Return To The Whorl Part 16

She stood silent before him, no larger than a child, her face a skull, her lank black hair falling to her waist.

"You look . . ." He groped for words. "Like--the way you did the first time I saw you."

"Yes."

"As if you have starved almost to death. I--I thought that sailors brought your food there on your island, that you and your grandmother caught fish."

"You've been gone a long time," she repeated. This time she added, "I haven't."

"I see--or at least believe I see. Certainly I see you, which reminds me of the favor I must ask in a moment; before I do, where will I find Silk?"

"In whatever place you go."

"In Viron? Thank you, I'm sure you must be correct. Will you, Mucor, as a great favor to me, go outside and talk--if only just for a moment--to my friend Pig?"

In an instant she was gone, and he was left in darkness. Retracing his steps, he found her window again and looked out. He could see nothing, only darkness beyond that of any natural night. He heard Pig's voice, and although he could not make out what Pig had said, that voice overflowed with joy. There was a hiatus, a half minute of silence. Pig's deep tones came again, trembling and so freighted with exaltation that he knew Pig was near to weeping.

Hound stroked the donkey's smooth, soft nose, saying, "There, there. Nothing to worry about." The donkey (it was Tortoise, not the one Hound rode) seemed in less than full agreement, although determined to be polite.

"If there were wolves about, I'd know it, wouldn't I?" Hound stepped back and twirled his burning stick, whose faint flame had nearly died away. It made a pretty pattern of sparks, and fanned the flame enough to show the fearful donkeys huddled together with their forelegs hobbled.

"Bird back!" Oreb settled on one of Scylla's outstretched arms. "Bird back. Silk back. Come fire."

"I'm glad to hear it," Hound said, "I've been worrying about him. He and Pig have been gone a long time." Hound went through the portico and re-entered what had been Blood's reception hall. "There you are! Is everything all right, Horn?"

"No." He turned away from the fire. "May I have some more of your wine?"

"Go right ahead. Empty the bottle. There's not much left."

"Thank you."

"You look tired." Hound sat down next to him. "Maybe it's just the firelight. I hope so. But you don't look well."

"Good Silk," Oreb muttered, perching on his shoulder.

"I--" He drank, and put down the bottle. "That doesn't matter. I owe you an apology, and offer it freely. Before I left, I drank your good wine for a bad reason, which is a species of crime. There's something sacred about wine. Have you noticed?"

Hound shrugged. "It belongs to some minor G.o.d or other. But then everything does that doesn't belong to one of the Nine."

"To Thyone's son. Isn't it odd that I should remember it? Supposedly, there is no less significant fact in religion, yet that one has stuck with me. I recalled it when Nettle and I wrote our book about Patera Silk, and I recall it now. May I have some more?"

"Certainly." Hound handed him the bottle again.

"Wine is sacred to Thelxiepeia because it intoxicates and intoxication is hers, like magic, paradoxes, illusions and other things of that sort. But wine in and of itself is sacred to Thyone's son. Thyone is a very minor G.o.ddess."

"I don't mean to change the subject," Hound said, "but do you know what has become of Pig?"

"I do and I don't."

"Poor Pig!" Oreb croaked.

Both men were silent, looking into the fire; then Hound said, "You can't tell me what happened to him?"

"Nor what happened to me, though I suppose I'll talk about it when I've ordered my thoughts a bit more."

"Wise Silk!"

He smiled. "That's the sort of the thing Hammerstone was always saying about Patera Incus. Is Incus Prolocutor now?"

Hound nodded. "I think that's the name."

"That's very well. He may be willing to help me. There's only a swallow left, wouldn't you like it? Here."

"I've had more than my share already. I've been trying to remember the bad purpose you mentioned, and I can't. Wine does that to you, makes you forget. All that I can think of is that you said it might keep away ghosts, but not the ghost of the ugly daughter. You wanted to see her."

He nodded. "That was the bad purpose--keeping off the ghosts. We always go wrong when we use it for something other than itself, Hound. It's meant to be a beverage, a pleasant, refres.h.i.+ng drink, next to good cold water the best we have. When we use it for something else--to make us forget, which is what I meant when I said it might keep off the ghosts--or to warm us when we are chilled, we pervert it. Have you noticed, by the way, that it's no longer as hot as it was?"

