Alliette de Bodard

         For years after Masani turned her back on us, no other hermit came to the citadel of Lhira. On Lord Rakhte's orders, I had carved the patterns of cobras and elephant tusks into the gates, to deny the god-touched wanderers entrance. But my wards were weak, and the dead wood of the carvings decayed with time.

         Seven years after Masani's departure, another hermit came to me.

         I found him one morning in my workshop; as I entered, he turned to me, his eyes silently reproaching me for abandoning Masani's teachings. We faced each other without speaking. I did not know his name, but I knew his kind. All too well.

         His face, framed by a shock of snow-white hair, was covered with a fine network of wrinkles, and veins stood on the back of his hands. Despite that, I knew he had been born after me. Contact with the gods aged hermits.

         If the gods had been kind, they would never have allowed him to enter Lhira. But the gods have always been on the hermits' side.

         "What do you want?" I asked.

         "Answers, Master Yarek." He laid a hand on the table, fingered one of my sorcerer's carvings. It was a whitewood lotus flower, one that warded against diseases. "I want to know what happened to Masani."

         "I have no idea what you are talking about," I said, as coldly as I could. Of course I could guess. Masani must have taken on another student before coming to Lhira, and now this student was here, demanding explanations for her departure.

         There could be none.

         "I think you have some idea," he said.

         "Masani came here twelve years ago in search of some wisdom in our libraries. In return for this, Lord Rakhte asked for her service. She stayed five years. She had a disagreement with him on how to conduct the war against Ingara, and she left." Those were the bare facts only. Anything more would have rekindled old grudges.

         He laughed, then. His voice echoed with power. He reminded me too much of Masani, of my old teacher who had tried to make me into a hermit.

         My teacher, whom I had failed.

         I itched to throw him out of my workshop, but his laughter told me he was far more powerful than me. He was, in fact, everything I could have been, everything I had refused to be.

         "I think there is much more to this, Yarek," he said.

         I did not answer. I had already told him the only things that would help him. There was no need to pry into my own tumultuous past with Masani.

         He left my workshop without looking back. He had not told me anything, not even his name. But then, hermits had always been contemptuous of sorcerers.

         Lord Rakhte sent for me soon after that. I had intended to go to him myself and give him the news, but my apprentice, Ashe, had arrived on the hermit's heels. I had been loath to postpone his daily lessons—the Triad knew he needed them.

         I left Ashe in charge of the workshop after we had finished, hoping he would have enough sense to give the right carvings to the right people. I then climbed the stairs to my liege's chambers.

         "There is a hermit in Lhira," Lord Rakhte said. He was sitting on silk cushions near the window, holding a bowl of cardamom tea, and his blue eyes scrutinized me. His gaze held only curiosity, the same curiosity that had prompted him to ask for Masani's service twelve years ago.

         "Yes," I said. "I saw him. I apologize for not warning you immediately, but I had not thought he would come so quickly to you."

         "It is of no importance," Lord Rakhte said, with a wave of his hand. "I doubt you could have prevented him from entering my rooms."

         I shook my head. I said, slowly, "I could not even prevent him from entering Lhira. The wards were the strongest I could fashion, my lord." I was weak by choice. I could not protect him against Masani's kind.

         "I knew it was only a matter of time, Yarek. After all, what can any of us do against the raw power of the forest?" He was not smiling. He had not invited me to sit, and so I remained where I was, trying to guess what he wanted from me.

         "His name is Sarasve," Lord Rakhte said at last. He sipped his tea, looked up at me as if trying to make up his mind. "I want you to help him."

         I had rejected the forest and its teachings long ago. I wanted nothing more to do with hermits.

         "Why?" I asked, before I could contain myself.

         Lord Rakhte was silent for a while. "Because he says Masani never came back to the forest. He followed her trail, and he met some veterans of the Ingaran war in one of the smaller villages around Lhira. He was told she had left the citadel, so he went to Ingara. He says no one in their army remembers seeing her."

         "And why should it matter?"

         He stared at me, his eyes unmoving. After all, he had been the one to cast Masani out, seven years before, when she had refused to summon demons to help in the war against Ingara. Though I had never known him to display emotions, that didn't mean he couldn't feel remorse.

         At length he said, "Because he has the power to cast the walls of Lhira down with a single word. Because his curse would undo us."

         "And still he knows nothing." I smiled bitterly.

         I could have refused to help him. I could have asked him to find someone else, someone who had not known Masani. But she had been my teacher, and later a symbol of all I had lost by using my powers for personal ends. I had been glad to see her go, glad to know she could no longer reproach me with her existence.

         But even as I rejoiced to see her gone, someone had killed her. Thus I had betrayed her a second time. I would not be able to rest if I did nothing.

         "My lord," I said at last, "I am your faithful servant."

