Dreams of the Compass Rose Read Free Page B

recognized its nature.
    It was too late for her. But not for them.
    Yes, maybe she would speak these words tomorrow, repeat them out loud before the little ones, so they would know.
    The choice must be given, always.
    For, one way or another, eventually, all come face to face with it, all hear the music that is Amarantea.
     

DREAM TWO
     

THE MIRACLES OF RIS
     
    When sweat, tears, and blood are drawn, truth breaks forth upon the shore.
     
    In the desert, the only god is a well.
     
    — old proverbs in the lands of the Compass Rose.
     
    T here are fables, and then there are histories, passed from old to young, that take on the pungent flavor of fable, of the many-hued rainbow, after being re-shaped so many times.
    Such is the story of Ris, the Bringer of Stillness and Water, the Bright-Eyed Liberator, the Mad Sovereign of Wisdom.
    Incidentally, it is unknown whether Ris is god or demon, messiah or trickster, man or woman or child. . . .
     
    * * *
     
    I f you were to follow the Compass Rose directly East, across grand stretches of the whiteness that is sun upon sand, you would come upon a place that was once Golden Livais—a town sprawled like a gods’ mistake in the middle of the desolation.
    No rivers flowed for a hundred miles around, no rain had spilled from the incandescent skies, not in a hundred years. And yet the original settlers had seen scorpions burrow deep, and fat snakes slither, skim the surface of the dunes. And this told them there was to be found a source of water.
    When struck eventually, the well pumped cool black water like blood upon the sands, permanently discoloring them with life. The town germinated from this oasis, and after several generations affluent trade routes were established through the desert to the far outlying cities of the South and West of the Compass Rose.
    Down one such route, in the wake of a caravan bearing salt and sandalwood, came an old woman and her two children. After an absence of forty years, she was coming home.
     
    “ H ow much longer this desert, Grandmother?” a girl complained. She was slender, with radiant hair the very shade of persimmon in the sun, and with pale freckled skin that was peeling from sunburn. She huddled in the swaying wagon, leaning wearily against the cotton-draped knees of an old woman with nearly black parchment skin.
    “ Stupid Caelqua,” a young voice said. “You know this desert will be all around us forever. It is called Hell.”
    On the other side of Grandmother, the speaker, Nadir, had attached himself with a grip of misery to the old one’s elbow. Nadir was a dark precocious boy-child no older than seven, while Caelqua was possibly fourteen, and they were unrelated, children of two different races.
    Grandmother had rescued Caelqua, who had been drudging in a work-board house within one of the distant great cities.
    “ I take you because of your pretty bright hair, and nothing else,” the old woman had said to her, while the smile of her eyes denied the harshness of her words. This implied smile had pierced Caelqua and bound her with ties greater than blood.
    When Grandmother had come upon him, Nadir had no name. She had leaned down to pick up a fallen purse from the filth of a city gutter, and had noticed him there, black-skinned as a little demon, crouching against the brick alley wall. The boy had made no attempt to take her possession, and instead watched her with a remarkably clear and wise pair of young eyes.
    The old woman left the purse lying, and stared back at the young swarthy thing.
    Eyes had met eyes. And after a rich moment of silence, the old woman merely said, pointing to the purse, “Come with me, and bring that with you.”
    And he followed her like a shadow.
    “ I take you because you need something,” Grandmother had told him as they walked. “And my curiosity will be the end of me if I don’t find out what it is. I’ll call you Nadir, because we first met at the very bottom—unless you have a