Sheri S. Tepper - Jinian 03 - Jinian Stareye.pdf - Sheri S. Tepper - widez2

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One

The Great Maze

So far as one could see from the outside, the Great Maze was merely a jungle of paths and hedges, trees

and bushes, a mighty entanglement lying to the south of the Pervasion of the Dervishes, stretching from

there away to the distant sea. Standing on the hill above the Maze, I had looked down into it to see

winding trails, clearings, pathways, even quite large open spaces with impenetrable edges of luxuriant

green, and in some of these spaces the easily recognized outline of well-known plants: rainhat bush,

thrilps, giant wheat. Only natural things.

I suppose if you took the top of my skull off and looked at the quivering stuff inside, you would see only

flesh, only natural things. Looking at that quaking jelly, one wouldn’t see ideas or fears; no dreams would

leap from the pinky-gray convolutions to dance on the brain top.

So, when Peter and I stood beside the Great Maze of Lorn - which is the name the Shadowpeople give

to this world - we saw no memories rising from the clearings or insinuating their way through the

underbrush. And yet, according to Mind Healer Talley, who had told the Dervishes long before, the

Maze halds the memories of our world.

Each time I thought of this, my mind chased about for a moment and then stopped working. It was not

easy to believe, a whole world, remembering. A world actually thinking, planning. A world dreaming,

perhaps. A world regretting. A world dying.

No. Not merely dying. Killing itself.

Outside the Maze were boiling fumaroles casting acid palls onto ageless forests; chasms opening to

swallow mighty rivers; mountains bursting into flame and ash. Outside the Maze was a world sick unto

death and with no desire for healing. And we were on it, with nowhere else to go.

Oh, yes, part of our fear and pain was for ourselves. Why deny it? And part for those we loved. I

fretted, thinking of Murzy and the rest of my seven away south. Peter groaned thinking of Mavin, his

mother, and Himaggery the Wizard, his father, and other kin dear to him. And both of us together thought

of Queynt and Chance, fondly and with foreboding. At one point I even found myself regretting Queen

Vorbold, back in Xammer, for all her unsympathetic pride. But if we went to them, there was nothing we

could do to help any of them. If anything could be done, it would be done here, now.

The reason for Lom’s death would be found among those memories.

The reason had to be there, somewhere in the past.

Perhaps if the reason were known, something could be done to reverse this final agony.

There seemed to be no one else to make the attempt.

We might be able to do something. If we were very lucky, it might even be the right thing.

Peter said all this to me, and then I repeated it to him with all the tone and frenzy of conviction. So we

encouraged ourselves. Both of us knew that each of us was sick with anxiety and apprehension, and each

of us was very busy concealing it from the other. ‘Oh, yes,’ we seemed to say, ‘this is perfectly possible.

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Of course we will get on with it at once,’ while our stomachs hurt and a smelly sweat oozed on skins

already damp. Even I could smell us. A fustigar could have followed us for leagues. We stank of fear,

and everything we saw and heard made it clear how late it was to attempt anything at all. If we failed, we

died with the world. And even if we succeeded, there was no guarantee we would survive the effort.

I had been inside the Maze once before, only just inside a shallow edge. Cernaby of the Soul had

showed me one way in and one way out, and now that Peter and I were going in together, it seemed

wise to start by retracing those earlier steps. To get the flavor, so to speak. Or rather, to let Peter get the

flavor, since I was afraid I already had it. A flavor of confusion, mostly. Of connections just out of reach.

At any rate, after an affectionate and - if we’re honest about it

-bravely-hiding-our-true-feelings-for-fear-of frightening-ourselves embrace, we went in hand in hand by

the same path I had tried before, an easy path making a short loop into the Maze and out again, the

entrance and exit only a few paces apart along the road.

We took one step . . .

... To find ourselves upon a height, sharp with wind. Below lay a cliff-edged bowl carpeted in spring

green, sun glinting on the western rim of stone, the depths still in shadow. From above came an enormous

screaming, mightier than any fleshy voice, metal on air, burning gasses, hot shrieking wind.

Down from above a silver spearhead, falling butt end first, buoyed on its bellowing, gas-farting rear,

down into the green. I smelled the burning; trees burst into flame; the grass crisped into ash; smoke

billowed into the morning. Then quiet. A feeling of dread; dread and excitement, curiosity and pain.

Mixed.

