Nightwings Read online

  In the Old City, also, is a Second Cycle place that was of much more immediate interest to Olmayne and myself. As we stared through the darkness at the holy precincts Olmayne said, “We should make application tomorrow at the house of renewal.”

  “I agree. I long now to give up some of my years.”

  “Will they accept me, Tomis?”

  “Speculating on it is idle,” I told her. “We will go, and we will apply, and your question will be answered.”

  She said something further, but I did not hear her words, for at that moment three Fliers passed above me, heading east. One was male, two female; they flew naked, according to the custom of their guild; and the Flier in the center of the group was a slim, fragile girl, mere bones and wings, moving with a grace that was exceptional even for her airy kind.

  “Avluela!” I gasped.

  The trio of Fliers disappeared beyond the parapets of the Old City. Stunned, shaken, I clung to a tree for support and struggled for breath.

  “Tomis?” Olmayne said. “Tomis, are you ill?”

  “I know it was Avluela. They said she had gone back to Hind, but no, that was Avluela! How could I mistake her?”

  “You’ve said that about every Flier you’ve seen since leaving Perris,” said Olmayne coldly.

  “But this time I’m certain! Where is a thinking cap? I must check with the Fliers’ Lodge at once!”

  Olmayne’s hand rested on my arm. “It’s late, Tomis. You act feverish. Why this excitement over your skinny Flier, anyway? What did she mean to you?”

  “She—”

  I halted, unable to put my meaning in words. Olmayne knew the story of my journey up out of Agupt with the girl, how as a celibate old Watcher I had conceived a kind of paternal fondness for her, how I had perhaps felt something more powerful than that, how I had lost her to the false Changeling Gormon, and how he in turn had lost her to the Prince of Roum. But yet what was Avluela to me? Why did a glimpse of someone who merely might have been Avluela send me into this paroxysm of confusion? I chased symbols in my turbulent mind and found no answers.

  “Come back to the inn and rest,” Olmayne said. “Tomorrow we must seek renewal.”

  First, though, I donned a cap and made contact with the Fliers’ Lodge. My thoughts slipped through the shielding interface to the storage brain of the guild registry; I asked and received the answer I had sought. Avluela of the Fliers was indeed now a resident in Jorslem. “Take this message for her,” I said. “The Watcher she knew in Roum now is here as a Pilgrim, and wishes to meet her outside the house of renewal at midday tomorrow.”

  With that done, I accompanied Olmayne to our lodgings. She seemed sullen and aloof; and when she unmasked in my room her face appeared rigid with—jealousy? Yes. To Olmayne all men were vassals, even one so shriveled and worn as I; and she loathed it that another woman could kindle such a flame in me. When I drew forth my starstone, Olmayne at first would not join me in communion. Only when I began the rituals did she submit. But I was so tense that night that I was unable to make the merging with the Will, nor could she achieve it; and thus we faced one another glumly for half an hour, and abandoned the attempt, and parted for the night.

  9

  ONE must go by one’s self to the house of renewal. At dawn I awoke, made a brief and more successful communion, and set out unbreakfasted, without Olmayne. In half an hour I stood before the golden wall of the Old City; in half an hour more I had finished my crossing of the inner city’s tangled lanes. Passing before that gray wall so dear to the ancient Hebers, I went up onto the high place; I passed near the gilded dome of the vanished Mislams and, turning to the left, followed the stream of Pilgrims which already at this early hour was proceeding to the house of renewal.

  This house is a Second Cycle building, for it was then that the renewal process was conceived; and of all that era’s science, only renewal has come down to us approximately as it must have been practiced in that time. Like those other few Second Cycle structures that survive, the house of renewal is supple and sleek, architecturally understated, with deft curves and smooth textures; it is without windows; it bears no external ornament whatever. There are many doors. I placed myself before the easternmost entrance, and in an hour’s time I was admitted.

  Just inside the entrance I was greeted by a green-robed member of the guild of Renewers—the first member of this guild I had ever seen. Renewers are recruited entirely from Pilgrims who are willing to make it their life’s work to remain in Jorslem and aid others toward renewal. Their guild is under the same administration as the Pilgrims; a single guildmaster directs the destinies of both; even the garb is the same except for color. In effect Pilgrims and Renewers are of one guild and represent different phases of the same affiliation. But a distinction is always drawn.

