A SCHOOL OF flying fish spurted across the sea and made a playful froth in the distance. From her seat in the rowboat, Merwen stretched her neck and watched their beauty, their dance that was a song in praise of life.
At the prow, Flossa leaned outward, her youthfully smooth elbows perched on the edge, sunshine gleaming from the curve of her back. “Those fish will make a good dinner, Mama; I can taste them already.”
Merwen turned back and pulled easily at the oars, in whose wake tiny whirlpools swirled away. The boat shuddered as a raft seedling
bumped the prow, a tangle of branches wide as the length of the boat. Only a few seedlings were so large, now, but there would be many more before the swallowers came.
Above the horizon, a helicopter appeared, buzzing insistently. Merwen dreaded the sight of those insects now, for they could disgorge Valan soldiers who might snatch her away to face their wordweaver Realgar again, although now they were all Unspoken. Realgar did not understand Unspeech; it only seemed to give him a temper tantrum. Malachite the Dead One had told Merwen that these Valans would share a lesson with her, but so far this one had learned nothing.
The helicopter swooped lower, close enough to alarm her. She watched its wheeled legs as it sailed overhead.
A loud voice blared out of it. “Turn Back to Raft,” came the words, Sharer words in a rough accent. “Keep Within Ten Person-lengths of Rafts. All Who Stray Outside Will Face âArrest.' Keep Within Ten Person-lengths of Raft ⦠.” The one word in Valan made no sense, but Merwen was sure it meant no good.
The helicopter dipped so close that a human face appeared at the front glass. Then steam hissed all around from the sea, and spray drenched the boat.
“Mama?” Flossa's eyes were round, her mouth pinched.
Merwen caught the girl in her arms and covered Flossa's face with her own shoulder. Above, the helicopter was blaring again.
“Mama, we can't listen to them,” came Flossa's muffled voice. “They're Unspoken.”
Merwen breathed deeply. “I can't let you go. You're too young.” How could she let this child slip into darkness? How far would the madness take them?
Out of the helicopter, two soldiers dropped into the boat and pulled Merwen apart from her daughter; Flossa, brave as she was, did not even gasp. Both were swallowed up into the foul gut of the machine, which smelled of oil and stale clothing. An endless nightmare passed, although it could not have been more than minutes, before they were released again, upon the raft.
At the silkhouse Merwen found a group of former witnessers, spread out in exhaustion. But these were the sisters who had just set off for their home many raft-lengths away; a perilous journey without clickflies, only dead reckoning. How could they be back?
“Valans reached us,” said one dully. “For a whole day we sped off
behind our glider squidâyet the death-hasteners flew us back here in minutes. Think of it, Impatient One.”
Merwen nodded. “It is true, in outer space these Valans can outpace the wind. Yet in inner space they cannot cross a web's-breadth.”
“But Merwenâwe can't just go on like this.”
Overhead a helicopter buzzed again and blared, “No Gatherings More Than Five People; Repeat, No Gatherings ⦔
“We will gather tonight, after sharing time,” said Merwen.
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Lystra caused quite a stir when she made it to Raia-el for the Gathering that night. First the Valan creatures had flung her from her boat at Leni-el, then they plucked her from the water where she swam. At last she managed to swim over, hidden beneath a raft seedling.
The news cheered some as they collected in the raft hollow, beneath a night sky still fringed with pink. But Trurl's face was somber, her eyes nearly closed. “It's a black day indeed when dead insects prey on people. When will our live insects return?”
“I'm trying,” muttered Usha. “I saved a few clickflies, but they still won't reproduce, and I don't yet have a full structure for the poison molecules. Why did we insist on Unspeaking Siderite? He would have told me.”
Lystra said, “Not with six death-hasteners around him.”
“Well, what do you expect of me?” Usha was at her wits' end. “I've made a new strain of breathmicrobe; shall we try that? This one will turn them all purple for good. As they should be.”
Trurl squeezed her eyes shut as if pained. “
Shora
, no. That would only drive them crazier than ever. Do you know, sister, now they are recruiting the sick ones among us? Sharing stone with the stonesick, and where that may lead ⦔
No one cared to guess where that might lead.
