by Andre Norton
The five left behind did not push off but held their craft steady as long as she and Jagun were in sight.
Luckily the mud slime in which one could not find steady footing did not last. There were sometimes pools across their path that Jagun depth-tested with the butt of his spear. Their pace was necessarily slow and the way was long.
There was little shelter. Game was scarce and the provisions which made up the larger part of their packs were fast disappearing despite all their care. There came the time when they went without food for the night and were no better off in the morning. However, under that gray sky the rain had mercifully slackened, and Kadiya at last caught sight of the huddle of ruins ahead.
It was the Place of Learning—the stronghold of the Sindona, the Vanished Ones. She paused. Would the old magic touch her once she passed through that broken semblance of a gate? She began to splash toward it—then remembering, she glanced back.
“Jagun?”
His face was set as if he were battle ready, yet he was following. Looking to neither side, he marched as one does to a danger which must be faced. The age-old Oath put upon his people: even though she had loosened it for him when they journeyed this way before, did it burden him still?
He did not answer but he came on. There was a great burst of wind driven rain, as if the monsoon itself would bar their passage at this last moment. Then they stumbled forward, through the wreckage of the gate, falling to their knees from a last blow of the wind.
But … the beat of the storm was gone! They might have passed under a roof, though the sky was open over them. In the air hung a heavy moisture, more like a morning fog. While before them—
No ruins, no tumble of age-struck stone. Kadiya had seen the transformation work before, passing in the opposite direction. Ruins without to the eye; within, a city silent, deserted, yet unpitted by years. Streets stretched empty before them. The buildings bordering them, though half clothed with the green of vines, showed no crumbling. Just as the Citadel in which she had been born had survived time without decay, so had this place though all other sites the Vanished Ones had left behind were tumbled stone.
Jagun’s pack thudded from his back to the pavement. He muttered something as might one who lived by natural laws and did not welcome a confrontation with what put those in abeyance.
“This is a place of …” He hesitated as if he could not find the proper words.
The clouds were darker. Night was overtaking the storm. Kadiya was on her feet. Twilight, or black night, she was now so close—
“This is a place of Power,” she said, and her words seemed softened by the mist which was growing stronger. “And I have something to do.”
She did not turn her head to see if he would follow, nor did she linger for any word of agreement. Instead she hurried onward. To either hand the intact buildings loomed. The curtains of vines which draped them took on a darker hue in the twilight. Windows like great lidless eyes watched her from behind those living screens. No flicker of lamp, flare of torch gave honest welcome. Still she felt no alarm, no fear that anything here lay in wait.
From street, to square, to street, she went to find that which she knew was the heart of this place. She rounded a mist-veiled pool to come to a stairway. There she stopped, both hands gripping the sword she wore but had not drawn. On either side, mounted on each rising step, were life-size (or perhaps larger than life-size) statues, facing each other so that none could pass between them unseen.
The artist who had carved them had given them a kind of shimmering life as if each were bespelled. Men and women in company, they were surely representations of the Vanished Ones. Each countenance differed from the others so that one could well believe they were portraits of the once-living.
Kadiya slipped off her pack, then drew the sword. This she held by the pointless blade. As if the gesture assured her right to entrance, the girl climbed the stairs.
Gaining the columned platform above, she paused. There was the second stairway which she sought, leading downward to a garden which was not of any world she knew. Here fruit and flower shared the same branch. Time vanished: There was no past, no future, only the moment in which she moved. The mist was nearly gone. Even the twilight lingered, as if night had no place here.
Sparks of light danced in the air. They were many-colored, as if jewels had taken wings. From flower to flower, swelling fruit to fruit, they wheeled and spun. She had never seen their like elsewhere in the swamplands.
With a sigh Kadiya dropped to the top step. At that moment all the weariness of her travel settled upon her. She raised her hand to push off the helm which suddenly had taken on an intolerable weight. It fell, to clang on the white stone, and she frowned at the noise.
Her hair was plastered to her mud splattered cheeks, or lay in lank strings upon her mail clad shoulders. It held the darkness of peat waters. Swamp smells were strong about her body. The fragrance of the garden seemed a reproach.
Across her knees rested the sword. The three eyes which formed the pommel were sealed, closed as tightly as if they had never been opened to loose raw powers. Kadiya slipped her hands along the blade. Once her touch had awakened tingling life, but that was gone now. This was certainly what was meant to be.
Though she caressed the sword, her eyes were on the garden. The one who had come to her here, who had sent her into battle with the Dark to learn for herself a little of what she was, or could be, would that one come again now?
No. Instead the twilight was slowly dimming at last. Nothing moved save the gemmed flyers. With a sigh, her shoulders slumped, Kadiya arose and went down step by lingering step into the garden.
The thick turf which covered all the open land between shrubs, beds of flowers, and twining vines was broken in only one place. Where that patch of earth was visible there seemed to be also a hovering luminosity.
Kadiya stumbled toward it. She stooped and, with both hands clasped tightly over the ovals which held the eyes, drove the squared-off blade tip of her talisman into the spot of bared earth. The blade entered, but not easily. There was strong resistance which drew heavily on her already taxed energy. But the sword stood erect when she moved back a step, a strange new growth in this place of comfort and peace.
