He had started out to kill a dragon, and had ended up striving to climb a mountain others could not even see, to a doorway they had yet to imagine. And yet, to him his goal had become more concrete and infinitely more worthy and solid as it became progressively more invisible and inconceivable to others. Yet it was the same goal - only now, sitting here, he seemed for the moment to see it clearly, while in the beginning, like all the rest, he had seen only that false facade within the real universe that was a tiny part of it.
Now, all the universe had become his classroom: and everyone and everything in it, subjects of his study.
The first isolated sparks of sunlight were beginning to find crevices in the top line of the mountains. He reached out to the limits of his imagination, now, then stretched on beyond the veil at the end of known limits, reaching through it metaphorically with both hands, into the Creative Universe he could not yet wholly enter and with his hands hidden from him he molded the place he now sat into the place of its own future.
About him, in his mind, the ledge changed. The few heavy blocks of stone that had so far been hewn from the mountains and polished, multiplied and fitted themselves together to make the finished structure for which they were destined. The House of the Chantry Guild, constructed of the warm, green-threaded marble of the mountain that contained it, was lifted up, roofed itself, and sent walls and pathways forward to enclose that space of the ledge not covered. The little stream ran now between narrow borders of native grasses and flowers to the pool, which had become enclosed by a rim of stone terrace. On that rim he sat, now in the far future. Behind him, he heard the timeless chanting of those in the circle. He sat, young and waiting for a sunrise, centuries ahead in time.
The surface of the pool now showed white flowers upheld on the surface of the waters by flat green leaves. Variform lilies, stirred only occasionally when their stems, reaching down underwater, were brushed by the passing of one of the fish among those living in the pool, raised there, then as now, to be part of the food for the Guild members. Then, as now, the sun had just joined together its sparks of light into one line of illumination marking the chain of the mountaintops.
He sat, in lotus position, waiting for the sunrise as he did every morning. Behind him the walker adults chanted and turned, and the brightening day drew his attention to the clouds of the sky reflected in the pool beside him, and to a Hower on its surface, almost within arm's length.
There was a particular spark of light from one white petal. Procyon had climbed high enough to strike a diamond glitter off a dewdrop on the blossom of a flower. There was something powerfully memorable about that, but he could not divine what it was. He looked away once more, back out to the crest of mountains itself, and watched the actual breaking through of the sun, its upper edge reaching at last over the barrier of the mountains to look directly onto the ledge, at the Chantry Guild and at him. Then with one crescendoing upsurge of light it burst fully and directly into his eyes and made him blind to all about him.
He blinked and looked away. His eyes met the eyes of Old Man. They exchanged a smile, and got to their feet, parting as they went their separate ways into the daytime activities of the ledge.
Hal turned his mind from the sunrise just past, and back to the present practical requirements of life. He had now been here seven weeks, nearly double the time Amanda had asked if he intended to stay. In itself this should be no great time. but in his mind he could see the image of Tam, fighting off death, hour by hour, waiting, and he felt the urgency like a hand pressing always on his back.
He was to begin a walk in the circle again early this afternoon, but first, this morning, he was scheduled to go with a foraging party to collect edible wild fruits and vegetables growing in the forest below. The foraging group was to consist of six people and meet at Amid's reception building. He turned in that direction, accordingly, and the sight of it, together with the thought of the land below, brought back to his thoughts the matter of Cee. Ever since Amanda had first suggested it, Artur had let one of the female Chantry Guild members, a roundfaced, brown-haired, cheerful young woman named Onete, go down to sit in the forest. But not seemed his niece - at least not being able to feel her presence there, and have direct personal evidence of the fact she was alive and well - had been painful to Artur.
The pain had been evident, but he had borne it with a quietness and patience that made no lessening of his usual activities in the Guild. It wits behavior which had reminded Hal of something he had almost forgotten. The Exotics, for all their original apparent softness and tendency to surround themselves with what many thought of as luxuries, had proved to have the inner strength Hal had seen in them, that was even now making at it hard for the Occupation to kill them off. It was a strength they had its roots in the constancy of their individual philosophies, regardless of how each one might and did interpret it, that was as characteristic of them, as unflinching faith was of the best of those on the Friendly worlds, and courage was of the Dorsai.
He remembered with a sudden pang of sadness and loss, even after all these years, Walter the InTeacher, who had been the Exotic among his tutors. as Malachi Nasuno had been the Dorsai and Obadiah Testator the Friendly - until Bleys' thugs had gunned the three of them down, that one warm, late summer afternoon in the mountains of Earth, years ago. Walter, who had ordinarily seemed the most persuadable of the three old men who had brought Hal up, had been in fact the most unyielding, once his mind was made up. So it was with the best of his fellow Exotics under the heel of the Occupation.
Remembering this, Hal found he had reached Amid's reception building and that he was in advance of his fellow foragers. There was no one else waiting outside. The thought of Cee returned to his mind, and, since he was here, he knocked at the door of the building, "Come in - come in, anyone"' called Amid from within. Hal pushed open the door and went in, closing it softly behind him.
Amid was seated on one side of the fireplace, in which small fire, probably built against the chill of the early hours, was now burning from unheeded to it few glowing coals. His chair had been pulled around to face two other chairs. in which sat Artur and Onete.
"Ah, it's you.'' Said Amid. "I'd almost have bet it'd be you. Hal. Come, join us. Sit down. I was going to call you in on this, anyway."
"Am I that predictable?" asked Hal, entering and taking chair which he also pulled around, so that they sat in a round circle, he and the three others. "You sit out there to watch the sun come up every morning," said Amid. "As soon as the sun's up. you go to whatever duty you've got. That duty's foraging below, today. So you were bound to come here, weren't you'?"
"But not necessarily to knock at your door," said Hal. "You're ahead of time - watching the sun come up makes you that way." said Amid. "What are you going to do, stand around alone out there? Or am I so unapproachable? You know I like talking to you."
Hal smiled. "When you've lot of time to spare," he answered. "But of course, I'd forgotten. You sit here all day doing nothing, just hoping for someone to stop and talk to you," he said. "As a matter of fact, I was going to ask about how things are progressing with Cee and you've got the sources of information right with you. "It's Cee we're concerned about," said Artur. "What's gone wrong?" "Nothing, as far as my trying to win her trust is concerned," said Onete. "But while I was down there, yesterday, Elian, one of the people from Porphyry - came looking for me. I've got in the habit of sitting in the same place down there every day, and the local people have come to know I'm there. He wanted to pass on the word that there was some interest, none of the townspeople knew why, about the Guild among the soldiers in the garrison. " "You see," said Artur to Hal, "we thought they'd given up looking for us long ago. No one knows the location of this ledge but the Guild members, Amanda and yourself. Even the local people below only know that we live out there, somewhere, and even they've no idea how many of us there are or anything else pertinent about us. The garrison soldiery hunted for the better part of a year for us, after they first moved in here. But we stayed up on the ledge, except in emergencies, and they finally gave up looking - for good, I thought. Our guess was they'd assumed we'd left the district, if not this part of Kultis, completely, and scattered." "But not, according to Elian," said Onete. ''the soldiers arc talking, about some sort of new hunt of the area here for us."