The Age of Light (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 1) (27 page)

“Why
do you stay mewed up in here with that dried-up old stick?”
he
finally asked
.
“I see you like to read. Well, there is a whole library out there for you to
read, with millions of books, too, on any subject you can imagine! I could -
show you if you’d like.”

He had apparently gotten her to her feet and halfway
to the door when she had tentatively asked whether he would get in trouble by
not being there when the Librarian got back. He had laughed it off and said,
“He wanted these books? Well, I’ll just leave them right here where he can trip
on them. The fall will probably do nothing more than jog his memory. And if I
do get into trouble - well, it’ll be worth it just to be with you.”

From that moment on they had become almost
inseparable. Denyo came for her every turn and showed her the Library,
inadvertently teaching her all the duties of a novice as they went along. Rukto
still interacted with her, and she, however shyly, responded.

Denyo helped her make friends among the other
novices, the group of them getting into all types of mischief, though never
into anything seriously harmful. And one turn, half a cycle later, Denyo
approached the Head Librarian with a reluctant Pentuk in tow.

“Teacher,”
he had said, holding her hand tight to keep her from running
away,
“Pentuk has something she’d like to ask you.”

Playing up his ‘old geezer’ role, he had cupped his hand to
his ear as if he could not hear him.
“Eh?”

Denyo repeated his statement, laughter audible in his voice.

“What?
She wants to know about Summa Ask’yu? She says she saw a taro’asbyu? She came
to give me a nasty basku?”

Reduced to giggles by the performance, she asked in a timid,
trembling voice to be allowed to enter the novice-hood to train to be a
Librarian.

“What,
child?”
he had said loudly.
“Speak up! Goddess bless me, with the
way you whisper, you should be a Librarian!”

Denyo had laughed and said that that was good enough
for him, and that he would sign her up for classes and Rukto would never know
the difference. “
He can’t remember
me
half the time, anyway!
”

And from there, Pentuk launched into her life’s
work. She had learned later on, of course, that most of the antics between
Denyo and Rukto had been largely staged for her benefit, to put her at ease,
and that Rukto actually missed very little. He had followed her education and
career very carefully, his eye on making her his successor.

The three became fast friends, and a budding romance
had just recently begun to spring up between the two young people.

But at the
lorn
with the two
Princes, he had seen the instant attraction to the young Prince Staventu on her
face as clearly as if she had shouted it; and Staventu’s was just as evident.
He knew that Staventu would invite Pentuk along on the search, could have
predicted it in the wind. And he had known that she would have a fear/desire
reaction that would lead her straight here. He had taken the liberty, in case
of just such an event, to inform the older of the two, Rilantu, of Pentuk’s
background.

“It is all right, child. Be at peace. Tell me what
is wrong.”

And in trembling words she told him, told him of her
desire and fear, of her desire to go and her fear of going.

“What if he is another Junti’mun?” she whispered. It
had been a long time before she could utter the name. “I still have not had the
training of an
Ov’ta’mu
...”

Rukto had to agree with some misgiving. He had hoped
that Denyo would have taken care of that, would have been her first. Staventu
surely was as well versed, if not better, in the sexual arts, though, and Rukto
knew him to have a kind and understanding heart and the ability to display
great gentleness and care. The younger Prince, in his youth, had found a
wounded bird once, and had nursed it back to health and flight and freedom by
himself, with only healing advice from the
ol’bey’w
oman.
Surely someone who displayed such sensitivity and delicacy of touch at such a
tender age could not harm this wounded bird now?

She had a difficult time ahead, being forced to make
a choice between the two young men, but perhaps it would finally push her to
taking that last step to independence. For once the choice had to be made, no
one could make it for her. One young man would be hurt, but they had both taken
a fancy to her. The thing would have to sort itself out.

“Pentuk, you are a woman now,” he said, lifting her
head up so that he might look into her eyes. “No one may force you to do
anything, and if I know Staventu, he would never do anything so ignominious. He
is an honorable young man. And you have a good head on your shoulders and great
av’rito’ka
at your command. If anything goes wrong, you have but to
av’tun
your way back here, before you go past the range of your av’rita, and I’ll
protect you with all the power and authority I can wield. But you must step
into the world. You are my best student. I know you’ll be fine.”

She smiled and hugged him fiercely. It was all the
answer she needed.

the
stars turned the laughing darkness with their dance...

The stars were at the height of their whirling dance
as the search egwae prepared to leave. Warru, servants and mounts filled the
Este courtyard.

The two Crown Princes stood side by side, each
preparing his own mount. Staventu was strangely quiet, his movements stiff and
abrupt, his face expressionless. Beneath his ministrations the specially bred
kati’yori
,
almost the size of a full horse rather than the zebra it resembled, squealed
more than once. Rilantu completed strapping the riding
panquin
to his
kati’yori
before turning to gaze at his brother.

