Black Rose

Chapter 16

Harness

They had come in from the coast, and were rounding the northern end of the Maloccas: the Abolo Highlands.

The Coney was wearing most of her clothing all at once, because in spite of how far north they were, they were so high up, and it was so dry and so cold, that it was bitterly cold in the wagon.

She went up and squinted in the weak sunlight.

To their left, the long dry plain sloping down to the sea. Ahead, the narrowing spur that led to the Ragasz Archipelago and, beyond that, a few hundred miles over the horizon, the long, damp, dark, cold, dour, forest-world of Rakissala. Where bad things came from.

The driver was sitting there, looking as stoic and carved and monumental as ever. The Coney had been observing the driver for several days, now, and was none the wiser as to whether the driver was a he or a she, and had eventually decided, what's it matter, still a good driver.

'Any more tea,' she said.

'You got more tea,' the driver said.

'No.'

'Then no,' the driver said. 'Tomorrow, we get more tea, when we stop.'

The Coney shrugged slightly, with her face.

'Grand, so,' she muttered.

She felt around inside one of her several garments and found some jerky. She took it out and offered it to the driver, who looked at it and nodded with a certain ancient grace. The Coney tore it in half and gave half to the driver, and put the rest in her mouth and chewed. The Coney chewed the rest. It was sustaining. Bit boring though.

The track was old, and long, and yet it was the quickest way from Terrasse-des-Loups to Memika.

No chance of going direct, because the Vollsumpf lay to the east of Terrasse, hundreds of square miles of impassable marsh, and then there was the northern half of the Maloccas to get through. So, you'd to go north to the coast to skirt around the marshes, then turn east, and go via the Highlands, and once you were east of them, head straight south to Memika, which was bathed in the warm east wind.

Memikashouldhave been cut off from the rest of Dairdland by the high ridge of the Maloccas, directly to the west of it.

But it just so happened that there was the Spovert Pass, west-south-west of Memika, which cut a very conveniently wide and flat gap in the mountains, and gave Memika access to the rich farmlands of Pascone and Losso in the middle of Dairdland, and which in turn gave those areas access to Memika's wonderful harbour.

Some were content to believe the Spovert Pass was proof of the existence of the Right, for there was no other natural explanation for such a useful passage through the mountains.

Others thought that the existence of the Spovert Pass proved that the Messengers had done more engineering than people thought. It shouldn't be, but it was. So someone must have made it.

What was not in doubt was that control of the Spovert Pass had been the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting in the war.

The Coney had never seen the Spovert Pass. Apparently it wasn't much to write home about, precisely because it was so broad, flat and useful, and not perilous at all.

Still. Made you think.

'Done this route a lot?' the Coney said.

The driver nodded.

'Ever get bored?'

Ahead, it was a long, gently curving sand track. Behind, it was a long, gently curving sand track.

The driver nodded.

The Coney waited for any more information, then saw that none was forthcoming.

'Want some company?' she said.

Whether or not the driver was male or female, or something else, and no matter what age the driver was, for you couldn't quite tell that either, something between 30 and 50, the Coney had been wondering if the driver might be kind of fun, after a couple of drinks.

The driver, however, ignored her.

The Coney sighed and went below again.

She picked up the papers and sat down, and pulled her blanket over herself, and went back to reading.

***

'Do you ever think about life in the Otherworld?'

Aadhya stood [Cormac wrote] and stared at us all, a smile waiting to break on her face.

Nobody wanted to answer. It was one of her ways of getting your attention: ask an embarrassing question.

'This is a question,' she said. 'Questions are supposed to have answers. Haven't you ever thought about it?'

'Why would anyone want to think about the Otherworld,' Shvaun said, scowling slightly. 'Can't go back there.'

'We know it must have been a little like this one,' Aadhya said, looking at us sidelong. 'You've read the books, haven't you? Does it not sound like this one? But better?'

'Course it does,' Shvaun said. 'But what's the point in thinking about how great it was? They didn't have to live like we do. They could speak to each other miles away and go from world to world, and dream aloud, and defeat their enemies by saying so, and...'

There was a burst of laughter at this, from some of the others, and Shvaun turned and glared at them.

I looked at them; boys like me, who didn't believe in the Otherworld and thought it was all a load of shit told to fool people like Shvaun.

'What you laughing at, Dohy Reevclarr,' Shvaun said.

