Chapter 1. THE BLOODSTAINED MEN

We have been journeying by guess, and it is high time we admitted it. Thus I admit it here. All things considered, we have been fortunate; but unless we are favored by the Vanished Gods of Blue far above most, it cannot continue.

In this third book, which will surely be the last, I will begin by saying that, and telling you who we are; but first I should mention that the bandits are all dead, and that I, rummaging through their loot, have discovered this paper-an entire bale-and am making haste to use it.

His thoughts seemed to have nothing to do with the dead woman, her coffin, or the hot sunshine streaming through the open door into the poor little room. There was a pattering, as of rain; moisture splashed his ankles, and he looked down and saw blood trickling from his fingers to splash into a small pool at his feet.

His son had deserted him.

He was wounded. (No doubt the blood was from that wound?)

He lay in the medical compartment of a lander, though he was standing now, his blood dripping on worn floorboards. The bier was for another, it seemed, and the other was a middle-aged woman, and was already dead.

A knife with a worn blade and a cracked wooden handle lay at his feet. Reflexively, he bent to pick it up, and recoiled from it as if from a coiled snake. Something screamed in the emptiness, something deeper than resentment and thoughts of water, food, and healing.

He backed away from the knife and stumbled through the open door into the darkest night ever known.

We are four, a number that includes Oreb but excludes our four horses and Jahlee's white mule. Oreb is my bird and often a nuisance, as he is at this moment, trying to wrest one of his old quills from my fingers. "It's no use, Oreb," I say. "I want to write-have just started a new book-and I won't play with you at all unless you behave yourself."

"Good bird!" He means himself.

Have I mentioned Hide? Looking over this sheet, I see I have not. Hide is the fourth member of our party and my son, one of three. He is of medium height, not bad-looking, solid, muscular, and rising sixteen. He wears a sheepskin coat shorter than mine, a sheepskin hat, and sheepskin boots that are very well greased now, he having found a pot of mutton fat. No doubt the bandits used it for the same purpose.

The bandits, I should say, are all dead. Even the last. I would like to inter them with some decency, but the ground is frozen. Jahlee suggested burning their bodies, but it would take a great deal of wood, I am sure, to consume the bodies of nine men.

I must have been present when Patera Silk, Patera Quetzal, and Maytera Marble burned Maytera Rose. If someone had asked me about it yesterday, I would have said that I was not, that Nettle and I went away to fight for Maytera Mint after Echidna ordered her to destroy the Alambrera; yet I find that I can very clearly visualize the skull peering from the flames. It seems likely that I am confusing that occasion with some other on which a body was burned.

In any event I am certain they used a great deal of good, dry cedar. Our wood here will be green, and that which is not green will be wet with snow. Hide and I, working hard, might cut that much wood in a week, perhaps. (I in half an hour if I used Hyacinth's azoth-but what folly it would be to let them know I have it now!)

Anything else about Hide? A lot, although I will not try to set it all down. Hide has a twin, his brother Hoof, who looks exactly like him. Hoof is in the south, or at least Hide believes he is. We were tempted to turn south around the marsh in the hope of finding him. It would have been farther, but I wish we had.

I am telling you all this in case the first two books in my saddlebag are lost or destroyed, which is surely likely enough. If you have them, they will tell you much more about me and my sons than I possibly can.

What else should I say? As a traveling companion he is inclined to gloom and pessimism. (He may well think the same of me.) He is not talkative, and is seldom entertaining when he does talk. But he is courageous and resourceful, and has a smile I can warm my hands at.

I see I have already begun on Oreb, so let us take him next. He is smaller than a hen, though his wings are much longer. His feathers shine. His head, bill, and feet are red. He has a most disconcerting habit of leaving me suddenly, when he may be gone for a day, an hour, or (once) the better part of a year. I got him in the Long Sun Whorl before Hari Mau got me and put me on his lander.

To be more accurate, Oreb got me as they did, adopting me as his master and sometime confidant. If I did not feed him more than he feeds me, it might be difficult to say who owns whom.

He thought he had gone blind, then that it was death. He had failed to reach the Aureate Path-he would wander in this darkness forever, beset by devils.

Devils worse than the inhumi? Worse than men? He laughed aloud-madness. Madness; and to be mad was to be dead, as to be dead was to be mad, and to be dead and mad was to be blind.

