In questioning the associates of the lost orchard workers, another pattern grew. Several, it seemed had, shortly before their disappearance, witnessed something concerning the Pash-shan that they had found most disturbing. Most had not disclosed exactly what it was they had witnessed, but a few had mentioned their determination to seek counsel concerning the matter—to go to the Ol-zhaan. Most significant of all, one orchard worker, before his disappearance, had told a fellow worker that he had spoken with a Pash-shan. Several years had passed since his disappearance, but the co-worker remembered it well. He had discounted the story, of course, he had assured Hiro D’anhk. Obviously the poor man had indulged in too many Berries, or, perhaps, neglected to wear his head shade in the open orchard and been stricken with sun-fever. But such a wild story was not one that was easily forgotten. Spoken with a Pash-shan, indeed!
Gradually an almost unbelievable but strangely seductive theory had begun to grow in Hiro’s mind. He had begun to believe that there was a deadly secret concerning the Pash-shan, any knowledge of which was enough to doom a Kindar to oblivion. It also seemed to be true that the victim’s disappearance occurred soon after the Ol-zhaan became aware of the individual’s knowledge of the secret.
It was then that Hiro had decided to go, himself, to the forest floor in search of further information. On the day of his expedition, Genaa had witnessed his departure and had begged him to tell her where he was going. Thinking, as he did by then, that the Pash-shan were probably more pitiable than fearful, he had told Genaa where he was going and that he did not believe he would be in great danger.
He had not been long on the forest floor, however, when he heard the sound of footsteps behind him and someone called his name. He turned to see, not a Pash-shan, but the Ol-zhaan D’ol Wassou.
“I was apprehensive, of course,” Hiro said, “but D’ol Wassou is an old man and quite frail, and I could not see how he could offer any immediate danger. His approach was friendly, even enthusiastic, as if he were relieved to see me. He spoke of how he had been sent with a small party of Ol-zhaan to search the forest floor around Farvald for signs of withering of the Root and had become separated from the others. He wondered if I had seen them. He did not question my presence on the forest floor or express the slightest degree of disapproval. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have been warned by that fact alone, and it also should have occurred to me that our meeting—in all the vast and trackless stretches of the forest floor—could not easily be explained as coincidence. But I was not warned, and when he asked me to sit with him while he rested and refreshed himself from his food pouch, I agreed. Sitting together on the moss-covered remains of a fallen tree, we rested, and I accepted a drink of pan-liquor from his drinking gourd. I remember nothing more until I began dimly to return to awareness and found myself groping my way down an endless dark tunnel. I will never forget how slowly and painfully, and with what nameless terror, I began to realize that I was below the Root.”
Raamo, Neric and Genaa had listened with fascination, and now Neric burst out in a frenzy of impatience. “But how? How were they able to open the Root for your passage?”
“I don’t know,” Hiro said. “The Erdlings believe that the Ol-zhaan can cause the Root to shrink away in an instant and return again, but I, myself, am not sure.”
“Raamo has begun the studies of a Vine-priest,” Genaa said, “and he thinks as you do—that changes in the Vine come very slowly.”
“If at all,” Raamo said. “I think that the Ol-zhaan may no longer be able to cause any changes.”
“Then there is an opening,” Neric said. “A permanent passageway.”
“I have looked for one,” Hiro said. “I have searched everywhere, and in particular in the area in which I was found wandering. But the potion I was given apparently allowed my body to return to life while my mind still slept. I had been wandering, perhaps for miles, before I returned to consciousness. And even after that, I stumbled on and on for an endless time through complete darkness before I was found and rescued by the Erdlings. It was impossible to guess where my wandering had begun. And my experience is not unlike that of every other Verban to whom I have spoken. All of them, all, had gone to seek counsel from an Ol-zhaan, or had been called before them, and all had been offered a friendly sharing of something that seemed to be ordinary pan-liquor.”
