VII - Whiterock

For the Love of Spring

The first moon had risen in Whiterock.

The trees were almost the size of those in Channelwood, but their bark was gray and smooth as water, and they bore wide green leaves that billowed like flags--very different. Different enough that even at night, sometimes, Achenar felt safe. By day, the blue-white sun would make the leaves stained glass and the trunks dull silver. Now the gray moon made them wide dappled shadows that haunted the sky, and the trunks became water, calm vertical stretches of stolid gray water, unchanging. Later, after the gray moon set, only the red moon would be left, and the land would become the haunt of shadows, a blood-tinted nightmare of cool night wind.

This was not one of those nights when Achenar felt safe.

It was their second visit to Whiterock. The last time, a year or more past, the brothers had arrived to late fall, with the leaves turning a hundred shades of red and purple and the sun swinging low to the horizon. Barely a few days after they arrived they found themselves beckoned eagerly to perch high on a pillar of rock with the natives, who were keeping a vigil, for it was the night of late autumn when the ground opened and the souls of the dead walked, or so they sung. Sirrus and Achenar, restless amongst the drums and eerie chants, saw only the shadows of animals, and muttered between themselves about superstition; but it was Achenar alone who heard, just once, the howl of a dying man, felt a cold and bodily chill brush his back. He didn't tell his brother anything. He was perfectly capable of recognizing the sound, for it was one he loved and knew so very well, and would not bother explaining how it had come to his ears. It was like the dreams of Mechanical; explanation was not a part of its existence.

Now, on the second visit, it was early spring. The leaves, barely unfolded, were creased and thin, unusually brilliant by day. The snow was still melting, and the fleeting rivers of thaw swirled deadly fast over the white cliffs. The equinox would come soon, and the Shirnao were preparing to celebrate. And Achenar, fresh out of Channelwood, was jumping at shadows and staring into space.

As if following his brother's long-standing lead in Channelwood, Sirrus had involved himself with the spiritual leaders of the Shirnao, questioning them intricately about their traditions. And with the rest of the people as well, insinuating himself into their lives, eyeing their women--but that was common for him. And Achenar kept apart, as usual--a habit he'd only broken for one monkey in Channelwood, one man in Mechanical, one boy in Stoneship, one woman in Everdunes. And even Danir was gone now--with no pirates to kill, he'd drunk himself to death. And Branch, stabbed, Mathriv, stabbed, Pran whirled away by the sand and toppled to the desert with her mask laid open to the bone.

Achenar didn't know what his brother was plotting this time, and even that had stopped to matter. He knew Sirrus would tell him when he could kill somebody; until then he was just waiting, listless, enduring in terror those nights which reminded him of Channelwood and running his thumb over and over the little slash of a scar on his arm, from the night of the mysteries when he had bled water.

Let him do what he must. It doesn't matter anymore.

Once, said the elders of the Shirnao, the new year had been greeted with human blood on the spring equinox. Now the visitors, the honored ones, had come among them, and so close to the springtime. Would they not like to see the ritual, to hear the words that have been passed down for all the history of the Shirnao? Would they not join them, perhaps even speak, as the gods of the spring were drawn from the earth?

Sirrus listened as the elders spoke of the upcoming ritual, disclosing its mysteries as they would only to one they respected and feared. And afterwards he retreated to think, perched on a white outcropping high above a thaw river. It was Achenar who found him, and only Achenar who ever would have--he'd climbed above the level of the trees, a Shirnao taboo that was only lifted for the participants during some of the rituals.

"You know them, little brother," Achenar asked, his eyes twitching back and forth across the land. "Why do they give us such freedom? We break their taboos left and right."

Sirrus looked up at him, harsh delight on his face.

"Because we are messengers from beyond. Remember Father telling us his old grandmother's fairy tales at night? Remember how the Maker was supposed to have angels, and those angels were messengers?"

Achenar giggled.

"Stop it, dear brother," said Sirrus pleasantly. "You sound like an idiot. We're their angels."

"Cruel angels."

"Not yet." It was a commanding hiss. Sirrus expected Achenar to flinch; he didn't. "You're getting uppity, dear brother."

"As I have every right to be," said Achenar with a fierce laugh. "I am elder. I was Mother's favorite. Mother's favorite cruel angel. I could fling myself off this cliff right now. I am not yours, little brother."

Sirrus stared darkly at him. "Shall I prove that you are, then?"