His fingers met the rough bark of a tree, and he discovered for the second time that they were slippery with blood. There were oozing cuts in both his arms and both his wrists. Rummaging unfamiliar pockets he found prayer beads, spectacles, two cards, and at last a handkerchief still folded in a way that seemed to promise it was clean. He started a tear with his teeth, ripped the handkerchief in two, and bandaged his deepest cuts, making himself work slowly and carefully, tightening the clumsy knots with his free hand and his teeth.

Far off, a faint light shone. He stood up, blinked at it, and stared again. A light, a faint point of golden light. When Aster's house had been haunted by her dead child, Remora had laid the ghost with candles and sacred waters, and many long readings from the Writings, urging it between times to go the Short Sun.

So it was said in town, at least; and when he had asked about it, Remora had explained that ghosts, for the most part, did not realize they had died: "An, um, understandable? An innocent confusion, eh? They have never been dead before, hey? The, ah, we religious know. Generally. Informed, eh? Expected. No ghosts of, um, holy augurs, hey? Or, er, sibyls. Not-ah-unheard of. But few. Very few."

Remora walked beside him, speaking into his ear.

"We-ah-anticipate it. Some even pray that it may be hastened, so, er, desirous of the blessed companionship of the Nine. But the, um, ah..."

Unbelievers.

"Skeptics have assumed-no evidence, eh? Do you follow me here, Horn? Urn, theorize that, er, dissolution? The kind embrace of High Hierax is an-ah-mere sleep. But without dreams. There is in, er, simple fact. No such thing."

Yes, Patera.

"They will not, um, credit it. Because they do not, eh? In every case-ah-recollect their dreams. The, um, goddess of sleep, eh? Morphia. Aspect of Thelxiepeia. She has, um, sagaciously arranged that we-ah-dream? That we shall be subject, eh? Yes, subject. Subject to phantoms-"

He had stepped on something hard and round. He picked it up, and felt dry, dead bark drop off under the pressure of his questing fingers. A fallen branch.

"You see?"

No, Patera, he thought. No. I do not.

"No, um, slumber without dreams, so we may know that sleep is not the end. We who've given over countless, um, delightful hours to prayer are prepared. Know Hierax when he comes, eh? You are a, um, boatman? Sailor?"

Its twigs were weak and brittle, but the branch itself seemed stout enough.

"Steer by the stars, hey? Do you take my meaning, Horn? By the stars by, er, at the midnight hour, and by the sun, um, daylight. Just so. Not, um, myself. Not seaworthy, eh? But so I've been told. Sun, and stars."

He waved the stick before him, discovering a tree that might perhaps have been the same tree to his left and something spongy that was probably a bush to his right. The pinpoint of yellow light called out to him like the driftwood fires the fishermen's wives lit on the beach by night.

"Landmarks. This is, um, crucial, eh? Landmarks. We, um, I spoke of faith. Of hours spent at prayer. Not-ah-natural to a child, eh? You agree? Run about shouting. Play. Perfectly normal. Fidget in manteion, seen them scores of times. You likewise, doubtless."

Yes, Patera. Certainly.

The stick made it easier to walk, and he told himself that he was walking toward the Aureate Path, toward the spiritual reality of which the mere material Long Sun was a sort of bright shadow. He would go to Mainframe (although he had already been there) and meet gods.

"A child, therefore, clings? A child adheres to landmarks, places familial and familiar."

Hello, Molpe. My name is Horn, Marvelous Molpe, and to tell you the truth I ever paid much attention to you. I'm sorry for that now, Molpe, but I suppose it is too late. You were Musk's goddess. Musk liked birds, loved hawks and eagles and all such, and I didn't like Musk, or at least didn't like what others told me about him.

"Hug the shore, eh? These, um, departed? These children who have, um, attained to life's culmination early. The-ah-familiar house, um, rooms. Toy, eh? Even toys. We, er, prattle that they have lost their lives, hey? Said it myself. We all have, eh? Possibly they hope to find them again, like a lost doll. Sad, though. Tragic. Not like, um, exorcising devil, eh? Calde Silk, eh? Performed the-ah-exorcised. Wrote an, um, report. Some old place on Music Street. I-ah-saw it. His, um, report, that is."

You were the goddess of music too, Molpe. I ought to have remembered that. I could use a cheering song. And I have sung, Molpe. I really have, although I was not thinking specifically of you. Oh, Molpe! Please, Molpe, dear old Molpe, goddess of kites and childhood, doesn't that count for something?