Suddenly Neric sprang to his feet. “Enough,” he cried. “We have heard enough. We know now what it is that we are facing. We know the full extent of the evil. Now all that is left for us to do is to move against it. We must begin to plan how we shall overcome the Geets-kel. It seems to me that our best course would be to call the people of Orbora together in the largest assembly hall and tell them everything. And then lead them to Temple Grove, where, with the strength of a thousand Kindar behind us, we will confront the Geets-kel.”
Raamo found himself shaking his head. He felt strongly that the Kindar must be told, but the imaging that came to him as Neric described the telling was one of confusion and bewilderment—panic and desperation.
Genaa, too, seemed to find Neric’s proposal somewhat impractical.
“Very grand and glorious, friend Neric,” she said. “But it seems to me that the Kindar, after hearing our confusing and unbelievable story, might simply go home and curl up in their nids with bulging handfuls of Berries and think of less troubling things.”
“Well, what would you do then?” Neric said. “What would you recommend?”
“I think our first concern should be to free the Erdlings,” Genaa said. “Once they are free, the Geets-kel will have to listen to us. They will have no choice.”
“But we don’t know how,” Neric protested. “It could take months, years even, to find the opening in the Root, and if in the meantime our search became known to the Geets-kel, as it undoubtedly would, we might well find ourselves below the Root—if not disposed of in some more complete and immediate fashion.”
“And you must consider,” Hiro D’anhk said, “what might happen if the Erdlings were freed suddenly among Kindar who were still ignorant of their existence and who would not know what to expect of them. If the Geets-kel were still not discredited in the eyes of the Kindar, who can say what evils might arise?”
“But what can we do then?” Neric cried. “What steps can be taken?”
“Small ones,” Hiro said. “Small ones at first. Only evil comes from great changes made too swiftly.”
“Raamo has not said what plan he favors,” Genaa said. “Neric would turn to the Kindar and I to the Erdlings. In what direction would you go, Raamo?”
“I?” Raamo asked. “I feel the Kindar must be told, but I have not yet thought of how it should be done. I think that first we should—” He paused, and then found himself saying, “—I would go first to D’ol Falla. Yes, I would go to D’ol Falla.”
There was a long tense silence as the others stared at him in amazement. But then the shocked surprise on Neric’s face turned slowly to a blaze of controlled excitement.
“Yes,” he said. “If we go quietly, the three of us—if we can go to her when she is alone in her chambers—we can make her tell us the secret of the passageway. And when that is ours, we will have a wedge—a lever of great power with which to pry the Geets-kel loose from their strongest vantage points.”
“But what if she will not tell us?” Genaa asked.
”She is old and frail, and there will be three of us,” Neric said, and it seemed to Raamo that his face altered strangely as he spoke.
Hiro D’anhk spoke from the shadow of the tunnel’s mouth. “I don’t know,” he said. “I am afraid that the ancient D’ol Falla may have powers of which we are not aware.”
“If she does, we will outthink her,” Genaa said. “We will be careful to see that she does not summon help or make use of any tools of violence that she might have. We will come to her quietly as if to seek counsel, and then we will take hold of her, and we will not release her until she has told us the sec
ret of the passageway.”
“We will take hold of her—we will not release her.” In Raamo’s mind the words gave rise to images that mixed and swirled in patterns of meaningless horror. Patterns that intermittently gave way to another image—an image of youthful green eyes in an ancient face, and of something that searched blindly, pathetically, around the edges of his mind.
“I didn’t mean—” he said.
But Neric had already gone, running across the clearing to retrieve Teera from where she still waited. And Genaa was bidding her father good-bye and setting a day for their next meeting.
The green light of the forest floor was deepening into blackness, and there was no more time for plans or explanations no matter how urgent. Teera must be delivered to the D’ok’s nid-place, and Raamo and Genaa would soon be expected at the evening food-taking in the hall of novices.
