by Carol Berg
“Of course, we’ll stay,” I said, dismissing Vroon’s urgent gesturing without a second thought. I’d not heard a Singlar so well-spoken, nor so cheerful and mannerly in his greeting. Besides, I was ravenously hungry, and even the prospect of a Singlar’s unvarying menu of tappa root had my stomach growling.
The man clapped his hands in delight. “My fastness awaits. If your companions wish to come, we will be crowded, but happy. Others will bring sustenance for them.”
I glanced at Vroon and he shook his head. “Out here we’ll stay waiting, if you insist on going inside, my - ”
“I insist.” I interrupted him before he could come out with some honorific that might make my host less at ease.
Paulo came inside with me, but Ob, Vroon, and Zanore stubbornly remained standing in the rain.
The Singlar’s dim and smoky shelter was the most barren I had seen, its rock-and-mud walls unrelieved by any decoration, its furnishings no more than two smooth rocks beside a tiny fire pit scraped in the center of the dirt floor. A small heap of dark, spongy squares sat to one side, their purpose revealed when the tall man set one in the fire pit and carefully blew a small ember to life underneath it. In northern Valleor, where wood was scarce, the villagers used such material cut from the ground to make their fires. The fire seemed hardly enough to warm the Singlar, much less dry out two such soggy guests.
“Tell us of the wide world, traveler,” said the man, easing his bent frame onto the ground across the fire from us. “We hunger to know of it.”
“You surely know more than I,” I said. “I’m new to your land and few speak as freely as you to teach me of it.”
He squinted pleasantly. “Hmmm… you’ve not the look of a new-birthed Singlar who wanders from the Edge. You have been real longer than any I’ve known, longer than any who hold fastness here. I see it in your bearing. I hear it in your words. You come from the center of the wide world to which we send the new-birthed on their way, never to see them return. Mayhap even farther than that.”
“Perhaps you could tell me of your life here and what you know of the wide world, then I can tell you whatever new I can.”
The man laughed and flushed a little. “I’ve given these Singlars so many guesses, told so many stories of what I imagine or surmise, I can hardly say what is fact and what is only my foolishness. You must catch me up where I err.”
While he emptied a small lump of tappa root from a woven bag, sliced it thin with a stone knife, and fried it in a chipped clay pot over his little fire, he told me of storms that lashed their valley, and earthquakes and lightnings from the Edge. His villagers welcomed the occasional wanderer who struggled in from the Edge naked and bewildered, and they tried to calm those who arrived frightened and ferocious. Often they had to fight off raving man-beasts who roamed the wilds and were known to kill Singlars and eat them. The Guardian had forbidden the rift dwellers to leave their valley, but they were determined to make the best of it until the king came to the Bounded to change everything.
His stories, though interesting and dramatic, fit with what I knew already. It was only when I asked him about his knowledge and theories of the “wide world” that I heard anything extraordinary.
“Have you not wondered about the Bounded?” he asked, leaning toward me, his eyes alight. “I sit before my fastness and watch the passing of the storms and feel the earth shaking under my feet; I see the new-birthed Singlars open their eyes to the world, and my head will not stop wondering.”
“And what have you concluded?”
The man almost whispered his answer, as if these wonders of his reason were too much to express. “Our land is alive. We feel the beating of her heart, and we experience the pain of her growth. She is bent in her aspect as are we, and it pains her as do our own misshapen parts. Our life here is hard. But I tell my people that the Bounded is only just learning of Singlars, and that we are hidden here in our valley where she cannot see us as yet. When she learns of our hardships, she will share her abundance and shepherd us through the storms.”
As he talked of his strange theories, I ate his fried tappa as if I’d not eaten in a week. I would have eaten five times as much if it had been available. Paulo left his share to me, saying it was clear I was far hungrier than he, and our host shook his head when I indicated he should take his own portion.
“What of the firestorms?” I said, picking the last crumbs from my hand and wiping my fingers on my breeches. “Do you have an idea about those?”