Achenar crowed with laughter. "But I'm crazy, little brother. You said it yourself. And I don't think you can own crazy people. They'll just run off."

"And they're also disgustingly vulnerable. You're been worse since Channelwood. I could destroy your mind as easily as stabbing you."

Achenar's voice twisted with sick fear and rage. "Don't go there, little brother. I'm the one who owns people through blood. You can't play that game. You'll lose." And then he shook his head with a thrash of dark curling hair and just laughed, and kept on laughing as he turned and ran down the grassy slope, giddy little-boy whoops of freedom.

Sirrus watched him leave, then watched the canopy of the forest move with no wind--the solastings were scurrying about in great numbers that day, tiny creatures new-hatched for the spring. His eyes were narrowed with sunlight and calculation and he surveyed the shining green and white land as if it were his enemy.

"We have got to do something about this," Sirrus said quietly. "Haven't we, Tisha?"

It was his imagination that placed her sitting on the grass beside him, her shining hair blowing in the wind.

"You're going to intrigue against your brother, aren't you?" Her voice was soft and lilting, without a hint of accusation.

"Of course. Only intrigue here means playing by their rules. Why, I'm almost acting like he did in Channelwood, turning their primitive rituals into my tool. Still. It is necessary. He deserves it."

For a moment her hair was the thick white-gray of the Shirnao, complete with the women's braids strung with women's baubles, and then she was back to normal, almost the portrait princess. Almost--but with red hair and a green spark to her eyes.

"I'm not even going to try to find you here," he murmured. "I don't need another you, after all. You're not like gold or jewels. You're the only woman I love."

She just smiled at him, with her hair like spun gold and her eyes as hard as emeralds.

Sirrus had offered them the sacrifice, and so they took that sacrifice in the night to the cliff of the equinox and bound him there on the altar, as they would the doomed children of old, to await the dawn.

Achenar woke there, amidst the masks in the night, and screamed.

The sound caught up in the twist of burlap they'd gagged him with, and smothered and died, and Achenar looked around in the deepest and most sudden terror he'd ever known.

The circle stood unmoving. Black cloth hid their faces; their white hair and their raggedly ornamental robes swayed in the night wind. The first moon had already set; the land was bathed in blood-red dimness as the second moon rode high in the sky.

The night, the island of Whiterock, lay silent and still, taut with anticipation. It was bitterly cold. Another masked Shirnao walked slowly up the hill, a torch in his hand, and lit a ring of clay braziers that had been laid about on the rocky ground. Smoke drifted up, acrid and dizzyingly heady. Spurred by the stink, Achenar began to struggle, but the heavy ropes held fast, even stretched the wrong way to hold a grown man on an altar meant for a barely mature child. Please! he wanted to shout, to scream, to beg. But they did not release him, did not look at him, did not move but for the wind.

It was worse than a nightmare. Helpless, pathetic and whimpering and helpless. His body was tiny against the vast starry sky, the looming bulk of the red moon swinging closer to the horizon, the sprawling view of the great island, even as far as the ocean, glimmering in the distance; the world was eating him, swallowing him whole. But if he closed his eyes they ran with tears, burst and sparked with masks and monkeys and blood, clouds and thunder and bone-hewed prows of black ships, the murmurs of the mysteries, the shrieks of the pirates, the war cry of the black goddess under the towering trees--

"It was the season of death."

Achenar's eyes flashed open, and his body strained in one great heave against the ropes, and then he dropped back, defeated. There had been no signal, no warning; just a single voice speaking calmly from one of the masked circle. A hint of a sing-song, a warbling of pitch in the speech, and the inflection was different from the everyday speech of the Shirnao, echoing as old as time.

"The snows lay heavy on the land. The trees were silent and the animals slept."

A pause for the wind to speak its part as it howled between the rocks, and a new voice took on the story.

"Now the leaves have begun to open to the sun. Now the solastings move again."

Another pause; somebody beat two sticks together a few times, the tiny noise echoing down through the valley.

"But it is not fully done. When the sun dawns today, it will bring the true fruiting of summer."

Another voice.

"We are here to help the sun rise."

Another pause, and all the circle raised their arms, chanting together in the expectant night.

"We bring sacrifice."

Achenar gave one, long, despairing groan.

"Since the dawn of time we have given the freshest blood of our tribe to the first day of spring. Life must be given back to make life. Blood must water the land."

Achenar felt as if a lead weight had settled on his chest.

They're going to kill me.

He shook his head.

