Visible Light, page 26
"I'd not do that," Dubhain said, squatting nearby, his eyes aglow and wicked.
"Let him go," Caith shouted at the chill and mocking faces above, about him. "Let my brother go. I never rescued him to give him to you."
"But you didn't save him," Nuallan said. "Safe and sound, you said. Was that not the bargain, mac Sliabhin? Would you ask more now?"
Dubhain drew back his lips in a half-grin, half-grimace. "Listen," the phooka said, "don't be reckless.
You have the curse on you. It's all yours now. Didn't we help you? We've more than kept our bargain.
What else have you to give up, beyond your scruples? Think, man."
Caith managed a laugh, despairing as it was; then the laugh died in his throat, for the Sidhe glow brightened, showing him where he was, in a small clearing at a ford, where a sleeping company sat sleeping horses, heads bowed, bodies slumped, and the rain on them like jewels, as if time had stopped here and all the world were wrapped in nightmares.
"They should not have come here," said one of the Sidhe.
"No man should," said another.
"Now, mac Sliabhan, what will you pay," asked Nuallan, "to free the boy from us?"
Caith turned a bleak look on him, blinking in the rain. "Why, whatever I have, curse you. Take me. Let the rest go. All of them. I'm worth it. Isn't that what you've most wantedto have one of Sliabhin's blood in your reach? And I'm far more guilty than the boy."
"You've not asked what the curse is," said Nuallan.
"You'll tell me when it suits you."
"Torment," said Nuallan, "to suffer torment all your days, mac Sliabhinthe boy, oh, aye, he's free. We accept your offering; he's no matter to us. The curse is yours alone."
"Then let him go!"
"I shall do more than that," Nuallan said; and bent, the tallest and fairest of all his fellows, and gathered the boy into his arms ever so gently, as if he had been no weight at all. He bore him to the sleeping riders; and the light about him fell on their faces. It was Raghallach foremost among them; and Cinnfhail's shieldman; and others of Gleatharan. And Nuallan set Brian in Raghallach's arms on the saddlebow sleeping child in the keeping of the sleeping rider, whose face was bruised and battered with wounds from Dun Mhor's cellars.
"What have you done?" Caith asked in horror. "Sidhe, what have you done?"
"Ah," said Nuallan, looking at him, "but they will get on well, don't you think? Raghallach will remember a thing he never did; but it will seem to him he was a great hero. And so the boy will remember the brave warrior who bore him away and took him safe to Gleatharan. Oh, aye, they'll wake at dawn, and think themselves all heroes; and so men will say of them forever. Is that not generous of me?"
Caith let out a breath, having gotten to his feet. He clenched his fists. But it looked apt, the tired small boy, asleep in safety, the honest man who sheltered him. "You could make him forget the rest," he said.
"You've nothing left to trade."
"For your own kindness' sakeif it exists."
"I've done thatalready." The Sidhe all were fading, leaving dark about, and the gleam of phooka eyes.
But Nuallan took Caith's arm. "Come with me," he said.
Caith was alone then, left utterly alone in a place where the sun blinded him, and when his eyes had forgotten the dark the light seemed soft. There were fields and hillsfair and green, spangled with gold flowers. Herds of horses, each the equal of Dathuil, ran free, and trees grew straight and fair on the hillsides.
No one hindered him. Caith wandered this beautiful place waiting to die; and then taking comfort in it for it seemed no heart could grieve here long except for greater causes than he possessed. He felt thirst; he slaked it at a stream over which trees bent under the weight of their fruit.
The water washed the pain from him. It healed his heart and when he washed his face in it he felt stronger than he had ever been.
He considered the fruit and risked it, growing reckless and fey and calm all at once, as if no death could touch him here, nor any grievous thing. Only then he felt afraid, for he felt a presence before he saw it and looked up.
"It gives the Sight," said Nuallan, for Nuallan was suddenly there, astride Dathuil, bright as the setting sun. Dathuil dipped his head to drink, and the Sidhe slid lightly down to stand on the grassy margin.
"And what will you ask for that, Sidhe?"
"Nothing here has price."
Caith thought on that, taking what leisure he had to think. Every saying of the Sidhe seemed tangled, full of riddles, and he felt unequal to them, and small. "I've been waiting for you," he said.