Hound smiled. "You're right. Praise Pas!"

"No, not at all. Pas is the sun G.o.d, and it is blowing out the Long Sun that has cooled the whorl for us. I mentioned the son of Thyone. He's called that because no one knows his name--or much of anything else about him save that he's dark, and that wine is sacred to him. Am I boring you? We don't have to talk about this."

Hound raised the bottle, then lowered it again without drinking. "Not at all. What do you say we save this for Pig?"

"I doubt that he'll drink it, but it's a kind thought."

"You were saying n.o.body knows the wine G.o.d's name. Isn't that unusual? I thought we knew the names of all the G.o.ds, or that the augurs did even if I don't."

"It is unusual, yes--but not unique. I had an instructor once who made a joke about it. We studied the G.o.ds a good deal, and spent half a day, perhaps, on Thyone and her dark son. My instructor said that Thyone's son had drunk so much that we had forgotten his name."

Hound chuckled.

"He also said that Thyone's son was the only G.o.d whose name we don't know. It was years before I realized that he'd been wrong. We speak of the Outsider, but it's obvious that 'the Outsider' can't be his name--that it's an epithet, a nickname."

"Good G.o.d," Oreb remarked.

Hound said, "He's your favorite, isn't he? The G.o.d you love the most."

"The only G.o.d I love at all, if I've ever succeeded in loving him. In a larger sense, he's the only G.o.d worth loving. I've been outside, you see, Hound. I've been to Blue and to Green, other whorls quite different from this one."

Hound nodded.

"One goes outside full of high ideals, but one soon discovers that one has left the G.o.ds behind, even Pas. I told you how badly things were going in New Viron."

"Yes, you did."

"That's one of the chief reasons, I feel sure. So many of us were good only because we dreaded the G.o.ds. The Outsider--this is very like him, very typical of him--has shown us to ourselves. He tells us to look at ourselves and see how much real honesty there is, how much genuine kindness. You're hoping to become the father of a child."

Hound nodded. "A son, I hope. Not that we wouldn't love a daughter."

"There are children who sweep hoping to be rewarded, and there are children who sweep because the floors need sweeping and Mother's tired. And there is an abyss between them far deeper than the abyss that separates us from Blue."

"The G.o.ds keep telling us to go. That's what everybody says. I--"

"That is their function."

"I don't go to manteion myself, Horn. It seems to me that the G.o.ds ought to go with us, that they owe it to us."

"It must seem to them, I suppose, that we should take them with us gladly, that we owe them that and more."

Hound did not speak, staring into the fire.

"For three hundred years they let us live in this whorl, which they control. Their influence was malign occasionally, but benign for the most part. Scylla is a poor example, but because you know her better than the rest I'll use her anyway. She helped found Viron and graciously condescended to be its patron. She wrote our Charter, which served us so well for three centuries. Don't you think that the people who leave Viron owe it to her to take her along--if they can?"

"Why did you call her a bad example?"

"Because she's probably dead. She was Echidna's eldest child, and seems the most likely to have a.s.sisted in her father's murder. She may come back, of course, as he did. We don't call them the immortal G.o.ds for nothing."

Hound rose, broke a stick across his knee, and tossed both halves into the fire.

"You're ready to sleep, I suppose, and I'm keeping you up. I'm sorry."

"Not at all. My donkeys are afraid of something tonight, and I'm waiting for them to calm down. If I go to sleep now, they'll be all over the forest when I wake up."

"Have you any idea what may have frightened them?"

"It's wolves, usually. That's one reason I wanted to stop here. I'm sure a whole menagerie of small animals have moved in since the owners moved out, but the wolves haven't taken to denning in here yet, and I don't think they like coming inside the wall. Maybe the ghosts keep them away."

"Perhaps they do. They will keep me away after tonight, I'm sure. Is it really night, by the way? Where would the shade be if the sun were rekindled now?"

"I have no way of telling."

"Nor do I. Oreb, have you seen any wolves since we've been here?"

