Seeker (2 page)

Stand, and look steadily on the land below you.

The goatboy stood, still trembling, and gazed out over the plains. He felt the soft buzzing in his head that always came at such times. The first time it had frightened him: the voice, and the buzzing, and the sensation that something had entered him that he could not control. But he had learned there was nothing to fear. And when it was over, there would come the sweetness.

They are watching.

Through the goatboy's eyes, they see the sunlight shimmering on the land. They see the bright river, with the barge disappearing round the slow bend. They see the bullock carts creeping down the dusty road. Deep underground the silent walls tremble with pictures from far away.

They are old, all of them. So old that when they speak, their lips do not move, and the sound of their words barely shivers the damp air.

"There, there. The city by the lake."

They gaze intently, greedily, on the distant glitter of golden roofs that hug the shore of the great lake. The city of Radiance.

"The people are ruled by priests. They will believe what they are told to believe."

"There are many? We need many."

"There are many. They will give us what we need."

The voices follow each other after long silences. Time has no value here, in the darkness and quiet of the deep caves.

"Better for a few to live forever young than for all to die."

"Forever young!"

The words are repeated by ancient throats, passing softly from mouth to mouth like a prayer.

"Forever young!"

It is their dream, their passion, the only hope that keeps them alive. It has been their life's work and the life's work of those who went before them. Preserved here, deep underground, barely moving, safe from extremes of heat and cold, they live on, their mighty brains working more slowly now, but getting nearer, nearer. They can smell it now, these withered creatures whose nostrils have known no fresh sensation for decades; they can smell the coming of new life.

They call it the harvest.

Now their old eyes track slowly over the shimmering scene before them, following the broad river as it runs down to the sea. There, where the river meets the sea, is an island: little more than a rock in the river's mouth. This is Anacrea, the home of the Nomana, who are also called the Noble Warriors.

"And what of the Nomana?"

Only the Nomana stand in their way. Only the Noble Warriors have the power to resist their will.

"The Nomana will be destroyed."

"Ah!" The soft exhalations breathe out approval.

"A weapon will be built at our command. This weapon will destroy the island of Anacrea. And when Anacrea is gone, the power of the Nomana will be at an end."

"Ah!"

"Then the harvest will begin."

"Soon," came the answering murmurs. "Soon, soon. Let it come soon."

"It will be soon. The harvest time approaches."

***

On the mountain pasture, the goatboy felt the buzzing cease inside his head and knew it was over.

"Am I deserving, mistress?" he asked.

You are deserving.

Then the sweetness came upon him. He slipped down to the ground and lay there, sprawling and abandoned, giving himself up to the hot soak of ecstasy.

S
EEKER SAT AT HIS DESK IN THE CLASSROOM, LOOKING
out of the window at the whitewashed wall and the straight line of the ocean horizon beyond. He thought of what he was about to do, and he shivered.

It was the start of the school day, and he was alone in the classroom. Through the open door behind him he could hear the shouts of his classmates as they chased one another between the plane trees, delaying their arrival at school to the last possible minute. A bird flashed past the window: underwings black on white, hook of beak, black cheek and white throat, a peregrine falcon cruising for prey. He knew them all, had learned their names. He liked to know names.

From high above, the monastery bell sounded the hour with its slow, deep bumps of sound, felt more than heard. There followed the brisk footfall of his teacher-father. The screek of the door handle as he entered. The rustle of papers in his hands. His father padded up and down the lines of desks, laying a test paper facedown on each: flop, flop, flop. Then he took his place at the table in front of the class that was not yet there, and turned his attention to paperwork of his own, without a word or a glance to his son, the one other living, breathing creature in the room.

Seeker watched him in silence. His father was a tall man with a high smooth brow and a long smooth face. His usual expression was one of polite impatience. Those blue eyes had a way of gazing at you without blinking that seemed to say he knew already everything that you were going to say, and had his answer prepared before you started to speak.

The bell jangled for the start of the school day, and the cries fell silent outside, as the students made their way to their classrooms. Seeker's father did not look up from his paperwork until the last chair had scraped into silence. Then he laid down his pen and raised his blank blue eyes and spoke in his mild, implacable voice.

"Your test paper is on your desk. Write your name at the top of each sheet of paper. Remember that a correct answer is not enough. Marks are also given for grammar, spelling, punctuation, legibility, and neatness. You may begin."

There was a rustling all across the classroom as the test papers were turned over. Ten questions; an hour to answer them. Seeker wrote his name on the blank sheet before him: Seeker after Truth. Then he read the first question.

A man wishes to measure the height of a tree near your home, and he asks for your help. His method is to measure the tree's
shadow when it is exactly equal to the tree's height. You know that sunrise is at 5:08
A.M.
and sunset is at 6:40
P.M.
At what time should you tell him to take his measurement?

Seeker stared at the paper for a long moment. He was an excellent problem solver and could see at once how to answer the question.

He realized his hand was shaking too much to write. He put his left thumb to his mouth and bit hard, using the sudden pain to steady his nerves. Then he wrote quickly:

This is a bad man who cuts down trees that are all different to make planks that are all the same. I will not help him.

A long slow release of breath. It was done. No going back now. The rest was much easier.

The second question went:

Describe, with diagrams, the rainfall cycle.

Seeker wrote more carefully this time, to be sure of his misspellings:

Furst the rainfall down from the cluods and make pudles then the rainfall up from the pudles and make cluods.

He drew a little diagram with arrows, in which the arrows all pointed in random directions. His hand had stopped trembling.

The third question went:

Using your own words, describe the sacred mission of the Nomana, also known as the Noble Warriors.

Seeker wrote:

The Nomana do biff bad fellows noses bash-squish yip whoopadoo.

