The Sound of Seas (20 page)

But before it went entirely quiet again, the olivine tile briefly experienced a flash of power, someone reaching for it from nearby . . . someone whose energy it recognized from the night before . . .

Someone who would certainly seek it again, for she had been hungry.

CHAPTER 17

A
s a child, Qala had lived in the deep, lush valley of western Codurazh. There, a river carried jasmine to and from the processing farm operated by her several guardians. With soil rich in nutrients from ancient volcanism and long periods of shelter from icy winds provided by the surrounding mountains, it was there that the tea leaves and jasmine plants, along with other medicinal herbs, were born. Floated to the airships in Falkhaan, they were taken aloft to be nourished by the moisture in the clouds, to grow healthy and large in the pure, plentiful, even brazen sunshine. Like the airship personnel themselves, they thrived beyond the smoke of the magma towers, beyond the foggy dampness of coastal mornings. When they were ripe, the leaves were returned to Codurazhkhaan to be blended into tea or bottled for therapeutic and aromatic uses. From there, the river carried the finished product everywhere along its route, from the western coast to the eastern ice boundaries.

Because she grew up surrounded by high peaks—including the majestic Zetora, legendary home of the first Galderkhaani—it had always been Qala's ambition to soar above them. She occasionally saw the largest of the airships pass high overhead, and when the flier recruitment boat came along the river, this girl still shy of womanhood
implored
Femora
Ninma to allow her to apply. The old commander later told Qala that what he saw in her then was not just desire and poise. It was awe. He believed that one who flew on an airship should never lose a feeling of wonder for the skies—and whatever lay beyond.

“What
does
lie beyond, do you think?” the youthful Qala had once asked during training.

Ninma had answered, “Some say it is the true home of the Candescents, but I don't know. And there is some beauty in not knowing.”

“How do you mean?” Qala asked.

Ninma had smiled warmly. “Your young thoughts are as valid as my old ones, possibly even more so. Ideas should always remain fresh. And,” he began, then stopped.

“Yes,
Femora
?”

He had looked at Qala then and said, “And I hope we never find out. That would make someone right and someone wrong.”

“Isn't knowledge worth that?” Qala had asked.

“Questions are always more valuable than answers,” Ninma had replied. “I suppose if answers encourage new questions, they are valid. But this one? I do not think any of the major participants would receive the truth kindly, or willingly.”

By “major participants” Ninma meant the Priests and Technologists. Even as a child, Qala recognized the rising dislike and mistrust between the two groups that supposedly served the general well-­being of Galderkhaan.

The importance of questions was one of the most valuable lessons Qala had ever learned: always to seek, to ask, to look, and then to look beyond—if possible through different eyes, younger eyes, older eyes. In that way, Qala had always maintained her balance. To stop and “gloat” about being correct was the stagnating act of a future imbecile.

Sitting with the physician as he spoke with Vilu, Qala could not help but remember dear Ninma and her own years apprenticing on larger and larger airships. Because she spent so much time on the ground in
Falkhaan, Qala had formed a special bond with Vilu and had always understood and even encouraged the boy's enthusiasm for flight. He was only slightly younger than she had been when she left the valley, and every bit as obsessed. In the many coastal cities she had visited, Qala discovered that those Galderkhaani who plied the seas felt a similar respect and love for that vastness: What was below, they wondered? What was beyond? It used to perplex Qala that a sailor or flier could feel the same humble love for two very different mysteries, two different places, above and below. Yet a Priest had once asked her, during a long, moody night flight: “How strange is it that among people we can have many loves, each special and deep in its own way? Yet for fliers and sailors, affection can only be for one or the other, the sea or the air?”

Qala had no answer for that. She felt, though, that those two worlds were in many ways the same: the mysteries of one reflected the mysteries of the other. Answers to one showed the way to answers in the other. The Galderkhaani called this concept
Raque
, and it was one of the oldest concepts in the civilization: the idea that there was a sublime and perfect balance in the differences of all things, one-to-one and many-to-many.

