Paul Mcauley - Ancients of Days

“False humility is worse than pride. If you refuse to accept the burden of your destiny, then you are denying your nature.”

“Your bloodline is old, dominie. Does it remember mine?”

“Some say you are of the bloodline of the Builders, but I do not see it myself. They were gone long before any of the Shaped were brought to Confluence, and left only their works behind. Perhaps the Builders never really existed—have you thought of that? People reason that servants of the Preservers must have constructed the world, and so they invent a mythical bloodline and give them all the attributes they imagine world-builders might possess. But perhaps the world created itself, once the Preservers had willed it. For if the Preservers are gods, then they can speak true words, words so true that they are no different from the thing they stand for.”

Yama remembered the slate he had been shown in the City of the Dead, which had shown a man of his own bloodline with a starry sky behind him. But perhaps the slate had shown only a story. Perhaps everything was a story. He said, “Words are not truth, are they?”

Theias slapped Yama about the head with his fan. “You have been reading in the Puranas. There are many stories in the Puranas that reveal the nature of the world, although it is only by deep thought and contemplation that one can truly understand their importance. The stories are not lessons in themselves, but act upon the receptive mind to bring it into a state by which one can obtain enlightenment. Words cannot represent anything but themselves, no more than things can be anything but what they are. And so words can teach nothing.”

“For one without a tongue, you are a good teacher.”

Once again Theias battered Yama about the head with his fan. Yama endured it. Pandaras looked to his sewing and tried to hide a smile.

“Foolish boy,” the envoy said. “If you need a teacher, then you are unable to learn.” He held his fan a handspan before Yama’s face. “If you call this a fan, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a fan, you ignore the fact. Now, what do you wish to call this?”

Yama took the fan from Theias’s unresisting fingers, fanned himself, and handed it back.

Pandaras sang softly, as if to himself:

Theias smiled. “Your servant knows the Puranas, at least. You might learn from him.”

“I have not read in them,” Pandaras said, “but your riddle reminded me of a game my people play amongst themselves.”

Theias pulled at the long hairs that fringed his chin and said, “Then your people are wiser than me, for I take these riddles seriously. I must go now. I will leave for the cities of the Dry Plains in a few hours.”

Yama said, “It will take longer than that to make landfall, I think.”

“Not at all. You see only what you want to see, and ignore the obvious. But at least you have made a beginning. Study the Puranas if you must, although you would do better to listen to your servant’s jokes. Now, you may ask me one more question.”

Yama thought hard. He had so many questions that he could not even begin to decide which was the most important, and many required specific answers which Theias, although he was wise, might not know. At last, he said, “I will ask you this, dominie. Is there a teaching no master has ever taught before?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then what is it?”

Theias put his hands on top of his head. His fan hung down, covering his eyes. He said, “I have answered your question.”

“You have told me that you can answer it, dominie, and I know you are an honorable man.”

“It is not mind, it is not the Preservers, it is not things.” Theias said this very quickly and immediately swung onto the forestay and scampered away to the crow’s nest.

There was a brief commotion up there, and then something fluttered over the rail. It hit the slope of the sail and slid down and fell to the deck.

It was Theias’s fan. Even as Pandaras ran to retrieve it, the envoy rose above the crow’s nest. He was standing on a gleaming disc which slid away through the air at an increasing speed toward the nearside shore, vanishing from sight in less than a minute.

Yama was astonished. He said, “He did not need to travel on the ship. He came only because he wanted to see me.”

Pandaras held up the fan and sang:

Less than an hour after Phalerus had climbed into the crow’s nest Theias had so precipitately abandoned, the old sailor called in a high, hoarse voice, “Sail! Ten leagues to the first quarter!”

“It is the picketboat,” Captain Lorquital told Yama, after looking upriver through her spectacles.

So Prefect Corin had escaped the authorities at the floating harbor. Yama had been expecting it, and he felt a sense of relief rather than fear.

Captain Lorquital said, “I suppose we should be grateful it isn’t the warship, but she’s rowing steadily and hard and has crowded every yard with sail. I’d say she’s bearing on us at twice our speed or better. She won’t be able to keep up that pace, but we’re in the midway of the river and it will take us more than a day to run to shore and a hiding place. I fear that she will catch us before then.”

There was little that could be done, for the Weazel was already running briskly before a good wind, dipping and rising through long waves that marched across the Great River from far-side shore to near. Captain Lorquital and Aguilar discussed putting out the staysails, but decided that this would drive the Weazel ’s bows down and make her more likely to plow.

“We should do it anyway,” Tamora grumbled to Yama.

“It would only delay the moment, and it would put the ship at risk,” Yama said.

They stood by the big square lantern at the stern rail. By naked eye, the picketboat was a black dot far off across the shimmering sun-struck plain of the river.

“It is Eliphas who leads them on to us,” Tamora said, “I swear he made a bargain with Prefect Corin while we were all prisoners.”

“Yet he urged me not to go into Mother Spitfire’s gambling palace. I wish I had taken his advice.”

“Grah. It is likely that Eliphas was to be the goat leading you to an ambush somewhere else, which is why he so earnestly wanted you to leave.”

Eliphas was talking with Ixchel Lorquital, hunched forward earnestly on the stool by her sling chair, his big hands moving eloquently. Yama said, “No, he is no more than an old man looking for one last adventure. Look at him—he talks too much to be a spy. Besides, I met him by accident.”

“Are you sure?”

“If not, anyone could be an agent of Prefect Corin’s, and how am I to live? Eliphas has given me a destination, Tamora. A place where my people might still live. If it is true, it is a most precious gift.”

“Grah. I’ll believe in this lost city when I see it, but let’s say he didn’t lie about it. Maybe he didn’t start out to betray you. But I still think he’s struck a bargain with Prefect Corin. Maybe he didn’t want to, maybe he was forced. Think carefully. You keep the spy machines away, but something has led Prefect Corin straight to us. In all the wide river, how would he find us so quickly unless led? It must be Eliphas. He’ll have been given a device of some sort. Let me search his kit. Let me search him, down to the bones.”