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Stuffing the swirling energies, the black fires, deep inside himself, Martel
touches the CastCenter entry plate.
"Martel, evening shift."
That's right. Evening, evening in youth. Evening in full light. Why not? Light
is a lie, promising everything and sig-
nifying nothing.
XXXI
A small, dark-haired girl stands on a half-story balcony and looks to the
south. She inclines her head slightly, as if bowing to an unseen presence,
then lifts it and stares into the south-
ern distances.
"Derissa?"
She ignores the call and continues to watch the southern heavens, and their
eternal gold.
"Derissa!"
The girl makes the sign of the inverted and looped cross and walks back into
her bedroom to obey her mother's call.
... Up the lane, behind closed doors of a workroom, the bootmaker Aldus labors
over a pair of black formboots.
He checks the seams of the left upper, squinting as he draws the black leather
next to his eye.
He nods and. puts it down, begins to check over the right upper.
The door opens behind him.
"How are you doing, dear?"
"So far, so good."
"Your supper's ready."
"I'll be there in a moment, as soon as I check this one over."
"You've checked, and checked, and checked."
"It has to be perfect."
"Would He know the difference?"
"No, probably not, but you never know. And I would. Un-
like some of Them, He pays, and pays what they're worth.
Almost, anyway."
The bootmaker does not lift his eyes from the black leather.
After a time, the woman looks away, shakes her head si-
lently, and retreats to the kitchen.
... On a golden sand beach, across the Middle Sea, a boy, playing on the
sheltered beach under the cliff on which his parents' house rests, scoops up a
handful of sand for his cas-
tle.
The dark glitter catches his eye. In among the golden and silver grains of
sand are black ones, sands so black that each grain seems to absorb the light,
but glistens all the same.
He begins to separate the black grains from the silver and gold ones, until at
last he has a small handheld heap of mostly black and glittering sand.
"Mom! See what I found!"
His mother wades in from the low surf to meet him in the ankle-deep water.
"See! See how shiny it is!"
"Pierre, put that sand down. The black ones are danger-
ous."
"But why?"
"Put it down. All of it."
"I want to know why."
"When you're older, I'll tell you. Put it down."
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"But why?"
"I told you it was dangerous. When you are older, I will tell you why. Now ...
put ,.. it ... down!"
"All right." He throws the black glimmerings into the wa-
ter lapping around his ankles. "All right, but you'd better tell me. You
promised. You promised."
"I will. I will. Now ... let's see if you can still float on your back."
... In the secret hollowed-out space beneath the old stone house, they begin
to gather.
By ones, by twos, the figures drift in and take their places in the small
chapel, until the requisite score has assembled.
The man in the brown robe finally approaches the cube, black on all sides, on
which stands a single black candle.
He does not light it.
"Oh, hear our prayers, undeclared God of Night. God of
Darkness, deliver us from Light."
"Hear our prayers."
"Oh, hear our songs, God of the Evening, God of Black-
ness."
In time, up wells the familiar refrain:
"... And the Hammer of Darkness will fall from the sky;
The old gods must fly, and the summer will die ..."
The black candle remains unlit on the black stone cube.
"Deliver us from Light; deliver us from the flame of our oppression, from
eternal day that lets us rest not, nor slumber.
Hear us, and deliver us, thy servants, from the bondage of eternal brilliance
..."
xxxii
For the third day running, the waves break over the top of the golden sand
beach, and the biting spray reaches over the hill-
crest and down to the porch where Martel sits.
As all mortals do, his landlady, Mrs. Alderson, had suc-
cumbed to time, even though her life had been prolonged a great deal more than
she had expected. For reasons unknown to Mattel, who remains uninterested in
the finer details of cellular biology, his attempts to rejuvenate the
gray-haired woman failed, though she was unaware of his efforts.
Surprisingly, her testament, last declared less than a stan-
dard year after he had come to live in the small cottage, had offered him the
right to buy either the cottage or the house, or both.
With the continuing royalties from his reruns both For-
gotten Beaches of Aurore and Postulant Communities of Au~
rore are a steady source of income he purchased both and
rented the house out, preferring to stay in the cottage.
The present occupants of the house are a middle-aged cou-
ple on sabbatical from the University of Karnak. Most of
Martel's renters have been outsider norms. Those who decide to stay move
elsewhere.
Martel shakes his head. The mannerism is unnecessary, he knows, but he enjoys
hanging on to some of his useless hab-
its.
Martel sniffs the air, and the salt tang reminds him of the waves whose
muffled crashes he can hear from the other side of the hill.
The continuing waves are unnatural, even on Aurore. After three days, they are
not likely to disappear, not until they achieve their purpose.
Another challenge? Or annoyance?
He rises, his face clear, eyes hooded, dark. A stocky man, modest in height,
black-haired, lightly tanned, apparently in the health of first maturity.
His steps are heavy, but they have been heavy since youth, as he descends the
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three steps from the porch to the hillside.
He walks up the grassy slope to the top of the hill that over-
looks the small bay.
At the crest he pauses.
The spray flings itself upward in misty patches, glistening in the indirect
light that gives the breakers themselves a threatening yellow look.
From his vantage point he can see the outward path of at least one riptide.
He shrugs as he starts down the hillside, the shadows gath-
ering around his black-clad form.
A dorle chitters at him, but wings over and glides across the hilltop to perch
in one of the quinces and to wait.
Any close observer would note that Martel's feet do not quite touch the grass
over which he marches and that there is no direct light to cast the shadows
that trail him.
From the grass that does not bend under his tread to the sand that does not
receive his footprints he heads straight to-
ward the waters, and they part around him.
He walks through gold-green breakers as if they are not there, and the waters
crash over the places where he has been without touching him.
Overhead, a white bird with deep golden eyes and black pupils circles, then
vanishes.
His head beneath the water's surface, he follows the line of the sloping beach
at least a kilo outward. By now the waves are nearly a hundred meters over his
head, yet his hair is still in place, and he moves, bone-dry, over the seabed
sands.
At the edge of the rocky shelf he stops, knowing that be-
neath his feet is the beginning of a slope that will drop nearly a kilo in
several hundred meters.
By sights, that for which he searches should be near.
Out into the nearby waters he casts his thoughts, and on the first cast snares
nothing.
Nor on the second. Nor on the third.
Some little patience has evolved in his years of avoiding what others regard
as inevitable, and he changes his cast, re-
focuses his thoughts, and tries again. And again.
At last, a glimmer, a slight tug.
That is enough, and he turns his steps southward, paral-
leling the dropoff, striding quickly, as if the water were not surrounding
him.
Above the sea the white bird, golden-eyed, circles, follow- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]