Surely books exist to be read! Zanja thought. But in her own time few people could go in and take a book from Emil and Medric’s ever-growing library, and probably for much the same reasons: preservation and protection. In both past and future, librarians were guardians, and books existed not to be read, but to be copied.
The young men appeared to have reached the end of their suggestions. Yet they also seemed unsettled, as though each was wondering whether one of the others would say something he himself was determined not to say.
“So I can’t get in the door,” Zanja said.
“You want us to help you break into the library?”
“We would never attempt such a thing!”
“Such fragile and irreplaceable treasures as are housed in that monolith are not for reckless, shortsighted youths such as ourselves,” declaimed Coles solemnly. “It is instead our duty to save them in pristine splendor for those youths who will come after us, who in turn will be forbidden to step over the threshold—”
Briefly attempted to suffocate him with a bag of laundry. Soon dirty clothing was flying through the air, accompanied by many shouts and yelps, and a fellow boarder began thumping angrily on the wall.
“You’ve broken into the library before,” asserted Zanja, taking a very smelly undershirt off her head.
“Never!” Legs protested.
“Once or twice,” admitted Speck.
“Frequently,” Briefly corrected him.
“Well, we are curious fellows!” said Coles. “But we always leave everything as we found it.”
“Show me how to get in. I’ll take only what can be carried in my head.”
“You’re no Paladin,” said Coles. “At least not a very good one.”
“You’re right about that,” she said.
Chapter 23
Where the road to Hanishport, the road to Keneso, and the old road intersected, the ancient crossing-stone was still rooted in the earth. Damon paused to scrutinize its chisel-chipped surface. “What did the stones once say?”
Seth’s original journey to Watfield had followed the low road that parallels the Corber, a road that was now impassable due to the heavy rains. The Waystone at this crossroads was famous. The glyphs had been obliterated, but the memories had survived. “It used to say that Haprin lies to the east, Basdown and Keneso to the south, and the House of Lilterwess to the north.”
Damon glanced northward with a frown.
“People say the soldiers tried to destroy the road like they destroyed the House, but it couldn’t be done.”
“Very good. It is a beautiful road.”
Seth went with Damon to take a closer look at the road. Its stones were smooth and flat, its ditches clear of mud. Seth was abruptly reminded of the restless fallen stones that now ringed Watfield Garrison. She said, “I think this road will never fail. Just as the G’deon’s power can tear stones apart, so also it can hold them together.”
“I wish I had seen the House of Lilterwess.”
“It must have been like the Travesty, but a lot bigger. As big as a small town, the old people say.”
“You never went there?”
“No. This is my first time north of the Corber. I was a farmer, you know. Farmers don’t travel, as they can’t bring the farm with them. You were a boy when the House of Lilterwess was destroyed—you don’t remember it?”
“My father was there, at the battle.” Looking embarrassed, Damon rubbed a foot across the unworn surface of an enchanted road stone.
Seth pointed southward. “That’s our road.”
Damon scarcely said another word all morning.
They passed through Genton that day, where the nearest garrison to Wilton sat with its gates ajar but watched by armed Paladin irregulars. The next day, and most of the day after that, they were in the Barrens, where rock frequently broke through thin soil and the plants were all sturdy miniatures: tiny trees, tinier shrubs, and a scattering of early flowers that looked like blue-dyed dust. The rock fields were of solid black stone that appeared to ripple like water. Some people found the Barrens disquieting, but Seth liked the spare landscape and the mournful wind. Damon was restless beneath the open sky and kept looking anxiously towards the horizon as though to spy an enemy before he himself was spotted. “What’s that?” he asked sharply, pointing to the west.
“Oh, those are the Three Sisters. They’re hills, though they are oddly shaped. The man we’re trying to find was camped over near their base, but he’s gone now.”
“This is a strange place,” he said, in his simple, blunt way.
“Yes—but listen to the wind singing on the stones. You won’t hear that anywhere else.”
She pointed west. “We’re two days from the coast, where the rocks flow right into the sea, like a stone river. I have walked that way to the coast almost every year. In the spring, you can see huge fish swimming northward, and in the autumn you can see them swimming southward. Once, one of those fish washed on shore. It was seven times my length! Now its bones are still there. I have spread my rain cape over the ribs and camped inside the skeleton.”
The land dropped gradually towards Basdown; the gray haze became a leafless forest that stretched from east to west as far as could be seen, frequently interrupted by long stretches of rich grassland, where the cows of Basdown grazed. Seth could have named each of these pastures or hay fields but did not subject Damon to that recital. Soon, their vista was delimited by trees. The road began to meander this way and that, though generally it went southeast. The Threeflowers were blooming: three-leaved plants with three-petaled white blossoms. Damon asked her to name the plants for him, and Seth explained, “They spread by roots, but it’s impossible to dig one up and move it. They shrivel up and die; they won’t accept any unfamiliar dirt.”
As they drew near a farmstead a couple of cow dogs appeared to keep an eye on them, and then a raven flew down from his hidden perch in a tall tree, to land nearly at Seth’s feet.
