Bright of the Sky Page 11

  "No." He waved his hands large around him. "Where am I, where is Master Yulin, where is the sky?"

  She looked up at the sky, and she understood him. She spoke a phrase in her language. Then in English, she said, "You will remember. This is All. This is, you may say, the Entire."

  The Entire. Yes. That seemed right. It seemed like memory. "But how can you look the same as me? How can you be human?"

  "We copy you. You were copied. We had such choice, how to look. We chose ... that culture of long ago."

  "Chinese," he said.

  "Yes. Chinese. It was so important a sway once, when lords create the All. We chose such form."

  Imperfectly, Quinn thought. They've blurred some distinctions-around the eyes, the hair color ...

  Anzi went on: "Also, we chose such culture, but since have improved it, as all things are improved in the Entire."

  "All created by the lords ... ," he repeated, looking around him, at the trees, the sky, and Anzi.

  "Yes, certainly."

  "They are the tall creatures, with sculpted faces?"

  Her expression became more alert. "You remember?"

  "I saw a lord, in a village."

  "Yes, Tarig," she said.

  Tarig. The word seemed right, seemed awful. He asked, "They have powerful technology, beyond that of my people, beyond that of the Rose?"

  She shook her head, not understanding. Technology.

  "Science, manipulating forces of nature."

  Brightening, she nodded. "Yes. Such scientific arts are beyond you. None of us know such powers. They give knowledge to us, here and there. Crumbs from their large table." Raising her arm, she pointed in a direction through the trees. "Long way. Don't fear."

  He didn't fear. But he remembered. Tarig. The face, long and beautiful. It crouched, looking down at him, its sinews sculpted from some bronze metal, one hand raised, four-fingered, becoming a blade, slicing the air toward him.... He stepped forward, muttering, "You will die now. It's over" Then he turned, delivering a backward kick, thrusting hard into the Tarigs midsection, sending him staggering to his knees. In front of his eyes, he saw his fists bearing down on his enemy, and a great raptorlike scream erupted...

  Anzi was standing in front of him, looking worried.

  "I was a prisoner among the Tarig."

  Solemnly, she nodded, as though it saddened her. As though it were an awful thing.

  "Hadenth," Quinn continued. "He died." The creature's name was Hadenth. He was a prince of the Tarig. Felled by Quinn's hand after the terrible thing that happened.

  "No," Anzi said. "He not dying. Wounding. He remember you."

  The prince was hurt, but still smiling. The memory faded. "What did Hadenth do to me that I tried to kill him?"

  Anzi shook her head. "Ask later, please."

  "No, tell me now."

  Her face hardened. "Later. Master Yulin says later."

  He grabbed her arm. "I say now."

  Anzi freed herself in a swift move that wrenched his arm. Her eyes cooled. "Never touch one trained as warrior. I will teach you how not." She moved into a fighting stance. With lightning speed, her foot swiped out and knocked him to the ground.

  He stood, slapping off the dust from his fall. Normally, it would have stopped there. She was a woman, and he had a big advantage of strength. But this was not a normal time. Blood boiled under the surface, and he lunged at her. Pivoting out of his way, she yanked on his arm, using his own momentum to send him staggering. Her strength took him completely by surprise. She followed up with a kick that hammered his shoulder.

  When he collected himself again, she was standing, hands in front of her, ready to punch. She said evenly, "You do not fight yet. You do not speak yet. You are not free. Yet."

  Taunting as this was, she stated the truth. He'd just lost a fight with her. It galled him, but he couldn't afford to alienate her like this-not when he needed her to inform him. "Tell me," he said. "Tell me what happened." She stared coldly at him. "Tell me, and then I'll practice your language. Not before." He needed to learn the language, so it was a bluff to negotiate, but he guessed she was under pressure to teach him, and he could exploit that.

  She frowned at his demand. "You must learn following Path. We all, even Master Yulin, following Radiant Path. Learn obedience, yes please."

  "I have a different path, I think."

  They faced off for a long time. Her face was as still as porcelain. "You have path; I have path. But now one, you must know."

  He doubted that. He might be in the Entire, but he was of Earth, of his own path. These things could wait, but knowing his past couldn't. "Anzi. Tell me."

