The terror of not knowing the safe path, it haunted me. My life, my future, was at stake. If by some lapse of the gods I should manage to graduate to the center of the temple, I would at least have food and a place to sleep when the years caught me. If the servants should cast me off, though, I might as well be hawking sand in the Madah. It was as though I could see the future, though. My charge Shizumaat would somehow put me between the servants and itself, and I could no longer keep myself clear. All I knew for certain, though, was that my heart would not allow Shizumaat ever again to be beaten.
The days passed, and Shizumaat continued to ask questions and come to conclusions that delighted Varrah and horrified me as well as the rest of my charges. Varrah, though, encouraged Shizumaat to think and question, and soon all of us were thinking and speaking in new ways about new things. Once I told my charge that I believed that someday it would eventually change even the name the servants used to address the God of the Day Light.
"Varrah is the key, Namndas, not I," Shizumaat answered. "Questions, new ideas, different ways of thinking, these come naturally. Varrah allows them to happen by not forbidding them."
It was different, going to the Madah Wall, excited about what we would learn each morning, delighted to be part of Uhe’s Temple, and eager to explore the future. Before the winter rains came, Varrah heard all of our recitations and moved our class off the Madah Wall and within the first row of columns. Varrah kept me as charge of the promoted class, even though I was still a student.
The one lesson that hovered above me, though, waiting for the least-expected moment to inflict itself, was that everything changes. What is up will be down, what is light will be dark, what is happy will be sad, what is good will be found out and destroyed. Before the lesson, though, we investigated, challenged, and learned. As always, Shizumaat was our leader.
Now that our class was in the second rectangle, Varrah told us that we must take what we had learned and apply it to the world outside the temple. "Learn what is, challenge it, and seek to improve or replace with something better."
Some of the students were sent to the Denvedah to learn war. Some of the students were sent to the farms to learn growing. Some of the students were sent to the artisans, markets, and moneylenders to learn the ways of making, buying, and selling. Shizumaat and I were sent to the last of the nomads to learn the ways of the hunt.
I complained to Shizumaat that we had drawn the assignment with the least opportunity. After all, the days of the nomads were over. The world was growing crops and livestock, and trading in markets for things manufactured by the artisans. Nomads created nothing, learned nothing, and made no knowledge upon which greater knowledge could be built. That was, I concluded, what kept the old tribes the same for thousands of years until Uhe shattered the world’s ways of doing things.
Shizumaat said to me, "Namndas, every person, place, and thing can teach us, if we have the wit to learn." And with that, we went to Shizumaat’s aged parent. Caduah was pleased that Varrah had advanced Shizumaat with its class, and that the servant had such a high opinion of its child. We bid Caduah good-bye and struck out for the land of the Kuvedah where the last of the nomadic tribes still followed the darghat.
When we climbed the step trail up the southern wall of the Great Cut ten days later, we stood upon the northernmost edge of the great plain of the Kudah. It was as flat as a griddle stone, thick with waist-high grasses, and dotted at great intervals by massive menosa trees. Shizumaat and I aimed our steps toward the south, stopping nights beneath the protection of the trees.
In the dark, while I prepared a meal for us, Shizumaat would go out to study Aakva’s children spread out above us on the blanket of night. On one such night, Shizumaat came back to the camp, took a brand from the fire, and said to me, "Namndas, I am going to walk toward the north with this flame. When the light from this brand seems the same size as the lights from Aakva’s children, lift two brands above your head and wave them. Call my name, too."
"What are you trying to see?" I asked.
My fellow student only smiled and said, "Let me see it, first, then I will tell you what I saw."
Shizumaat left, holding the burning stick above its head, and began walking toward the north. I studied the light, and did not let its flame leave my sight for more than an eyeblink. After one of those eyeblinks, though, I could not again pick out the flame from Aakva’s Children low on the horizon. I lifted the brands, waved them, and called out Shizumaat’s name. When it returned to the fire it brought with it a most fantastic, fascinating, and blasphemous idea.
"Think of this, Namndas. If Aakva is a great fire circling our universe, and if Aakva’s Children are still more fires but at great distances, is it not possible that they circle other universes? And those other universes, might they not contain their own living beings?" Shizumaat looked up at the night sky. "For these answers I would suffer much. To meet those beings, see them, touch their thoughts, I would exchange my life."
I looked up and studied Aakva’s Children, and thought that the Sindie would lose much if Shizumaat’s idea was true. If it was true, then the child that was placed in the night sky by Aakva for me was neither placed in the sky by Aakva nor was it for me. I looked back at Shizumaat, and asked, "How will you argue this before the servants? What will you use for proof?"
"Short of growing the wings that can take me before Aakva and its Children, I do not know. I will keep myself open to an idea."
After nineteen day’s walking south, we met a Kuvedah hunting party. Its servant, Gatu, gave us directions to the tribal camp and the tent of Buna, the tribe’s chief of servants. Gatu said that the chief of the tribe, Kangar, Master of Masters, was near its death, and that Buna ruled in Kangar’s stead.
When we reached the camp, we saw the skin tents crowding both banks of a stream in a grove of menosa trees. We were directed to Buna’s tent, offered our respects, and were welcomed inside.
Buna was very old and wore skins instead of cloth. Its skins were hooded over its head as though it could not keep warm. The chief of servants listened as we related Varrah’s charge to us. "A very wise one, your teacher," said Buna. "The knowledge one acquires with the hands carries greater truths than the kind one acquires by exploring the inside of one’s own head."
We were shown where to put up our shelter, and when that was done, it was evening and we gathered with the others in the camp to watch the return of the hunters. Buna stood with us and in a low voice told us the significance of what we were seeing. "The tall hunter with the scar down its left arm, it is Haruda, the leader of the hunt and the greatest hunter of the Kuvedah."
"Haruda carries no game," Shizumaat observed.
Buna nodded. "That is because Haruda is the one who got the kills. It is for those who killed nothing to carry in Haruda’s kills."
"Buna, why is Haruda’s success at the hunt so much greater than the others this day?"
"It is the same all days, Shizumaat. Haruda is a great hunter."
"What does Haruda do differently?" I asked.
Buna held back the edge of its hood with one hand and peered at me. "Friend Namndas, it is a god-gift to Haruda."
"But," I insisted, "what does Haruda do?"
The old chief of servants grinned and said, "This is why you two are here, yes?" Upon that, Buna retired to a treegrove to meditate and give thanks to Aakva for the success of Haruda’s hunt.
I felt Shizumaat pull on my skins as it said, "Come, Namndas. Let us answer your question." Shizumaat and I followed Haruda and watched as the hunter barked orders at the less successful hunters and supervised the distribution of the game to the cookers and smokers. When Haruda was finished, it sat before its hut and began to clean its weapons and examine their stone points in case they needed dressing. Haruda looked up at the pair of us and said, "There are questions in your eyes, strangers."