by L. M. Roth
No one answered for a long moment.
“Yes, it would seem,” Kyrene replied, “that there is no life to be found here; nothing but the sun and the moon and the stars.”
Marcus’ attention was caught by her last word. Stars. Instantly he could hear the Empress Aurora instructing him on his task…
“‘Bring back to me the Fountain of Youth, a star from the heavens, the Rays of the Sun, and the secret of life.’”
Which he wondered was it to be: a star from the heavens, or the Rays of the Sun? For surely Zoe had led them here to fulfill the quest and find one of the objects assigned to them?
They lingered on the summit for a while simply because they did not know where to go. The path led them on, but to where they did not know. They were still at a loss, when Felix suddenly spotted the door.
Now the door was not attached to a house. That was the second odd thing about it. The first odd thing was that there should be a door when there was not a sign of life to be seen.
The door itself was unobtrusive, being gray and fitted into the side of one of the mountain peaks. Indeed, they would not have spied it at all had not Felix had the eyes of a lynx and the door knob was a deep cobalt blue.
Yet there it was, and now they must decide what they were to do about that door: to pass it by, or to approach it and knock, and find out what manner of people had placed a door in a mountainside?
They discussed the alternatives.
“I vote that we knock and meet the inhabitants, for I am curious to know why anyone would live in a mountainside,” said Felix with the lilt of excitement in his voice.
“I vote we pass it by,” Dag stated firmly. “In my land, good men live in huts, not in hills or rocks. Those that do are bad men; we will not speak of what they are.”
Cort sided with Dag as did Elena; but Kyrene insisted that Zoe led them here, so it must be for a good purpose.
“I feel as Kyrene does,” Marcus agreed. “Yet we are split on our vote, and that can not be. We should be united in our actions, whatever our decision may be.”
They all pondered on his statement, and all felt he was right. They must all be agreed or do nothing, yet their opinions were divided, and none was willing to change their inclination.
It was Felix who found the solution.
“Let us continue on the path, and if it winds in a different direction from the door, then we journey on. But if the path leads to the door, then we knock and meet whoever is within.”
This solution seemed fair and sensible to everyone. They set their feet back on the path and followed it as it wound around in the semicircle of peaks.
It led directly to the gray door in the side of the mountain. Indeed, it went no further, for it had been made by those who dwelt in the mountain, and for their purpose alone.
Marcus prayed silently that those within would be civilized and friendlier than those of Jytte’s Land when they first arrived there.
With the ending of his prayer, he strode to the door and knocked.
Chapter XI
The People of the Forgotten Tongue
Marcus knocked on the strange gray door that had been set into the mountainside. There was a long silence, so long they began to fear that whoever had chiseled the door in the mountain had abandoned it, and therefore they moved away from the door and back onto the path, there to decide what they should do next.
A grating sound of stone moving against stone proved them to be in error in their supposition of abandonment. They glanced back and saw the strange door had opened and peering out at them in the doorway were two little men as like as the twin stars that graced the night sky.
That is to say, they seemed little to Dag, Marcus, and Felix, but in actuality they were a little taller than Kyrene, and the top of their heads just reached the chin of Marcus. They had black hair cut short and straight and in a bowl shape around their heads. Their skin had a faint golden tint, and their dark eyes were wide with a distinctive tilt at the corners.
At first glance, they appeared identical, but on closer inspection it could be seen that one had a short nose with a pointed tip, the other had a nose slightly flattened with flaring nostrils. One’s chin was sharp, the other’s rounded. Only their hair and eyes were similar, and both sets of eyes looked warily at the strangers at their door, as if they were beholding creatures from an alien world.
Perhaps they did appear alien and foreign to these men: Dag’s towering height contrasted with Cort’s small stature, Marcus’ keen gray eyes differed sharply from Kyrene’s dreamy hazel ones, and Felix’s springy crop of auburn curls was at variance with Elena’s glossy black mane the color of a raven’s wing.
Feeling that someone should do something, Marcus returned to the door and held out his hand in greeting to the men. They merely looked at one another and spoke to each other in a tongue Marcus had never heard before. After finishing their consultation they turned their attention back to the traveler on their doorstep.
Marcus and the two men stared at one another earnestly. The silence seemed intensified by the absence of any other noise.
Marcus decided to try again to initiate a greeting. He spoke in the Common Tongue, introducing himself and his companions. The blank stares that he met with increased his sense of frustration.
He paused a moment and tried to think of another way to communicate with the men. He once again introduced himself in the Common Tongue and this time added that he and his friends followed the path over the mountains.
At the word “path” the faces of the little men lit up with sudden comprehension. They responded to Marcus with a steady stream of questions, but in a far older language than the Common Tongue, and different from the one they had addressed him with previously. Marcus was able to grasp their meaning, having studied languages intently under his old tutor, but he was astonished that any man living still spoke the words spilling from the mouths of these two men, as it had gone out of universal usage at least five hundred years ago.
