The Luck of Brin's Five (7 page)

He brought out a chart of his own and other objects from his pocket vest and laid them on the Diviner's worktable. Beeth Ulgan examined everything with an intense concentration, poised over the worktable with a solemn face and hands hovering, as if she were working a conjuration for some grandee. Roy stood by and acted as interpreter, although Diver used the words that he had pretty well. He displayed and demonstrated his wonders; we knew some of them already. There was the flat box, no bigger than the palm of my hand, that tells again what is spoken into it. There was a thin, fine apparatus like a silkbeam . . . and Diver was surprised in his turn when the Ulgan showed him a box of silkbeam copies.

There was the terrible weapon that he had turned on the Pentroy vassals in our glebe. He aimed it at a tall vase, and I cringed, but the vase toppled gently onto a cushion . . . the power of the thing could be altered from a stunning blow to a feather touch. There were the lightsticks and a set of metal tools and the tiny buzzer that Diver used to shave his face and something called a recharger to make all the marvellous engines well again when their power diminished.

While the Ulgan marvelled at all these things, Diver asked for a map of Torin, and she gave him a colored “Fortune Map” on good willow paper, the kind she had made up by the printmaker two doors away, to sell in her booth. He stared at it sadly and compared it with a map of his own. Then Beeth Ulgan produced larger maps, one on silk, one on parchment, but on these maps also the islands were no clearer, and the distances, though vague, were just as great.

The Diviner looked at Diver's map and shook her head. “As I thought,” she said. “We know nothing about the islands.”

The islands on her maps, beyond the western edge of the land of Torin, were huge patches of green, coastlines unfinished or fantastically drawn into bays and sounds. On the old silk map there were the sea sunners, giant water beasts embroidered, and strange beasts on land too. There were five mountains breathing red fire that had split the world asunder in ancient times. Diver could still hazard a guess. He pointed on all the maps to a place on the largest island, the one called Tsabeggan or Nearest Fire.

There were his people—three of his own kind—and they might as well have been on a distant star. Whatever way he chose to reach them—and by contrast the land of Torin, with its plain and rivers and mountains and the desert, was all finely mapped—he must cross a continent and sail the ocean sea. He turned to Beeth Ulgan with a look of despair and spread his hands in a gesture that said plainly, “What shall I do?”

The Diviner took one of his hands and looked at the palm lines, then turned it away from her, as if it were a scroll in a strange tongue that she found too fascinating. “Are your people safe in the islands?”

“Yes.”

“Is their tent strong?”

“Yes.”

“Is there food and water?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the leader of this Family?”

“No.”

“Have they another air ship?”

“Yes, a larger one.”

“Then they will come seeking you!”

“No,” said Diver sadly. He explained, and finally we grasped his meaning. His people must follow certain rules; they could search around the camp and the sea nearby, but the larger air ship was of no use in the search. It was not an
air
vessel at all, but a ship for the void where there is no air. It was for taking the man Family back to the space station or larger sky town around Derin. Diver explained that he had done his people a terrible wrong in depriving them of his little ship, which went in the air or out of it, and was meant for short journeys. His people must continue their scholarly tasks, testing the air, numbering the flowers and the creatures, until their time of two hundred days had elapsed and they would return to the space station.

I found it difficult to believe that they would obey such harsh rules; surely they would continue searching for him and go further afield. His instructions were equally harsh and plain: if he could not return to the party, he must shift for himself.

Beeth Ulgan stared keenly at Diver. “Your people have flown around Torin. You must know there are cities.”

Diver nodded. They had reports of inhabited places made some time ago from a great distance. But his people . . . the Biosurvey Team . . . were not envoys; their duty was only to discover how well man might live on Torin.

Harper Roy laughed aloud. “Great North Wind! You have picked a bad spot. The islands are choking hot, full of fever and poison stings.”

“Perhaps that's another Diviner's tale,” grinned Beeth Ulgan.

Diver smiled and sawed his hand as if to say, “more or less.” “It's hot.”

“Are you under rule
not
to find other beings?” asked Beeth. Again Diver sawed the air.

“I flew too far,” he admitted sadly. “I hoped, always, to find . . . others. The ship failed on my second journey.”