'Kids' stuff,' Dohy said, glancing at Aadhya. 'You're not supposed to believe it.'

'What makes you say so,' said Aadhya in a cool voice.

'Because it's shit,' he said. 'There's no Otherworld.'

Dohy sat back, smiling at Aadhya, smiling at all of us.

'Or at least,' Vere Finry added, 'not everyone believes in one.'

Vere was older than Dohy. He had been in the Chariot since before we had joined, and he was still in training, but he was a good dancer, and he was beautiful, with a finely boned face and auburn hair streaked back from his forehead.

'Oh,' Aadhya said, gazing at him. He looked back at her, and I could see him thinking.

He was a good guy, Vere, but it was hard to work out what he really thought about anyone or anything. He was always polite, always friendly. But from time to time, he came out with things that made you wonder.

'So some people say,' he said, shrugging. 'I mean, that's what they say in Hargest. I went there with my father when I was a kid. I'm just telling you what they think.'

'It sounded like you believed it,' Aadhya said, smiling at him.

'I'm just saying,' Vere said, 'we can have a talk about it. Some people think we came from the Otherworld. Other people, such as the Hargest folk, say we were here all along, and the messengers came and gave us speech and fire and whatnot.'

'What do you think, Vere,' Aadhya said, and she sat on a table and smiled at him.

That was a bit alarming. Because Aadhya was not a very smiley person.

'I don't know,' he said, and the smile vanished from his face. 'I'm just saying, there are other ways. Not everyone agrees.'

'No,' Aadhya said, nodding. 'Not everyone agrees.'

She got up and began to pace up and down, staring at the floor with a patient look on her face.

'But we in Bhuvala do not believe the tales that Hargest has to tell,' she said quietly. 'We have our own beliefs, do we not? We have our own traditions, and our tradition speaks about the Otherworld, where things were different. A world we have fallen from, no?'

She glanced around the room. We nodded, Shvaun and Dawvy and I, and most of the others. Vere sat with his arms wrapped around himself and looked a little uncomfortable.

'Have we not seen traces of the Otherworld?' Aadhya said. 'Our oldest books speaks of the haw as a fruit that can be eaten, and gives methods for its preparation. But we have found, again and again, that no amount of cooking will make a haw edible. Is the Book simply wrong? Or could it mean some other tree than the one we know?'

She waited for an answer, and when nobody said anything, she shrugged.

'In the Otherworld, you could eat the fruit of the haw tree,' she said. 'In ours, you cannot. That is the most reasonable answer to this problem.'

I heard my dad's voice in my head:Or the book is wrong.

She sat down on the floor and crossed her legs beneath her and looked up at Vere.

'You think that nobody has ever discussed this,' she said quietly. 'You think that, because you've heard what the Hargest folk think, that nobody else has ever wondered if what they say is true. But we have fought over these things, Vere, and we still fight about them.'

She paused, and looked at him, waiting for his reply. He stared at the wall, and looked down at her, and fidgeted, but said nothing.

Aadhya stretched out her arms before herself, and regarded them for a moment. Then she looked up at Vere.

'They in Hargest say that we were like animals, once, lying on the plain, dumb and mute, living from hand to mouth,' she said. 'And then the messengers came and gave us their magical secret fire, and we became alive. Do you believe that?'

'No,' Vere said.

'Good,' she said, 'because it has never made sense to me. Here we are, walking and talking, loving and breathing.'

She smiled at him and flashed her eyebrows.

Loving? It was hard to imagine Aadhya loving anyone.

'Kissing and sweating,' she added, her eyes gleaming. 'Laughing and farting.'

She smiled, and we all smiled, because the idea of Aadhya farting was so bizarre, and yet the fact that she said it made it true.

'How can we ever have been mindless nothings?'

She stared at Vere, challenging him to deny it. The flirtation in her face and eye went out, like a candle blowing out. He grinned at her, blushing a little at his own daftness.

'You can tell me,' she said, 'that we, who carry our own fire within us, were once lumps of meat without thought or desire?'

'I know,' he smiled. 'It's stupid.'

'Good,' she said. 'Just because others believe this stuff, you need not.'

She walked away from him, and I watched her go, then I looked at Vere.

He was also watching her go, smiling slightly to himself.

Then he glanced at me, and I looked away.

***

The day I began to realise that we were under new rules was the first day of Harness class.

