"Well, even so, all such knowledge is not lost forever—no more than your bardery—we will give it all back to Keltia when we have driven out the Marbh-draoi and his creatures and his ways. But look now, Talyn, see where we do go."
I craned past him to peer out the bubble, looking up to orient myself by the visible stars. And I frowned, puzzled, for according to the positions of the great constellations—Caomai, the Armed King; Camcheachta, the Plough; Inion Rian na Reanna, the Daughter of the Queen of the Stars; Llenaur, the Lady of Heaven's Mantle, that great sweep of frostfire in the northwest—we were flying south, though we had all heard Ygrawn declare that our refuge lay to the north. When I looked from the stars to the earth below, I gasped: The great mountain range of the Spindles, that runs from east to west across the top of the continent, was rising up white-fanged across our path.
"We came round and over the pole from the other side of the planet," said Ailithir behind me. "All to shake off pursuit, though I think there was none even at first, and certainly there has been none all these hours since."
"How can that be?" I was staring rapt at the cold comb of peaks below. "Did they not see us in flight?"
"Do you know, I rather think that they did not," he answered after a pause. "And the reason they did not shall be explained to you later on—though you shall see it proved even more plainly before we come again to earth."
"And where and when shall that be?" Arthur had come up to stand with us; it was he who had spoken, and his voice carried no stresses other than the everyday. He met my eyes then, and gave me a curt nod which conveyed, Aye, I know your pain, and Aye, I admit to mine, and Nay, we shall not speak of it yet awhile.
To my surprise, Ailithir did not answer Arthur's inquiry. In that same instant I had other things to think about, for the ship dropped beneath us in a sudden sickening movement, that vertiginous lurch and shudder of a horse going down on its knees; Arthur reached out a hand to steady me as I swayed unbalanced. I had one brief swift thought as to how unsurprised he seemed—far more off-hand than I—to be on a starship amid all these marvels of artificing. Then I realized to my chagrin that he must have known all along; had most like been taken into the confidence of Scathach and Berain and the other warriors who must surely have shared the secret; and I felt a twinge of hurt at the seeming exclusion.
"We are coming out of true-flight and beginning our approach," said Ailithir, by way of explanation for the ship's sudden drop. "That vale below is Nordereys—Coldgates. These are the End-lands; but though they be the edge and end of the habitable places, they are far from empty. There is a secret among them that the Marbh-draoi would give half his magic to uncover, and all these years he has not dreamed of what—and whom—these hills have sheltered." He straightened in his seat. "And now they will open their gates to shelter a few more lost ones… Go you both and wake the others. We are nearing our new home."
In a very few minutes after Ailithir had warned us, the ship began a long lazy spiraling descent, dropping like a hunting snow-owl down toward the glacier-fields into the perpetual winter of the great hills.
Strapped in my seat for the landing—well, not strapped, precisely; a thing I had never heard of held me in place, a force-field like an invisible hand—I glanced round at the others. Their faces were all calm and assured, as if they had done this sort of thing many times before; as perhaps they had. For me it was breathstoppingly exciting, as I could see through the port the ship's passage spinning up veils of snow on either side. But though I strained my eyes until the sun on the white expanses made them dazzle and water, I could see no sign of the promised refuge. Until—
A flash of blue-white lightning seemed to engulf us, and the ship gave a soft, heavy shiver all down its length. I looked quickly at Ailithir, who smiled, and at Scathach, who nodded; but no explanation seemed forthcoming from either. And then I was not wanting words, for beyond the port I saw before us a great mountain that had not been there even seconds before, tucked in among taller, snowier sisters; and as I looked I saw that it was opening for us—a vast black gate yawning in its frosted flank.
So wide was that portal that, as we passed in, I could not see where its bounds might be; the edges were lost in the dimness within the mountain's heart. But I could see that the entire peak was hollowed out like a summer gourd, and rank upon rank of ships like to the one we now were in stretched away in the secret vault under the snows.