Beeth Ulgan was pacing now, with her long hands pressed together in an attitude of thought. “Escott Garl Brinroyan,” she said formally, translating the name or at least making it easier to pronounce, “what have
you
in mind?”

“To find my ship.”

“Will it fly again?”

“Maybe not,” said Diver, “but it has ‘radio', to speak with my friends in the islands.”

“Ha!” said Beeth, “I think this magic is known here. It resembles the voice-wire.”

“The voice-wire is forbidden in Rintoul,” said Harper Roy.

“Still used in the Fire-Town,” said the Ulgan, “and I could do with one now, though the Winds know it would take a long wire to reach from here to Rintoul. How does your speaking device work, Diver?”

“The words travel through the air . . . no wire is needed.”

The Ulgan held up her hands as if she would cry out all the way to Rintoul.

“Oh, these things will be known!” she cried triumphantly. “This will indeed be what the charts proclaim . . . a three comet year. There are others; there is a great one in Rintoul who must know these things.”

“The Great Elder?” asked Diver innocently. “Should I go to Tiath Pentroy? To the Elders in Rintoul?”

For the first time Beeth Ulgan made an averting sign. “No! Winds forbid!”

“Why not?”

“It might mean your life and the life of Brin's Five.”

“This Elder would take our lives?”

“If he could do it secretly,” said Beeth Ulgan.

Harper Roy protested. “Even the Great Elder is bound by law; he must follow the old threads. . . .”

“That's true,” said Beeth, “but very often he may weave those threads in
his
pattern.”

“But why kill us?” burst out Diver. “From fear? Why should he fear a lone man? I come in peace. Why should this grandee kill a stranger when simple folk have shown me nothing but kindness and love . . . when Brin's Five has adopted me without a trace of fear?”

“You bring power and skill!” said the Ulgan. “You bring fire-metal-magic. We might have had all these things ourselves from Tsagul, long ago. But the Elders, the clans, will brook no change in their power. They cannot see the way the world must go.”

Diver studied the maps and traced on one the course of the river Datse down to the sea. “Should I go to Tsagul?” he asked.

“No!” said Beeth Ulgan sharply. “If you found friends there, it would split the world like the blast of a fire-mountain.”

“Besides,” said Harper Roy, “it is a bleak place. Mamor was there once and did a stint in the mines. Mountain folk do not care for the place.”

“Do not be too sure, Roy Brinroyan,” smiled the Diviner. “There may be one of your kin well known in the Fire-Town.”

The Harper shook his head and began numbering our kin on his fingers.

“No,” pronounced Beeth Ulgan, “be ruled by me, Diver. Go with Brin's Five, be patient.”

“Where shall we go?” I asked.

“To my fixed house at Whiterock Fold,” she said. “And my own barge will take you all downriver.”

“Very well,” said Diver, “if Brin will go there . . . if it serves all the Five well . . .”

“There is one in Rintoul who will weave all these threads into a safe web,” said the Diviner.

“But who, Beeth Ulgan?” I cried. “Who will save us? “Who is more powerful than Strangler Tiath? Is it . . . is it
Blacklock?
”

Beeth Ulgan laughed aloud. “Well, you are not far from wrong, child. I will not say the name, but it is the one who gives Blacklock—young Murno Pentroy—his wings to fly with.”

I had to be satisfied with this. In fact it was many days before any of us heard the name she would not utter . . . but from this time we were aware of the presence of this subtle magician, this Maker of Engines.

Beeth Ulgan clapped her hands and went bustling into the other room again. “There is much to be done!”

We followed and found her kneeling beside the twirler. The apprentice had sponged down the poor creature and covered the thin body with a blanket, but still it had not awakened.

“What are the twirlers?” Diver asked softly.

“Outcasts,” said Beeth Ulgan, “vagabonds. They fly from a sad fate that haunts all Moruians. Do you know what that is?”

Diver shook his head.

“To be alone . . .” said Harper Roy, making an averting sign. “How is it with your people, Diver?”

“Some bear it pretty well,” he replied.

I was stricken with fear in case poor Diver felt alone . . . far from his own people. It was such a dreadful thing.

“Cheer up!” I whispered. “
You
have a Family.”

“I know it!” he said, smiling.

