“It’s the mark of another fear,” Raldnor said, “an older fear. A fear of betraying who I was.”
Tullut looked at him but asked no question. He took Raldnor’s hand in a gesture of friendship.
“Well, you must do as you wish, Ralnar. Yannul too, and Resha will do as he does, no doubt. We have our own way. I hope your luck may change. I doubt it will.”
He went below as had the other Zakorians. They did not come up again.
So she lay, a ship of death, and at dusk three birds came flying over the mast.
“Land near,” Yannul cried. “Perhaps better than the last.”
The moon swam cold into the sky and brought a cold wind. It blew them through the night, and there were big fish leaping silver in the water.
Resha fell asleep at Yannul’s side. At last only Raldnor still watched. He saw the black shape of the land come up out of the ocean like a huge beast.
As the sun rose, the heights of the land were drenched with carmine, while its valleys were black, as if in retention of the night.
He thought of Tullut. “None of us,” he thought, “wait long enough. Whatever god, whatever destiny, is at work must have time.” And in the midst of death, he felt the surge of hope in him, and leaned and woke Yannul out of sleep.
17
Having brought them within sight of land, the wind abandoned them. There were dark forests along the coast, rocky inlets, a backbone of crags. It seemed a turbulent landscape, and untenanted by men.
The heat of the day came down from the sky, up from the ocean.
Raldnor, as he sat alone at the rail, made out a movement in the sea, and thought it was a fish. But the fish swam on the surface, never dipping in the water. Shortly he realized it was a narrow boat, made of some hollowed black tree, similar to the fishing canoes of Zakoris. One figure occupied it—a man, rowing with strong easy motions. As he drew closer, coming quite obviously for the ship, Raldnor saw his sunburned face, empty of surprise or curiosity, a face quite closed in on itself, yet at peace. The man’s hair was very long, lying over his shoulders, chest and back.
In color it was corn yellow.
The pulses kicked in Raldnor’s body. He lifted an arm and hailed the rower. In turn the man raised his hand briefly; he did not call.
The narrow boat came alongside where the ladder trailed in the water. The man climbed up on deck and stood facing Raldnor. They were of an equal height, but the stranger’s body, though muscular, was thin almost to the bone. He wore only a cloth about his middle; the rest of him was tanned, but with that pale clear tan of the white-skinned, which fades with the cold.
“You’re a Lowlander,” Raldnor said, and he laughed, his eyes extraordinarily full of water.
The stranger clearly did not understand his speech, did not attempt to speak himself. He gestured to the boat below and indicated that Raldnor should follow him. Raldnor shook his head, pointed to the tower and called Yannul and the girl.
The man showed no concern. The boat did not seem large enough, but somehow he placed all three of them in it and took up the oars, rowing in the same easy movement as before. Little patches of the blue fire ran before them, almost playfully. The ship fell behind, a ragged skeleton, black on the sky. Ahead, the land drew closer. The boat appeared to be making for an area of thick forest where a rocky promontory stretched out into the sea. There were no signs of life there, but faint blue smokes rose from the tree-covered slopes above.
The man never spoke or moved his lips. His mouth had an indefinable strangeness about it, as if it had never been used to form words. Perhaps he was dumb. A dumb Lowlander, Raldnor mused in surprise.
The canoe was beached. The stranger moved to the first line of trees. There was a clay vessel set in the shade. He gave them water, then led them up into the forest.
It was a house of wood—a tall, wide hall built of mud clay over a frame of staves, with its black knotty pillars and mainstays the great trees themselves. The roof was full of leaves and nesting birds, which shook off their droppings on the floor, and sang in sweet fluting voices, and flew incessantly in and out of the high window spaces. The forest people lived in the wooden house, bathed in the clear streams below, cooked at innumerable fires on the open place above. They ate neither meat nor fish, most of their food being raw: berries and fruit, plants and leaves and milk from their small herd of black goats. They were a yellow-haired race, and light-eyed. None of them spoke. It came to Raldnor at last, as he lay in the shade of the wooden house near sunfall, that they did not speak because they had no need. They, like the Lowlanders, came together in their minds, and being more at peace, more content with their life, saw no need to express themselves in any other way. He felt a sense of angry despair, finding himself again with this key of communication, which should have been his birthright, freshly denied him. He was once more a cripple, a deaf mute among the hearing, speaking ones.
Yannul and the girl Resha seemed more ill at ease than he, though they were all well enough looked after. The silence troubled them, though for different reasons.
An indigo night settled, like the birds, on the wooden house, glinting with white bird-eye stars. Raldnor rose and went out into the cool. Fireflies darted a gold embroidery from thicket to thicket. Below, the soft thunder of the sea.
As he stood there, someone came walking through the trees toward him, light as an animal. He sensed rather than heard her come. For some reason his skin prickled.
At once there was an old woman, near him, in the starlight.
She was dressed, as were all the forest people, only in a cloth tied about her middle; yet, despite her age, there was nothing ugly in her body, though she had neither the smooth skin nor the firm breasts of the young women. Her hair was faded and streaked but still fine, and very long. Her eyes were strange, large and yellow as an owl’s. She seated herself cross-legged on the grass with a suppleness that gave him pause; she indicated that he too should sit, facing her.
She stared in his face. After a moment there came a startling, fearful flicker in his brain. He flinched; sweat broke out on him. It was to be hard this time, though without pain.
“Cease struggling,” a voice said suddenly and quite distinctly in his skull.
He lapsed, shivering, against the bole of a tree, and the voice said: “There is nothing you need fear.”
He did not comprehend how he could understand her, for they did not know the language of the lands he had come from. That much had been plain. He strove for expression. The voice said: “I use no language, only thought. You interpret in your own way, which suits you best.”
It had no gender, this voice. He tried to question it, blindly. An answer came.
“There are many in this land. Not all live as we do. Yet all could speak within, at need. You are of our people, yet you could not speak within. Some of us are more sensitive and more strong—we are the delvers. We seek out pain in the sick mind, and cure it. I am sent to you to cure your pain, so that you may speak as it is your right to do. I see now there have been others. Both women. Lovers. Ice hair and fire hair. To these you could speak; such a thing has its logic. Have no fear of me; I see your grief. Let me see all. I will help you to be yourself.”
But his mind cried out at hers in angry hurt.
“So there is another land,” the voice said, “and dark men who rule it. We have old stories of such a place. Do not fear your half-blood. It is your strength and not your trouble. I see your mother, back down the long corridors of your memory. Look, there is your mother. Do you see her? That is how you saw her as a newborn child. Thin she is, sick from bearing you. But how beautiful. There is strength, true strength, hard as the forest tree. Think what lay behind her, and before. Would you call this woman weak? Do you think she left you nothing of herself? Yes, weep, poor child. Know her, and weep. She is your spirit, and the other half is a King.” Then there was a curious inflection in the voice, a kind of sorrow. “You imagine yourself so little, Raldnor, son of Ashne’e, son of Rehdon, Dragon King. So little.”