Sirronde's World 1: The Span Page 2

  “I saw the Goddess on a paved street once,” Sirronde said, and her tablemates stared. She poured herself another cup of wine. “In Darthis. She had just bought some parsnips in the market, and She was saying that She thought the prices were a little high. The stallholder was complaining right back at Her about what his wholesaler charged him.” Sirronde smiled at the memory. “She was wearing the Cloak which is the night sky, and he looked right at Her and never saw, never knew.”

  “How...how could anyone see Her and not know...?” one of them whispered.

  “The same way someone could look at him and not see Her,” Sirronde said, glancing at Adri. “Or any of you.”

  There were a few rueful chuckles at that, and after a breath or two her seatmates went back to other gossip, and their food and drink. The room was full, a bedlam of voices and clattering plates, and Leni was doing her best to be like the Goddess, everywhere at once. Her husbands, more pragmatic, had given it up and were having their own dinners.

  Conversation went on for a good while after the food finished, but as evening drew on the room began to empty. Dyla and her young gentleman were early to leave. “The sooner asleep, the sooner back to work,” Dyla said, and around her Sirronde could underhear people restraining themselves from slighting remarks based on the comment. They really don’t like her much. But they like him well enough—

  She could see why. Even at first glance, Adri seemed as accessible and open as his loved seemed cool and remote. As he went out after Dyla, the young man threw Sirronde another of those amused, resigned looks, as if he knew what people were thinking. He brushed past their table, making for the door—

  —and Sirronde suddenly tasted a peculiar emptiness nearby, the lack of a wholeness or certainty, as if she had bitten into an apple and found no core—or discovered that the core had already been removed. Here was a person whose soul was not his own.

  She blinked in astonishment. Behind her, the door shut, and the feeling faded.

  You will look for your death there, the true-dream had said, and you will not see it. But it waits regardless...

  Now she understood why. Knowing what was wrong with Adri, she would have to try to put it right. But if she put herself between him and the One to whom he seemed to have sold himself, His rage would fall on her.

  Sirronde pushed her cup away and went to find her bed.

  *

  She did not sleep much that night, or dream, but she thought a great deal about the true-dream, now weeks old. It had started innocently enough, in fragments, as dreams will—images of a stone-flagged floor, a dim stone-walled interior lit by a tallow-dip, the legs of a chair. But the dusty cloak flung over the back of a chair was full of the faint drift and glitter of stars.

  Sirronde had seen Her as the Mother before, but rarely had She looked quite so motherly, or so hugely pregnant, well into the chronic-backache stage. The Goddess sat in the chair and knitted with very fine yarn and casual speed, an extremely domestic sight, But what She knitted was shimmering faintly with the forces that bound the smallest bits of matter together. Looking more narrowly at the yarn, Sirronde glimpsed the double-spiral twist of it and recognized the pattern.

  The Mother glanced up at her, nodded amiably enough, and finished the row She was working on. Then She put the knitting aside and stood up, groaning and bracing Her back as She did. Sirronde felt the whole fabric of things tremble and move...and realized exactly what lay inside Her womb: everything in the world, the World itself, herself included. When is this, for Her? Sirrondewondered. Before the beginning of things... before the Fall? Or does the question even have meaning? For time tangled in and out of itself and knotted reason into immobility when you tried to see it the way She did. Finally Sirronde put the issue aside. “What exactly am I supposed to do, madam?”

  The Mother went out the door. Sirronde followed, and together they looked out across the broad landscape. Far away across the green hills a thunderstorm-anvil rumbled along, trailing a dark gauze of rain behind it. Hidden lightning flickered uneasy in the belly of the cloud. “Go where you were going anyway. South. Of course,” She said, “you won’t find anything wrong when you get there.”

  Sirronde blinked at that. The Mother gave her a narrow look. “Nothing ever seems to be wrong at first,” She said. “It didn’t seem so for Me, either, when I started. But you and I know better now.”

