Jagunjagun’s modified
plow was found to be useable by a team of horses and on light snow they could
plow the road almost as fast as an elephant showing off. They had passed through White and headed
north, catching up to the regular plowing crews and having to stop and have
people look and take notes and ask about getting their old plows re-done, or
getting a break in taxes.
Ahrimaz lay on Didara’s
back, wrapped up warm, and could see over the heads of their escort to where
the new plow was getting almost as much attention as the elephants. “Do you mind the crowds?” He asked, in
Innéan, since she had expressed her intent to become fluent in the language and
asked him to.
“Oh, no,” she
answered, swinging along in her slowest pace so as not to run over the horses
and deer in front of her. By now they
had all grown accustomed to the elephants and no longer tried to bolt for the
horizon. Yustiç paced just ahead of
Didara, tacked up should Ahrimaz wish to ride her. She seemed very miffed that he chose the
elephant’s company over hers. “My little
brother says I am an attention… sucker? Seeker.
Yes. Seeker.”
“I don’t think
so. You sometimes seem to endure the
mob. Like me.”
People, drawn by the
elephants, would sometimes stop and cast their eyes over Ahrimaz, but not
approach. He still felt as though their
gazes were rasping his skin off, but he found that complaining to Limyé and
writing in his book were making them almost bearable. “Did you want to continue our discussion
about other worlds?” Didara rumbled.
Ahrimaz pulled the
hood of the feather bag up over his head, cutting out the bright winter day. It eased his eyes and his head. Even with snow goggles, the light was almost
a pressure and day after day it grew hard to bear. Lyrian,
this is how you relate to Aeono, isn’t it?
Unending, blinding light. From
water.
There was no answer to his stray thought
and he shrugged. “You were postulating…
theorizing… that my and my doppleganger’s apparent exchange was not only solid
evidence for more than one perceived existence but two, and it could therefore
be argued that there is no upper limit presented for the number of possible
worlds,” he said.
“The word you used,
when you described the vision you had,” she answered. “Was infinite. In fact you said infinite in all directions
and times.”
In the dimness and
warmth of the bag, with blinding flashes of light and cold just leaking in as
Diadara walked, Ahrimaz could almost remember that instant of
transcendence. He took a deep breath, as
everyone here was always telling him to do.
“Yes. It… yes.”
“I find it interesting
that those two worlds were so close that for an instant one overlaid the other
and you two hommes? Men… yes… slid into
each other’s places. Infinite monsters, infinite good men, and everything in between.”
“Priests and healers
are telling me that it might be the Goddess’s will, as far as they can see, but…
the Gods…”
“Your Gods, Male and
Female, I theorize are the collective imaginings of your people, with enough
faith and will to make them real.”
“Didara… in this
context what is ‘real’?”
She was silent for
long enough that he was almost beginning to doze. Finally she cleared her throat, and he could
hear her footsteps change as she carefully stepped along one of the hundreds of
bridges along White Road to Innéthel. “I
can honestly say ‘I don’t know’,” she said.
“I don’t even have a theory. All
I can say is that I have not seen a country before where the Deities are so…” She paused, clearly trying to find a word
that was neutral enough.
“Present?” He
offered. “Dreams and Nightmares made manifest in this world? Interfering Busy Bodies with nothing better to do than mess with us poor
creatures? Children playing with the ant
farm?”
She had started to
shake her head yes but froze and when he finished his outrageous litany she
blasted a laugh that made Yustiç jump, hunch her back, flick both ears back at
them, outraged.
“Present will do,”
Didara said. “In our country, the
Divinity IS the land, so I suppose I should be used to it, but the Land works
on such a big, slow scale we live too fast to notice, or be noticed. Especially not as individuals.”
Ahrimaz stopped a
moment and considered. “I find that concept
of the Land being the Divine terrifying.”
“I can see that. But when we speak through our feet, our
prayers go rumbling down and across and become part of the Land you see.”
“That makes sense.” Her footsteps changed again. “We seem to be coming up on another village,
Ahrimmmmaz. Your Captain is calling for
a rest.”
“Good. As much as I’d like to get you to Innéthel and
into a warm place –“ the Cylak had sent a courier ahead, days ago, with
instructions as to what would be necessary for the Ambassadors – “I don’t want
to lame you or the other animals getting you there!”
“Thank you, my strange
iti-igi,” She said. He froze, hands
clenched on his feather bag, grateful no one could see his face. It put him on the same footing in her family
as Ologbon. For her to call him that,
she must have spoken to Jagunjagun, who was getting stronger every day.
“Thank you, Didara,”
he said softly. “That means a lot to me.”
She rumbled,
wordlessly.
No comments:
Post a Comment