The vast chamber beneath the mountain was like to a shieling, one of the caverns used in high country for the warm stabling of stock in winter and their cool comfort in the hot season; and so, with a certain grim irony, this place was called. But by merit of its sheer size—and by reason of its grave purpose—it was like to no shieling known before, and I began to believe, as I think I had not before no matter how desperately I had wished to, in the reality of the Counterinsurgency, and its strength to set against Edeyrn.
When at last we settled to the ground, I did not even feel the jar; I was too caught up in wonder. Ever since we had passed through that strange barrier of blue fire—But Ygrawn was in the cabin now, and all round me the others were making ready to leave the ship.
She came to me as I stood a little apart, put her hand on my arm. "My sorrow I had so little time to be with you," she said in that rippling low voice of hers. "That will change from now, I promise; you and Arthur and I, aye, and the rest too, will be safe here in the shieling—and there are other folk… But enough."
Something in my silence must have spoken to her, for she all at once broke off her reassurances, and simply smiled and kissed me. Then unsealing the main hatch of the ship she stepped through, and we were close after.
We stood in the tremendous cavern hollowed from the mountain's stone heart. The chill of the place struck to the bone, and as I trudged blindly along behind Ygrawn and Ailithir, who seemed to know how to go and where in this strange unthought-of haven, I felt my mind begin to dim to a kind of unquestioning acceptance, all dull and sleepy and perversely acquiescent. It was at last too much for me—all of it, Gorlas and Daars and our flight and this place—and in my owlish daze I trod upon Berain's heels who walked in front of me, and who had suddenly halted.
Before us was a blank rock face, in the dim sconcelight gleaming with frost that had formed in the stone's veins and crevices. Ygrawn was speaking, but I could not understand a word of what she said. And as I stood there before the granite wall, dazed and sad as only a child can be with cold and weariness and the utter incomprehensibility of it all, the rock opened before us.
On the rock's far side was the shieling proper—warmth and light and many folk to welcome us. I was no less confused in that moment than I had been a moment since, standing stupefied and frozen in the dark; but though I shrank back, I could sense that the crowd pressing forward was a friendly one. Then all at once the throng parted, and my sister Tegau was bending over me, chafing my stiff fingers in hers and scanning my face anxiously for recognition, out of eyes that were the color of my own.
"Do you remember me, Tal-bach?"—gently, as if I might not remember (as if I could ever forget!), and she not wishing to fright me. She gathered my hands then to her heart, and I felt through her gwlan tunic the smooth hard curve of the breast of gold.
And then, stern hard warrior of fourteen as I thought myself, I was in her arms, my face buried in the warm soft breast, and she was ruffling my hair as she had always used to do.
The chamber she took me to was small, carved from the rock by some means I did not know, with a tiny air-shaft that wound up through the stone to pull in cold fresh air from outside and heat it on its way down. Crystals stood in niches, to give light and more warmth, and their glow fell in pleasing patterns on the rough walls and uneven floor. On a wide bed against one wall were strewn thick furs—ice-bear, red lynx, silver wolf, even a pelt of the great northern snow-lion. I was by now too weary of body and spirit even to spare a thought for my companions, where they might be or how they were faring: I threw m
yself down into the furry herb-scented softness and knew no more until Tegau set down a small tray beside me.
The delicious scent of breakfast wound into my dreams, and all at once I woke ravenous.
"Is it morning then? I must have slept for hours." In my haste I burned my mouth on the hot shakla, and puffed in air to cool it.
"Some hours," said Tegau smiling. "But as for morning—not for you. You are to eat, and then you must sleep again." At the protest forming on my lips: "It is not my order, Talyn—though I do agree—but Ailithir's. Arthur too is to spend the time as you will spend it, so you need not think you are being unfairly dealt with."
