"I am warned, grandfather," she said, slinging her quiver over her shoulder and adjusting its balance.
As Firekeeper ran to meet Blind Seer, quiver bouncing lightly against her shoulder, knife at hip, unstrung bow in hand, she fought down the fear that Moon Frost would be waiting beside the blue-eyed wolf. She imagined the two wolves standing shoulder-to-shoulder, Moon Frost perhaps biting playfully at one of Blind Seer's ears or grabbing at his ruff. The image was so vivid that Firekeeper's feet started to slow, reluctant to bring her face-to-face with what it seemed she must find.
But Blind Seer waited alone for her, the dappling of light falling through the leaves making him almost invisible. He started for the deeper forest before Firekeeper had caught up with him.
"We go inland, first," Blind Seer said when she was trotting beside him in the easy mile-eating jog both could effortlessly maintain for hours. "There is a place where the stone comes above the soil, and the humans built on that rise. I would never have found it, but for ravens calling. I never learned what had them so agitated, but I did find something worth the climb."
In the heart of the forest where they now traveled, summer was well established. The leaves had darkened and lost the tenderness of springtime. Oaks, maples, hazels, and gum spread their leaves to catch the sunlight. Somewhat lower down, scrubby pine and holly mingled with fruiting shrubs. Briar, blackberry, raspberry, and honeysuckle laced tightly in the interstitial areas. Moss carpeted the damp clay where the duff had not settled. Lichen grew on fallen tree limbs, and mushrooms paraded in the shadows.
This was a damper, younger forest than the ones Firekeeper knew best, a forest that had filled in after the trees had been cut away by human hands or leveled by the violence of storms. This forest's understory was thicker, its odors headily enhanced by the carrying wetness, every evocative scent underscored with the bite of salt.
Here and there were the signs that once humans had claimed this territory for their own. It might be shrubs growing in too straight a line or a cluster of mature fruit trees struggling to maintain their rights against the crowding of exuberant sapling oaks. There were no open fields, but crowds of younger trees—some now growing to dominate kin sprouted the same year—told the skilled eye where once a clearing might have been.
Noticing more and more of such signs, Firekeeper was not surprised when Blind Seer slowed and began to cast around as after an elusive scent.
"Near here, I think," said his ears and tail. "Yes!"
Ears perking, the blue-eyed wolf slightly changed his course. Soon they had intersected a wide path and began to climb. Initially, Firekeeper thought this must be a well-used game trail and wondered at its width. Two deer could walk side by side on this trail and their shoulders would hardly brush.
Could it be a trail cut by Wise Deer? Firekeeper knew there must be such, but she thought that yarimaimalom would not mark their ways so clearly. The Royal Deer she had known before did not. What purpose did this wide way serve?
Firekeeper had her first clue as to the true nature of this trail when she and Blind Seer came to a place where runoff from one of the frequent rainshowers had cut away the duff. Her bare foot encountered not the sticky coldness of clay, but rock. Moreover, this rock was smoothed and polished, as one would expect to find in a streambed but not on the side of a hill.
"Blind Seer," she called softly, "hold up a moment."
The wolf waited, then came to watch as Firekeeper scraped away the surface vegetation. His tail wagged slowly when he saw what she had found.
"This was once a roadway," Firekeeper said, "one paved with stones such as we have seen in cities. Was there a city here once?"
"Not a city," Blind Seer said. "At least, I do not think so. Come along and see."
Firekeeper motioned for him to wait while she checked the extent of the road more carefully.
"Maybe not a city," she agreed, "but this road was no small one. Even with the paving broken and pushed apart by young growing things I can guess that carriage or cart could have used this trail with ease. Lead on. I would see who these were who were grand enough to need such a road."
Blind Seer bumped his head into her arm.
"I thought you would be interested. I don't know why I took so long to bring you here."
Moon Frost's doing, Firekeeper thought sourly, but she said nothing—not even to tease as she would once have done so easily. She wanted to do nothing to remind Blind Seer of the she-wolf they had left behind.