We thought Harness class was going to be about how to use the trapeze, the ropes, all those things.

It wasn't.

The thing that tipped us off was that the tent was too damn small.

We filed in, Shvaun and Dawvy and the others and I, and we found it empty of ropes and harnesses and gear of any kind, except a carpet on the ground which was slightly springy.

At the far end of the tent there was a tall person, balanced on her hands. None of us had ever seen her before.

She was looking to one side, her legs folded around each other, ignoring us. We walked slowly over to her.

She was a young woman, younger than Aadhya but bigger than her. Her shoulders were broad, with muscles in them like thick ropes. Her legs, too, looked very strong. Her hair was cropped short like a monk's. She was wearing a close-fitting, black, one-piece garment that covered her torso but had short sleeves and legs. She was staring at the tent wall, breathing slightly.

A long moment passed, in which we waited for her to acknowledge our presence in some way. But she ignored us.

I wondered how she was holding herself up. I looked at her wrists to see if I could see them wobble, but I couldn't. She seemed absolutely still, apart from the gentle in-and-out of her ribcage and the slight flare of her nostrils, which showed she was breathing.

We waited for a long time before I actually started counting how long we were waiting, and then I counted another five minutes.

And then she slowly unfolded her legs from themselves, and began to unbend them, swivelling herself on her shoulders and unbending her torso until she was in a full handstand, arms extended, toes pointing at the ceiling of the tent.

Then, she shifted her weight to one arm, and lifted the other off the ground, so that she was resting her entire weight on one arm.

Then she held it there for a long moment.

'Hello...' Shvaun said tentatively.

'Shut up,' said the young woman levelly.

Shvaun closed her mouth.

The young woman slowly swivelled her head and looked at us all. She fixed her eye on me.

'You,' she said. Her voice was very odd. It was like she aimed to spend as little effort in possible in saying words. 'Stand up straight.'

'I am standing up straight,' I said.

'No you're not,' she said.

I was insulted but I tried to stand up straighter.

'You're leaning forward and lowering your head, and you've got your weight on your left calf,' the young woman said in her strangely calm voice. 'You're not a fucking waterbird. Stand up straight.'

I started to sayThis is as straight up as I standwhen, I couldn't tell how she did it, but she returned to an upright posture, and in the same motion, her leg swung at my head.

I jerked backwards to avoid a kick in the face, and I felt the wind from her bare foot as it brushed past me. She swivelled on the spot and then stood there, resting on her heel, staring down at us, her face only a little red, breathing lightly.

'This is Harness,' she said softly. 'I teach this. What's your name.'

'Cormac Tecknor.'

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded, and looked to my left, at Shvaun.

'Shvaun Deeny.' Pause, nod.

'Dawvy Eeskra.'

'Avleen Altra.'

'Connor Fermyur.'

'Dohy Reevclarr.'

'Valeria Sveikas.'

'Titas Nesveika.' And so on down the row. Everyone got a pause, a stare from those icy pale eyes, and a nod.

'You don't get to know my name,' she said, 'until you are finished with this class. Until then, you call meIlkaya. Is that clear?'

The words came from her mouth like small droplets of clear glass. No tone. No emotion. Just mere information.

'Where are the ropes?' Shvaun said. Ilkaya turned her eyes on Shvaun and looked at her from a long way away.

'You don't get ropes,' she said.

'I thought this was harness.'

'It is. Ropes are in rope class. This is Harness.'

'What's Harness?'

Ilkaya looked at us all and... it wasn't that she smiled, exactly, but she did something with her face that made us feel worried.

'None of you know what Harness is?'

***

Two hours later, we were standing in a line before her.

My shirt was sticking to my chest. I was blinking the sweat out of my eyes. My arms and legs and stomach muscles were blazing. I was trembling with pain, tiredness and humiliation.

I didn't look at the others because I knew we were all in the same state. I kept my eyes on Ilkaya. I had been slapped in the face enough times to know that you kept your eyes on her; we'd all learned that lesson. Dawvy's right cheek was burning.

Aadhyapretendedto slap you. Ilkaya really did. Alot.

It took us a while to grasp that it was always for the same thing: inattention, looking at the others. Not taking it seriously.

She had put us in position after increasingly uncomfortable position and got us to hold them for longer and longer times, stretching our bodies like ropes being tested, scorning us with her soft voice and vicious words when we didn't do it properly.