         Sarasve was waiting for me in my workshop, talking quietly to my apprentice Ashe of the wonders of the forest, of the Gift of the gods that had made his hair turn white. I saw the open admiration on Ashe's face, and remembered how easily the young could be corrupted.

         "He is not yours," I said, giving voice to the anger I had felt since leaving Lord Rakhte's chambers.

         Sarasve bowed. "As you wish," he said, but his eyes mocked me. Masani would have been proud of him; the forest sang in his every gesture. It hurt me to remember the power I had once wielded.

         "Ashe," I said. "You have some lessons to prepare for tomorrow."

         My apprentice nodded and left both of us alone.

         "It seems I am to help you," I said.

         Sarasve smiled again. "I am glad."

         "Not I," I snapped. "Tell me why you took so long to come here."

         "Is this an accusation?"

         "Perhaps," I said.

         "Hermits are not tied to anyone or anything," Sarasve said at last. "Masani had always been in the habit of wandering. I hoped for years she would find her own way home, but she never came. Still I waited. I waited until the gods spoke to me. My powers awoke, and I knew then that I could not wait any longer. I had to know what had happened to her."

         I said nothing. Say what you will about Masani, the fact remained that she had had a presence, a hint of the forest's wonders that she brought into other people's lives. Once one met her, one would not forget her. I had not forgotten.

         "You knew her well, surely," Sarasve said.

         I froze. "I wonder who told you that."

         "Masani did, before she left the forest."

         I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply. "What I was before I came to Lhira has no bearing on this."

         "I thought it might please you to hear of the old times," Sarasve said. There was no telling what he thought, behind his mocking mask.

         "No. Never."

         "As you wish. What else can you tell me?" he asked.

         I leant on one corner of the table, staring at Ashe's carvings. Leaf of the Cold, a five-lobed shape with a delicate network of veins meandering towards the edges, but so sloppily done it would be a wonder if the thing did bring good luck to its holder. I would have to explain to him the proper patterns.

         "I told you everything already," I said to Sarasve. "There is nothing more to it."

         "Not quite," Sarasve said. "For instance, who saw her leave?"

         I frowned. "We all did."

         "Lord Rakhte told me it was night when she walked away from Lhira. Most of the citadel, I assume, would have been sleeping."

         Seven years had passed, but still I remembered that night with clarity. I had been sleeping. Ashe, who had been a page with Lord Rakhte in those days before he became my apprentice, had ended his service earlier in the evening, and had spent the night with his widowed mother.

         Who had spread that story then? The guards at the gates? I could no longer remember their faces or their names, or even if they were still alive.

         "Dubalya," I said, at last. "The Priestess of the Protector. She saw Masani leave. I do not know whether she was the only one, but I do remember her telling me."

         Sarasve smiled. "Let us go to the temple, then."

         In a mountain citadel like Lhira, the continued existence of which depends on the goodwill of its neighbors to provide it with food, a temple to the Protector has the place of pride. We pray every night to the god to keep our walls together and our weapons sharp, and so far He has not failed us. Even the Ingarans eventually struck peace with us, when snow fell in the passes and cut them off from their sources of supplies.

         Dubalya, one of the three priests in service in Lhira, was lighting the sacrificial fires by the altars when we came in. The air was heavy with the smell of incense and coconut butter.

         "Dubalya," I called, and she turned. She saw Sarasve, and gestured for us to come closer.

         "I have not seen a Gifted hermit for a long time," she said.

         Her voice did not shake. She had quarreled often with Lord Rakhte about Masani's presence. A hermit's place, she had said, was in the forest, not in a fortress. A hermit could not serve a lord; their only masters were the gods. They would betray their liege lords. They would fail them.

         Sarasve bowed to her. There was no trace of mockery in his demeanor; it seemed that was reserved for me. "My name is Sarasve," he said. "I have come in search of my teacher."

         "Masani?" Dubalya said. She shot me a puzzled glance. "She left Lhira. Did you not tell him, Yarek?"

         "It seems," I said, cautiously, "that she vanished from the world after that."

         "Tell me what you saw," Sarasve said, and I recognized the command in his voice. Masani had used the same tone on me, in the days when I was still in the forest. Before I failed her.

         "It was so long ago." Dubalya moved, leaving us a clear view of the altar. "Seven years, or was it eight? I lost count."

         Unable to find sleep, she had climbed the battlements, and stared at the massed fires of the Ingaran army laying siege to us. She had wondered when the protection of the gods would desert us, had imagined Lhira overwhelmed with pikemen and archers.  

         That was when she had seen Masani. Even from a distance there was no mistaking the assured step, or the white clothes with their vivid radiance, or the white hair falling in a cascade of cold light. The hermit seemed to be shining like a reflection of the full moon above, as she moved on the path leading out of Lhira. And then she reached the first tents of the encamped army, and was lost to sight.

