“That will work perfectly,” Terrell agreed. “Adara, shall you and I get our gear from the Trainers?”
Adara wasn’t about to leave Griffin alone with the Old One.
“We traveled light enough that Sand Shadow and I can manage. I’ll see if the Trainers will keep the horses and Sam the Mule. I can tell you’re itching to have a look at those maps.”
Terrell looked apologetic. “I am, rather. One thing the loremasters look for when training a factotum is curiosity about the past combined with an eagerness about the future. I’ve a full measure of both.”
* * *
When Adara returned with the luggage, she was met at the front door by a colorless woman of middle years who carried with her the scents of cornmeal and fish, accented by the smallest amount of sugar. Without a word, the woman showed Adara to the promised suite. Its windows were not as large as those on the side of the building overlooking Spirit Bay, but there was ample space.
The woman pointed out the various facilities, including those for bathing and an indoor toilet.
“The Old One usually prefers to breakfast alone,” the woman concluded, “but I can serve you and the two gentlemen here. Will you be needing food for the puma?”
“Is hunting permitted in the region?”
“Not in the town itself,” the woman replied. “However, the forests and meadows around the bay shore are public land. As long as you don’t let her help herself to someone’s cattle or sheep, or trouble the fisher folk, all should be fine.”
“We live in sheep country up in the mountains,” Adara reassured her. “Sand Shadow knows the difference between domestic and wild animals.”
The woman looked at the puma, her expression coloring with the first interest she had shown to this point. “That cat sure is a beauty. I love her eyes, like pale moonstones they are in this light. Looks smart enough to know just about anything.” She looked up shyly at Adara. “Would Sand Shadow mind if I gave her a pat? Just a little one?”
“Please do. Pumas are intensely interested in humans, but Sand Shadow doesn’t find many adults who want to be friends right off. Children are different. To them, she’s just a big kitty.”
The woman ran her hand over the deep golden fur and gave a sigh of pure pleasure. Her washed-out skin flushed pink. Even her lank hair seemed to gain a little shine. “Why she’s purring! I didn’t know the big cats purr!”
“I’ve heard that tigers and plains lions don’t,” Adara said, “but pumas most definitely do. By the way, what’s your name?”
“Jean, Mistress Huntress. Jean Cook. My husband is Joffrey. We handle most of the Old One’s needs here at the Sanctum.”
“Please, just call me Adara,” the huntress replied. “And thank you for getting things ready for us at such short notice.”
“It’s no problem, Adara, no problem at all. The Old One is always generous about making sure Joffrey and I have extra help when there are guests. Well, now, I’d better be off to the kitchen. Use the bell pull if you need anything.”
“May I just come over and find you?” Adara asked. “I hate to think of someone running all this way because we need an extra towel or some such.”
“Come if you wish,” Jean said. “We’ve nothing to hide.”
On that strange note, she gave Sand Shadow another appreciative pat and trotted off in the direction of the servant’s quarters.
Adara found the three men in the room with the large window. A long table had been set up and they were poring over charts. They seemed as happy as could be, deeply engrossed in discussing what areas might have served what purposes. Outside, the sun was shining, the wavelets on Spirit Bay beckoned. Adara and Sand Shadow slipped away.
The huntress had memorized Lynn’s landmarks. Now—while the Old One was under the watchful eyes of Adara’s allies—seemed a good time to see if anything remained of them. The landing facility had been built on the edge of the bay, part yet not part of the town. Near the Old One’s residence no fishing shacks crowded the shoreline and only one dock—the Old One’s own—extended out into the water. For all Adara knew, this might be because there were better harbors elsewhere.
“But it sure looks to me,” she said to Sand Shadow, “as if the Old One keeps his distance in more ways than simply living almost alone in that huge building.”
To be fair, Adara reminded herself that she didn’t know anything about the local lore. In Shepherd’s Call there were several places reserved as “scenic.” Every spring, certain flower seeds were sown in prescribed places. Every fall, bulbs were dug up and carefully saved for replanting, all to maintain a certain character to the landscape for the benefit of seegnur who had not visited in five centuries.
It was possible that the isolation of the Sanctum had nothing to do with the Old One’s desire for privacy, only with the local inhabitants’ abiding respect for the traditions of the past.
If so, what does that say about the Old One? Adara thought. That building remained pristine until he went and broke the seals set upon it by the seegnur. He says he respects the past, is eager that it not be forgotten, but he certainly shows that respect in a very different fashion.
* * *
Lynn’s detailed map began where a deep inlet cut into the shore several miles from town. She had included a list of landmarks, both natural and remnants of human use. Nonetheless, Adara and Sand Shadow searched for a long while before they found something that might be one of Lynn’s markers: a long, rocky shelf. In Lynn’s description, the shelf had been exposed, although surrounded by trees. Beneath the edge that faced away from the bay had been an open vent or window, the odor from which had alerted Lynn’s demiurge to the fact that humans were living in this apparently deserted place.
Now a large tree had fallen, obscuring the rocky shelf from view. Sand Shadow reported that the only human scent was old and scattered. Adara couldn’t find any trace of the vent or window.
