In soft pilgrim-robes he toiled as a gardener in the outermost terrace for six years. His hair was white, his hack was stooped; he learned to tell weed-seedlings from blossom-seedlings; he suffered from sendings every month or two at first, and then less frequently, and though they never left him entirely he found them increasingly unimportant, like the twinges of some ancient wound. Occasionally he thought of his family, who doubtless thought him dead. He thought also of Gleim, eternally frozen in astonishment, hanging in midair before he fell to his death. Had there ever been such a person, and had Haligome truly killed him? It seemed unreal now; it was so terribly long ago. Haligome felt no guilt for a crime whose very existence he was coming to doubt. But he remembered a business quarrel, and an arrogant refusal by the other merchants to see his frightening dilemma, and a moment of blind rage in which he had struck out at his enemy. Yes, yes, it had all happened; and, thought Haligome, Gleim and I both lost our lives in that moment of fury.
Haligome performed his tasks faithfully, did his meditation, visited dream-speakers — it was required here, but they never offered comments or interpretations — and took holy instruction. In the spring of his seventh year he was summoned inward to the next stage on the pilgrimage, the Terrace of Inception, and there he remained month after month, while other pilgrims moved through and past to the Terrace of Mirrors beyond. He said little to anyone, made no friends, and accepted in resignation the sendings that still came to him at widely spaced intervals.
In his third year at the Terrace of Inception he noticed a man of middle years staring at him in the dining-hall, a short and frail man with an oddly familiar look. For two weeks this newcomer kept Haligome under close surveillance, until at last Haligome's curiosity was too strong to control; he made inquiries and was told that the man's name was Goviran Gleim.
Of course. Haligome went to him during an hour of free time and said, "Will you answer a question?"
"If I can."
"Are you a native of the city of Gimkandale on Castle Mount?"
"I am," said Goviran Gleim. "And you, are you a man of Stee?"
"Yes," said Haligome.
They were silent for some time. Then at last Haligome said, "So you have been pursuing me all these years?"
"Why no. Not at all."
"It is only coincidence that we are both here?"
Goviran Gleim said, "I think there is no such thing as coincidence, in fact. But it was not by my conscious design that I came to the place where you were."
"You know who I am, and what I have done?"
"Yes."
"And what do you want of me?" asked Haligome.
"Want? Want?" Gleim's eyes, small and dark and gleaming like those of his long-dead father, looked close into Haligome's. "What do I want? Tell me what happened in the city of Vugel."
"Come. Walk with me," said Haligome.
They passed through a close-clipped blue-green hedge and into the garden of alabandains that Haligome tended, thinning the buds to make for larger blooms. In these fragrant surroundings Haligome described, speaking flatly and quietly, the events that he had never described to anyone and that had become nearly unreal to him: the quarrel, the meeting, the window, the river. No emotion was apparent on the face of Goviran Gleim during the recitation, although Haligome searched the other man's features intently, trying to read his purpose.
When he was done describing the murder Haligome waited for response. There was none.
Ultimately Gleim said, "And what happened to you afterward? Why did you disappear?"
"The King of Dreams whipped my soul with evil sendings, and put me in such torment that I took up hiding in Normork; and when he found me there I went on, fleeing from place to place, and eventually in my flight I came to the Isle as a pilgrim."
"And the King still follows you?"
"From time to time I have sendings," said Haligome. He shook his head. "But they are useless. I have suffered, I have done penance, and it has been meaningless, for I feel no guilt for my crime. It was a moment of madness, and I have wished a thousand thousand times that it had never occurred, but I can find in myself no responsibility for your father's death: he goaded me to frenzy, and I pushed, and he fell, but it was not an act that bears any connection to the way I conducted the other aspects of my life, and it was therefore not mine."
"You feel that, do you?"
"Indeed. And these years of tormented dreams — what good did they do? If I had refrained from killing out of fear of the King the whole system of punishment would be justified; but I gave no thought to anything, least of all the King of Dreams, and I therefore see the code under which I have been punished as a futile one. So too with my pilgrimage: I came here not so much to atone as to hide from the King and his sendings, and I suppose I have essentially achieved that. But neither my atonement nor my sufferings will bring your father back to life, so all this charade has been without purpose. Come: kill me and get it over with."
"Kill you?" said Gleim.
"Isn't that what you intend?"
"I was a boy when my father vanished. I am no longer young now, and you are older still, and all this is ancient history. I wanted only to know the truth of his death, and I know it now. Why kill you? If it would bring my father back to life, perhaps I would, but, as you yourself point out, nothing can do that. I feel no anger toward you and I have no wish to experience torment at the hands of the King. For me, at least, the system is a worthy deterrent."
"You have no wish to kill me," said Haligome, amazed. "None."
"No. No. I see. Why should you kill me? That would free me from a life that has become one long punishment."
Gleim again looked astounded. "Is that how you see it?"
"You condemn me to life, yes."
"But your punishment ended long ago! The grace of the Lady is on you now. Through my father's death you have found your way to her!"
Haligome could not tell whether the other man was mocking him or truly meant his words.
"You see grace in me?" he asked.
"I do."
Haligome shook his head. "The Isle and all it stands for are nothing to me. I came here only to escape the onslaughts of the King. I have at last found a place to hide, and no more than that."
Gleim's gaze was steady. "You deceive yourself," he said, and walked away, leaving Haligome stunned and dazed.
Could it be? Was he purged of his crime, and had not understood that? He resolved that if that night a sending of the King came to him — and he was due, for it had been nearly a year since the last one — he would walk to the outer edge of the Terrace of Assessment and throw himself into the sea. But what came that night was a sending of the Lady, a warm and gentle dream summoning him inward to the Terrace of Mirrors. He still did not understand fully, and doubted that he ever would. But his dream-speaker told him in the morning to go on at once to that shining terrace that lay beyond, for the next stage of his pilgrimage had commenced.
EIGHT
Among the Dream-Speakers
Often now Hissune finds that one adventure demands immediate explantion by another; and when he has done with the somber but instructive tale of the murderer Sigmar Haligome he understands a great deal of the workings of the agencies of the King of Dreams, but of the dream-speakers themselves, those intermediaries between the sleeping and waking worlds, he knows very little at all. He has never consulted one; he regards his own dreams more as theatrical events than as messages of guidance. This is counter to the central spiritual tradition of the world, he knows, but much that he does and thinks runs counter to those traditions. He is what he is, a child of the streets of the Labyrinth, a close observer of his world but not a wholehearted subscriber to all of its ways. There is in Zimroel, or was, a famous dream-speaker named Tisana, whom Hissune had met while attending the second enthronement of Lord Valentine. She was a fat old woman of the city of Falkynkip, and evidently she had played some part in Lord Valentine's rediscovery of his lost identity; Hissune knows nothing about that, but he recalls with some discomfort the old woman's penetrating eyes, her powerful and vigorous personality. For some reason she had taken a fancy to the boy Hissune: he remembers standing beside her, dwarfed by her, hoping that she would not get the notion of embracing him, for she would surely crush him in her vast bosom. She said then, "And here's another little lost princeling!" What did that mean? A dream-speaker might tell him, Hissune occasionally thinks, but he does not go to dream-speakers. He wonders if Tisana has left a recording in the Register of Souls. He checks the archives. Yes, yes, there is one. He summons it and discovers quickly that it was made early in her life, some fifty years ago, when she was only learning her craft, and there are no others of hers on file. Nearly he sends it back. But something of Tisana's flavor lingers in his mind after only a moment of her recording. He might yet learn from her, he decides, and dons the helmet once more, and lets the vehement soul of the young Tisana enter his consciousness.