They're going to kill me!

He couldn't help laughing then, but it caught and choked in the back of his throat, and he let his head fall back to the altar, his body shaking. He wondered how they might do it. He had died so many times in dream; now, awake, what was it to be? Would they stab him, bash his head in, cut his throat? Or would it be slow, methodical, torturous? He almost longed for that. It would be interesting.

They gathered close around his helpless body, arched and cramped over the altar, and he rolled his head about and groaned in terror. One reached under the ragged pale robe and pulled out a heavy stone and dropped it on the altar next to Achenar's head. Another took a flint knife and laid it by his throat. Two sharpened stakes, one at each hand. A briar of poison thorns between his feet.

And, from a weathered brown Shirnao hand, a kriss dagger, gleaming metal and fine-forged, the wavering blade gleaming in the red moonlight, laid on his bare chest.

Sirrus.

He spat the name from his throat; it choked back on him, nearly strangled him.

Sirrus. Brother.

A hand he could not see took hold of his hair and forced his head back, baring his throat to the vastness of the sky. The fine sharp curving blade rested lightly at the base of his neck.

"Accept our gift!" Shirnao voices rang through the still night. The stone came to rest on his chest, just where it would crack open his ribs if smashed down upon him. "Accept our pain, the sacrifice of our beloved!" The stakes against his arms, angled inwards, to sever muscle and scrape bone. "Accept his blood in place of ours, that the land might bloom again!" The flint cold and sharp and stony on his stomach, ready to tear into the soft spots, deep into gut and bile. "Hail! Rise! Sun of the Spring!" The thorns pricking the arches of his bare feet, the pain of the poison flaring sharp and sudden and burning like acid, and he screamed again into the gag, and wondered what would happen to his face when he died.

Then they were silent again, still again, their weapons of torture still poised against his body, but he did not bleed yet, did not scream, did not die. Yet. The smoke was beginning to get to his head, coloring his vision, disorienting him, until he felt himself floating a foot above his body. He screwed his eyes shut against the masks swarming round him, waiting for death, waiting for the white faces.

"Once," a new speaker went on alone, "many generations ago, there was a mending man who was wise in many things, who watched the first leaves arise every spring and lived as if kin to the sun."

Achenar's entire body went cold. It was his brother's voice, Sirrus' voice--Sirrus in the circle, Sirrus in the ritual.

"And one day he looked to the sun for council in the dark of the winter, through the leaves of the trees, and the sun descended and sat with him at his fire and spoke with him in the night."

Where is he? He strained against the hand in his hair, rolled his smoke-watered eyes about the circle. The sharp flint trembled against the vulnerable skin of his stomach, eager for blood. He's one of them...

"And the sun shared wisdom with him, and together they touched the earth, watered year after year with the blood of the people's children, and together they came to know that the coming of spring needed no such sacrifice."

One of the masks... The dagger shifted against his throat, and he thought it might have cut him, for there was the tiniest warm liquid trickle against his skin, but it might have been sweat. With the masks I can't tell, not unless I break them open--

"Only three drops of blood could bring the earth to new life."

Which is my brother? Achenar shook with panic; his hands twitched murderously in their bonds; the sharpened ends of the stakes dragged in deep scratches down his arms. Where is my brother?

"And the people followed his wisdom, though they feared that spring would not come, and drew three drops of blood from the feet of the sacrifice, and they fell to the waiting earth."

Achenar's toes arched in burning pain at the sky.

"And the sun rose, and summer fruited, and the people found it good. And that is the way it has been, from that day to this."

Break them open...break them open...

"So the blood of the sacrifice shall not be shed."

And they lifted away, knife and stone, stake and thorn. A Shirnao raised the shining dagger high to the sky, a tiny smear of blood on the blade, then let it fall to deliver another drop to the parched earth.

"And now it is complete!" Sirrus cried, triumphant and joyous to the sky, throwing his arms wide to the mountains.

"The snow has melted!" exclaimed another voice, and a third joined in with a triumphant crow.

"The snow has melted!"

The entire circle took up the chant, and somebody sprinkled cold water across Achenar's throat, as if he had bled the waters of thaw.

Brother...Sirrus...

"The snow has melted!"

The sun crested the horizon, and the dawning rays struck across Achenar's body where he lay on the altar. One of the Shirnao took off his mask to reveal a face pale and streaming with tears. Another knelt and drew a knife across his palm, letting the warm blood run over the white stone--personal sacrifice, honor to the ritual itself. They untwined the ropes from his limp limbs, pulled the gag from his mouth, and he rolled to his side, his eyes screwed tight against the sun, curled up in fear and awe and agony and sickened betrayal.