"For the curse. Oh, aye, that matter. But it is settled. Or will be." The Sidhe looked less terrible than before. There was pity in his eyes. "I like you well, man. You bargain wellfor a man. Would you know the truthwhose son you are?"
"Sliabhin's."
"The boy is Gaelan's. Half brother to you. And innocent. Come." The tall Sidhe knelt beside the brook.
"Look. Look into the stream."
Caith looked, kneeling cautiously on the margin and his heart turned in him, so that he almost fell, for it was the night sky he was looking into with the day still above him. "Ah!" He said and lost his balance.
Nuallan caught his arm and drew him back safe on the margin. "Nay, nay, that were a death neither man nor Sidhe should wish. An endless one. Look. Is there a thing you would wish to see? These waters show you anything dear to your heart. Would you see your brother?"
"Aye," Caith murmured, foreknowing a wounding. The Fair Folk were terrible even in their kindness.
The stars gave way to green hills, to Dun Gorm in the sunlight. A boy raced on a fine white horse, the wind in his hair, untrammeled joy in his eyes "Is that Brian? But he's older"
"He's fourteenAh, you're thinking of others nowoh, aye, RaghallachBrian follows him about; and Deirdreshe's grown very fair, has she not? Like Cinnfhail's own son, Brian is; and his queen's, the darling of their fading years, he is. The lad remembers very little of that year, only that it was terrible; he remembers fire and the long ride, and Raghallach bringing him awayit's thorough hero-worship. He doesn't remember you at all, save as one of Raghallach's men."
Caith bit his lip. "Good."
"Would you have it? Would you have what Brian has?"
"There's cost."
"In their world, always."
"His cost."
"Aye."
"No. I won't." Caith kept looking, until the image faded, until the abyss was back. He stood up as Nuallan did, there upon the brink. The gulf was below him again, the fall so easy from this place. He turned his back to it, there on the very edge, waiting as Nuallan set his hand lightly on his arm.
"Go your way," said Nuallan.
"Go?"
"Just go. You're free."
Nuallan let fall his hand. Caith turned away from the void, walked a little distance in disbelief, and then the rage got through. He turned back again, shaking with his anger. "Curse you, curse you to play games with me! You're no different than his sort, Sliabhin's, Hagan's. I've known that sort all my life. Is it your revengeto laugh at me?"
"Oh, not to laugh, mac Sliabhin. Not to laugh." Nuallan's voice was full of pity and vast sorrow.
"Torment is your curse; and I know none worse nor gentler than to have drunk and eaten hereand to know it forever irrecoverable. I have spared you what I could, my friend&"
"Nuallan" Caith began.
But the dark of the Sidhe-woods of Gleann Gleatharan was about him again, and the cold, and mortality in which he shivered. He had the ache of his wounds back; and the gnawing of hunger and remorse in his belly.
"A curse on you!" He cried in the night of his own stained world.
He heard only a moving in the brush, and saw there the gleam of two eyes like coals. Dubhain was there in boy's shape, a naked ruffian again.
"I am still with you," the phooka said. "This is my place."
Caith turned his shoulder to Dubhain and walked on, lost in this mortal woods and knowing it. He walked, until he knew that he was alone.
THE VISIONS crowded in on him, too vivid for a while: the vision of Dun Gorm that he had seen; and his brother growing upbut never must he go there, nor to the ruins of Dun Mhor, where he was a murderer and worse. His new Sight told him this, not acute, but dull, like a wound that hurt when he touched it, when he thought of the things he wanted and knew them lost.
There was no life for him but banditry, and regret, and remembering forever, remembering a land where everything was fair and clean.
"I'll give you a ride," the phooka offered in his dreams, on the next dark night when Caith slept fitfully his belly gnawed with hunger. "O man, you need not be stubborn about it. I like you well. So does Nuallan. He did let you go"
the phooka took more solid shape, seated on a stump as Caith dreamed he waked. "O man, don't you know Nuallan could have done far worse? He repented the curse. He wished it unsaid. But a Sidhe's word binds him. Especially his kind."
But there was no comfort in Caith's dreams, when he dreamed of the beauty he had seen, and of ease of pain; and when he rose up in the morning and had the miles always before him.
"I'll bear ye," the phooka offered wistfully.
