A Telling of Stars

by A Telling of Stars (v5. 0) (epub)

  “May I hear?” Jaele asked Murtha, pointing at the horns. “Could you play something?”

  He looked at her. All of them looked at her with what she imagined was sorrow, old and heavy as root or stone. “No,” he said. “Never here. Only above.” They yearn to leave this place, she thought again, and her heart began to race with the words she would speak to them.

  Jaele and Murtha sat in the chamber and watched as the earth silga inspected the horns, watched as new instruments were carried carefully in by children. One of these children held up a horn. Someone looked, pointed to a bubble or fold, and turned the child gently back to the corridor. Feet scuffed and hands smoothed and children smiled; time passed, beyond circling of sun or moon or stars.

  The soft hiss of Murtha’s indrawn breath jolted her back. This sound was the only one; feet and voices had suddenly gone silent, as the hammers had done, before. All of these earth silga, like those others, were still, looking at the doorway. Jaele knew what she would see.

  A tree silga was standing in the entrance to the chamber. He had to stoop beneath the low ceiling, yet even stooping, his long fine hair was dusted with earth. He looked down at them and they looked at the ground. He did not glance at Jaele, though her nails dug into her palms as she waited for him to do so.

  As in the cavern of fire, the earth silga waited. He walked slowly among them, examining the instruments. The colours of his clothing blurred, like leaves in wind. He came to where a woman was standing with a child, each holding one end of a horn. He looked at it, though not at them, then took it from them. It was a slender, delicate thing; he twisted it easily in his hands until the mouth-tip snapped and fell to the dirt at their feet. The child made a sound—a sob, Jaele thought—and the woman took his hand and led him from the chamber.

  “Wait!” Jaele’s voice leapt from the rock and she cringed at its loudness, even as she stood before the tree silga. “What have you done to them? Where have they gone—and those others from the cavern?” I will not hide. Not now—not this time.

  He did not blink. “You,” he said, “will not know. You will leave this place.”

  She was small, again—a leaf on the ground, or a twig. She stared at him in a moment that lengthened and stretched. She was not hiding—but it did not matter. He did not speak again.

  The tree silga left—ducking and straightening in a rustling of leaves—and she swallowed. Time to speak, now, while the earth silga were quiet and her anger still burned.

  “Murtha,” she said carefully, and he smiled at her, very slightly, “do you hate them?” Murtha’s smile slid away, and he gazed at her with his head cocked to one side, like a bird. “Because I will help you,” she went on. The other silga were watching intently, but there was a thread of singing twining once more against the green. “I understand hatred. That other stranger who came here before me—he is my enemy, as the tree silga are yours. I am following him east because he murdered my mother. I will wound him as he has wounded me.” She paused, willing her voice to harden into the shapes of her words.

  “I will help you,” she said again. “We will go above together and fight the tree silga. I have a weapon; surely you could make some. But we can decide these things later. Afterward you could come with me to the Ladhra River and Fane and the ocean, if need be, and you could help me in your turn. We hate—”

  And then she stopped speaking, for Murtha held up his hands and said, “No.” His eyes were full of stone darkness. “No,” he said once more. “We live here. We do not know the sea. And you do not know the silga.”

  Jaele cried, “But you must hate them, and this place so far below the earth!” Her throat was thick with unshed tears.

  Only Murtha was looking at her, now; the others were bending to work, singing and touching the cool green horns. He shook his head and smiled again—his small, sad smile.

  They might have sickened, she thought then, breathing the tears away. They might have died on the journey, and they are so misshapen, not formed for fighting. She forced her anger to dissolve and nodded at him over the regret that remained, like bile. Her fingers closed tightly around the green-hearted stone in her hand. “I will leave now,” she said quietly.

  Murtha guided her back to where the tunnel began to slope upward. The orange light leapt and flickered behind them. “Farewell,” he said. “Jaele.”

  “Farewell, Murtha,” she said, not looking at him. Then she turned and walked up and up, until daylight shone above her and she heard the wind in the leaves.

