Until the Celebration (20 page)

“What is it?” Maala said anxiously. “What evil has it done to me? Tell me what it is.” She had begun to unfasten the shoulder ties of her shuba, but her fingers were trembling so violently that Genaa had to come to her assistance. When the stained silk was, at last, lifted away, no one spoke, but the air throbbed with silent echoes of shock and horror.

D’ol Falla rose from her chair, and going to Maala spoke words of comfort and hope. “Peace, peace, Maala. Try not to tremble so. We will take you to the chambers of healing, and all will be well with you. Wounds heal, Maala. Surely this wound, too, can be healed.”

A litter was sent for, and Maala D’ach was carried from the assembly hall. For some time after she had gone, the Councilors sat in stunned silence. But when at last the speaking began again, it was directed towards one matter only—the best and safest way to transport the tool-of-violence to its final resting place in the bottomless cavern. The planning moved forward with great efficiency, hastened perhaps by the Councilors’ obvious desire to remove themselves from the vicinity of the ancient weapon. A few agreed to guard it through the night by standing watch outside the doorways of the hall; and others left for Erda to bring back a heavy metal urn in which the weapon and its contaminating power could be contained. On the following morning, it would be carried to the cavern of the Bottomless Lake.

R
AAMO CAME TO D’OL
Falla’s chamber very early the next morning, soon after the last fall of rain. He came to speak to her before he left to take part in the procession that would accompany the tool-of-violence to the Bottomless Lake. The journey would be long and arduous, and only those Councilors who were strong and vigorous were expected to go. D’ol Falla would, of course, remain in the Vine Palace, but Raamo wanted to see her before he left.

“You are pensing again,” he said as he held out his palms in greeting; and her eyes glowed with Joy.

“Yes,” she said. “In the last few days there have been hints—wisps and shadows—but yesterday in the hall there was no doubt. It was strong and clear.”

“Yes,” he said, “I know.”

“After so many, many years. And for it to happen now, in the midst of such great trouble. I can’t understand it.”

Raamo smiled. “It might have happened sooner if it had not been for the thing that was hidden in the cage of the joysingers and in your thoughts. It would have happened sooner if there had been no need for hiding.”

“Yes,” she said. “I thought of that, also. I think you are right.” The boy’s gaze met hers, and she pensed his shared delight at this gift that had been returned to her after so many years. For an amount of time that seemed fleeting and yet endless, she was once again caught up, lost, and freed, in the intensity of mind-touch.

Later, when Raamo was preparing to leave, he spoke of the woman, Maala D’ach. “Do you think it is in the power of the healers to help her?” he asked.

“Poor woman,” D’ol Falla said. “I spoke to her of healing, but I am not certain. I have never seen such a wound.”

“Kir Oblan said it resembled the wounding caused by fire,” Raamo said. “But how is it that she was wounded simply by carrying it on her back? Others have handled it without harm. And your joysingers lived above it for many months.”

“I don’t know,” D’ol Falla said. “But Hiro thinks it is possible that its materials have begun to decompose with age. And perhaps the jarring motion of constant carrying hastened the disintegration so that the force with which it is empowered began to leak out. There were forces used on the ancestral planet that had such corrupting powers.”

“Yes,” Raamo said. “I think Hiro is right. It leaks an evil, now, that corrupts the body. But it has always leaked a more deadly evil.”

“Yes, but that will soon be over, Raamo. Before this day is done, it will be gone, and forever.”

“I don’t know,” Raamo said. “The Council agreed to do away with it because they were afraid. But they did not deny its right to be. I am afraid ... He paused, and D’ol Falla saw that his eyes were unfocused and inward, as if turned towards far-distant sources. After a time he went on, “Without their denial, its power will not be destroyed.

“I am afraid ... he said again, and turned away; but at the doorway he turned back, smiling, and sang the parting.

