

  Her eyes moved swiftly over them all. There was one—cold, clean pink, and translucent at the edges. She touched it. “That one.”

  “Take it,” he instructed. He produced a metal instrument like a stylus. “Write your mother’s name on one half and your own on the other.”

  She was reluctant to mark the smooth surface, but she did as she was commanded, then looked up, waiting.

  “Break it in half,” he told her. “Cast the half with your mother’s name into the eternity of the sea, and place the half with your own name in this garden, where it will remain, and your covenant with it.”r />
  She held the shell for a moment in the palm of her hand; then obediently she broke it. She drew her arm back and launched the half bearing her mother’s name as high and as wide as she could. Its tiny gleam of white flashed up in a brief arc against the blue void of the sky, then was lost. She placed her half in the shell garden, close to a piece of driftwood like the flying mane of a horse.

  She repeated the act for Mon-Allat, then for Habi, placing his small, golden shell beside the pink one, for him promising to nurture everything new and young, to be tender to the innocence of all beginnings. Then she and the priest turned and walked back over the headland and down towards Orimiasse.

  The days passed more and more easily. The narrow streets of the town became familiar with their sudden flights of steps, the nets strung across to dry, casting intricate shadows on the soft-colored walls, and the pungent smell of salt. The pain of grief did not go, but it became less sharp. She found companionship and much to learn. There was a deep comfort in growing close to the other half of her heritage. With every passing day she felt a deepening of the bond between her mother and herself.

  At an evening gathering a month after she had arrived, a Lost Lander man, about ten years older than herself, with windburned skin and a high, arrogant face, interrupted something she was saying and made a patronizing joke, very much at her expense.

  There was a moment’s discomfort at his rudeness before conversation resumed. With violence as sudden as lightning she remembered who she was. As Empress of Shinabar no one alive would have dared argue with her, let alone contradict her in public, and laugh about it. How had she so far forgotten herself, her identity, as to allow this to happen? Had she become so numbed by comfort she had abandoned her dreams, her need to know? The kindness of the Lost Landers had almost smothered her.

  The following morning she began her search for the sage of her mother’s tales. It was mid-afternoon when an old woman told her to go over the headland along the bay to the leeward. She would find a lone house among the dunes.

  As the sun turned gold and the shadows softened, Ta-Thea climbed high up the steep face of the hillside beyond Orimiasse. The windswept grass was dry, salt-whipped, and starred with small, scentless flowers. Ahead of her was the gentle curve of the bay with its blue-green water paling limpid to the long reaches of the sand, and over the northern horizon lay the Island at the Edge of the World.

  She was wearing a cloak of Lost Lands silk, indigo as the twilight sky over the desert. She wrapped it closer about her; up here the air was cool, and the soft silk was warm on her shivering arms.

  She walked steadily past many houses, then for a space through the dunes and the sea lupins, petals luminous in the fading light. The last house, far beyond the others, was low down by the shore, too close to the water for vines to grow. There were only sea pinks, tide-washed stones, and driftwood scrubbed white.

  She hesitated before knocking on the door, afraid now that she was on the brink of committing herself. What would she have left if the sage had no answers? What if he was an ordinary man with nothing but dreams and questions, like everyone else? It would almost be better to stay here in the wind and the sun’s afterglow, hearing the water hiss on the wet sand and in the distance the high, harsh cry of the gulls as they rode the currents of the air.

  This was her mother’s land. She could hear her voice in the murmur of the sea.

  Now that the cup was at her lip, it was the coward’s way not to taste the answer, bitter or sweet. She rapped on the weathered board, bruising her knuckles.

  It swung open, and an old man, the dome of his skull walnut brown, peered up at her with eyes as blue as the sea, and as blind. His face was seamed with wrinkles, but they formed an expression of gentleness so intense it had a beauty beyond that of youth or shape or coloring. His was a soul that had suffered and not lost the power of love, a spirit that had traveled far, endured, and found peace. Ta-Thea knew her journey had not been in vain.

  Wordlessly he invited her in, and she followed him to a small room that opened onto the sand and the sea. It was decorated with a single fishing net hung over the inner wall, but of a finer mesh than those of Orimiasse. In its folds were caught the weeds and flowers and shells of the ocean, their forms as varied as the imagination could conceive.

  “What is it you seek?” he asked in a voice little more than a whisper, so cracked was it with age and disuse.

  “Everyone I loved is gone, everything I thought I knew,” she replied simply. “I want to know if there is any meaning in life. Why do I exist? Who am I?”

  “So you want to know all things?” His head was a little to one side, as if he strained to hear what he could not see.