  “When I find what’s wrong—”

  “You’ll do what I would do, I’m sure,” the Mother said, and sat down on the bench outside with another soft groan. “But you’ll want to ask yourself whether you’re ready to take on this burden...”

  She glanced down at her belly, resigned. Sirronde felt sorry for Her. A Rodmistress knew that every act was the act of Creation. Every time you acted, you put your shoulders under that burden, of possibly getting it wrong and having to deal with the consequences, as She had. After only a moment or aeon of looking in the wrong direction during the ecstasy of the making of the worlds, the Great Death had slipped in from outside and insinuated itself inextricably into what the Goddess had made. Now, a world’s life later, She was still dealing with the Shadow that had fallen over Her making. She would never win completely; this world would have to die before it could be made anew. But in the meantime, She would make it run as best it could. For that purpose, there was blue Fire in the world, and Rodmistresses and Fireworkers to use it.

  Assuming, of course, that they could work out what to use it on.

  “So go on,” said the Mother. “See what you can find. And see that It doesn’t kill you first.”

  “Even if It did,” Sirronde said, “it would be on Your business. That makes it worthwhile.”

  “Daughter, you’re an idiot,” said the Goddess. “Any fool can get killed on My business. It’s the ones who stay alive on it who do the most good.” Nonetheless, She smiled.

  The unalloyed warmth of that divine regard was like the Sun on Sirronde’s skin. Shortly Sirronde had realized that it was the Sun, shining through a gap in the trees under which she’d been sleeping. She had gotten right up, glad and excited, and started on the road that would lead, weeks later, to the Sender Pass. Now, lying in the guest bed upstairs at the common-house, and looking east through the unshuttered window at the bright upthrown rays of the Sun coming up behind the mountains, she yawned and rubbed her aching head, hoping she was not going to turn out to be one of the fools.

  *

  Later that morning Sirronde walked down to the riverbank. The bridge-building operation had a hurried, pressured feel about it, much unlike the end-of-the-day feeling of the evening before. Sirronde looked about and saw, nothing of Dyla, but much of fifty people working hard and fast, with the pressure of someone’s impatient will pushing them every second.

  Some workers were setting in blocks with the carved images that would be the end-pillars of the bridge—bas-relief images of the Goddess’s firstborn, the Lovers, each reaching out to his partner, “the One with whom Hands are Joined.” The Two Themselves had inevitably become a symbol of that other duality, the paired light and darkness at the bottom of the human soul. While held in balance, the stress of that duality could make the best things in life. But when the balance broke, when the Shadow drowned love in darkness, then the Two to Whom the Goddess had first given Herself, and Whom She had given each other, had seized one another by the throat rather than by the hands. Jealousy had been invented, and after it came murder.

  No one would be carving that part of the story on any bridges. Here They stood as They had before the Fall—looking toward one another, confident in each other though not actually touching. “It’s nice work, isn’t it?” said the voice from behind her.

  Sirronde turned and saw Adri standing there. “It is,” she said as he walked over. “Your sculptor is an artist.”

  “Launye, yes. She asked to be assigned to this work.”

  “The people here are lucky to have something of hers for their town. And how are you liking it dow
n here? Do you miss Prydon?”

  He looked at Sirronde with some surprise. “How could you— Oh, of course,” he said, looking at her Rod.

  Sirronde smiled. “Hardly. Your accent’s plain enough.”

  “Is it that strong?” He laughed. “I guess city folks don’t think so much about accents, except other people’s.”

  “You’d be right there,” Sirronde said. “I never stopped hearing about mine when I was down there last summer.” She looked around at the fields and the mountains, indistinct through the morning mist: the overwhelming underlying silence made a profound contrast with the bustle and noise of Prydon. “It must not be easy for you down here.”

  “Well, there’s not much to do,” Adri said, looking at a tall slender form clambering up a ladder at one side of the scaffolding. “She doesn’t have much time for anything else when she gets sent on these trips.”