While Sand Shadow went off to hunt, Adara sat down to think.
The tree might have fallen by accident over the winter. It’s certainly large enough that it would be vulnerable to high winds or the pull of ice. Yet, judging from the angle at which the smaller shrubs grow, the prevailing winds are from another direction entirely. Not proof, perhaps. Indeed, the wind coming from an unaccustomed angle might uproot a forest giant like this quite easily.
Still … Still … This is the right direction around the bay and the right distance, too. I can’t imagine that someone who had trained with Bruin and, later, had been a groundskeeper could not judge distances with some accuracy. We’re not seeking a pebble, but a very large rock, too large to be grubbed out without causing comment. Perhaps too large for any but a seegnur to remove. But not too large be concealed.
I think then, unless given good reason to think otherwise, that I will say this is the place and, as we suspected, the Old One has moved his operations elsewhere. Is it worth looking for the other signs Lynn mentioned? Why not? Finding another would confirm whether this is or is not the correct great rock.
She began scouting, discovering several interesting things. In time, Sand Shadow returned, bearing with her a portion of a yearling buck, antlers still in velvet. The puma had, of course, eaten her share, but doubtless Jean and Joffrey would welcome this addition to the larder.
Adara did the necessary cleaning of the carcass, trimming away the worst evidence of the puma’s meal and wrapping the hide to cover the raw areas. She was very pleased with the puma’s success and told her as much. She wished, not for the first time, that she could share her more complex thoughts as easily.
Not only am I happy to have the game to offer, so we will not seem so like beggars but, if the Old One has wondered, this will show that we were indeed hunting. I think it would be well if he thought me a little stupid, a little restless, eager to show off in this unfamiliar place. I can play that part.
She found herself hoping that Griffin and Terrell would not make the same assessment. Surely Terrell wo
uld not. They had known each other in Shepherd’s Call for some time. Griffin, though, already had demonstrated a time or two that he was surprised she could think. She’d seen his reaction when he saw her writing in her notebook. She wondered how much more surprised he would be if he learned what the contents were. Not only the trail notes and such that he doubtless expected but …
Such thoughts kept Adara amused during the tramp back into Spirit Bay. The few people she passed greeted her with varying degrees of surprise, but not so much as might be expected. Already, then, word was spreading of the huntress and the puma who had come to Spirit Bay. Well, that was all for the good. People who knew you were somewhere could often be convinced you were where you were not.
Dinner that night would be the cornmeal fried fish that Adara had guessed at when she first met Jean, but the cook was delighted at the gift of the deer—even more so when Adara offered to take care of the butchering.
“I’ll make a nice venison sausage with most of the meat,” Jean promised. “This time of year, game can still be tough, but making it into sausage will tenderize it nicely. I’ve garlic and some nice young spring onions. My herbs are leafing out…”
She mused aloud as she returned to her preparations for dinner. After confirming that the men were still busy over their paperwork, Adara took the buck to where she could butcher it without getting in Jean’s way. She had no particular desire to return to the stuffy room, even if the view from the window was like watching a painting come to life. She had another reason for staying near. She wanted the cook and her husband to get used to seeing her around, even to forgetting she was there. It was amazing what people who were used to being alone together talked about when they forgot there was a listener.
Adara hadn’t forgotten that odd comment that Jean had made about not having anything to hide. Something in Jean’s inflection had implied that there were those who did. If the Old One had secrets, it was likely these trusted servants knew some of them, though they might not be aware of how they fit into the larger picture. Adara knew she might be being naive, but she couldn’t imagine that the cook—even now humming away to herself as she washed spring greens for a salad—would accept the sort of slavery Lynn had described.
If Jean did, then the Old One’s influence was so powerful that Adara’s hopes were doomed from the start.
Interlude:
Sowing spores.
Sewing spores.
Ganglion, neurons, axons.
“Interlocking mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes.”
Aware, reactive.
Reactive, reacting.
Reacting, acting, linking.
Axons, neurons, sporophores, semaphores.
Signaling,
Wriggling,
Slowly, tentatively,
interlacing mosaics
becoming,
coming,
bursting forth into a burgeoning
One.
14
The Hidden Door
From the moment the Old One ushered them into the visitor’s center, Griffin felt as if the world had righted itself under his feet. Here at last were things he had grown up taking for granted: large windows, flat floors, high ceilings. The lack of power didn’t unsettle his sense of rightness. Even on Sierra, power outages happened. They were uncommon and backups came on nearly instantly, but he was familiar with how a building felt when the power was off.
So his brain had a comfortable category into which to place the experience, leaving Griffin free to glory in the unfamiliar familiar. There had been a jolt when the Old One pulled out primitive oil lanterns to illuminate their venture below the ground floor, but Griffin’s sense of exploration fired up. He was one with all the archeologists who had ever entered a ruin with a torch held high.