  She glanced into the glen, as though worried Master Yulin would hear her. But she relented.

  "Tarig sending Titus Quinn daughter away to far land where beings are who Tarig wish to be happy. They are the Inyx, rough creatures-of herd. One may ride upon such. And Inyx wish sentients to ride them. Daughter is a fine gift to the Inyx. The Inyx accept this gift. Long ago. But one thing they wish to be happy for ..." She shook her head, wavering.

  "Tell me."

  "That she must be a gift without sight. This the Tarig did. Took her sight."

  Quinn listened to the words, trying to process them. "Her sight?"

  "She is blind."

  He paused, trying to register the words. "They blinded her?" He looked at her, waiting for her to retract this statement, but she didn't. "Blinded her?" he repeated. Then he whispered, "How?"

  "We have no knowing. Tarig are surgeons. They do this. But we hear Inyx riders keeping their own eyes, though not the sight in them."

  A bellow came up from his throat. He kicked savagely at a thick sapling, and it snapped in two, sending a crack into the forest like a rifle shot. Anzi watched this without flinching.

  She waited as he demolished several other of the master's plantings.

  Finally he rested his forehead on the trunk of a tree that was more than a match for him.

  His youngster, his sweet daughter. He gazed into the garden depths, whispering, "So I attacked the Tarig prince."

  From a distance, he heard Anzi say, "We heard. We are long way ago."

  "And now? Sydney still dwells there? With the Inaks?"

  "Inyx, they are named. Perhaps she is there."

  He would get it all out now, quickly. "And Johanna?"

  There was a very long silence. Quinn continued to stare into the forest, seeing trees and leaves and cages hidden among them, for the most dangerous animals. Like himself. They hadn't discovered all the harm he could do. "And my wife?" he repeated.

  Silence still.

  He couldn't bear to stretch it out. "Dead, then?"

  "Dead."

  He heard her say this, perhaps in English, perhaps in her tongue. The dread that had been lurking in shadow now came into clear and awful light. He leaned against the tree looking at this odd girl, all white, all cold, mouthing words he desperately didn't want to hear, and must.

  "How did she die?"

  Anzi couldn't meet his gaze. "Of sadness, they saying."

  He whispered, "How do you know?"

  "Everyone knows, of her dying of sad."

  She was dead. Had been, for many years. He closed his eyes. So now, how could it hurt this much? Such old news, and so fresh.

  Quinn stared into the dark forest. He placed his hand on his pocket, feeling the paper inside. He pressed his hand against his chest, hanging his head.

  Sydney. Blind, enslaved. What kind of hell was this, where a child was torn from her mother and blinded? Where a woman could be left to die of grief? Whatever this place was, it had kept Sydney too long, far too long. He would find this Inyx sway. And bring his daughter home.

  "I promise," he whispered. "Sydney, I promise."

  He wandered the garden a long while, avoiding Anzi, who followed him the rest of that day. When the twilight came he slept inside the hut, where it was almost dark. In misery, he tossed and fought with dreams.


  Anzi woke him as the bright streamed through the window of his hut. He opened his eyes, wondering what the terrible thing was that had plagued his sleep. When he remembered Johanna and Sydney, he groaned, and clenched his eyes against the pain.

  His keeper would have none of this. She'd brought hot food, and removed the top lid to entice him. To placate her, he took a few pieces of safe edibles.

  She said, "We practice talk."

  He left the hut to go to the lake. Washing, he heard a new sound, a discordant music. Perhaps it came from the master's house, though it seemed far away. Somewhere, people laughed and had music. Somewhere, perhaps Sydney laughed, heard music. She lived, at least. He held on to that.

  When Quinn came back to the hut, Anzi rose, bowing. This bowing was odd. Good food, bowing. All to please a prisoner. He picked up the pictures that had lain beside him during the twilight, and tucked them in his pocket.

  Anzi watched this, narrowing her eyes. "We now talk," she said.

  "Not today."

  "Yes, today." Eyes cold, she challenged him. Would she fight him, to make him a good student?

  She gestured for him to come with her. "I show you something new."

