The Luck of Brin's Five (19 page)

“I will see them soon enough.”

“What is your will then?” asked Blacklock sulkily.

“I will have this Garl Brinroyan and his
Tomarvan
as quickly as the winds can carry them, for the newcomer's safety. Dorn . . . give my words to your Luck.”

I passed on the words as I was told, but the plans outlined were shocking to me. Blacklock and Diver must fly out together in their machines
Dah'gan
and
Tomarvan
to a place far away, east of Rintoul, where Nantgeeb would be waiting. Agents of Tiath Gargan were supposed to be in Otolor; Diver's existence, even his identity, might become well known now that he had won the Bird Clan.

I put this all to Diver exactly as it came to me, and he made the reply that I had already made in my mind. “Ask the Maker of Engines what is to become of Brin's Five?”

“They are very rich, with even a portion of the Bird Clan winnings. Let them take land or return to Hingstull; they have played their part.”

“Not so!” exclaimed Diver. “For I am their Luck, and I will not leave them, especially in Otolor where danger threatens.”

“My care is for your person and the knowledge you bring to Torin.”

“You are the Maker of Engines, so I will give you mine to study. Let Fer Utovangan, or Antho, if that is his name, fly the
Tomarvan
and my scripts on its engines to your meeting place. I will go on with Brin's Five to Rintoul and ask for news of my air ship.”

“I can see why this new bird is your sib, Blacklock,” said the Maker of Engines, “for he is as tender in his feelings and as stubborn as you are.”

So it was arranged; I gripped Diver's hand with relief, for I had seen our Luck snatched away from us. But Nantgeeb was eager to have the
Tomarvan
. Blacklock promised to find us all passage to Rintoul before he flew away also.

“Tell the Maker of Engines I look forward to a true meeting,” said Diver.

“Tell Garl Brinroyan to take care,” said the Maker of Engines.

I knew this was the end of our audience. A last whisper grated at my ear: “And do not ask in Rintoul for the air ship. Tiath Pentroy has lost his prize. I have it now.”

Diver sprang up when I said this and questioned the empty air, but Nantgeeb's presence had been withdrawn.

Blacklock walked about flexing his shoulder muscles like a weary omor and cursing under his breath. “Garl Brinroyan, this is an old quarrel you have come upon. Nantgeeb hates the Bird Clan,” he said.

“I like it less than I did,” said Diver, “but with your help, Murno, my good friend, we will fly by all these nets.”

Blacklock smiled again and even laid a hand on my head to make me more cheerful. “Escort, you have served your Luck well!”

We walked all together out of the silken tent into the sunlight of the New Year and made our way, through subdued cheers and salutations, to the green tent, garlanded now, where Brin and Ablo were waiting.

When I saw Brin again, my eyes stung with tears, like a child who does not cry after a fall until its mother brings promise of comfort. But I did not weep. We sat in the tent, and I reported faithfully all that had passed. The task of making these reports, as a Witness must do sometimes, is not easy, and I did not envy Narneen, who was going to have a lifetime of it.

Brin turned to Diver when all had been told. “We have a great Luck,” she said, “not because he wins the Bird Clan, but because he is faithful to his bond.”

VII

The closing ceremonies of the Bird Clan were shortened because of Jebbal's death on the field. Even so they took several hours, part of them spent in sorting and counting our winnings. These were lodged in five wheeled wicker caskets, each one big enough to contain two or three Moruians, inside the Launcher's pavilion. Ablo was given a generous share and left to head a guard chosen from Blacklock's escort; this pleased him almost as much as the cloth and credits he had won.

The gates had already been opened, and the members of the Bird Clan were streaming across to the fairgrounds to celebrate the New Year. A bridge of decorated barges stood at the river gate; the double bridge past the citadel was twined with flowers. Flying machines still passed overhead, taking their leave. Diver instructed Fer Utovangan in the control of the
Tomarvan
, and he flew a brief practice flight. It was arranged that Fer and Blacklock should fly out the next day or the day after that.

“I will care for this bird of yours,” said Fer. “No harm will come to the
Tomarvan
, and I hope you will fly in it again.” For he could see that Diver loved the flying machine and did not really wish to part with it.

At last we were ready to leave and find our family at that good pitch the Harper had told of in his skein, by the cloth market. It was customary for the winner to leave in triumph, with Bird Clan vassals playing music all the way to the Sun Carpet, the famous dancing place in the center of the fairgrounds. We did not use this escort, and it was understood that this was out of respect for Jebbal, but we had other reasons as well.