It was not known whether it was the ancient concept of
Raque
that gave rise to the legends of the Candescents, or the other way around. The
Anata-Raque
, who later became the Priests, believed that if there was life in the sea, there must be life in the skies, beyond the highest clouds, beyond the hovering phosphorescence. The future Technologists, the
Eija-Raque
, felt that because all things come from above, including the waters that made the seas, a great power they named Tawazh
had to have been the primal cause.

The great debate had begun, but there was one thing the early Galderkhaani believed. Before they had mastered flight, the thunder that occasionally rose from Zetora convinced them that the Candescents actually dwelt there. The mountain that glowed, the peak that rumbled with life from time to time, the cliffs that gave Galderkhaan their first
Yua
, the olivine tiles that spoke to those who were the first
Technologists—there was no other conceivable cause. The
Anata-Raque
and the
Eija-Raque
agreed on that, and that only. No one then, or now, addressed the mammoth flaw in the split between the groups: believing that all things came from above, the Technologists nonetheless tapped power from inside the world to create the Source. While the Priests, believing in balance, embraced the idea that there was a hierarchy to Candescence.

Qala was not a devoted student of such matters, certainly not like the Priests and their followers, who believed in deeply reflective prayer as a means to understand the Candescents; or the Technologists and their acolytes, who believed in the
Yua
as the medium for direct communication.

Torn by conflicts, no longer asking questions of each other, neither group had proved anything. The
zembo
, the nighttime lights far above even the highest airship, were still as mysterious as ever. The world after death was still unknown. And the bottom of the sea was stubbornly elusive.

Qala herself did believe that there is life above, even though those who had tried to reach it failed. Their balloons ripped or exploded and the fliers perished, just like those who attempted to use weighted, airtight conveyances to journey deep below the waters. She believed it because the spots of light hovered and watched with a friendly familiarity, in the way sand or stone, fire or molten rock, did not. Something must be behind them. Sometimes the lights flashed by, like leaves dropping from trees. Perhaps they too became extinguished.

Because the
zembo
could not be seized, like fish, Qala held that the lives and secrets of the Candescents were meant to be contemplated, not examined. One could surmise a great deal from the remains of sea creatures. Not the lights. Not even the largest one, the
zembo-jutan
, gave up its secrets—other than its sex, for its shape changed like that of a woman with child as it birthed and rebirthed the
zembo
every time darkness arrived.

The lights were meant to be considered in solitude or talked about
in a group but, in the end, the majesty of their abodes was probably unknowable.

And yet, the things this boy was saying, like the sentiments Bayarma had spoken, were unlike anything Qala had ever heard.
Raque
described a realm where there was “above” and “below.” It did not address a time that was “now” and “then.”

Yet if balance is universal and constant . . . such contrasting worlds should exist
, Qala thought. She wished Ninma had spent more time addressing the frustrating aspect of questions, as well as their merits.

Qala had returned to the physician's cabin after witnessing the discomfort of the sky. By the time Zell was finished talking with the boy, Qala had been informed that the airship was nearly ready to depart. The physician joined Qala outside the cabin while Bayarma remained inside, the boy curling beside her in the hammock.

Pressed by the
galdani
, Qala told him everything Bayarma had said to her as they walked toward the column.

“I do not know what to make of him, or her, or
them
,” the physician admitted.

“I don't believe that,” Qala said. “You always have an idea, or at least an opinion.”

Zell shook his head. “I always have a sense of the truth behind something, whether the ailment is mental or physical. Not here. I cannot say whether this is something profound, a fabrication worked out by these two, or a mad shared fantasy.”

“Your instincts are—” Qala pressed.

“Failing me,” Zell admitted with a shrug of his bony shoulders. “What have these two to gain by such a tale? Yet how could they share a delusion? Which leaves only the one option, that this is a miracle for the Night of Miracles.” He leaned closer so none of the crew would hear. “But that would compel me to believe in beings I am not convinced exist!”

