Rediscovery (25 page)

Gold seemed to be rare, but oddly enough, little valued or used except in dental work and some ornamental inlay-work. Sometimes it was alloyed with silver, the old alloy called by the Egyptians “electrum,” and used in ceremonial knives and vessels.

Otherwise it was deemed too soft to be of use, for it bent too easily and would not take an edge. Silver had a higher value, for it was harder, though it tarnished. Some smaller coins were made of it, and jewelry and inlay-work.

Most of the local money was made of copper, and much of the jewelry. Copper

money was either made of large coins, or necklaces of carefully weighed links that could be bent open and handed over to a merchant.

Iron was in short supply, and steel nonexistent except for the weapons of

Kermiac’s private soldiers. What iron the common folk had seemed to be kept mostly for shoeing horses.

Simple iron and steel tools represented the real portable wealth of the natives.

David had seen an old horseshoe that had been found by the roadside when they cleared land for the port, a bit of a scrap almost consumed by rust, salvaged and treated as a Terran might have treated a similar find made of platinum or some other rare and precious metal.

The village blacksmith had told them that metals were a little more plentiful in the lowlands. Elizabeth had not entirely understood how they were mined, but gathered that the process was infinitely difficult—and oddly, he had said that it was more difficult now than in his grandfather’s time. Many things that the Terrans would have assumed to be made of metal were made of hardened wood, ceramic, or some alternative material.

She also gathered that things had been simpler in the long-ago days; that
laran,
which was what the native called telepathy, had made things possible then that were not now. She had to wonder how much of that was simply a “Once there was a Golden Age”

type legend, and how much was actually based in fact.

She knew what Evans would have said:
it was all tall tales.

David left her to contemplate their new home; he had people to process at the

language lab. Not all the natives were as accommodating as Kadarin; their language had to be captured the hard way, a phrase here, a word there, and they were sometimes a little afraid of David’s machines. He often had to coax them just to get a few words or a story out of them.

She wandered around the house site, staying out of the workers’ way. Here would

be the kitchen; there, the music room. The next room had no purpose at the moment, but it was large and would catch the sun during most of the winter; perhaps she should revive the old concept of a “solar,” that room where a lady spent most of the days of the winter…she had a dreamy image of herself, playing a lap-harp in the sun, a sleeping baby in a cradle beside her.

The next room would be David’s office; they had decided that many of the natives would find a room in a house less threatening than a lab in the HQ building. Kadarin had helped him plan it, making it look as much like a room in a moderately prosperous house in Caer Donn as possible.

As if thinking of him had called him, she raised her head to see Kadarin

approaching.

“Where have you been?” she asked curiously, after greeting him.

He indicated the building which had been given over to Terran Intelligence with a wave of his hand. “An interesting proposition,” he said. “Your captain wishes to know more about this world; he has offered to employ me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “As an—ah—”

“As an agent,” Kadarin said smoothly. “He wants to employ me to go beyond

Carthon and bring him information about the Dry Towners.”

She poked at a bit of stone with her toe. “Why you?” she asked.

“Easy enough,” he told her. “I am one of the few people in these hills willing to go beyond the Kadarin River and into the Dry Towns to see what is happening there. He has pledged to give me instruction in your map-making techniques, so that I may map out all that territory.”

“This doesn’t bother you?” she asked carefully, stepping over a pile of two-by-

fours.

He shrugged. “Not at all. I know a good many of the Dry Town languages. I have

a few friends there, and because of my height and coloring, I can pass there as a Dry Towner. There are few enough even of your folk that may do that, but naturally, none of you are suited to the task.”

She eyed him speculatively. There was little enough that she or any of the other Terrans knew about him; that he was Kermiac Aldaran’s friend, and was more tolerant of Evans than any of the other natives was the beginning and the end of it. “Are you of Dry Town blood?” she asked bluntly.

He turned and gave her a speculative look. Whatever he saw there in her face

must have assured him of something. He smiled, slightly.