“I tell the Singlars that there must be a guardian beyond our lands who flogs the Bounded as our Guardian flogs Singlars, even if they do not understand their offense. We must help our land endure her punishment, just as we must ourselves endure.”
His gentle philosophy was sorely at odds with my view of the Guardian. I almost hated to tell the man that the only news of his “wide world” that I had to report was the judgments and activities of an iron-fisted despot. But the man listened so intently to my own discourse that I guessed he could have repeated my words more exactly than I could have re-created them. I mentioned nothing of the Singlars’ beliefs about me.
“And the Guardian believes our king will come from outside the Bounded?” he asked, his face hungry for my tale.
“It seems so. He sends searchers into lands beyond the Bounded - other worlds - to seek him out.”
The man wrinkled his brow, his first sign of disagreement. “No, no, that’s wrong! The king must be of the Bounded. He will speak for her, and mold her, and ease her suffering. How could he be from outside?”
“I agree with you,” I said. “It makes no sense.”
After we spent a few moments quietly pondering these mysteries, I took my leave, thanking him for his hospitality.
Outside the smoky hovel, the rain had eased into a warm drizzle. Pink sheet lightning flickered constantly overhead, illuminating the dismal settlement. Two Singlars, one a rheumy-eyed young woman wearing a sack-like covering, and the other a naked man with one foot like a tree stump, stood to one side waiting patiently for my host. Each of them carried a woven bag, just like the one from which my host had taken his tappa root.
“Abide a moment and I will serve you,” my host said to them. Then to me, “I must leave off my prattling and give these two their portion of tappa. They hunger much. Joyfully, I may share your words to fill out their stores.”
“Do you keep a common store of tappa then?” I asked. “I’ve not seen that custom among other Singlars.”
“It serves us best. Tappa grows only in one small part of our valley.” Not hard to understand, considering the steep, rocky walls, and the river of mud that comprised the valley floor. “To prevent disputes and to share equitably, we decided long ago to appoint one person to share out our stores. This waking, these two have come for their portion. Next waking, two more.”
He moved the stones from a small shelf in the steep embankment to reveal a root cellar, dug high enough up the wall that it wouldn’t flood when a capricious storm set the valley awash. With his stone knife, the man cut a sizable lump of dusty white from the huge knotted root in the little alcove. Then he allowed the woman to cut the lump in half, and the man to choose which piece was his. The two stuffed their portions, each roughly the size of a loaf of bread, into their bags, smiled and nodded at Paulo and me, and hurried away.
“Your people must trust you very much,” I said. “And it must be a great deal of trouble to feed everyone on every day.”
“Only two come each waking,” he said, flushing with embarrassment as he carefully replaced the rocks about the precious root cellar. “So it is no trouble. Farewell, kind traveler. I am honored by your speaking. Have care in your journey.”
Paulo and I started toward Vroon and the others, who stood waiting for us a hundred paces down the track. As the five of us trudged through the mud toward the end of the valley and the Edge, the gaunt Singlar began to sing. His song told of the suffering land and his people’s long waiting, the hau
nting tune echoing through the mists long after we lost sight of him.
I thought a great deal about the cheerful Singlar as we slogged down the road out of his muddy valley. It was easy to dismiss his fanciful imaginings. Yet, as we began feeling the slight tremors beneath our feet as we approached the Edge, I couldn’t completely rid myself of the image of a beating heart.
We hadn’t traveled far before Paulo pulled out a piece of flatbread to munch on, and my mind wandered onto the Singlar’s problem of feeding his people. If there were fifty towers in the cluster - fifty Singlars - and only two per day could claim a share of the tappa root, then the loaf-sized lump would have to last a person twenty-five days. No wonder then at their gaunt appearance. And then I thought back to the meal I had eaten… the thin slices of fried tappa, so much more appetizing than the boiled mush that could last for many days. The man had emptied his own woven bag for me - his month’s ration.
“Vroon!”