  Serani was sitting in the wagon when Jaele reached the clearing. Whingey stood patiently. The pots, wheel, and fresh clay had all been packed away. Jaele took the bundle from her platform and climbed up to sit beside the potter.

  “They were not what I expected,” Jaele said, glancing from the trees to the trail before them. “Eight sleeps, perhaps nine”; he would be far from this forest, now—but still ahead, where her feet too would fall. “Not what I had hoped for. Thank you, anyway, for taking me to them. And,” she added, “I would be grateful if I could travel with you for a time—if you are still going east.”

  Serani nodded; she touched Jaele’s hand lightly.

  Whingey drew them down the path. The tall, beautiful silga did not appear, and the holes beneath the roots were dark. Later, as the sun began to slant and the path left the silga’s trees, Jaele heard for the last time the horns singing piercing and lonely over the mountains.

  TELON PLAIN

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Serani guided a melancholy-eyed Whingey northward, up a new path. They rode over slopes where few trees grew. The air was shockingly cold, like deepest water, and their breath hung suspended before them. They came at last to a gorge, a stretch of shadow between walls of mineral-whorled rock. Whingey shied at the entrance to the pass, but Serani laid her hand on his neck and he went slowly forward.

  Jaele shivered as she looked up at the bare mountainsides, and drew her woollen cloak more closely around her. She watched Serani, who was sitting very straight, with a light growing in her black eyes. But mostly Jaele stared at the rock, waiting for a wisp of colour she could make into Dorin—running back along the sandy earth to the Giant’s Club, reaching to touch her shoulder at first light. Dorin or the other one, the man without a name. She sank into silence and did not think to yearn for words.

  Bundled in all their blankets and cloaks, they slept beneath ledges of stone. Two nights passed in the cold darkness of the mountains. Jaele slept soundly and woke each morning to pale, chilly sunlight, and the quick throb of remembering, and Serani’s smile. “What?” Jaele finally demanded on the third morning. “Why are you so happy? Where are we going?” The old woman only smiled more broadly and climbed into the wagon.

  On that third day they came suddenly to the end of the pass. The stone walls fell away, and the path sloped sharply down and into sunlight that was strong and warm. The sky soared above them; Jaele felt light. Below was a plain, rippling golden-green in the wind. The mountains and now the plain. My footsteps in Galha’s.

  She turned to Serani, whose eyes were round and blinking with tears. At last Jaele understood. “This is your home,” she said when the potter looked at her. “This plain is your home.” Words of pain—a lost place, memory like a wound. Serani took her hand and held it tightly before she sent Whingey trotting down the path.

  That night they slept in grass that rose high above them and cut at the sky. Jaele listened to the wind hissing in the grass; it sounded like water rushing in to foam at the edge of the sand. She tried so hard not to remember; tried to think only of a path to the rising sun.

  Serani urged Whingey on almost without halting, and the horse drew them swiftly over the flat earth. Jaele learned then to love the feeling of wind whipping around her face and through her hair. But even as she exulted in this wind and in the grass parting before them, she imagined Dorin and that other appearing, running, riding over the shifting ground
beside them.

  They spent one more night alone on the plain. Jaele woke twice, and both times saw Serani standing looking northward. She was small and straight beneath the sky, which was bottomless in the dark and the endless stars.

  That day they came to an expanse of wheat and corn, and Serani left the wagon to walk. She held the fronds of grain to her face and closed her eyes. Jaele remained in the wagon. Shortly after this they came to a hut. It was small, made of stones of all sizes, and Jaele knew instantly it was Serani’s. She watched her walk up to the wooden door; she laid her forehead against it, then pushed it open. Jaele did not follow. A few moments later Serani put her head out, smiled and beckoned her in.

  The first thing she noticed was the table. It was a flat, round stone, close to the packed earthen floor. It was set for three, and strewn with flowers—pink, blue, yellow-hearted white. A large reed pallet lay in a corner below a window, and it too was covered in petals. The room danced with scented light.