I sipped more cautiously at the shakla, uncaring of my knowledge that the drink had more in it than met the eye or even the tongue, and then applied myself to the pastai and chunk of cheese that lay on the plate.
"How did you come here?" I asked through the mouthful of gravied meat and crust. "Are the rest of the family here as well?"
"They come and go," said Tegau, "and they are all hale and happy. I am here more or less on fixed post… But the others know of your coming and are glad; you will see them when next they are here. As for your first question, I came here long before Gwaelod was lost—long before mamaith had died."
I looked up at the mention of my mother—our mother, wondering suddenly if the tale of plague my father had told me had not been just that, a mere tale; if Medeni ferch Elain had perhaps died instead of something quite different…
Tegau saw the questions forming, and sidestepped them as neatly as ever did Ailithir. "Later, braud; later you will know all. I promise! Now you must sleep again."
"Will not," I said with great spirit, but a warm, exquisite slumbrousness was blooming through me: Whatever sedative had been in the shakla had worked quick and well, and I was away.
Neither Arthur nor I was permitted to spend much of the next twenty-four hours in a waking state—unfair as we both thought it, when at last we were awake to think so. The combined wisdom of Ygrawn, Ailithir and whoever commanded in the shieling seemed to hold that such grief and terror as we had endured could be best healed from unconsciousness, and I think our own bodies concurred, however mutinous our minds might be, with that judgment. Any road, none in the shieling was like to dispute them, and Arthur and I—sleeping away for a night and a day and a night again, like a pair of wintering hedgepigs—could not dispute them.
And yet even when I woke at last—was permitted to awaken—I could not say that our elders had been in error, for the events of Daars had magically receded far enough for me to begin to contemplate them in calm—if not in freedom from pain. That last, I knew even then, would never wholly be mine when I thought of Gorlas and Daars, but at least now I could look back and face it fairly.
On opening my eyes, then, I sensed that it was day; though how precisely I knew it remained a mystery, for my inner clock had been turned all throughother, and no light seeped down through the shieling's rock roof. But it felt like daytime, perhaps because of the activity I sensed beyond the chamber door—many people, awake and bustling; so after bathing in the small pool-bath that gave on the sleeping-room, and dressing in fresh clothes from my pack, I opened the door and ventured out into the corridor.
And fell back against the door, eyes wide and jaw agape with staggerment. Half-dead with sorrow and fatigue as I had been on our arrival two nights since, I had not really registered the true size and scope of our new home. The huge chamber we had passed through—where the ships were kept and cosseted, like prized bloodstock in the most incredible of stables—was but one part of a vast underground complex.
From my chamber door I looked down through a gallery rail, two stories down, to the floor of an enormous cavern where scores of folk hurried busily about; glancing up, I saw that there were more tiers of galleries above mine—I counted ten before the helical rows were lost in the darkness of the cave roof. At intervals round the walls, under the overhang of the gallery rows, were heavy doors of bronze or copper that apparently led into other, similar caverns on various levels, or perhaps into the great ship-cave itself; and through those doors passed a constant stream of people.
I have no idea how long I simply stood there staring, watching the folk below. How many from how many places in Keltia had found their way here? How many Daarses had there been, how many Gwaelods, on how many other worlds? Were all these folk, like me, like Arthur, waifs of Edeyrn's making; or had some come here out of other reasons, out of anger or duty or love? And where in all this vast hidden city would I find those I knew—Tegau, or Ygrawn, Arthur or Ailithir or any of those who had come with me from Daars? In the end I did not have to search far; indeed not so much as a step, for just as I began to panic a cold wet nose pushed at my fingers, and I looked down with joy to see Luath. His tail was whipping back and forth in his ecstasy at having found me, and I take no shame in admitting now (indeed, I took none then) that my joy was no whit less than his.
I was down on my knees kissing him back when I felt his delight redouble, and I knew by that that Arthur had found us. Fending off Luath's renewed attentions, I turned and stood, and he was there.