The point of light had become a rectangle. Still very far, and still very small; but distinctly a rectangle. Which god had light? Molpe? Molpe had autumn leaves, vagrant scraps of paper, wild birds, clouds, and all the other light things. So why not light itself?

"Pas, eh? Solar god, er, sun god. Go toward the light, child, hey? Steer by the sun."

What about the stars, Patera? Was Pas the god of stars, too? No, he could not be, because the stars burned outside Pas's whorl.

Not just in manteion, Molpe-but I sang there every Scylsday as a boy.

Miraculous Molpe, wind-borne on high,

Reaches her realm to the lands of the sky.

Dance for us, Molpe! Sing in our trees,

Send us thy breath, the sweet, cooling...

The old hymn faded and was gone with his cracked and lonely voice. Tartaros was the god of night and dark places, Tartaros who had been Auk's friend, walking with Auk, his hand in Auk's. There was no god's hand in his own, nothing but the stick that he had picked up a moment before. Was there a stick god? A god of wood and tree? A god or goddess for carpenters and cabinetmakers? If there was any, he could not think of it.

Smoke. He stopped to sniff. Yes, wood smoke. Very faint, but wood smoke.

How hot it was!

He had tried to smoke and salt fish when they had first come to Lizard, and watched his fish spoil afterward, had gone at last, after humiliating himself more than once, to the fishermen and learned their secrets. The smell of wood smoke always reminded him of his failures, of eating the fish that even loyal Nettle would not eat and being violently ill for half a day afterward. It was the dryness, not the smoke (as he had thought), that preserved the fish from decay.

"Tartaros! Can you hear me, Tenebrious Tartaros? Are you listening?" When he had written about Auk, he had shown Tartaros replying instantly to such pleas as those; but here was no book, no story, and there was no answer at all.

This grass-like stuff was wheat, presumably. Some sort of grain. They grew wheat, in that case, in the dark beyond the Aureate Path, the darkness of which the shade was a mere material shadow cooling the whorl, cooling even the breath of Molpe.

Hare had joined General Mint after Blood died, and had told them about the eagle and the old kite maker's praying to Molpe for a wind. The wind had come, he said. The wind, and winter, too. Winter at last, with snow to refresh fields as hot and dry as dead fish hanging over a fire.

How hard the wind had blown, and how bitterly, bitingly cold it had been when they had gone down into the tunnels!

Not like Green. No, not like Green at all.

The bomb had burst, and Hyacinth had feared that their horse had been killed. Hyacinth, freezing cold and a little dirty, so beautiful in the dim light and wind-driven snow that it had been hard to look at her. Nettle had been cheerful and brave; but Hyacinth had been lovely, always lovely and always finding new ways to be lovely even when she was exhausted or shrieking curses. Hyacinth had hated all men, had hated men in the aggregate, because of things that had been said to her and things she had been forced to do for money, humiliations worse than spoiled fish.

He had loved Nettle-Nettle, whose mother had hated her from the moment of conception, as the name she had given her had made only too plain-and had envied Patera Silk Hyacinth (lovely, savage Hyacinth) with all his heart.

He stumbled and fell, got up again, too weary to swear, and looked for the golden rectangle; but it had vanished. He was tired, he discovered. Weak and tired and light-headed, and what was the use? Sighing, he dropped to his knees, then stretched out upon the soft, half-grown grain.

If Hyacinth had indeed been his, he would never have gone to Blue, never have gone to Green, never have died on Green...

For the first time he admitted himself that he was truly dead, that he had died in the medical compartment of the pillaged lander he had struggled so desperately to repair. This was the whorl again, the Whorl in which he had been born, and this was the only afterlife he had been granted.

If he had somehow possessed Hyacinth, he would still be in the Long Sun Whorl. He had not possessed her, yet here he was, without the Long Sun.

His eyes shut of themselves, seeing no less shut than open; and the soft cold swirling snow of another day filled his mind, mocking the dry heat of black night.

Wings beat overhead, and a harsh voice called, "Silk? Silk? Silk?" But he did not reply.

The third member of our party is my daughter Jahlee. She is of medium height, red-haired and attractive, with a smooth almondshaped face and a sly smile many find captivating. The white mule is hers; she wears a thick wool gown under a wide, warm, snow-cat coat that reaches to the ankles of her kid-skin boots. The cold makes her slow and sleepy just the same, and she fears-as I do myself-that she may freeze to death like my poor friend Fava.