The Luck of Brin's Five (24 page)

“Should we not go to the east and find the Maker of Engines and Murno Pentroy?” asked Brin.

“Perhaps,” said Vel Ragan. “First, bear with me once more and we will try Guno Deg.”

The little darkness had returned, though it was always very short in Rintoul; spring shades into summer in the south without a sharp distinction. We all rose up in Esder light, dressed in our best and set out for Guno Gunroyan's skyhouse in Rintoul. Old Gwin protested, but she was made to travel in a carrying chair with Narneen and Tomar. The scribe led the rest of us for miles, up and down, then only upwards, and we crossed our first skywalk. A wind blew from the sea, and the skywalk rippled; even Diver could not look down. The porters with the chair waited at the other side laughing, as we tottered across.

We plunged into the shining levels of the house and came to the antechamber before the sun room. We were not the only petitioners, even at this early hour; we tried to send in a skein, but the servant in charge, the House Warden, would not accept it. Food was sent out on trays, and as we were eating it there was a sudden commotion and the curtains of the sun chamber were abruptly drawn. The room was of such magnificence that my eyes dazzled; three domes of colored glass flowered overhead, and there were three carpets, old and fine, each as large as a small field. There was a wicker throne on a dais, but it was empty. A little, stout, strutting figure in a brown robe was bustling through the spaces of the sun chamber, followed by a couple of vassals. A continuous stream of complaint and comment rang out. Guno Deg gestured with a staff and struck the floor with it. Eventually she came right on out into the antechamber.

“Good-day! Good-day, gentles all!” she cried. “What new work are you bringing me?”

Then she began by the door, speaking to each petitioner in turn and solving some of the problems on the spot . . . a matter of land claim, the need for a fishing licence. One or two groups of country visitors simply brought gifts of cloth or food, and she accepted these graciously and embraced an ancient who had brought her a young black wool-deer as a present. She approached our large party and looked us up and down.

“Great wind!” she barked, “an invasion from the distant north. No, good Mother, remain seated, I pray. Why are these children not asleep? Who is the Speaker here? A scribe, forsooth, and from Tsagul . . . what have you to do with this tribe?”

“We bring a wonder, Highness,” said Vel Ragan. “Something that has not been seen under the two suns.” He presented the skein with our names and his name.

“Indeed!” snapped Guno Deg. “Well, I don't believe you. I have no time for talking animals, healing stones or drawings of fantastic beings.”

“Perhaps you mean the Stone Brook drawings, Highness?” put in the scribe.

“I do!” she said. “Is this your wonder?”

“Here is the artist himself,” said Vel Ragan.

Diver stepped forward and bared his head and bowed to Guno Deg. She stared up at him in silence. “Garl Brinroyan?” she asked at last.

“So I am called on Torin, Highness.”

“Did you not fly in the Bird Clan at Otolor?”

“I did, Highness!”

Guno Deg bit her underlip and rapped testily with her staff. “Humph!” she said. “Scribe, you do not lie. This
is
a wonder, and one I had hardly believed to this hour. Come in, all of you . . . yes and especially you, whatever you may be, Garl Brinroyan.”

We were escorted into the sun chamber, and the curtains were drawn again on other unlucky petitioners. Inside we were all settled and made welcome by still more vassals and house servants, but I crept as close as I dared to hear Guno Deg speaking with Brin and Diver and Vel Ragan. At first Diver told a little of his coming and how we left Hingstull; then the Elder urged him to leave nothing out and tell all that had passed. We knew what she meant: the pursuit by Tiath Avran Pentroy. So Diver and Brin and the scribe told the whole tale, not leaving out the Gulgarvor and the harrying of the twirlers and the death-pact of the bird carriers.

The Wentroy Elder heard them out in silence, then she said, “You are wise to show yourself, Escott Garl Brinroyan. But I notice that in spite of your claims to come in peace you have fought several times with Moruians.”

“In my own defense, Highness,” said Diver, “and the defense of Brin's Five.”

“What will you do now?” she demanded. “And do not tell me that you mean to seek out young Murno Pentroy, your flying sib. He is all but an exile, like his teacher Nantgeeb, and if you fly with him I cannot help you.”

“I had thought, Highness, of seeing Brin's Five settled in the delta on a bird farm,” said Diver.

