Until the Celebration (2 page)

When the planning was accomplished, the talk had turned once more to uniforce and miracles, and the men and women of the Geets-kel, troubled and shaken by their contemplation of the days to come, had returned eagerly to the Joy they had discovered in their newfound faith. And it was then that Raamo had left the hall, removing his private fear and doubt from the midst of so much hopefulness.

At the doorway he turned for a moment to look back. The attention of the Geets-kel, clustered below the stage, as well as of those on the platform was centered on the children. Only Hiro and D’ol Falla stood apart, Hiro holding the tool-of-violence. He spoke to D’ol Falla, and she answered, and then she reached out and took the weapon carefully in both hands. And once again Raamo had felt an evil presence, moving through the bright Joy and trembling excitement, like the seeping waters of a dark river.

And so he had come to the farheights to look for Peace, and perhaps for some understanding of the beckoning—of what it was that had called to him and why. But even there, rocked in the swaying leaf-cushioned nid, and soothed by the enfolding cloud-softened sky, the fear remained unchanged, and still hidden.

Then at last, it came to him that if he were truly Spirit-summoned, it could not be without reason—and when the time came, he would understand what was needed and what was required of him. With the first warm drops of rain, a kind of Peace fell on him, and he drifted in it, tempted for a time to go on lying there all through the night. But he sat up instead, and as his leafy nid rocked wildly, he was suddenly aware that the fear had become bearable. It was not so much diminished, but more as if he, himself, had changed. As if he had made an accommodation so that the fear’s space no longer crowded out hope and many other things as well.

He left the farheights and climbed downwards to where the thinning topgrowth left space for gliding. Shaking out the wing-panels of his shuba, he leaned forward into a glide. But here in the uninhabited forest there were no cleared glidepaths, and he was forced to turn and bank sharply. As he dropped lower, the dark quickly deepened, making such maneuvering more dangerous, and he was soon forced to land and continue by branchpath.

He was moving southward, towards Orbora, and had almost reached the boundaries of Temple Grove when he stopped suddenly and listened. Someone was approaching, below him and slightly to the south. Faint sounds reached his ears, the soft brush of feet on branchpath, the occasional snap of a broken twig, and now and then the cautious hiss of whispering voices. Dropping to his stomach, Raamo slid forward and peered over the edge of the branch.

Not far below him a small procession was making its way along a large branchpath. Of the six figures, four were heavily laden with portage baskets; and even in the semi-darkness, it was apparent that the other two were dressed in the shimmering white shubas of Ol-zhaan. The first was tall and thick-bodied, his step slow and ponderous, while the other, who scurried beside him in stumbling haste, was short and formless as a tree tuber.

Clearly the large Ol-zhaan was D’ol Regle, and the short formless one, his ardent disciple, D’ol Salaat. The other four were, perhaps, servants from the palace of the novice-master. It seemed that D’ol Regle had, indeed, decided to flee to the open forest and live in exile.

Perhaps it was for the best, Raamo told himself. What good could come of his presence in Orbora? It would be only a continual reminder of what he had tried to do, and such a reminder would surely cause only fear and mind-pain. But when the novice-master and his followers had disappeared from sight in the thick untrimmed growth of the open forest, Raamo’s fear did not go with them.

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING
, two people descended the rampway from Broadgrund and slowly crossed the wide platform that served as an entryway to the assembly hall of Orbora. The great hall, built during the glorious early days of the planet, was still unsurpassed—a monument to the time when the creative genius of the Kindar was at its height. Securely supported by two great grundbranches, it appeared to be almost floating among masses of greenery, its soaring arches and lacy screens blending in perfect harmony with the surrounding forest. But its wonders were lost on the man and woman who were approaching it at that moment. Deep in conversation, they spoke in tense urgent voices of matters that clearly concerned them greatly. The woman was D’ol Falla, and the man upon whose arm she was leaning was Hiro D’anhk.

“It is indeed a pity,” D’ol Falla was saying, “that so much must be asked of you—such a great burden of responsibility placed on you—when you have so recently returned from exile. I know you would much prefer to be free to enjoy your reunion with Jorda and with Genaa. But there is no one else among us who can speak to the Kindar as one of their own. Except for Kanna and Herd, who are Erdling and alien, we are all Ol-zhaan, and therefore tainted.”