  The Renewer’s voice was light and cheerful. “Welcome to this house, Pilgrim. Who are you, where are you from?”

  “I am the Pilgrim Tomis, formerly Tomis of the Rememberers, and prior to that a Watcher, born to the name Wuellig. I am native to the Lost Continents and have traveled widely both before and after beginning my Pilgrimage.”

  “What do you seek here?”

  “Renewal. Redemption.”

  “May the Will grant your wishes,” said the Renewer. “Come with me.”

  I was led through a close, dimly lit passage into a small stone cell. The Renewer instructed me to remove my mask, enter into a state of communion, and wait. I freed myself from the bronze grillwork and clasped my starstone tightly. The familiar sensations of communion stole over me, but no union with the Will took place; rather, I felt a specific link forming with the mind of another human being. Although mystified, I offered no resistance.

  Something probed my soul. Everything was drawn forth and laid out as if for inspection on the floor of the cell: my acts of selfishness and of cowardice, my flaws and failings, my doubts, my despairs, above all the most shameful of my acts, the selling of the Rememberer document to the invader overlord. I beheld these things and knew that I was unworthy of renewal. In this house one might extend one’s lifetime two or three times over; but why should the Renewers offer such benefits to anyone as lacking in merit as I?

  I remained a long while in contemplation of my faults. Then the contact broke, and a different Renewer, a man of remarkable stature, entered the cell.

  “The mercy of the Will is upon you, friend,” he said, reaching forth fingers of extraordinary length to touch the tips of mine.

  When I heard that deep voice and saw those white fingers, I knew that I was in the presence of a man I had met briefly before, as I stood outside the gates of Roum in the season before the conquest of Earth. He had been a Pilgrim then, and he had invited me to join him on his journey to Jorslem, but I had declined, for Roum had beckoned to me.

  “Was your Pilgrimage an easy one?” I asked.

  “It was a valuable one,” he replied. “And you? You are a Watcher no longer, I see.”

  “I am in my third guild this year.”

  “With one more yet to come,” he said.

  “Am I to join you in the Renewers, then?”

  “I did not mean that guild, friend Tomis. But we can talk more of that when your years are fewer. You have been approved for renewal, I rejoice to tell you.”

  “Despite my sins?”

  “Because of your sins, such that they are. At dawn tomorrow you enter the first of the renewal tanks. I will be your guide through your second birth. I am the Renewer Talmit. Go, now, and ask for me when you return.”

  “One question—”

  “Yes?”

  “I made my Pilgrimage together with a woman, Olmayne, formerly a Rememberer of Perris. Can you tell me if she has been approved for renewal as well?”

  “I know nothing of this Olmayne.”

  “She’s not a good woman,” I said. “She is vain, imperious, and cruel. But yet I think she is not beyond saving. Can you do anything to help her?”

  “I have no inf
luence in such things,” Talmit said. “She must face interrogation like everyone else. I can tell you this, though: virtue is not the only criterion for renewal.”

  He showed me from the building. Cold sunlight illuminated the city. I was drained and depleted, too empty even to feel cheered that I had qualified for renewal. It was midday; I remembered my appointment with Avluela; I circled the house of renewal in rising anxiety. Would she come?

  She was waiting by the front of the building, beside a glittering monument from Second Cycle days. Crimson jacket, furry leggings, glassy bubbles on her feet, telltale humps on her back: from afar I could make her out to be a Flier. “Avluela!” I called.

  She whirled. She looked pale, thin, even younger than when I had last seen her. Her eyes searched my face, once again masked, and for a moment she was bewildered.

  “Watcher?” she said. “Watcher, is that you?”

  “Call me Tomis now,” I told her. “But I am the same man you knew in Agupt and Roum.”

  “Watcher! Oh, Watcher! Tomis.” She clung to me. “How long it’s been! So much has happened!” She sparkled now, and the paleness fled her cheeks. “Come, let’s find an inn, a place to sit and talk! How did you discover me here?”

  “Through your guild. I saw you overhead last night.”