“No,” he replied. “I was—let us say, that I am a kind of foundling, although I

knew my people. They preferred that I take myself elsewhere.”

His voice, so toneless, still conveyed an edge of bitterness to her. “Who are your people?” she persisted boldly, remembering some of what Ysaye had said about his appearance, and what that might imply.

He smiled at her presumption. “Well, in these hills, because of my age and my

coloring, it would be obvious that certain of my people are of the old fair folk of the hills

—the
chieri
—the folk Kermiac thought you had come from. So, of course, being no one’s relative, I am the obvious choice for an errand to the Dry Towns. And later, perhaps, I may go down into the Domains, near Thendara, as an envoy from both

Kermiac and your Captain.”

Elizabeth licked her lips; that was not the plan she’d heard before the wedding. “I thought Lorill Hastur was to be sent back to the Domains for Kermiac. That is the country south of here, correct?”

“It is. But Lorill is not currently in good odor.” Kadarin grinned. “Kermiac has quarreled with Lorill Hastur. He found Lorill playing at such games with his sister Mariel as would do the girl’s reputation no good. Innocent enough by your standards, I expect, and to tell the truth, I think the boy meant no harm. He is, after all, very young, and he is not accustomed to the free manners of girls here in the mountains. Maidens of good family are chaperoned every moment until they are wedded, down in the

Domains.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I expect we must shock you.”

“Me?” Kadarin chuckled, mockingly, as if he had secrets in his own past that

made the Terrans seem tame. “I don’t shock easily. And Kermiac takes you as you seem, for mountain folk are used to freer ways. But, oh, the Domains-folk would find you
most
peculiar, and frankly, quite appalling.”

His smile was genuine and unstrained, and invited her to share the joke. She

chuckled.

“Well, Kermiac is not giving Lorill a further chance to play with Mariel’s heart; at the moment, he is nothing more than an exciting stranger, but he is taking no chances.

So Lorill is going back to his homeland tomorrow, alone, and with no word from

Aldaran. Kermiac will be trusting the boy with no errands. There is no point in making your envoy one who doesn’t even have good sense about a young girl.”

“That’s probably true,” Elizabeth agreed. They walked away from the house site,

picking their way through piles of construction materials, some of which, like

greenboard, polyester insulation, and composite board, had never before been seen on this world. Nothing could make more trouble in such a civilization as this one than trifling with their protected women. She had studied hundreds of such societies, and that constant never changed. Nor was there ever any lack of young men such as Lorill, eager to find women of whom to take advantage.

“Do you leave at once for the Dry Towns?” she asked. And as she asked that, she

realized that she would miss him. He was the only one of the natives who had been truly friendly, except for Kermiac Aldaran himself. All the rest had regarded the Terrans as benefactors, but warily, and had kept their own, cautious distance.

“Not at once; I shall be here for some time yet, assisting your husband and—

others,” he said. “Captain Gibbons has also promised me a journey in one of your craft.

He has said I may go to the—the place you have made on the moon Liriel. I wish to see your—” he hesitated, for there was no word in the native language for “weather station,”

and finally he had to say it in Terran Standard.

“You’ve really picked up our language amazingly fast,” she said, complimenting

him. “And more than the language, you’ve gotten the concepts. That’s astonishing.”

This was unusual for a native of a planet with such a low tech level as this; not unknown, but definitely not usual, either.

It also might mean something else, on the Terran side. She and David had already discussed the origin of the natives as part of the crew and passengers of the Lost Ship with Kadarin. He had seemed to accept it as he accepted everything else the Terrans told him, calmly, as one more fact. He had warned them, however, that his fellow natives would be very resistant to the idea.

“Is Captain Gibbons accepting the natives here as full Terrans?” she asked. “If

he’s offering you a job as an agent and promising trips to our off-planet installations, it seems to imply that.”

