A Dirge for Prester John

The Physon flows through the upper cliffs of Nural, grinding the pink rock there year by year. A river, yes, but we have many rivers. The Physon flows through all the world, and I think John’s world, too. Catacalon, when he was a philosopher, said that the Physon dwells underground in most lands, moving through the earth, the breath of the e

arth, rumbling and coughing and rasping. But in Nural, and a few other places, it breaks the surface like a whale, and we see this breath in motion, rocks tumbling over one another, basalt and schist and granite and slate, crashing, rolling, roaring. Time smoothes the stones and grinds down the cliffs, but always we can see new, rough rock surfacing. A river of stones, its current never slowing, stopping, or breaking into tributaries or marshes. The Physon is constant.

Sometimes I think the road through the Rimal is only the Physon, finally slowing somewhere, pausing for a moment before rushing on through the flesh of the earth. A held breath. Since the Physon rolls through the body of the world, it could leave us anywhere, anywhere it flows beneath the sunlit land, in the dark, where we cannot hear or see. I should be grateful it spared us a long walk through the desert, which would certainly have been amusing, the first time we tried to plant our dried yak and peach-bread in order to have supplies for the trip home. Instead, the Physon, or the Rimal road, whichever pleases the geographer in you, brought us to another river, wide and blue, with eddies of golden silt shivering down its banks. A new river, and a bright day, and river-birds crying and calling overhead, so white and small. On the opposite shore, some ways south, we could see the dim, tiny shapes of a white city, white as the seabirds, shimmering and prickling with minarets and crosses perched atop the buildings. The wharf sang with movement, but the river yawned between us.

How fine we must have looked. With our ships behind us, and our armor in the sun, our flags—do you remember how the amyctryae sewed the flags, their huge mouths full of pins, arguing over our standard and what it should depict until John insisted on the cross. But they would not be placated, and on every blazing green flag was not only a silver cross, so many stars, crescent moons, ears, mouths, horses, hands, and other symbols of the people of Pentexore that the cross was rendered all but invisible in the riot. We flew those flags so proudly, glittering with their tangles of silver thread, and the centaurs put brass covers on their hooves, and the sword-trees had borne good fruit, and we must have looked so beautiful, like we were dressed for a holiday—for Christ-mass, that festival John was always trying to get us to perform in the winter, with gifts and songs about darkness. I cannot believe anyone could have looked on us and not fallen to their knees in joy.

And yet, the river. A blue ribbon bordering their country. I still do not understand. We meant to put our ships onto the current and sail into the white city, glorious, stately, and John would stand at the prow (forever at the prow) coming home with emeralds in his coat, and his wife and his people, a crown on his head. We all agreed he deserved that, that any of us, coming home, would want our folk to see us that way, it was a thing of the heart we were happy to give him. Rivers were never a trouble to us. In addition to the Physon the Indus belongs also to Pentexore, and its waters flow deep and green. Little rivers, some so little they have no names, and lakes, too. The ships would glide as smoothly on the river as on the Rimal, surely. They were built for water, after all. Sand was only ever a temporary dalliance.

My father shivered, so excited, practically radiant—he would rescue them all, and they would see how lovely he was now. I understood so well. Had not I wanted John to see me that way, when I came home?

“Anglitora,” he said to me, and my heart lurched toward him, so surprised to hear him think of me, to call my name. “Stand on my left side, when the ships sail in? Hagia will stand on my right, and I would have a daughter with me.”

I thought I might die of his approval.

We dug a trench to get the ships afloat. All stood ready. The sun, so low when we reached the end of the road, seemed to have flipped around in the sky so that it was merely early morning, and the light would show our wild army gorgeously as we descended like salvation, like a cadre of angels. And yet, when the trench gaped in the sand and the river moistened it, when we were so ready, everyone kept their place. We stood and stared at the river like we had never seen one before. We meant to move, to haul the ships in one by one to lash the ropes on and heave ho, but no one stepped forward.

“Forward!” cried John, and forward we went—except we didn’t. We told our limbs to do it, but it would not be done. My body felt as though it had become a statue, built for that one spot, made for it, to watch over the river for centuries, a stone sentinel. Nothing could move me. I could not quite even feel my feet.

The winged soldiers felt the breeze beneath their feathers and it would not lift us. The wind said: stay, stay.

“Forward!” I cried, trying to rally us, in case our spirits had suddenly lost the taste of war.

Had they only!

The flags flapped in the air. A cannibal coughed nervously. I strained, willing my body to leap into the water. The blood beat in me, loudly, madly. Sweat prickled every inch of skin.

“Backward,” John whispered.

And without the smallest effort, we all took a firm, easy step back.

Forward. Back. We could come to the edge of the water but not beyond it. Downstream, I saw the flicker of small boats, long white barks. Forward. Back.

John dropped to his knees at the water’s edge. He wept so bitterly, as though his whole heart had vanished from his body and left nothing but grief in him. He clenched his fists in the wet earth. He screamed—it was awful, a voice torn in half.

I stood on his left.

I stood on his right. And he could not cross the river any more than we. His screaming turned to laughing and that was worse, that was ugly and we did not want to witness it.

“Demons cannot cross water,” he laughed, and went on laughing, while the white barks drew nearer and nearer, and our green flags snapped in the blue, searing air.

THE LEFT-HAND MOUTH,

THE RIGHT-HAND EYE

In the end, Gahmureen saved her, where I could not.

She rose out of her tent one morning and crouched next to the cradle-knight, who was named Elif, with her chisel. I have never and I suspect will never understand what made that little imp move and speak and think. Gahmureen’s invention passes my understanding as mine passes that of a very dense tensevete. I asked her once—she said that when she was a child she invented as a child does, without knowledge of what can and cannot be done. Elif was her first invention. He had all the ambition and none of the well, perhaps we oughtn’t. She cannot remember how she did it, anymore than I can remember my dreams. Elif was a mystery, as much as the Tower, as much as the Fountain.

I asked: “Do you know magic? Is it a charm or a spell that moves him?”

The inventor wrapped her long fingers around one of her horns. “What is magic?” she replied. “Magic is what you call it when you cannot remember how you did something, or cannot imagine how you will do it. When you dreamed it, and then it happened. Nothing is magic. Everything performs its design.” She paused for a moment, her gaze faraway. “I think there might have been a wind-wheel involved. Spinning around in his heart. I hear it creaking, when he is thinking hard.”

And I learned no more of Elif’s workings.

Gahmureen slapped the cradle-knight on the back and the little automaton strode jerkily over to Sefalet and her tree. I watched with interest, padded after him. His helmet, a bit of cradle-canopy carved from red wood, gleamed from a fresh polishing.

“Stop,” Elif said to the child.