The procession to the Bottomless Lake was the strangest that Orbora had ever seen. The ancient weapon, now tightly sealed in a heavy metal urn, was strapped to a litter with greatly extended carrying poles. The litter was carried by teams of bearers, who were changed every few minutes. The Councilors who had agreed to accompany the procession were divided into two groups, one to proceed and one to follow the litter and its deadly burden. A procession, by long tradition, symbolized glory and honor, and was conducted in an atmosphere of triumphant Joy. But this procession was grim and silent; and fear, like an unseen canopy, hung heavy about it.

There was, of course, reason enough to be afraid; but the deep, pervading apprehension that surrounded the procession was beyond reasoning. If anyone had questioned them, some of the marchers might have said that they feared the mysterious contamination that had wounded the serving woman and that might not be wholly contained inside the metal urn. Others might have said that they feared the procession might be in danger from an outside source. If Nekom informers had been at work during the hours of darkness, there was the possibility of an attack by the followers of Axon Befal.

Hiro D’anhk, leading the procession with Ruula D’arsh and Kir Oblan, told himself that he feared an explosion. From what he had learned of the ancient sources of power, it seemed possible that a long fall and the shock of striking water—or a projecting rock—might cause a cataclysmic release of power that could entomb them all.

Walking with the group of Councilors who followed the litter, Neric’s mind surged with the fear that they had made a mistake in deciding to rid themselves of the weapon so hastily. There had been no attempt to discover if its leak of power could be controlled—and if it would still function if the Nekom did, indeed, attack the city.

But Raamo felt fear as an evil ghost of the past. The fear that had made their ancestors refuse to give up the power that had, at last, consumed them. It seemed to Raamo that the fear spreading out around the metal urn was almost willed into being by the thing inside—by something alive and sentient and determined not to relinquish its ancient authority.

The journey was not quickly accomplished. It began on the Lower West Branchway of Hallgrund and made its way to the new stairway that, circling Halltrunk, led down to the forest floor. From there the party went by winding surface pathways, where dense growth pressed close on either side, and fern frond arched, lush and green, above. Skirting the surface city of Upper Erda, they came at last to the mouth of a tunnel, where a loading platform for railcars now ran all the way from Upper Erda to the caverns of the old underground city. A train of seven cars was waiting, and when the urn had been placed in the central car, the Councilors boarded the others. It was while he was waiting for a chance to board that Raamo became aware of the fixed gaze of a young man with a wide flat face and wild, unruly hair.

The young man was not the only person who had been following the procession. Processions were traditionally followed, and this one was no exception, although these followers were grim and silent, rather than joyful. They did not press close in their efforts to see, but only continued to follow, at a distance, and with a strange, patient persistence. At the loading platform they came somewhat closer, and it was then Raamo realized that he had seen the flat-faced youth before.

When the train was finally loaded, the young man was still on the platform, but sometime later, when the rail journey was over and the procession continued, once more on foot, the followers appeared again. And once more, the flat-faced boy was among them.

The journey went on and on. The tunnels narrowed, and the glowing wall torches became fewer and farther between. At last they stopped altogether and there were only hand-held lanterns to light the way. The tunnels turned and twisted, narrowing at times to mere crevices, and then giving way to enormous caverns where water dripped endlessly down slimy walls and grotesque formations hung down from above like organic growths.

Chilled by the deep, dank cold and burdened by exhaustion and ever-growing fear, the Councilors at last saw before them a grillwork of close-set metal bars. Near the grill a crew of Erdling metal workers waited. Their flaming torches revealed a narrow gap in the barricade, where several bars had been removed. Behind the grill the flickering torchlight struggled against a wall of darkness, revealing, now and then, a black nothingness, sharp-edged and sudden, beyond the wet gray rock of the cavern floor.

The bearers slowly approached the barricade, and placing the litter in front of the opening, they stepped back quickly into the crowd of Councilors. The Councilors stepped back also, back and back, until they had retreated halfway across the cavern floor. The urn sat alone, and the torchlight reflected by its burnished surface made it seem to glow with a pulsing inner light.