  Giving up on privacy, he followed her in a new direction into the garden. From the depths came alien cries as creatures woke up and screamed for their pails. From one nearby pen, hidden by foliage, issued a haunting, ululating scream that could belong to no Earth creature.

  Anzi walked ahead, saying the name of a plant. When he didn't repeat it, she stopped and pinned him with a stare. "You learn faster, Dal Shen."

  "Good. Glad you're pleased."

  "I not pleased. You not pleased. Not when Master Yulin putting you in his lake." She stopped, glaring at him. "Deep in."

  "Maybe I'm a slow learner."

  "Master Yulin not yet decide, if killing you." She raised a finger like a schoolteacher. "But may. If not learning."

  "I had a translator. He spoke my language. Yulin drowned him."

  Anzi bowed her head. "Unfortunate."

  At this breezy comment, Quinn snapped. "Now your master will have to wait for his slow student." He was depressed by the death in this place. He'd only been here a short while, but already, there were three deaths, and one was Johanna.

  "You not wanting your life, Dal Shen?"

  He paused. That depended. Today, he was not so sure. "Why are you calling me that name?"

  She continued deeper into the woods. Her voice trailed back as he reluctantly followed. "You can have new name. We conceal you from bright lords. Dal Shen is name for you, so saying Master Yulin."

  He thought that he'd found a crack in Yulin's armor. If he was hiding Quinn from the Tarig, Yulin was no doubt straying from the Radiant Path. Maybe the crack could be widened.

  They came to a tall cage within which birds, some furred, some bald, flew to perches in treetops.

  "We climb," Anzi said, jumping up to the first strut where she could gain a foothold. Without waiting for him, she began to climb up the cage, using the cross-pieces where the birds roosted. He followed her.

  "Keep fingers away," came her voice.

  Too late. A ochre-colored bird dove at his hand, narrowly missing it with its spiky teeth. After that, Quinn paid more attention, finally emerging on the lid of the aviary, above the treetops.

  Here was a view of the limitless plain that Quinn had seen before. In the foreground, on every side, stretched a city, grand and dense, one that might house a million people. Above, the unending bright threw its blanket across the sky. The smell of the lavender grasses of the great plain came to his senses in a rush of clove-tinged perfume. The expanse lay devoid of any geological feature, or tree, or settlement besides the immense city beneath him. Whatever the towering gray walls had been that he'd seen before, they were invisible from here. The staggering emptiness of this land conveyed less a sense of isolation than of power. There was land enough to squander.

  Anzi gestured. "Great city of Chalin sway," she said. "Yulin's city of Xi." She crouched in the center, where a top mast formed a pinnacle. Quinn crept closer to her, stepping carefully on the struts, below which lay a hundred-foot fall. "Chalin, that is people here. Outside"-she gestured to the plains-"is many sways, not all Chalin."

  She pointed to a palatial building layered into a hillside. "Master Yulin house."

  Yulin's dwelling was a sprawling palace, hewn from the same goldenblack material as Quinn's own hut. Its architecture was one of rounded forms: domed roofs and half-circle porticos. The master's fine black stone gave way, in the rest of the city, to deep browns and golds, sparkling under the bright. "Yulin rules here?" Quinn asked.

  "Master care for sway as please the Tarig to do so."

  The noises of the city came easily to this perch, and Quinn heard the music that had caught his attention earlier. Anzi pointed to a plaza, where a line of people wound through in a bedecked procession. The bright gleamed in raised cymbals and polished horns.

  "This day of sadness, for Caiji, she dead. This her ..." she search for a word. "Her funeral line."

  They watched the procession thread through an open space crowded with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.

  "Who is Caiji?"

  "Caiji of master's many wife. Very near oldest of all wife."

  "Are you also the master's wife?"

  Anzi looked startled at this. "No, you would say, niece to master. One of many nieces. Smallest niece."

  Quinn had not had time to wonder who Anzi was. Now he thought he knew why Yulin had sent him one who couldn't speak his language well. Because he trusted her, being a relative. He didn't trust his interpreter. Not with the news that Quinn had brought.

  She sat with ease, perched on the aviary. Her jacket sleeve fell back from her wrist as she held onto the center plinth, showing her muscular forearm. In profile, Anzi looked to be about twenty years old. But her poise was of one older.

