Echoes of the Goddess. Darrell Schweitzer
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and blind in the darkness. It was a long time before his eyes adjusted and he could again see the pale stars overhead.
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Ain Harad walked out of that field, into a town where a strange tongue was spoken. The people there saw by his manner, by the look in his eye, that he had been touched by something beyond nature. They provided him with food and drink, did him reverence, and hurried him on his way. He passed thus through many lands, unmolested but never encouraged to linger, seeking his home.
For a long time he delighted in the simplest things, the feel of the dusty road beneath his feet, the good green woods, the chatter of birds as they heralded the day’s dawning. Sometimes he would sit for hours by a stream listening to the rushing waters, or watching tiny fish in a pool. He had words of cheer for all he met, but most folk avoided him, taking him for a holy pilgrim deep in thought, or else a Power clothed fleetingly in material form, or else merely a lunatic.
More than anything else, in those days, he wanted to see his parents again. This drove him on. He thought of his brother Zadain, off in the wars. He even thought of herding goats with more a sense of regret than not.
As long as he focused his mind on such things, he continued on his way. But one evening, after a long climb up a steep mountain road, he paused at the summit to watch the sunset, and the fading light reminded him of the Bright Lady and her kingdom.
It was as if he had awakened from a stupor. The memories came flooding back, overwhelming him. With them came a flash of pride. He would be the greatest of all singers when he told of the Lady in song. He would be, indeed, her equal. She had said otherwise, but she was wrong about that, he was certain.
The memories filled his mind. He went deeper into his trance than ever before. That last, detached part of his consciousness was also filled, like a final housetop submerged in a flood. He thought of his parents and his homeland no more.
He came down the mountain singing. The music was far stronger than any human music. It sustained him. He knew no need of food, drink, or rest. Wild beasts bowed down before him, and, yes, the stones wept.
The people of towns and cities left their homes to follow him, scarcely aware of what they were doing. The strange procession trampled fields of crops and interrupted battles, yet no voice was raised in protest. He crossed stilled seas, walking on the water, and the great masses followed in ships, on rafts, anything they could contrive. Islands were depopulated as they passed.
When at last he came into his own country, the folk of Randelcainé saw before them the largest army ever assembled. The dust from these countless feet filled the sky. This throng joined with another, streaming out of the holy city of Ai Hanlo, as all were drawn to the boy’s music and to his singing.
Beneath Ai Hanlo Mountain, the bones of the Goddess stirred.
Then the Guardian of the Bones, lord of the city, called together what few of his counselors who had not already joined the listeners, and said:
“In the days of our forefathers, the body of the Holy Goddess plummeted from heaven, trailing light across the sky like a comet, crashing deep into Ai Hanlo Mountain. Out of the chasm made by that fall, the newly formed Bright Powers, fragments of the Goddess, swarmed like bright bees, filling the nights with glory. Out of it too came the Dark Powers, enshadowing the days. Men died in ecstasy and terror, their minds and their hearts overwhelmed. It seemed all mankind would perish. It was only when the Powers had fled away, and the first of the Guardians had contained the bones in a vault and closed up the chasm by desperate magic that the survivors could return. Each guardian tells this to his successor, but now the danger is so great that I tell you.”
“Has another goddess fallen from the sky?” someone asked.
“No, but a similar duty is upon me.”
So the Guardian went forth, dressed the half-white, half-black vestments of his office, with his staff of power in his hand and wax plugs in his ears. It was the first time in centuries that the feet of a guardian had touched the streets of the lower city which surrounds the base of Ai Hanlo Mountain. He walked past deserted shops and houses, then out the Sunrise Gate, onto the plain. So great was the crowd that it took him many hours to get within sight of the singer. He stepped over the corpses of people who had been entranced by the music of Ain Harad, but not sustained by it, and so had perished of hunger and thirst, and, as of old, of ecstasy.
When he stood before the blank-faced lyre player, he spoke a word that only the Guardian may know, and held aloft a reliquary containing a splinter of the bones of the Goddess.
Silence struck the crowd, as if the spinning world had suddenly snapped to a halt. All stood frozen in shock. For Ain, returning to himself, it was the most exquisite of agonies to be wrenched from his contemplation of the Bright Lady. But some remembrance of his former life came to him and, dazed, not sure of where he was or how he can come to be there, he stared with reverent awe into the face of the Guardian, that holiest of men, and paid heed when the Guardian leaned over and whispered a command in his ear.
Obediently he went at once, parting the crowd as he passed, and made his way in silence out of the land of Randelcainé, wandering ever northward, knowing many hardships as he grew from boy into man, never able to rest until he came to that place where he could resume his music and his song. He crossed mountain ranges on the backs of wild beasts. Though the oceans would no longer bear him up; he couldn’t walk on water anymore; he crossed them on the backs of whales, taming and commanding each with that single word the Guardian had spoken, until at the very last, close to death, he reached a warm valley in the middle of the ice country at the top of the world.
There he crawled to the base of a tree and sat up, his back against the tree, the warmth of the valley washing over him, bringing faint sensation into his frozen legs. He dreamed once again of the Bright Lady, and once more touched the strings of his lyre. As before, he played without ceasing, and the spirits and the Powers swarmed around him like bright bees.
In Randelcainé, those who had heard him could not return to their lives after having known such beauty. Some retired to monasteries and caves, where they worshipped little sounds and shadows and the rustlings of leaves and conversed with the silence. The streets of the city were quiet for a generation. Those who did not shut themselves away lived out their lives in longing, wishing only to travel beyond death so that they could hear that song again. Thereafter, all those who died were dressed in traveling cloaks and shoes, and staves were put into their hands, that they might rise from their funeral biers and walk the long road into paradise.
In time Ain Harad was united with his family, for the lord of the goats had become the lord of the dead. Those very near to death could just barely hear his song, faint and far away, growing louder as they sank out of this life. First his father came to him, then his mother, then his brother Zadain, who was slain in battle.
Thus, by the wisdom of the Guardian, the world came a little closer to order amid the chaos that followed the death of the Goddess.
THE STORY OF A DADAR
It was in the time of the death of the Goddess that the thing happened, when the Earth rolled wildly in the dark spaces without any hand to guide it, or so the poets tell us, when Dark Powers and Bright drifted across the land, and all things were in disorder.
It was also in the open grasslands that it happened, beyond the end of the forests, where you can walk for three days due south and come to the frontier of Randelcainé. All was strange to me. I had never been there before, where not a tree was to be seen, anymore than I had been to a place where there are no stars. All that afternoon, my wife Tamda and I drove our wagon through the familiar woods. Slowly the trees began to seem farther apart, and there was more underbrush. I remember how the heat of the day faded quite quickly, and the long, red rays of the setting sun filtered between the trunks, almost parallel to the ground, giving the undersides of the leaves a final burst of color before twilight came on. The trees ahead of us stood in silhouette like black pillars, those behind us, in glory. Above, little birds and winged lizards fluttered in the branches. I reflected that these things had always been thus, even in the earliest times, when the great cities of the Earth’s mightier days stood