“I, veimaro!” cried a woman’s voice. “I and Tais my daughter.”
“Come then,” said Auram impressively. “He awaits.”
He led them in: a girl, a woman in wooden slippers, a bent old man. “Avalei hears you,” he said, and went out.
The woman sank down and advanced on her knees, pulling her daughter behind her with some difficulty, for the girl would not kneel but walked stiffly with a fixed gaze.
“Avneanyi,” the woman sobbed. She put her hand over her face. It was clear that she had not intended to address me in tears.
I clutched the arms of the chair. After a moment she regained control of herself and looked up, still shaking, drawing her arm across her eyes. “Avneanyi,” she moaned. “You must help us. It is for the sake of a child. A little child—you know how Avalei loves them.”
“Please stand,” I said, but she would not. She looked at me wonderingly, as if my slight accent increased her awe. Her daughter, still standing, gazed at the tent wall.
“It’s my grandchild,” the woman said. “My daughter’s son. A little boy—three years old when we lost him a year ago.”
“I can’t,” I said.
She looked at me eagerly, her lips parted.
“I can’t promise anything,” I amended. “But I will try.”
“Thank you, thank you!” she whispered with shining eyes. “Thank you,” the old man echoed behind her, seated cross-legged on the grass. And I looked at one of the little red lamps. I listened to my heart until it grew steady. And I conjured up Leiya Tevorova’s words like a smokeless fire.
The Afflicted must sit facing in the direction of the North, which, though it be not the Dwelling-Place of the Angel, is yet the place which draws the Spirit to it with its Vapors, and thus may keep it lingering in its Environs. The Afflicted must then bring to mind a certain Wraith or Image which shall have the form of a Mountain of Nine Gorges. Each of the Gorges shall be deep, ragged, and abysmal, and filled with brilliant and icy Vapors withal. The Afflicted must pursue this Vision until it is well attained, building up the Mountain Stone by Stone. When he has achieved it, he must cause, by an action of Mind, a Tree to grow from each of the Nine Gorges. And the Nine Trees shall have a golden Bark, and various Limbs, of which there shall be Nine Hundred on each Tree: one hundred of Ruby, one hundred of Sapphire, one hundred of Carnelian, one hundred of Emerald, one hundred of Chalcedony; and one hundred also of Amethyst, Topaz, Opal, and Lapis Lazuli; and these shall flash with a most unusual Splendor. When the Afflicted has mastered this—the Gorges, and the Trees, and the Branches which are nine times nine hundred in number—then will he be dazzled most grievously by virtue of the Radiance of that Image, which he will maintain through sore Travail. And when he is able to look upon it without Agony of Spirit, then must he bring into his Vision miraculous Birds, of which there shall be nine hundred on each of the Branches of the Nine Trees; and each Bird shall have nine thousand colored Feathers. On each of the Birds one thousand Feathers shall be jetty black, one thousand white, one thousand blue, one thousand others yellow; and one thousand each of red, green, purple, and bright orange; and one thousand feathers shall be clear as Glass. The Afflicted must perceive these things at once: the Mountain, the Gorges, the Trees with all their Limbs, and the colored Birds. Then shall there come a moment of most dreadful Suffering, which shall be sharp, white, and heated as if in a Forge. And when that Moment has passed, the Afflicted shall no longer see the Mountain, nor any of the things he has lately perceived; but another Vision shall take its place, an unfamiliar Image which shall take a form such as that of a Wood or a Cave. Then shall the Afflicted enter the Cave, or the Wood, or the Strange House, or whatever Image is by him perceived; he shall walk until the Image grows obscured with a gaping Darkness. And in that Darkness he shall meet the Angel.
“Jissavet,” I said. “Answer me.”
The red lamp burned, and the angel arrived. She stood there in her shift, her shoulders bright as dawn. Her bare feet tore the fabric of the air. Sparks clung to her plaits; her inimical light engulfed the glow of the little red lamp. A veiled light, certainly less than what she was capable of, but still a light intrinsically hostile to life. In the islands we say that death is dark, but I know there is a light beyond that door, intolerable, beyond compare.
“Jevick,” she said. Her absorbed, caressing voice. Her expression of longing and the wildness in her beautiful brooding eyes. She raised her hand, and I stiffened and closed my eyes, expecting a blow, but she did not strike. “Jevick,” she said again: a glass shard in my brain.
Words came back to me, whispered prayers, ritual incantations: Preserve us, O gods, from those who speak without voices. With an effort of will, my eyes tightly closed, my head pressed back against the chair, I forced myself to say: “I have a question.”
“I will tell you everything,” she said. “I will tell you everything that happened. You will write it for me in the vallon.”
I opened my eyes. She hung in the middle air, her hand still raised in an orator’s gesture. All about her gleamed a soft albescent fire. She smiled at me, stars falling. “I was waiting for you. I knew you’d call me. You are that rare thing, I said: a wise man from the islands.”
I swallowed and stumbled on. “My question. My question is for this woman here, this Olondrian woman. Her grandson is lost. Do you know where he is?”
She stared at me from the circle of her light. She was still so small. Had I stood beside her I could have looked straight down on the top of her head. I sat, frozen, on the Olondrian chair, not daring to move. After a moment I managed to say: “This woman’s grandson…”
“Grandson,” she said. Her glance was like a needle. It was her glance of startling clarity, which I remembered from the Ardonyi.
Then her voice clashed against my brain in a shower of brilliant sparks. “What do you want? Are you asking me to find him? You dare to ask me that?”
“Not me. These people. Their priest. He said you could answer—”
“Answer! Do you like to see me? Does it please you?”
She advanced, a golden menace.
“No,” I screamed.
“For me it is the same. The same. To enter the country again—that country—among the living—never! I couldn’t bear it!”
She shuddered, throwing off light. I could feel her dread, as strong as my own, the dread of crossing. She clenched her fists. “Write me a vallon,” she said.
“I can’t. Jissavet, these people are trying to help you. They’ll find—they’ll find your—”
“Write me a vallon!”
“Stop!” I screamed, pressing my hands over my eyes. The outlines of my fingers throbbed before me, huge and blurred, the blood in the body like oil in a lamp. Then she was gone.
I came to myself on the ground, in the odor of vomit. “Grandson,” I murmured. A face floated over me, tearful, the face of a stranger. An Olondrian peasant woman. My head was pillowed on her knees. “Thank you, my son,” she sobbed, her fingers in my hair.
“But I told you nothing.”
“We felt her. We saw your torment. Avneayni…”
I rolled away from her, sat up after a brief struggle, spat in the grass. My chair lay on its side. Two of the little lamps had gone out; another blinked madly on the verge of dissolution. And we—myself, the woman, and the old man she had brought with her—we looked at one another like the survivors of a deluge. The girl still stared at the wall. She stood in that same attitude, as if exiled from life, when out on the starlit commons a storm arose.