Raamo looked around him. All the Councilors, men and women, Kindar and Erdling, were staring with fear-glazed eyes at the urn and the darkness that lay beyond it. He could feel their terror growing and spreading like a living thing. And he knew that although they called their fear many names and gave it many faces, in the end it was the same fear that had caused their ancestors to shape the evil the urn contained—and then refuse to deny it until it was too late. If something were not done, and quickly, it might be too late once more; they would find reasons to retrieve the urn from the edge of oblivion and carry it back with them to Green-sky.

Suddenly he was walking forward, past Neric and then past Kir Oblan and Hiro. The straps that held the urn fell away easily, and he lifted it in his hands and stepped through the opening in the barricade. Behind him there was a rush of sound as the Councilors surged forward, as far as the barricade. The light from the torches leaped wildly and then stilled, and all sound died away. He moved forward slowly over wet and slippery rock.

The rock sloped steeply downward to where, only a few feet away, it ended in the sharp-edged slash of darkness. Tiny streams of water trickled past his feet and slid silently over the edge to disappear forever into the lake that waited far below.

Raamo walked slowly and with great care. He reached the edge, and when he was certain that his feet were firmly planted, he leaned forward and extended his arms, to hold the urn out over the darkness of the crevice.

But the thing in the urn was not yet conquered. Its power still lived and took strength from the minds and Spirits behind him that had not yet denied it. A numbing indecision gripped him, making the urn seem to cling to his hands. He struggled to release it; and in the struggle, he slipped forward and plunged over the precipice.

He was frightened as he fell, but the urn was still in his hands, and as the waters of the lake closed over his head, he saw with a clear foretelling that the evil in the urn would be denied in his memory, and his name would become a talisman against it for many years to come.

To those who were present—the Councilors, the Erdling workmen, and those who had followed the procession—the time that followed was a wild confusion of hopeless effort and strangely violent sorrow. There were screams and moans, people who ran uselessly in circles demanding that something be done, and others who sank quietly into motionless mounds of grief.

Ropes were finally produced; and Neric, screaming and shouting orders, insisted that he be lowered down over the rim of the precipice. And it was done. The rope was not long enough to bring him near the dark surface of the lake, but by the light of the lantern that he carried, he was able to see the water below him was as smooth and untroubled as if it had been undisturbed for a million years. When Neric was drawn back up over the rim, he had ceased to shout, and he was not the same.

There came a time when they knew that there was nothing more to be done, and all sound and motion stopped except for quiet weeping. The people stood quietly, close together, touching each other for comfort, and stared through the iron grillwork towards the dark slash of the crevice. They had stood thus, quietly, for some time, when suddenly someone cried out, as if in pain, and a figure pushed forward.

Hiro was standing near the opening in the barricade. As the one who had cried out pushed past him, he saw that it was a young man, and that his wide flat face was violently contorted. The young man stepped through the opening before Hiro could reach out to stop him. For a moment he seemed to be fumbling with a large carrying pouch at his waist, and then he took something from the pouch and held it high above his head. Perhaps a foot long, metallic, and sharply pointed, the thing gleamed in the torch light. Then the young man threw it fiercely towards the chasm. It struck the rocks at the rim with a loud clanging sound and then plunged over into the darkness. When it was gone, the youth crumpled to the floor and began to sob and moan with wild abandon.

They pulled him back, then, behind the barricade, and Hiro tried to question him; but he was hysterical and almost incoherent. They were able to learn only that his name was Dergg and that he had something to tell the Council. So they took him with them on the long sad journey back to Orbora.

That night, weighted down by exhaustion and sorrow, the Council heard the story of Dergg Ursh—and with it the story of Axon Befal. Dergg Ursh, they soon saw, was a simple, graceless boy who was not at ease with the more complicated forms of spoken language. But it was impossible to doubt that he spoke sincerely. And the message that he brought was of utmost importance.

“I was always lonely,” he told the Council. “I was lonely in Erda, and in Upper Erda. My parents died when I was very small, and I had no true clan, so when I was asked to join the Nekom, I felt that at last I had something to belong to. Something important and strong, so that someday people would look up to me and give me honor.