  “Yes.”

  “How much do you want it?” he asked. “More than anything else, more than everything?”

  She was startled, but she answered after only seconds of thought. “What use is anything without it? Everything built on a lie must perish. Who am I?”

  “Oh, child.” He shook his head slowly, but there was a smile on his lips. “Truth does not come without cost—terrible cost. Are you willing to pay the price of it? The war in heaven is as old as time, and the great enemy himself will strive with all his power against you. But God will hold you in His hand, and your name will be written in His heart.”

  She gulped. Fear touched her soul. Why was it of such tremendous price? What was this enormity she sought? To know the mind of God!

  Her words were barely a whisper in her throat. “Yes ... I am.”

  His smile was like love itself. “Then go to the shore there.” He pointed out to the pale stretch of sand where it stretched down to the water. “Go there and wait, past sunset and moonrise, all night while the stars wheel round the world, and out of the dawn will come the first step towards truth. Now go, and prepare your soul.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, then did as she was bidden. She stood on the shore while the last gold faded from the air and the sky deepened from brilliant blue to indigo over the arch of heaven, leaving the sea pellucid green in the afterglow. The air cooled and smelled salt and sharp. For a moment the foam at her feet was pearl, then the color ebbed and the first stars glittered far above her.

  She shivered in the chill breath of the ocean and held the blue cloak close round her body. The moon rose and sailed calm and silver across the heavens till it too set. The tide retreated, leaving wave-ribbed sand where shallow pools shone pale. All night there was no sound but the hiss and ripple of water, but always she looked to the horizon.

  Dawn came as a high arc of light like a bird’s wing over the east, then suddenly a silver bar, brilliant, hurting the eyes, and outlined black against it, the mast and single sail of a skiff.

  She watched it, standing rigid, uncaring of the cold sea foam licking around her feet. The east burned with luminous color, broadening until the whole face of the sea was spread with cold blue before the white fire of sunrise. All the time the skiff came closer until at last it grounded on the sand and a lone mariner stepped out and walked towards her. He was slender and dark. At first, from the ease of his step, the beauty of his hands, she thought he was young. Then as she gazed at him she saw the wisdom in his face, the understanding, and in his eyes the knowledge of a man who had seen heaven and hell, and would bear them both.

  “Are you sure?” he said softly.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I am sure.”

  He held out his hand to her. “Then come ...”

  Chapter II

  TA-THEA WATCHED THE mariner without speaking. The purple sails billowed in the wind, and he stood in the stern of the boat, feet astride, balancing, the fine ropes held hard in his hands. The hull lifted and cut the water, gathering speed. His face was intent, his dark eyes watching the canvas, the swing and shift of the yards. There was a joy inside him, as though he rode the wings of a bird, and he was at one with it.

  She did not ask him where they were going. Words would be a clumsiness in the luminous stil
lness of the dawn where the sea was shot with silver as the sunlight fell in brilliant bars between the darkness of cloud shadows. The sky arched above them in a measureless dome, luminous, wind-scoured, as the last vestiges of night fled westward.

  She was content to wait. She sat low in the boat, staring ahead of her as the sun rose. The sky and the sea became a burning, cobalt blue, and the warmth gradually eased the chill from her. She let go of her silk cloak. The motion of the boat was slight, no more than a rocking, and without intending to she sank lower and lower until she slipped down onto the boards and fell asleep in the sun.

  She awoke with a start. Her cloak had been tucked gently round her and something placed under her head for a pillow. She sat up, embarrassed. The mariner was seated in the stern, the ropes still in his hands. The sun was low in the west behind him.

  “I’m sorry!” she said hastily.

  He smiled. “Why?”

  “I fell asleep ...”

  “It doesn’t matter.” His smile widened. “My name is Ishrafeli.”

  She pushed her hair, thick and black as night, back from her brow. “I am Tathea.” She robbed it of its Shinabari accent. For a little while longer she wanted that anonymity. Should she tell him more, that only a short while ago she had been an empress? That assassins had slaughtered her family, her child, and she had been driven out of her land? It was part of who she was, of all her needs and reasons. But it was too painful to say. Words made it real, and here in this shining silence she could forget.

  “I know,” he said.

  She did not ask how, but an awe settled over her and she said no more.

  Eventually land appeared ahead of them, a high headland crowned with ancient silver-gray trees. They sailed wide round it and past the long breakwater into a harbor scattered with ships. Beyond the harbor a city lay spread out in the fading light, pale-pillared, clean-lined façades, flights of wide steps. It was smaller than the Shinabari equivalent, built on a more intimate and human scale, as if it were to be loved rather than feared.