Paul Mcauley: Shrine of Stars

Yama nodded. “They destroyed my father.”

Carenon nodded. “A disgrace, the way they exiled so many loyal to the Department.”

“I mean that they will. It is one of the Committee for Public Safety who will set fire to the city, and it will be the end of my father.”

“They would be worse than the heretics,” Derev said.

“It has happened before,” Yama said. “A tyranny may conquer every one of its enemies, but will ultimately destroy itself from the inside. The wheel turns, and all is renewed.”

Derev said, “And is that what you want? That the world can go on forever and ever without change?”

“No. That is not possible. I was allowed to perform a miracle, Derev. The indigenous peoples will become like us. They will gain self-awareness and at last achieve enlightenment. That is no small thing. If that was all I could do, then I could be content.”

“But it is not.”

“No. No, it is not. I was going to tell the boy, my younger self. Tell him everything and let him decide what to do. But that would do no more than pass the burden to another. And so I turned aside, and came here.”

Derev said, “I cannot decide for you.”

“I would not ask you to. Besides, I have already decided.”

Carenon said, “I suppose that if we tried to stop you, or if I tried to tell my poor workers their fate, you would have the power to prevent it.” Behind him, far beyond the shadowy hills of the vast necropolis, the first rays of the sun touched the peaks of the Rim Mountains.

Yama said, “I will not force any of you, but I hope that you will help me.”

Early one winter one of the goats was taken by a leopard. It was the piebald nanny which in her short life had given birth to six fine healthy kids, and only one of them a billy. The winter looked to be a hard one. It had been raining for more than a decad, which was why Beatrice had not yet moved the goats from the thorn scrub pasture to their winter quarters, and perhaps the rain had driven the leopard from its usual range in the spruce forests in the mountains. Beatrice found its pugmarks by the swift stream at the edge of the pasture, but no trace of the goat, not so much as a drop of blood. She told Osric the news and said there was no helping it, and then added, “Why are you weeping, husband? It was only a goat.”

“It is the sign.”

Beatrice took off her wet oilskin and hung it on the hook by the kitchen door. The end of her long, feathery white hair had got wet. She wrapped it around her strong, capable hands and squeezed water from it onto the stone floor. She said, “It is a sign that means more winter fodder for the other goats, and less milk for us next spring.”

“It will begin soon. He will come to us…”

Beatrice gave him a sharp look. “The boy.”

“Next spring.”

“We won’t see Derev until then, that’s certain. She won’t want to make her way from Aeolis to the keelroad head in weather like this. And I will not risk sending out any doves in this weather, either. But never mind, there’s plenty of time to tell her what she must do. Husband, what is it now?”

Osric was troubled, teary and weak. So often these days his mind seemed to catch on unimportant things. He would find himself in the middle of one of the little stone-walled gardens on top of the tower and not know whether he had come to harvest or water or weed. He said, “What will I tell him, wife?”

“I’m sure you’ll remember when the time comes. That’s how it is, isn’t it? What must be will be.”

Osric watched his wife putter about the kitchen. She built up the fire which he had forgotten to tend while she was out in the cold rain rounding up the surviving goats. Wind hunted at the slit windows. A loose shutter banged. The left side of his face ached, as it always did in cold wet weather. But they were snug here, with plenty of canned and pickled vegetables, and sacks of dry beans and wild rice for which they had traded goat’s-milk cheese with the local tribe of mountaineers. They would sleep in the niches on either side of the stone fireplace. And in spring…

Osric began to weep again, choking with frustration. He was too weak, too old, and too confused. He was older than Bryn, and Bryn had considered himself very old. He slept more than half the day, and could not work for more than an hour without having to rest for twice as long. He could not remember exactly what would happen, but he knew that it was so very important that he must try and recall every detail. He must tell the boy enough, but not too much.

Beatrice noticed her husband’s distress and made him a beaker of chamomile tea. “Well,” she said, “as the fox said when he first saw the grapes, what are we going to do about it?”

“I suppose I must try and remember everything. I will tell the story again. I will tell it and you will write it down, wife.”

“And I suppose that is more important than the half hundred things I must do before winter really comes.”

“It is more important than anything in the world.”

Beatrice warmed her hands at the fire, thinking about it. At last, she said, “We will do it a little at a time. An hour or two a day. We’re old, husband, and we don’t want to tire ourselves out.”

Osric stroked her long white hair. She leaned into his attention, like a cat. He said, “I have to live until spring, at least.”

“Longer than that, I hope. Well, where should we begin?”

Osric thought hard. He said, “I suppose the proper place might be when Dr. Dismas came back to Aeolis from Ys. That is how it really began. But any place is as good as any other. It is all a circle, like the river.”

“As the river was, but is no more. Not for… ach, I always get confused over the ins and outs of it all.”

“The point is that it does not matter where it begins, or where it ends.”

“Of course it matters. Beginnings are as important as endings, and it’s just the same the other way around. I think we had better write it all down, or we will begin at the end or somewhere in the middle, and never get ourselves straight.”

“Perhaps that is the place to begin. The middle, I mean. Most people would start with the child and the dead woman in the white boat on the Great River. But I think it should begin with the goat, and how the boy will be brought here.”

“I can see that I will have to find pen and paper straightaway,” Beatrice said. “Think about what you want to say while I go and look.”

It took most of the winter to tell the tale, until at last they reached the point where Yama had returned home for the last time, and where their own story, the story of the two of them, husband and wife, had really begun.

“Do you remember,” Beatrice said fondly, “do you remember how shocked Father Quine was, when we burst in like that at dawn, waking him and Ananda and demanding that we be married at once?”

Osric smiled. “Ananda knew. He knew right away who I was.”

Carenon told Father Quine that the marriage would take place at gunpoint if it had to, but Father Quine assured him that his threats were not necessary. All the while, the young sizar, Ananda, stared at Yama until he could contain his amazement no longer, and plunged into a breathless series of questions.

“Why have you returned? Did you go to Ys? What happened there? Did you run away from Prefect Corin? Did he do that to your face?”

And so on, until Yama burst into laughter. “I came back because something both wonderful and terrible happened,” he said. “You will understood soon enough, Ananda. I wish I could tell you everything, but there is no time.”

“But you did go to Ys.”