“You really are treating that mount very badly,” he
observed calmly. “Is there something bothering you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Staventu answered, his
voice perfectly modulated to seem as calm. “What could possibly be bothering
me?”

Rilantu gently shouldered his twin aside and began
re-buckling the
panquin
. Some were much too tight,
while others woefully loose. The thing would have hobbled the poor ‘yori and
thrown the Prince inside of a
san’chron
-
assuming that the beast could have been made to move at all. It probably would
have lain down and refused to budge.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Should I hazard a
guess?”

Staventu snorted, checked the security of his packs.

“Brother,” Rilantu persisted. Staventu snapped
about, his eyes wide in a fierce glare of onyx and liquid fire. Rilantu met it
with a solid obsidian and hard granite, not giving ground before the sharp
ocular onslaught. Their eyes locked, Staventu’s anger and hurt pouring forth in
the ferocity of his eyes. Rilantu weathered it patiently, letting the redly
glaring emotions impact upon him and pass through him. Finally the searing
ocular onslaught wore itself out and Staventu narrowed his eyes and looked
away. Rilantu suppress a sigh.

Neither had heard softly approaching footsteps
during their strange discourse, nor the accompanying hoofsteps.

“Your pardon,” a soft, familiar voice finally spoke
up. Instead of jumping or startling, both turned as one, with the lightening
quickness that had been trained into both of them.

Pentuk stood transfixed by their double stare, a ‘
yori
lead in her hand. She wore a light, mauve linen wrap with a slightly thicker
de’siki
over it. She bowed deeply to them.

“I - have come to ask permission to j-join the
search
egwae
,”
she said timidly.

Rilantu glanced at his brother. Staventu’s face had
changed infinitesimally. To Rilantu it was part whoop of joy, part snarl.

“Of course you have our permission,” he said
quickly, before Staventu had time to find his voice in the tiny maelstrom of
warring emotions that fled across his face and say something stupid. “We are
glad to have you.”

Staventu raised his chin, assuming a formal, distant
air. “Yes, that is so,” he said, his voice and face so expressionless that he
might have been an animated
boabi
statuette.
Pentuk bowed again and turned away, but not before a look of puzzled hurt
crossed her face. She moved off to take a place in the forming line.

Staventu looked after her with eyes that burned and
smoldered slightly, the barest flicker of some unexpressed desire in them. He
stood that way for a long moment, his well-trained features gradually closing
so that they betraying nothing further. He moved, shot a sidelong glance at his
twin, then checked over the fastening of his mount’s harness as if he had not
been botching the securing of them a little while ago. His stance and silence
were almost a visual challenge, daring his brother to comment. Rilantu,
however, this time wisely said nothing.

Why did she suddenly changed her mind?
the younger
twin wondered, staring off into the darkening eve, it seemed, but really not
seeing beyond his own whirling thoughts.
First she abruptly runs out on me
in the Library, presumably to another’s arms, and now, out of nowwhere, she
shows up, packed and ready to go.
Was she playing with him? Did Rilantu
have anything to do with any of this? He did not know.

His musing was cut short by a ‘
tunned
command to mount and form up on the
Warru
First. He
clicked to the
kati’yori
. It held still so that he
could swing himself into the
panquin
. Taking his
place near the head of the double line, he began his part in the casting of the
Rite of Concealment taking shape around them.

They moved out with the rising of the third moon,
fifty warru (one of whom was
ol’bey
-trained),
ten servants, the
Warru
First, the
two Princes, and the Librarian. They rode out of the Palace grounds, and
through the Western
av’turun
that led
down to the first ring of buildings below the Palace, the Temples. They were completely muffled from
sight and sound. Through spiraling streets they rode, coming to the next
av’turun
that put them on the next lower level. The City was built in a huge spherical
crater, with a conical spire rising from the center. On this spire stood
T’Av’li
,
and in successive rings that stepped down and outward stood the houses of the
Goddesses and the nobility. They moved like
joumbi
,
whispering spirits through the wide boulevards of the
Lan’mba
and nobility districts, their mounts making no sound on the smoothly paved
streets. None spoke, no unnecessary sounds were made as they rode through the
huge city. Three
san’chrons
later, at a gallop, they
left that part of the city behind and came to the upper middle class district
just at the base of the central cone. The streets were narrower and not made of
the precious
tiffan
satin stone. The houses
were not as large; but the district as a whole was much bigger than the
nobles’. Thus they moved through the concentric rings of the city, each a
little less rich than the last; there was, however, no poor section to the Ritious City. The last district before the high
walls of the crater and the watchtowers was the industrial district, the
weavers, dyers, tanners, and smiths. They reached the city’s outer limit eight
san’chrons
after leaving
T’Av’li
. Only when they were through
the final
av’turun
that put them outside the city’s crater walls and on the road to farm land did
they create their first personal
av’tun
, several
warru
women working together to form the large portal. They rode through a few at a
time, those who held the portal open going last.

Eyes as deep as the eve watched them disappear.