By the time Teera was safely returned, the darkness was complete and the soft fine fall of the first rains had begun. Trying desperately to hurry, slipping on rainwet branches, groping for Vine and branch, the three young Ol-zhaan had no time for communion or conversation and little time for caution. And if there was one who followed close behind them, concealed by shadows and curtains of rainfall, they might not even have noticed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN THE THREE CONSPIRATORS reached the Vine-shrouded branchend near Temple Hall, they paused long enough for a brief whispered consultation.
“Shall it be tomorrow then?” Neric said.
“Tomorrow,” Genaa agreed. “The longer we wait, the more risk we take that D’ol Falla will have heard rumors—and be prepared for our coming.”
“But what shall we do—when we are with D’ol Falla?” Raamo asked.
“We will simply tell her what we know, and what we want of her,” Genaa said. “And what we do then will depend on what she does. I am quite certain that the three of us, together, will be able to handle the situation, no matter what she chooses to do.”
“And I agree,” Neric said. “Shall we meet then on the central platform near the entrance to D’ol Falla’s chambers at the seventh hour?”
And so it was decided. The three parted to return singly to their chambers and then to food-taking. Before too long, Raamo was swaying softly in the warm comfort of his nid—and staring wide-eyed into the depths of a dark moonless night. But his staring eyes saw much more than empty darkness ... Against the curtain of night, images leaped and fluttered, flickered and faded. He saw D’ol Falla. He saw the bird-bone frailness of her body and the deeply probing gaze of her green eyes. He tried to remember—to bring back in clear detail—the exact sensation that he had so often felt in her presence. A sensation of something watching, waiting—of a questing without words, a stealthy subtle sensing of his mind and Spirit.
Was it evil, that questing? Was D’ol Falla evil? Could she really, she the oldest and most honored of the Ol-zhaan, as the leader of the Geets-kel have planned and directed the disappearances of Hiro D’anhk and many others? Would she, as Neric seemed to believe, arrange for the disappearance of Raamo and Genaa and Neric if she knew of their plans? And even more terrible to contemplate, did she have at her disposal tools of violence such as were used in the days before the flight—instruments of death that, at the touch of a finger, could take the lives of those who opposed her? If she did possess such things, would she use them against the three who would stand before her in the morning, demanding that she release to them the secret of the passage through the Root? That such a thing might be possible seemed unthinkable. Yet Raamo knew that the bringing of death had, in the days before the flight, been accepted and even legislated by nations and governments.
At last Raamo slept, at first restlessly, dream haunted, and then more deeply. When he awakened, it was as if through a great distance of time and space. The rain was over and dawn was not far away. But in the silence of the predawn hush, Raamo awakened abruptly as if to a call. Startled, he lay stiffly, listening for a long moment before the summons came again, and he realized that he had not heard it with his ears.
“Come, Raamo.” The voiceless call was distant and indistinct. “It is I, D’ol Falla who summons you. Come now.”
Without hesitation, Raamo rose from his nid, put on his shuba and, moving silently, left his chamber and the hall of novices. It was still quite dark and the leaves of the grunds still ran with recent rainfall when Raamo arrived outside the ornate doorway of the chambers of D’ol Falla. At the edge of the doorway, he stopped, staring. By the growing light, he could see that, although it was not yet dawn, the grill of tendril had been removed and the door hangings caught back by heavy cords—as if someone was expected.
It was that—the open doorway—that made him pause. The huge arch yawned darkly, expecting his arrival. D’ol Falla was awaiting him—or lying in wait. How did she know that he would come? And why had he come—so quickly without stopping to take thought?
Raamo had begun to move silently backward when suddenly D’ol Falla was standing in the doorway. Her green eyes glowed in the blurred beauty of her face like moonmoths in a misty night as she lifted her pale hands in greeting. “Ah, Raamo, you have come,” she said. “Come in.” And without protest or even hesitation, Raamo followed her into the great reception hall and through it to the mouth of a dimly lit hallway.
A dense predawn darkness obscured the magnificent chambers of the Vine priest, except where an occasional honey lantern marked the path they followed through hallways, rampways, and great echoing common rooms. As D’ol Falla led the way from lantern to lantern, Raamo followed, his feet moving slowly but steadily, while his mind seemed to be racing in frantic circles.