“Yes, my king?”
“What stores do we have?”
“Flatbread for us all to last a twolight, the hard sausage the Horseman Mighty favors though it is not what he is used to, five of the Guardian’s round fruits that you have named apple-things.”
“Each of you take one piece of flatbread for yourselves, none for me, then take the rest of our supplies back to the man we just visited.”
“But, great Master - ”
“Tell him it is our custom. I want him to have it.”
“But the Guardian - ”
“Blast the Guardian. He need never know if we don’t tell him. He can’t mean for those people to starve.” I would have to speak to the Guardian about the place. Even if the man kept all of our rations for himself, it wouldn’t hold him a month.
Vroon bowed, wearing his most long-suffering expression.
We proceeded through the increasingly rough country, along the path Zanore devised, slowly so Vroon could make his delivery and catch up with us.
“He seemed a right fellow,” said Paulo.
“A natural leader,” I said. “Probably the best mind we’ve run across in this place.”
After we had tramped through the gloom for another hour or so, Vroon rejoined us. “The Singlar delighted in your gift, great Master, praising you unstopping.”
“What did he do with it? Did he take it?”
“Five pieces of the flatbread he shared out among all his people, each taking a portion. Himself, too. The rest he put in the common store - ”
With an ear-splitting roar, a plume of steam shot skyward not fifty paces in front of us. We dodged sharply left to avoid a shower of glowing rock shards. Soon afterward the wind came up, a frigid gale, blowing right in our faces, even when we had to reverse our course again to skirt a bubbling pit of stinking yellow mud. I had no more time to think about the people of the rift.
“How long until we reach the Edge?” I shouted to Ob over the roar of the wind. We’d just made a third hour-long detour, this time in order to circumvent a bottomless crevasse. The earth groaned all around us.
“Long,” said Ob in the nuance of speech that I’d learned meant, “a very much longer period of time than you possibly could imagine.”
Even that would have been all right, if I hadn’t begun feeling so wretched. At first it was merely dizziness. But then waves of hot and cold that had no relation to the character of the wind left me variously sweating and shivering. My stomach tried turning inside out. I blamed the evil-smelling gasses from the sinkholes and steam vents, but no one else seemed at all affected.
Eventually, knees wobbling and head spinning, I had to stop and lean against a massive boulder that seemed a bit more stable than the heaving earth, forcing myself to hold on to the generous Singlar’s meal. I didn’t think my malady had anything to do with my humiliation at so callously gobbling up a starving man’s last provision. Before long, I could think of nothing but a warm dry bed and a lifetime of sleep. It had been hours since the others had eaten their flatbread, and I didn’t want to see them among the starving either. “Let’s go back,” I said. “I still intend to visit the Edge, but I guess I’ll just have to wait.”
For the rest of the journey back to the Tower City, sickness and exhaustion muddled my head. I kept hearing the faint echoes of the starving Singlar’s song of joy drifting through the stormy ever-night, soaking through my soggy clothes and into my skin and bones right along with the dismal rain.
Wait I did, and it drove me to distraction. I’d not come to the Bounded for lessons in geography or economics, no matter how odd or interesting. I had certainly not come to see that the Singlars were fed or to drag them out of their mud holes. I didn’t like it that the place felt so familiar or that the people took it for granted that I was their king.
The Guardian continued to ignore me. He even stopped coming to the table for meals. Maybe the damnable villain thought I’d go away if he paid me no attention. We had been in the Breach three weeks by my reckoning when I decided I could wait no longer.
“He’ll never take us to the Source willingly,” I said one day when Paulo and I were wandering aimlessly through the deserted streets of the Tower City. “And no one else seems to have any idea what it is or where to find it. We’ll just have to learn when he goes, and then follow him.”
“He goes somewhere every third evening before the lights go down,” said Paulo. “That’s the times he don’t come to the room to check on us, and he’s always fired up nasty the next morning.”
“I don’t think the Source will let him send me away. Otherwise we’d be on the road or dead by now.”