“I was thinking that too,” Qala said. “Yet there is also the timing, the way one appeared as the other left.”

“What about it?”

Qala answered carefully, thoughtfully, because she knew that her explanation brought her in line with the doubts Zell had just expressed.

“It is as though the winds of
Raque
were blowing, informing us that our view of balance is too narrow,” she said.

Zell fired her a look. “That's not what I would expect from my
Standor
, whose cabin is full of maps and more maps because, as we know, the ground is fickle, unbalanced, uneven, and unstable—as strong an argument against
Raque
as one can find.”

“I know,” Qala agreed. “But if what Bayarma said is true, that someone from the future was speaking through her, then her sudden departure as this other boy arrived means that that balance was being preserved through time, from future to past, past to future.”

That idea caused Zell to sigh. He leaned forward on the smooth wooden rail. “I had that thought too,” the
galdani
admitted. “It is the cleanest, simplest explanation. So why do I find it the most difficult to accept?”

“Because it makes sense and it opens a frightening, humbling possibility,” Qala replied. “Several, in fact.”

“Balance is a reality and an absolute,” Zell said.

“Correct. If true, it means that the past is known so the future must be knowable. It also means that since there is life in the sea, there must be life in the skies.”

“And the reverse, though, must also be true,” Zell said. He gestured above with a wave of his hand. “Beings in the skies? We have never seen life on high, other than birds—and they eventually come to ground, alive or dead,” Zell continued, returning to a favorite argument against celestial beings. “Hypothetical beings would perish and fall, as creatures of the deep sea perish and rise. We would see them. We
must.
”

“Only if balance applies to things of substance,” Qala said. “The past is no longer real, but we know it exists.”

“Ah, the old Priestly argument,” Zell replied.

“Yes, but there is logic that would not turn the head of a Technologist in disgust: What if, because there is physical life in the water, the
Raque
must
be insubstantial life in the air?”

Zell grinned. “And
I
am supposed to be the esoteric one, Qala, sniffing potions and smoke to see what is inside the minds of others.” The physician looked out across the landscape. It possessed a dark and brooding quality that had come on suddenly. “It is a strange day,” he remarked.

“Very.”

“I notice the tower is putting out more heat and light than usual,” Zell said.

“I want to get above it as soon as possible, try to determine the levels of molten rock, the status of the tiles,” Qala said. She peered toward the mountainous horizon. “I also want to see if this is unique. There appears to be light beyond the peaks.”

Zell nodded. “Celebrations for the Night of Miracles, no doubt.”

“Perhaps.”

The physician sighed again. “We know so little—about the molten rock, about the tiles. Yet we use them as if we own them.”

“Didn't the
Drudaya
teach that we should welcome all strangers, for how else would we get to know them?” Zell asked.

“Strangers don't spit flaming rock at villages from time to time,” Qala said.

“True enough. And a consortium of Priests and Technologists don't band together to try and resolve differences based on
Raque
,” Zell said. “Maybe the
Drudaya
were wrong, after all.
It has been said that Priests dream the way and Technologists figure out how to get there. Balance does not always mean cooperation. Sometimes it arises from rivalry.”

Qala nodded. “Fortunately, I just fly an airship. The only ones who ask what I think are crew members and the occasional child who is infatuated with flight.”

Femora
Loi approached quickly. “We are ready to depart,
Standor
.”

“Thank you,” Qala said. “Hold a moment.” The
Standor
regarded Zell. “A last chance: What do we do with our guests? They will be your responsibility.”

“The boy cannot be returned and the woman wishes to go to Aankhaan,” the physician said. “What else is there to do but take them?”

Qala turned back to Loi. “Give word to the tower agent that the boy, Vilu, accompanies us for medical reasons,” the
Standor
said. “Have them send a messenger to the water guardian Lasha. Tell him to let the custodians of the boy's home know that he is in the personal care of
Galdani
Zell.”