Below the Root (16 page)

“No,” Raamo said, “and it would be wrong to take her with us into danger. I think we must take her to safety as quickly as we can and come back again later to search further.”

Neric sighed. “But it will be many days before there is another free time when we can get away and not be missed. And we have learned nothing yet.”

“Perhaps we have,” Raamo said. He motioned toward the child and, speaking softly behind his hand, said, “She has lived among them, and we have found that she can speak. Who knows what she may be able to tell us?”

“That is true,” Neric said. “You are right, Raamo. We will take her back with us, and when she is used to us we will question her carefully and—but where will we take her? If she goes with us to the temple, we will have to explain everything. We will have to admit that we have been to the forest floor. That would ruin everything and might be very dangerous for us all. Unless we could find a deserted chamber and hide her there...

“No,” Raamo said. “She would be lonely and afraid. She must be with others who will treat her kindly and—I have it. I know where she can be taken.”

I
T WAS ALMOST DARK
before Raamo and Neric and the slave child, Teera, reached the lowest level of Grandgrund. As they crouched on a leafy side branch within sight of the nid-place of the D’ok family, Raamo’s legs were trembling from exhaustion. The journey back from the place where they had found Teera had been unexpectedly difficult and time-consuming.

From the first moment, although they had explained carefully that they were taking her to a safe place where she would be treated kindly, the child had been reluctant to accompany them. She had hung back, refusing to take even the first step, while Raamo and then Neric took turns trying to overcome her fear by telling her about the kind and gentle people who would care for her. She listened and seemed to understand, but said nothing, and continued to pull away from them when they tried gently to lead her away.

At last she said, “Can I take Haba?”

“Haba?” Neric said. “Oh, the little animal? Yes, of course you can take him.”

She regarded Neric intently, her long dark-lashed eyes still liquid from her recent tears. “They won’t eat him, will they?”

“Eat him?” Neric’s lips curled in disgust. “Eat an animal? Of course not.” He turned to look at Raamo, his face contorted with horror and pity.

Giving her pet to Neric to hold, Teera held out her hands to Raamo. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me this way.”

With palm and eye touch, Raamo sent, “You and Haba will be welcomed with great kindness. No one in Green-sky would think of eating your pet.”

But Teera shook her head, and her return sending was one of bewilderment. Raamo tried again, this time sending only a wordless assurance of truth and good faith. This Teera understood. A tiny smile touched her tear-stained face and, reclaiming her lapan, she at last moved forward.

They walked in single file along the dark thicket pathway, past the cloud-breathing tunnel mouth and then, by following the frond markers, back to the thick stand of Vine-stem down which they had climbed. But having reached the route to safety, they encountered new and unanticipated complications. It was obvious that the makeshift Vine ladder would be hard enough to climb with both hands free, so it was necessary, first of all, to devise some kind of carrier for the lapan. After some experimenting and much looping and tying, the green tabard that marked Raamo as a novice was converted into a carrying pouch large enough to accommodate the small animal.

As Raamo and Neric worked on the pouch, Teera watched with interest but apparently with no understanding of what lay behind their actions. For, when the pouch was finished and the lapan placed inside it, and Raamo began to climb up the Vine, her reaction was shocked surprise—and panic.

“No, no,” she cried, when she saw that she was expected to climb behind him. “I cannot. I’m afraid. I will fall.”

“Hush! Hush!” Neric whispered, glancing around in fear that her voice might have attracted the attention of the Pash-shan. “Come back down and talk to her, Raamo. She doesn’t want to climb.”

She would have to climb. There was no other way, since she was too large for them to carry. But convincing the once more tearful Teera of the fact was a long and arduous process. Raamo and Neric argued, reasoned, and reassured in turn, with one of them talking and pleading while the other stood watch, fearfully searching the deepening shadows around them. At last she agreed to try—and the climbing began.

The climb went on—and on—and on. Every few feet Teera would panic and, clutching blindly, would refuse to loosen so much as a finger to reach for the next hold. Then Raamo would have to work his way back down to her—or Neric work his way up—gently loosen her grip and guide her hands upward. Starting, stopping, comforting and cajoling, they progressed a few inches at a time, until at last they reached the level of the first grund-branches. There another crisis occurred.