Nothing got her angry. Nothing made her raise her voice. But she had a gift for making you feel like a flabby little mark who'd wandered in off some field and was expecting to be treated like a god. As if wehadn'tjust spent a year shovelling shit as nobodies.

If this was a step up, it was a step up into a pool of the dirt that Aadhya had warned us about.

Ilkaya herself was glowing a little from exertion but otherwise she was as calm and unflappable as she'd been since we entered the tent. She stood with her arms hanging by her sides, her feet planted squarely on the mats, surveying us with her pale eyes and her impassive face.

'Nowdo you know what Harness is?'

She lifted a corner of one eyebrow.

We were silent, and then Shvaun croaked 'No.'

Ilkaya stared at her for a moment, and then nodded slightly.

'No,' she said agreeably. 'You don't know fuck all. What has the Loremaster been teaching you.'

Something in her tone made me look at her harder.

'Just, about... what we believe, and stuff,' Shvaun said.

'"What you believe",' Ilkaya said, her voice thin as the skin of an onion, and more withering than ever.

We all looked at her, afraid to look at each other.

Aadhya made us feel stupid, all right, but Ilkaya made us feel worthless.

'It's not what you believe that matters,' she said. 'It's what your beliefs make of you.'

I couldn't figure this out at all. I was desperate to look at Shvaun and see if she looked as confused as I felt. But I knew better.

'Tell the Loremaster that Ilkaya says she's full of shit,' she said. 'And for yourselves, come back tomorrow, and do better.'

We started to turn to go, eager to retreat from Ilkaya's contempt.

'Wait,' she said.

We stopped, and looked at her. Oh gods, I thought, is there really more of this?

She indicated with her fingers to face her and straighten up. We did so.

And then, she bowed from the waist at us.

We stood looking at her. It was so bizarre that, after treating us like human puppets for two hours, she shouldbowto us, that we just stared at her.

She looked up at us, without straightening.

'Now you,' she said.

We bowed too, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw her shadow move as she straightened, and we straightened.

'There,' she said. 'Harness.'

And she gave us all a last look, then stalked past us and out of the tent.

***

The next day, in lore class, Aadhya was telling us how energy flowed through our limbs and that this was how we partook of the divine fire. That the divine fire burned in us until it consumed us, and then our bodies died, but the part of us that had been us lived on in our deeds and what we had left behind.

'The divine fire,' she said, 'is invisible in most of us. We only know it is there when we make it manifest. We make it manifest by showing the extraordinary. It is the function of the Chariot to show people what people can do. To awaken them. In order to do this, you all have to learn how to do the extraordinary.'

She paused, and surveyed the class.

'Does anyone have a question.' she said. Shvaun put up her hand.

'You,' Aadhya said.

'Miss Aadhya,' Shvaun said, 'our harness teacher says you're full of shit.'

Aadhya paused, and then raised a hand to her brow and flicked back a lock of her black hair.

'She said that.'

'Yes,' Shvaun said. 'She said to tell you.'

Aadhya stared at the ground for a moment. Then she looked up.

'You had your first harness lesson yesterday.'

'Yes,' Shvaun said.

'What did you think?'

We all avoided each other's eyes, not wanting to remember the embarrassment of the harness lesson. Aadhya gazed at us, a faint smile in the corner of her mouth.

'It was good,' I said. 'It was tough, though.'

'Do you like your teacher?'

None of us said anything.

'Ilkaya is right,' Aadhya said. 'I am full of shit. She can do what I can only teach. If you want to see the divine fire in action, you need only watch her. She is the most remarkable Dancer I have ever seen.'

'Why doesn't she dance in thetamasha?' Shvaun said.

'Ilkaya grew up in the Chariot,' Aadhya said, 'but she left some years ago, to follow her own path. Thetamashashe performed in could not be staged without her. Thetamashayou know was made for lesser dancers. Now that she has returned, we are creating atamashaworthy of her gifts.'

'Why doesn't she respect you,' Shvaun said. 'You used to be a Dancer, like her.'

'I taught her,' Aadhya said, smiling. 'She is what she is, in part because of me. But she has gone far beyond what I could ever do.'

'She's mean to you,' said Shvaun, her face dark.

'I let her down, once,' Aadhya said. 'She held out a challenge to me, and I failed to meet it. So she hates me.'