The Legacy of Gird (94 page)

"Gird knocked him flat," Arranha said when Luap paused for breath. "Told everyone—perhaps especially me—that he'd kill him the next time he used his magery. Luckily, by the time you forced that, lady, Gird had changed his mind."

"Not my most impressive moment," said Luap wryly. "But some years later, after the war, and after Dorhaniya told me my real parentage, I went back there. I was hoping for another revelation, something to rattle my mind."

"The study of logic . . ." muttered Arranha. Luap shook his head.

"Such studies settle
your
mind, Arranha, but don't help me. At any rate, I returned, while on a journey for Gird, and found something quite different. I found a place—a far place—to which magery can travel."

"A place." It was almost the same tone as Gird had used. "What sort of place? Where?"

The same questions, and he had hardly more answers. "It's a great hall and many chambers, all carved from living rock, and outside is a strange land of red stone, great towers and mountains and narrow steep valleys. Where it is from
here
I cannot say, but it's apparently in a colder land than this."

"And you can get there by magery . . ." Arranha mused. "So—"

"I took Gird once." Luap said. "That is the place I meant, the time we quarreled so about moving the mageborn. As far as we could tell, it was a great land empty of all people; I thought it would suit us well. He said no—but you remember the day of his death—"

"And you think that's what he meant, when he said you had been right, and he had been wrong? You think that was permission to take the mageborn there?" The Rosemage sounded doubtful, and in her voice he could doubt Gird's meaning himself.

"I think you should come see it. No one knew, but Gird and I; he's dead, and someone else should know. What I'm thinking now is that it's a place no one without magery could stumble upon, a place where the mageborn could learn to use their powers safely, without risking harm to others, and without a chance to use them wrongly: there are no peasants to rule. With such training and discipline, our people might be more acceptable to those without magery—at least, there would be no beginners' errors to be explained away."

"Ah, that makes sense." Arranha nodded, his eyes bright. "As weapons-practice is done in the bartons and granges, not in the marketplace or inside a home—this is a place for our young ones to learn properly." Luap kept quiet, waiting for the Rosemage's response.

"I'm surprised you didn't tell us before this," she said. Luap shrugged.

"Gird preferred that no one else know," he said. "He thought it was a secret best kept close, lest disaffected mageborn try to use the cave. Now, I think you two should know, but no one else, until you've seen the place and considered how it might be used."

"Tell us about it," said Arranha. "What sort of great hall? How large? How many could stay there at once?"

"I'd rather you saw it for yourself," said Luap. He could not possibly describe it all, and besides that, he wanted their reaction; he wanted to see someone like himself arriving.

"How far from here is the cave?" asked the Rosemage.

"A few days' travel by horse; it's between Soldin and Graymere. At this season, the ford at Gravelly should be passable, which cuts a day off."

"It will do my hand no harm to rest from teaching sword-work," the Rosemage said. "Why not leave tomorrow?"

Luap opened his mouth to protest, and then shrugged. If they were that eager, why not? He had planned to suggest a more elaborate, less obvious journey, with each arriving separately, by a different route, to meet by "coincidence" if anyone found out. "Very well," he said. "I'll tell Marshal Sterin or Cob that I won't be at the Council."

Traveling with Arranha and the Rosemage was nothing like traveling alone. Arranha wondered, aloud, about half the things he saw: what was that rock, and why did it break into squarish lumps when another rock the same color didn't? Why would any bird build a nest that hung swinging from a limb? If the weaving patterns of peasant women had the names of plants and animals, why didn't they look like that plant or animal? He noticed everything that Luap normally rode by without seeing it: tiny wildflowers, the speckles on river frogs, the relative numbers of red and spotted cattle in fields they passed. He greeted everyone they met on the road, and if Luap had not reminded him that they had a goal, would have stopped to talk of anything that caught his mind.

He's like a bur, Luap thought. Everything clings to him; he could stop and be stuck anyplace until some stronger attraction yanked him free. By the end of the first day, Luap was exhausted by the relentless intelligence with which Arranha attended to his surroundings.