Why had he come? From whence came the compelling conviction that his coming, his response to D’ol Falla’s summons, was inevitable—that he could not have avoided responding, and that even now, he could not turn and walk away?
At the end of a long narrow rampway, D’ol Falla stopped at what appeared to be a solid wall of frond-woven tendril. Removing a honey lantern from a nearby wall hook, she handed it to Raamo, indicating that he should hold it close to the tendril grillwork. By the light of the lantern, she quickly removed some cleverly concealed pins, releasing a panel that she then slid to one side. A small doorway was revealed and, taking the lantern from Raamo’s hand, D’ol Falla led the way down a corridor so narrow that the wing-panels of his shuba brushed the walls on either side. This tiny corridor ended before what appeared to be an impenetrable barrier—the trunk of an enormous grund. Handing the lantern back to Raamo, D’ol Falla took from her waist-pouch a small piece of dark metal and inserted it into what appeared to be an intricate metal amulet that had been embedded in the trunk of the grund. She turned the metal to one side; there was a grating sound; and a door panel of solid wood swung open. D’ol Falla and Raamo entered a large room that had obviously been formed by hollowing out the interior of a grundtrunk. Hanging the lantern on a wall hook, she turned, and Raamo, who had been staring at his strange surroundings in amazement, found himself once again transfixed by the searching green gaze of her strange eyes. For a long moment no one spoke.
“What is this place?” Raamo said, at last. “Why are we here?”
“This is the Forgotten,” D’ol Falla said. “It is here that the terrible memories of our tragic past are kept hidden away where they can do no harm. There was a legend long ago—long, long before the flight—that told of a box, a chest in which were imprisoned all the evils of the universe—until curiosity and disobedience set them free to torment humanity. This chamber is such a chest. Many great and dangerous evils are imprisoned within these walls.”
D’ol Falla’s gesture invited Raamo’s inspection, and he once more turned his attention to his surroundings. Around the walls of the large room were many cupboards and shelves. Many of the shelves held books, or what appeared to be books, except they were much smaller and thinner than any Raamo had seen before.
“Are those books?” Raamo asked.
“Yes. On the wall before you and to your left, are many ancient books brought here at the time of the flight, and here—” she pointed to banks of shelves laden with books of a more familiar shape and size, “—here are histories of the early days of Green-sky. Diaries of the early Ol-zhaan chronicles of events and accounts of early studies and experiments. But much of the material included in these books is unknown, not only to the Kindar, but to most Ol-zhaan as well.”
They moved on around the room, past the book-laden ranks of shelves, to cabinets of a different kind. These were wider and of greater depth, and they held many articles that were entirely unfamiliar to Raamo’s eyes. Most of them were made, at least in part, from metal, but their purposes, the uses for which they were intended, were beyond his imagining. There was something, however, in their very shapes, in their blunt and graceless design, that spoke of brutal mindless energy materialized into solid form. It was as if the basest and most sordid instincts of humankind had, somehow, been embodied in matter and design. Raamo turned away, his mind recoiling in horror.
“These are weapons,” D’ol Falla was saying. “Tools of violence such as were used by our ancestors in the days before the flight. This one, for instance, by only the slightest touch here upon this bar, is capable of destroying anything at which it is pointed, even at a distance of many yards.”
Turning toward D’ol Falla, Raamo saw that she was holding one of the weapons in her frail old hands, her narrow fingers coiling tendril-like around its ugly surface. Roughly triangular in shape, the weapon tapered to a narrow orifice, a dark ugly mouth that seemed to reach out to Raamo as if in hunger. Raamo lifted his eyes quickly from the deadly mouth to D’ol Falla’s face, seeking desperately to read there some reassurance, some clue to her intentions. But the bright green eyes looked back at him coolly from the withered face, and no shadow of thought or feeling answered his pensed entreaty.
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