  “At least you get to travel widely,” Sirronde said. “See all kinds of places, meet people.”

  “She meets them, yes,” Adri said. Then he smiled, as if to take the edge off his words. “But she’s the one who has the King’s ear. To her loved, people are polite enough...when they see me as a way to keep in the Master-builder’s good books. Mostly they see me as a barrier.”

  The smile faded. “Sorry, uh—”

  “Sirronde,” she said, looking at the bridge. “Will it be all right this time, do you think?”

  “Oh, yes,” Adri said, and his voice was light enough—but a slight tremor ran under it. “She’ll finish it this time.”

  And I think you know exactly why, Sirronde thought.

  That slender shape was standing still in the scaffolding, looking back at them. Even at this distance, Sirronde could feel Dyla’s uncomfortable regard, like the edge of a sharp blade scraping tender skin.

  “She is a formidable woman,” Sirronde said.

  “That she is,” Adri said. “What she starts, she finishes...one way or another.”

  “That I’ll be staying to see.” The shape watching them ducked into the scaffolding and was lost to sight. “Meanwhile,” Sirronde said, “I have some other things to do today...”

  “Suppertime then, perhaps,” Adri said, and turned away with a casual wave and a smile.

  *

  He did not come to supper, though Dyla did. She sat with the town elders again, talking a great deal, quietly, wearily, about the way the work was going—about how other works had gone, elsewhere, and the new labors awaiting her when she got back to Prydon and had time to take counsel with the King. Sirronde ate and drank and chatted into the evening with the same group of tablemates, aware that it was not the town elders to whom Dyla was talking, but to her.

  Eventually, fairly late, Dyla left, yawning. As she went out the door, she cast an assessing glance at Sirronde,: are you impressed now? Do you realize who I am? Do not cross me, or pry too closely...or into anything of mine. Sirronde did not meet the glance directly, but she felt it go by her, like a sword through the air next to her head.

  She drank her wine, listening to the murmur of voices around her, gossipping, storytelling, until finally, late, Leni went around to the tables and started shooing customers out. “Sirronde,” she said as she passed, “was the bed warm enough last night, did you need another quilt?”

  “No, it was fine, thank you, Leni.”

  “Good. Sleep well, then: I’m off...” Leni trimmed the wicks of the two lamps, went around the room to fasten the shutters, and took the tallow dips away to quench them in the kitchen.

  Sirronde sat late by the dying common-room fire, trying again to think what to do. The fire drowsed itself down to embers, and she drowsed too. It was the squeak of the door opening that finally made her sit up and look over her shoulder.

  Adri was standing there. After a moment, he shut the door.

  “What are you doing here?” Sirronde said.

  He came over to the fire and sat down in the other chair, silent.

  “You were missed at dinner. Where’s Dyla?”

  “Asleep.” He reached out for the poker and stirred some of the embers of the fire with it.

  Good. There would be no better place or time to begin. “Adri,” Sirronde said softly, “you’re missing something important.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean. You have given up a part of yourself not normally a mortal’s to dispose of. Why did you do it?”

  The silence stretched long.

  “It was something I could give her,” he said, his voice brittle. “Since I can give her little else.”

  Everything lying hidden behind the words abruptly came washing over Sirronde, underheard much too clearly. She felt Adri’s many months of frustration since he met Dyla and found himself bound into a love too off-balance, one side of the relationship open and easy, but the other too tightly bound in its own needs to recognize the requirements of the larger bond between them. And there were other needs which he also did not think about, finding them too painful.

  “She is not exactly...the nurturing kind, is she,” Sirronde said.

  Adri shook her head. “She makes,” he said. “Brilliantly.”

  “But she doesn’t mother.”

  “No.”

  And you want to father. But that was too private to mention.

  “The bridge,” Adri said. “I’m sure they’ve told you.”

  “It came up in conversation.”

