Until the Celebration (6 page)

“It must have been the Nekom,” Neric told her. “Kir Oblan warned us of them when we were in Erda, and he has also spoken of them before the Council. You remember how their leader, the man called Axon Befal, tried to rouse the people against us and all Ol-zhaan.”

“Yes,” Genaa said. “I remember.”

“Oblan told the Council that this Axon preaches anger and ... What is the archaic term that means the desire to do evil because evil has been done to you?”

“Vengeance,” Genaa said, and her voice was heavy with forboding. “The word was vengeance.”

“Yes, that was the word Oblan used. He said that vengeance is the first goal of those who call themselves the Nekom.”

“And Wassou?” Genaa asked. “Was he badly injured?”

“Yes, badly. But the healers have said that he will live. It seems he was set upon in the midheights of Skygrund. He was on his way to the new Erdling Garden, where he had been working with the prospective teachers. When he was found, he was able to speak enough to say that he had been set upon by three or four men—Erdlings, although they were dressed in shubas. They rushed out at him suddenly from a thicket of endbranches and began to strike him with long sharp pieces of metal. He would surely have died except that when he fell he was near the edge of the branchpath, and he managed to push himself off and into a long free-fall. His attackers followed, but his greater skill at gliding saved him. He was able to prolong his glide long after the Erdlings were forced to land on the forest floor. He was found and carried to the healers by some Erdlings from the surface city of Upper Erda. He was bloody and fainting when they reached the healers.”

Again Genaa shook her head, and then sat silently for many moments, her hands pressed against her mouth. Her eyes were enormous and bleak with horror. When she spoke again her voice quivered. “Poor Wassou. He is so old and frail. Why would they wish to harm such a one?”

“Who can say?” Neric answered. “Except that he was of the Geets-kel. Perhaps the Nekom intend to take vengeance against all who were once Geets-kel.”

“But why Wassou? He was the first among the Geets-kel to oppose Regle and accept our goals. And since the Rejoyning he has set an example, not only to the Geets-kel but to all who were once Ol-zhaan. He was among the first to leave his palace and take a nid-place in a guild home. And no one has done as much to hasten the preparation of the Erdling nid-places and Gardens.”

“I know. It would seem that vengeance is a weapon that wounds the innocent.”

“What will be done to them—the Nekom?” Genaa asked. “To those who attacked Wassou?”

“I’m not sure. There is to be an emergency meeting of the Council in an hour’s time, to discuss what must be done.”

Genaa sighed. Like Neric, she had spent the morning at a Senate meeting, except that she had met with Kindar, in Orbora. But she, too, had returned exhausted and unjoyful. Throughout the morning each person who had appeared before the Senate had been desperately troubled and fearful. Although the Kindar had been urged repeatedly to bring any problem concerning the Rejoyning to the immediate attention of the Senate, they would not do so. In the face of extreme anxiety, frustration, or even fear, they chanted hymns of Peace, practiced rituals of joyfulness, and consumed larger and larger quantities of Berry. Until at last, when the burden had grown beyond the reach of ritual or Berry, they came to the Senate desperate and demoralized.

Among the petitioners whom Genaa had seen that morning had been a Kindar carpenter whose trencher knives and chisels had been replaced by Erdling tools— and he was certain that the tools were cursed. Their very efficiency—the sharp bite that shaped the wood with such enchanted swiftness—was proof, to him, of their accursedness. Twice already, they had caused him small injuries. They were, he was certain, only waiting for the right moment to take his life.

There had been, also, two Kindar bond-pairs whose nid-places were in the farheights, near some of the first Erdling height-dwellers. They were afraid that they were being poisoned by the smoke that came from the Erdling hearthfires and of the effect of the rough and tempestuous Erdling children on their own children’s peacefulness and Joy. They were even terrified, although they hesitated to say so, for the lives of their pets and their children at the hands of the flesh-eaters, who were now their neighbors.

