Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

There was no reply. The inner silence was absolute. That long, unearthly note seemed to hang in the air between forest and field, earth and sky, and then it faded away like the mist.

Later that day, towards twilight far to the west, a grey-haired, grey-bearded man rode a jostling farmer's cart towards the city walls of Varena.

The farmer, having had more than one animal cured of an ailment by his passenger, was happy to oblige with irregular rides into the city. The passenger, at the moment, could not have been said to appear happy, or pleased, or anything but preoccupied. As they approached the walls and merged with the streaming traffic heading into and out of Varena before sunset closed the gates, the solitary passenger was recognized by a number of people. Some greeted him with deference and awe, others moved quickly to the far side of the road or fell back making a sign of the sun disk as the farmer's cart passed carrying an alchemist. Zoticus was, in fact, long accustomed to both responses and knew how to deal with each. Today he scarcely noticed them.

He'd had a shock this morning that had greatly undermined the wry detachment with which he preferred to view the world and what transpired within it. He was still dealing-not entirely successfully- with that.

‘I think you should go into the city," had said the falcon earlier that day. He'd named her Tiresa when he'd claimed her soul. ‘I think it would be good for you tonight."

"Go to Martinian and Carissa," little Mirelle had added, softly." You can talk with them." There'd been a murmur of agreement from the others, a rustling of leaves in his mind.

"I can talk with all of you," he'd said aloud, irritated. It offended him when the birds became solicitous and protective, as if he were growing fragile with age, needed guarding. Soon they'd be reminding him to wear his boots.

"Not the same," Tiresa had said briskly. "You know it isn't."

Which was true, but he still didn't like it.

He'd tried to read-Archilochus, as it happened-but his concentration was precarious and he gave it up, venturing out for a walk in the orchard instead. He felt extremely strange, a kind of hollowness. Linon was gone. Somehow. She'd been gone, of course, since he'd given her away, but this was… different. He'd never quite stopped regretting the impulse that had led him to offer a bird to the mosaicist travelling east. Or not just east: to Sarantium. City he'd never seen, never would see now. He'd found a power in his life, claimed a gift, his birds. There were other things he would not be allowed, it seemed.

And the birds weren't really his, were they? But if they weren't, then what could they be said to be? And where was Linon, and how had he heard her voice this morning from so far?

And what was he doing shivering in his orchard without a cloak or his stick on a windy, cold autumn day? At least he had his boots on.

He'd gone back inside, sent Clovis off, complaining, with a request to Silavin the farmer down the road, and had taken the birds" collective counsel after all.

He couldn't talk to his friends about what was troubling him, but sometimes talking about other things, any other things, the very timbre of human voices, Carissa's smile, Martinian's gentle wit, the shared warmth of a fire, the bed they'd offer him for the night, a morning visit to the busde of the market…

Philosophy could be a consolation, an attempt to explain and understand the place of man in the gods" creation. It couldn't always succeed, though. There were times when comfort could only be found in a woman's laughter, a friend's known face and voice, shared rumours about the Antae court, even something so simple as a steaming bowl of pea soup at a table with others.

Sometimes, when the shadows of the half-world pressed too near, one needed the world.

He left Silavin at the city gates, with thanks, and made his way to Martinian's home late in the day. He was welcomed there, as he'd known he would be. His visits were rare; he lived a life outside the walls. He was invited to spend a night, and his friends made it seem as if he was doing them a great honour by accepting. They could see he was disturbed by something but-being friends-they never pressed him to speak, only offered what they could, which was a good deal just then.

In the night he woke in a strange bed, in darkness, and went to the window. There were rights burning in the palace, on the upper floors where the beleaguered young queen would be. Someone else awake, it seemed. Not his grief. His gaze went beyond, to the east. There were stars above Varena in the clear night. They blurred in his sight as he stood there, holding memory to himself like a child.

They walked for a long time, moving through a world becoming gradually more familiar as the mist continued to lift. And yet, for all the re-emergence of the ordinary, Crispin thought, it had also become a landscape changed beyond his capacity of description. Where the bird had been about his neck there was an absence that felt oddly like a weight. There were crows in the field again, towards the woods, and they heard a songbird in a thicket south of the road. A flash of russet was a fox, though they never saw the hare it pursued.

At what must have been mid-afternoon they stopped. Vargos unwrapped the food again. Bread, cheese, ale for each of them. Crispin drank deeply. He looked away to the south. The mountains were visible again, rifts in the clouds above them showed blue and there was snow on the peaks. Light, shafts of colour, coming back into the world. He became aware that Kasia was looking at him. "She. the bird spoke," she said. Apprehension in her face, though there had not been in the forest, in the grey mist of the field.

He nodded. He had made himself ready for this during the silent walking. He had guessed it would come, that it had to come.

"I heard," he said. "She did."

"How? My lord?"

Vargos watched them, holding his flask.

"I don't know," he lied. "The bird was a talisman given me by a man said to be an alchemist. My friends wanted me to have such a thing for protection. They believe in forces I do not. Did not. I… understand next to nothing of what happened today."

And that was not a lie. Already the morning felt to be a recollection of being wrapped in mist, with a creature in the Aldwood larger than the world, than his comprehension of the world. Thinking back, the only vivid colour he could remember was the red blood on the bison's horns.

"He took her, instead of… me."

"He took Pharus, as well," said Vargos quietly, pushing the stopper back into his flask. "We saw Ludan, or his shadow today." There was something near to anger in the scarred face. "How do we worship Jad and his son after this?"

Real anguish here, Crispin thought, and was moved. They had lived through something together this morning. Wildly different paths to that glade seemed to matter less than one might have expected.

He drew a breath. "We worship them as the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do." He surprised himself. "We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can't even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another?" It was posed as a rhetorical question, a flourish, but the words hung in the brightening air. A blackbird lifted from the stubble of the field and flew away west in a low, sweeping arc, wings beating.

"I do not know," said Vargos, finally. "I have no learning. Twice, when I was younger, I thought I saw the zubir, the bison. I was never sure. Was I being marked? For today, in some way?"

"I am not the man to answer that," said Crispin.