“Why do you call them chosen?” I asked.
“Because they are chosen by God to be the ones through whom all our nations will be drawn together in harmony,” he replied. “He often chooses the weak people in the world to accomplish the mightiest things. Now, back to anatomy: I want you to pick up Ebony’s heart, and tell me the names of the great arteries and veins leading to and from the chambers.”
I did as he asked, and he raised his eyebrows at me and looked pleased. “You have an excellent memory,” he said.
“I like the heart, it’s my favorite organ,” I said, still cradling Ebony’s wooden heart in my hands. “It would be a high lot wonderful to see a real heart beating. It holds all the life.”
“It is indeed wonderful,” he replied. “I have operated on a man’s heart, made it beat right when it was not beating properly.”
I laughed, thinking he made a joke.
“It’s true,” he said, laughing with me. “He felt nothing while I did it, and lived for five years after.”
I stared at him, unsure, still half suspecting a jest. Then I remembered that he was the greatest healer in the world and realized he was speaking the truth.
“I’m being sorry,” I said, feeling my face go red. “Touching a heart, cutting it, I did not think it could be done. Not without death.”
“Don’t apologize, Avala,” he said. “Your laughter is good for me. It makes me realize how privileged I’ve been in my life, and what an honor it is to pass on what I know, to have someone wanting to learn. I won’t be able to teach you heart surgery, but I can show you how to mend a shattered bone or a pierced lung. Now see this bit here, under our Ebony’s ribs. . . .”
The lessons went on, and there were many times when I thought he was jesting about some unimaginable piece of surgery, and he was not. His teachings blew away everything I thought I knew about healing, about what could be done and what was impossible. I must have shown my ignorance many times, but he never laughed at me, only with me, and I never felt foolish. He had a beautiful way of making me feel as if he was honored to be teaching me, not that I was honored to be learning from him. Many times when I was bending over Ebony, puzzling something out, I caught him watching me with that gentle smile of his, and I realized it actually gave him pleasure to be teaching me. It was part of the greatness of his spirit, that he so joyfully shared his wisdom. I thought of old Gunateeta, with her pain and misery and refusal to teach what little she knew, and those hard days with the Igaal seemed a lifetime past.
Yet my link with Mudiwar’s tribe stayed strong, for I often thought of them, and every night at dinner I drank from the cup that Ishtok had carved for me, and said a prayer in my heart for him and his tribe. When I thought of Ishtok my heart ached, and a longing went through me, and I realized, with a shock, that I missed him more than I had ever missed Santoshi, or Yeshi, or even my mother.
Everyone at Ravinath ate together in a long, splendid hall with a towering roof made of graceful arched pillars, and with a wall of high curved windows overlooking the western ranges. We sat on cushions at low tables, about twenty of us to a table.
Usually I sat by Taliesin, as he had become my friend as well as my teacher of the Navoran language, and my guide through the maze of passages and narrow stairs in Ravinath; but always someone different came to sit at my other side. On my fifth day there a lively man with olive skin, blue eyes, and a warm smile came to sit by me. As he sat down he noticed Ishtok’s cup.
“Ah—carved by a true artist!” he said. “Don’t tell me you use your scalpels for carving up wood, as well as human beings!”
I replied, smiling, “The cup was made by an Igaal friend, as a gift. The eagle is the sign of my people.”
“May I look at it?”
“Of course.”
He picked up the cup and studied it, turning it slowly in his left hand. I noticed that he had paint under his fingernails. “By the way, I’m Tulio, an artist here,” he said. “I painted most of Ebony’s bits. But they’re not as beautiful as this cup. The Igaal are fine artists, obviously.”
“Ishtok is,” I said. “Maybe all of them. They cut out patterns in their clothes, very clever.”
“Well, this cup is more than clever. The design is quite stunning.”
“I’ll tell Ishtok, when I see him again.”
Taliesin said, as he handed me some bread and cheese, “You won’t be telling him anything, Avala. Not about this place. Ravinath is secret, and it must remain that way, for our protection.”