We set out at the third hour after midday, three nondescript Moruians, two adults and a child, muffled in plain gray silken cloaks. We joined the crowds thronging the double bridge, and I felt at last a lifting of my spirits. Home again. Home to the tent after so long, with Mamor, the Harper, Old Gwin, Narneen, and Tomar waiting for us. It was a day when nothing but friendship should prevail. The faces I saw everywhere were smiling; there was no ill-will, no ill-natured jostling. Children ran about among the crowd waving fair favors of colored wool that twirled on a stick. As we passed the citadel, Brin checked suddenly, then we walked across the second arch into Otolor.

“Something wrong?” asked Diver.

“I thought we had a follower . . . in twirler's dress.”

“Petsalee!” I squeaked. “I saw him, I saw him . . .” It seemed ages ago, before the race was won, before Jebbal died.

We stood in the shadow of a cook-stall awning and looked back for a long time but saw nothing suspicious. Then we threaded our way down a long alley full of cook-stalls, and the scent was so delicious that Diver and Brin took pity on me and we stopped to buy roast wild fowl stuffed with berries. Then, feeling open-handed, we bought a carrying hamper of food to take to the tent and spent so much that the cook-shop owner gave us towels when we washed at the fountain. We wandered on, well fed, and then I saw two twirlers, neither of them our watcher, lounging in their blue rags under the window of a fixed house, a common sleeping house for fair travellers. They stared dully about and accepted offerings but certainly paid us no heed.

“I will feed these birds a little grain,” said Brin. We followed her and stood to one side as she approached the pair.

“Greetings to the spirit-warriors,” she said, dropping a credit into their gourd.

“Eenath's blessing!” was the soft response.

I stared at them, feeling the same mixture of fascination and disgust that I had felt for the twirlers in Cullin. They were both still young; their brown bodies were thin and stringy, scarred from head to foot with the marks of the sharp shells. I have heard townees complain that the twirlers are dirty, but I hardly noticed. I saw their expression, gentle, sad, dazed. Could Eenath bring this fate upon her followers?

“Dear friends,” said Brin, “share this food and answer me a question.”

“What pleases you, in Eenath's name.” A gaunt hand came up for the food, but Brin held it out of reach.

“Where is the twirler Petsalee?”

The twirlers were silent; their faces grew firmer, their expressions almost sly.

“Petsalee . . .” prompted Brin. The twirler who had reached for the food held up two fingers and whistled softly. Brin reached a second game bird from the basket.

“The spirit-warriors dance at the Sun Carpet,” said the twirler.

“At what hour?”

“When the spirits call . . .”

“About the fourth hour after the New Year Shout!” put in the second twirler who was very hungry. “The Leader Petsalee will call the dance.”

Brin gave them a bird each, and we left them eating. Diver was curious about Petsalee; how could he be Leader still and recruit a new band of twirlers? Did this mean we had misjudged the creature—he had not bought a life but only escaped Tiath Gargan's massacre?

“Twirlers have their own laws and their own secrets,” said Brin, “Petsalee must hold great power for them.”

We were still passing through a part of the fair given over to eating and drinking; then we came to a place for all kinds of sports and games. Brushwood fences separated the stone-placers from the teams of skip-rope and the ringers, who twitch down wooden pegs from a high stand with a reed ring attached to a strong thread. A whole pen of ancients were taking part in a knitting contest, with the colored work growing before our eyes until it flowed over their knees, so fast their needles flew. Diver announced that he could knit; he had had it from his mother and all his female ancestors. We laughed in disbelief, until Brin fetched a ball of thread and needles from the knitting marshal and cast on a few stitches, as she used to do for me, when I made my winter stockings. Diver took over pretty unhandily, but he knitted, both first and second stitch; anything requiring more skill or more than two needles he said was beyond him.

“Knitters are born,” said Brin. “Dorn here is still battling with his third twist and double plaits. The best knitter I ever saw was Little Griss, the Luck of Tarr's Five, my birth family. He swore he could knit a tent, given the right thread.”

Diver explained, as we walked on into the pottery market, that knitting had been a dying art on his world, but had grown up again in something called the Craft Revival.