"You are a lazy poor slob," he said with great affection. "Now I have been up and doing these three hours since. Come now and I will get you something to eat, though your sloth does not deserve it, and then we will go to my mother. She sent me to find you; it seems she has a thing to tell us both."
All at once I was aware of the chasm of hunger that split my middle; a pastai or two and some drugged shakla go not very far, even to fuel sleep, and I eagerly followed Arthur down to the cavern floor.
An hour later, having been stuffed to bursting by the solicitous and sainted folk who ran the cookplace—crisp brown sausages, fresh greens (with all that snow outside!), hot soup so thick it would scarcely pour, a kind of folded panbread filled with all manner of savory bits; my sorrow to say I gobbled like a week-old bonnive—when I rolled away from the table at last, it was to trudge after an increasingly impatient Arthur through one of the big doors into an adjoining cavern.
This one seemed to be devoted to offices, as the one we had just left was a place of living-quarters. Here there were banks of equipment blinking ominously, vast screens that showed the views in all directions outside the mountain in which we were hidden, hologram displays whose purpose was a mystery. Like almost everyone else in Keltia at that time, I had been deprived of access to any real technology, and the sudden revelation of such richness of enginery made me feel ignorant and poor.
Not so my foster-brother: Arthur seemed to know his way about already, and strode through this impressive array of wonders with scarcely a second glance, and again it was borne home to me that he must have been receiving such training as I knew naught of… But I kept on at his heels, considerably more daunted, wondering very privately as to his state of mind and heart, how he was feeling Gorlas's death and his own plight. Strangely, it never occurred to me to apply that thought to myself: I was in just exactly the same situation as Arthur, but somehow I did not think of it so. Perhaps the fact that I had been through it once before—the bereavement, the sudden upheaval of my entire life—made it seem less terrifying now that I was encountering it for a second time. Or perhaps I was for once simply concerned with someone else's feelings before my own, that his pain mattered more to me than mine.
Whatever the truth might have been, the speculations occupied my mind and I paid no heed to how we went or where. I came all at once to myself: We were in yet another living-cavern; Arthur had paused before a door and was setting his hand to the touchplate. He spoke his name and mine into the voice-lock next the frame, and then the door swung silently open and I followed him through.
The chamber was rather more spacious than my own, though just as simple in its furnishings; but already it bore the mark of its occupant. Ygrawn had ever had that knack, to make a place her own however briefly she had been there; and she had applied that knack here—naught overmuch, just touches her
e and there, for she had brought little enough gear with her from Daars. Yet even so the chamber seemed to have been hers for years if not for always, and I sank down into a pile of pillows and raised my eyes to her face.
"How is it with you, amhic?" She bent to kiss my cheek, and I inhaled the lily-oak fragrance that ever clung about her. The amethyst eyes held mine. "Are you well settled, Talyn?" So of course I said aye, and then I was telling her more of my meeting with Tegau, for she had seen only our first moments of reunion; told her too of my enforced and protested slumbers, and my discovery of Luath and Arthur, and my gluttonous breakfast. Her delighted laugh pealed out, and I looked at her in wonder, for I had not thought to hear her laugh so soon.
"Ah, Talyn, you are surprised that I can laugh? Well, it is not that my sorrow for my lord is any the less for it; he himself would be the first to bid me merry."
Which was surely truth; but of how she herself had wept for her lost lord, and would again, she said no word—not then, not ever. Her grief was deep and true and lasting, and she held it no one's concern but hers alone. Though I know now that there are many kinds of love and loving, and that what she had felt for Gorlas was not the love of which we bards like best to chaunt, still she mourned him honestly and well. But just then I knew none of this, and so I was still surprised.
If she saw she gave no sign. "Come," said Ygrawn instead, and as she rose from her seat I saw that she was clad rather more elegantly than either Arthur or myself: more for the halls of her own palace than the depths of the shieling.
The Hawk's Gray Feather Page 10