The Rosemage, on the other hand, seemed to view the country as a military map: this position defensible, that one not. She said little, in contrast to Arranha, but the little she did say had to do with the possibility of brigands up a narrow valley, or the way someone with any knowledge at all could control the trade roads. Luap had not, since the war's end, felt nervous about trouble on the road, but he found himself eyeing places where travelers were vulnerable. Then Arranha would exclaim over some novelty, and he had to make some comment in response.

The cave, when they reached it on the fourth day, felt welcoming. Luap thought longingly of the silence in that distant hall, and was tempted to vanish there, leaving his companions behind. Instead, he took the horses to the creek, while Arranha and the Rosemage set up their camp inside. It was hot, even standing above cool water; he felt itchy and obscurely distressed. Here, with the water chuckling softly around the horses' fetlocks, with their gentle sucking, he began to relax. No one pointed out the swirl in midstream where something had come to the surface from below—he noticed it, which he would not have four days before, but in silence.

Arranha's horse lifted its head, water dripping from its muzzle, and yawned. It shivered its withers, and Luap saw its knees begin to buckle.

"No, you don't," he said firmly; the other two lifted their heads to watch as he yanked Arranha's horse back to dry land. It blew, spraying him in the face. Muttering, he got them all back from the bank and safely into the trees. The Rosemage was coming from the cave when he came in sight of it. She waved and came down to help feed them.

"I've never seen a cave like this," she said, almost eagerly. Sunburn had given her a rich color. "Where I was in Tsaia, the caves were dank little holes under graystone bluffs—big enough for one shepherd and a few sheep in a blizzard, no more. This thing's big enough for an army."

"That's what we had," said Luap.

"—And that chamber," she went on. "Arranha says those designs aren't anything from Old Aare. If Gird didn't recognize them as his peoples', what could they be?"

"You've been in the
chamber?
" Anger raged through him; he had expected them to
wait
. It was his secret, after all.

"We didn't try to use it," the Rosemage said. Luap managed not to say anything sarcastic, and she went on. "Although it's thick with magery in there—I suspect anyone sensitive at all could trigger it." She put two handfuls of grain in the nosebag of her bay horse and tied it over the halter. "How long do you think we'll stay?"

"Not above a glass or so, I think. Time enough to see what Gird saw." Luap finished with the other two horses and led the way back to the cave. Deep inside, where dimness should have faded to blackness, a faint glow showed that Arranha had no qualms about using his magery here. Luap called his own light—if the old priest could be that bold, he wasn't going to chance falling over any stones.

As he came past the ledge where Gird had stumbled, Arranha said, "It's very interesting, this pattern."

"It's more than
interesting
," Luap said.

"Oh yes—I know—but my point is, I doubt if it's a pattern wrought by humans. It's not Old Aarean, nor any pattern of the northern branches, and you say Gird did not recognize it . . ."

"By the gods?" Luap felt a cold chill down his back and arms.

"Perhaps. But the Elder Races, particularly the sinyi, use patterns of power. Have you asked any elves about this, Luap?"

"No. Remember, Gird wanted it kept secret."

"Hmmm." Arranha's bright eyes glittered before he blinked and turned away. "Strange—he had scant love for secrets, in most things. 'Bury a truth, and it rots.' he told me more than once."

"Well—I never asked him if I could ask the elves; it never occurred to me. His reasons concerning the mageborn seemed so strong, to him—"

Arranha said, "I daresay it doesn't matter. You've used this pattern three times now; if it were a matter for elves, you would surely have heard from them."

Another shiver, as if icy water had funneled beneath his shirt; Luap twitched, but said, "Then let us go, and you judge what you see."

This time his mind clung to the pattern and the remembered place; almost before he could think, they had arrived. He did not know which face to watch. The Rosemage, to his quick glance, seemed almost turned to stone. Her face paled, then flushed; her eyes widened. Arranha, too, seemed stunned to silence.

Luap repeated the same prayer he had uttered the first time he came, and heard Arranha and then the Rosemage repeat it. Then he led the way off the dais.

"We can talk now," he said quietly, looking back. They had said nothing but the prayer. They were looking up, around, faces as full of awe as Luap had wished. The Rosemage brought her gaze back to him.