“We can purchase one,” Brin pointed out, “and the children can be at home there.”

“Good enough!” said Guno Deg, “but what else?”

“Mamor . . . the hunter yonder . . . is also a sailor,” said Diver. “We might sail to the islands—”

“Dangerous!” Guno rapped with her staff. “Do you sail upon the oceans of
your
home?”

“Indeed, Highness . . . and under them as well. But our ships move with engines.”

“If the truth is told, so do some of ours,” said Guno Deg. “Did you not fly with Mattroyan, the Merchant of Itsik? He has ships that leave the harbor under sail, then stoke up a boiler when they are in the open sea.”

A vassal came and brought the Elder a reminder of some appointment; she turned aside irritably. “Work does not wait, even for a wonder such as this. Garl Brinroyan, wait on me again, with Brin and the scribe here, and I will do what I can about your safety. In the meantime, inquire for your bird farm and stay out of trouble!” She pressed into Brin's hand a Wentroy token of a bird's head colored and glazed on gold; then she cried out to us all. “Take your time . . . eat up. Call a chair for your ancient and use that token.”

She bustled away. We ate our fill and wandered about the sun chamber, talking with the vassals of Wentroy.

I sat with Tomar and watched the flatbills—two common Narfee—playing in the water garden, and thought of the distant north. Tomar was walking and climbing well now; his first-fur had all lifted, his front teeth were through, and he said “Bin-bin-bin” for his pouch-mother, “Een” for Narneen and sometimes “Dar” for myself. It seemed strange to me that he might grow up and never recall Hingstull, where he was born and hidden. I made a vow that he should return one day and hear the story of our old life there and of how the Luck came.

So we amused ourselves one day longer and were planning a trip to the delta to seek out bird farming land. I walked out with Ablo and Diver at the setting of Esto to buy fruit from a stall; we turned up a short basket way, empty save for a porter with a net lounging against the wall. As we passed, I noticed that it was an omor. I had no warning until Diver gave a shout, and they leaped upon us from three directions. The omor with the net had Diver down before he could help us; I hardly felt the blows that brought me down, but I saw Ablo shouting and fighting. Then a blow from a cudgel made blood stream from his forehead and he lay still. I heard the voices of the Gulgarvor, panting and rough; I remember the cart being wheeled up, then as I struggled, a foot struck my chin. My head bounced on the cobblestones, and I dived suddenly into a black pit; my last thought was, Ablo is dead.

So the Luck of Brin's Five was taken easily in the midst of Rintoul by the three omor, Meetal, Artho and Alloo, still bound in Gulgarvor. For good measure they took me along too, as a member of Brin's Five. But our luck had not quite run out, for Ablo was not dead. He was left bleeding in the street after the Gulgarvor wheeled off Diver and myself in their cart. He dragged himself back to the wig house and the alarm was given.

IX

I came to my senses slowly and painfully. For a long time I saw nothing but a blur of yellowish white; I felt a rocking motion and dreamed I was on the barge again or the keel boat bringing us to Rintoul. I heard voices and bell chimes and a long way off someone laughing and sobbing. Then I was fully awake; none of my bones were broken; I was wearing my own clothes and I could still feel my Bird-Clan token around my neck. Yet the waking made no difference; I was in a place so strange it was as if I could see for the first time. I lay on a bare shelf stuck to the wall of a small room shaped like a teardrop. The wall, which had no corners, was a smooth yellowish expanse of plaster, drawn up to the top, like the folds of a cloth bag. In front of me was a big bubbled piece of glass that distorted whatever lay beyond it. Colors and shapes moved on the other side of the bubble glass, and I saw that there was a small round door in it.

My head ached but I oriented myself as best I could and put a foot down from my shelf to the curving floor. The whole room rocked gently. I lay back again, thinking I was dizzy, but then I saw a water bag hanging across from the shelf, and it rocked by itself. I wriggled a little on my shelf and sure enough the whole room responded. The place hung suspended in some way, like a basket. I was struck with the awful notion that it
was
a basket, or a honeybee's cell: I had been enchanted and made small and stuck in some insect's larder! I stifled a cry and lay still.