"No," Caith said, and walked on, stubborn in his loss. Where he was going next he had no idea. He looked down from the height of the green hills and saw Gleann Gleatharan, and Dun Gorm with its herds fair and its fields wide; but he came no nearer to it than this, to stand on its hills and want it as he wanted that land he saw only in his dreams.
"I am your friend," the phooka said, whispering from behind him.
It was well a man should have one friend. Caith held his cloak about him against the wind and kept walking, passing by Dun Gorm and all it had of peace.
"Come," he whispered to the wind. "Come with me, phooka, if you like."
VII
The ship approaches dock. The star glows in the window, red and so dim they do not need the visual shielding. We can look on its spotted face directly, if not for long. Its light momentarily dyes the table the ice in our glasses, the crystal liquid, the bubbles that rise and burst. Then the ship's gentle rotation carries the view away.
There are no planets in this system. Only ice and iron. And a starstation.
Bags are packed. Most of the passengers are leaving. Soon the take-hold will sound.
"Packed?" I ask.
"Yes," you say. And gaze at the unfamiliar stars, thinking what thoughts I do not guess. "They're going to have to ship that poor fellow home. Next ship back. He just can't take it out here."
"His world always traveled the universe," I say. "He thinks it's abandoned him. Maybe it has. He thinks he'd be safe there. I'm not sure he'll ever feel quite so safe again."
"You're immune?"
I think about it. I see miniature worlds in the bubbles amid the ice in my glass. Microcosm in crystal. "I haven't left home," I say. "I don't know what it is to leave home. And I'm as safe here as most places."
"You mean the universe."
"That, yes."
The alarm sounds then. I down my drink quickly, we both do. I rise and toss glass and ice into the disposal. Yours goes after it.
We stare at each other then, at the point of farewells.
There is no choice, of course. This is a transfer-point. Our separate ships are already waiting at the station.
And they keep their own schedules.
§
Table of Contents
Introduction
I
Cassandra
II
The Threads of Time
III
Companions
I
II
IV
A Thief in Korianth
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
V
The Last Tower
VI
The Brothers
I
VII
C. J. Cherryh, Visible Light
Thank you for reading books on ReadFrom.Net
Share this book with friends
"Let him go," Caith shouted at the chill and mocking faces above, about him. "Let my brother go. I never rescued him to give him to you."
"But you didn't save him," Nuallan said. "Safe and sound, you said. Was that not the bargain, mac Sliabhin? Would you ask more now?"
Dubhain drew back his lips in a half-grin, half-grimace. "Listen," the phooka said, "don't be reckless.
You have the curse on you. It's all yours now. Didn't we help you? We've more than kept our bargain.
What else have you to give up, beyond your scruples? Think, man."
Caith managed a laugh, despairing as it was; then the laugh died in his throat, for the Sidhe glow brightened, showing him where he was, in a small clearing at a ford, where a sleeping company sat sleeping horses, heads bowed, bodies slumped, and the rain on them like jewels, as if time had stopped here and all the world were wrapped in nightmares.
"They should not have come here," said one of the Sidhe.
"No man should," said another.
"Now, mac Sliabhan, what will you pay," asked Nuallan, "to free the boy from us?"
Caith turned a bleak look on him, blinking in the rain. "Why, whatever I have, curse you. Take me. Let the rest go. All of them. I'm worth it. Isn't that what you've most wantedto have one of Sliabhin's blood in your reach? And I'm far more guilty than the boy."
"You've not asked what the curse is," said Nuallan.
"You'll tell me when it suits you."
"Torment," said Nuallan, "to suffer torment all your days, mac Sliabhinthe boy, oh, aye, he's free. We accept your offering; he's no matter to us. The curse is yours alone."
"Then let him go!"
"I shall do more than that," Nuallan said; and bent, the tallest and fairest of all his fellows, and gathered the boy into his arms ever so gently, as if he had been no weight at all. He bore him to the sleeping riders; and the light about him fell on their faces. It was Raghallach foremost among them; and Cinnfhail's shieldman; and others of Gleatharan. And Nuallan set Brian in Raghallach's arms on the saddlebow sleeping child in the keeping of the sleeping rider, whose face was bruised and battered with wounds from Dun Mhor's cellars.