In the lead, Raamo had climbed up to a level slightly above the branch and then glided easily down to light on its broad surface. But when he stood at the edge and reached out toward Teera, she refused to jump the small gap between their reaching hands. It was not until he had collected some Vine tendrils, which Neric then tied carefully around her waist, that he was able to pull her across to safety.

Collapsed on the broad surface of the deserted grund-branch, Neric stared at the still sobbing Teera. “Great Sorrow!” he exclaimed. “I almost wish we’d left her to the mercy of the Pash-shan. I’m exhausted.”

“And I also,” Raamo said. “But her fear is to be expected, I suppose. Openness and heights are as frightening to her as dark airless tunnels would be to us. And perhaps in the depths of her mind there is some memory of her fall to the forest floor. She was probably injured by the fall—and then to have been seized and pulled down into the earth by such fearful creatures—it is no wonder that the fear of falling causes her such great mind-pain.”

“True,” Neric said, grinning ruefully. “There can be no doubt that fear can cause great mind-pain, and other pains as well.” Gingerly he touched a bruised and swollen lip with the tip of his finger. “On the Vine,” he explained in answer to Raamo’s questioning look, “during one of her spasms of mind-pain, she kicked me full in the mouth.” He rose to his feet, sighing. “We still have to get her down some narrow sidebranches if we are to reach your parents’ nid-place unobserved. We had best be going. Darkness will soon be upon us.”

Thus it was that Raamo and Neric and a weary tear-stained girl child crouched behind sheltering grundleaves and watched the last straggling Kindar hurrying to their nid-places as darkness fell. When the branchpath was at last deserted, they struggled to their feet and, with Teera between them, hurried down the branch and burst into the common room of the D’ok nid-place.

The room was empty, but sounds of voices came from the hall leading to the pantry. Raamo recognized his mother’s voice and that of the helper, Ciela.

“I will take Teera to Pomma’s chamber,” he whispered. “When we are gone, you call and announce your presence to my mother. Then bring her with you to Pomma’s chamber.”

If Hearba was surprised to find the young priest of healing, D’ol Neric, in her common room so close to the time of rainfall, she carefully hid it, out of politeness and respect. But when, on entering her daughter’s chamber, she found Raamo, holding Pomma in his arms, with a weirdly clad girl child standing beside him, her careful calm was lost completely—first to Joy, and then to shock and consternation.

“Raamo,” she cried joyously and then, “Why are you here? You were not to visit us during the first year of your novitiate. What is it? What has happened?”

There was no time for lengthy explanations. There was no time even to call Valdo D’ok from his nid-chamber where he was resting before the evening food-taking. Neric explained briefly that the girl had been a slave of the Pash-shan, only recently rescued, and that she must be sheltered and kept secure and secret until such time as he or Raamo returned for her.

Keeping his face under strict control, forcing a false smile to hide his grief over her worsened condition, Raamo hugged Pomma a last time and carried her back to her nid. “Remember Pomma,” he whispered, “I will need your help in keeping Teera’s presence a secret. And in keeping her content and happy here in our home.”

“Is she really going to stay here with us?” Pomma asked. “Is she to live here with me in my chamber?”

Raamo nodded.

“But what of Ciela?” Hearba asked. “She will surely have to see the child.”

”I will speak to her now,” Neric said. “I will tell her the child’s presence here is approved by the Ol-zhaan, and that she must not speak of it to anyone. But Ciela must not see you here, Raamo, so while I am speaking to her, you must wait for me in the entryway. We must hurry, for we have far to go if we are to approach the Temple-grove from the outer forest. And the rain has already begun.”

Turning to his mother, Raamo took time for only the briefest palm-touch before he hurried across the common room and out into the darkness and softly falling rain.