A door opened high on the silver spearhead, and a strange creature came out. It was too thick through

to be normal. Too thin from side to side and too thick from back to front. Not star-shaped, as would

have been normal. Limbs oddly jointed. Naked-faced. Not attractive. Ugly, rather. It called with a weak

little voice into the shadowed bowl. Um, um, blah, um. Uttering nonsense. Um, um, blah. I knew what it

was saying but could not understand a word. A nasty little human creature, an invader, and I could not

understand a word.

I shook myself, frightened, grasping Peter’s arm and hanging on as though I were drowning. I had not

seen that creature through my own eyes but through the eyes of- the world. Through Lom’s eyes. I

gasped, blinked, tried to find myself in all this.

‘Jinian . . . Jinian?’ He was shaking me gently, looking at me with that tender concern he showed

sometimes, the kind that made my heart turn over and stop beating.

‘It’s all right,’ I breathed. ‘It’s all right. Let’s get out of here.’ I tugged him to our left along the rim of the

cliff, toward the grove of midnight trees. He followed me reluctantly, eyes turned back to watch that

silvery vehicle in its patch of burned grass. Just before we reached the tree, the silver vessel disappeared

from the green bowl below and we heard the howling begin high above us. As we stepped into the

shadow, I looked up. It was coming down again. Below us in the valley the green meadow was

untouched; the blackened scar had vanished.

‘What?’ Peter started to say.

‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Just come on a few more steps, then we’ll figure it out.’ I was shaken. When I had been

here before, I had merely observed, not been battered about by these waves of feeling.

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We stepped out from the shadow of the tree onto the Wastes of Bleer. The place was unmistakable; a

high plateau, barren and drear, with the contorted shapes of the Wind’s Bones all around. Thorn bush

and devil’s spear and great Wind’s Bones. There was no feeling here, only a waiting numbness.

‘Quick,’ I said to Peter, moving toward the crevasse I remembered from the time before. ‘Before it

comes down on our heads.’ Above us, out of a clear sky, a moon was falling at us, burning bright,

soundlessly, hideously plunging out of the east. He looked up, gasped, almost fell as I pulled him down

into the hole .

Into the great, gray temple I remembered from last time. Outside the walls, the menacing roar of many

voices. Above us, a great vacancy, an enormous height. Smoke rising. Somewhere doors opening and

closing, the sound far away and vague, as though heard inattentively. Shadowy forms moving around us,

back and forth across the immense nave. Two pedestals were toppled against the wall, the lamp that had

evidently rested on one of them lay at my feet. Beside the other fallen pedestal was a great book, its

leaves crumpled.

Before I could stop him, Peter broke from my side and ran to a carved stone monument that loomed

beneath one of the high windows. He was up in it in a moment, neck craned to peer through the opening.

I remember being surprised that he Shifted a little as he went, making spidery arms and legs for himself.

Somehow I had felt our Talents would not work in the Maze. There was no time to consider it. I cried

out, ‘Peter, don’t. ...” afraid he would through into some other place. He heard the tone of panic in my

voice, if not the words, came scurrying back. My heart was pounding; every muscle was tight. I could

barely breathe among the feelings of apprehension and horror. We fled around the low curbing of an

empty pool toward the stairs and the altar. From high above came the dreadful breaking sound that I

remembered half hearing the time before, a sound like a great tree breaking, tearing apart in an agony of

ripped fibers. We stepped behind the altar and out onto the path in the Maze. It opened to our right onto

the same road we had left.

‘Wah.’ Peter gasped, breathless. ‘Gah. Oh. That wasn’t what I expected.’

I tried to take a deep breath, choking myself in the effort. Horror. Sheer horror. After a time the feeling

diminished. I managed to ask, ‘What did you see out the window?’

‘Eesties. I mean, I guess they were Eesties. I’ve never seen them, but Mavin has. And Queynt saw

them, of course. I don’t know what else they could have been. Star-shaped. Hundreds, maybe

thousands of them, all roaring at the building we were in. Why did you yell at me like that?’

‘I was afraid you’d slip through. Cernaby said each “place” has many ways out. That’s what makes it a

maze. If you’d gone somewhere else, I’m not sure I could have found you.’

‘Is it all like that?’

‘I think so. Places. No, not exactly places. More like events. Did you notice that first one we were in?

...”

‘It was the Base. The place the Magicians called the Base. I’ve seen that ship before. I’ve been there.’

‘Have you really!’ Somehow this was astonishing to me. Even though I knew Peter had had a life before

we met - or met again - evidence of it always had the power to surprise me, to shame me, as though I felt

he could not have survived without me. ‘Then you know what was happening?’

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Sheri S. Tepper - Jinian 03 - Jinian Stareye.pdf

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