“And you can get there by magery . . .” Arranha mused. “So—”
“I took Gird once.” Luap said. “That is the place I meant, the time we quarreled so about moving the mageborn. As far as we could tell, it was a great land empty of all people; I thought it would suit us well. He said no—but you remember the day of his death—”
“And you think that’s what he meant, when he said you had been right, and he had been wrong? You think that was permission to take the mageborn there?” The Rosemage sounded doubtful, and in her voice he could doubt Gird’s meaning himself.
“I think you should come see it. No one knew, but Gird and I; he’s dead, and someone else should know. What I’m thinking now is that it’s a place no one without magery could stumble upon, a place where the mageborn could learn to use their powers safely, without risking harm to others, and without a chance to use them wrongly: there are no peasants to rule. With such training and discipline, our people might be more acceptable to those without magery—at least, there would be no beginners’ errors to be explained away.”
“Ah, that makes sense.” Arranha nodded, his eyes bright. “As weapons-practice is done in the bartons and granges, not in the marketplace or inside a home—this is a place for our young ones to learn properly.” Luap kept quiet, waiting for the Rosemage’s response.
“I’m surprised you didn’t tell us before this,” she said. Luap shrugged.
“Gird preferred that no one else know,” he said. “He thought it was a secret best kept close, lest disaffected mageborn try to use the cave. Now, I think you two should know, but no one else, until you’ve seen the place and considered how it might be used.”
“Tell us about it,” said Arranha. “What sort of great hall? How large? How many could stay there at once?”
“I’d rather you saw it for yourself,” said Luap. He could not possibly describe it all, and besides that, he wanted their reaction; he wanted to see someone like himself arriving.
“How far from here is the cave?” asked the Rosemage.
“A few days’ travel by horse; it’s between Soldin and Graymere. At this season, the ford at Gravelly should be passable, which cuts a day off.”
“It will do my hand no harm to rest from teaching sword-work,” the Rosemage said. “Why not leave tomorrow?”
Luap opened his mouth to protest, and then shrugged. If they were that eager, why not? He had planned to suggest a more elaborate, less obvious journey, with each arriving separately, by a different route, to meet by “coincidence” if anyone found out. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell Marshal Sterin or Cob that I won’t be at the Council.”
Traveling with Arranha and the Rosemage was nothing like traveling alone. Arranha wondered, aloud, about half the things he saw: what was that rock, and why did it break into squarish lumps when another rock the same color didn’t? Why would any bird build a nest that hung swinging from a limb? If the weaving patterns of peasant women had the names of plants and animals, why didn’t they look like that plant or animal? He noticed everything that Luap normally rode by without seeing it: tiny wildflowers, the speckles on river frogs, the relative numbers of red and spotted cattle in fields they passed. He greeted everyone they met on the road, and if Luap had not reminded him that they had a goal, would have stopped to talk of anything that caught his mind.
He’s like a bur, Luap thought. Everything clings to him; he could stop and be stuck anyplace until some stronger attraction yanked him free. By the end of the first day, Luap was exhausted by the relentless intelligence with which Arranha attended to his surroundings.
The Rosemage, on the other hand, seemed to view the country as a military map: this position defensible, that one not. She said little, in contrast to Arranha, but the little she did say had to do with the possibility of brigands up a narrow valley, or the way someone with any knowledge at all could control the trade roads. Luap had not, since the war’s end, felt nervous about trouble on the road, but he found himself eyeing places where travelers were vulnerable. Then Arranha would exclaim over some novelty, and he had to make some comment in response.
The cave, when they reached it on the fourth day, felt welcoming. Luap thought longingly of the silence in that distant hall, and was tempted to vanish there, leaving his companions behind. Instead, he took the horses to the creek, while Arranha and the Rosemage set up their camp inside. It was hot, even standing above cool water; he felt itchy and obscurely distressed. Here, with the water chuckling softly around the horses’ fetlocks, with their gentle sucking, he began to relax. No one pointed out the swirl in midstream where something had come to the surface from below—he noticed it, which he would not have four days before, but in silence.
Arranha’s horse lifted its head, water dripping from its muzzle, and yawned. It shivered its withers, and Luap saw its knees begin to buckle.
“No, you don’t,” he said firmly; the other two lifted their heads to watch as he yanked Arranha’s horse back to dry land. It blew, spraying him in the face. Muttering, he got them all back from the bank and safely into the trees. The Rosemage was coming from the cave when he came in sight of it. She waved and came down to help feed them.
“I’ve never seen a cave like this,” she said, almost eagerly. Sunburn had given her a rich color. “Where I was in Tsaia, the caves were dank little holes under graystone bluffs—big enough for one shepherd and a few sheep in a blizzard, no more. This thing’s big enough for an army.”
“That’s what we had,” said Luap.
“—And that chamber,” she went on. “Arranha says those designs aren’t anything from Old Aare. If Gird didn’t recognize them as his peoples’, what could they be?”
“You’ve been in the chamber?” Anger raged through him; he had expected them to wait. It was his secret, after all.
“We didn’t try to use it,” the Rosemage said. Luap managed not to say anything sarcastic, and she went on. “Although it’s thick with magery in there—I suspect anyone sensitive at all could trigger it.” She put two handfuls of grain in the nosebag of her bay horse and tied it over the halter. “How long do you think we’ll stay?”
“Not above a glass or so, I think. Time enough to see what Gird saw.” Luap finished with the other two horses and led the way back to the cave. Deep inside, where dimness should have faded to blackness, a faint glow showed that Arranha had no qualms about using his magery here. Luap called his own light—if the old priest could be that bold, he wasn’t going to chance falling over any stones.
As he came past the ledge where Gird had stumbled, Arranha said, “It’s very interesting, this pattern.”
“It’s more than interesting,” Luap said.
“Oh yes—I know—but my point is, I doubt if it’s a pattern wrought by humans. It’s not Old Aarean, nor any pattern of the northern branches, and you say Gird did not recognize it . . .”
“By the gods?” Luap felt a cold chill down his back and arms.
“Perhaps. But the Elder Races, particularly the sinyi, use patterns of power. Have you asked any elves about this, Luap?”
“No. Remember, Gird wanted it kept secret.”
“Hmmm.” Arranha’s bright eyes glittered before he blinked and turned away. “Strange—he had scant love for secrets, in most things. ‘Bury a truth, and it rots.’ he told me more than once.”
“Well—I never asked him if I could ask the elves; it never occurred to me. His reasons concerning the mageborn seemed so strong, to him—”
Arranha said, “I daresay it doesn’t matter. You’ve used this pattern three times now; if it were a matter for elves, you would surely have heard from them.”
Another shiver, as if icy water had funneled beneath his shirt; Luap twitched, but said, “Then let us go, and you judge what you see.”