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"No. Are we not yet gorged with senseless rantings? What does he preach but fear
and subservience fear of tomorrow, subservience first to him and later to doom?
Yes, the star-folk have caused changes, and in those changes is loss. But would
you call it wrong that as your child grows, you lose the warmth of his little
body in your pouch? Do you not, instead, rejoice to watch him soar forth?
"What threat have the star-folk ever been, save to those who would fetter us
down and require we honor them into the bargain? The threat is from them, I tell
you. If they prevail, everything we have achieved will perish, and likewise
countless of us and our children and children's children. Shall we not even have
a chance to seek help?"
Her audience listened aghast. Nobody had ever defied a senior Seeker thus
openly, and before the very Lord of the Volcano.
Yewwl's words had been her own, following the advice she received from Banner.
Having uttered them, she stalked toward Erannda, her vanes open, fur-abristle,
fangs bare. She said, before she herself could be appalled at what it was:
"I will lay a satire on you instead, old one, that all may ken you for what you
truly are."
He controlled his rage, made his harp laugh, and retorted, "You? And what
poetics have you studied?"
"I begin," she answered, halting close to him. And she declaimed Banner's words,
as they were given her:
"Wind, be the witness of this withering!
Carry abroad, crying, calling,
The name I shall name. Let nobody
Forget who the fool was, or fail
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To know how never once the not-wise
Had counsel worth keeping, in time of care "
"Stop!" he yelled. As he lurched back, his harp dropped to the clay floor.
He would have needed a night or longer to compose his satire. She threw hers at
him, in perfect form, on the instant.
"Don't be vengeful," Banner urged. "Leave him a way out."
"Oh, yes," Yewwl agreed. Pity surprised her. Erannda straightened, gathered
around him what was left of his dignity, and said, almost too low to hear: "Lord
of the Volcano, colleagues, clanfolk & I have opposed the proposal. I could
possibly be mistaken. There is no mistaking that quarrels among us & like this &
are worse than anything else that might happen. Better we be destroyed by
outsiders than by each other & I withdraw my opposition."
He turned and stumbled toward his bench. On impulse, Yewwl picked up his harp
and gave it to him.
After a hush, Wion said, not quite steadily, "If none has further speech, let
the thing be done."
The inscribed parchment felt stiff in her fingers, and somehow cold.
She tucked it carefully into her travel pack, which lay by her saddle. Not far
off, her tethered onsar cropped, loud in the quietness roundabout. Yewwl had
wanted a while alone, to bring her whirling thoughts back groundward. Now she
walked toward the camp, for they would be making Oneness.
They were out on the plain. The short, stiff nullfire that grew here glowed in
the last light of the sun, a red step pyramid enormous amidst horizon mists.
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Lurid colors in the west gave way to blue-gray that, eastward, deepened to
purple. In the north, Mount Gungnor was an uplooming of blackness; flames tinged
the smoke of it, which blurred a moon. Northwestward the oncoming storm towered,
flashed, and rumbled. The air was cold and getting colder. It slid sighing
around Yewwl, stirring her fur.
Ahead, a fire ate scrubwood that the party had collected and waxed ever more
high and more high. She heard it brawl, she began to feel its warmth. They were
six who spread their vanes to soak up that radiance. The others were already
homebound. Skogda, his retainer and companion Ych (oh, memory), Zh of Arachan
were male; Yewwl's retainers lyaai and Kuzhinn, and Ngaru of Raava, were female;
Yewwl herself made the seventh. More were not needed. Maybe seven were too many.
But they had wanted to go, from loyalty to her or from clan-honor, and she could
not deny them.
Let them therefore make Oneness, and later rest a while; then she would call
Banner, who would be standing by about the time that Fathermoon rose. And the
ship would come the new ship, whereof a part could hold breathable air and carry
them east at wizard speed.
Yewwl winced. She had not liked lying before the assembly. Yet she must. Else
Wion would never have understood why she needed a credential which, undated as
was usual, made no mention, either, of cooperation by the star-folk. After all,
he would have asked, were they not star-folk too in ? but he would have failed
to remember what the place was called, Dukeston. Yewwl herself had trouble doing
that, when the noise was practically impossible to utter.
She likewise had trouble comprehending that star-folk could be at strife, and in
the deadly way Banner had intimated. Why? How? What did it portend? The idea was
as bewildering as it was terrifying. But she must needs keep trust in her
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oath-sister.
Oneness would comfort, bring inner peace and the strength to go onward. Skogda
had started to beat a tomtom, Kuzhinn to pipe forth a tune. Feet were beginning
to move in the earliest rhythms of dance. Zh cast fragrant herbs onto the fire.
It would be an ordinary Oneness, for everybody was not perfectly familiar with
everybody else. They would just lose themselves in dance, in music, in chanted
words, in winds and distances, until they ceased to have names; finally the
world would have no name. Afterward would be sleep, and awakening renewed. Was
this remotely akin to what Banner called, in her language, "worship"? No,
worship involved a supposed entity dwelling beyond the stars
Yewwl put that question from her. It was too reminding of the strangeness she
would soon enter, not as an emissary whatever she pretended but as a spy. She
hastened toward her folk.
IX
Clouds made night out of dusk, save again and again when lightning coursed among
them. Then it was as if every, huge raindrop stood forth to sight, while
thunder, in that thick air, was like being under bombardment. Though the wind
thrust hard, it was slow, its voice more drumroll than shriek. The rain fell
almost straight down, but struck in explosive violence. Through it winged those
small devil shapes that humans called storm bats.
Hooligan descended. Even using her detectors, it had not been easy, in such
weather, to home on Yewwl's communicator. It might have been impossible, had
Banner not supplied landmarks for radars and infrascopes to pick out. Nor was it
easy to land; Flandry and the vessel's systems must work together, and he felt
how sweat ran pungent over his skin after he was down.
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But time was likely too short for a sigh of relief and a cigarette. He swept a
searchbeam about, and found the encampment. The Ramnuans were busy striking a
tent they had raised for shelter, a sturdy affair of hide stretched over poles.
He swore at the delay. They'd have no use for the thing where they were
bound except, of course, to help make plausible their story that they had fared
overland. He might as well have that smoke.
And talk to Banner. He keyed for her specially rigged extension. "Hello. Me.
We're here," he said, hearing every word march by on little platitude feet.
"Yes, I see," came her voice from Wainwright Station. More remoteness blurred it
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