"What have you done?" Caith asked in horror. "Sidhe, what have you done?"
"Ah," said Nuallan, looking at him, "but they will get on well, don't you think? Raghallach will remember a thing he never did; but it will seem to him he was a great hero. And so the boy will remember the brave warrior who bore him away and took him safe to Gleatharan. Oh, aye, they'll wake at dawn, and think themselves all heroes; and so men will say of them forever. Is that not generous of me?"
Caith let out a breath, having gotten to his feet. He clenched his fists. But it looked apt, the tired small boy, asleep in safety, the honest man who sheltered him. "You could make him forget the rest," he said.
"You've nothing left to trade."
"For your own kindness' sakeif it exists."
"I've done thatalready." The Sidhe all were fading, leaving dark about, and the gleam of phooka eyes.
But Nuallan took Caith's arm. "Come with me," he said.
Caith was alone then, left utterly alone in a place where the sun blinded him, and when his eyes had forgotten the dark the light seemed soft. There were fields and hillsfair and green, spangled with gold flowers. Herds of horses, each the equal of Dathuil, ran free, and trees grew straight and fair on the hillsides.
No one hindered him. Caith wandered this beautiful place waiting to die; and then taking comfort in it for it seemed no heart could grieve here long except for greater causes than he possessed. He felt thirst; he slaked it at a stream over which trees bent under the weight of their fruit.
The water washed the pain from him. It healed his heart and when he washed his face in it he felt stronger than he had ever been.
He considered the fruit and risked it, growing reckless and fey and calm all at once, as if no death could touch him here, nor any grievous thing. Only then he felt afraid, for he felt a presence before he saw it and looked up.
"It gives the Sight," said Nuallan, for Nuallan was suddenly there, astride Dathuil, bright as the setting sun. Dathuil dipped his head to drink, and the Sidhe slid lightly down to stand on the grassy margin.
"And what will you ask for that, Sidhe?"
"Nothing here has price."
Caith thought on that, taking what leisure he had to think. Every saying of the Sidhe seemed tangled, full of riddles, and he felt unequal to them, and small. "I've been waiting for you," he said.
"For the curse. Oh, aye, that matter. But it is settled. Or will be." The Sidhe looked less terrible than before. There was pity in his eyes. "I like you well, man. You bargain wellfor a man. Would you know the truthwhose son you are?"
"Sliabhin's."
"The boy is Gaelan's. Half brother to you. And innocent. Come." The tall Sidhe knelt beside the brook.
"Look. Look into the stream."
Caith looked, kneeling cautiously on the margin and his heart turned in him, so that he almost fell, for it was the night sky he was looking into with the day still above him. "Ah!" He said and lost his balance.
Nuallan caught his arm and drew him back safe on the margin. "Nay, nay, that were a death neither man nor Sidhe should wish. An endless one. Look. Is there a thing you would wish to see? These waters show you anything dear to your heart. Would you see your brother?"
"Aye," Caith murmured, foreknowing a wounding. The Fair Folk were terrible even in their kindness.
The stars gave way to green hills, to Dun Gorm in the sunlight. A boy raced on a fine white horse, the wind in his hair, untrammeled joy in his eyes "Is that Brian? But he's older"
"He's fourteenAh, you're thinking of others nowoh, aye, RaghallachBrian follows him about; and Deirdreshe's grown very fair, has she not? Like Cinnfhail's own son, Brian is; and his queen's, the darling of their fading years, he is. The lad remembers very little of that year, only that it was terrible; he remembers fire and the long ride, and Raghallach bringing him awayit's thorough hero-worship. He doesn't remember you at all, save as one of Raghallach's men."
Caith bit his lip. "Good."
"Would you have it? Would you have what Brian has?"
"There's cost."
"In their world, always."
"His cost."
"Aye."
"No. I won't." Caith kept looking, until the image faded, until the abyss was back. He stood up as Nuallan did, there upon the brink. The gulf was below him again, the fall so easy from this place. He turned his back to it, there on the very edge, waiting as Nuallan set his hand lightly on his arm.
"Go your way," said Nuallan.
"Go?"
"Just go. You're free."
