by Andre Norton
The woman who stood a little behind had a loose shift-like garment, fastened on the shoulders with broad brooches also gem set and belted with as complex a girdle as those of her companions. She wore also the high sandals on her feet.
The clothing was in contrast to their skins which were dark as those of the Labornoki plains dwellers who worked under the sun. Though the men appeared beardless their heads were covered with curling hair trimmed close to the skull. The woman’s hair had not been so tightly cropped, locks falling to brush her shoulders.
However, it was their features which made Kadiya catch her breath. For of these three, two she had seen before—appearing carven in stone leagues away from this place. One she could even put name to—
“Lamaril!” He was the living embodiment of that statue which, hacked free of its armor of mud dried hard as iron, had pointed her way to the lost city when she had first sought it. Lamaril, who Jagun had said legend hailed as a great warrior against the Dark.
The woman she knew also, but not by name. Her likeness stood to the left on the fourth step of the garden stairway.
Certainly none of the three showed any signs of welcome. Both the woman and Lamaril were frowning. It was the third of their company who spoke.
“Who are you—what are you—who has dared the Gate?” His cold demand shook Kadiya out of her blank astonishment. Her chin came up and she faced the three squarely, yet one hand sought the amulet and the other tightened on the sword.
“I am Kadiya, King’s Daughter to Krain who ruled in the Citadel of Ruwenda. It is set upon me to hold the mire lands against the Dark. We are those who came after your people departed.”
“Mire lands,” the man repeated. “You name a place we do not know, yet you have come through the Last Gate as one who has full right. And we heard your babble that you followed evil hither. There is no evil in this place!”
Now it was Lamaril who spoke. “You called upon my name, you who say that you are King’s Daughter. Yet I have never seen you before. What mischief would you stir by naming me?”
His mouth set sternly, but Kadiya refused to be daunted by the coldness in his look.
“I have seen your likeness, not your person.” She did not know what title of honor she should grant him and at the moment she did not care. “There is a figure of you on guard—though long ago it was mud buried and it was the enemy which chipped it free. Jagun of the Nyssomu named you to me then as a mighty captain who stood firm against the Dark in a troubled time.”
His sternness of feature was suddenly gone. Now he showed astonishment, as one who might have heard a silent stone give voice.
Kadiya pressed what she felt was a small advantage. “And you,” she addressed the woman directly, “I cannot name you. Yet your likeness, too, remains in the city of the fair garden, the Place of Learning. It stands guard on the stairs which lead to that same garden.”
“Yatlan!” The woman pressed forward now. “Yatlan,” she repeated and there was a soft note in her voice. She raised one hand, half extended it toward Kadiya. “You who have come, what is Yatlan now?”
“A city forgotten. No,” the girl corrected herself, “forgotten by most. But it has its indwellers. They call themselves Hassitti and they have made efforts to hoard safely all which was left. There is the garden”—Kadiya raised the sword to hold it fully into view—“this was born of the garden. Binah, the Archimage, laid it upon me and my two sisters at birth to be the saviors of Ruwenda. She gave me a root which guided me to the city and there I planted it in the ever fruitful garden to become … this, and later the third part of a most powerful defense to save our country.
“Each of us found a part. Haramis, my mage sister who has become Binah’s successor, wielded those parts into a mighty whole. Once that had served us well it separated again, returning to each of us that portion we had been geas-led to find. I was ruled by a great need to return it to the garden, but when I planted it again there was no change. Thus I knew that its task and mine was not yet accomplished.” She had been speaking faster and faster, a desire to spill forth all forcing her to it.
“Archimage Binah!” The man who had first addressed her interjected. “She who chose to remain—you have seen her?”
“She set upon me the geas. But her rule was nearly done. Her last attempt to hold the Dark from the land weakened her too much. She chose my sister Haramis to come after her, then she died.”
“Binah!” The man put his hand uncertainly to his head. “Her name—remembered in the wasteland!”
“You spoke of evil which you followed … here! Something which could not be true.…” Lamaril once more addressed Kadiya. “How did you find the Last Gate—and why?”
The girl flushed. His disbelief was very apparent, and somehow that realization brought bitterness.
Placing tight rein on the stir of her old impatient anger, Kadiya began her tale with the finding of the ancient message strip, the unease of the Hassitti dreamer. Step by step she covered her journey to Jagun’s village, retold the coming of Salin and Smail, described what they had all seen in the scrying bowl. She was aware as she continued her tale that the three were listening very closely. When she mentioned the western mountain country there had been a quick hand-to-belt gesture from Lamaril, as if he wished to free some weapon.
At her description of the plague, their expressions changed. There was horror in the eyes of the woman. But they did not interrupt and Kadiya brought her account to an end in a rush with the tale of what had happened in that strange room of the carven wall.
“So I came here,” she ended.
Lamaril’s hand lifted from his belt and reached out toward her—or rather toward the sword. There was a trilling as she had heard before. The great golden flower moved. From it drifted a wisp of rainbow motes such as embellished its petals. Those swirled outward and then down to lock upon her weapon’s pommel, bringing specks of brightness to the lid edge of each eye.