"Brother!" he screamed, his voice at last free, and it rang through the ritual and against the mountains, and no one even turned to face him.

Three days later, Sirrus asked the Shirnao to gather, so they did, a solemn circle of white-haired folk under the noonday sun. Sirrus stood in the center, with Achenar off to one side, and simply pointed at the sun, then at himself. The Shirnao fell totally silent. Every deep black eye was on him with unwavering, religious attention.

"What is the role of a messenger?" Sirrus spoke quietly, his voice empty of its usual arch sarcasm. Only Achenar could see his uncertainty. Only his brother could know how embarrassed he was to play their rituals. "Messengers come from the gods, yes. But sometimes gods walk disguised as messengers, to test faith, to test devotion. Is this not true?"

One of the oldest men nodded, but did not speak. Sirrus raised his hand, knowing the sun would fill it with light.

"It is so with us."

He could not believe it was working. But they watched him. They believed him.

"I am the Sun King," Sirrus said quietly, and as he spoke it, he knew it was true. Tisha was beside him, warm fingers brushing his hand, and her voice whispered in his ear. "I have come amongst you with my brother."

"Brother Night?" asked an old woman. Her voice was very quiet in the thick spring air, as if she were afraid to even move.

"Brother Night," Sirrus acknowledged smoothly. Achenar giggled in the back of his throat without even opening his mouth.

Stupid brother.

"I have been watching you for a very long time," Sirrus went on. "I have seen many things. You walk your paths well; you fulfill your duties every year. Why, you wonder, have I come now? Why have I descended when you have given me no reason to?"

The circle did not answer. They would not dare provide answers for a god.

"Because I grow tired of these springs. They are proper in their place, year from year, but this shall be a year the likes of which you cannot imagine. It must have a new spring. I demand sacrifice."

Achenar grinned without even being aware of it.

Sirrus paused. The next move belonged to the Shirnao.

For a long moment, there was silence, except for the constant humming and squeaking of the feathered squirrels and the rustling of the solastings in the trees. Then, with not a word passed in discussion, an old man, a priest, rose, leaning heavily on his antler-tipped staff, the many ornaments on his robes clattering with every movement. At barely a cast of his eyes, the woman beside him--his daughter, Sirrus guessed--rose as well, and the two of them walked out of the circle and towards the foot of the northern mountain.

The Shirnao turned to watch them walk, and nobody spoke. Even Sirrus remained eerily still and quiet; only Achenar could read the slight narrowness at the corners of his eyes, the anxiety over whether he'd won this particular game. The old man climbed slowly, his daughter a few paces behind him, until he rose above the trees.

A few of the Shirnao were starting to murmur under their breaths as the two climbed. Achenar caught one whispering the sparse words of a lay, winding his way through verses of solastings and trees and shamans; another was hoarsely repeating a single line of desperate prayer, over, and over, and over. The old man climbed higher; the breeze blew up, died, blew up again. Sirrus stood still, one finger twitching as if he wanted desperately to fidget. The old man stopped, perched on a rock high above the forest valley, halfway up a shining white cliff. Sirrus raised his head a little, and Achenar lowered his, and everyone watched.

The old man handed his staff to his daughter, and the Shirnao fell suddenly silent. Even the birds seemed quieter now. A single brave solasting scurried like quicksilver through the circle; the Shirnao it had run over didn't even twitch. The old man raised his arms, staring straight at the sun overhead, and the wind stirred his long hair and deerskin robes.

Then, without a hint of hesitation, he walked off the precipice.

The circle--the land--was so still, so silent that Achenar could hear the thud of the body hitting rock in the distance, the crack of old bones. The dead man's daughter stood for a long time, then turned and started coming down the mountain, bearing the staff with a certain care and not using it to steady herself on the path.

The Shirnao were still silent, but they were paler, and had again all turned to face Sirrus. Nobody moved or said a word until the woman returned to the circle. Her black eyes were liquid; tears poured down her face. She carried the staff in both hands, arms outstretched, palms flat. She knelt before Sirrus, not looking him in the eye. Again, only Achenar caught the hesitation, the moment of confusion, before Sirrus took the staff, lifted it to the sun, and took it for his own.