Beeth Ulgan was stroking the face of the twirler in a certain pattern; the apprentice crouched beside her, watching keenly. “Our legends tell of a few spirits, neither good nor bad, who lived among the Moruia,” she said. “Name us some names, Dorn. Show your mother's loom teaching.”

“Eenath, Vuruno, Ullo and Telve . . .” I parroted gamely. “All were great spirit-warriors and made Families with the clans long ago. Eenath for Pentroy, Vuruno for Dohtroy, Ullo and Telve for Tsatroy, the fire-clan that is no more.”

“Good child!” smiled the Ulgan. “The legend tells that these spirit-warriors, especially Eenath, still inspire these twirlers. A Leader, once inspired, gathers poor outcasts into a skein. Those whose families have been broken by death or misfortune, runaway vassals, disgruntled townees or miners. They roam about begging alms and doing their spirit dance. Simple folk are kind to them.”

“What will you do with this one?” asked Harper Roy.

“I must put the poor wretch to use,” sighed the Ulgan. “I know the leader of this twirling band. He's a wily one, who plays politics.”

She motioned us back behind the curtains of the inner room and, raising her arms, began a crooning chant. The apprentice, who divined her will, took over stroking the twirler's face. Presently the twirler sat bolt upright, and I saw that it was a female, no older than Brin, but scarred and undernourished. As the Ulgan crooned, all the harsh lines left the poor face and the twirler spoke its name, like a sleeper. “Mooneen uto Vilroyan. Mooneen, once of Vil's Five. Now roaming with the spirit warriors.”

“Your Leader?” asked Beeth Ulgan.

“Petsalee, host of spirits.”

“You will bear this message to the Leader, with a gift of silver,” pursued the Ulgan.

“Surely. . . .” sighed Mooneen, in the same eerie tone.

The Diviner spoke quickly and earnestly: “Tell Petsalee that he will earn praise and riches from the Maker of Engines if he goes straight downriver and plays all towns and villages between here and Otolor. The burden of his teaching shall be: no devil came down from the void but a true spirit warrior, who will bring glory and peace and honor to the land of Torin.”

Diver could not follow all this; but as I peered from the light into the darkness, I was struck by the cunning of the Diviner.

When the twirler knew the message, she was awakened. We saw her dressed in a cloak and given silver, then sent out into the night-light. Beeth Ulgan called us back and for the first time introduced the apprentice, whose name was Gordo Beethan—Gordo, Beeth's helper. No Five-name, or if he had one he did not use it. Again, I wondered about living with a teacher instead of a family. The Ulgan was explaining: “Gordo is a Witness,” she said. “The only one registered in Cullin. Ask Diver if such things exist in his knowledge.”

We had already tried to explain this way of sending messages to Diver. He understood fairly well what we meant but seemed to doubt if it would work. He admitted he was thought-blind himself but not all his folk were so. A few had the power to link minds. He asked now, could it be shown?

The Ulgan could not do it. “One must believe,” she said. Gordo looked smug; he valued his powers. I was sleepy and jealous.

“I will link minds with the Witness,” said Beeth Ulgan. “Then, when he calls, far off, at an appointed time, I hear and speak through him, while he is entranced. His hearers hear
me
speak.”

At that moment there came a musical rapping sound from deep inside the house; Beeth Ulgan's big silk and wood clock was striking in her clock room. Long before its echoing wooden notes had died away, Diver knew what engine it was and asked to be shown. The clock made me sleepier than ever; I had lost all the hours of total darkness, which the mountain folk use for their best sleep; the Far Sun had been hours in the sky. The apprentice, Gordo, began curling up by the stove in the outer room in an old blue sleeping bag that might have been one of our own weave, for we supplied the Ulgan with much of her furnishing. I went back into the inner room and fell asleep on the fine cushions.

Suddenly I was wide awake; Harper Roy had gone. I felt a stab of alarm although the place was warm and beautiful; I was alone. Then I heard a murmur of voices and saw Diver, quite close, talking with the Ulgan. One of my family was there . . . I was safe. The Harper, I knew, had gone to fetch the others from the cave at Stone Brook; they would join the Ulgan's barge outside the town at the river junction, according to the plans we had made. So I went back to sleep and half woke, once or twice, to hear Diver and Beeth Ulgan talking away, companionably, about stars and engines, like two ancients, yarning over their lace-looms at a spring fair.