They mounted the trail swiftly, for the incline was easy, curving to go around the occasional large rock that interrupted the hillside like an island in a sea of green. As they walked, Firekeeper was reminded of the Norwood Grant, where she and Blind Seer had spent some time. There, too, the rocks had claimed their part of the woodlands, and she had often sought them out as comfortable places from which to watch the stars. The memory made her feel friendly toward these otherwise strange forests.
At last they emerged onto a less thickly wooded hilltop. The reason there were fewer trees was immediately obvious.
"Here the winds do not like those who thrust themselves up too tall," Firekeeper said, looking to where the shattered length of more than one such woodland giant was giving itself back to the forest in mold and loam.
"But their children do not learn," Blind Seer agreed. "They rise, free now from the shade of their parents, to defy the power of the wind."
"Until the next storm comes," Firekeeper said. "Then those who have forgotten how to bend will fall. Still, it is nice to be out in the sunlight again, no matter how it comes to touch the ground."
She began to seat herself on an upthrust bit of rock, but stopped in midmotion. Her automatic inspection for anything that might be dangerous—whether as large as a sunning rattlesnake or a small as a biting ant—had shown her that this rock was no more placed by natural forces than the trail had been.
"What is this?" she said, kneeling to better inspect her find. "A bit of wall, and I do not think it was just set here to border a garden patch. Look at how wide it is at the base. It was meant to hold weight."
Blind Seer scratched vigorously behind one ear.
"If you say so, dear heart," he replied. "Humans pile rock on rock to make their lairs as no other creatures do. However, I have not made a study of how they manage to keep them from tumbling over."
"I have, a little," Firekeeper admitted. "When last spring brought us to New Bardenville there was much talk of the best ways to build both in rock and in wood. I listened because I thought such lore might someday be useful for making some small lair of my own."
"Females and nest-building," Blind Seer laughed. "Why not just dig into the earth as our mothers do?"
"Perhaps because I lack strong front claws," Firekeeper retorted, feeling very strange at the turn the talk was taking. "In any case, my fires cannot breathe well beneath the earth. I thought more to build a house for them than for myself."
Blind Seer rose and shook, scattering bits of leaf and dirt to all sides.
"Clever," he acknowledged. "Come, let me show you some of the places where these humans built lairs to house their fires. The weather has done much to wear them away, but interesting scraps remain."
"Lead," Firekeeper replied. "This has been a good hunt so far."
She followed the tip of Blind Seer's tail as he moved with silent sinuosity over the broken ground, slipping between heaps of rock that were now clearly identifiable as broken building material. Most was the local rock, broken to size and often showing remnants of the mortar that had held it in place. Occasionally, however, there were scraps of enameled brick such as that which was common on the mainland. There were also remnants of stone carved into elaborate borders, often found with polished—if mostly broken—tiles.
Firekeeper wanted to stop and look more closely at these things, perhaps collect a few more shining scraps as bribes for the ravens, but Blind Seer urged her on.
"Come. This is nothing to what lies ahead. T
his is mouthing at a hank of rabbit's fur hanging on a bit of bramble when you might have its hot meat."
Firekeeper laughed at the image, quickening her pace to match Blind Seer's, nor was she disappointed when he led her through a tangle of honeysuckle and wild rose into the remnants of what must have once been a beautiful room.
The roof was entirely gone, but the angle of the two walls that still stood had protected the interior from all but the most direct precipitation. Honeysuckle and rose made such a solid barrier on the sides where the walls had almost completely collapsed that for a moment Firekeeper entertained the idea that the wild flowers were somehow protecting the shell of the room. Then she saw without fancy.
Far from protecting the remaining room, the honeysuckle and wild rose had contributed to the collapse of the stonework walls. Perhaps some day long, long ago the humans who had built this place had planted the flowering vines along the outside of the wall. Firekeeper had seen this done in many places, the flowering vines treasured for their scent, for the shade they cast, and even for the birds they attracted near.
