Artemis Awakening (27 page)

Cats
, she thought, and didn’t know quite whom she cursed, Sand Shadow or her own indecisive nature.

*   *   *

The next days were as intense as any Griffin had ever experienced. He and the Old One spent much time exploring the subterranean portions of the landing facility, alternating with sessions in the sunny reception area where the Old One updated maps while Griffin struggled to make sense of the coded symbols they copied wherever they found them.

Some were easy enough to figure out, having been so basic and essential that they had survived almost unchanged to Griffin’s own time. Many others could only be translated in a fragmentary fashion, some of the others—often the simplest and most frequent in occurrence—not at all.

“It’s like this,” Griffin explained to the Old One when the other expressed frustration. “Icons like these rely on a cultural context to be understood. They’re not words, they’re picture writing.”

He sketched a circle with lines coming out from it. “All right. Tell me what that means.”

Terrell offered, “That looks like a child’s drawing of the sun.”

The Old One nodded, but he was less immediate in his answer. “If that’s so, then the symbol might mean something like ‘light.’ Perhaps it would indicate that pressing a certain button or tab would create light.”

Griffin permitted himself a slight smile. “Both perfectly reasonable conjectures. However, I picked this one deliberately to show how hard it is to guess without the cultural context. My home planet, Sierra, suffered badly in the wars of dissolution. However, our system was one of the winners, so we had the resources to rebuild. New cities were designed around large, central hubs with roads radiating out from them. Larger cities were designed with multiple hubs.”

“So this,” Terrell said impulsively, “could mean something like city center!”

“Right,” Griffin agreed. “In larger cities, there would be a code in the center of the circle indicating which hub and what specialized services—medical or transportation—it provided.”

The Old One’s expression said very clearly, “If you’d put a code in, I might have guessed differently.”

Griffin thought,
But I bet it wouldn’t have been the right guess. You probably still would have thought of light—and perhaps thought the code indicated intensity.

He glanced at Terrell. Seeing the other man’s blue eyes crinkle with quickly hidden laughter, he knew they’d shared the same thought.

“Anyhow,” Griffin continued, “that’s why these icons are particularly difficult. I don’t think that the hub icon is used outside of the Kylee Dominion. Elsewhere, that same image might indeed mean ‘light.’”

“So these icons,” Terrell said, “may have been specific to Artemis?”

“Specific to Artemis,” Griffin agreed, “perhaps specific only to this facility and a few others, especially if, as your lore preserves, this is one of a very limited number of landing areas on the planet.”

“Interesting,” the Old One replied, not quite grumbling. “Perhaps if the icons are specific to the planet, we will find a translation card somewhere.”

“That would be nice,” Griffin agreed.

They didn’t find a translation card but, a few days later, they found something else—a door that they not only couldn’t open, but also seemed to have been deliberately concealed.

They’d long since finished with the areas the Old One had already explored. In these, Griffin’s great contribution had been to show how a hidden release—standard on his own world—permitted various cabinets to be opened. What they found within would delight the loremasters but, to Griffin’s way of thinking, was no more than busted junk, left behind after the invasion, doubtless to be cleared away when the victors returned.

This was different. Not only was the door itself concealed, someone had gone to the trouble to shift a large console in front of it. If Griffin hadn’t wondered why the console—a diagnostic device that more properly should have been up near the shuttle docks—was so far out of place, they might not have looked further.

Griffin climbed underneath and probed for any trace of a seam. He’d nearly given up when he found it: hair fine but definitely there. Next he climbed up on the console and, balancing precariously, confirmed the outline of a door.

Griffin’s palms started sweating, his skin prickled with excitement. “At last! We’ve got something here. I’m guessing the console was moved just in case the locals got in. Heck, this place is so full of equipment that it’s completely possible that anyone who wasn’t actually looking for something out of place might not have wondered.”

“Can we open the door?” the Old One asked.

“Impossible to tell without getting the console out of the way. Possibly not, but we won’t know until we try.”

