THE THIRD STAGE IN THE TRAINING OF THE NOMANA
Doing
In which the novice takes responsibility
for his own actions.
15 The Land Cloud
MORNING STAR SMILED UP AT THE WILDMAN, THINKING she was still dreaming. She reached up her arms to embrace him.
"Oh, Wildman! I knew you were alive!"
"Yes, I'm alive."
But instead of coming closer, he moved away. Morning Star let her arms fall back down. She was awake now.
The Wildman left the hut. Morning Star heard the murmur of low voices outside. She rose to her feet and brushed the dirt from her clothes. She felt the hot tingling of a blush redden her face. She wished she hadn't reached up her arms like that.
She came out into the bright daylight, blinking, and forgot her shame in sheer amazement. There before her were two strange and beautiful beasts. The beasts turned their long narrow faces towards her and fixed her with their large brown eyes. As she gazed at them she experienced a second shock: she could see their colors. The auras were faint but unmistakable, a whitish shimmer tinged with blue, like the winter sky. It was the first time she had ever seen the colors on an animal. It made her think they must be somehow human.
She moved forward, hand outstretched, and stroked their necks and cheeks. They permitted her to do so without turning away. She saw how her hand made a ripple in the aura but didn't change its color.
"They're called Caspians."
The voice spoke from behind her. Morning Star turned and saw a slender stranger. She too was beautiful.
Where am I? thought Morning Star. Everyone here is beautiful. Except me.
She looked then for the Wildman. He stood to one side, his eyes on the road. She took in his bright-colored clothes and the dull green of his aura, and understood immediately that he had cut himself off from his recent past.
"I'm glad you're alive, Wildman," she said.
"Didn't think to see you again," he said.
"You're one of the Nomana, aren't you?" This was the beautiful girl. She sounded excited and fearful. "Please. I need your help."
"I'm sorry," said Morning Star, struggling with a rising sadness. "I've left the Nom. I can't call myself a Noma any more."
"You, too?" said the Wildman.
The beautiful girl fell to her knees before Morning Star, and taking her hand, she kissed it.
"I kneel to you," she said. "I kiss your hand. I beg you to help us."
Morning Star blushed once more, with a new shame.
"I'm sorry. I can't help you."
"Then tell me where to find those who can. I have so little time. The Glimmen will be burned. Only the Noble Warriors can save my people."
Morning Star, hearing this, pushed aside her own troubles and did her best to make sense of what the beautiful girl was saying.
"Who is to burn the Glimmen? Why?"
So she learned about the Orlans and the passion of Amroth Jahan and the plight of Echo Kittle, and her sympathy was awakened.
"Anacrea is far away," she said. "I don't have the power to defend the Glimmen against an army. But there's a Noma walking this very road who has more power than any of us." Then, remembering Seeker's answer to the pleas of the women on the ferry, she added, "But I don't know that he'd agree to help you."
Echo Kittle sprang to her feet.
"How far is he from here?"
"I left him at noon yesterday, heading for the forest."
The Wildman stared at her.
"Who?"
"Seeker."
"Seeker!"
Echo then understood that the Wildman knew this great Noma, too.
"He's a friend of yours?"
"He was."
Morning Star watched his colors and saw a glimmer of shame. So the Wildman too felt that he had failed.
"Come with me," said Echo. "Beg him to help me."
The Wildman shook his head.
"I go another way."
"Seeker has a mission of his own," said Morning Star. "I don't think he'll stop for you."
Echo saw that she must rely on her own determination. She called to Kell, and the Caspian came to her side. Morning Star looked on in wonder as the beautiful girl mounted the beautiful beast. They were like magical beings from some other, finer world.
"I'll make him stop," said Echo. "Once he's in the Glimmen, he's in my world."
She urged Kell onto the track and into a canter. With a wave she was gone, down the high road to the west.
The Wildman and Morning Star were left alone together.