Had this room then been a lady's bower? The quiet retreat wherein the lady of the house came when the summer heat grew too intense? Had it been a study or an eating room? Firekeeper felt fairly certain it had not been a kitchen or laundry room, for the two walls that remained were designed for beauty, not mere practicality. Grease stains were surely never meant to accumulate here, nor steam and soap scum to dim the elaborate borders.
Firekeeper raised the lower edge of her shirt and used the fabric to rub away the dirt that clung to the walls. Blind Seer watched with curiosity.
"What do you see there, Firekeeper?"
Firekeeper continued her cleaning, wishing for a bigger piece of cloth and a bucket of warm water.
"The wall is decorated with pictures made from small bits of stone or glass or tile," she said. "We saw the like in New Kelvin. Such work is very time-consuming to do, or so I understand, and not so common in buildings unless the owner is very rich."
"What is pictured?" Blind Seer asked.
"I can't quite tell," Firekeeper admitted. "Here are flowers, certainly, though as with many of the things humans draw, I cannot tell for certain what type of flower. Birds, too, though I am not sure about the type of bird—a robin, maybe, though the red may simply be mold."
The wolf came closer so that he might look, and bumped his head against her arm.
"Do you like it?" he asked, and Firekeeper thought he sounded a bit tentative, even shy.
"This place is very interesting," she assured him, reaching so she might embrace him. "I am learning slowly to understand the fashions in which humans do their decorations, and I think you are right. There is something here that does not seem like what we have seen in New Kelvin. It is harder to say whether or not the artists favor the style of those who founded Hawk Haven and Bright Bay, for much of those people's work was destroyed in the days following the Plague. Still, I think you may be right. This seems more like what we saw in u-Seeheera than what we have seen elsewhere."
"I did not make a hasty judgment," Blind Seer said. "There are other places like this one—though I think these walls are two of the best for holding pictures. My eyes must still sometimes struggle to tell what the humans have drawn, but, do you know what, Firekeeper?"
"What?"
"The wolves I was here with—Moon Frost, Freckles, and some of the others—they could not see either a flower or a bird or a cloud in the sky until I showed them how to look."
Firekeeper must fight down a touch of jealousy at this reminder of how Blind Seer had first come here before she could think clearly about his comment.
"That is interesting. You would think that these Wise Wolves would have learned something of human ways, living in such harmony with humans as they do. Instead it seems that they have kept some blindness while you, dear heart, have learned to see a little with human eyes."
"Even as you see with wolf's eyes," Blind Seer said.
"I wish I could show Derian this," Firekeeper said. "I think there must be things I am missing. I wonder if there is writing here among the pictures."
"Writing?"
Blind Seer tilted his head and stared at the wall, his brow furrowing in what some would have called a most human manner.
"Yes," Firekeeper went on. "We know that the people of Hawk Haven and Bright Bay make their words in one way, but those of New Kelvin make them in an entirely different way. The Liglimom use yet a third form. I think I might see traces of it here, but I cannot be certain it is not simply an ornamental border."
"Could Derian?" Blind Seer asked doubtfully.
"I don't know," Firekeeper said, "but surely as the Ones get the best bites from the kill, so Derian has by now seen how these Liglimom humans write their language."
Firekeeper glanced up and noticed that the sun was beginning to set. It would be many hours, though, before full darkness came.
"You said there are other places," she said. "Can you take me to another?"
Blind Seer tugged her hand in his jaw, as gently as a snake carrying eggs.
"Follow," he suggested, and so Firekeeper did, her heart lighter than it had been for many days—perhaps since that evil night when Harjeedian had taken them from the banks of the Flin River.
Shivadtmon didn't show any trace of his prior agitation when he arrived a few days later for his next Pellish lesson with Waln. Indeed, he focused so intensely on reviewing the routine phrases that Waln thought he might need to start his efforts at subversion over again, maybe even with another person entirely.