With difficulty Lystra kept her voice level. “Under so much pressure, there are more who will follow Rilwen.”
Yinevra had arrived with Kithril, and both sat still as death, though Kithril had tears running down to her waist.
“Whatever we do,” said Lystra, “we can't Unspeak our own sisters along with the Valans, not at a time like this.”
Merwen said, “I will share care of the stonesick ones. Let anyone who is drawn to stone come to our silkhouse instead. We will share healing, somehow.”
Lystra looked away, quite unable to say more.
“We are gathered, Sharers,” called Trurl at last. “Let the Gathering grow from our silence.”
But as silence fell, the sound of helicopters grew, dozens of them, with a roar that would have drowned out any voices. Then the beasts swooped down, disgorging Valan creatures who stumbled and shouted and started pulling sisters away with them.
Lystra cried out to them, but the Valans had gone deaf. There was nothing but confusion, meaningless noises, here and there a face etched in a flash of horrible light. And all the while it seemed that the helicopters kept coming, and more and more sisters were gone.
The agony wore on, until only a handful of sisters were left. Merwen and Ushaâwhere were they? That was all she could think of.
A numb, stifling rage settled within her. But she gathered close with the few who somehow remained, like the last of a school of fish after fleshborers gorged their fill. She watched the indigo sky, and the stars coming out tranquil as ever, as if this were any ordinary evening. Only humans knew what an evil time this was.
There was a lull in the carnage; the roars died away. Had all the helicopters indeed gorged their fill?
From behind, something grabbed Lystra, twisted her around, and bruised her breast. Blindly her arms swung out and connected the Valan's shoulder; the act made her shudder, but not for long. The Valan reeled backward, then pulled her over in a somersault. She found herself on her back, facing the stars. She tried to get up, but something hit her head, stunning her.
Then the Valan bent over her and tried to do something with his body, the last thing Lystra would have expected at such a time, the thing she had warned Spinel against before. Pain split her insides; she retched and vomited all over her own arm. The pain still throbbed, but somehow Lystra forced herself up on an elbow. Her vision cleared a bit.
The Valan was doubled up on the raft, yelping like a fanwing caught by its tailfeathers. Other death-hasteners surrounded him, waving their metal sticks. “Poor trollhead,” said a female voice. “You don't listen to briefings, do you.”
It was beyond Lystra's comprehension that someone could mean to use an act of loving to share hurt instead. She gagged again until her stomach squeezed up to her throat and there was nothing left to come
out. Then the other mad Valans grabbed for her arms and legs, but they had to stun her to take her away.
MERWEN SPENT THE night pressed with a dozen others in a cell that stank of urine and had not even enough room to lie down. She stayed in whitetrance, dreading to be caught unawares by a mind invasion before she could stop her own heart. That night, squeezed between a sister's back and the cold sticky concrete that surrounded them on all sides, Merwen felt for the first time what “war” was. Afterward, Merwen would never be quite the same person who had greeted the Valan soldiers when they first came to Raia-el.
In the morning, bruised and aching in every limb, Merwen and the others were dragged out into the light and left to the sea. It took her last strength to swim within sight of Raia-el, where a child out fishing picked her up.
At home, Usha was back from her own ordeal in the soldier-place. Weia clung to Usha, her little eyelids fluttering stark and wide, and would not leave for a whole day. Even Wellen stayed within the silkhouse, subdued and quiet as she helped repair the panels torn by the soldiers. Merwen remembered how that imp had sneaked down to the lifeshaping place to question the Valan death-hasteners. Now Wellen had a taste of the answer.
Usha went back to her clickflies, the precious few that she had kept alive. She was injecting a virus, which would carry certain genes into the cells of the clickfly, to enable it to live and reproduce in the presence of Valan poisons. Sharers maintained libraries of genes for many species, from edible fish and weeds to seaswallowers and shockwraiths. Shora had said that Sharers must share care for all the lesser sharers as for themselves. The ultimate library was kept with in raftwood: every
living cell of every raft held a library within its genes, millions of units within a cell too small to see.