He answered their questions in the same language. And their faces creased into welcoming smiles. They raised the palms of their left hands in a gesture which Marcus understood was to be returned. He held his left hand aloft, and Felix signaled for the others to do so as well.
Marcus spoke again in the obsolete dialect and requested shelter, and the men opened the door wider to grant admittance to all of them. The sight that met their eyes was one they could not possibly have imagined.
They were in a cave. But it was not a dark, damp cave with bats or water dripping from the ceiling. No, for this cave was dry and well-lit, there being lanterns of a most intricate pattern lining both sides of a path that ran through the interior.
The interior itself was extensive, and they could not see an end to it from where they stood. Indeed, they heard voices in the distance, echoing through the cavern, alerting them to the fact that these two men were not the only inhabitants of the cave.
The two men beckoned them to enter, so they followed along in their wake to whatever lay beyond.
The narrow path, they discovered, had many branches off it on either side. Felix tried to get a glimpse into whatever they led to, but the men led them in a straight line into a broad brightly-lit chamber.
They were amazed to see that the chamber was filled with about two score people, both men and women, all of them remarkably similar in appearance to the two men who acted as their guide.
Their own amazement was equaled by that of the people in the chamber, who spun around as one to face the travelers. All of them, Marcus noted, were clad in long robes of the same deep blue, the color of the sky in summer after the sun has set and before the night has deepened to black. A curious feature of the robes were the decoration of stars embroidered in silver thread scattered about the hem line, with a crescent moon, also embroidered in silver thread, placed on the bodice of the robe, on the left side for women and the right side for men.
The women were smaller than the men, even small
er than Elena. They were of delicate appearance in both form and feature, with silky black hair caught up on either side of their faces, and held in place with the assistance of long pins wrought from silver, and decorated with an exotic flower carved from pale blue enamel.
The two men addressed the assembled group in the same dialect they had originally used to speak to Marcus. The people responded to their exhortation to welcome the strangers, by all of them lining up in a row, and bowing the upper half of their bodies while raising their left hands.
Marcus and his friends responded in like fashion. Their two guides then said something in another language that Marcus did not know to an older man who stood at the head of the line. The man bowed and left the chamber, walking with the sedate pace of a maiden aunt.
One of the two men addressed Marcus and spoke again in the forgotten tongue.
“We have sent word of your coming to Wangdakene. He will know what is to be done.”
Chapter XII
Stairway To the Sky
Marcus could not recall when he had last seen anyone so withered with age. The man who stood before him was stooped with it, and his face seemed little more than a road map of connecting lines that crossed over his features, so that they were nearly lost to sight.
The guides had led them through another long corridor into a still larger chamber where the man they called Wangdakene had taken residence. He did not sit on a high chair, for he was not a ruler. For his people, he explained, were all equal. No one was higher or lower than another; they were all the same and treated with equal dignity.
There were, however, Wangdakene continued, those among them with superior knowledge, who had studied more and learned more than all others. These were given the title of the Yeshui, the Wise Ones. They were also the most knowledgeable of all; the star gazers.
Marcus marveled at how freely the old man imparted information to complete strangers. It had been his own experience that the more primitive the civilization or less knowledgeable, the more likely to withhold information of a revelatory nature from visitors. These people, he therefore reasoned, must be either highly cultured or extremely intelligent, perhaps both.
For the present he decided to enjoy their exquisite courtesy and warm hospitality. For they had been extended a genuine welcome, and bade to stay as long as they liked. This people, who called themselves the Khalaman, were not accustomed to receiving visitors, and it was a novel experience for them.
The reason they had not seen visitors was clear: they lived in a remote and nearly inaccessible locale. It was the reason they took the name they chose for themselves: Khalaman, which meant Path of the Sky. For surely there was not a better word to describe their mountainous abode, right at the top of the world, in the path of the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Once again Marcus and his friends had an interview with Wangdakene. They had been staying in this mountain abode for nearly a week now, and he marveled at the ingenuity of these people, and how they had carved out an existence in this mountain fastness.
For light, they struck with flint a white substance of some crystal which they called ahare. It was abundant in their cave residence, and when ground to a fine powder and struck with a flint, it produced a clear light that lasted for quite a long time. Marcus found it to be cleaner and more practical than candles, which smoked and would have fouled the air in this underground dwelling that was without proper ventilation.
For heat, the Khalaman piped in water from the mountain springs and heated it in a manner similar to that which the Valerians used to heat the baths. Truly, these people were ingenious, and in some ways, far more advanced than some other civilizations Marcus had encountered, in spite of the primitive language they used.
On this particular day, he met with Wangdakene with whom he had become particularly friendly.
They had quickly made friends with several of the people, including the two guards whom they had first met. Their names were Kipui and Pembui. Never, thought Marcus, could two people be more unlike. Kipui was a happy, light-hearted soul who continually smiled and attempted to make jokes with Felix, some of them pretty feeble indeed, although Felix said the attempt was made from a cheerful disposition. Pembui, on the other hand, was of a more saturnine temperament. His grave face rarely smiled, and he seemed to find life a serious matter indeed.