“You must be the G’deon’s raven,” Seth said to the bird. “You’ve been watching the road for us, I guess.”
The raven eyed her steadily, not at all like a wild bird. “Now you just have to follow us, and when I find the assassin I’ll tell you. I’ll put food out for you, also.”
The raven lifted off and disappeared into the overhead branches as abruptly as it had appeared.
It was late afternoon, and Seth’s bones ached from last night’s rocky bed in the Barrens. Her feet also hurt, and she was actually looking forward to a bowl of the salt-beef stew she was usually so tired of by late spring. But if she and Damon walked until dark, they could reach High Meadow Farm tomorrow. She gave the distant cow dogs a wave and continued down the highway.
Damon, who never questioned or complained, walked steadily beside her, and she named more flowers for him. He asked, “How does Karis-the-G’deon make the ravens?”
“I haven’t thought to ask her.”
“But since you are like her—you have the same center—”
“Element,” she corrected him.
“Element, yes. It is the same, so you think the same.”
“Somewhat,” said Seth, remembering Norina’s assessment of her elemental makeup.
Damon considered for a few paces. “How would you make a raven?”
“The ravens would make one for me. I guess I’d take and raise the hatching—maybe that’s what Karis did. But some physical part of her must be incorporated into the bird somehow. I know that one G’deon was able to halt a famine by scattering his blood in the fields, so maybe it’s Karis’s blood that the ravens have.” And that, also, Seth realized, explained how Clement had been kept alive until Karis could reach her.
“Once I thought I understood everything,” said Damon. He made a soldier’s gesture of help
lessness. “Now—nothing. Nothing at all.”
They stayed the night at Hundred Farm. (“A hundred what?” asked Damon, and couldn’t believe that no one remembered anymore.) There the farmers treated them with minimal courtesy. Even when Seth directly chided them, it made no difference. Damon made several light remarks that earned only blank stares. Seth reported the doings in Watfield, and not even when she stressed the importance of Karis’s declaration making the Sainnites into Shaftali did they become friendly. “We heard that from another traveler,” said one without enthusiasm. Another made a caustic remark that it was not a surprising declaration from a half-Sainnite.
Seth was so consternated that she could not trust herself to make a reasonable reply. But Damon said, “You have many travelers here? We see only ourselves.”
No one responded to him, as though they had agreed to pretend he did not even exist. Then, one of the older children spoke, for like Seth he seemed to find that silence inexplicable and unbearable. “So far there’s been just one. He taught me how to carve.”
“Will you show me?” said Damon.
For a man who had never had contact with children, he was managing well. Despite the ill-disguised objections of the boy’s parents, Damon and he soon went into a nearby parlor. The boy launched an enthusiastic explanation of how he had carved a stick into a bird.
Seth said to the remaining people, “Do you know that Basdowners’ decency is renowned all over Shaftal?”
The Hundred Farm people applied themselves to their stew as though they had not eaten for weeks.
“When I visited you last, on my way to Watfield, you all said you wanted peace. Therefore I’m on the Peace Committee, and I’ve brought Damon to Basdown to see whether a Sainnite soldier can be comfortable on a Shaftali farm. He’s here because of you.”
One of the people at the table had been Seth’s brother. They had grown up together at High Meadow, and it was possible they might share a parent, though no one paid attention to such things here. He muttered at his soup plate, “Well, we were wrong. And so are you.”
“How do you know?” Seth looked around the table. “How am I to speak for Basdown, if Basdown won’t speak to me?”
A few of the farmers brought themselves to talk. They said things Seth had heard many times already, unarguable facts and arguable judgments. Seth’s experience as a councilor, tiresome though it could be, proved itself useful. She restrained her impulse to disagree, and merely asked questions and listened. She began to hear a name, Jareth, that didn’t belong to anyone in Basdown.
She and Damon slept in the cow barn that night. She didn’t want to leave Damon alone, and the farmers didn’t want him in their guest room. They made their beds in a hayrick where it still smelled like last summer. “I guess the assassin has another kind of poison,” Seth said, as they lay in the soft darkness. The cows were left in the field at night, now it was spring, watched over by cow dogs. Seth and Damon were the barn’s only occupants.
“They don’t know he’s an assassin,” said he.
“Well, I’ll tell them as soon as I can. I hope that makes them reconsider what they’re thinking.”
Hay rustled under Damon. He yawned noisily. “They should just think what you tell them to think.”
“What? They’re not soldiers!”
“They are stupid as soldiers.”
Now Seth wanted to disagree. But she lay thinking, and Damon’s breathing told her he had fallen asleep. The boy had mentioned to Damon that the wood carver, Jareth the assassin, had guested at Hundred Farm for ten days, the longest any stranger could reasonably stay anywhere, and then moved on to another farm farther to the south. He was behaving more like a suitor than a traveler, remaining in each household long enough to demonstrate his personality and skills. He was in no hurry to leave Basdown’s comforts, and it was not difficult to imagine why, as he had camped in the Barrens through the end of winter and most of the mud season.
