The Ordinary by Jim Grimsley
15
The shock of the talk still echoed later, when she was washing her face in the clear cold water, relieving herself while seated on the stone privy. Her apprehension returned by degrees. She had felt no fear in his presence but out of it she felt more and more. Outside her windows the sky pulsed and danced with color. She watched for a long time, standing at the window with a view of the tower, the tall one, watching the spires at its crown light again and again with a cold white light, other glows coming from the center of the tower, or the sides. Rumbles of thunder began to pulse, at first in the distance, then closer as rain began to fall. She felt a charge along her skin as if there were static in the air, the light hairs on her forearms arched away from the skin. Her host had gone to his tower, she was almost sure of it.
She drew the heavy drapes over the windows to darken the room a bit, and lay in the smooth sheets and coverings on the low bed, making no effort to sleep but instead allowing her thoughts to drift. But the bed was so comfortable it soon drew the weight of her body to the surface of her thoughts, and her own heaviness bore her down into dreamless sleep.
She woke to a soft gray light peering around the edges of the drapes, rose to pull them open to find a cloudy, pale dawn in progress. Below, in the misty morning, a few figures moved through the green parks and lawns. In this room she had a window to face in nearly every direction, and stood in one from which she could see the massive stone face of one of the entry halls, every column of stone carved intricately with geometric patterns adorned here and there with small leaves or flowers. Little of the art or decoration was figural, most was simple and fluid. Beyond the hall, the name of which she vowed to learn, lay the broad wall with its punctuating towers, a long walk running along the top of the wall, studded with the fire pots she had seen burning in the night. All were dark now. A few figures in long, gray-brown rain cloaks patrolled the walls in the misting rain.
The sky appeared less eerie in the daylight, hidden behind layers of rain-bearing clouds. Pale lights still burned from the tower, watery washes of color swelling and subsiding.
She opened one of the windows to let the cool mist from the rain settle on her skin. Moisture welled on the stonework of the windowsill, collected in grooves between the stone and ran out the window again. Some of the carvings channeled water down the stone, probably the runoff from the roof; she could hear the water running down near the window, and if she leaned out she could nearly see it. A flash of lightning from the mountains, a deep rumble of thunder.
The place was as seductive as its master, she thought. The peace of the rainy morning made apprehension hard to retain; she felt herself easing into the calm of her surroundings. He would not have to plan that effect, he could rely on it from his bones, and might not even be aware of the advantage it gave him, to house her in the midst of so much beauty. A part of her felt as if she had come home, different as her world was from this.
She could picture Malin in this house so easily, maybe wandering in the garden, tall and wan, with her somber, green eyes nearly glowing in the mist. The picture gave Jedda comfort for some reason, reminding her of their conversation in the shrine. She might be in this world, in fact; it would be interesting to know.
She bathed and dressed, balanced between apprehension and peace, listening to birdcalls through the open windows, feeling the crisp bite of the morning breeze. Into peace she lapsed, then remembered all her host had told her the night before, and tension returned, a cycle that repeated itself every few minutes.
The Hormling have a saying that a person does not want to stand too tall in a crowd. She was feeling herself head and shoulders taller than any of her kind.
Descending the stairs, she wondered which of those mute doors led to Arvith’s room. He would guess she had gone for a walk if he found her room empty. She might have left him a note but found nothing that she could recognize as a writing instrument upstairs.
Outside, crossing the dewy grass, she relished the warm dry feeling of her feet in her good boots, waterproofed by some method these people knew. She was dressed, in fact, in clothing that came from Irion, though from her time, of course: a cream-colored blouse with full sleeves and a touch of lace at the collar and cuffs, a pattern of flowers embroidered through the bib, buttons carved from bone; warm wool leggings, loose and comfortable, and over them hiking shorts of a durable cloth, roomy with pockets, into which she stuffed her cool hands as she walked. Did she look like an Anin trader, maybe? Someone here to see Jessex on business? He must do a good deal of business here, after all. He was essentially the ruler of all this territory.
Across the garden she walked, passing a few people, a man in a long wool coat and dark full trousers, a woman in a skirt that was split through the middle, like pants; she saw styles of dress she had seen before, and fabrics she recognized, along with examples of both that were strange to her, like the boy in the shift-tunic that ran past her with his dog behind him, or like the cloaks on several of the folks she passed, that in Jedda’s time were largely replaced with sleeved coats. A more practical adaptation, given the cold winters here.
Still, the differences were not so great that she was certain to have noticed them, unless she had been looking.
Over her, the cloudy sky threatened rain again at any moment. She could feel the moisture as if it were poised over her head. But she kept walking, out of the park to the main road that ran past rows of statues along the lower part of the wall. That road appeared to go a long way in either direction, and at this hour was thinly populated with a few pedestrians and carts. She headed toward the entry halls, toward the main gate of the house.
Alongside the stone road the house fell and rose again in terraces, till it met the mass of the formal halls. Every shape and curve of the hill had been used in one way or another; some of the terraces were decorated with statuary, furniture; rooms opened off some of them, reaching sometimes into the hill itself. This part of the house, with the road rising toward the initial crest of the hill, had an intricate, honeycombed look. The architecture was marked by few true perpendiculars of line other than the intricate geometric tracings in the stone.