After all, it wasn’t as if he was back on Sierra. This was Artemis. The technology lying dormant around him was not that of Griffin’s own culture, but that of a foundation culture so vanished into the past as to have become—even with all the tidbits saved in modern information storage—gloriously mythical. Griffin always found amazing how much of what a culture wrote about itself assumed that the reader was of itself. As time passed and words fell out of use, even material written in a known language became cryptic.
Griffin’s excitement grew as the Old One showed off the facility. As part of his quest to find Artemis, Griffin had immersed himself in relics of the Imperial past. Now he was seeing those items firsthand, in nearly pristine condition, rather than as holograms or as time-ravaged relics. Artemis had never been bombed or otherwise suffered the damaging aspects of war. There had been one raid. The targets for that raid had been very specific: not the technology, but rather the people who knew how to use that technology.
For the first time since he had met her, Griffin found himself unaware of Adara’s presence—or of her absence. He was back, back to himself, back to where he belonged. Had he ever loved that wild woman? Had his feelings been the weak fantasies of a man disconnected from all he knew?
Even when the comm units refused to activate, Griffin couldn’t let go of the dream that any time now he would regain contact with his orbiting ship, that he would have the means to return to Sierra, there to flaunt his discovery before an awed universe. Such fantasies sustained him as he pored over maps and charts with the Old One and Terrell.
When the servant had shown Griffin and Terrell to their suite, the sight of Griffin’s now-familiar travel bag had come as something of a shock. On some level, Griffin had expected his “real” luggage, holding the clothing and toiletries now isolated from him by the unreachable void of the planet’s atmosphere. After washing, Griffin almost put on his coverall, just to maintain the feeling he was “back.” He resisted the impulse at the last minute as foolish—or worse, as an attempt to show off.
Instead Griffin donned clean woolen trousers, a loose shirt with buttons carved from bone, then slid his feet into soft moccasins. He peed in a toilet that was little more than a hole flushed with water (doubtless from a holding tank somewhere on the roof), then tried not to slouch or mope as Terrell led the way to the dining room.
Adara was waiting for them. She’d been out most of the day but, at some point, she must have cleaned up, for she no longer wore her hunting leathers. Instead, she had changed into one of the several long dresses Bruin had insisted she pack for just such an occasion. This one was a deep shade of honey gold that echoed the color of her amber eyes. It laced close at the bodice, showing off her figure quite differently than did her ordinary clothing.
Griffin hardly noticed the change. Instead he found himself entranced by the flat panels of the defunct lighting system, imagining how they once would have provided an illumination neither too glaring nor too soft—and certainly not as diffuse as the elegant wax candles that were liberally set around the room in an effort to compensate for the failing daylight.
On some level Griffin knew that dinner was excellent—the fried fish not the least greasy, the bread of high quality, the salad an elegant assortment of greens that complemented each other to perfection—but he found himself eating without interest. Indeed, the only person possibly less attentive to the meal than himself was the Old One. He ate hardly anything and refused a helping of the strawberry tart Joffrey brought in for dessert.
Almost before it was polite, certainly before either Terrell or Adara had eaten their fill of the pastry, the Old One asked Griffin if he would care to return to the lower levels.
“I realize you have already had a long day…”
Griffin shook his head. “Compared with our days of travel, this one was easy. I’d like to see what I can make of the various symbols you have found. Please remember, though, the language of the Empire is not the language of my time.”
“I understand completely.” The Old One glanced at Terrell and Adara. “Are you
coming with us?”
Adara looked bored and sulky, Terrell torn.
“Perhaps I can join you later,” the factotum said. “I want to walk over to the Trainers and make sure Sam is letting someone other than me groom him.”
The Old One nodded graciously. “Of course, Terrell. We would be happy to have your insights.”
Griffin turned to make sure Adara knew she also was welcome, but as silently as might her puma, the huntress had vanished.
* * *
“So … Interesting developments,” Terrell said when he joined Adara and they were clear of the Sanctum. Sand Shadow remained behind, promising to alert them if either Griffin or the Old One departed.
“Indeed,” Adara agreed. “What next?”
“Did you sense anything in the lower part of the facility?”
“Nothing in the Sanctum itself,” Adara said, “nor did Sand Shadow but, when we went hunting…”
Quickly, she sketched what they had found.
“So they’ve relocated.”
“As we expected,” Adara countered. “I never disbelieved Lynn, but I am pleased to have confirmation of her tale nonetheless.”
“The huntress does not feel the hunt is ended then?”
Adara snorted. “Hardly. As I see it, the Old One would have been torn between two equally strong conflicts. He would not wish to have his breeding facility discovered. However, he would not want it out of his reach.”
“He is a controller, that one,” Terrell agreed. “Have you seen how he looks at Griffin?”
“Like he is deciding whether to pluck the bird or swallow it feathers and all.” Adara shook her head. “Do you think Griffin has noticed?”
Terrell was silent for four or five long strides. “No. I don’t think he has. He is too overwhelmed by having his hopes and dreams so close and so far…”
“That one!” Adara tried to sound amused but suspected she only sounded annoyed. “Griffin changes dreams far too easily. First his dream was to find Artemis. Now his dream is to leave her as quickly as possible.”
Artemis Awakening Page 20