Tulio put down the cup and said, “The Citadel won’t be secret in the Time of the Eagle. There’ll be a place there for artists like Ishtok. He has a gift. I believe you’re gifted, too, Avala. I’ve heard amazing things about you, that you already know many of the healing skills Salverion teaches.”
“My mother taught me,” I said. “She was taught by my father, who learned from Salverion in the Citadel.”
“I realize who your father was,” Tulio said. “I can see the resemblance. Gabriel and I were both initiated into the Citadel on the same day. From the first time I saw his face, I wanted to do a painting of him.”
“Would you paint his face, for me?” I asked. “So I know what he looked like?”
“I’ll do better than that,” he said, smiling. “I’ve got a portrait. Just a drawing. He sat for me, once, in the Citadel gardens. I kept the drawing, though it’s unfinished. Come up to my studio after the meal, and I’ll show it to you.”
I had been in the galleries where the paintings and statues were displayed, but not in the private rooms of the artists. Taliesin took me there, and Tulio welcomed us warmly, though he seemed in a muddle. He was trying to tidy the place when we arrived and said, apologetically, “I should have told you to come tomorrow. I live in a bit of a mess. I can’t keep two worlds tidy, and all my order goes into my pictures.”
It was a glorious mess. There were paintings on wood stacked up against the walls, drawings pinned to the closed wooden window shutters, and even pictures painted directly onto the stone walls. There were several stands with half-finished work on them, and tables covered with plates where colors blended and swirled in marvelous confusion. Even the bed in the corner was covered with drawings, half-finished sketches and ideas. All over the floor were cloths splattered with paint, and there were jars of brushes and rows of pots of color. He obviously worked on several pictures at once, and even unfinished they were amazing. One of the pictures was of a fox standing in the snow, so real and alive I wanted to stroke its fur.
Tulio went to a deep shelf with scrolls, and searched among the rolled parchments.
“Ah—here it is!” he said, after a while. He looked about for a table to spread the drawing on, found nowhere clear, and pinned the picture to one of the wooden window shutters. He stepped back, and I saw my father’s face.
Beautiful he was, his features clear-cut like a statue’s, his hair long and pale and waving to his shoulders. He was frowning a little, thoughtful and stern. His nose was like mine, hooked like an eagle’s beak, and his eyes were far-seeing, his brow fierce. Yet there was a gentleness about him, too, a peace. It was in his sunlit eyes, in his slightly smiling mouth. The drawing was in red pastel on brown parchment, and the highlights were worked in white. It was three-dimensional, stunning. But what struck me most was that it was incredibly similar to the face on Yeshi’s bone torne. Yeshi had always said that the face on the bone was my father’s, but I had thought he meant it was a symbol of my father, not a true likeness. Yet the bone had been carved generations ago. Had the carver seen my father in a vision? If so, how inescapable was a destiny carved in bone—or a destiny spoken in an old priest’s words? Was there really any choice, as Salverion said there was?
“Well, from that frown of yours, Avala, I gather you’re not too impressed with my fine portrait,” said Tulio, with a laugh.
I felt my face redden. “I’m sorry; I was thinking on destiny,” I said. “The picture, it’s wonderful. I love i
t. I will hold it in my knowing for all time to come.”
“Then you’d better hold it in your hands, too,” he said, taking it down and rolling it carefully, and giving it to me. “Take it as a gift, Avala. I know it will be well looked after. While you’re here, would you like to see some other portraits? I’ve got the Empress Petra here somewhere, and a few of her advisors. There’s the Lord Jaganath here, too. If I can just find them . . .”
So it was that, in a messy artist’s studio in Ravinath, I looked upon the faces of people my father had known—people who had changed the course of his life, and the course of my nation’s history.
The Empress Petra was beautiful, but there was a hardness about her, and a sadness, as if the power she held was more pain than peace to her. I thought of the letter in Yeshi’s tent, of the graceful Navoran script, unreadable to me, written by her hand.