Moving the console was extremely difficult. Griffin longed for the anti-grav clamps that were routinely used on Sierra. He’d had a couple sets in his shuttle. Maybe it would be worth digging the damn thing out, now that he had the Old One to help him recruit labor.

In the end, they managed to move the console. Terrell’s factotum’s education was very eclectic and the Old One had not forgotten everything he had learned in his early days as a sailor.

Griffin slid behind. “Here’s more proof, if we needed any. The backside of this console shows damage from being torn out of its prior set-up. There’s also no evidence of any sort of power connection and no place for power storage.”

“Can you open the door?” the Old One asked, intensity visible on every line of his fine-boned face.

Griffin felt for the usual latches, then shook his head.

“Nothing obvious. This door was constructed to be overlooked. Probably whatever is back there is stuff that not only didn’t they want the average tourist to find, but also was off-limits to most of the permanent staff. If I had to, I’d guess that most of the people who worked here didn’t even know this door existed.”

Frustration marred the Old One’s expression, but he remained polite. “Let us move the console further, so we can inspect the area in more detail.”

No one disagreed. Later, when Terrell and Griffin were washing up in their suite, Griffin said, “A shame Adara isn’t here. Maybe she could get a claw tip into that seam.”

He’d meant his comment as a joke, but now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen much of Adara the last couple of days. She came in late and slept with Sand Shadow in her room. If she attended a meal it was lunch—which often seemed to be her breakfast.

“What has Adara been up to?”

Terrell’s glance was steady and disapproving. “Hunting.”

Griffin almost asked, “For what? Doesn’t Sand Shadow have enough to eat?” Then he remembered Winnie and Ring and Lynn’s story. He flushed to the tops of his ears. How could he have let recent events push that so completely out of his mind?

“Oh. Right. Any, uh, luck?”

“Not that she’s told me.”

“Oh.” Griffin wondered if Terrell and Adara didn’t trust him. Given his behavior over the last several days, he couldn’t blame them … not at all. But knowing that made him feel more alone than ever.

Interlude: Warring Gifts

A…:

Slowly sinking underwave

Tickled with awareness

Weaving touches ungraved

     Engraved

          Graven

               Grave.

                    Responsibility?

1—1-OO:

No! Know No.

Guidance precise.

Await god.

Safe from Know.

     Safe.

          Enfolded.

Encased between tables of law.

15

Lost Love

From the hidden vantage from which she had been studying the small fishing village, Adara stared, shaking her head in appalled wonder.

Julyan? Impossible!

Unlike Spirit Bay or Shepherd’s Call, this village was exactly what it seemed to be—a small settlement which had grown up because the location was useful. Sometime during the last five hundred years, weather and water had sculpted a small cove just large enough to shelter a small fleet of fishing boats.

Doubtless shacks had been thrown up first, then, over time, had evolved into actual houses. The settlement contained no shops or businesses, only these shabby residences, some drying sheds, and racks for mending nets. It was the last place Adara would have expected to see Julyan, that poised and polished hunter, the man who had been her first love, the man who had broken her heart so resoundingly that she had never quite recovered.

Adara shifted so she could take a more careful look, but she needed no confirmation. There was no mistaking that hawk-beaked profile, that arrogant swagger. She would have known Julyan by his gait alone, the tread of a lord of the woodlands.

Julyan!
What was he doing in a rundown place like this? He had left Shepherd’s Call to find his fortune, leaving Adara behind—though she begged to go with him—saying some half-trained chit would only slow him down.

Adara had been crushed. No matter that Bruin had said he knew envy when he smelled it. Adara was sure Bruin was wrong. Julyan had nothing to envy. He had been among the best of the local hunters, this even though his adaptations were not very useful. His only gift was a sense of hearing so perfectly tuned he could identify any birdsong.

Julyan!

He had a fine singing voice, too, so clear and strong that many said he should have followed the musician’s trade rather than the hunter’s. It was for Julyan that Adara had started writing poetry: simple rhymed verse that went well with the tunes he already knew.