So we passed on, through the pottery market, the place for music and singing—where we looked for the Harper—and the fortune-tellers' lane, where we kept an eye open for Gordo Beethan. We skirted the edge of the Sun Carpet and took a side trip into the fixed houses of Otolor, beside the old curtain walls of the town, now tumbled down and planted with flowers for a memorial. We came at last to the cloth market, and I was impatient, for the stalls of cloth reminded me of our winnings and the great news we were bearing home. Behind the cloth market is a wide field, especially planted with redwood trees for the bush weavers to use for the support of their tents. We stood on the edge of this field and stared, and I saw it. Our tent . . . our own good tent, with the three new panels replacing those we had left in the glebe on Hingstull. It stood a long way off on the distant boundary of the field; there were not many people about, and none that we knew; everyone was at the fair. Yet somehow I thought of the Family all sitting in the tent waiting for us. I began to run.

“Hold . . . in the Winds' name; hold!” I looked back and saw a lithe figure in gray dart out from behind a tree, a stranger, frantically hailing our approach. Then I thought I knew it . . . the Witness who had called Narneen! Before I could think of her partner, I was caught and held in a firm grip.

“Still! Be still for your life, Brinroyan child!” said a strong accented voice. I looked up into the scarred face of the scribe from the Fire-Town. I must have showed fear, for he slackened his grip at once and turned his face away in an odd cringing motion, as if protecting me from the sight.

“Don't be afraid,” he said. “I am Vel Ragan, ever your friend.”

Diver and Brin converged on us fiercely, with Diver already fumbling under his cloak.

“Let the child go!” ordered Brin.

“Hold, I pray,” gasped the Witness Onnar. “We bring a warning.” Vel Ragan released my arm and held out his hands empty in the gesture of peace.

“We have waited for your approach since the rising of Esto,” he said. “Pray hear us, for your safety.”

“You are Vel Ragan,” said Brin, “and this your Witness, Onnar. You come from the Fire-Town, and you sleep-spy upon my child Narneen.”

“This is true,” said the scribe, “but I think Narneen, that excellent Witness, has also told you that we mean friendship and we do not lie.”

“Trust us both,” begged Onnar. She kept looking about anxiously. “Come to this tree,” she said, “where we can sit down like a Family at their food.”

“What are you afraid of?” asked Diver.

“The creatures of the clan Pentroy,” said Vel Ragan. His voice had a rich timbre, almost like Diver's; his gray eyes flashed fire; I could guess what hand had guided the firestone that burned his body.

“Are they safe . . . our Family . . .?” I blurted out.

“Come and sit down.”

We sat down together under the tree, and Vel Ragan looked keenly at Diver. “Let me see your face,” he said.

Diver threw back his hood and removed his goggles. Vel Ragan stared and gave a long sighing breath. “It is true then. Strangers have come to Torin from the void.”

“One stranger,” said Diver, “and no longer so strange thanks to the love and care of Brin's Five. My poor companions still work in the islands. No doubt they think I am dead.”

“How many? An army?”

“Three,” answered Diver, “a team of scholars.”

Vel Ragan drew out from his sleeve a worn sheaf of willow paper: Diver's drawings, copied first at Cullin, then in other parts of Torin.

“Yes,” said Brin. “Diver made these drawings and I wrote on them, at Stone Brook. But now, tell us your warning.”

“Hear us out,” said Onnar, “and do nothing rash.” So we heard them out, although the tale they had to tell was a terrible one, outweighing any sorrow or danger we had passed through till now.

“We came to the fair after questioning Narneen on the river,” said Vel Ragan. “It was only then we were certain that this child was the one named in the Stone Brook drawings. We believed that your Luck was the one we sought, and we had heard tales of the landing all down the river. We had planned to go to Cullin or even Stone Brook itself, but in fact we landed our glider at Wellin with a damaged runner and took up the search from there twelve days ago. There was plenty to hear. The Strangler had left a trail much wider than Brin's Five. So we came on to the fair and gleaned a few snippets of gossip out of the Bird Clan, and at last the news today of your good fortune. But before that time, about the first hour of Esder shine, or what would be night, Onnar was called by Narneen. The child, as you know, is a powerful Witness, destined for a great career in this strange art if she desires it. Narneen had a dreadful tale to tell. The members of your Five have been surprised, sleeping, by seven armed vassals of Tiath Gargan. The Harper was absent from the tent when this happened, but we could not warn him in time and he was taken when he returned. No—be still and listen! No one has been harmed or even questioned, although Mamor and the Harper are bound and gagged. Narneen lies, feigning sleep; Gwin nurses the baby. The vassals are simply waiting for the return of Garl Brinroyan; they are disguised, but make no secret of their allegiance to the Great Elder. There are four among the seven who say that they have a score to settle . . . your Luck has already dealt roughly with them on Hingstull and in Cullin town.”