         "I see," Sarasve said when Dubalya was finished with her tale.

         "So she did leave," I said.

         "I am not sure." Sarasve was looking at Dubalya, and the priestess wavered under the intensity of his gaze. "This is what you saw?"

         She raised her chin, proudly. "I never lie. Nor was I the only one to see her leave. Ask the soldiers who kept watch on the battlements that night, ask the servants who could not sleep. We saw that, nothing more, nothing less."

         "Leave her," I said to Sarasve. "Whatever happened to her, she did reach the Ingaran encampment."

         Sarasve shook his head. "No."

         "Why deny the obvious?"

         "Because this bears the marks of a powerful illusion," he said.

         "And no one saw it before?" I asked, scathingly.

         "Perhaps because no one questioned this before," Sarasve said. "You were all glad to be rid of her, were you not?"

         I had been glad. I had been so glad that she could no longer reproach me with her inhuman green eyes, and blame me for failing to heed the forest call to the end. I had been so glad to know that she had left Lhira forever. And all the while she had been sleeping in her grave.

         "What makes you think this is an illusion?" I asked.

         "The light," Sarasve said. "Even the light of the moon would not have been enough to illuminate Masani so thoroughly. Illusion victims tend to remember the subject wreathed in light, because it is what the maker of the image wanted them to focus on. The speed with which she disappeared from sight once inside the camp also suggests an illusion."

         "You read too much into what she tells you," I snapped.

         Sarasve shook his head. Dubalya was not looking at either of us; her eyes burnt with anger.

         "You could not have known," he said to her, almost gently.

         "I am a Priestess of the Protector, Sarasve," she said. "I rejoiced when she left. I accepted a feeble explanation instead of looking for her. If I had done something else, perhaps we could have found her before it was too late. Do you think my acts can be undone that easily?"

         She had disapproved of Masani. I knew the shame she felt; I could read it in her eyes and empathize.

         We left her in her temple, staring at the painted statues of the gods as if she could erode them with her gaze.

         "A powerful illusion," I said to Sarasve as soon as we were in the Outer Courtyard, among the empty stalls of the market. Night had fallen long ago, and the cold bit into my flesh like hundreds of ravenous insects. "There is no one in Lhira able to cast that."

         Sarasve shook his head lightly. "Priests," he said. "Sorcerers."

         "You suspect me?" I said, drawing myself to my full height. I had no intention of letting him get far with his accusations. They struck too close to home, for I felt some part of responsibility. I should not have let Masani go so easily.

         "I consider all possibilities." Sarasve sighed. "It has been a long evening, Master Yarek." He managed to twist the respectful address into some vast mockery of what I was.

         I wanted to scream at him. I survived, I could have said. I made my way out of the forest, though every step cost me. How could you ask me for more than that?

         "I believe we should both sleep," Sarasve went on.

         If only things were that simple. That night, sleep would not come to me, and the gaze of the stars through the window of my room was a reproach for my years of silence. The silence of the night filled the citadel: there were neither shouted orders from military exercises, nor calls of traders plying their wares in the Outer Courtyard. There was nothing.

         I rose, mouthing the words of a prayer to gods whom I had abandoned a long time ago. I went for a walk, towards the Inner Courtyard and Lord Rakhte's gardens, a haven of peace in the citadel in which both my liege and I dearly loved to meditate.

         The guards at the entrance of the gardens knew me, and let me pass without a word. I strolled deeper into the maze of fountains and fruit trees, until I reached a grove of young palm trees, each barely taller than me.

         I sat, as usual, under the smallest tree, and felt that familiar peace flow back to me. Something of the forest, which I had abandoned long ago, rose in my heart until all I could hear was the song of the canopy.

         I remembered Masani, smiling at some trifling spell I had accomplished. I remembered fleeing from her years later, going against her advice to heal my sister. After that, I had hoped that she would respect my choice and leave me in peace. I had found refuge in Lhira, but even there she came to me. And, once again, I had rejected her.

         "I am sorry," I said, aloud, laying one hand on the trunk of the tree. It beat to the rhythm of my heart.

         What was there to be sorry for? I had not defended Masani, true, but I had not known of her dispute with Lord Rakhte until she was gone. No, my failures with Masani lay deeper. They could be found even in those days before I had come to Lhira, a young man with an old man's bitterness.

         Forty years of service to Lord Rakhte could not erase the memory of walking under the canopy and being able to speak the languages of the animals, to change my shape into whatever I wanted. They could not erase my failure to become what Masani would have wanted for me. To become like Sarasve.

         Hermits never lied; no matter how much I disliked Sarasve, I had to believe him. No one in the Ingaran army had ever seen Masani, that night or any other night. She had never left us. She was still here. Someone had made us believe that she had gone away, so that no one would ever think to look for her.

