Sartor (29 page)

“Then we will cease issuing dire warnings,” an
older woman spoke from the other side of the circle.

Morvende shifted position, some exchanging slight signs with
their hands, and here and there a soft whisper.

Lonender said, in the Old Sartoran, “Tsauderei is
known to us. His name was good.”

Atan knew how to translate that:
worthy of trust,
reliable for truth
. “His name is still good,” she said. “To
that I can attest.”

“You are young,” the old woman spoke again. “But
not without wisdom. What do you know about Norsunder?”

“Little enough,” Atan replied. “Again,
what I have read in records and what Tsauderei has told me, as well as what Hinder
reported to you of our recent encounters. Is there something you can add, so
that I might be aware?”

Lonender said, “We have in truth been in hiding this
century past, except for the few who desire the sun. The news they bring back
matches what you already know, that Norsunder holds some of Sartor’s
ancient allies, and that others pay tribute either directly or indirectly.”

Again came that brief exchange of glances, signs, a breathed
word or two, but Atan sensed that some sort of agreement had been made.

The youngest morvende there, a teenage girl with a merry
smile, said, “Numbered among your ancestors were those we trusted with
the access signs, giving them freedom to come and go among us. I will show you
those signs now, if you will have them.”

Atan flushed. “I know what that means. And I thank
you.” Then she thought of what the responsibility meant, and her joy spun
away, leaving sick fear. “Perhaps you should wait. I mean, I must go out
again, and I know the enemy is waiting. But there is something I must do.”
Her voice trembled. She stilled it with an effort. “If I succeed. Perhaps
then.”

Again she noted the stirrings, the sense of signals, but the
faces turned to her were kind and understanding, and though Grandfather smiled,
there sadness in it. “We honor you for your concern on our behalf. Be at
peace. The signs might come to your aid. As for being forced to reveal what we
teach you, remember this, for we do, always. The Great Betrayer, who reigns now
in the Garden of the Twelve—he was once one of us.”

Hinder’s mother held out her hand. “We shall
begin here, with this region...”

o0o

“I think I can hear the morvende talking to Atan,”
Lilah exclaimed. “Are they all close by?”

Hinder was dancing around the cave, a hopping, spinning
dance that looked like fun, but he performed it with his eyes shut, as though
he heard music that Lilah could not.

When she spoke, he stopped. “Well, I hate to keep
saying what has to sound silly, but
close
and
far
don’t
mean much here.” He hesitated, then shook his head, hard enough to send
his silky white hair flying. “What I mean is, they are kind of close,
yes, but your hearing is happening because you’re thinking about them,
not because they’re in a cavern nearby.”

Lilah shut her eyes and thought about Atan. “Flowers...
rocks. Atan is talking about flowers and rocks, or else I’m just
dreaming. Well, I
feel
like I’m in a dream—that if I lie
down, I’ll sleep for a year!” She threw her arms wide.

Hinder looked at her flushed face and recognized how close
he’d come to saying what he must not say. The exhilaration of the jewel
cave was turning into that dreamy state that made one want to talk recklessly. “It’s
time to go.” He pointed. “Now comes another thing you will like,
the warm pools. And rocks you can dive off!”

Lilah clapped her hands. “Let’s run!” She
welcomed the idea of a cool dash downward with a pool at the end, after the
boiling toil of the upward climb.

They began a race, laughing all the way.

Merewen wandered along a narrow rock bridgeway between two
old tunnels, peering down into the immense cavern and admiring the subtle ways
the glowglobes at various levels gave light. Up, down, and side to side had
never been so interesting. The floor was not even, the walls not straight. She
had never thought about it before, but the people who lived on the surface
seemed to value symmetry. Here, in the caves underground and in the mountains,
there was no such thing, and as a result, no view in any direction was ever
boring.

With sorrow she remembered Savar’s little house, and
though it had been cozy when a fierce blizzard blew, the rest of the time she’d
stayed outside as much as possible.
I don’t like being closed in
,
she thought.
Is this my human side or my Loi side?