Her advisors I did not know, but Tulio pinned up the pictures of them, and told me their names. One face struck coldness through me: a middle-age man with dark skin and black eyes, with a pointed beard combed into little curls, and strange signs embroidered on his elegant clothes. He was very handsome, with a look of disdain, almost of amusement, mixed with cold cruelty. The painting was eerily lifelike, the glittering eyes too perceptive. “That one I don’t like,” I said.
“That is the Lord Jaganath,” said Tulio. “Look well, Avala, and hope you never see him in the flesh.”
“I’m hoping I do,” I said. “He killed my father’s brother, and plotted my father’s death. He imprisoned my people in Taroth Fort. Words I have, to say to him.”
Taliesin gave a low whistle. “You’re braver than most, Avala,” he said. “If you’re serious, ask Sheel Chandra to teach you how to fight with the powers of the mind. You will need such weapons, if you intend to tackle Jaganath.”
“I’m serious,” I said.
“It would take time, even for someone as gifted as you, to learn how to fight Jaganath with his own powers,” Taliesin said. “Sheel Chandra is the only one here who could do it—and he’s been a master for more than fifty years.”
“Then I shall have to stay here awhile,” I said, “while I get the knowing of it.”
Tulio rubbed his hands together. “Good. I can do a portrait of you. I’ve been longing for a new face to paint.”
16
As the days passed, the peaceful rhythm of life in Ravinath became my own rhythm, and I felt uplifted and protected, held in the All-father’s hand, beloved and blessed. I was given crimson robes to wear, and a green sash like Salverion’s, and velvet shoes. All were remade especially to fit me, for I was the smallest there.
Though I was the only woman in Ravinath, I never for a moment felt excluded or uncomfortable; always I was treated with the highest respect, even honor. Often I made mistakes in the Navoran language, got lost in the labyrinth of passages, stumbled into places I should not have entered, and forgot names and was unsure how to address these greatest of men who were teaching me; yet always I was put right with the gentlest of smiles, and deepest courtesy.
And the joy—the joy there was in learning some of those wondrous things my father had learned! And to learn them from the same revered people who had taught him, the ones he had honored and loved, became a happiness almost too sweet to bear. Mainly I learned from Salverion, and we studied charts and books as well as the wooden innards of Ebony; and when he was satisfied that my knowledge of anatomy was sufficient, he said I could begin learning from some of the other masters about herbs and other basic healings.
Disappointed, I said, “But I was thinking I would learn how to stop pain in its pathways, better than before. I was thinking . . .”
“I know what you are thinking, dear one,” he said. “And you shall learn those things, and much more besides. But first, the basics of anatomy. Then healing with herbs. After that you will learn from me again, and I will teach you all those deeper things you long to know. Last of all, you will learn from Sheel Chandra. His mind-powers are the greatest of all the healings we teach here, and the hardest to learn. But for now, the herbs.”
Amael was the master of healing with herbs. He was an elderly little man with a mop of white hair, red cheeks, and a ready laugh. To my surprise I enjoyed working with Amael, because for once I could learn from real things, not models or charts. He had a glass room in one of the high outer galleries of Ravinath, where the morning sun poured when it was fine, and the light heated rows and rows of plants growing in long troughs. These plants he watered daily, with great tenderness. I loved the smell of the place, the sense of life and growth in the bright, concentrated light. I realized I was missing the windy grasslands of the plains.
“We do have a garden,” Amael explained, waving his hand vaguely toward a small frozen valley far below our windows. “The Garden in the Gap, we call it. I do have herbs there, in the summer, but there isn’t a lot of good soil, and the cooks claim most of it for vegetables. So I have this place. I feel like a bird in its high nest, with its little ones.”
I smiled. He did look like a bird, hunched over his beloved plants, dropping some kind of powdered plant food over them.
“They have such power in them, these little plants,” he murmured lovingly. “This one here, her name is andrya. Distill a little of her essence into a spoon of water, and she will restore rhythm to a heart in spasms. And this little beauty, wild hereswid, she can combat just about any poison known to human beings.”