         She was dead, I thought, chilled. Dead and burnt, all those years, and we slept in our rooms and despised her for leaving us. I had been among those who had mocked hermits for their faithlessness.

         She was dead.

         By whose hand?

         I knew Sarasve was right. Few people had the powers needed to cast such a spell. I was one of them. Who else? Dubalya? No one can cast an illusion on themselves, and I knew her well enough to tell she had not been lying.

         That left one of the two other priests of the Triad, both of whom had been in service at the time of Masani's disappearance. Once one has come to Lhira, one seldom finds any reason to leave.

         I considered the priests, weighing them in the palm of my hand as I would weigh Ashe's crude carvings.

         Ebhire had been born and raised in Lhira, and trained to be the priest of the Creator by his increasingly incoherent predecessor. Few things ruffled him. He knew a little of sorcery, and had helped me design the carvings on the door of the citadel.

         Anya, the Priestess of the Destroyer, came into each room like a whirlwind and spoke each of her opinions as if fighting a battle against demons. She had helped raise Lord Rakhte, and he still confided in her, much more than he would in me.

         Why would any of them have wanted to kill Masani? Perhaps, like Dubalya, they had wanted to see her go back to the forest. But it is one thing to wish for something, and another to kill. Priests have the sanctity of life hammered into them from the moment they pronounce their vows.

         It made no sense. I sat in my grove of palm trees, a pale memory of the forest, as if I could come back to the powers I had wielded under the canopy. The image of Masani, shaking her head at some foolish idea of mine, would not leave me.

         In the end, I did not sleep much. I came to my workshop with a headache that would not go away, and the first thing I saw on the table was Ashe's mediocre carving of Leaf of the Cold.

         When Ashe himself arrived late, his face flushed with the effort of running, I barely managed to control my temper.

         "You are late, boy," I said. "This is the second time in four days." I held up the carving, massaging my forehead with the other hand. "I am wondering what you hoped to achieve with this. The second lobe should be a smooth curve, not a jagged line. And the largest veins in the centre have the shape of a pentacle, and go all the way to the edges of the leaf."

         "I apologize," Ashe said, bowing stiffly. At which point the palm-leaf books he had been holding fell to the ground with a thud.

         I bit my tongue to prevent ill words from escaping me. It would have been unfair for me to vent my anger on Ashe. "We have work to do," I said, taking some of my most recent carvings from the table.

         We sat cross-legged on the ground, around the shaping tools and materials, and I proceeded to teach him about the ways to choose the proper wood, emphasizing my words with the carvings I had laid before me.

         "Master," Ashe asked, "is it true that the hermit has come to find Masani?"

         "Yes," I said, distracted in my lecture on the differences between whitewood and sandalwood.

         "Did he find anything?" There was something in Ashe's voice which made me tear my mind from matters of the craft.

         "He might have. Why?"

         Ashe averted his eyes.

         I did not have Sarasve's powers, had never paid the price of my youth to the gods, but still I knew how to read people. I still knew how to understand them, which is a thing hermits, cut off from the mortal world, lose sooner or later. Masani had never been able to tell what I thought.

         "What do you fear he will find, Ashe?" I asked softly, my voice never changing tones.

         "Nothing." His eyes still would not meet mine.

         I knew better than to accuse him of a lie. Sarasve, perhaps, would have, and would have lost his trust. "You were eight at the time. It is a wonder you remember her at all."

         "I remember her." Ashe's voice was full of awe. "She held something beyond us all, Master. As if she were in Lhira by her choice only, and could leave us at any time."

         He was begging me to understand, and in truth I, who had walked the paths under the canopy, saw exactly what he meant.

         "Hermits do not belong in the mortal world," I said, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. "They but wear the mantles of mortals for a short while. And Masani was a true hermit."

         "You knew her?"

         Masani. Teacher. Friend. Judge. She had been all of that, and I could not shake the last image we had of her: that silvery form under the moon, perhaps closer than anything else to what she had been. "Yes," I said.

         I looked at Ashe, said nothing for a while. He was my apprentice. I was the closest thing he had to a father. There were things the boy had to know, thing he had to understand before the forest filled his mind with its song and he could hear nothing but the roar of water cascading into pools under the trees. "Once, before I came to Lhira, I was her student."

         "You were in the forest once?" The wonder in his voice cut deeper than knives. How quickly did the call of the trees overwhelm everything else in our young.

         "Yes," I said. "I was fated to be like her."

         "But you are not a hermit." Ashe fingered the whitewood lotus as if every edge could cut him.

         "No," I said. "There is a price to be paid, to receive the wisdom of the gods. I could not pay it, so I left."

         "The years of youth," Ashe said. "Sarasve told me."