"It's—impossible," she said, shaking her head.

"That's what I thought the first time. That I had dreamed it, perhaps. But Gird saw it too."

"If the gods did not make this, they blessed it," said Arranha softly. "I have never felt such presence, not even in the Hall in Fin Panir when Esea blessed Lady Dorhaniya's belief."

Is that what happened? thought Luap. He felt uncomfortable thinking of Dorhaniya in this place.

Arranha had moved down the hall, slowly; now he approached the arches at the far end. The Rosemage stayed near the dais. "Do you know what this is?" called Arranha, his voice louder than any Luap had heard in this place. He was pointing at the arch with the harp and tree entwined.

"Gird said it might be an elven symbol," Luap said.

"As you should well know," Arranha replied. "And the other—that is surely dwarfish. And you did not think to ask them?"

Luap felt his face burning. For a moment he was not sure what to say, but the great place eased him, as it had before. "Gird saw what I saw; it was his decision. Perhaps he was upset enough with me that I had used magery to bring him."

Arranha did not reply, but walked, as Gird had, through the arch with the High Lord's circle above it. Luap followed, and behind him he could hear the Rosemage coming.

"Up those stairs," Luap said, "is a land unlike any I've seen. Bare red stone, deep canyons with trees and rivers—" He had not actually seen the rivers, but where there were trees, rivers must be also. "Not good land for farming, Gird said, but I think it would support a small number."

"Mmm." Arranha looked at the stairs. "Shall we go up, then?"

"Certainly." Luap led the way, wondering again why the light that filled the hall and passages below did not extend to this. Because it was an entrance? As before, the sound of their boots on the steps echoed off the floor below, and as before they came to a darkness close above their heads. But this time Luap called his light before it was too dim to see, and pointed out to Arranha the whorls and interlacements Gird had noted. He himself, this time, put his thumb in the groove and traced the interlocked spirals in and out, and Arranha prayed.

When the ceiling close above them vanished, Luap half-expected the snowy blast of his first visit. But even here—wherever here was—spring had come, and warm sunlight spilled down the stair. Only a light breeze stirred his hair as he climbed the last few steps and came out to the view he remembered so clearly.

It was still there. He had been afraid, in some corner of his mind, that it was less majestic than he remembered, but in the clear cool sunlight that land lost none of its grandeur. The vast blocks of red stone, the endless vista of stone and sky. He could see farther than before, but still had no idea where the place lay, or how deep the canyons were.

Arranha and the Rosemage reacted as he had hoped. "It's . . . like nothing I've seen anywhere," Arranha said. "Certainly it's not anywhere near Fintha, nor down the Honnorgat valley as far as I've traveled, nor like anything I heard of Aarenis or Old Aare."

"It's so—big," the Rosemage said. Luap glanced at her. Few things ever seemed to daunt her, but this did. "Even the sky seems bigger. And how do you get down from this, or up into those trees?"

Where Gird and Luap, in the cold and snow, had seen what might be the bristling thatch of a forest above another level of stone, now the forest showed clearly. It seemed to stand on the topmost level of the stone, far above their heads or across great crevices on other blocks, as if Luap's imagined city of castles were roofed with trees and not slate.

"We didn't stay long enough to find out," Luap told the Rosemage. "It was snowing when we got into the open, and though the snow ceased, it had been blown away by a bitter wind. We were glad to get out of it."

"And you never came again, to explore?" Arranha asked. He had put back the hood of his cloak, and turned his face up to the brilliant sunlight. With his eyes closed, and his arms held out, he looked to Luap a little like a bird drying itself after rain.

"I had no time," Luap said, "and no reason. I suggested to Gird that he allow me to bring the mageborn here, when all that trouble started. But you know what he thought of that."

"Mmm. Yes." Arranha opened his eyes, as bright and penetrating as hawks' eyes. They seemed to have absorbed the brilliant light and now it poured from them. Luap blinked. It must be something to do with being the Sunlord's priest. Arranha stared in all directions, as if looking for something in particular. "I don't feel anything dire," he said finally. "I see no sign that anyone inhabits this land. Do you?"