His passion was infectious, and I came to love the study of herbs with him, almost as much as I loved the study of anatomy with Salverion. And there was a wonderful surprise with Amael: he knew my people.
“I visited the Shinali once, when we were at the Citadel,” he said. “It was before your father’s time. I visited the Shinali and took them packets of seeds and asked about their herbs. The healer then was a woman. Thandeka.”
“She is my grandmother!” I cried. “You know my grandmother!”
“I met her daughter, too. A little girl called Ashila.”
“Ashila is my mother.”
“Ah—’tis a wonderful thing, how the wheels go round! She’s well, your grandmother?”
Before I could reply, Taliesin came in. His face was pale, and he called me from the door, urgently. “Avala! Someone has fallen down the stairs. He’s badly hurt. Come and see Salverion do some real surgery.”
We hurried down the long stairs, along the passages, and up other stairs to a room I had not been in before. It was a small room, its roof high like a cone, and light poured down from above. Under the light was a long flat table like a narrow bed, and a fair-haired man lay on it, groaning. It was one of the disciples I did not know. Salverion, wearing a long white gown, was bending over him, talking to him, and someone else was setting out healing things on a little table nearby. Four other disciples were there, wearing white gowns. Everything was white, the cloths the instruments lay on, the cover over the injured man, the walls, even the bleached and polished boards of the floor.
“Our surgery,” said Taliesin. “Not often used, thank God.”
Salverion looked up. “Wash your hands, get ready,” he said to Taliesin. “I need your help. Stand at the foot of the bed, Avala. I’ll explain all I can while we work. Ask any questions you wish.”
For a while the disciples were busy cutting the clothes off the man on the table. They kept him very still while they did it, but he still groaned, and his breath rattled a little in his chest. Salverion stood near the man’s head, stroking his hair, speaking to him softly.
“I’m making you sleep, Delano,” he said. “You may wake at times, and feel pulling and pressure, but it will not be pain. Empty your mind of all anxiety. You are in hands that love you.”
Slowly Salverion moved his hands over the man’s face. Delano stopped groaning and sighed heavily. I moved closer. Salverion’s hands did not touch the man’s skin, and I saw light between them, steady and strong, and growing stronger. Delano’s face changed, became so
relaxed that even the tiny wrinkles about his eyes smoothed away, and he smiled a little. Then he slept, hardly breathing.
Salverion straightened and moved his hands over the rest of Delano’s body, pressing on his skin, seeking out the injuries. But he searched not only with his hands; he also worked with his eyes closed, as if he saw beneath the skin to organ, sinew, and bone. Awed, I knew what he checked, for in my mind I saw Ebony, all her inward parts, right through to her spine. Leaning close, the Master slipped his hands under Delano, examining his back. All the time Salverion spoke to Taliesin, who was standing nearby now, clothed in white.
“Ruptured spleen,” said Salverion. “Fifth and sixth ribs broken, lung pierced. Fluid in chest cavity. Lumbar vertebrae cracked. Right pelvic bone broken. Right thigh fractured . . .”
The list of injuries went on. How could a man live, with so much broken in him?
At last, his examination finished, Salverion stood and said a prayer. For wisdom he asked, and skill, and for the Sovereign God to mend what his scalpels could not. Then he began the healing.
All that day I watched, lost in another world, the world of Navoran skill at its highest and best. It was wonderful to see the knife in Salverion’s hands, to see the sureness of him, the calm with which he cut so deep into Delano that I thought the man would surely die. But he did not, and the blood was wiped away, and main vessels tied, injured parts healed, tissues sewn up, bones set with steel pins, organs and muscles layered back into their places, and skin sewn over. Taliesin’s hands, they worked with the Master’s as if they moved to the same music, in total harmony, and the healing was beautiful to watch.
Once Delano opened his eyes and cried out, and in a moment Salverion was moving his bloodied fingers down the back of Delano’s neck, over his face, his brow. Then Delano slept again and did not wake, even when they had finished.