A Night Market. I lay down and covered myself with the coarse blanket. The others talked late into the night, exchanging laughter. In the morning a watery sun showed me the scrubbed walls of the room patterned with shadows by the ivy over the window. Once again the angel had not come. A painting of the goddess Elueth regarded me from one wall, kneeling, her arms about a white calf. The expression on her dusky face was sad, and underneath her ran the legend: “For I have loved thee without respite.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Night Market
The next day we traveled farther into the Valley. And a message ran out from Kovyan’s radhu in every direction, announcing the Night Market. It would be held outside the village of Nuillen, almost on the eastern edge of the Fayaleith. The news traveled to Terbris, Hanauri, Livallo, Narhavlin, tiny villages in the shadow of towers overgrown with moss. We followed in a carriage, jouncing along the graveled roads. Miros drove, and I sat beside him on the coachman’s seat. Sometimes we stopped by the roadside and drank milk from heavy clay bowls, waving our hands to drive away flies in the shade of a chestnut tree, and the young girls who sold milk spoke to us with the glottal accent of the country, clicking their tongues when Miros teased them. They urged us to buy their pots of honey and curd, or strings of dried fish. One of them tried to sell us the skin of an otter. They had lively eyes and raggedly braided hair, always in four plaits, sometimes with tin or glass beads at the tips.
At the crest of a hill, we passed beneath the famous arch of Vanadias, the great architect of the Tombs of Hadfa. The pink stone glowed against the sky, carved with images of the harvest, of dancers, children, and animals entwined with bristling leaves. The intricacy of the carving filled me with awe and a kind of heartache, such as one feels in the presence of mystery. In the center of the arch were the proud words “This Happy Land,” and beyond it the very shadows seemed impregnated with radiance.
At night those shadows were deep and blue, the radhui immense and silent, and the whole world had the quality of an engraving. The carriage trundled past temples and country villas, their white shapes standing out against the darkness, each one spellbound, arrested in torrents of light. A healing light, cool as dew. We passed the famous palace of Feilinhu, standing in nacreous grandeur against the dark lace of its woods: that triumph of Vanadias with its roof of astounding lightness, its molded, tapering pillars of white marble. Miros stopped the horses and swore gently under his breath. The palace, nocturnal, resplendent, stood among palisades of moonlight. Even the crickets were silent. Miros’s voice seemed to rend the air as he spoke the immortal first line of Tamundein’s poem:
And she, my empress of sighs. Where was she waiting now with her ravaged hair, her deathless eyes, her perfect desolation? Waiting for me. I knew she was waiting, because she did not come. My nights were silent, but too taut to be called peaceful. Jissavet waited just beyond the dark. The night sky was distended in my dreams, sinking to earth with the weight of destructive glory behind it. In one of those dreams I reached up and touched it gently with a fingertip, and it burst like a yolk, releasing a deluge of light.
People traveled together in little groups along the roadsides, talking and laughing softly, on their way to the Night Market. There was no sign of the Telkan’s Guard. I blessed Tialon privately: she must be doing all she could to keep me safe. Fireflies spangled the grass, and a festival air filled the countryside, as if the whole Valley were stirring, coming to life. At the inn in the village of Nuillen, in the old bedrooms divided with screens, the sheets held a coolness as if they had just been brought in from the fields.
We spent two days in Nuillien. During that time the inn filled up until, the landlord told us panting, people were sleeping under the tables. From the window of my room I could see little fires scattered over the square at night, where peasant families slept wrapped in their shawls. On the evening of the Market, music burst out suddenly in the streets, the rattling of drums and the shouting of merry songs, and Auram came into my room bearing a white robe over his arm, his eyes alight. “Come, avneanyi,” he said. “It’s time.”
He was splendidly dressed in a surcoat embroidered in gold, its ornamental stiffness softened by the fluid lace at his wrists. Above the glow of the coat, rich bronze in the firelight, the flat white triangle of his face floated, crowned with dead-black hair. He looked at me with delight, as if I were something he had created himself: a beautiful portrait or gem-encrusted ring. His exaltation left no room for the human. I saw in his shining, ecstatic, ruthless eyes that he would not be moved no matter how I suffered.
“Come,” he said with a little laugh that drove a chill into my heart. “You must dress.” I undressed in silence and put on the robe he had brought for me. The silk whispered over my body, smooth and cold like a river of milk. Afterward he made me sit down and tied my hair back with a silver thread.
The mirror reflected the firelight and my face like a burnt arrow. Under the window a voice sang: “Gallop, my little black mare.”
“Have you been studying?” Auram asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you committed it to memory?”
“Yes.”
My glance strayed to the ragged little book on the table. The Handbook of Mercies, by Leiya Tevorova. Auram had brought it to me wrapped in old silks the color of a fallen tooth. “One of the few copies we were able to save,” he said, and he pressed it into my hands and urged me to memorize the opening pages. This was the book Leiya had written in Aleilin, in the tower where she was locked away, in the days Auram called the Era of Misfortune. A handbook for the haunted. I turned away from it and met Auram’s eyes in the glass.
“Come,” he said. “You are ready.”
The yard was full of people: word of the avneanyi had spread, and now, seeing Auram and me in our vivid costumes, the huvyalhi pressed forward. “Avneanyi,” someone cried. The landlord struggled through the back door and ordered the stableboys to clear a way to the carriage for us. A careworn man with a sagging paunch and protuberant blue eyes, he looked despairingly at the crowd, which was still pouring in from the street, then flung himself into their midst, moving his thick arms like a bear. “This way, telmaron,” he bawled. “Follow me.” Auram stepped forward, smiling and nodding, gratified as an actor after a successful play, holding his hands out so that the people could brush his fingertips. No one touched me: it was as if a shell of invisible armor lay between them and the glitter of my robe. “Pray for us,” they cried. Above us the sky was dancing with stars. When I reached the carriage my knees gave way and I almost sank to the ground. Someone caught my arm and supported me: Miros. “Hup!” he said, holding open the carriage door. “Here you are. Just put your foot on the step.”