“Oh?” At the moment Luap didn’t care.
“But we’ll have to go back, and then come back here, and do it again at night. On a clear night in both places.”
“What?” The Rosemage looked as confused as Luap felt.
“I think we may be very far west of Fin Panir,” Arranha said. He looked about, then headed for a sandy area near the stream. “Come here; I’ll show you.” Luap followed him; Arranha squatted and began drawing in the sand with a stick. “Here—this is the world.” It looked like a circle to Luap, but he knew better than to argue. “If the sun rises here—sunrising—in Prealith on the eastern coast, it’s overhead there before it’s overhead here, in Fin Panir.” He pointed to a spot near the center of the circle. “Now—if it’s overhead in Fin Panir, where is it on the sunsetting edge of the world—here?” He pointed to the circle’s rim.
Luap said, “Well . . . if it comes first to Prealith, and then to Fin Panir, then the other side of the circle will be . . . later. But are you sure about that?”
Arranha nodded. “You can see the sun move across the sky. It must be going from one place to another. Just as you walking past the High Lord’s Hall, let’s say, are first opposite one corner and then the next. Morning must be earlier as you travel sunrising, and later as you travel sunsetting. That’s clear, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t clear at all to Luap. “And you got this from what you were doing up there?” He jerked his chin at the narrow cleft from which they’d come. Arranha nodded again.
“I was noticing how quickly the sun moved across that narrow space. When we came out, the sunlight came in the opening and lay full on the rocks above. Even as you and the Rosemage were coming down here, it moved far enough to put that in shadow. It occurred to me that if you had both large and small sandglasses, you could measure how long it took for the sun to cross that space, and thus how fast it moved . . . and from that discover how far apart any two places were. Far apart in the sunwise direction, that is.” From his expression, he expected that to make sense to Luap. Luap glanced at the Rosemage; she was scowling in an effort to understand. Arranha sighed and tried again. “If you are walking, you know how far apart places are by how long it takes you to get there, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, but—” But some roads were harder than others. Uphill took longer, hilly roads took longer. “—does the sun move more slowly in the morning?”
“No.” Arranha frowned. “At least—I don’t think so. I don’t know if anyone’s ever measured it with a sandglass. Perhaps the sun, as Esea’s sigil, moves uphill as fast as down. That would be something to do, measure its progress before and after noon. I was assuming its speed stayed the same. If it does stay the same, then it travels across a certain space of the earth in each measure of time.”
Clearly Arranha was going to keep explaining until Luap said he understood. He saw no chance of understanding, but he could, perhaps, save himself further confusion. “I see,” he said.
Arranha smiled at him. “I knew you could follow that.” The Rosemage stirred, as if she had a question, and Arranha turned to her. Luap shot her a glance over Arranha’s head, and she made some quiet comment about the tameness of the wildlife.
“I think,” Luap said, “that they see few people, if any.” He was thinking to himself that there must, however, be something which fed upon the deer. Wolves? Bears? Would these attack humans in daylight, or should they return to the stronghold? He wanted to explore, but not foolishly.
“I’m going across,” the Rosemage said. “I’ve never seen trees like those.” Luap started to tell her to be careful, but didn’t. She was older than he; she didn’t need a keeper. She went slightly upstream, to a narrow place where she could jump from boulder to boulder and make her way across the stream and up a bluff of earth to the trees. Definitely pines, Luap thought, but so much larger than any pines in Fintha . . . and yet they looked small against the cliffs.
“I’ve seen similar trees in the Westmounts,” Arranha said. “But there they grew in solid forests along the mountain slopes.” As they watched, a bright blue bird flew from one of the trees, screeching, and into another. A smaller bright red and yellow bird flitted from bush to bush on the near side of the stream. A loud thud caught Luap’s attention; he looked and saw that one of the browsing deer was stamping a forehoof. On the third stamp, the group bounded away upstream, leaping over the rocks as if they were floating. He looked around for the source of the danger, and saw nothing—but the Rosemage, working her way upstream through the trees. Arranha said, “There’s plenty of wood in those trees . . . enough for fuel and building both, if we’re careful. Some of them would have to come down anyway, to make fields. And that one in the entrance . . .”
“And there’s more forest on top, if we can find a way to that upper level.” He had no idea if the internal passages went that far. “We should be careful; these trees may take a long time to grow. But perhaps some are nut trees or have wild fruit, as these bushes do.” He had lost sight of the Rosemage, and felt an urge to follow her upstream on his own side of the stream.
“I’ll stay here,” Arranha said, still peering at his designs in the sand. “I would like to find this out for myself.”
Luap moved along the near bank of the creek, noticing how clear the water ran. He dipped his hand in. Cold, too, and sweet to the taste. The red rocks of the creekbed seemed to sparkle; when he looked closely he saw tiny flecks of gold. His heart pounded. It couldn’t be real gold . . . but perhaps it was an omen. Certainly that might explain the almost magical shimmer of the cliffs in the sunlight, those myriad flecks of glittering gold. A frog popped up from the water to perch on a rock . . . the frog’s skin, too, seemed dusted with gold. And the fish, hardly a hand long, that held its place in the current with its tail just waving, had speckles on its side of rose and gold.
It had not seemed hot, when they first came into this valley, but now Luap could feel the sun’s heat reflecting from the cliff to his left. He noticed when it eased, and looked left to see another narrow cleft leading away in the direction of the one outside the stronghold. Should he explore it? No—it would take too long. He kept on his way, watching from time to time to see if he could see the Rosemage among the trees. He caught one glimpse of her, but she was still ahead of him, upstream. The sun baked him; he thought he knew now why the trees stayed on the other side. He was glad when the stream twisted, and he moved into the shade of its opposite bank for a few minutes. Here he found delicate flowering plants hanging half in the water, their starry blossoms stirred by the current. Ferns, too, clung here, and a low herb holding juicy berries just above the earth. A great rock hung out over the water on the other side, with a pine angling up from it.
“There’s a very big fish in that pool,” the Rosemage said. Luap looked up, and saw her lying stomach-down on the rock, peering at the water. “It’s deeper than it looks.” Luap squinted and found an angle where the reflections didn’t obscure his gaze. What had seemed a pool perhaps knee-deep showed itself much deeper.
“How big a fish?” he asked, thinking of dinner. She held her hands apart to show him. Big enough for all of them, if he could catch it.
But he could not stop for that, and they could not stay past sunset—that much he was sure of. He scrambled past a fall of rocks and found that he was now on the same level as the Rosemage, some distance away. He could just see Arranha’s white hair glowing in the sunlight downstream. The sun had moved too fast, he thought; he dared not go much farther. Echoing his thought came the Rosemage’s call. “We should go back. . . .” From the tone she was no more eager than he. With a last look around, he spotted yet another cleft leading to the north, winterwards. From above, he remembered, he had seen narrow ridges of rock standing on end, finlike. Did each have its cleft, and could each cleft conceal another stronghold, or part of the same one? He tried to estimate how thick the fins were . . . thicker than the city walls of Fin Panir, thicker than half the city, he suspected. His skin prickled, imagining those walls hollowed out for dwellings, imagining the rock full of his people, his mageborn survivors, all secure in their stone castles. But the sun’s angle warned him. He jumped down from that boulder and made his way as quickly as he could back down the stream.