“But surely Neric will be able to earn their trust,” Hiro said, “when they learn that it was he who began the search for the truth.”

“Perhaps,” D’ol Falla said, “but Neric is very young and inexperienced. I fear his certainty and his impulsiveness. In the days to come there may be great need to move slowly and with caution if we are to avoid disaster.”

Hiro sighed deeply. “That is true,” he said. “I will speak to the Kindar as you ask. But what would you have me say?”

“Tell them where you have been, and why. The rest will follow. I will speak first and tell them the truth concerning the past—of the true fate of the ancestral planet, and of the dispute that led to the banishment of the first exiles. And then, when the Kindar see you—when they see that you are still alive—they will be prepared to hear the truth concerning the Pash-shan.”

“I don’t know,” Hiro said. “When they see me, they may be forced to accept the truth; but I am afraid that nothing can prepare them for it. How can you prepare a people to lose, in so short a time, not only their saints, the Ol-zhaan, but their demons as well? I’m afraid that they will not easily relinquish their fear of the Pash-shan.”

They reached the doorway of the great hall then, and entering, they made their way down the long sloping aisle between the rows of tendril benches and mounted the curving rampway that led to the high stage. Soon after, the others began to arrive. First the young Ol-zhaan—Raamo, Genaa and Neric—and with them the two Erdlings, dressed now in Kindar shubas, but still alien in their appearance, with their golden skin tones and dark, uncropped hair.

Genaa was glowing, and Neric’s round eyes gleamed with eager anticipation; but Raamo’s face was shadowed as if by sleeplessness or mind-pain. D’ol Falla would have questioned him, but the others were coming now, the Geets-kel, in groups of two or three. And not long after, the Kindar began to enter the great hall.

In contrast to the Geets-kel, who were tense and strained, the Kindar leaders were relaxed and at ease. Curious, perhaps, at the sudden summons, but entirely unaware of the shattering revelations that were soon to come. Dressed in richly ornamented shubas, many adorned with sashes of high office, they took their places on the tendril benches and addressed their attention to the high stage where the group of Ol-zhaan were seated. And with the Ol-zhaan, two Kindar—odd, swarthy people, groomed in an unlikely manner—possibly visitors from Farvald or one of the other more provincial cities.

But then D’ol Falla, the ancient and honored priest of the Vine, came forward and began to speak to them. Beginning bluntly, without the accustomed rituals of greeting between Ol-zhaan and Kindar, she began to tell them things they had never thought to hear.

The first part of the telling concerned the ancestral planet; and shocking though it was, it did not come as a complete surprise to many of the Kindar leaders. There were many among them who were learned men and women, clear-minded and curious, who had long received the old legends and histories as truthful only in a symbolic way. In song and story, as well as on numberless tapestries and wall hangings, the ancestral planet had been depicted as a dimly distant fairyland, and the flight itself as a birdlike migration led by the shining figures of the legendary heroes, D’ol Wissen and D’ol Nesh-om. But although some suspected that the flight had been made on wings more substantial than those of a shuba, and that it had been undertaken for reasons more compelling than the promptings of the Spirit—they had no words to express their suspicions and no desire to face their implications.

But now D’ol Falla stood before them telling them monstrous things about their ancestors and the fate of their ancestral planet, things that could only be described by using forbidden vernacularisms of the most vulgar sort—grossly obscene in their meanings and painfully embarrassing to hear spoken in a public gathering. But there was more, and worse, to come.

D’ol Falla spoke next concerning the first Ol-zhaan, the two great leaders, D’ol Wissen and D’ol Nesh-om, and how a disagreement had arisen between them concerning innocence and truth—D’ol Nesh-om insisting that the Kindar should know the truth concerning their heritage of violence and the tragic fate of their ancestors, and D’ol Wissen certain that only a carefully guarded and protected innocence could prevent a return to the violent patterns of the past.

“But then D’ol Nesh-om died,” D’ol Falla told them, “and for a time D’ol Wissen prevailed, but he knew that there were some who still believed in the teachings of D’ol Nesh-om. D’ol Wissen feared that, after his death, those who opposed him would reverse his decisions. So at a great age, and feeling himself near death, he made use of his great skill in grunspreking to produce an enchanted and invulnerable barrier between earth and sky, and he imprisoned all who had opposed him below the Root.”

