The Stone of Farewell (28 page)

Below this incomprehensible poem was printed the name
“NISSES.”

So what was Tiamak to think? Morgenes could not know that Tiamak had discovered a page of the near-mythical book—the Wrannaman hadn't told a soul—yet still the doctor had said that Tiamak would have important work to do, something to do with
Du Svardenvyrd!

His inquiries to Morgenes and the others had gone unanswered. Now he must go to Nabban to plead his people's cause to the drylanders, yet he still did not know what it could all mean.

Tiamak poured the tea out of the pan into his third-favorite bowl—he had dropped and broken his second-favorite bowl that morning, when Older Mogahib and the others had started braying beneath his window. He cupped the warm bowl in his slender fingers and blew across the top. “Hot day, hot tea,” his mother had always said. Today was certainly hot. The air was so still and oppressive that he almost felt he could leap off his porch and swim through it. Hot weather alone did not make him unhappy, since he was always less hungry when the heat was fierce, but nevertheless there was something disconcerting about the air today, as though the Wran were a smoldering bar of tin on the world-anvil, with a great hammer trembling above it, ready to smash down and change everything.

That morning Roahog the Potter, taking a moment to gossip while Older Mogahib was helped up the ladder, had said that a colony of ghants was building a new nest just a couple of furlongs down the watercourse from Village Grove. Ghants had never come so close to a human settlement before, and although Roahog had chuckled about how the Wrannamen would soon put the nest to fire, the story nevertheless left Tiamak unsettled, as if some undefined but recognized law had been violated.

As the slow, sweltering afternoon wore on toward evening, Tiamak kept trying to think about the demands of the Duke of Nabban, and about Morgenes' letter, but visions of the nest-building ghants pushed in—their brownish-gray jaws clicking industriously, their mad little black eyes glittering—and try as he might, he could not rid himself of the ridiculous notion that somehow all these things were related.

It is the heat,
he told himself. If
only I had a cool jug of fern beer, these wild ideas would disappear.

But he did not even have enough yellowroot to make another cup of tea, let alone any fern beer. His heart was troubled and there was nothing in the wide, hot Wran that would give him peace.

 

Tiamak rose with the first light of dawn. By the time he had cooked and eaten a rice-flour biscuit and drunk a little water, the swamp was already becoming unpleasantly warm. He grimaced as he began his packing. This was a day to go splashing and swimming in one of the safe ponds, not set out on a journey.

There was actually little to pack. He selected a spare breechclout and a robe and pair of sandals to wear in Nabban—there was no reason to reinforce the unfortunate opinion of his people's backwardness held by most Nabbanai. He had no use on this trip, however, for his stretched-bark writing board, his wooden chest, or most of his other meager lot of possessions. His precious books and scrolls he dared not take, since there was a better than average chance he would wind up in the water a few times before he reached the cities of the drylanders.

He had decided he must take the Nisses parchment, so he wrapped it in a second layer of leaves and bundled the whole into an oiled skin bag given to him by Doctor Morgenes when Tiamak had lived in Perdruin. He put the bag, the Summoning Stick, and his clothes into his flat-bottomed boat, along with his third-best bowl, a handful of cooking implements, and a throwing-sling with a folded leaf full of round stones. He hung his knife and his coin-pouch on his belt. Then, having stalled as long as he could, he climbed up the banyan tree to the top of the house to set his birds free.

As he climbed across the thatched roof he could hear the drowsy, muffled speech of the birds within their small cottage. He had put the remaining seed in his fourth-best-and last—bowl, setting it out on the windowsill below. They would at least stay near the house for a while after his departure.

He poked his hand into the little bark-roofed box and delicately removed one of his pigeons, a pretty white-and-gray named So-fast, then tossed her up into the air. She fanned her wings briskly, settling at last on a limb above his head. Unsettled by this unusual behavior, she hooted quietly, questioningly. Tiamak knew the grief of a father whose daughter must be sent to strangers. But he had to remove the birds, and the door to their house, which only opened inward, had to be fastened shut. Otherwise, these birds or their absent kindred would enter and be trapped. With no Tiamak to rescue them, they would soon starve.

Feeling very unhappy, he carefully removed Red-eye, Crab-foot, and Honey-lover. Soon there was a disapproving chorus perched above him. Alerted that something unusual was happening, the birds still inside had fled skittishly to the back of the little house, so that Tiamak had to strain to reach them. As he tried to grasp one of these last recalcitrants, his hands brushed against a small, cold bundle of feathers that lay just out of sight in the shadows at the far end.

Suddenly full of worry, he closed his hand around the object and lifted it out. It was one of his birds, he saw immediately, and it was dead. Eyes wide, he examined it closely. It was Ink-daub, one of the pigeons he had dispatched to Nabban several days ago. Ink-daub had apparently been injured by some animal: many of his feathers were missing and he was spotted with dried blood. Tiamak was sure the bird hadn't been there yesterday, so he must have arrived during the night, flying with his last strength despite his wounds, reaching his home only to die.

Tiamak found the world swimming before his eyes as the tears came. Poor Ink-daub. He was a fine bird, one of the fastest fliers. He had been very brave, too. Everywhere on the bird's body that Tiamak looked, blood showed beneath the tattered feathers. Poor, brave Ink-daub.