Her hands went to her throat to clasp that other symbol of Power which she had worn from birth—the amulet of amber with a tiny embedded flowerlet within it. Kadiya waited.
She had returned this sword of Power to the place from which it had grown. It did not change as she had thought it would. The girl tensed, her shoulders straightened. She loosed hold of the amulet to sweep back the lank locks of hair and fully clear her sight. Nothing moved.
Kadiya cleared her throat. Though she spoke aloud, her words sounded deadened, far off.
“All is finished. We have completed that task which was set us. The evil is vanquished—Haramis is Archimage. Anigel reigns over both friend and those who were once foes. What would you have of me?”
The answer? Was the unchanging sword to be her only answer? Was she, in the place which knew no time, showing her old impatience? Resolutely she spoke again:
“I was told when I was here before, by that one who met me, that this is a place of learning. My … my need then seemed great, for I was going up against all the forces our enemies could range against us.” She paused and sought for words anew. “Now also my need is great. What would you have of me? What lies in my future that I must give in return? Haramis has her learning and her desired power, Anigel her kingdom. If I have truly earned a future, what is it to be? I have had no answer, but I have been drawn here for some reason. Give me answers, you who shelter in this place, as once before you showed me the way!”
Still nothing moved save the glowing things. Night had darkened, but a pale light encircled the planted sword.
Kadiya half reached for it, then snatched back her hand. She must understand more first. Turning, she climbed the stairs to the top refusing to look back.
Wea
riness was now trifold, and with it she felt a sense of emptiness and loss. It was not that she had left her portion of Power behind, but more as if some other will had walled her out, stepped between her and knowledge.
Yet in her remained a core of that stubbornness which had never accepted helplessness and would not now. There was a purpose behind all this, of that she was certain. And that she intended to discover. If not then, in days to come.
“Lady—”
At the foot of the stairway of the Guardians by the edge of the pool, stood Jagun, holding her pack with his. He held his spear point down as one did when approaching an Elder or Clan Captain. But perhaps that gesture was not meant for her but rather for what had once abided here.
Kadiya went down, her step firm. She held her helm in her hand, and there was still the dagger in her belt, even though she had left the sword behind. There was no danger here to threaten the body, of that she was sure. There was something else, though. What it was, she must learn for herself.
“Trail master.” She gestured to the building beyond the pool. “Here is a choice of shelter and we are surely made free of it.”
2
Even though the chosen building was the snuggest shelter they had found since leaving the Citadel, there was no way of making a fire and the damp clung. Between the roof and the stairs stretched the now black mirror of the pool. The darkness within the empty doorway was daunting enough so that Kadiya hesitated just within, trying to see even a little of what might wait there. She decided that the sense of awareness which she had slowly developed during her travels through the mires was too uncertain to be really trusted now. She felt no subtle warnings, but that was no assurance that there was nothing waiting here.
Jagun had been pawing through his pack. Though Kadiya could claim farsight, dark was always less thick for the Oddling. He drew out a tube a little shorter than his forearm. With this in hand he went out again into the open.
All Kadiya could sight there was a shadowy tossing of the brush growing along the edges of the pavement. Then there came a dagger point of wan light. Jagun had found, and was prying forth from its refuge under a leaf, a glow-grub. Another and another was stuffed methodically into the tube. When he returned he carried a rod which diffused a feeble but very welcome light.
A quick survey showed that they had found a room barren of everything but four walls, a solid pavement and a roof which was certainly storm proof.
With stiff fingers Kadiya pulled at the buckles of her shell armor. The odor of her wet hair, of her slime-stained body was an offense. Much as she had always sought the swamplands, this uncleanliness was something she had never accepted without faint disgust. Once free of the armor, her under jerkin pulled loose from its clammy grip on her body and she felt a fraction more at ease with herself.
The fastenings of her pack were also hard to force; the woven reeds had tightened. Kadiya broke a fingernail to the quick and spit out a fiery word.
By the limited glimmer of Jagun’s improvised lamp she was able to separate a strip of woven reed-pith towel. There was the pool waiting without but she did not intend to visit that by night. Instead a soft patter beyond the door suggested a more beneficial rain was falling. Discarding the rest of her sodden and too well worn clothing, she deliberately ventured forth. A handful of leaves gave her something with which to scrub and she used that fast fraying vegetation well.
She had long ago sacrificed the lengths of her heavy hair for the wearing of the helm. Now, since it fell no farther than her shivering shoulders, she was able to wet it thoroughly, run her fingers through tangles, and do the best she could to bring it to partial order.
There was a chill in the rain and she ducked back into their shelter to use her scrap of towel vigorously. A clean under jerkin was a luxury which she savored as she laced it at the throat. For a moment she thought of what she had once known in the ladies’ bower at the Citadel—all the comfort which was now Anigel’s. Then Kadiya shook her head, as much at her thought as to swing her hair loose.