  “She was furious, the first time it fell,” Adri said. “She did what she normally would have done—started building again, with greatest care. Every angle measured ten times instead of three, every stress recalculated, every stone checked, obsessively, fifty times, a hundred. Her artisans got sick of it. And then, when everything was finished, it all fell down again.”

  Adri stirred the fire, shook his head. “It was frightening,” he said. “She would barely speak to anyone, even to me. Nothing mattered but that bridge. She started her plans for the reconstruction. Then the messengers came from the King. She was needed up north for more important projects. She would have her chance to put things right, but if the bridge fell one more time—”

  Sirronde held herself silent.

  “I was no good to her,” Adri said, at the end of a long silence during which he turned the poker around and around in his hands. “I prayed, I made all kinds of plans—to send for a sorcerer, for a Rodmistress even—but there was no way to do it without her finding out. It would have been the worst kind of betrayal. She’s so proud, she doesn’t trust anything but her own accomplishment, the works her hands can do. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, she was wearing herself down to the point where she couldn’t work. I, I feared for her mind. Or her life.”

  Sirronde merely nodded. That fierce concentration, repeatedly frustrated, that precious reputation threatened...a mind might break under the strain, do something final...

  “Then I was out walking one day, and I was leaning on a wall—” Adri scrubbed at his face. “A young man came and leaned by me. A local, I thought. We talked a while. He was a good listener. I told him everything, and after a while I said I would do anything to help her, anything, sell my soul even—”

  “You didn’t mean it,” Sirronde said.

  “It was a joke. But then he said, ‘That might just work...’ And I knew right then that it was Him, and He could do what He said He could. And I said, ‘Yes, do it.’”

  Adri was silent a while more. “He just walked away,” Adri said. “I didn’t see where. He said, ‘The bridge will rise, now, and you will meet your loved on it when it’s done. I’ll meet you there, and take what’s due me.”

  Sirronde knew the ceremony he meant, in which the first creatures to set foot on a new bridge are two lovers, who meet and embrace at its center, above its keystones—a symbol of the Goddess’s love, which holds the world together. The carvings on the end-posts of the bridge were an oblique reference to that ceremony. “And now,” Adri said, “all the problems have fallen away. T
he bridge will be done by the tenday’s end. Then...” Adri broke off, and put his face in his hands.

  “Adri,” Sirronde said finally, “there must be something that can be done. It’s going to take time to think what, that’s all.”

  “I don’t see how it will matter,” Adri said, staring at the table. “I gave Him my soul.”

  That was the crux of it. Promises made to the Shadow, like those made to the Goddess, were always kept.

  Sirronde patted his hand. “I’ll get to work. Probably it’s better if we say nothing to Dyla of this.”

  “You think I would?”

  “As the time gets closer and emotions get out of hand,” Sirronde said, “you might be surprised what you feel impelled to do. Guard yourself. As for the rest of it... we’ll talk again when I have an idea,” Sirronde said, and left.

  *

  A day went past, two days, three. No idea came, though Sirronde fasted and prayed and worked with her Rod and delved down inside her until her head spun. But her mind was as empty of ideas afterward as before. Adri did not come to most meals in town. Dyla did, and ignored Sirronde pointedly.

  The fourth day passed. On the fifth morning, with the bridge scheduled to be finished in three days more, Sirronde leaned against a drystone wall half a league outside Dalthant and looked eastward toward the mountains, rolling her Rod idly between her hands.

  There is always a loophole in every enchantment, every sorcery, every wreaking with the Fire, her instructors had told her. But it was fallen divinity to be dealt with here, not fallible humanity. There were no loopholes to exploit. Adri had given the Shadow his soul freely. To some promises, whether made to ultimate love or ultimate evil, one was inevitably held.

  What can I possibly do...

  There was always the obvious solution—walk out first across the bridge, announce the bargain, and state that the Shadow would complete it over your dead body.

  Except that He would, along with as many other dead bodies as possible. And probably a broken bridge as well.