“It was red … this light which welcomed the diseased one … red.” Though that did not have the inflection of a question, Kadiya answered the woman.
“Like flames from a fire which wrapped around, drew him … it … inward. But I did not touch the same key places,” Kadiya repeated. “This”—she raised the sword a little—“chose for me.”
“Into Varm’s sanctuary,” Lamaril said. “One of the sleepers … but how awakened?”
“I do not know of any sleepers.” Kadiya thought that question directed to her. “The Hassitti said that the Power which Orogastus called upon could set askew the balances, that perhaps it freed some evil before he was destroyed by the talisman of the Three. I have wielded a small Power, but I am not learned in such things. I do not understand them even though I was marked from birth by Binah to serve my people.”
He might not have paid any attention to what she said, but was rather thinking along another line. “With Varm, there is Power and enough. We discovered that when we dealt with him before. King’s Daughter,” now he did speak to Kadiya, “from your account you have been sent, led, brought to That Which Abides.” He glanced up at the flower on the altar. “That accepts you; we can no longer question.”
Kadiya gave an inward sigh of relief. Now her thoughts turned to the three who had not come with her. Had they been indeed left behind in that Skritek guarded shrine, or … dispatched elsewhere? She had so little of magical learning. Jagun, Salin, and Smail had made themselves a part of her quest; she could not leave them to death behind.
She spoke up boldly. “Those who came with me, are they still in that place of doors and gates? Or have they been captured and taken elsewhere? They are my people and I hold responsibility for them.”
The woman shook her head. “They could not come with you. Only because you held that from Yatlan”—she pointed to the sword—“could you make entrance. They must remain where they were.”
“Jagun will not give up! He will seek to follow and perhaps so be taken by the Skriteks. If this gat
e of yours has opened once, surely it can again and let me back to my people. That monster I trailed is plainly not here and there remains the fact that it is he whom I hunt.”
Now Lamaril shook his head in turn. “King’s Daughter, we cannot open the Gate save when all agree and lend their strength. It remains locked.”
That he spoke the truth Kadiya did not doubt. The awe—and the unease born from that awe when she had first sighted these strangers—was growing stronger though the need for telling her story had lessened it for a while. No way back? She felt the heat of the amulet, the vibration of Power in the sword. She was not ready to accept it yet. She could not return!
However, she went with them as they started down a long hall. Her sodden boots squelched across patterns and she was suddenly aware of the strange figure she must make in this place of light, order, and beauty with her stained and cracked shell mail, the battered helm covering most of her tangled hair. For such a shabby figure to proclaim herself a warrior against ancient evil was a farce. Kadiya bit her lip as she tried to match her steps with those taller ones who walked with such swift grace.
The lengthy chamber gave directly upon the open and Kadiya looked out upon a land under a warm sun where there hung no hint of storm cloud. Buildings of a clear white, over which played faint rainbow hues, were scattered about like a handful of carelessly tossed shells, rather than set in any pattern of streets as was Yatlan. Flowers and shrubs of brightly colored leaves covered the ground between.
People moved on small paths between the buildings. When they sighted Kadiya and her escort, they began to gather. All were Vanished Ones and they appeared to regard her with as much surprise as she had first looked upon those in the temple.
They were silent but Kadiya sensed what might have been a far-off murmur in her head, and she believed that they were using mind speech on a level she could not touch. The group gave way as Kadiya and the three came toward them but several fell in to follow. She searched each face as she went, wondering if she would be able to find among them others who were represented among the guards in Yatlan.
One such she did sight—another woman who joined the gathering company. They approached a second building, this nearly as commanding to the eye as that which the Hassitti had taken for dwelling and storage in Yatlan. However, here no vines covered the walls and the growth about the doorway had been tamed. The air was soft about her and there were fragrances carried by every soft puff of breeze. Her wonder grew. Much had been said of the Vanished Ones. It would seem that they chose to dwell in a place which held more beauty than Kadiya had thought possible for any land to produce.
The portal appeared to have no door. Laramil took a step in advance. Now he brought one hand against a shining plate beside the frame of that opening. A series of musical notes rose and fell in answer.
Kadiya saw only a solid shimmer of blue-green across the way. At the sound of that message the curtain of light—for so she thought it—split apart allowing them to enter.
Here was a hallway. Along it a number of doors opened, each curtained as far as she could determine with sheaths of light which shaded from deepest blue to a pale green. One of these, well down the hall, split also and then she was facing two who came from that doorway.
The Vanished Ones she had first met had been awe inspiring—but these two were true Power held in tight reserve. Kadiya stumbled, and then she went to her knees. The Archimage she had always sensed had been one to be given full honor. These two, woman and man, were such that Binah might have served. The Power which radiated from the newcomers was so strong that it could be felt, as one could feel the touch of the full sun at the height of the dry season.
In her hand the three eyes, now ringed with the gem-brilliant motes the flower had shed upon them, were fully open and staring, as if whatever animated the sword recognized a master energy to which they must respond. The amulet also blazed high. Yet Kadiya herself felt diminished, even though she had, she thought, made no false parade of what she was.