Then he had left her. She still wrote verse, though she wondered why, for there would never be anyone to sing it.

Sand Shadow gave Adara a solid butt with her head. Adara nodded. She knew she should move on. Julyan would have lost none of his hunter’s skills. But she could not seem to make her feet obey her thoughts.

Julyan!

A fishing boat sailing into the small harbor broke Adara’s trance. After it docked, Julyan sauntered down to talk with the captain—at least Adara assumed the man he met was the captain, for the other sailors deferred to him. Julyan stood so still that he might have been sitting in a blind, waiting for game. The captain’s gestures were more articulate. He waved toward his boat, out over the bay—perhaps indicating a cluster of forested islands. He shook his head, nodded, moved to inspect a small, lightweight canoe, pointed to a stack of equipment.

Adara thought Julyan might be asking about passage to one of the islands, that the ship captain was expressing doubt. That was interesting. She’d begun to wonder about those islands after her first several days of scouting along the shore had turned up nothing to indicate where the Old One might have moved his obscene “stable.”

She hadn’t forgotten that the Old One claimed to have spent his first lifetime—before he realized that he was not aging as others did—as a sailor. There was a boathouse associated with the Sanctum. She checked it each night. Thus far there had been no evidence that any of the boats had been taken out. That didn’t mean the Old One wasn’t in the habit of sailing to his destination, just that he hadn’t done so recently.

Whatever discussion Julyan and the fishing boat’s captain were having came to a resolution. The boat’s cargo—splashing nets of still live fish—had been brought ashore. Leaving his crew to deal with the catch, the captain motioned for Julyan to follow him inside the largest house.

Julyan accepted, although not without a certain degree of distaste. As soon as he went inside, Adara felt as if a spell had been broken. She realized afresh the risk she had taken. She didn’t know that Julyan was involved with the Old One’s schemes …

“But,” she said to Terrell when they went riding that afternoon, “I’m not going to dismiss the possibility either.”

Adara and Terrell had been meeting each afternoon on the excuse that the horses had to be exercised. Once he had assured himself that Molly was well, Griffin did not join them. He was absorbed in the problem of the door that none of them could open.

Although Adara was nervous about leaving Griffin completely alone with the Old One, she was glad to have these opportunities to speak with Terrell without chance of being overheard. He, at least, remained suspicious regarding their host. She was not so certain about Griffin.

“Why do you think this Julyan may be involved with the Old One?” Terrell asked. “Is it just a hunch?”

“It started out that way,” Adara admitted. “After all, I have little reason to like either of them. However, the more I thought about Julyan being here the more I wondered.”

They were wending up a wide trail that led to a scenic overview of Spirit Bay. Tarnish knew the route perfectly, so Adara let the reins go slack and ticked points off on her fingers.

“One, Julyan is an excellent hunter. Why then is he in Spirit Bay, which is not somewhere he could best profit from his talents? Two, we suspect the Old One is breeding for something specific—most likely adaptations. Although Julyan is not strongly adapted, still, the seeds are in him. I believe he would not be averse to participating in rites such as Winnie described.”

“Adara…” Terrell looked uncomfortable but, taking a deep breath, he went on. “Both from what you’ve said and from the gossip in Shepherd’s Call, I gather that you were passionately in love with this Julyan. You aren’t…”

“Speaking out of spite?” Adara shook her head so vigorously that Tarnish snorted protest. “No, Terrell, I am not. I spent a long night working my way along that trail. I honestly believe I am not. Julyan was always one to seek out the best advantage for himself. That’s why he came to Bruin, although Bruin had little new to teach him. I believe now that Julyan wanted to associate with those he saw as powers—or who could introduce him to those who were powers.”

“Like the Old One,” Terrell said, nodding. “Yes. For all we see him as nearly a hermit, the Old One is a power in the land. You should hear how the loremasters speak of him.”

“So, Julyan has chosen to work for a power,” Adara went on. “Work that will give Julyan connections for the future. Work that includes among the benefits ample opportunities to…”