Kadarin gave her a peculiar look. “I really don’t know what your Captain thinks

about that,” he said, “I haven’t asked him. It doesn’t much concern me, after all.”

Elizabeth didn’t miss the hint, and it was fairly obvious to her, although she was too polite to mention it, that whatever Kadarin was, he was unlikely to be an ordinary Terran human.

And whatever strange blood flowed in his veins, it was evidently shared by

Felicia.

Kadarin smiled, and his eyes narrowed as he seemed to follow her thoughts.

Although, given that Kermiac could speak mind-to-mind with her, perhaps that was exactly what he had done.

“I sense curiosity in you,” he said. “I am not wholly sure of my heritage. I was fathered by one of the woods folk, the
chieri,
and my mother was at least half that blood.

I do not know much about her, and I do not know how old I am, but it has been hinted that my mother was a friend and relative of Kermiac’s grandmother. I was a kind of foundling—no, not as you are thinking, the babe in the basket—I was older than that when I was left among the humans.”

He said that as if he did not consider himself to be a human—and once again, he

followed her thoughts.

“I could not remain with the
chieri,
or so I was told,” he said, and again, there was that trace of bitterness. “Because I was not wholly of their kind, there were traits from my human blood that were—not acceptable. A certain level of uncontrolled aggression, they said. A certain—instability, by their rather exalted standards. And I am wholly male; they find that to be rather limiting, and inclined to warp one’s behavior in ways they cannot accept.”

To be “wholly male” was not acceptable? What kind of creatures were these

chieri,
some kind of hermaphrodite? “They sound as if they have rather unrealistic standards,” she said dryly. “But—Kermiac’s
grandmother
was the friend of your mother?”

He looked as if he were in his late thirties at most, about David’s age. She

couldn’t help but stare.

“Indeed,” he replied wryly. “I am much older than I look. I almost wish now I had kept track of the years. But there is no retracing last year’s snow.” He sighed heavily.

“And the years went by very quickly when I was young, and among the
chieri
there is no attempt to keep count of them. Then suddenly, I was—no longer wanted. I did or said something, I do not know what it was, and I was thrust back among my mother’s

people, and too bewildered to keep track of time.”

I
can imagine,
Elizabeth thought, a little angrily.
Poor man; rejection and culture
shock all at once. How could anyone do that to a child?

“Then the time came when my mother’s people knew that I was more
chieri
than human, and they would have sent me back to the woods. There were some who wished to rid Aldaran Domain of me, and tried—” Kadarin said, half to himself, and Elizabeth wondered just
how
they had tried to get rid of the young man. “But Aldaran’s father would have none of it, for Kermiac had grown fond of me, and Aldaran’s mother had lost two other children and clung to Kermiac and would not risk anything that might harm him. So I was reared here, treated as alien, almost as Kermiac’s pet. Subject to—

trouble, if I left the area of Caer Donn. Now I feel more accepted by your people than either of my own. Can you understand that?”

Elizabeth nodded, her mouth compressed with anger at these insular people.

“Quite well, actually,” she said. “You were named for the river, then?”

“Oh, no, not really,” Kadarin said, and grinned, but it was a grin with no humor in it. “Custom in these hills is to call anyone whose father is unknown a ‘son of the river.’ I simply made that custom into a kind of badge no one can ignore.”

And he thinks himself more like us than like one of his own kind,
Elizabeth thought.
I
am not surprised. His life thus far must have been impossibly hard.

“I think I have some notion of—of your feelings,” she said aloud. “I suppose that we must seem more compatible with you than either your father or your mother’s

people.”

And there was no question but that someone like Kadarin would be of enormous

use to the Terrans. Alienated from his own folk, eager to find a home among people who did not immediately reject him—oh, yes, if Captain Gibbons had any notion of

Kadarin’s background, he would have been quick to see what a good agent the man

could be. The intangibles— like a sense of belonging—were often vastly more

important to a thinking being than the tangibles, like genetics.