  "Tarig come to Xi, sometime. They roam here, sometime there. Looking."

  "Looking for me?"

  Anzi's eyes grew wide. "No. Lord of heaven give us not looking!"

  "What do they look for?"

  "Tarig do what they do."

  "When I was a prisoner among them, why did they send my wife and daughter away?"

  Her face fell into sadness, as it had once before when he spoke of his imprisonment. "For controlling you better, we hearing. Separation was a grief. They use such grief. We hearing." She thought for a moment. Then: "Also, girl and woman great gifts for those they wishing to please. And girl and woman, not being scholars, tell little that can be interesting to lords."

  So the lords wanted scholarship.... Despite Quinn's distinct impression of their great power, the Tarig did lack some things. "Do the Tang know about Earth?"

  Far below his perch on the aviary, he noticed that people in the funeral procession threw things to the crowds. A few children dashed forward to snatch these offerings.

  He continued, "You know about Earth, Anzi. Does Master Yulin? Do the Tarig?"

  Watching the procession, Anzi said, "Everyone know of Rose. But we vow that Rose not know us. This why Tarig kill you." She looked pointedly at him. "Unless Master Yulin hide you well, which you learn to speak also."

  "Rose? You call it Rose?"

  "Yes, long time call so. On Earth there is a plant call rose?" When he nodded, she said, "We have no plants shaped thus here. Nothing like such a creation as rose."

  A breeze lifted Quinn's hair, bringing to his nostrils the smell of dust and cooking and a tangle of chemicals that might be natural or manufactured. Anzi herself smelled like a human woman. And, if copied, was she human? He ran his hand through his hair, now growing beyond its usual cropped cut. It was, he knew, the same color as Anzi's: a hot white. Surely the sky didn't bleach all hair this color. Someone altered him to look like one of the Chalin people. Perhaps even the first visit here, he had to hide.

  "Tell me my story, Anzi."

  She turned to look at him. He
r face was sad. "Better if I speak better. When that story is said."

  "Say the story, now, Anzi. I'm ready."

  She crouched silently, looking over the city to the plain beyond.

  He hated to wait on her whims, and he hated the constant effort of trying to remember. A lid pressed down on his past. He wondered who had clamped it there.

  After a long while Anzi began to speak. "You came here," she said. In her voice was an overlay of regret. "You came from the Rose, behind the veil. Long time we always know of Rose, the place of young death, and many wars. At the ... reaches ... our scholars study Rose. Long time. But never touched Rose, nor Rose touch us."

  The music of the procession still came to their high perch, but more faintly now, as the mourners wound from sight. He already had questions, but he feared interrupting her.

  Anzi went on: "Then you come. In ship. Very confused time. Tarig want you, and keep you. Does Rose know about Entire? This Tarig ask. What powers dwell in Rose? Difficult to know what Rose understands. Our views of you are small, visions in a shattered glass. Tarig hope that you do not know us, but how to be sure? They wish to know enemy, and so keep you and asking questions. Send wife and daughter away, to keep you to please them. You please them if you think someday wife and daughter give back to you." She shook her head, over and over. "Never give back to you."

  He listened to her words, memorizing them.

  "Tarig are pleased. Learn that Rose is ignorant. Not fear so much Rose, since Rose not understand there is the All. Entire of all things. You please them. They keep you."

  "How long?" He couldn't help but ask.

  She flattened her mouth, thinking. "Four thousand days, is possible."

  Four thousand days, that was almost eleven years, close to what he'd always thought.

  Anzi went on: "Then one time you strike Hadenth, the high lord. We hearing this, but hard believe to strike a Tarig. So Tarig hunt you. But you go back? You gone back?"

  He shook his head. "I don't know what I did. I think I went back then. I can't remember." He glanced at her. "How would I have gone back?"

  "This we wondered. How can Titus Quinn disappear among us? If gone back, how go back and not die in the black space? So I thought-we all thought-that you have died." She seemed sad, recounting this, and Quinn thought perhaps he had not just made enemies in this place. She continued, "We hear that to not submit to high lords, you ended your days." She smiled tentatively. "Not true, I see."