         "Has he told you that you will have to renounce all that matters in this world? To stand, as I did, by the sickbed of those you love, knowing you have the power to save them, but cannot use it? That once you have received the visions of the gods and your hair has turned white, you will no longer even care whether they live or they die?"

         Ashe's face was pale. He must have heard some of the old wounds laid bare beneath my words, but he said nothing. At length he let go of the carving he held.

         "I am sorry," he said. "Who fell ill?" He spoke carefully, as if probing at raw flesh.

         I closed my eyes. "My sister. She died."

         In the end, I had been too late. I had been too late to abandon my teachings and save Rhana, too late to be anything more than a powerless old man shut in a citadel, as far away from the forest as I could go. But Lhira was still not far enough from the forest to silence the call of the power I had set aside.

         "May she ascend into the city of the gods," Ashe said, I guess because he did not know what else to tell me.

         "It does not matter." I felt the years in Lhira on my shoulders, each one like a block of white marble.

         I found it hard to tear my mind from thoughts of my sister and return to my lesson. Nevertheless, after covering the properties of few more woods, I managed to end my lecture with, "Never forget that these rules are not absolutes. When carving into gates or shutters, you will have to make do with what you have.

         "This morning's lessons are ended," I went on. "Study the carvings of the bee this afternoon, and for the Triad's sake try to produce a proper love-charm this time."

         Ashe gathered his books, and picked up sandalwood and a silver knife to start his carving. Before opening the door he stopped, and turned. His gaze was unreadable.

         "Master Yarek," he said.

         I said nothing.

         "That night, seven years ago, I saw her. It was not for war that she left Lhira." Ashe's voice was shaking, slightly, but it grew more confident as he spoke.

         I stood listening to him, as he brought me back to a time when Lhira had been under siege, and when my apprentice had been only a pageboy serving Lord Rakhte.

         It was monsoon time over Lhira. The air in the surrounding mountains was as heavy as a breath held before the answer to a prayer. Fires burnt under our walls, and invaders stood at our gates, vowing to end once and for all Lhira's monopoly on trade from the Shifting Kingdoms and the forest.

         The youngest of the pageboys, Ashe came bearing a cup of spiced wine to his lord. He walked slowly, for each step he took made the liquid slosh against the wooden cup.

         At the entrance to his master's room he stopped. He cocked his head, as he heard the voices inside. He knew the voice of Lord Rakhte, deceptively slow and calm, but now every word his master uttered quivered with tension. The other voice spoke in quieter tones. It conjured images of deer drinking from a pond, of birds calling from the trees. The hermit, he thought.

         He could not help but listen. He stood, transfixed, his nostrils filled with the smell of the spiced wine, and heard not a quarrel between a master and a soldier, not a dispute over strategy. It was something much more bitter.

         They were lovers, and they had apparently been over this many times. Each knew where they stood, and knew they would not budge. Not before, not then, never. They both knew that. They knew that there was no path for them beyond this room.

         He almost dropped the bowl, but had no wish to be heard. Silently, he retreated, and left only the empty night to hear the ending.

         "Lovers," I said, standing very still in my workshop. Masani had not loved. No hermit was allowed to love. It was impossible.

         Ashe had not moved. He held onto his things as if a mere word could topple him. "I know what I heard," he said at last.

         "I believe you." The room was filled with the smell of shaved wood. My carvings. All of them. To keep her at bay, Lord Rakhte had said, to prevent her from returning. But he knew. He had always known exactly where she was. He had always known that she would never return from where he had sent her.

         I thought of Anya, the priestess of the Destroyer who had always had his ear and his trust. It would have been easy to ask her for an illusion. I had lived for years caught in his lie.

         My lord...

         When I raised my eyes again, Ashe had gone. I could not seem to stop shaking. Lord Rakhte had taken me in when I had nowhere else to go. He had always been a kind master. And it was all lies.

         There was only one place I could go.

         I found Lord Rakhte in his chambers, listening to Anya's reading of the Third Book.

         "And thus was the Covenant sealed. 'You shall come to me', said the Scarred One, through which spoke the Triad. 'You shall come to me and lay aside everything that you were, and I shall give you power.'"

         "My lord," I said.

         "What is the meaning of this, Yarek?" Anya demanded, shutting her book.

         I ignored her. "My lord," I said, bowing with both hands joined in greeting, although it cost me to show him respect. "Tell me you did not do this thing."

         He looked at me as if I were mad.

         "Tell me you had nothing to do with her disappearance."

         The blue eyes held mine for a while, then wavered. "You presume," Lord Rakhte said coldly. "It is not for me to explain my acts to a servant."

         "I know what happened that night."

         "Do you?" Lord Rakhte asked, and there was sadness in his voice, although not in his face.

         I did not move. I stood before both of them, those who had conjured this illusion and had me laugh at Masani's faithlessness. "She thought she had erred enough from the teachings of the forest by loving you. She would not go any further."