“Daughter of a land we departed,” it was the woman who spoke, “why have you come to trouble us now? We had withdrawn as was right, for it was because of stiff pride and dark choices we were forced into exile. We left those whom we did not deal with fairly, those whose lives we arrogantly shaped, to live in peace.”
Kadiya dared now to look straight at the speaker. “Great One, choices may have been made in the past, but the land is not free. One of evil who seems to be one of your race, though much disguised by a fresh ill, has sown such death across the land as those you left cannot defeat. It was he whom I followed and so came into this place of yours. Though I do not see how such can abide with you here.”
“He does not,” the man answered her. “That which is of Varm returned to his lord; the gate he entered was not ours. However, that one of Varm stirs—that is a thing of the Dark. Daughter of the new lands, take your rest and be at peace. We have much to consider now.”
They were gone—gone as if they had been snuffed out candle-like, though she had been certain they were as solid as she. Kadiya knelt, still staring at the spot where they had stood. This was the way the misty one of her first meeting in the garden had gone into nothingness.
There was a touch on her shoulder and she looked around up into the face of the woman who had accompanied her here.
“King’s Daughter, come. Rest and refreshment await you. In truth there is much to be thought upon.”
Kadiya got shakily to her feet. Some of the radiance of the amulet was spent; the eyes on the sword were half closed. That Power which had drawn them open might have left them so, though she now felt none of the usual exhaustion after their use. There was, though, a vast fatigue settling on her. She was aware it had been a long time since she had eaten, and her body’s aches were now pressing on her.
The woman escorted her down the hallway to a doorway curtained in green which disappeared as they approached.
Kadiya had known the comforts of the ladies’ bower at the Citadel, though at times she had been impatient with the need for such luxuries. Those were as nothing compared to what she was offered now.
She bathed in a shell shaped pool into which the woman dropped handfuls of powder, raising a froth of soothing ease to banish the discomforts of bruises, scratches, and all the other pains of rough travel.
While she relaxed in this pleasure the woman had seated herself on a stool. After she nodded briefly at Kadiya’s thanks for such bounty she said abruptly:
“Tell me of Yatlan, far traveler. I am Lalan who was once of the inner guard there. Sometimes I dream of wandering along its streets, of the garden …” Her voice trailed away.
“The city has magic in it,” said Kadiya. “From afar it seems to be in ruins as are all else of those places on the many islands. But within the gates”—she hesitated—“it seems to wait just as the Hassitti wait.”
“The Hassitti.” Some of the longing had vanished from the other’s face, now there was a slight smile curving her lips. “Those little ones! They were always about and many were the tricks they played, bringing laughter even when the heart was heavy. What of the Hassitti now, King’s Daughter?”
Kadiya once again described her meeting with the dwellers in Yatlan, going into more detail than she had earlier. She made much of the fact that they had preserved as well as they could what they considered to be the treasures of those who had left.
Lalan nodded. “So were they always … savers of things. Would that they could have come with us, for one misses their playfulness.”
“You could not bring them?”
The woman shook her head. “The Gate would refuse any not of the blood. When we chose this exile we did so for the good of those others—those you call the Oddlings—and the Hassitti also. Those we raised out of strange seed and the time came that they must grow untended to become whatever they might be.”
“The Gate did not refuse me.” Climbing from the bath, Kadiya toweled her unruly hair.
/> “No, and that is a matter not yet to be understood,” Lalan answered. She held out a garment of the same filmy material as she wore, not white but a gray like the mist rising in the early morning from a river. The shoulder brooches were of silver and set with stones shaped like bubbles of water, transparent but flecked with rainbows. Kadiya put aside the linked girdle laid by it, choosing rather her worn sword belt. She satisfied her hunger with food not unlike that the Hassitti had set before her—fruit and a bowl of creamy substance.
When Kadiya had done, Lalan who had shared her meal still asked questions concerning the swamplands. Perhaps, thought the girl, she had set to do this for a purpose and was not just moved by her own curiosity.
Kadiya had a question of her own. “Did the Great Ones in truth all leave Yatlan? I met one—or someone there—who spoke of knowledge to be gained. Was that real, or a dream, or did I hear a shadow speak?”
Lalan’s amazement was manifest. “Tell me more of this.” She spoke with the snap of an order. Kadiya obeyed.
When she had done Lalan drew a deep breath. “So—in that much did Carnot succeed. But for it to remain active for so long—” Again she gave a sigh. “He was the one of us who refused to believe that our day was truly past. Instead he swore that there would come after us some others worthy to walk our ways. Up almost to the last he worked with all his Power, and he possessed knowledge far beyond most. He strove to fashion that appearance which would be ready to aid such followers—if they were of the light.”
She studied Kadiya closely. “And so his messenger appeared to you.”
“Only once,” Kadiya answered. “I hoped upon my return to Yatlan to meet with it again, but I did not.”
“Power wears thin under the pressure of time. Perhaps making contact only once exhausted what Carnot left; he had little time for its fashioning, for he was injured to the death and was gone before our last retreat. However, perhaps it served well, for it did set you on the path which brought you here.