The halls themselves rose like extensions of the hilltop, following the slightly jagged line of the crest and therefore not set truly parallel to one another. Each of the three halls grew taller than the previous one, though neither seemed particularly massive when compared with the rest. The tallest of these grand structures was the closest to Jedda, and she craned her neck to see the top, given that the road itself ran even lower on the hill. The stone was a soft gray color traced through with highlights of blue and mauve and even spots of a rosy color. She was no geologist, she had no idea what kind of stone it was; not marble, more like granite. Scaffolding rose along the flank of the tower, workers doing some kind of repair. She recognized the squat shapes of the Tervan at the top of the planks. Even higher, on a rigged board hanging from ropes, a lonely couple were washing windows, too small to see much detail.
She fought the long incline that led to the broad lawn and formal garden at the main gate of the house, where she could stand and survey the narrow facade of the welcoming hall, twenty-seven columns lining a deep portico, each carved to resemble a tall, elegant woman in flowing robes. No guards of any kind were posted here and the front doors of the house stood open, so she walked inside, through the cool shadow of the porch into a high, arched room with a canopy of stained glass through which fell such colors of light that she was momentarily transfixed. Blues, reds, purples, flames, dancing on the stone floor and on the creamy marble of the hall. Beyond on either side was a row of such rooms, full of similar light, while ahead of her was a wide, warm room of stone and wood. The walls rose up maybe five times her height, a row of long narrow windows, shuttered lower down, admitting the clear light of day up above. Between the windows hung richly colored tapestries, some in styles she had never seen before, and she smelled a spice on the air, a scent like clove or cinnamon or both.
He spoke in a very quiet voice. “This is a sign that means we leave you to yourself, to your own peace. We make this to one another to signal that we are willing to talk but feel it would be an intrusion to speak first.”
“An intrusion?” she asked. She could see his reaction to her accent, his slight smile. “Against what?”
“Against the peace of the morning.”
She bowed her head. “So you answered my unspoken question? I spoke first.”
He assented.
“Does this hall have a name?” she asked.
“Halobar,” he said, and she could visualize the spelling in her head, he spoke so clearly. Now she remembered hearing the name the day before. He repeated the word with the meaning, “Hall of Partings,” as what she understood his inflection to say. “You’re a guest of our master?”
“Jessex?”
He nodded, smiling. “We call him Irion,” he said, though the word did not quite sound like “Irion” as it was spoken in her time. She wanted to ask him to repeat it, but hesitated. “It’s not respectful to use his name.”
“Does he tell you that?”
The man looked puzzled. “No. My teachers tell me that. I’m studying to be advanced in the chant.”
She nodded. “What name do you have?”
“Kirson.”
“Well, Kirson, is this hall always open, like now? With a nice pot of tea?”
“Yes, from sunup to sundown. Accolytes take a turn here. We chant and we listen. We greet strangers to the house. We’re very close to YY, here.”
YY was the name of God. “Are you?”
“The tower in which she lives is through those doors.” He pointed to several sets of high doors at the end of the room, each a glowing wood of a dark finish, carved elaborately. “The next hall is Thenduril, where the King sat. Beyond it is her tower, Mudren, the Mother Tower.”
She could follow his speech more easily than anyone she had met, in her time or in this one. Some speakers were like that, were able to speak so exactly that their way of speaking was almost a paradigm. He was Erejhen, she guessed, judging from his stature, from his green eyes and dark brown skin. These were variations that were possible in the Hormling through gene regressions but not in the normal course of reproduction, but that abounded in the Erejhen.
Kirson walked with her to look at the tapestries, explaining the stories depicted by each. Some were originals, some copies of originals that were now too old and delicate to hang. Even magic, it seemed, could not preserve everything equally. One of the tapestries depicted the building of Inniscaudra, a swarm of Tervan, scaffolding, the rise of an elegant tower on an hilltop, and the retreating figure of someone wrapped in cloth, carrying a tall walking stick. This was God herself, Kirson explained. Another tapestry, in which God did not appear, featured a more finished Inniscaudra with many figures rising from rest along its grounds, a view a long sweep of the road that ran along the wall. The awakening of the forty thousand, Kirson explained; the creation of the Erejhen people. Other stories on the other tapestries, but these two were the ones that drew her back.
She compared them to the tapestries she had seen in Shurhala, and his smirk was plain. “That house is hardly even a moment old compared to this one. Irion prefers there should be no images of the war here, so we have none.”
“How curious,” she said. “Since he played such a big role in it.”
“Maybe there you have his reason,” Kirson answered. “I’m not privileged to speak with the master often, I don’t know.”
He withdrew shortly after, maybe a bit uncomfortable. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him at the fire, talking quietly with the woman who was on duty with him. They were Prin. Could they read her mind? Only lately had she been close to them. Would she really be allowed to study their language, to learn the chant for herself?