But the most troubling of all, twice that morning, Kindar had been brought before the Senate who were far gone in Berry-dreaming and clearly not suffering from the effects of the Wissenberry alone. Genaa had been horrified to learn that they had eaten the fruit of the pavo-vine. Growing only in the farheights, this parasitic plant produced a small green berry that was capable of causing extreme hallucinations and was quickly and incurably addictive. Eaten regularly, it soon brought about a dream state from which there was no awakening. For generations the use of the pavo-berry had been forbidden and almost unheard of in Green-sky. But now, since the withering of the Root, the Wissenberry seemed to be gradually losing its milder dream-inducing power, and there were those who were turning to the deadly fruit of the pavo-vine.

All morning Genaa had searched for answers to difficult questions, and when midday had arrived, bringing a free half-day, she had returned to her nid-chamber determined to spend the free hours in rest. And now, a new and even more frightening problem had arisen and, as a member of the Council, she would have to go to the emergency meeting to search for a solution. Genaa sighed again and rose wearily from her nid. She put on the shuba she had so recently removed and then stood limply, head drooping, while Neric helped her with the wing-panels, tying the fastenings tightly at wrist and ankle.

Neric regarded her anxiously. “Wouldn’t you like to rest a little longer?” he asked. “There is still time before the meeting.”

Genaa shook her head. “It would be useless. I couldn’t rest now.”

Reaching out, Neric pulled her to him caressingly, thinking to comfort her with the ritual of close communion, but she pushed him away.

“This is not the time for Love-rituals,” she said. “How could we comfort each other, knowing what has happened to poor Wassou—and what has happened to the Rejoyning.”

Turning away she walked to the window and stood looking out into the soft green of the forest.

“What has happened?” she asked again. “Will it fail, the Rejoyning?”

Neric went to stand beside her at the window, but he did not try to answer.

“We were all so sure,” Genaa said. “So sure that when the truth was told and the Erdlings free, evil would be conquered, and all would be as it was in the early days. Were we wrong? Would it have been better to leave things as they were?”

“I don’t know,” Neric said. “I have wondered, too, at times.”

“Raamo,” Genaa said suddenly. “I can’t bear to think what this will do to Raamo. He has been so troubled lately—and now this.”

“Where is Raamo?” Neric asked. “At the Vine Palace again?”

“Yes. With the children. He goes there every day to see if they are well.”

“I know,” Neric said. “He is seldom here at the youth hall. It has been several days since I have spoken with him.” Neric smiled ruefully. “And there are few enough here whom I may speak to. Who would have thought that life in a youth hall could be so lonely. I wonder what they think of us, Genaa, that they leave us so much alone.”

They both stood quietly a moment, trying to understand what had happened to them. In their presence the young Kindar seemed at times to be both intrigued and embarrassed, awed and suspicious, worshipful and resentful. It was obvious that in their minds Neric and Genaa were still Ol-zhaan, as well as Rejoyners and members of the Joined Council, and as such, impossible to accept into the warm and easy bonds of youth hall life. Their presence in common room or food-taking chamber invariably signaled the end of games and dances and a hushing of laughter and conversation. In all the time since their arrival in the hall, there had been only two exceptions to this rule of exclusion—and they had been exceptional indeed. The two had been the Erdlings, the first and, as yet, the only Erdlings to take up residence in a Kindar youth hall.

These Erdling hall-dwellers were Sard, at twenty-one only a little older than Neric himself, and Mawno, perhaps a year younger. Only two months before, when they had first arrived at the Stargrund Youth Hall, they had regarded the former Ol-zhaan with even more suspicion and hostility than did the Kindar. But in a remarkably short time, the attitude of the Erdlings had changed to warm and open acceptance. Neric was not sure why.

Perhaps it was in the Erdling nature, with their unpatterned and informal relationships, to be able to make such sudden and seemingly complete changes. There was also the fact that the Erdlings had found their Kindar hall-mates extremely resistant to their offers of friendship. And that, too, might have encouraged the Erdlings to resort more quickly to friendship with former Ol-zhaan.

Sard and Mawno were true Erdlings, and the friendship had been enlightening, if not always comfortable. They were, Neric thought, like a pair of treebears, playful and charming and yet uncomfortably unpredictable. Sturdy and golden in appearance, boisterous and abrupt in manner, they seemed to Neric to be entirely typical products of Erdling culture. And yet they claimed to be just the opposite—daring and unconventional explorers and innovators. The very fact of their presence in the Kindar youth hall proved, they said, that they were rebels.