In dreams she could sometimes hear the Loi. She knew they
were there but a kind of curtain divided her from hearing and seeing them in
waking life. No, it was more like fog or smoke. She knew there was something
she ought to be doing to reach them, for they tried and tried to reach her
through her dreams, but dream images could not be trusted, and when she was
awake, nothing worked.

It did not disturb her, for she knew she had so very much to
learn. More troubling were the occasions when she accidentally slipped inside
someone else’s dream. She hadn’t discussed that with anyone, not
even Atan, who might feel obliged to tell the people whose dreams Merewen
accidentally visited. She loved Atan, who ‘felt’ like clean-running
stream water, whose inside—dreams, even—was just the same as her
outside. But Atan made herself do what she saw as her duty, including telling
people things. Merewen was not certain that some of the things she herself was
learning ought to be told.

Down here in the morvende part of the world, she always knew
where she was—just as she knew, somehow, that four days had passed since
Hinder brought them inside in order to escape the enemy who had closed round
them. Was that the Loi side or the human? She couldn’t figure that out
either. She had observed that the morvende were not telling the Shendoral
children that some of the pools and lakes were full of live beings, and that
the water in one pool could transfer you to water in other places. Distance did
not mean anything to those water beings, any more than did physical form.

This, like being in dreams, felt like ‘privacy.’
Merewen had learned about privacy when she and Atan first met the Shendoral
group. Some days, the boys wanted to swim in the stream without their clothes
on, and on those days, the girls went elsewhere. It was the same when the girls
wanted to swim. Atan had told her that was privacy of person. Merewen could
understand that concept; your inside and your outside had a boundary between. Clothing
was a boundary between your physical self and the world. The boundary around
dreams and emotions was harder to define.

She heard voices and glanced below. Ah! Coming down one of
the steeper trails were two adult morvende, leading Irza, her sister, Julian,
and a couple of the other ones who thought a lot about ancestors and titles.

Irza wanted to find the way out. Merewen had heard her say
so to her sister when everyone woke up. But Irza seemed to think they were all
still under the hill where they’d been found. No one appeared to realize
that the bath pool had transferred them a very great distance and they were
deep in the mountains. Irza might go up and up and up, but it would take days
to make her way to the surface.

Merewen listened. The morvende were not telling her that
now, either. “You might get lost,” one man was saying. How beautiful
their voices were! “We do not wish harm to come to you. It is so easy to
lose oneself here, for there is no sense of north and south, not the way you
sunsiders orient yourselves on the surface.”

“Oh.” Irza laughed. “I didn’t think!
I just explored, because it’s so very fascinating. If you could guide us
to an intersection with the surface, just so we could orient ourselves, we
would be less of a bother...”

There she went again. So often, Irza’s inside intent
was directly opposite her outside intent. It made Merewen dizzy, as if her eyes
saw double. It hurt. But to say out loud that she saw this contrast would be a
trespass against privacy. Merewen understood that much.

The voices faded, and Merewen sighed. What ought she to do
now?

She closed her eyes—and yes, there was Atan. Strange! She
had only to close her eyes and think, and she knew where people were. She could
also point to Shendoral, which lay
that
way—and to Eidervaen,
where the magic awaited them inside its boundaries...

Merewen popped her eyes open. “I’ve never seen
that before,” she whispered.

Atan had to know. That much was certain.

She raced back over the narrow stone arch and into the
tunnel, then down, down to the water, and in. Beings crowded all around her,
full of images and emotions too quick to pick out. They were very much like
colored stars—like the gems grown in those caves where people could go to
be in dreamtime, and hear the beings and be heard by them.
Selenseh redian
,
that was the human name for those jewel caves. Sel-enseh red-yan, the old
Sartoran pronunciation. Very, very,
very
old! Merewen knew somehow that
those jewel caves had been made by these beings, as a kind of guide for humans
to come and communicate—

Merewen climbed out of the water and dashed between the
stones with the magic that made you dry. She found Atan alone on one of the
ledges with pillows, eating some of the cakes that tasted so good.