She wanted him away from Basdown. She wanted to cull him out, like an unhealthy cow from the herd. Just find him, Emil had said. But Emil had not thought about the damage one man could do.
And why could he do that damage, Seth wondered? In ten days this Jareth had managed to change opinions that Seth would have assumed were unchangeable, as they were built on a foundation of ideals: hospitality, respecting boundaries. “A farm is a farm,” Basdowners often said. They would say it about people who expressed odd ideas, or did things in a peculiar manner, or fell in love with an unlikely person. It surely had been said often about her.
The journey to High Meadow the next day proceeded slowly, for Seth and Damon stopped at several of the farms that abutted the road. They did not find the assassin, but Seth could easily tell which households Jareth had guested in. They had to cease looking for him finally, because Seth had become so furious she feared she might rush up and hit him. She would ask Mama where he was, for Mama was so gregarious she could hardly bring herself to stay at High Meadow for more than three days at a stretch. Only Seth, whose fame as a cow doctor had kept her moving from farm to farm, had been less likely than Mama to be found at home.
High Meadow Farm bordered the highway near the southern edge of Basdown, and Seth’s family had done a lot of business with the Sainnites who managed the children’s garrison located in the wilderness further south. Seth and Damon had scarcely come abreast of the farm boundary when she heard the High Meadow dogs signaling each other, and soon a half dozen had gathered, a panting, grinning, enthusiastic escort that kept pace with the travelers but did not set one foot into the road. Damon seemed nervous, so Seth taught him how to determine that they were friendly.
“The cow dogs of Basdown are famous,” she told him.
“Because they look funny?”
“They are funny. They even play jokes on farmers and each other. But they’re more famous for what they won’t do. They will not cross any farm boundary, they observe a strict daily schedule, and they berate anyone who does something they disapprove of. It’s impossible to move cow dogs from one farm to another, even as puppies. If they’re prevented from returning to their home farm, they become melancholy and die.”
“Like Threeflowers,” said Damon.
“And don’t tell Basdowners that their dogs look funny.”
“But their legs are too short.”
“So the cows will kick over their heads.”
“They have no tails.”
“So the cows can’t step on them.”
“Their ears are huge.”
“So they can hear everything that happens on the farmstead.”
“They are so hairy!”
“So they are impervious to wet and cold.”
“They are perfect dogs?”
“Exactly. Now, this is important: cow dogs believe there are only two creatures in the world: dogs and cows. And you don’t want to be a cow, believe me.”
“No!” said Damon earnestly.
“So learn to be a dog. Here’s the track to the farmstead—I’ll take your arm so the dogs can see that you’re with me.” She tucked her hand in Damon’s elbow, and as they stepped off the highway they were surrounded by milling dogs whose noses Seth had to kiss in proper order before she and Damon could go one step further. Soon Damon, laughing breathlessly, had a young dog pulling on his shirt sleeve to try to convince him to wrestle.
“Councilor Seth, this dog is eating my shirt.”
As Seth turned to help Damon, she noticed a figure hurrying toward them down the track. “Oh, there’s Mama!”
“Is that Seth?” Mama cried, when she was close enough to see. “Well, no wonder the dogs are so excited.”
They embraced, and Mama kept talking. “We never expected to see you so soon. Is something wrong? We have heard about the terrible attack, and how the G’deon’s wife go
t drowned.”
“I’m fine, Mama. I’m just home for a visit.”
The young dog, apparently having determined that Damon didn’t know how to play, was now demonstrating and encouraging him with sharp barks. Damon knew how to take orders; he was already mastering the elementary chase and retreat.
“This is Damon, a Watfield Sainnite who’s here to learn how farmers live.”
Mama examined Damon with an expression Seth couldn’t interpret. The soldier left off his playing and came over to make a formal greeting, with his eyes still crinkled with delight. “Your dogs are perfect!” he declared.
“We could not farm without them,” said Mama. “Well, come to the house. You must be ready for a sit-down.”
Soon they were settled on the porch with the other stay-at-homes, sipping tea and eating cheese biscuits. Two babies crowded Seth’s lap; children asked Damon awkward questions; the old dogs whose job it was to herd the toddlers away from the fire and the stairs, or to show ancient Sarmon the way home when he got confused, all lay yawning in the sunshine. “You can sleep in your old room,” said one of the elders to Seth. “But Damon will have to share with someone.”
“He can’t have the room in the attic?” That room, though crammed with boxes and chests of stored goods, had a spare bed for visitors.
“Another visitor’s using it, a man named Jareth who seems to be looking for a family.”
“Oh,” Seth managed to say. “Damon will share my room, then.”
The setting sun painted the rolling hills of High Meadow in vivid splashes of color and shadow. On the far side of the farmstead the heavy-uddered cows trod the path to the barn in stately indifference, while their calves bounded madly up and down the dignified procession. The dogs self-importantly guarded the rear, uttering occasional instructional barks to the lightsome calves. The milkers also had begun to parade down the cobbled paths from the dairy and the main house to the barn, shadowed by cats, who wanted their evening dish of milk.
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