"Hm." The sound rippled around the circle, rumbling from every Shirnao throat. The woman stood and returned to her place, trembling. Nobody looked at her, nor touched her, nor offered her sympathy.

They are so simple, Sirrus thought, wondering at it all. I hold this world in the palm of my hand and they follow my every whim.

Sirrus smiled.

"It was done well."

The circle relaxed visibly, then knelt, so that Sirrus was looking at a ring of thick white hair at the level of his knees.

"Do you have more words, Sun King?" asked one man quietly.

"No. I am satisfied."

The woman, the dead man's daughter, stood again.

"What of your brother?" Her voice was warm like fur and smooth like water and trembling with grief like a leaf in the wind. "The night descends bringing silence and darkness in its wake. The Ice Moon sets and the leaves become the color of blood. He was sacrifice; now he walks. The god sees death and transcends. What of Brother Night?"

They all stood then, and the same impossibly intense attention they'd given Sirrus was now focused on Achenar.

"Brother Night does not speak," said Sirrus quietly. Silence, ominous, but Achenar could barely smell their fear. Sirrus almost allowed himself a smile. Never had he enjoyed introducing his brother quite as much as he did now. "The night descends and people vanish into it, never to return. So will Brother Night take sacrifice, by his own will."

For a few moments, there was silence, hints of fear in the deep black eyes.

"If he will it," chanted another old man solemnly, "it shall be."

The rest of the circle echoed him, the words rolling through the sun-drenched clearing.

Sirrus raised the staff, the bone and wood beads strung along it clattering.

"You may go."

The Shirnao turned as one. Back to their homes, back to their duties, back to their everyday talk. The old man would lie unburied at the foot of the cliff: sacrifice.

"You can kill some of them now if you like, dear brother," Sirrus said quietly, looking his brother straight in the eye. Permission given. He was sure, now as never before, that if he had denied permission, if he had kept Achenar from his slaughter, he would have had just the same obedience.

Achenar heard himself giggle.

"But of course."

Achenar picked out two men by the fear in their eyes and took them to a cave far off in the woods, with his tool kit slung across his back. The sun rose the next morning to shine upon four hands and four feet laid out neatly on the rock, the skin stripped off and the dried blood dark in the dawn. The next day a woman vanished into the night, and they found her dead from exhaustion by a stream with an arrow in her leg--he'd shot her and run her down like an animal, hunted her all across the wide and craggy isle. Brother Night was afoot. Achenar liked the name, and giggled as he went about, but did not dare meet his brother's eyes. Brother Serpent. Brother Spring.

When he walked amongst the Shirnao after that, the first man who saw him flung himself at his feet and started begging him for mercy, imploring him by the name of every night animal and every shadow and the two moons themselves to be satisfied with what he had taken. At that, Achenar started giggling and couldn't stop, not for a long time, not until the terrified man had slunk away with tears on his face. Then, later, he hunted him down and impaled him on a pared-down branch, hoisting him up broken-chested to die slowly in the sky.

He tasted their blood; it was flat, devoid of interest.

I want to go someplace new. The thought had been within him for a long time now. He knew his Ages. He knew their blood and the nuances of their screams. I need a new place, one I don't remember, so I can do anything I want.

Wanderlust; fear. He hoped he could find a place that didn't remind him of Channelwood this time.

"Why come here, brother?" Achenar stood on the walkway to the spaceship, clutching his cloak tight against the mist. "Why Selenitic, of all places?"

"Because Father doesn't expect us here. And he never comes here anymore, not since he hid the linking book down in the lava tubes because he thought it might be fun. He has as much trouble getting out of here as we do." Sirrus raked his eyes over his brother, noting a slight tremor in his hands. He'd been meek ever since Whiterock--he'd never spoken of it, of course, but Sirrus took pleasure in imagining the fear gnawing inside him. "Achenar, we've been to all of Father's Ages by now. Some were dull, some...weren't. Some I never want to go back to again."

"Me neither," Achenar whispered.

He's mine now, Sirrus thought, as he had so often since Whiterock. It was a clear note of triumph within him.

"But remember, dear brother?" he said quietly, placing both hands on his brother's shoulders. "There are two more. The red and the blue. The best of his Ages--they have to be, after all he's told us to keep away from them. His greatest secrets. They can be ours."

"Ours?"

"Just work with me, dear brother. I have it all planned out." Sirrus started walking Achenar down the dusty red path, one arm around his shoulders. "Now, this is what we have to do..."