"Heya, Wildman," she said softly. "Looks like you're a bandit again."
He avoided her eyes. Her gaze made him uncomfortable.
"No telling what I am," he said.
"Any telling where you're going?"
He gave a shrug.
"Spikertown."
"Mind if I go with you? For now."
"I don't own the road."
This was permission enough. Morning Star turned her attention to the second Caspian, grazing nearby. She approached her, and the mare lifted her beautiful head to gaze at her, curious but unafraid.
"She won't let you ride her," said the Wildman.
Morning Star put out one hand and touched the mare's shimmering colors. Then she stroked her neck. Then she laid one arm over the Caspian's back and rested her body against her flank. The mare did not move. Morning Star closed her eyes and pressed her brow to the mare's side and pictured her own aura merging with the aura of the mare. She had no idea what would result from this. She was responding instinctively to finding that the beautiful beast had an aura like hers.
The mare shuddered and tossed her mane. She turned her head round and pushed at Morning Star with her nose. Morning Star opened her eyes then and faced the mare, and slowly their heads bent towards each other until they were touching, brow to brow. As they touched, Morning Star knew, though she could not see, that they were sharing colors—that the same aura now enfolded them both.
This gave her a warm shivery sensation that she'd never experienced before. She and the mare were now linked, like sisters. She knew nothing about the Caspian beyond that, and of course the Caspian knew nothing about her. But from this moment on there was trust between them.
"She'll let me ride her now," she said to the Wildman. "Help me to mount."
The Wildman gave her his hand, and she jumped up onto the mare's back.
"Thank you."
The mare walked a little way, very slowly, to allow Morning Star to become familiar with the novel motion. She broke into a slow trot. Morning Star clutched at her mane and laughed at the jerky ride. Then the mare slipped into a smooth canter, sweeping up the road, turning in a wide curve, and so returned to where the Wildman stood watching.
He was smiling, clapping his hands in applause.
"Heya, Star!"
Morning Star waved to him, pink-faced, panting, happy.
"She's so beautiful. What's her name?"
"I don't know."
She leaned down and whispered into the mare's ear.
"What's your name, beauty?"
The mare flicked her ears, but of course could give no other response.
"I'll call you Sky," said Morning Star, "because you have the colors of the sky." And to the Wildman, "Jump up. She'll carry us both."
So the Wildman swung himself up onto the mare's back and put his arms round Morning Star's waist.
"How's that, Sky?"
The Caspian moved off at a gentle walk, her head nodding up and down as she went. Then, at Morning Star's urging, she increased her pace and broke into an easy canter. And so they rode east, towards the Great River.
Morning Star felt the cool of the wind on her face and the heat of the Wildman at her back, and for now she was happy. Her past was all failure. Her future was empty. This ride would come to an end. But she had found her beautiful Wildman again, and she asked for nothing more from life.
As dusk fell, Seeker
was making his way down the road that ran through the great forest. He was weary and hungry, and he had no way of knowing how far the forest extended, but he did not stop to rest. The shadows deepened rapidly between the dark winter trees, and in a short while he found he could barely see the road ahead. He began to think it would be wise to stop and rest until dawn.
At this moment a light dropped out of the sky—or rather, as he soon saw, out of the branches of the trees above. It was a lantern with a flame burning inside a pierced tin windshield, attached to a long cord. It dangled in the roadway before him, illuminating his startled face and casting his shadow onto the surrounding tree trunks.
Next to drop from the branches was a basket, also suspended from a cord. In the basket was a long curving sausage. He looked up, but he could see no one in the darkness above. So deciding that questions could come later, he took the sausage and started to eat.
The sausage was so tasty, and he was so absorbed in eating it, that he never heard the Glimmeners descend from their high perches and drop softly onto the forest floor. He only became aware of their presence when they began to appear between the trees, walking with soft tread towards him, in the glow of the dangling lantern.