“What is this Source? Is it somebody?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. So, he came sneaking around last night and the one before. That means he’ll go this evening. There’s an alcove on the third landing… ”
The winding stair of mottled red stone, polished and smoothed like marble, was the heart of the Blue Tower. Though the rooms one found beyond its landings had no relation to the outside shape of the tower, the staircase followed the exact curve of the spiral. The audience hall and the retiring room, the dining and reception rooms, were on the ground level. Paulo and I slept in guest apartments on the second level, and the Guardian had his private apartments on the third level. The storerooms were below ground, so we understood. The maintainers guarded them ferociously and would not allow us to go down the narrow stairs. All the other rooms on the ten levels of the tower, including a luxurious bedchamber on the fourth level and a rabbit warren of winding passages and large and small chambers that had no clear function, were reserved for the king.
Paulo and I slipped out of our room right after supper. The upper levels of the Blue Tower were quiet, as always. And we didn’t fear running into anyone. The servants seemed to disappear as soon as we were fed.
We crowded into an alcove near the third-level landing, counting on the fact that the Guardian would use the stair if he was going anywhere, and we’d be able to follow him. No more than an hour after we’d begun our watch from the cramped space behind a slender column that supported the spiral stair, we heard steps approaching from the direction of the Guardian’s quarters.
Surprisingly, the knob-jointed man started up the stair, not down. We crept after him, staying just close enough to keep his gray robe in view. He climbed all the way to the uppermost landing.
The yellowish wall at the head of the stair glowed softly of its own light, plain and undecorated save for a carved circle about the size of my full arm span. The Guardian seemed to be running his fingers slowly around the circle. Crouching low on the stair one turn of the spiral below the Guardian, we couldn’t see what else he might be doing or hear him saying any words. But after only a moment, the center of the circle dissolved into a curtain of deep shadows. And a moment after that, the Guardian stepped through and vanished, leaving us staring stupidly after him.
We hurried up the steps and examined the wall… now solid stone again, colored the pale gold
en yellow of ripe wheat. The devices carved on the stone circle at top, bottom, left, and right seemed quite ordinary: wheat sheaves, grapevines, flowers, and so forth. In the center of the circle was a small raised area about the size of my fist, having an oddly shaped hole in the center of it. Nothing told me how to invoke the enchantment.
But as I ran my fingers idly around the carved border, much as the Guardian had done, the center of the circle melted away again. “Well,” I said. “That was easy enough. Keep watch - ”
“Wait,” Paulo whispered, laying a hand on my arm.
Without bothering to discuss it, Paulo pushed past me and stepped into the opening.
No alarm rang out. No one shouted or cursed. But I was furious. Fool! Why did you do that? You should have let me examine the opening… to look for enchantments. Dangers. I was sorely tempted to charge after him straightaway. But, of course, that would risk compounding the blunder if he was going to fail, or wasting his courage and luck if he was going to succeed. So I didn’t follow him, but I listened until my ears hurt, and probed the emptiness and the silence with every sense. The Lord Parven would claim Paulo had done exactly the right thing. As my skills were potentially more useful, it was only right that the “expendable partner” lead the way into unknown dangers.
About the time I was ready to damn the risks and lay my hand on the carved circle yet again, Paulo stepped back through the wall as if he were walking out of the stable door. Even if we’d have been standing in pitch dark, I could have felt his grin. “It’s the damnedest! You won’t believe it. It’s safe enough, but watch the first step. It’s a rouser.”
First things first. I grabbed his head and pulled his ear close to my mouth. “Don’t you ever do that again.” Paulo was not expendable.
Then I ran my fingers around the circle and walked through the dark hole. The effect was quite the same as when Vroon and company transported us from place to place, as if the solid earth had dropped away beneath my feet, taking my stomach with it. No shapes were visible. Only a nauseating smear of gray, swirling and streaking by. And I heard nothing but a fast, dull throb in the ears that might have been the beating of my own heart.