For the first time Jagun spoke. “You do not wear the sword.” His large eyes reflected the glow, even seemed to have a faint radiance of their own from where he sat cross-legged, his hands within his pack.
Kadiya flicked out the towel, shook her still wet head.
“It—it was not received,” she said. “I set it in the place from which it grew from the Archimage’s stalk. There came no change. No change …” she repeated, and then added with more force, “How could that be, Hunt Master? Has the prophecy not been fulfilled in full? We women of the House of Krain brought forth the Great Weapon of the ancients. Voltrik and Orogastus are dead. Their army has sworn Oath to Antar, and, since he is Anigel’s chosen lord, also to Ruwenda which they sought to rend and destroy. The Skritek have fled back to their own loathesome holes. I have seen my younger sister safely crowned and happily, as she deems, wed; my elder sister go to her place of learning, her choice of power wielding. Yet my geas still is not laid.”
She had dropped to her knees so that her eyes were nearly on a level with those of the Oddling. Now she studied him as if she demanded answers.
“Tell me, Jagun, why is the reward for a task well done now denied me?”
“Farseer, who can understand the ones who built this place? They have been gone hundreds of hundreds.” He gave a quick glance right and left and then back again. “They had powers beyond reckoning—their life was not ours.”
“True. They have been long gone …”
Jagun was nodding. “The Great One Binah was the last of their blood, choosing to stand as Guardian here when they left. Now time has taken even her.”
He pulled out the last of their dried root cakes and broke it carefully in half, holding one piece out to her. Though she was faint with hunger (realizing that the more when she saw the remnant of food) she did not immediately bite into its tooth-cracking hardness. Instead she turned the small block around in her hand.
“Jagun, tell me of the Vanished Ones. Oh, I know what our own records at the Citadel have to tell—did I not search those just before we came hither?—that this land was once a great lake, perhaps even an inlet of the sea, that it encircled islands that were the dwelling places of another people, neither Oddling, nor of my own race.
“Legend has it that they were mighty in powers we do not know and that for long they lived in peace. Then we are told of a great war in which weapons such as we cannot dream of were turned one against another—though perhaps when we witnessed what Orogastus called up against us we saw in part those dealers of death. These rent the very substance of the land and the waters were drained away, cities were left to fall to the perils of time. But where did they go, those Vanished Ones? Certainly they did not all die in the hellish ruin they wrought.
“Yet, who were they? Remember, Jagun, the first time we came to this place we followed the pointing arm of a statue hacked free from a coating of dried mud. You had a name for that statue: Lamaril. Tell me, Hunt Master, who was that Lamaril?”
Kadiya did not know why she chose that question out of all those which now seethed in her mind.
Perhaps she should ask concerning that veiled one who had spoken to her at her first coming. Had that been—the thought came sudden and sharp—another Vanished One like Binah who had chosen to remain?
Drawing upon her memory, now Kadiya thought there had been something illusionary about the encounter. It had had none of the reality of her meeting with the Archimage. Her perplexity now brought another query from her.
“Sword Bearer,” her companion’s tone was formal as if he now addressed a Speaker, the ruler of a house clan, “none of my people have dared to enter this place. We are Oath-bound against it.”
“Not you any longer, Jagun. The talisman freed you.” The girl remembered those words which had come from someplace outside her understanding to heal his despair when he believed himself forsworn. Again she repeated them:
“Bear no soul burden.”
For a moment he was silent and his eyes were not on her but rather sought the grub lamp, as if he were reading there some message in the manner a wise woman would scry from a filled bowl.
“You ask of Lamaril. Yes, my people have legends also—but time broken, hard to understand now. He was a warrior—a shield Guardian against the Dark. It is said that he stood alone at the end against one of the mightiest of the evil ones, that he won a battle for the Light, but then died. Also he was one who favored my people, so at his going we did him all the honor that we might.
“Farseer—the Vanished Ones made us, Nyssomu and Uisgu both. We had been as those that still come and go in the mires, mindless, without memory of yesterday or thought of tomorrow. With the aid of the Vanished Ones we became true people. Their knowledge of life force, life flow, was very great, enabling them to do that which can hardly be believed in these days. Because we were formed by their powers from lesser creatures we have striven to keep alive what we remember of them. But the sources of their power were always closed to us, for we were as children not to be trusted with a sharp-edged dagger. When the Dark threatened, those who had summoned us out of the mires spoke. They set the Oath upon us that we would not seek what they wished hidden and ordered us into hiding lest we be hunted down by the evil.”
“But who were they?” Kadiya asked that of herself rather than Jagun now. “I have looked upon those statues which stand guard across the way. I saw the likeness of Lamaril on the trail. In some ways they might be of my own kind, yet in others they differ.”
“No word passed among us from Speaker to Speaker has told of what they were before our people arose from the waterways at their command. I do not think them kin of yours, Farseer. As to whether they all died in the war with the Dark … no. Some are said to have survived and withdrawn to another place, perhaps the one from which they once came.”
“This Dark—oh, I know that such a name is given by my people to great evil such as Orogastus loosed upon us—from where did that arise?”