Like Weia, Merwen stayed with Usha most of the day. As Usha worked, Merwen caressed Usha's arm and leaned her chin in Usha's neck, although she tried not to interfere too much. Her heart pounded with a question she had not dared ask “Usha, did you see anything of Lystra?”
Usha's face was blank with concentration. Then abruptly it twisted. “No. But I saw many others with burns who belonged here with the lifeshapers.”
Merwen looked down at Weia. “The children will grow old before they grow up.”
“I grew old that day on Valedon, when that hulk of a malefreak raved at us.”
“I grew old years before that.”
“Perhaps you were born old.”
“I was not,” said Merwen a little too sharply.
Usha looked at her, then nodded. “There was Virien, before I knew you. Virien was only one; and now ⦔
Virien, with a twist in her head that nothing could cure. Virien would have let Merwen die, if Yinevra had not come and beaten the death-hastener in such a way that she could not swim again. Yet Yinevra was the one Merwen had never forgiven, because she was sane, andâ
Merwen shook her head and squeezed memory's door.
“Only one, then,” Usha repeated. “And what good did wordweaving do?”
“Valans are not all like Virien,” Merwen said with conviction. “Their sickness is different. For soldiers, Death has a âwage.'” A wage that did not stop with stone and coins, as it did for traders.
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Lystra did not return to Raia-el, nor to her new home at Leni-el. Excruciating days passed with more attempted Gatherings and more sisters flown back and forth from the soldier-place, with the burned ones crowding the lifeshaping place, but a few did not return at all.
By the fifth day, things relaxed a bit. Fewer sisters tried to make a Gathering at Raia-el, but the couple of dozen who did collect within the cup of the raft's ridge were not molested by helicopters.
Merwen sat outside the silkhouse, replacing a split beam in her silk loom, when the sound of a motorboat reached her. The boat was weaving in through the branch channels, not very efficiently. When it reached solid raft at last, a lone Valan stepped out. It was Siderite, in his former non-soldier plumage, without any guards.
Out of the corner of her eye, Merwen watched Siderite approach her. Blood rushed to her ears and she felt hot all over. Where is Lystra, her heart cried to ask; but to ask would be a failure. Lystra would not want her to ask, to break Unspeech, and she would be right.
Siderite's shadow fell across the loom, darkening the warp strands. He spoke in Sharer. “Merwen, I came without guards. Even the âgeneral' does not share that I am here. Do you understand?” The voice paused. “I'm sorry for all this. Believe me, I hate this mess as much as you do. I can share a way out of it. Listen: all that the âHigh Protector' really cares about is this learnsharing of mine, with you and Usha. Yes, he would like to control the planet, but it's not worth the trouble. Too âexpensive,' you understand? If you work things out with me, I willâwill see to it that the soldiers leave.”
Merwen's anger grew as she heard this. Even the best of Valans seemed always to be hiding from the worst. Merwen was sick of it; she wanted nothing to do with any of them. But she tried to keep her mind steady. To Siderite's credit, he had come alone, despite âorders,' which was a big step for any Valan. If Siderite had even a remote chance of learnsharing further, of taking a selfname, then she had to encourage him.
Slowly she turned her head and looked into Siderite's face. His eyes squinted in the sunlight, and wisps of hair brushed around; his arms hung limp, with fingers flexing nervously. Siderite hungered for a word from her. And Merwen longed to ask what Yinevra had asked Nisi many months before: What is the First Door, The Last Door each enters alone, the Door of your own name?
But Lystra was missing, and Siderite was not yet ready to tell her where or why. Merwen returned to her loom. A look she had shared; that was all she had in her, for now.
For a long time Siderite stayed, while Merwen waited, and the Valan's shadow inched across the warp strands. At last the shadow fell away. From Siderite's boat, the motor sputtered and groaned, then died away.
Merwen gripped the frame of the loom, almost hard enough to break it again. If only she could know if she had done the right thing. Even Shora seemed to know so little anymore.