If Kipui remarked that the day was rainy, in typical spring fashion, Pembui chimed in that the streams would probably flood, and they must be careful when they ventured out to collect water. If Kipui reported that the day was fine, with plenty of spring sunshine, Pembui commented that the warmth would probably melt more snow caps on the mountains and that would flood the streams all the more so that must be very careful if they ventured out.
Marcus found them delightful, as he also did a young woman named Tashima. She was vigorous and energetic, and was always doing some task, whether it be tending some of the young children or bringing in water from the streams in pails, one in each hand, or helping in the kitchen to cook the communal meals. She was never idle. There was no servant structure among them and everyone was expected to do their share of the work. It just seemed that Tashima did more than her share.
Her sister Chodena was a more delicate creature, not built for the heavy labor that Tashima frequently volunteered for. Chodena helped to lay the table for the meals, and to pour water in the glasses; she was far too frail to carry the heavy water pails or lift the iron cooking kettles that Tashima flung around so effortlessly. Marcus divined that they were sisters, and there was a devotion between them that was touching to see; Tashima rather protective of the fragile Chodena, and Chodena clearly admired her heartier sister. He soon discovered that their mother, Kunchena, was one of the Yeshui, and they breathed her name in awe, with a touch of trepidation, or so it seemed to him.
The two quickly struck up a fast friendship with Kyrene, who volunteered to help with the kitchen work in gratitude for their hospitality. The sisters seemed fascinated by the tawny waves of Kyrene’s hair, never having seen any shade other than black, and accustomed to straight locks. They frequently traced the spirals of its waves with their fingertips, giggling in glee as they did so, all of which was borne in serene patience by Kyrene.
Elena kept apart socially, although she helped with the work. Marcus noted that while she was a tireless worker, she gave nothing of herself in friendship. He wondered if this was simply true of Elena’s people, or if she had been so deeply wounded from the loss of her family that she had nothing left of herself to give.
Marcus brought himself back to the present. He was facing Wangdakene, and he had just posed to him the question that he had wanted to ask from the moment he knocked on the door in the mountain.
“Tell me, please,” Marcus ventured, “how your people came to live here in the heart of the mountain? Where did they come from, and for what purpose did they settle in such a desolate place?”
Wangdakene smiled indulgently at the young man.
“Ah, but to our people there is no other place more to our liking than where we are,” he answered.
Such a statement puzzled Marcus. Why would anyone desire to live in such an inaccessible country so remote from human habitation? Surely the loneliness of such a place would depress the spirits, to say nothing of the cold of winter!
“I am afraid I do not understand,” Marcus puzzled.
“Then I shall tell you the story of my people, and how we came to our home on the top of the world,” Wangdakene replied.
The withered old man took a sip from the tiny cup of thaelan which he kept perpetually at his side. It was a drink brewed from the leaves of the plants that grew abundantly in the mountain meadows. The Khalaman cultivated it, and harvested it diligently, for in this remote locale it was all they had to drink apart from the cold water of the clear mountain springs. They claimed that thaelan warmed them when cold, refreshed them when tired, and soothed them when ill. Wangdakene always had a cup of it near him, and after tak
ing a long swallow, he turned his attention back to Marcus.
“Long ago,” he began, “when the world was young, and knew peace, my people lived on the river plains of a fertile country. We dwelt in harmony with one another, and with the land around us. None among us knew want of any kind, for we shared all we had. The land we lived on was our sacred trust, given to us to care for and to cultivate. For this reason our women wear the blue malanka flower, symbol of harmony.
“We believed that all we had was a gift; it was entrusted to us, but we did not possess it. This was true as well of the animals who shared our land; if a bird broke its wing we nursed it back to strength. If the winter months were harsh, we shared our food with the creatures around us; the pheasants, the deer, and the wild foxes.
“Our desire was to live in peace with all of nature. We took our counsel not from man, but from the sun, the moon, and the stars, as they coursed through the heavens. For had not they always lived there, and acquired wisdom that man who was of the earth, a frail and finite being, knew naught of?
“The great and learned ones among us, the Yeshui, or star gazers, set their hearts to learn the secrets of the heavens, to divine the mysteries they concealed from mortal man. And this they did with great success, imparting knowledge to those who wished to inquire of them for guidance. They alone wore the golden sun on their robes of midnight blue.
“In our country on the low lying river plain they had enjoyed success, but, they said, how much more would they learn if they could climb up the sky and reach the heavens!
“It was for this purpose and this purpose alone, that we left our river plain, and traveled the lands far and wide until we found the tallest mountains, the highest peaks we could see. Here we settled, and here we will stay. For where else should we find such access to the rulers of the heavens, those who divide the night from the day? For truly they have ordained our days; they have set our course, and it cannot be changed.”