If Shivadtmon had said something inappropriate to one of his supervisors and been slapped back into line, especially if powerful concepts like "deity" or "omen" had been used in the reprimand, there might be no bringing the aridisdu over to Waln's way of thinking.
Waln knew perfectly well the power of abstract ideas. Even if residents of his native islands didn't worship deities as these people did, there wasn't a sailor alive who didn't know deep down in his heart that the ocean was a potent and capricious force. And though Waln didn't like to accept this, he knew that Queen Valora had bought him with nothing other than words, words like "lord" and "baron," words that had transformed a whore's bastard son into a peer of the realm through a medium no more potent than breath.
When he thought about it, Waln realized that Valora's rulership of the Isles was another thing based on little more than words. Valora called herself "queen" and expected people to respect that word and the lineage it represented, never mind her own lack of deeds. Could she and her little fleet have held the Isles if the residents had decided to resist her? Waln didn't think so.
Words were very powerful indeed, and Waln would not overlook their power here among the Liglimom. Best to begin with this lesson.
"Slowly, aridisdu," Waln said. "You are running the words together. Separate them more distinctly from each other. There is a pause between 'good' and 'afternoon,' another between 'Your' and 'Majesty.'"
Shivadtmon pursed his lips as if he might object, but obeyed.
"Good afternoon, Your Majesty," he said, this time exaggerating the syllables too much, so that "Majesty" became "Ma-jes-tee."
Waln swallowed a sigh. Accurate instruction and flattery did not go hand in hand.
However, as much as he would rather move to flattery, Waln could not have his student poorly taught, or his efforts at winning Shivadtmon to his side would be undone the moment Barnet or someone else corrected the aridisdu's diction.
Then Waln realized how he could combine fishing for information as to Shivadtmon's mood with the lesson.
"That is too great a separation," Waln said, "especially in the phrase 'Your Majesty.' Pellish does not break between each syllable any more than your own language does. Like you, we pause between words. The difference is that where both of our languages have compound words… "
Waln felt a flash of pride that he remembered the technical term he had heard Barnet us
e.
"… Pellish has far fewer compounds than does your own language."
Waln saw Shivadtmon frowning, so quickly seized chalk and wrote an example on a slate. Waln was far from literate in Liglimosh, but two sea voyages with little to do had given him ample time to practice a limited vocabulary.
"Let us look at your own title, 'aridisdu,'" Waln said, writing the word. "It breaks into two parts. 'Disdu' is the root that means 'one who has been initiated into the service of the deities.' Am I correct?"
Shivadtmon nodded, and Waln was pleased to see him relaxing slightly. He'd thought choosing this word with its implied acknowledgment of his student's special status would be a good idea.
" 'Ari' indicates that you belong to the elite group which has intensively studied the great wealth of knowledge handed down through divination of the divine will."
Shivadtmon relaxed even more.
"That is so," he said, nodding regally. "Not only must the aridisdum study prior divinations, we must study the interpretations written by our forebears, especially as to what these past messages indicate about the code of behavior pleasing to the divinities."
"Not only that," Waln said, figuring it couldn't hurt to rub in a little more oil, "you aridisdum must also study how to interpret omens yourselves. There is a great deal of responsibility included in the small syllable 'ari.'"
Shivadtmon smiled, and Waln returned his focus to linguistics.
"In Pellish, however, we would probably use two separate words for the concept, rather than combining the two. We speak of a 'head gardener,' not 'headgardener.' Indeed, the latter might imply one who gardens upon heads, rather than one who is in the highest authority regarding garden lore."
Shivadtmon frowned. "Pellish is not a strong language if it is so open to misinterpretation. Why say 'head' when you have a perfectly good word in 'chief'?"
That last was beyond Waln's ability to answer, so he ignored the question, rightly guessing that Shivadtmon was less interested in learning the evolution of Pellish than he was in asserting the superiority of his native language.
Wolf Captured Page 31