“My parents won’t tell anyone where I’m living,” Mawno said once. “They haven’t even told the rest of our clan.”

“Why not?” Genaa had asked.

“They say I’ve disgraced them.”

Mawno was lying, sprawled like a sima, on the floor of Neric’s chamber, his long hair and swarthy golden skin contrasting strangely with the elegance of the elaborately embroidered shuba he was wearing. He would have looked much more natural, Neric had thought, in the tight-fitting fur of his native costume.

The conversation had taken place only a few days before, on the afternoon of a full free day. Raamo had been there, briefly, and he and Genaa, along with the two Erdlings, had gathered in Neric’s chamber to relax and entertain themselves as best they could. Not far away, in the large common room, there was singing and laughter, which they knew would cease abruptly if any one of them appeared.

“Disgraced?” Genaa had asked. “What have you done that is disgraceful?”

“Nothing,” Mawno said smiling. “It is simply that I have chosen to live in a youth hall. My family, like most Erdlings, does not approve of allowing young people to leave their home caverns until they are old enough to choose bond-partners. And there are forbiddances against some of your rituals—except to the bonded.”

Mawno had lowered his eyes as he spoke and his face flushed, as if someone had used a term of extreme unjoyfulness in a public place.

“I know,” Neric had said. “Those of us who were assigned to the Erdling Senates were instructed on such matters. There are many such strange taboos and forbiddances in Erda. They became necessary, I think, because of insufficient training in Peace and Joy. When the strong emotions of communion are not properly trained and patterned, they can lead to danger—and to the necessity for strange taboos.”

“I disagree.” It was Sard who spoke. During most of the discussion he had been pacing around the room, but now he stopped before Neric and stared down at him. Tall and fine-boned, with a mind that cut like an Erdling knife, he could almost have passed for a Kindar, except for his lack of graces. His blunt, unmannered denial was typical, Neric thought. “Our taboos grew out of our lack of access to the ingredients necessary to the production of youth-wafers. Where food and living space is limited, as it has been in Erda, and the means to produce contraceptives is lacking, youth halls would, indeed, be dangerous. Like all taboos, ours grew out of practical necessity, and only much later began to be related to such impractical matters as good and evil. But whatever their origin, our taboos are no more strange to you than your everlasting rituals and ceremonies are to us.”

Turning suddenly towards Raamo, Sard’s face underwent another of its completely unpredictable changes. Smiling, he said, “Don’t be concerned little Ol-zhaan. I am not unjoyful towards your comrade. It is only that I cannot resist matching my dull Erdling wits with your learned friend.”

“Dull, indeed,” Genaa had said laughing. “Your Erdling wits are as sharp as your Erdling steel, and I think you know it very well.”

Sard looked at Genaa and there was something in his gaze that made Neric think of the red glow of Erdling hearth-fire. “Well,” Sard had said softly, “if my wits are like Erdling steel, yours are like a Kindar raindrop in the sunshine—clear and dazzling.” He stared at Genaa for a long moment and when he spoke again the red glow was in his voice as well. “Who would have thought an Ol-zhaan could be so lovely.”

The discussion had left Neric with a strange confusion of feelings, feelings that he found to be unnameable and, for the most part, not particularly joyful. Remembering only added to his present state of unjoyfulness. Dropping his head into his hands, he sat for a long time in a decidedly un-Kindarlike attitude of dejection. He did not lift his head until he felt Genaa’s hand on his shoulder.

“Come,” she said wearily, “we must help decide what must be done about the Nekom.”

W
HEN GENOA AND NERIC
left the youth hall, they made their way along the public branchpaths, through the heart of the city, to the great public assembly hall of Orbora. Although it had long ago been decided that the permanent quarters of the Joined Council would be in the Temple Grove in the meeting chamber of the Ol-zhaan, they had not, as yet, made the move. Nearly all of the Council members were in favor of the change. It was agreed that it was only fitting that the beautiful chamber in the Grove should be used by the Council—now the highest authority in Green-sky. However, the move to the Grove continued to be postponed, at the request of the delegates from Erda.