A slender strip of parchment was curled around the pigeon's twiglike ankle. Tiamak placed the silent bundle aside for a moment and coaxed out the last two birds, then wedged the small door closed with a notched stick. With Ink-daub's body curled in a gentle hand, Tiamak climbed down to the window and into the house. He set down the pigeon's body and carefully removed the parchment, spreading it out on the floor between his fingertips, squinting at the tiny characters. The message was from his wise friend in Nabban, whose hand Tiamak recognized even in bird-writing, but was inexplicably unsigned.

 

At the bottom was scribbled a drawing of a feather in a circle—the symbol of the League of the Scroll.

Tiamak sat dumbstruck, staring at the message. He read it two more times, hoping it would miraculously say something different, but the words remained unchanged. Go to Kwanitupul! But the elders had ordered him to Nabban! There was no one else in his tribe who could speak the drylander languages well enough to serve as an emissary. And what would he tell his tribesmen—that some drylander they didn't know had told him to go wait for instructions at Kwanitupul, that this was reason enough to turn his back on his people's wishes? What did the League of the Scroll mean to Wrannamen? A circle of drylander scholars who talked of old books and older events? His people would never understand.

But how could he ignore the gravity of the summons? His friend in Nabban had been explicit—had even said that this was what Morgenes wanted him to do. Without Morgenes, Tiamak would never have survived his year in Perdruin, let alone gained the wonderful fellowship to which the doctor had introduced him. How could he not do this one thing—this, the only favor Morgenes had ever asked of him?

The hot air was pushing in at the windows like a hungry beast. Tiamak folded the note and slipped it into his sheath. He must attend to Ink-daub. Then he would think. Perhaps it would be cooler as evening drew closer. Surely he could wait one more day before leaving, wherever he was to go? Surely?

Tiamak wrapped the bird's small body in oil palm leaves, then wound it in a length of thin cord. He stilted through the shallows to a sandbar behind his house, where he set the bundle of leaves on a rock and surrounded it with bark and precious strips of old parchment. After uttering a prayer for Ink-daub's spirit to She Who Waits to Take All Back, he used his flint and steel to set the tiny pyre aflame.

As the smoke coiled upward, Tiamak reflected that there was something to be said for the old ways after all. If nothing else, they provided something to do at a time when the mind was weary and hurting. For a moment, he was even able to push aside the troubling thoughts of duty, feeling instead a strange sort of peace as he watched Ink-daub's smoke take flight, rising slowly into the feverish gray sky.

Soon, though, the smoke was gone and the ashes were scattered across the green water.

When Miriamele and her two companions came down off the hill path onto the North Coast Road, Cadrach jogged his mount ahead, putting several lengths between himself and Dinivan and the princess. The morning sun was at their backs. The horses Dinivan had brought trotted along with heads waving, nostrils wide to catch the scents on the early breeze.

“Ho, Padreic!” Dinivan shouted, but the monk did not reply. His round shoulders bounced up and down. His hood was lowered as if he hung his head in thought. “Very well, then—
Cadrach
,” the priest called, “why do you not ride with us?”

Cadrach, a graceful horseman despite his bulk and short legs, reined up. When the other two had nearly caught him, he turned.

“It is a problem with names, brother,” he said, showing his teeth in an angry smile. “You call me by one that belongs to a dead man. The princess, well now, she's given me a new one—”traitor“—and baptized me with it in Emettin Bay to seal the bargain. So you see, don't you, it would be all too confusing, this—one might say—
multiplicity
of names.” With an ironic bow of the head, he dug his heels into his horse's ribs and forged ahead, slowing again to match their pace when he had extended his lead to a dozen ells or so.

“He is very bitter,” Dinivan said as he watched Cadrach's hunched shoulders.

“What does he have to be bitter about?” Miriamele demanded.

The priest shook his head. “God knows.”

Coming from a priest, she decided, it was hard to tell exactly what that phrase might signify.

 

Nabban's North Coast Road meandered along between the ridge of hills and Emettin Bay, sometimes jogging inland so that the hills' tan flanks rose on the right, blocking all view of the water. Farther on, the hills fell away again for a short time and the rocky coastline appeared once more. As the trio approached Teligure, the road began to fill with other traffic: farm wains shedding streams of loose hay, foot peddlers carrying their wares hung on poles, small troops of local guardsmen marching officiously from one place to another. Many travelers, seeing the golden Tree that hung on Dinivan's black-robed chest and the monkish robes of his companions, bowed their heads or made the Tree-sign across their breasts. Beggars ran alongside the priest's horse, crying: “Father, Father! Aedon's mercy, Father!” If they seemed truly crippled in some way, Dinivan reached into his robes and produced a cintis-piece, which he tossed down to them. Miriamele noticed that few of the beggars, no matter how hobbled or deformed, ever let the coin strike the ground.

They stopped at midday in Teligure itself, a sprawling market town set in the lap of the hills, where they refreshed themselves with fruit and hard bread bought from stalls in the town square. Here, in the crush of commerce, three religious travelers drew little notice.