“And the scourges came … ”
“True. When we opened the gate, scourges of the tempter pursued us, coming through the gate with us. Almost before we knew they were here, they had killed some of us. Yet faithful we remained, for in the end, where can even these scourges bring us except to the waiting arms of Mother Darkness and Father Endless, they who were before the Consequential Egg was hatched?”
She rocked Laluzh/Snark, softly shush shush shush, singing in her mother voice:
“Ahau, Father Endless, Mother Darkness. Ahau, thou who wert before the stars. Ahau, eternal entropy, refuge of the sorrowful, haven of the weary, salvation of the aged, unlit by grief or pain. Ahau, to lie upon the breast of darkness knowing only peace.”
The song was like a lullaby, a hymn to the gods left behind on Breadh, a memorial to those who entered the gate, a plea for those few left on this world: Mother and Laluzh and the four other children, silent Nances and strong Ehrbas, weepy little Hahnaan and some other little girl whose name Snark couldn’t remember. Six of them in all. And Mother herself was gone by the time the ship came.
An Alliance ship, screaming out of the sky, landing upon the moor, where the children ran back and forth like panicked animals. Twenty standard years ago, when she’d been eight or nine. Old enough to remember the questions.
“Where did you come from, little girl?”
“I live here.”
“What happened to all the grown-ups, little girl?”
“The scourges of the tempter ate them. Something killed Mother, but I put her bones away safe, in the Mother Darkness jar.”
Glances, one man to another. A finger circled beside an ear. Crazy little girl. Out of her head. Must be a survival pod somewhere nearby. Kids must have been boosted off some ship in trouble. Castaways. Couldn’t actually have lived here for any length of time. Impossible. There was nothing here: no agriculture, no edible animals, no beasts of any kind. Only seabirds, fish.
“She’s gone snarky from the trauma,” said one.
“What’s snarky?”
“Snark’s a kind of a duck thing. From Herangia Five. It goes crazy and drops eggs on people.”
The label had stuck. Laluzh became Snark the crazed, later Snark the liar, Snark the thief. Eventually, she forgot Laluzh, forgot Perdur Alas, forgot Mother. Only the cave had remained, a place of safety and comfort. She might never have remembered the other parts if she hadn’t been sent here. But now … now she recalled everything she had been told of: Breadh, the Tempter, the Choice, the Journey to Dinadh, the Faithfulness, the Persecution, the Flight, and the Scourges.
She had not seen scourges since she’d returned to Perdur Alas. Mother had said they’d died soon after arriving, screaming in the night, crying like lost children, hungry and cold. So it wasn’t scourges who’d killed Mother. Something had. Something had killed her and chewed on her bones. Was it as Diagonal Red and the others had shown her? Had they done it?
She didn’t know. There was no way of telling. Nothing was left of that former time. Nothing but monsters. Monsters and Mother’s bones.
CHAPTER 9
Saluez had thought to grieve a little and then to sleep, but it was not to be. There was a stir of discontent eddying among us travelers, and its name was Lutha Tallstaff. She would not settle. Trompe fell asleep. Leelson fell asleep. Even Leely was quiet, with none of his usual restless little murmurs, but Lutha moved and sighed, sighed and moved, wearing herself out with trivialities. She went out and checked the panels not once but a dozen times. She put Leely’s harness upon him and fastened the end to her belt. Though Leelson had already referred to Bernesohn Famber’s yellowed map when he said we would finish our journey on the following day, Lutha unrolled the map once more and sat perusing it by lamplight. When she tired of that, she wedged the door shut, leaving me gasping for air.
“I’ll go outside,” I said. “There are no Kachis tonight.” It was true. There were none at all, and I desperately wanted to be by myself.