  “I came here in the winter. I was in Fars for a while, halfway back to Hind, and then I changed my mind. There could be no going home. Now I live near Jorslem, and I help with—” She cut her sentence sharply off. “Have you won renewal, Tomis?”

  We descended from the high place into a humbler part of the inner city. “Yes,” I said, “I am to be made younger. My guide is the Renewer Talmit—we met him as a Pilgrim outside Roum, do you remember?”

  She had forgotten that. We seated ourselves at an open-air patio adjoining an inn, and Servitors brought us food and wine. Her gaiety was infectious; I felt renewed just to be with her. She spoke of those final cataclysmic days in Roum, when she had been taken into the palace of the Prince as a concubine; and she told me of that terrible moment when Gormon the Changeling defeated the Prince of Roum on the evening of conquest—announcing himself as no Changeling but an invader in disguise, and taking from the Prince at once his throne, his concubine, and his vision.

  “Did the Prince die?” she asked.

  “Yes, but not of his blinding.” I told her how that proud man had fled Roum disguised as a Pilgrim, and how I had accompanied him to Perris, and how, while we were among the Rememberers, he had involved himself with Olmayne, and had been slain by Olmayne’s husband, whose life was thereupon taken by his wife. “I also saw Gormon in Perris,” I said. “He goes by the name of Victorious Thirteen now. He is high in the councils of the invaders.”

  Avluela smiled. “Gormon and I were together only a short while after the conquest. He wanted to tour Eyrop; I flew with him to Donsk and Sved, and there he lost interest in me. It was then that I felt I must go home to Hind, but later I changed my mind. When does your renewal begin?”

  “At dawn.”

  “Oh, Tomis, how will it be when you are a young man? Did you know that I loved you? All the time we traveled, all while I was sharing Gormon’s bed and consorting with the Prince, you were the one I wanted! But of course you were a Watcher, and it was impossible. Besides, you were so old. Now you no longer Watch, and soon you will no longer be old, and—” Her hand rested on mine. “I should never have left your side. We both would have been spared much suffering.”

  “We learn, from suffering,” I said.

  “Yes. Yes. I see that. How long will your renewal take?”

  “The usual time, whatever that may be.”

  “After that, what will you do? What guild will you choose? You can’t be a Watcher, not now.”

  “No, nor a Rememberer either. My guide Talmit spoke of some other guild, which he would not name, and assumed that I would enroll in it when I was done with renewal. I supposed he thought I’d stay here and join the Renewers, but he said it was another guild.”

  “Not the Renewers,” said Avluela. She leaned close. “The Redeemers,” she whispered.

  “Redeemers? That is a guild I do not know.”

  “It is newly founded.”

  “No new guild has been established in more than a—”

  “This is the guild Talmit meant. You would be a desirable member. The skills you developed when you were a Watcher make you exceptionally useful.”

  “Redeemers,” I said, probing the mystery. “Redeemers. What does this guild do?”

  Avluela smiled jauntily. “It rescues troubled souls and saves unhappy worlds. But this is no time to talk of it. Finish your business in Jorslem, and everything will become clear.” We rose. Her lips brushed mine. “This is the last time I’ll see you as an old man. It will be strange, Tomis, when you’re renewed!”

  She left me then.

  Toward evening I returned to my lodging. Olmayne was not in her room. A Servitor told me that she had been out all day. I waited until it was late; then I made my communion and slept, and at dawn I paused outside her door. It was sealed. I hurried to the house of renewal.

  10

  THE Renewer Talmit met me within the entrance and conducted me down a corridor of green tile to the first renewal tank. “The Pilgrim Olmayne,” he informed me, “has been accepted for renewal and will come here later this day.” This was the last reference to the affairs of another human being that I was to hear for some time. Talmit showed me into a small low room, close and humid, lit by dim blobs of slavelight and smelling faintly of crushed deathflower blossoms. My robe and my mask were taken from me, and the Renewer covered my head with a fine golden-green mesh of some flimsy metal, through which he sent a current; and when he removed the mesh, my hair was gone, my head was as glossy as the tiled walls. “It makes insertion of the electrodes simpler,” Talmit explained. “You may enter the tank, now.”