The journey back to the grove was long, uncomfortable and frightening. Stumbling through the wet darkness along slippery branchpaths, Raamo and Neric finally arrived on the outskirts of the grove, just in time to be trapped there by a belated group of Ol-zhaan making their way from the great hall to their chambers. At last the stragglers disappeared and, waving a silent good-bye to Neric, Raamo made his way across the public branch-path and darted into the branchends, where Neric’s secret route led him to the roof of the novice hall. A few minutes later he dropped softly down onto the balcony of his chamber and crept wet and trembling through the window.

A dozen days passed before another free afternoon made it possible for Raamo to return again, secretly, to the house of his parents. In the meantime, however, Neric was able to visit the D’ok’s nid-place three times, as a part of his ministry of healing in the city of Orbora. Following each of these visits he was able to arrange brief meetings with Raamo to tell him what he had learned.

“You should see her,” he told Raamo, during a meeting in their trysting place behind the curtain of Vine near the Temple Hall. “They have dressed her in one of your sister’s shubas and arranged her hair more normally, and one would scarcely notice her on any branchpath in Green-sky, except of course, if she spoke—with that strange slurring accent of hers. Even her skin seems to be a more normal shade now. Do you know what she says caused its darkness?”

Raamo shook his head.

“The sunlight,” Neric said, his lifted eyebrows inviting Raamo to share his incredulous reaction. “I was sure she was speaking an untruth at first. But then she explained that all Erdlings—a term she apparently uses to mean both Pash-shan and Kindar slaves—spend many hours daily in the areas where the tunnels run between the aisle of the orchard trees. And the sun, she says, falling down between the grillwork of Root, quickly turns skin to that strange golden hue.”

“But what does she say of the Pash-shan?” Raamo asked.

Neric shook his head, sighing. “Very little, I’m afraid. She speaks to me quite freely now concerning many things, but when I mention the Pash-shan, she stares at me strangely and begins to tremble. She must be deathly afraid of the very memory of them, poor child. I will be glad when the next free day comes and you can accompany me to your parents’ home to question her. Perhaps by pensing, you will be able to learn more.”

“You have learned nothing then, concerning the Pash-shan?”

“A little. I learned for instance that they are indeed flesheaters, as we have been told. Teera told me that much when I questioned her concerning her escape. She said that she had run away from the Pash-shan because they were going to eat her pet, the small creature she calls Haba. She said she was trying to find a hiding place, and was wandering down ventilation tunnels far from her living place, when she discovered a spot where the Root left an opening large enough for her to squeeze through. She put the lapan through the hole first and then followed it, although the cold of the Root was painful and frightening. Then the lapan ran from her, and in following it she became lost and could not find the tunnel opening again. I think she must have been wandering for at least two days when we found her.”

“Do you think she speaks truthfully?” Raamo asked.

“I think so,” Neric said, “for the most part, at least. But not freely. She obviously dislikes my questions, and answers as briefly as possible. But she does answer—unless I question her directly about the Pash-shan.”

It was some days later that Raamo, leaving his last class of the day and starting back toward the novice hall with Genaa, encountered Neric on the central platform of the grove. Neric hurried past, pretending to be engrossed in private thought, but his sending was clear and urgent and charged with excitement. “Meet me at the hiding place. I have much to tell you.”

Raamo continued on some distance before he turned to go back, telling Genaa that he had forgotten a book that D’ol Regle had promised to loan him for the evening. When he pushed his way through the Wissenvine curtain, Neric sprang to meet him.

“I have news,” he said, “concerning the Pash-shan and—” he lowered his voice, “—and I think, the Geets-kel. I was again today at the nid-place of your parents and again questioned the slave child, Teera. I questioned her concerning the cloud columns of the Pash-shan, and she seemed surprised, amused even, that I considered them to be poisonous—and produced by the Pash-shan in order to carry evil and noxious vapors into Green-sky. I was speaking of the cloud column that we saw coming from the tunnel near where we found her, and she said, ‘Cloud column? Oh, you mean the smoke.’ And then she went on to explain that—”

Suddenly interrupting himself, Neric asked, “Have you learned yet about fire, in your study of preflight history with D’ol Regle?”

“Yes,” Raamo said. “Only a few days ago D’ol Regle spoke at great length concerning fire and how it had been a blessing and a curse to our ancestors and how the first Ol-zhaan had banished it from Green-sky.”