  Jaele knelt before one of the glazed plates on the table, and waited. Serani sliced the bread, peeled the skin off a ball of smooth white cheese. The silence was even deeper about her than usual. When a shadow fell across the table, she looked up steadily.

  He was tall and thin and a bit stooped. His skin was black and only slightly wrinkled, although he was very old. His eyes sparkled green beneath an uneven swath of white hair. He bowed deeply to Jaele. “Greetings,” he said in a voice full of twinkling, and turned to Serani.

  For a moment she stood in the petal-coloured light, hands outstretched. Then she was up and whirling, and the man’s laughter wrapped round them both as he spun her.

  “I am Bienta,” he said to Jaele afterward. “Welcome,” he added with a grin and a sweeping gesture. “Serani has no doubt told you all about me.” He looked at Serani, and she at him, and Jaele looked at her plate of bread and cheese.

  She learned, that afternoon, that if Serani was silent calm, Bienta was flood. “We built this house ourselves when we were young, young—you should have seen us—Serani was as beautiful as a wind in the corn—not, of course, that she is not still as lovely—what was I saying? Ah, the house. . . .” He moved, always—touching Serani’s hair, dancing in small light steps through the deepening shadows. Jaele relaxed beneath his words, for none were expected of her—and she smiled, although she did not know it. She looked from Serani’s eyes to Bienta’s and felt an ache.

  “My, how I go on,” was one of the last things she remembered Bienta saying. “Put your head down, like that—good—now sleep, my dear.”

  Jaele woke to darkness and chill and distant laughter. She rose and stood at the window. She saw the wheat and tufted corn stroking black against the sky; and she saw Bienta’s tall shape and Serani’s slight one, circling and dipping in the silver grass.

  Jaele stayed with Bienta and Serani for one more night and two windy days. There was rain at first; Bienta drew her out of the house, crying, “The rain on Telon Plain is one of the wonders of this world! No one must sit inside—come, come!” Jaele stood with her face upturned, her eyes narrowed: the water was grey, more like silver, and cool and smooth as the underside of a shell.

  The rain passed in the wind, and when the plain was again golden, Jaele saw the stream that wound dark and clear behind the house. She saw the kitchen and the large oven beside it, already burning and lined with bowls. A cat, small and orange, rubbed around her ankles and mewed cheerfully, and Whingey huffed contentedly, despite his wet hair. Jaele picked up the cat and buried her face in sun-scented fur.

  She ate bread, sweetmoss, and pinkfruit from a cellar below the kitchen, and slept in the grass by the stream. Rustling and buzzing and golden-blue warmth; she did not dream.

  At dusk, Serani and Bienta came to sit beside her. Serani pointed to the sky that hung low over the wheat. Bienta said, “Sunset here is quick. If you look away, it will elude you.” Jaele watched the colours sweep up from the grasstops: gold, scarlet, green, and orange, then a rush of darkness.

  “Another wonder of the world?” she said to Bienta, and was shocked at the edge of anger in her voice. He looked at her, but said nothing.

  She sat by the stream well into the night. When Bienta came to her, one of Jaele’s hands was wrapped around the shell at her throat and the other rested on the cat in her lap.

  “I see you have a siri bird thread from the mountain forest,” he said quietly.

  She glanced at him. “Have you seen the place?” she asked, and he smiled.

  “No. But I have heard that it is very beautiful.” They were silent for a moment; the water gurgled, and the cat’s purring rumbled around them. “Jaele,” he said at last, “Serani has told me about Dorin.”

  “Oh,” she said, not thinking to ask how Serani had told him this. She was squeezing the shell so tightly that she felt its tiny grooves pressing into her palm. “Have you met him?”

  “We laughed together,” Bienta said, “and he seemed happy here. But Serani and I knew at once: he is a fleeing one. I knew he would not travel with her for long. He needs to run.”

  “I run,” Jaele said in a small, muffled voice.

  “Yes,” Bienta replied, “but why? and where to?” He paused, then said, quite softly, “Serani has also told me another, larger thing: that you are seeking to avenge your family, and that you are searching for people to join you.”