         "Know your place." Lord Rakhte's voice was a lash from a whip. "Leave us alone, Yarek."

         "I have to know."

         "So do I," Sarasve said, behind us. His voice still held the same power that had humbled me in my workshop. I wondered how long he had been at the door, listening to every word we said.

         Lord Rakhte said, softly, so that only I could hear, "Do you see what you have done?"

         Sarasve did not bow before any of us. He came to stand by my side, and said, "So, my Lord Rakhte."

         "Sarasve," Lord Rakhte said. "To you I am even less accountable."

         "Nevertheless," Sarasve said. "I had come to ask you more about Masani. But now it seems I have heard too much, and too little. What happened that night, my lord? Tell me what happened."

         Lord Rakhte inhaled. "Demons take you," he said, his voice low and savage. "I loved her. Can you even understand what that is?"

         "It has no place in the forest. And it is no barrier to murder," Sarasve said.

         His voice was serene, but I could hear the anger beneath. And I thought that Sarasve had loved her, as much as a hermit can love anyone. One could never remain indifferent to Masani; one would either hate her or worship her. It was her nature.

         "We—came to an agreement that night," Rakhte was saying. "There was nothing left for us; no way to go forward without her betraying the Triad, which she would not do."

         "And so you determined she would be no one's but yours," Sarasve said.

         "No," Lord Rakhte said. "I had nothing to do with her death."

         "I do not think you are innocent." Sarasve kept his voice even. "I came here to find her, and to pass judgment on her murderers."

         I knew his next words would be a curse: a curse on Lord Rakhte, on Anya, on Lhira. Hermits were not merciful, for the humanity with which they might have tempered their justice had been consumed by their first vision of the Triad. I looked into Lord Rakhte's eyes, and for the first time I saw an emotion in those unreadable pupils. It was a sorrow so deep no man should have had to endure it, a sorrow like my own at Rhana's death. There was no murderer's regret in Rakhte's eyes.

         "No," I said, before I could think.

         Sarasve turned to me. There was raw power in his eyes, so much that it hurt me; he had been blessed with the powers of the gods, and I had nothing. I fought an urge to abase myself before him, remembered that he no longer could read people.

         "No," I repeated. I moved, so I stood between him and Rakhte—even though it would make no difference at all in Sarasve's curse.

         "This is unjust," I said.

         "Then tell me what would be just," Sarasve said.

         "I have no answers," I spat. "But until you have proof, you have nothing."

         "You dare defy me? You, Yarek, who failed the forest, and live by stealing what little power you can?"

         "Yes." I kept my voice steady. My eyes ached with his radiance. My body hungered for his power, but I had seen my sister die.

         "You are nothing." And he turned back to Lord Rakhte.

         "Leave me until tomorrow." I pleaded, for there was nothing else I could do.

         "Why?" Sarasve asked.

         I called on the only thing that would matter to him. "For what I was, once. For the wisdom Masani taught me."

         Sarasve was silent for a moment, and then he turned his back to me.

         "Until dawn," he said.

         My workshop was deserted. I rubbed the doorjamb, on which I had carved the cobra image, so long ago it had faded into the wood. It would no longer prevent enemies from entering.

         I stood before the table which held my latest carvings, and watched the light of the sun invade the room. It laid fingers of light on every one of the figures, until it seemed that the wood itself held nothing but this golden radiance.

         They had been lovers. If not Lord Rakhte, who else might have killed Masani? Anya, taking upon herself to remove a threat to her lord?

         I did not believe it. Not any of it. But there were only four people in the whole of Lhira who could have cast such an illusion.

         Four people. I stared at the whitewood lotus flower, chilled. There were not four people, there were five.

         Masani herself had more than enough power for this. More than enough to make the whole of Lhira see her leave, if it came to that.

         Suppose... Suppose she had found herself caring for Lord Rakhte, which was an anathema. Suppose she could not go back where she had come from, because, as she had once taught a student of hers, love was not a thing of the forest?

         Suppose she were not dead.

         I rubbed the wood, breathed in its scent. Where would she hide? She was a hermit and all the shapes of the world were hers to take. She could be the serving girl who brought my meals in the morning, or one of the pages in personal service to Lord Rakhte, or the mongoose kept in the granaries to chase snakes and rats.

         Where would she hide?

         I held the shape of her in my mind, remembered the power she had exuded, the power Sarasve exuded, power enough to drive someone like Ashe to seek the forest.

         The forest. In that moment I had my answer.

         I stood in the Inner Courtyard, in the grove of palm trees. I laid my hand on the smallest of them, and felt the trunk beat to the rhythm of my heart.

         "I am here," I said, into the silence.