"No see."

"Something's frightening Hound's donkeys. Do you know what it is? Might you guess?"

"No, no."

"Then as a favor to me, would you go out and have a look around? If you see a wolf--or anything else that the donkeys might find frightening--stay well clear of it and come back and tell us."

Oreb took wing.

"You spoke of ghosts, Hound. I ought to tell you that I saw the woman who is called the ugly daughter in your story. She told me that Silk was in Viron, and that I'd find him there. Please don't ask me to exhibit her to you--"

"I wasn't about to," Hound declared emphatically.

"I cannot control her movements--her appearances and disappearances--though I confess there have been times when I very much wished I could. She's not a bad person, but I find her a frightening one, and I've never been more afraid of her than I was tonight, not even when I sat with her in the hut she and poor Maytera Marble built of driftwood. She was really present on that occasion, really there just as you and I are here. This time she was not, and I spoke with a sort of memory she has of herself."

Hound broke another stick. "You said she isn't a real ghost. That she isn't really dead as far as you know."

"I suppose I did."

"But Scylla is. Are you saying that if Scylla were to appear in the Sacred Window of the little manteion where Tansy and I were married she would be a ghost, the ghost of a G.o.ddess? People used to talk about Great Pas's ghost when I was a sprat, and some of them still swear by it."

"I think it likely, but I can't say with any certainty. I know less about the G.o.ds than you may be inclined to believe, and in all humility I don't think anyone knows a great deal. We suppose that they are like us, and we read our own pa.s.sions and failings into them--which was the point of my instructor's joke, of course. If we find our neighbor irritating, we're confident that the G.o.ds are irritated by him to an equal degree, and so on. I've even heard people say that a certain G.o.d was sleeping and required a sacrifice to wake him up."

Hound started to speak, stopped, and at last blurted, "Horn, do you think it's possible your friend Pig's gone to sleep in another room?"

"It's possible, I suppose, though I doubt very much that it's actually occurred. If it has, it's probably the best thing we could hope for. I pray that it has."

"You're worried about him, too."

"Yes, I am. You're not sleeping now because you're worried about your donkeys. I'm not sleeping because I'm concerned for Pig--and for myself and my errand, to acknowledge the truth."

"This woman who's not a ghost, couldn't she have harmed him? You say she's not a ghost. All right, I accept that. She sounds a lot like a G.o.ddess to me, Horn, and a G.o.ddess . . . You're shaking your head."

He sat up straighter and turned away from the fire to face Hound. "She isn't. May I tell you what she is? You may know some or all of it already, in which case I apologize."

Hound said, "I wish you would. And I wish you'd sent Oreb for Pig, instead of worrying about wolves. You don't agree."

"No, I don't. It might conceivably have helped. I don't know; but my best guess was and is that it would have been very dangerous for Oreb--far more so than scouting for wolves, which are unlikely to pose a threat to a bird. He would have been in a confined s.p.a.ce with a very large man who has a sword, acute hearing, and an amazing ability to locate even silent objects by sound. If Pig had been enraged by the intrusion, which I judge by no means unlikely, Oreb might have been killed."

"You're saying Pig needs privacy right now."

"I am."

Hound sat down again, crossing plump legs. "Because of something the ghost said to him?"

"Possibly. I don't know."

"Tell me about her."

"As you wish. You mentioned that the G.o.ds have been telling everyone to leave. The devices used to cross the abyss to Blue or Green are called landers. Are you familiar with them?"

"I've heard of them," Hound said. "I've never seen one."

"Are you aware that they were provisioned by Pas before the Whorl Whorl set out from the Short Sun Whorl? And that most of them have been looted?" set out from the Short Sun Whorl? And that most of them have been looted?"

"All of them is what everybody says."

"I won't argue the point. There were human embryos among their supplies, ancient embryos preserved by cold far beyond that of the coldest winter nights. Sometimes the looters simply left those embryos. Sometimes they wantonly destroyed them, and sometimes they took and sold them, packing them in ice in an attempt to preserve them until they could be implanted."

"You said human embryos, Horn. I've heard of it being done with animals."