  A gentle ramp led me down into the tank, which was a tub of no great size. I felt the warm soft slipperiness of mud beneath my feet, and Talmit nodded and told me it was irradiated regenerative mud, which would stimulate the increase of cell division that was to bring about my renewal, and I accepted it. I stretched out on the floor of the tank with only my head above the shimmering dark violet fluid that it contained. The mud cradled and caressed my tired body. Talmit loomed above me, holding what seemed to be a mass of entangled copper wires, but as he pressed the wires to my bare scalp they opened as of their own accord and their tips sought my skull and burrowed down through skin and bone into the hidden wrinkled grayness. I felt nothing more than tiny prickling sensations. “The electrodes,” Talmit explained, “seek out the centers of aging within your brain; we transmit signals that will induce a reversal of the normal processes of decay, and your brain will lose its perception of the direction of the flow of time. Your body thus will become more receptive to the stimulation it receives from the environment of the renewal tank. Close your eyes.” Over my face he placed a breathing mask. He gave me a gentle shove, and the back of my head slipped from the edge of the tank, so that I floated out into the middle. The warmth increased. I dimly heard bubbling sounds. I imagined black sulfurous bubbles coming up from the mud and through the fluid in which I floated; I imagined that the fluid had turned the color of mud. Adrift in a tideless sea I lay, distantly aware that a current was passing over the electrodes, that something was tickling my brain, that I was engulfed in mud and in what could well have been an amniotic fluid. From far away came the deep voice of the Renewer Talmit summoning me to youth, drawing me back across the decades, unreeling time for me. There was a taste of salt in my mouth. Again I was crossing Earth Ocean, beset by pirates, defending my Watching equipment against their jeers and thrusts. Again I stood beneath the hot Aguptan sun meeting Avluela for the first time. I lived once more on Palash. I returned to the place of my birth in the western isles of the Lost Continents, in what formerly had been Usa-amrik. I watched Roum fall a second time. Fragments of memories sw
am through my softening brain. There was no sequence, no rational unrolling of events. I was a child. I was a weary ancient. I was among the Rememberers. I visited the Somnambulists. I saw the Prince of Roum attempt to purchase eyes from an Artificer in Dijon. I bargained with the Procurator of Perris. I gripped the handles of my instruments and entered Watchfulness. I ate sweet things from a far-off world; I drew into my nostrils the perfume of springtime on Palash; I shivered in an old man’s private winter; I swam in a surging sea, buoyant and happy; I sang; I wept; I resisted temptation; I yielded to temptations; I quarreled with Olmayne; I embraced Avluela; I experienced a flickering succession of nights and days as my biological clock moved in strange rhythms of reversal and acceleration. Illusions beset me. It rained fire from the sky; time rushed in several directions; I grew small and then enormous. I heard voices speaking in shades of scarlet and turquoise. Jagged music sparkled on the mountains. The sound of my drumming heartbeats was rough and fiery. I was trapped between strokes of my brain-piston, arms pressed to my sides so that I would occupy as little space as possible as it rammed itself home again and again and again. The stars throbbed, contracted, melted. Avluela said gently, “We earn a second youthtime through the indulgent, benevolent impulses of the Will and not through the performance of individual good works.” Olmayne said, “How sleek I get!” Talmit said, “These oscillations of perception signify only the dissolution of the wish toward self-destruction that lies at the heart of the aging process.” Gormon said, “These perceptions of oscillation signify only the self-destruction of the wish toward dissolution that lies at the aging process of the heart.” The Procurator Manrule Seven said, “We have been sent to this world as the devices of your purgation. We are instruments of the Will.” Earthclaim Nineteen said, “On the other hand, permit me to disagree. The intersection of Earth’s destinies and ours is purely accidental.” My eyelids turned to stone. The small creatures comprising my lungs began to flower. My skin sloughed off, revealing strands of muscle clinging to bone. Olmayne said, “My pores grow smaller. My flesh grows tight. My breasts grow small.” Avluela said, “Afterwards you will fly with us, Tomis.” The Prince of Roum covered his eyes with his hands. The towers of Roum swayed in the winds of the sun. I snatched a shawl from a passing Rememberer. Clowns wept in the streets of Perris. Talmit said, “Awaken, now, Tomis, come up from it, open your eyes.”