         There was no answer. I had not expected this to be easy. She had hidden for seven years, folded on herself so tightly that nothing of the human husk remained. But still, sitting under her branches, one could hear the song of the forest, and feel a desperate yearning for a place where war had no say, where illness had no hold.

         Masani, I said, in my mind, tightening my grasp over the trunk. I knew only how to bring out spells from the dead wood, not to awaken anything from the living veins and knots. Masani. Come.

         Nothing. I heard only the beat of sap, flowing upwards towards the leaves, the wind in the arcing branches.

         Masani.

         I heard the voice of the tree then. It was the rustle of leaves high in the canopy, the calls of bucks to does, the song of the apsaras, the nymphs from heaven, as they descended from the city of the gods to bathe in the hidden pools. It said my name.

         Yarek.

         Come back, I said. 

         Why should I?

         For the sake of Lhira.

         The tree's voice held no emotion. Why should I care about Lhira?

         It was a hermit's answer. Why indeed. For him, then, I said. Your student will curse him if you do not show yourself.

         A sigh rose, like the wind in the branches. I gave him up.

         He needs you.

         I needed him, Masani said. His voice, his touch. Five years of service in the mortal world, and little by little the teachings of the forest become dry things. What you thought you had relinquished forever comes back to you. You smile at boys' mock wars in the courtyard. You see him, and joy makes your heart beat faster. You sit before a mirror, and draw an ivory comb through your hair before coming to him. His kiss makes you whole.

         I told myself it was a game. Her voice was sad. I told myself wise ones should know something of human love before casting it away. I knew I could not lie to myself forever. I had to leave.

         I know, I said. But the time for hiding is past, Masani. You made us live a lie for the sake of your pride.

         She did not answer at first. I heard only the wordless song of the forest, rising to make me whole.

         I grow weary, Yarek. My power is no longer enough to sustain me. Seven years I have stood here, and watched him pass me by, and yearned for him.

         I know, I said. You cannot hide forever. There comes a time to do what is right. Even for hermits.

         She laughed, then, and her laughter was bitter. There comes a time, to all of us. A time to die. Help me, Yarek.

         I no longer knew how. But she was with me, grasping at my strength, and at what remained of her teachings within me. My chest was filled to bursting with the power I had cast aside. Each beat of my heart, each breath, was a wound in my chest.

         And when it was done I fell to my knees before a human shape. She looked up at me, and her eyes were the ones I remembered, as green as the leaves of the canopy. Her hair was the white of coconut paste, and the fine mesh of wrinkles on her face, like a fisherman's net, made her seem even older than I. I had never known her true age.

         "I need to see him," Masani said. And her voice, her true voice, caught at each word for lack of use. "Help me."

         She weighed nothing: a leaf, a breath of wind, a length of silk. Her skin was smooth against mine as I raised her and draped her arms around my neck. Her scent was musty, the smell of things hidden below the ground. She was dying.

         I carried her, one step at a time, from the Inner Courtyard into Lord Rakhte's chambers.

         When I entered the room, Lord Rakhte was still in the same position, staring straight ahead. Sarasve sat cross-legged near one of the lattice windows, a darker shape against the marble walls, unmoving. Anya was gone.

         "Yarek," Lord Rakhte said, and his gaze fell on the body I held. "How..."

         I did not answer, only laid Masani on the ground. The strength that had filled me flowed away when I let go of her, and that was when I knew I had been drawing on forest power—on her power. I fell to my knees, tears prickling my eyes. She had not died seven years ago, and yet she was dying now. It was unfair. I wanted... I wanted forgiveness, but it would be beyond her to give.

         Sarasve rose, and came to kneel by her side.

         He looked at her, and then closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain.

         "Why?" he asked.

         Her voice was a whisper, but the forest sang in every word. "It seemed—simpler."

         "Was it simpler than coming home? I waited for you," Sarasve said.

         "No," Masani said. "Hermits never wait. The forest waits. It always waits for us to die and to take what we have been into its song. I wanted—a different life, but it would have been wrong."

         "I would have given you that life," Lord Rakhte said. His voice was toneless.

         She said nothing. At length she spoke, and the words seemed to be dragged one by one from her chest.

         "It would have been wrong. I could not unmake what I was. I could not lay my powers on palm-leaves and forget that I had ever wielded them. I could not have my youth back. I—I did not have to think, as a tree."

         "You fled from your responsibilities," Sarasve said angrily.

         She laughed. "Oh, Sarasve. Years in the forest, and still you have not learnt to see. Hermits have no responsibilities. I am not accountable to men for what I have done."

         "You are accountable to me," Sarasve said.

         "Not even to you. I am sorry," she said, and her eyes were on Lord Rakhte. He was weeping, and it cut me deeper than I had thought possible. "I could not."

         I was still kneeling by her side. "Do you want me to call for the Priestess of the Destroyer?" I asked.

