The Stone of Farewell (27 page)

Dinivan did not smile. “I've no doubt of that, Miriamele. In fact, I think you should seek a greater challenge than merely being wiser than men. ”

“But I left Naglimund to do something,” she continued unhappily. “Hah! That was smart, wasn't it? I thought I'd bring Leobardis in on my uncle's side, but he already was. And then he was killed, so what good did it do Josua anyway?” She trooped a little way around the tower until she looked out on the spine of the cliff and the backslope that fell away into a green valley. Rolling hills stretched beyond, brushed with rippling light as the wind moved among the grasses. She tried to imagine the end of the world and could not do so. “How do you know Cadrach?” she asked at last.

“Cadrach is a name I never heard until you mentioned it,” he replied. “I knew him as Padreic, long years ago.”

“How many years ago could that be?” Miriamele smiled. “You're not that old.”

The priest shook his head. “I have a young face, I suppose, but actually I am nearing forty years—not much younger than your Uncle Josua.”

She scowled. “All right, many years ago. Where did you know him?”

“Here and elsewhere. We were members of the same ... order, I suppose you would say. But something happened to Padreic. He fell away from us, and when I later heard tell of him the stories were not good. It seemed that he had descended into very bad ways.”

“I'll say.” Miriamele made a face.

Dinivan looked at her curiously. “And how did you happen to give him this unexpected—and no doubt undesired—bath?”

She told him about their trip together, about Cadrach's suspected small treacheries and her confirmation of his larger one. When she had finished, Dinivan led her inside again, where Miriamele found her hunger had returned.

“He has not done right by you, Miriamele, but has not, I think, done entirely wrong either. There may be hope for him—and not merely the ultimate hope of salvation, which we all share. I mean that he may move away from his criminal and drunkard ways.” Dinivan walked a few steps down from the top of the staircase, leaning over to look at Cadrach. Now wrapped in a coarse blanket, the monk still slept, arms flung out as though he had only this moment been dragged from the perilous waves. His wet clothes were hanging in the low rafters.

Dinivan returned to the room. “If he were beyond hope, why would he have remained with you after he had received his silver from Streáwe?”

“So he could sell me to someone else,” she responded bitterly. “My father, my aunt, Naraxi child-merchants-who knows?”

“Perhaps,” said the lector's secretary, “but I do not think so. I think he has conceived a feeling of responsibility to you—although that responsibility does not prevent him from profiting where he thinks you will be unharmed, as with the master of Perdruin. But unless the Padreic I know is totally gone, vanished beyond any retrieval, I think he would not harm you, nor would he willingly let harm come to you.”

“Small chance,” Miriamele said grimly. “I will trust him again when stars shine at noontime, but no sooner.”

Dinivan looked at her closely, then sketched the sign of the Tree in the air. “We must be careful of such pronouncements in these strange days, my lady.” A grin came back to his face. “However, this talk of shining stars reminds me—we have a job to do. When I arranged to use this place to meet you, I promised the tower-keeper that we would light the beacon tonight. The mariners who ply the coastline expect it to be there, warning them away from the rocks so they can go east to the harbor at Bacea-sá-Repra. I should do it now, before it starts to get dark. Do you want to come along?” He clattered down the stairs and returned with the lamp.

Miriamele nodded, following him out onto the hoarding. “I was at Wentmouth once when they lit the Hayefur there,” she said. “It was huge!”

“Far bigger than our modest candle,” Dinivan agreed. “Be careful as you climb here. This is an old ladder.”

The tower's topmost room was little more than a place to hold the beacon, a very large oil lamp squatting in the middle of the floor. There was a smoke-hole overhead in the tower's roof and a fence of metal screens around the wick to slow the wind. A large curved metal shield hung on the inside wall behind the lamp, facing out toward the sea.

“What does this do?” she asked, running a finger over the shield's highly polished surface.

“Helps the light travel farther,” Dinivan said. “You see how it is curved away from the flame, like a cup? That collects the lamplight and flings it out through the window—more or less. Padreic could explain it better.”

“You mean Cadrach?” Miriamele asked, puzzled.

“Well, once he could have, anyway. He was very clever about mechanical things when I knew him—pulleys and levers and such. He studied a great deal about Natural Philosophy, before he ... changed.” Dinivan lifted the hand lamp to the large wick and held it there. “The Aedon only knows how much oil this great thing must burn,” he said. After some moments it caught and the flame rose. The shield on the wall did make it brighter, even though failing sunlight still streamed in through the wide windows.

“There are snuffers hanging on the wall,” Dinivan said, pointing at a pair of long staves, each with a metal cup on one end. “We must remember to put it out in the morning.”

When they had returned to the second floor, Dinivan suggested they look in on Cadrach. Trailing after, Miriamele turned and went back for the pitcher of water and some grapes. There was really no sense starving him to death.

The monk was up, sitting on the lone chair, staring out through the window at the twilit, slate-blue bay. He was withdrawn, and at first did not respond to Miriamele's offer of food, but at last took a drink of water. After a moment he accepted the grapes as well.

“Padreic,” Dinivan said, leaning close, “do you not remember me? I am Dinivan. We were friends once.”

“I recognize you, Dinivan,” Cadrach said at last. His hoarse voice echoed strangely in the small round room. “But Padreic ec-Crannhyr is long dead. There is only Cadrach now.” The monk avoided Miriamele's eyes.