They came from every side, like ghosts, with slender forms and pale lovely faces. There was no aggression in their manner, and so he felt no fear.
In the lead was Echo Kittle.
"You are the Noble Warrior they call Seeker?"
"I am," said Seeker, now even more surprised. "How do you know my name?"
"I met some friends of yours on the road."
One of the older Glimmeners bowed and spoke.
"Darkness has fallen, sir. May we offer you the hospitality of our homes for the night?"
"Your homes?"
The Glimmener pointed up into the branches above.
"Our homes are very near," he said. "We can offer you food and drink and a comfortable bed. But you will have to climb."
Now that he had eaten a little, Seeker realized how hungry he was, and a bed for the night would refresh him more than a litter of damp leaves between the trees.
"Thank you," he said. "I accept your offer. But I must be on the road again at first light."
The lantern rose as he climbed, drawn by some invisible hand high above him. Echo's brother Sander went ahead, slipping upwards through the branches like a bird. Seeker followed, from foothold to foothold, feeling heavy and clumsy by comparison. And as he climbed, lights came on in the upper branches round him and sparkled like stars in the forest night.
"Have you got one of the new riding beasts?" Sander asked him.
"No," said Seeker, not knowing what he meant.
"Echo has. She's brought one back."
The nearer he climbed to the highest branches where the Glimmeners lived, the more these lights revealed to him. There before his astonished eyes, seemingly suspended in shadows and air, were little homes made up of many rooms, all separate from each other but clustered close together, tumbled up and down and this way and that as if some storm had blown the houses into their various parts and tossed them into the high branches to perch wherever they fell. Each room had a roof, a door, windows; and through these windows, as he climbed, Seeker saw scenes of domestic tranquillity. A family seated round a table eating dinner; a mother tucking two children side by side into a quilt-covered bed; an old lady in a high-backed chair, at work on her embroidery by lamplight. He saw a line of jovial fellows on a bench, all with tankards in their hands, drinking and laughing. Altogether it was very like passing through a village at night, except that he was passing through it upwards.
"Why do you live in trees?" he asked Sander.
"We just do," said Sander. "Why do you live where you live?"
"If you don't like it, you don't have to come," said a voice from above. It was Orvin Chipe. He glowered at Seeker as he clambered up to the main living branch. "We don't get many groundlings up here. We keep ourselves to ourselves."
In this way Seeker was guided to the Kittle family home, and there he was greeted by Echo's mother.
"So you're the one who's to save us!" she exclaimed, bobbing a greeting and smiling even as she dabbed tears from her eyes. "My Echo says we're all to be destroyed, and what a wonder it is to have her returned to us! Do take the long couch, you'll find it very comfortable, like resting on air, though I say it myself."
Seeker sat on the couch and looked round him. Three glowing lamps illuminated a room papered in a pink and green floral pattern. At the center stood a polished table, with an arrangement of winter blossoms in a terra-cotta vase. All round were armchairs and couches, into which his hosts had settled themselves to gaze upon him. For all the urgency of his mission and his longing for sleep, it seemed impolite not to admire the domestic arrangements.
"What a pretty room."
"Oh, do you think so?" cried Mrs. Kittle. "It's just the way we like to do things in our family. It is true, I must say, that others have been kind enough to suggest that I have a knack. But in the end it's no more than what I call a home, and a home should be pretty, don't you think?"
Food and drink now appeared and were offered to Seeker. As he ate, the Glimmeners watched him with open curiosity and whispered among themselves.
"So you're the Noble Warrior, eh?" said Mr. Kittle.
"What's a Noble Warrior?" said Sander, impressed.
"It's just a name," said Orvin.
"Let him eat," said Echo.
"How do you find the couch?" said Mrs. Kittle.
"Very comfortable," Seeker replied.
"No doubt you're wondering who made it. He made it." She nodded proudly at her husband. "Tell him, my dear."
"No, no," said her husband. "He doesn't want to know about furniture."