By now it was full morning, though the sky was gray and glowering, rain starting to fall. Kirson’s companion brought Jedda a rain cloak to put over her shoulders, and Jedda thanked her. “Should I bring this back?” she asked.
“No,” the woman said, “keep it as long as you need.” She was beautiful, this woman, extraordinarily tall, with fine bones, a long chin, eyes like saucers. Jedda turned away, flushed at her own attraction, wondering whether the woman could read it. Long, thick hair braided at her back, a color between silver and gray.
“I’m Jedda.” She offered her hand, standing at the doorway, listening to the rain splatter the columned porch.
“I’m Malin,” the woman said, and Jedda’s heart began to pound. Of course she was. But her eyes were not as bright, the green a deeper color. Malin, sensing none of Jedda’s agitation, said, “You’re my uncle’s guest.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been quite impatient to meet you.”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I have no idea who you are or where you’re from, but I haven’t seen my uncle so animated in a long time.”
They shook hands gingerly. Malin’s skin was cool and soft, like silk. Jedda’s heart was picking up force.
For a moment there was acknowledgment; there was an answer in the way Malin looked back. But this was followed by mistrust. “I’m just a stranger,” Jedda said. “Someone he wanted to talk to. He sent a long way for me. But he’s your uncle, after all, he can do that.”
“Yes, he can.”
“Do you always take a turn at duty here?” Jedda asked.
“What?”
“Kirson, your friend there. He told me all the Prin take shifts in the hall.”
“It’s an old tradition,” she said. “I came this morning because I had a feeling. A good one, as it turns out.” She turned to go. “And I owe duty, too, of course. How long will you be staying?”
“A couple of days.”
“You won’t tell me where you’re from?”
“No. But you’ll find out, one of these days.” Jedda smiled at Malin’s look of vexation. Was she taller in Jedda’s day? Or was it simply that she was younger, here and now, and less imposing? The softness of her curious beauty struck Jedda deeply, and she turned away to the rain. “I’d better get back to my rooms. Your uncle will think I’ve gotten myself lost.”
“I expect he’ll find you,” Malin said. “He has a way of doing things like that.”
“On my way back, you mean?”
She nodded. “Probably bringing you a rain cloak.”
Jedda laughed, and stepped into the open.
“I’ll tell my uncle I like you, at least.”
Jedda called, over her back, “Thanks,” but for some reason felt too shy or awkward to turn.
She headed into the rain pulling the cloak over her hair. The drumming of rain on the cloak beat at her hearing, but the air had such a fresh smell, she could taste the difference, and this made her happy. Splashing steps along the grass, she walked across the wide lawn in front of the house, beneath a grove of old trees that looped their branches into a nearly impenetrable ceiling over her head. Rain came dripping through in big drops. She walked from side to side in the twisted vaults.
What was different in Malin? She was fresher, cleaner, and clearer in every way. For the first time Jedda could feel the truth of the span of years she had crossed, for this Malin was unquestionably younger than the one Jedda had already met.
Heart pounding, Jedda headed at last across the lawn, looking for the road to her quarters. What could this mean but that Malin already knew her, knew Jedda, in Jedda’s real time? What else could this mean? The thought knotted her up in the middle so that she could hardly breathe. A tangle through which
She found the road, the park, the Twelve-Tower, as the signs read. Only a few people about, most in military dress, hurrying through the rain wrapped in dun-colored cloaks. The sky had grown darker, the clouds heavy.
She shook out the cloak onto the wet stone of the colonnade that ran along the front of the tower, avoiding the stairs that swept up toward the formal entryway. Water streamed down the stairs and into open drains that rang hollowly with the transport. Maybe feeding into cisterns or maybe drained down from the top of the hill. She took a last breath of the rain, ducking down the stairs to a lower entrance, protected by the mass of the entryway overhead.
The room beyond was quite elegant, lined with portraits of a handsome man at various ages. He stood as a young hunter over the body of a stag, its antlers reaching as tall as the man; he stood as a swordsman in a practice yard, shirt open, sword carelessly held; he stood in formal clothing carrying some kind of elaborate hat in his hand; older, but still recognizable, he stood beside a beautiful white horse. Other images, very nearly like photographs, captured the same man in a garden, on horseback, meeting with various people, alone at a window which overlooked mountains, even on the steps of the Hall of Welcome where Jedda herself had just walked. By the time she noticed the small, carefully engraved plaque beneath the portrait with the hat, she had already guessed who this man was; Kirith Dav Kirin, read the script. The hat was a crown, the head ornament for a king.
She climbed the stairs behind, these steps carpeted and plush, leading to the wide wooden stairs in the entry hall, up those to the worn stone landings outside the door to her room. The door stood open, and she guessed correctly that she would find Arvith inside; the smell of tea and bread welcomed her. “You’re just in time. Where have you been?”
“I walked to the hall called Halobar,” she said.
“In this mess?”
She shrugged. “I don’t dissolve so easily. And it wasn’t raining when I started out. I met Malin, she was on duty in the hall.” When she said the words aloud, she felt a bit queasy. She waited.