The voice was not from outside. It trembled through the interior of his head like uncontrolled thought.
Is it Hanin? he wondered. Is the voice my teacher’s?
The ground shook.
* * * *
Tashnark would respond by tossing aside the images that crowded through his restless sleep. He’d open his eyes and the night, broken into shadow-patterns on the plaster roof above him, would coalesce into something familiar again. He’d be in his mother’s home. Her house stood on the edge of a large park on the seaward side of the City of Koerpel-Na, in the merchant-state called Vesuula. His father was a state-sanctioned slaver. He himself was drunk too often and a great disappointment to his family. Heavily built and, on occasion, oafish with it, he occupied his time in taverns and gaming houses, working for money only when his father indulged in the sort of parental moralising that had frustrated many a fine layabout.
Why then was he plagued by the dreams? They were more frequent now than they had ever been, so barely a night passed that was not full of their bizarre imagery. Tashnark felt the dream…no, it was more than a dream…he felt the memory growing clearer and clearer nightly. Yet it was impossible. He was Sevthen Ulart-Tashnark and he lived in Koerpel-Na. There was no Tammenallor, no Hanin, no Bellarroth.
He’d turn in his bed and pull the blankets around his shoulders.
Can dreams supplant reality? he’d wonder—but would not want an answer.
* * * *
In the morning he had a hangover. His memory of its causes was blurry to say the least, though oddly enough what he remembered most about the night before was not whatever conversation he may have had with acquaintances in The Night Binge, nor how much he drank, nor the fight with the ship crewman (which he only knew about because of a note from the publican he found in his jacket pocket, billing him for a busted table). Rather it was a woman he’d noticed sitting at the back, as though waiting. He’d watched her for a while, fascinated by her, and had seen some self-important bastard from one of the Commercial Houses come in and sit with her. As a liaison, however, it looked to be about as welcome as a bacterial infection in places best not mentioned in polite company. The woman was intimidated at first, but then rallied, putting the wind up him by something she said and sending him on his way with only a show of scorn to cover his annoyance. What happened then got a bit hazy, but Tashnark did recall that the next time he’d looked for her, the woman was gone.
He’d been attracted to her, that was certain—irresistibly drawn in fact. He’d admired her face and figure to be sure, but was even more entranced by the manner in which she carried herself. Dark hair, tied back firmly, compact body, ornately decorated clothing, piercing eyes. Though her face was delicately and finely featured, giving a suggestion of being lost, there was no hint that this fact demoralized her. In her determination, which was plain to him even from a distance, she reminded him of his mother. Tashnark might have approached the woman, hoping to prolong an acquaintance that didn’t even have a starting point, except he’d been sober enough to realize he was in no state to impress. He was incoherent and morbid and drunk. His shirt and rough cotton pants were filthy with spilt food and beer stains. No doubt he stank. So he’d kept away and all that was left now were a few recollections. It was strange, though, that despite the alcoholic amnesia that inevitably settled over him, memories of the woman should linger.
Both his mother and Ishwarin, his brother, had breakfasted by the time he made it to the kitchen. He forced himself to eat some eggs and a plateful of cereals covered in thickened juice—he had no idea what kind of fruit the reddish green sludge had once been—then was sick into a large washbasin he was using to splash the throbbing out of his temples.
His mother didn’t appear either to comfort or berate him, so he assumed she’d left for her workplace—the Hassur Libraries. She spent an inordinate amount of time there, much more than her job required. It was as though she were desperate to track down some important scrap of information hidden in the thousands of volumes written by men and women long dead—a truth that would make her content. She wasn’t content, Tashnark knew that. Under her veneer of easy acceptance was a spirit tormented by longing. Tashnark didn’t fully understand the source of that longing, but his awareness of it made him uncomfortable. Part of him wanted to help her, though he had long ago given up any pretence that he knew what could be done for her.
And he was conscious of his own responsibility. Once, looking for money, he’d violated the sanctity of her room while she was out. On her desk lay piles of paper and his eyes had scanned them lazily. One sheet was an old fading leaf covered in the archaic square pen-craft of Hassur-scholars. It was a ‘Meditation on Worthiness’ by Halek-Sinor, one of the College’s founding fathers. Next to it was something written in a recent and more flowing script: his mother’s, without a doubt. There was a date at the top, that of several days before. Strangely compelled, Tashnark had picked up the paper and read it.
How can we see Halek-Sinor’s Worthiness, with its relentless pursuit of Truth and correspondent Morality, in the Hassur of today? Godliness seems further and further removed from every part of intellectual life. Nor can I, on a personal level, keep my own life pure and free of ambiguity. What is my son? I cannot admit what I know in my heart, that my son is dead, and that a stranger has taken his place. Hassur records, but does not evaluate. Is this worthy? I remember the past, as does Hassur, but resist the memory in favor of blind hopes and ignorant assumptions. In that, I’m like the Temples. If Ur-Teth the God called upon us today, how far from truth and willingness would we find ourselves to be, I and my Hassur?
…that my son is dead, and that a stranger has taken his place. What did she mean by it? Tashnark hadn’t known, and still didn’t, but memory of her doubt and sorrow made him afraid—for her…and for himself.
He heated water over the stove, carried it through the house in a large pot and poured it into the expensive metal-wrought tub that graced his mother’s bathroom. After the third trip, he stripped off his smelly clothes and soaked himself for a while. He tried to cut off his thoughts, which were too often spoiled by a self-pity he didn’t let anyone else see. Post-binge melancholy didn’t help. Such self-indulgence struck him as pathetic and made him feel worse. Instead he watched the whirling phantoms molded from steam from the hot water and listened to the muffled sounds of the outside world. At one point he found himself wondering again who that woman in the tavern had been—her dark hair tied back, her gray-green eyes glinting clearly even across the smoky taproom, the way her hands moved with an elegant expressiveness as she talked.
If I search hard enough, he wondered, will I be able to find her again?
As his mind numbed and his eyelids got heavier, Tashnark heard his brother singing gently in the room above. The words filtered into his mind as an undercurrent to thought and settled there like a sediment over his day-dreaming.
“Where are you going?” spoke a man I met beside the
bay.
“Along the road and out of town,” at once I tried to
say.
“Where are you going?” again he pressed, that man so
thin and gray
“Beyond the last house, out the gate, still further on
my way.”
The tune was slow and measured, soothing on the surface yet somehow unsettling at a level below Tashnark’s conscious thoughts. Verse after verse described the determined questioning of the thin, gray man. More, it charted the narrator’s growing terror as the stranger’s words took on darker meaning. Tashnark found his mind drifting into a landscape full of hazy light, as the song’s narrator begged the strange man to leave him alone.…
His “Where are you going?” laughed at me, his eyes
said plainly “Nay!”
His hand stretched