"I don't see why not. If we're not to be burned to death, then we need somewhere comfortable to sit at our ease."
"Mother!"
"Oh, I'm not to talk." She looked round the room with bewildered eyes. "I don't know why it is, but apparently conversation is no longer appreciated. My daughter has come back from the dead—for we were all quite sure she had been murdered by those horrid hairy men—and as for the beasts they rode on, their color was most unusual, what I call biscuit, a color that I haven't thought to use before, but it would go very well with the reds I've used for the window curtains in this room, which I call earthy reds—"
She fell silent, quelled by her daughter's furious glare.
"Glimmeners keep to the Glimmen," said Orvin. "That's how to stay out of trouble."
"You can do as you please, Orvin," said Echo, "and I shall do as I please."
She had been watching Seeker with growing uncertainty. Though he was dressed as a Noble Warrior, he seemed to her to be too young and too soft to possess the kind of power she needed. His thoughtful face and wide brown eyes gave him the look of a student rather than a fighter. Nevertheless, he was her only hope.
"Sir," she said, when at last he put down his plate, "my mother has spoken of it already, and now I must tell you directly. We are in great danger. I have been told that the Noble Warriors are sworn to come to the aid of the oppressed. Sir, our homes, our people, the trees of this whole great forest round us—all are threatened with destruction. We ask for your help."
Seeker heard this with dismay and lowered his gaze. The Glimmeners fixed their eyes on him in silent entreaty.
"The Great Jahan," continued Echo, "has sworn that he will burn the Glimmen and kill all the people who live here. Only you can save us."
Still Seeker stared at the floor. Echo felt her hopes fade.
"You're a Noble Warrior. It's your duty."
Seeker looked up at last.
"I have a greater duty," he said.
"What can be more urgent than saving the lives of hundreds of innocent people?"
"Saving the All and Only who gives us life."
"The All and Only?" said Sander. "What's that?"
"Our god," said Seeker. "Everyone's god
."
"There's a queer thing," said Mr. Kittle. "You're to save your own god? Are you stronger than your own god?"
"The All and Only is the weakest of us all," said Seeker. "We also call him the Lost Child."
"A weak god!" Echo felt anger rise up in her. "What use is a weak god?"
"We live our own lives," replied Seeker.
"If you don't have the power to help us," Echo said, "just say so. If you have the power and won't use it, then you don't deserve our kindness."
Seeker rose.
"I think I should go."
"No. I don't mean it." Echo found herself caught whichever way she turned. "Stay tomorrow, just for one day. If the Orlans come, they'll come tomorrow."
"I've no time to lose. Not even one day."
"Then go!" she cried out in her bitterness. "Go to your baby god and I'll do as the old monster wants and I wish I were dead!"
She turned away and bit her lip to stop the tears rising to her eyes. Her family and the other Glimmeners looked on in silence, awed by her anger and pain.
Seeker made them a bow in the Nomana fashion.
"Forgive me," he said. "You have your duty, and I have mine."
So Seeker slept that night on a bed of leaves after all, and slept fitfully and woke early. He set off at once down the road, unaware that he was being followed by a silent figure in the trees above. He reached the edge of the forest as dawn was breaking, then stopped by the last of the trees and gazed westward.
Ahead, across the plain, its upper surface silvered by the light of the rising sun, lay the land cloud.
It sat like an immense feather bed on the flat land. Its upper surface, hummocked and pillowed and creamy white, was in permanent movement, rising and falling, swelling and stirring, like some vast creature breathing in its sleep. It looked benign, even comfortable, from the safety of the forest. But this was surely not a natural creation.
Echo watched Seeker from her high perch in a tree above. She understood now that he was going into the land cloud. She saw him leave the forest with confused feelings of anger and admiration. The Glimmeners had seen many singing pilgrims go into the cloud, but no one had ever come out. What was the point of doing something brave if you knew it would kill you?
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