He was beginning to feel light-headed. He looked round furtively at his classmates, but they were all bent over their test papers. He looked at his father. He too was intent on his work. Seeker dipped his pen in the inkwell and, holding it over his test paper, dropped blobs of ink onto the white spaces. Each blob splattered on impact, throwing out little legs like a spider. Beside the splattered blobs he wrote
Dady Spidder, Mumy Spidder,
and
Babey Spidder.

After that, he answered no more questions. He spent the remainder of the session writing with his left hand so that the handwriting would be as bad as possible. He wrote:

I have forgot evrything
My head is emty
I no nothing
I am a stupid

Each question was worth ten marks, so the highest possible mark for the test was one hundred. Seeker had never yet been given a lower mark than eighty. On this paper, with marks deducted for bad spelling and untidiness, he would be well into minus figures. In one single test he would crash from the top to the bottom of the class. And maybe then, at last, his father would listen to him.

When the session ended, he handed in his test paper just as he always did, but inside he felt strange and giddy, as if he had no body weight and was floating a little off the ground. He couldn't imagine how his father would react to what he had done. All he knew was that everything would change.

"Results after the break," said his father evenly, as he always did.

Leaving the classroom, Seeker overheard Precious Boon speaking to Fray.

"How did you do?"

"Useless as usual," said Fray, taking her arm. "Let's go and do stupid things in the shade."

They strolled away with their arms linked, and Seeker followed behind, alone. It was a hot day, too hot to stand out in the sun. The others threw themselves down on the dusty earth in the shadow of the plane trees. On the terrace below, a class of smaller children were playing a chasing game round the ornamental pond in the paved forecourt, uttering sharp cries and calling out one another's names. Seeker leaned his back on the warm whitewashed wall, the same wall he could see from his classroom desk, and remembered how he too had run round and round the pond when he was little, back in the days when his brother had been in the school. So long as Blaze had been there, everything had been all right. Blaze was tall and sturdy, and he had taken care of his little brother from his first day in school. But then Blaze had left, to train to be a Noma.

Seeker looked up the terraced streets, which furrowed the steep sides of the island, to the great castle-monastery of the Nom, at the top. Blaze was there now, somewhere. Three years ago he had been accepted as a novice, and Seeker had not seen him since. He missed him very much. He thought about him every single day. It wasn't just that Blaze had protected him. Somehow, when Blaze had been there, his father had left Seeker alone. After all, Blaze was the eldest, the pride of his father's heart, the child he had pledged to the Nom the day he was born. Blaze had always been destined to be a Noble Warrior and had been named accordingly: his full name was Blaze of Justice.

Seeker scanned the long granite wall of the monastery, which seemed to hang suspended over the sheer cliffs of the island's ocean face. That part of the Nom was closed to all except members of the Community. Sometimes he waved at its high windows, thinking that Blaze might be looking out and might see him waving, and so would remember him. When Seeker waved, he could almost see Blaze looking down at him, with his broad open features and his ready smile. He could almost hear his familiar voice saying, "Time to go home, little brother." He could almost feel that strong arm round his shoulders.

A falcon swooped overhead, perhaps the same peregrine he had watched from his desk before the test. The bird's flight brought his gaze round and down, to the windows of his classroom. There sat his father at the table, alone in the room, marking the test papers.

Results after the break.

His father believed that tests should be marked right away, while the memory of the questions was still fresh. He was a fast marker, and he was scrupulously fair. Seeker felt himself flush as he imagined his father reading his test paper. He would be angry, of course. Probably bewildered. Perhaps even hurt. But it had been done now.

The bell rang for the end of break. This time Seeker was one of the last into the classroom. He avoided meeting his father's eye as he went to his desk. He sat there, looking down, squeezing his left thumbnail under the fingernails of his right hand, one after another. The sharp sensation this produced was not quite pain and not quite pleasure, but it stopped the shivering.

His father paced slowly between the desks, handing back the test papers, calling out the marks achieved, adding a brief comment with each one.

"Precious Boon, fifty-eight. Careless calculation there, Precious. Always check your answer."

"Yes, sir."

"Rose, seventy-one. A great improvement, Rose. Third from top."

"Thank you, sir."

"Fray, thirty-eight. Only six questions answered, Fray. Does that satisfy you?"

"No, sir."

"Nor me. Better next time, please."

Seeker felt his father's presence as he approached his desk. He saw his test paper fall onto the desktop, face-down. He went still, not raising his eyes.

"Seeker," said his father, his voice as even as ever. "Ninety-six. Best in class."

Seeker's head jerked up, his eyes reaching for his father's. But his father was already striding on past. Behind him he heard Fray murmur something to Precious Boon, and he heard Precious laugh. With a sensation of sickness in his stomach, he turned over his paper. No marks had been given to any of his answers. Across the top of the first page his father had written:
See me after school.

***

"Here is what I propose to do about this paper."

His father held it out before him, and slowly and methodically tore it into small pieces.

"That was not the work of the best scholar in the school. That was not the work of my son. It would be quite unfair of me to mark it as if it represented a serious set of answers. Instead, I have averaged your last five test results and given you a mark that reflects your true ability."

Seeker hung his head and said nothing. What could he say? His father would never understand. He stood before him in the school's assembly hall, surrounded by the trophies and the honors boards of bygone years, and waited for his punishment to be handed down.

"Have I been fair to you?"

Seeker nodded.

"Then you must be fair to me. Why did you do this?"

Seeker shrugged. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. His mind was muddy.

"Well? I think I deserve an answer."

"Don't know," said Seeker.

"You don't know?" His father's voice sharpened. Now he was going to get angry. "I'm afraid I don't believe you."