         "No. I have seen the gods, Yarek. What more would a priest tell me that I do not know?" She paused, then asked, "Will you leave us alone?"

         Sarasve and I looked at each other. Masani's hand still clung to me.

         She whispered, "I understand now, Yarek. You are not meant to care, but you do. Hermits should never come back into the mortal world."

         I said nothing. My mouth was filled with the salty taste of tears I had not thought I could shed, and there was a hollow in my chest that would not go away.

         I left the room, side by side with Sarasve, and did not look back.

         She died later that night. Lord Rakhte came to my workshop, his face a mask, and told me.

         They buried her instead of burning her: because she was a hermit, she had no need of fire to purify her on her way to the city of heaven. They dug a hole at the bottom of the largest coconut tree in the gardens, and so she slept as close to the forest as she could be.

         After the wake, Sarasve came to me. I had been sitting on the ground in my workshop, carving the image of an apsara. I would lay it upon Masani's grave, in the hope that she might be guided into the city of the gods by one of the nymphs from heaven. My eyes still stung.

         "I thought I would see you before I left," he said.

         I laid aside my knife, nodded.

         He stood at the door, one hand on the remnants of the cobra carving that would no longer bar his entry into the room. "I owe you an apology, Yarek." His voice was faintly mocking, but it seemed it was so much part of him that he could no longer lay it aside.

         Still I said nothing. Under my fingers, the wood gleamed with its secret light. It reflected a darker shadow: his face, as he bent over the carving to scrutinize it.

         "You have not lost everything Masani taught you," he said.

         I set down the carving and looked at him. His eyes held the green of leaves, the reflections of trees in water. That much had not changed.

         "I doubt you can ever lay the forest aside," I said, rising. "But then I doubt I would ever have been able to lay the mortal world aside." I wondered if he would ever be able to either. After all, he had come all the way to Lhira for his mentor's sake. And yet love, as he had said, as Masani had said, had no place in the forest.

         Sarasve's wrinkled face was expressionless. "Perhaps some of us are not meant to be hermits," he said.

         "Perhaps."

         For a while we stared at each other, over the numerous images of animals and trees, the dead wood, the silver knife. He was the first to look away.

         "I will be going back to the forest," he said.

         "May the Triad walk with you."

         His voice, when he gave me the traditional answer, shook a little, but surely hermits can feel no emotions. Surely they cannot grieve for those who have died.

         "And may its shadow cover you," he said.

         I nodded, reached out, took one of my carvings, and held it out to him.

         "Thank you," he said. His skin was cool to the touch, moist. "What is it for?"

         "Spider monkey," I said, with a smile. "It is for good luck, and swift journeys."

         He laughed then. It was the sound of the monsoon rains in the canopy, of lightning striking banyan trees.

         "Do you think I will have any need for this, Yarek?" He exuded a power that I knew would never be mine.

         I smiled. "One never knows the will of the gods."

         He shook his head, darkly amused, and bowed with both hands joined, in farewell.

         "I will take my leave, then."

         I said nothing. I bowed in turn, watched him leave my workshop. I imagined him walking out of Lhira, out of my life, back into the forest that had birthed him. The forest that should have been my home, had I accepted Masani's teachings. I felt no bitterness.

         It has been years since Sarasve came to us. An unnamed grave in the gardens of the Inner Courtyard is all that remains of his passage, a darker patch of earth where Lord Rakhte kneels to pray on full-moon nights. He prays for the soul of one who has no need for prayer.

         I can feel her, sometimes. She is watching us. She is watching me. Her voice rings with the powerful laughter that is the province of hermits.

         What have you learnt, Yarek?

         Despite what happened between us, she is still trying to teach me lessons.

         No matter. I have made my peace with the forest. I take pride in my apprentice Ashe, who will one day be the sorcerer in Lhira. And if at night the power that I have renounced comes back to haunt me, I know that in the end the sun will rise over a world where even hermits cannot entirely cast aside the things that make us human.

         And on the gates of Lhira the wood is smooth and silky to the touch, the cobras and elephant tusks erased by years of monsoon rain. I have carved no other patterns.

         Let him come, when he grows weary of the forest, or when he feels the need for more than that never-ending song in his solitude.

         Let him come.

         I will be waiting.

 

Copyright 2006, Aliette de Bodard

Aliette de Bodard studies Applied Math in Paris, France. She is also a writer of fantasy. One of her stories has appeared in Deep Magic; others are scheduled to appear in Deep Magic, Shimmer, Fantastical Visions IV, and Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. Her website can be found here: < http://perso.wanadoo.fr/aliettedb >. 

 

 

Cover: "The Lady Returns"

Copyright 2006, Melinda S Reynolds 

Self-taught artist and writer; drawing came first, writing second.  My favorite genres are fantasy and sci-fi because of the depth of imagination.