An audible gasp of horror arose from many throats, and although it was unvoiced, it spoke clearly of a single thought.

“The Pash-shan?” D’ol Falla asked. “You are thinking that surely D’ol Wissen could not have knowingly sent humans to certain death at the hands of the Pash-shan? And indeed, he did not. He sent them only to a dark and endless banishment—because the Pash-shan do not exist and never have.”

Speaking into a stunned silence, D’ol Falla went on to explain how the secret had been kept over the many years that followed. How even the Ol-zhaan were kept in ignorance concerning the true nature of the Pash-shan, except for a select and secret few who were chosen to become Geets-kel—a society dedicated to the maintenance of prisons, the prison in which the minds of the Kindar were held in bondage, as well as the great underground dungeon that confined the exiles and the ever-growing number of their descendants.

“I, myself, have for many years been a Geets-kel, a prison-keeper,” D’ol Falla said, “as have most of these others whom you see before you. But now you must learn why we will no longer be prison-keepers, and why many things will no longer be as they have been in Green-sky.”

D’ol Falla turned then and summoned someone who came forward from the wings of the high stage and approached to stand beside her. It was—surely it could not be—Hiro D’anhk. Most of the Kindar leaders had known him well when, as Director of the Academy, he had been an honored scholar and a leader among them. His lean, well-favored face was still written in their memories, although he had been gone—dead—lost to the Pash-shan, more than two years before. And yet, he now stood before them—one more unbelievable fact out of many. But this fact appeared to be of flesh and blood.

“My old friends,” the apparition was saying, “as you can see, I have not been dead these last two years, but only among the banished, and now, I think, you are beginning to understand where I have been and why.”

Hiro went on speaking, and the Kindar sat before him, but some of them had ceased to listen. Standing above them on the platform, Raamo could feel the force of their denial, a cold tension, full of confusion and fear. In the second row an old man wearing the gray-green sash of a grund-master reached furtively into his waist pouch and, bending low, brought his hand quickly to his lips. Watching him, Raamo could almost taste the thick cloying sweetness of the Berry and feel the soothing numbness that would soon flood the grund-master’s mind, drowning his anxiety in calm clouds of oblivion.

Hiro had begun to speak of the Erdlings—the banished Kindar—and of how their increasing numbers had doomed them to constant hunger and, if help did not come soon, to death by starvation. Calling forward the two Erdlings, Kanna and Herd Eld, Hiro gave their names and had them each speak briefly to the audience. In their unfamiliar accents, slow and slurring, they spoke of how they had come as representatives, to seek first food and eventually freedom for their people.

The Kindar listened in total silence. Raamo could pense a strange dark confusion, touched here and there with revulsion—as if there were some who saw these thin alien humans as monsters in disguise—as if they could not possibly be other than monstrous, since they had admittedly come from below the Root.

“I would ask a question, Hiro D’anhk, if it is you, indeed, returned to us from the dead.” It was Ruulba D’arsh who spoke, the city-master of Orbora, and at one time a close friend of Hiro. “I would ask how it is that these Ol-zhaan—these who have called themselves the Geets-kel—have decided to speak out now, after so many years of silence?”

Hiro raised his arms in the embracing gesture used at the meeting of intimate friends. “Greetings, old friend,” he said, smiling. “It is like you, Ruulba, to remain clearheaded at a time of confusion and to come forward with questions that need asking. The answer to your question can be shown as well as told.”

Turning, Hiro motioned Raamo, Neric, and Genaa to come forward and stand beside him. “The answer to Ruulba’s question stands here before you,” Hiro told the Kindar leaders. “These three young Ol-zhaan, whom you have known as D’ol Neric, D’ol Raamo, and D’ol Genaa, discovered the secret of the Geets-kel, and it was their actions that brought about this meeting—this moment when the truth is given back to all the people of Green-sky. It was Neric who first began to suspect the truth,” Hiro said, putting his arm across Neric’s shoulders and leading him forward. A sharp gasp arose from the audience, and Hiro realized that he had made a mistake. There would be time later to question old traditions and taboos, such as the use of the respectful title D’ol and the taboo against physical contact between Ol-zhaan and Kindar. There were more urgent changes to be accepted—and shock enough in the acceptance.