“Merewen!” Atan smiled a welcome, and Merewen
hugged herself, delighting in how the smile came with light from inside Atan’s
spirit. “Hungry?”

Merewen discovered that she was.

“I don’t know how they get their food,” Atan
said. “I was just thinking about it. They don’t have any sun to
grow things, and though I know there are ways to make food by magic, that
expends a tremendous amount of magic. Just think of it! You have to hold it all
in your mind and do every step through spells, from seed-gathering to growing,
and water and sun, and harvest and milling. Much easier to get it the regular
way!”

Merewen suspected that the ways distances could be
circumvented had to do with food distribution—ah. When she closed her
eyes, inside was an image of the plateaus on Sky Island, where surface-living
mountain morvende grew things. And there were others who traded. But she only
smiled and bit into the rice-and-nut cake, and then said, “Is it good,
the talking?”

“It’s strange,” Atan said, her forehead
puckered. “There is so little time, and though they’ve been very
nice, I could not but be aware that they were testing me with every single
question. Every word. Yet I could feel how they want to trust me—”
She paused, thinking,
Just as I want to trust Irza
.

Merewen didn’t hear the thought, but she didn’t
need to. Atan’s expression was the same one she often wore when Irza talked.

Atan finished her cake, got to her feet, and dusted off her
tunic. “I know they won’t mind if I test something with you also,
if you don’t mind shutting your eyes at the end.”

Merewen nodded, enjoying the glee that Atan tried so hard to
hide. She would also have her chance to discuss her discovery with Atan, and
not have to watch for those who might want to listen.

They ran up one of the narrow tunnels, noting the transition
from stone to clay-covered dirt that marked off access-ways. The clay in the
old access-ways had slowly dried to a soft gray, but the newer ones were still
brownish. It took centuries for the color to alter, Atan had been told.

Centuries. And immeasurable distances. And another language.
She had always wanted to see where the morvende lived, but her imagination had fallen
far short of reality.

She was both flattered and afraid, because they had chosen
to show her not just a local access, but how to read the signs marking any
access on the world—and how to activate the magic protections.

She did that when they reached the end. Atan gave Merewen an
anxious glance, and Merewen obligingly shut her eyes—though if she
reached
with her inside self, she could see the stylized carving that Atan traced so
carefully with her fingers.

Always a narrow crack existed, masked by so limited an
illusion that anyone trying to sense magic would have to find the spot and
touch it before discovering it, and they were always behind great stones. Then one
touched the carving and said the words... and the boundary vanished.

She and Merewen stood very still, their skin roughing as
cold air flowed from the outside world. There were no sounds and no sense of
Norsundrians present.

Atan made the last passes and said the words that enabled
them to slip out. They found themselves on a barren hillside. Above, snow
clouds covered the pale winter sky. Golden shafts slanted down, and Atan
blinked in pleasure.

She turned back, and panic fluttered inside her. She couldn’t
see the access! But she
knew
the stone. So she knelt, ran her fingers
over it, and was reassured when she felt the subtle indentations of the access,
right where it should be. “We did it.”

“Eidervaen lies that way,” Merewen said,
pointing. “I found it, inside.” She smacked her forehead. “And
I know where it is you need to go.”

Atan stared at her in amazement. “You do?”

Merewen closed her eyes. “There’s magic there,
needs to be free. Other magic is already free. I can feel it all around. Some
of it is dangerous. Something happened there, while we were below.”

“What?”

Merewen sighed. “All I can feel is magic. Like
lightning, and not.”

“And naught. And naught!” Atan said, and
laughed. “Ah, Merewen, we will have to make our try soon.” Fear and
delight, and excitement and dread, swooped inside her, making her giddy. “But
I must make myself ready. Thinkest thou we shall one day be the subject of
great ballads?”