There were voices and footsteps and shapes swelled as they passed the bubble glass then faded away. I became calmer and more naturally sleepy as I experimented with the movement of the room, and, like a beam of light penetrating the darkness, it came to me where I was. This was a sleep-cell. It was not a prison or a place of punishment but one of the golden globes of painted wicker that nestled under the beams on the highest levels of Rintoul. Through the round door was a solid corridor, a courtyard or even a sun chamber and a water garden. Another thing was sure—for me the place
was
a prison. I doubted very much if the door would let me out. Before I had time to pursue this thought, the sobbing laughter I had heard in my dreams sounded again, very close.

It was a horrible despairing sound in a voice quite light and young; another person, another prisoner, lay in another sleep-cell close to my own, so close that I could hear the broken words and pleading.

“Let me out . . . let me see you. I am the only one, they have need of me, my teacher has need of me. It has been so long. There are fifty fixed stars in the constellation of the Loom, I could name them all, but I have forgotten—they have been stolen from me. . . .”

There followed a dreadful sobbing. “Blue . . . the eyes were blue . . . it made no secret . . . I have told, and I will tell again if only you will not leave me in this awful place . . .”

I sat up, trembling, on my shelf.

“There is a cave above Stone Brook . . . please let me out, let me see your faces, let me die. Send me back to the north. The blessing has all left me. Oh my dear Teacher, the power has waned, and I have lost the blue barge and the mountain Five with the devil will be utterly destroyed. Three comets . . . this is a three-comet year . . .”

I braced myself against the wall, although it rocked crazily, and shouted with all my might: “
GORDO BEETHAN
!”

There was an absolute silence, and I shouted again. “
Gordo Beethan!
”

The voice came again, so low I could hardly hear it. “Who calls me?”

“Dorn Brinroyan. I am in the next sleep-cell.”

“You are dead. You are a ghost come to mock me, for I have been kept so long, and I have betrayed you all.”

“I am alive, Gordo, and so are we all. The blue barge is safe.”

“Dorn, Dorn Brinroyan . . . is it you?”

“Truly Gordo. Have courage.”

“Dorn, what is this place, this dreadful swinging basket room?”

“It is what they call a sleep-cell. The grandees use it when they cannot sleep.”

“But where? In what place?”

“In Rintoul, of course.”

“
RINTOUL
!” There was a pause, and I heard muttering and thought he had lost his wits again.

“Gordo?”

“I was taken before the New Year, returning from the east to Otolor, having delivered the Ulgan's message.”

“Have you been . . . mistreated?”

“At first, a little. Then I was left here. It has been so long, Dorn. There is food put through the door, but I cannot eat much. I have lost my powers, perhaps forever. I sleep and dream and remember all that I told the questioners.”

“Please Gordo, you are not to blame.”

“The old one is
kind
, Dorn. All it does is ask and send me back again. I hate the blanket, I am wrapped in a blanket when they take me out of here, so that I cannot see. But no more beatings . . .”

A distant set of bells chimed, sweet and silvery.

“Gordo?”

“Quiet, they are coming!”

I lay quietly on my shelf, although my heart was pounding so hard I felt it must make the cell rock. I prayed to the North Wind; I prayed to Eenath; I called upon Odd-Eye to give me strength. I reasoned that they could not hurt me or make me mad as they had poor Gordo. I was protected by all that I knew, and I was given power by my duty. I must find Diver or at least where he was being held. I must find this out and return to my Family.

Then a shadow of yellow and gray appeared before the distorting glass of my door, almost destroying my courage. The round door opened and an ancient peered inside, smiling.

“Have you slept well, child?” My visitor was a grandee, I saw at once, and probably a male. I sat up a little.

“Come along, come along,” said the old one. “We'll take a walk.” There was no sign of the blanket Gordo hated so much; I slithered across the curved floor and half fell out of the door into the corridor.

It was frightening enough without the blanket . . . indeed it may have been another “kindness” not to let Gordo see where he was perched. The walls of the corridor were glass and wide-meshed wickerwork; we seemed to be on a narrow strip of paving, high, high up, with the blue and white and golden gulfs of the city reaching down on every side. The ancient wore an elegant robe of yellow silk, with gray facing, and carried a wooden staff, set with milky pink jewels. Yet there was something old and dusty and food-stained about these clothes; the long hands gripping the staff were furry and tremulous; only filmed eyes glittering in its temples told of a mind still alert.