Nuallan let fall his hand. Caith turned away from the void, walked a little distance in disbelief, and then the rage got through. He turned back again, shaking with his anger. "Curse you, curse you to play games with me! You're no different than his sort, Sliabhin's, Hagan's. I've known that sort all my life. Is it your revengeto laugh at me?"
"Oh, not to laugh, mac Sliabhin. Not to laugh." Nuallan's voice was full of pity and vast sorrow.
"Torment is your curse; and I know none worse nor gentler than to have drunk and eaten hereand to know it forever irrecoverable. I have spared you what I could, my friend&"
"Nuallan" Caith began.
But the dark of the Sidhe-woods of Gleann Gleatharan was about him again, and the cold, and mortality in which he shivered. He had the ache of his wounds back; and the gnawing of hunger and remorse in his belly.
"A curse on you!" He cried in the night of his own stained world.
He heard only a moving in the brush, and saw there the gleam of two eyes like coals. Dubhain was there in boy's shape, a naked ruffian again.
"I am still with you," the phooka said. "This is my place."
Caith turned his shoulder to Dubhain and walked on, lost in this mortal woods and knowing it. He walked, until he knew that he was alone.
THE VISIONS crowded in on him, too vivid for a while: the vision of Dun Gorm that he had seen; and his brother growing upbut never must he go there, nor to the ruins of Dun Mhor, where he was a murderer and worse. His new Sight told him this, not acute, but dull, like a wound that hurt when he touched it, when he thought of the things he wanted and knew them lost.
There was no life for him but banditry, and regret, and remembering forever, remembering a land where everything was fair and clean.
"I'll give you a ride," the phooka offered in his dreams, on the next dark night when Caith slept fitfully his belly gnawed with hunger. "O man, you need not be stubborn about it. I like you well. So does Nuallan. He did let you go"
the phooka took more solid shape, seated on a stump as Caith dreamed he waked. "O man, don't you know Nuallan could have done far worse? He repented the curse. He wished it unsaid. But a Sidhe's word binds him. Especially his kind."
But there was no comfort in Caith's dreams, when he dreamed of the beauty he had seen, and of ease of pain; and when he rose up in the morning and had the miles always before him.
"I'll bear ye," the phooka offered wistfully.
"No," Caith said, and walked on, stubborn in his loss. Where he was going next he had no idea. He looked down from the height of the green hills and saw Gleann Gleatharan, and Dun Gorm with its herds fair and its fields wide; but he came no nearer to it than this, to stand on its hills and want it as he wanted that land he saw only in his dreams.
"I am your friend," the phooka said, whispering from behind him.
It was well a man should have one friend. Caith held his cloak about him against the wind and kept walking, passing by Dun Gorm and all it had of peace.
"Come," he whispered to the wind. "Come with me, phooka, if you like."
VII
The ship approaches dock. The star glows in the window, red and so dim they do not need the visual shielding. We can look on its spotted face directly, if not for long. Its light momentarily dyes the table the ice in our glasses, the crystal liquid, the bubbles that rise and burst. Then the ship's gentle rotation carries the view away.
There are no planets in this system. Only ice and iron. And a starstation.
Bags are packed. Most of the passengers are leaving. Soon the take-hold will sound.
"Packed?" I ask.
"Yes," you say. And gaze at the unfamiliar stars, thinking what thoughts I do not guess. "They're going to have to ship that poor fellow home. Next ship back. He just can't take it out here."
"His world always traveled the universe," I say. "He thinks it's abandoned him. Maybe it has. He thinks he'd be safe there. I'm not sure he'll ever feel quite so safe again."
"You're immune?"
I think about it. I see miniature worlds in the bubbles amid the ice in my glass. Microcosm in crystal. "I haven't left home," I say. "I don't know what it is to leave home. And I'm as safe here as most places."
"You mean the universe."
"That, yes."
The alarm sounds then. I down my drink quickly, we both do. I rise and toss glass and ice into the disposal. Yours goes after it.
We stare at each other then, at the point of farewells.
There is no choice, of course. This is a transfer-point. Our separate ships are already waiting at the station.
And they keep their own schedules.
§
Table of Contents
Introduction
I
Cassandra
II
The Threads of Time
III
Companions
I
II
IV
A Thief in Korianth
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
V
The Last Tower
VI
The Brothers
I
VII
C. J. Cherryh, Visible Light