  “Yes,” she said, turning to him, “I need help, and I thought that he would come with me, since the Sea Raiders attacked his town as well. And then I thought that the earth silga would help, but. . . .” Her voice sank into the dark pulsing of the river.

  “I am sorry,” Bienta said, “that I cannot help you. I am old—though still much as I was as a young man, I must add.”

  She said quickly, “No—you and Serani aren’t too old—you are both hale, and could be of great help to me. And I would enjoy your company.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “Thank you, my dear, but we are most definitely too aged to go hurrying east with you. And most definitely too aged for fighting, except with each other.”

  “I do not need to hurry,” Jaele said. “It is something I have thought about since Luhr. I am certain I will find him—but he is already well ahead of me. I am not sure how far, any more. I may have to travel all the way to Fane and then across the sea. I will need companions for this. I will need them more than I need haste.” Part of her cried out in denial: No—go now, go on. Another part (shuddering alone by a burned-out fire; walking alone round a clearing) clung to safety. “Companions who will understand my need.” Rage and fear, twinned.

  Bienta said, in a slow, careful voice, “I do understand your pain, and your desire. But I think, Jaele—and do not be angry with me for saying it—that this journey may be yours to make alone.”

  “No,” she said, “that is not true. I will have others.”

  “Perhaps,” Bienta replied, and Jaele bent her forehead into the lacing of her fingers. She felt his hand on her shoulder. “Sleep,” he said, “if you can. Much comes clear in daylight.” After a time she did fall asleep by the stream, with the cat curled around her head.

  The wind woke her. The cat was gone, and the sun was up and shimmering. For a few moments Jaele lay without thoughts; then she remembered Bienta, and what he had told her. She rose and walked over to the hut, where he and Serani were waiting.

  “I must leave,” Jaele said, eyes darting to the table, the window, the flowers. She did not say: You will not come with me, so I cannot stay. Dorin has been here, laughing and singing, so I cannot stay. But when she did look into their eyes, she saw them smiling, gently.

  “We understand,” said Bienta. “Where will you go from here?”

  “East,” she replied. “I have told you this. If I do not overtake the Sea Raider soon, I will find the Ladhra River. It will lead me to Fane.”

  She saw Serani glance at Bienta. He said, “East is a large place,
Jaele, and the Ladhra River is far away. Where exactly will you go from here?”

  “I do not know,” she said, and looked at her feet. “That must seem ridiculous to you; it does to me now. But I have found my way this far, and I know where I want to be.” “Mountains and plain and hills”: my father’s words will guide me.

  Bienta went to the high shelf near the door, touching Serani’s hair lightly as he passed her. “It does not seem ridiculous,” he said as he took down a folded piece of parchment. “Perhaps what is ridiculous is the querulous worrying of two old people. In any case,” he continued, turning back to Jaele and holding the parchment out to her, “here is a map. An ancient map—many towns will be missing. But the rivers are there, and so is Fane, and so, of course, is the sea.”

  Jaele unfolded the square and held it carefully; it trembled a bit in her hands. At first she saw only a tangle of ink, lines black red blue green, bright upon the faded honey of the parchment. Then Serani put a finger lightly on the paper and Jaele saw the palace of Luhr, the empty space of desert, the jagged points of mountains.

  Bienta, too, was beside her. “Telon Plain,” he said, pointing at ink strokes like bending grass, “though you will see that its name is not here. There are no names at all here, only images of each place. Perhaps the person who drew it could not write. But see how clear it is: here is the path of the sun; here is the land of scrub and stone beyond our plain; the lake country and the red desert. And here,” he said, “is your river.”

  A broad, curving stroke, blue-black, swept across the desert scarlet, widening and widening again until it met the edgeless green that was the Eastern Sea. Where river and ocean merged there were rows of scratches: houses, Jaele saw when she looked more closely. Tall houses with steep roofs. Tiny ships in a sheltered harbour. “And there is Fane,” she said, and it was so close and so distant that she trembled again. “There is nothing after the sea,” she said after a moment, and Bienta shook his head.