Dinivan watched him intently. “Have you no wish to speak?” he asked. “There is nothing you can have done that would make me think badly of you.”

Cadrach looked up, a smirk on his round face, his gray eyes full of pain. “Oh, is that true? Nothing so foul I might have done that Mother Church and ... and our other friends ... would not take me back?” He laughed bitterly and waved his hand in disgust. “You lie, brother Dinivan. There are crimes beyond forgiveness, and a special place prepared for their perpetrators.” Angry, he turned away and would not speak any more.

Outside the waves murmured as they struck the rocky coast and fell back, hushed voices that seemed to welcome the settling night.

Tiamak watched Older Mogahib, Roahog the Potter, and the other elders climb into the rocking flatboat. Their faces were grave, as befitted the ceremonial occasion. The ritual feather necklaces drooped in the damp heat.

Mogahib stood uneasily in the stern of the boat and turned to look back. “Do not fail us, Tiamak son of Tugumak,” he croaked. The ancient one frowned and impatiently brushed the leaves of his headdress out of his eyes. “Tell the drylanders that the Wrannamen are not their slaves. Your people have given you their greatest trust.” Older Mogahib was helped to sit down by one of his great-nephews. The overloaded boat wallowed away down the watercourse.

Tiamak made a sour face and looked down at the Summoning Stick they had given him, its surface knobby with carvings. The Wrannamen were upset because Benigaris, the new master of Nabban, had demanded greater tithes of grain and jewels, as well as young sons from the houses of the Wran to come and serve on the holdings of Nabbanai nobles. The elders wanted Tiamak to go and speak for them, to protest this further meddling by the drylanders in the lives of the Wrannamen.

So yet another responsibility was now laid on Tiamak's slender shoulders. Had any of his people ever said one respectful word to him about his learning? No, they treated him as little more than a madman, someone who had turned his back on the Wran and his people to follow the ways of the drylanders—until they needed someone to write or speak to the Nabbanai or Perdruinese in their own tongue. Then, it was: “Tiamak, do your duty.”

He spat from the porch of his house and watched the green water ripple below. He pulled up his ladder and left it lying in a heap instead of neatly rolled as was usual. He was feeling very bitter.

One good thing would come of this, he decided later while waiting for his water pot to boil. If he went to Nabban, as his tribesmen insisted, he would be able to visit his wise friend who lived there and find out if anything more could be discovered about Doctor Morgenes' strange note. He had been fretting over it for weeks, yet felt no closer to a solution. His messenger birds to fat Ookequk in Yiqanuc had returned, their messages unopened. That was troubling. The birds he had sent to Doctor Morgenes had returned as well, but that, although disappointing, was less worrisome than Ookequk's silence, since Morgenes had said in his last note that he might not be able to communicate for some while. Neither had his messages been answered by the witch woman who lived in Aldheorte Forest, or by his friend in Nabban. Tiamak had only sent those last birds out a few weeks ago, however, so they still might reply.

In fact, now that he thought of it, what would he do with his birds? He didn't have nearly enough seed to keep them penned for the entire time he would be gone, and he certainly couldn't take them all with him. He would have to turn them loose to fend for themselves, hoping that they would stay close to his little house in the banyan tree so he could recapture them when he returned. And if they flew away and did not come back, what would he do? He would have to train more, that was all.

Tiamak's sigh was subsumed in the hiss of steam escaping from beneath the pot lid. As he dropped in the yellowroot to steep, the little scholar tried to remember the prayer for a safe journey that one should make to He Who Always Steps on Sand, but could only think of the Showing-the-Hiding-Places-of-Fish prayer, which was not really appropriate. He sighed again. Even though he didn't quite believe in his people's gods anymore, it never hurt to pray—but one really ought to say the right prayer.

As long as he was pondering such things, what would he do with that damnable parchment Morgenes talked about in his letter—or seemed to talk about, for how could the old doctor know that Tiamak had it? Should he take it with him and risk losing it? But he had to, if he was going to show it to his friend in Nabban and ask his advice.

So many problems. They seemed to be crowding his head like black-flies, buzzing and buzzing. He had to think it all through clearly—especially if he was to leave in the morning for Nabban. He had to look at each piece of this puzzle.

First Morgenes' message, which he had read and reread dozens of times in the four moons or so since he had received it. He took it from the top of the wooden chest and smoothed it, leaving smudges with his yellowroot-stained hands. He knew the contents by heart.

Doctor Morgenes wrote of his fears that “...
the time of the Conqueror Star”
was surely upon them—whatever that might mean-and that Tiamak's help would be needed “...
if certain dreadful things which—it is said—are hinted at in the infamous lost book of the priest Nisses ...”
were to be avoided. But what things?
“The infamous lost book...”
—that was Nisses'
Du Svardenvyrd,
as any scholar knew.

Tiamak reached down into the chest and removed a leaf-wrapped bundle, unrolling it to remove his prized parchment, which he spread on the floor beside Morgenes' letter. This parchment page, which Tiamak had stumbled on by luck at the market in Kwanitupul, was of much higher quality than anything he himself could afford. The rusty brown ink formed the northern runes of Rimmersgard, but the language itself was the archaic Nabbanai of five centuries gone.