The boy's lips moved a little as he committed the words to his memory. "But—why don't you think they're the same if they both make things stick to other things?"
Zorsha chuckled, put the feather away, and rubbed the amber again, briskly. "I'll show you—hold out your finger."
Yuchai did, and Zorsha brought the amber in close enough to the boy's fingertip that a spark leapt from the bead to the outstretched finger. The boy yelped in surprise and jerked his hand back.
"Now, since we don't keep getting stung by sparks all the time, we probably aren't being held to the world by electricity," Zorsha told him, putting the amber and silk away.
Yuchai cocked his head to one side and stared over Zorsha's shoulder, out the window at the mountains. The Hand had noticed that Yuchai always stared at the mountains when he was thinking. His brow was creased—but not in puzzlement. "That . . . spark . . . that was like a tiny piece of lightning," he said after a moment, making it a statement and not a question.
"Very like," Zorsha agreed.
"Is the spark you made the same stuff as lightning—only small?"
"We think so."
"There's always a lot of lightning in the mountains," Yuchai mused. "Could . . . lightning happen because—because clouds rub against the ground, the way you rubbed the silk on the amber?"
Zorsha felt his eyes widening in surprise. I hadn't expected that jump of reasoning! Good for him!
"That's one idea," he agreed. "There are lots of possible explanations, and that's one of them."
"But clouds are only air and water," Yuchai said, turning puzzled eyes on his teacher. "How could they rub against the ground when there's nothing there to rub with?"
"Are you sure that air is nothing?" Zorsha countered.
"Yes!—No." The boy looked back over the mountains. "No, it can't be nothing, not when I've been in winds so strong they knocked me over, and wind is just air moving the way the Wind Lords tell it to. And when the wind blows like that, in a khemaseen or a syechali, it can pick up enough sand to strip the flesh from your bones, which means that it's holding the sand up. So air is something. Is—is air like water, only very, very thin?"
"We don't know," Zorsha admitted. "We used to think that all things were made of four elements—air, water, earth, and fire. Now we know they aren't: we know that what we call 'earth' is made of a great many things. We call those things elements now, because they are 'elementary,' which means they can't be broken down into anything smaller. We think water is made of several elements, but we can't tell what they are. We don't know about fire. Or air. Or light, like from the sun. Those might be what we call 'energies,' or we might be able to break them down into other things some day—or they may be elements."
"There's a lot you don't know," Yuchai observed, with a stare that had mischief lurking at the bottom of it.
Gods above and below—if I should have a son one day, grant me one like this!
"Oh, yes," Zorsha admitted cheerfully, "there's a great deal we don't know. That just makes a great deal for someone to find out. Maybe you. Hm?"
The boy returned his gaze to the clouds moving above the mountains.
"It might be. . . ." he whispered. "It might be me. . . ."
The Khene's tent was very crowded. Of all his advisors, only the Shaman sat beside him to hear what the most senior riders of the Clan had to say about the wizards—and the truce. Jegrai wished with one half of his mind that he had the others with him.
But the more reasoning half of his mind told him that this must be dealt with—and he alone must deal with it. Else the Clan might begin to wonder who was Khene—Jegrai, or Jegrai's advisors.
So he kept his face impassive and listened with patience that was mostly feigned to the arguments and threats of his most argumentative people.
"I tell you, we have them at our mercy!" shouted a stocky, round-faced rider with a strong and authoritative voice, a voice that almost forced one to listen to it. This was the Clan Singer, Yuchai's father, Jegrai's uncle Gortan. "These fools leave their gates open to us by day or night—there are not so many of them that a war party could not steal in under the cover of the darkness and force them to give us the secret of the lightning!"
"Pah! The secret of the lightning!" spat Jegrai's half-brother Iridai, a man so like Gortan that they could have been -brothers, save that Iridai did not have Gortan's power to ensorcel with his voice. "That is only too likely a secret the Wind Lords would curse us for having! If they did not curse us for taking it by force from these wizards! I would remind you all, these folk are too like the Holy Vedani for my comfort. I would be away from them, before we lose ourselves to them! Jegrai, we have the water-pledge, we have the truce—send back the envoys, take back our people, and let us be away from here! Their land-folk are creeping out of hiding, and there can be none who could hold us less than honorable if we moved on to other pickings. The old ways are the best ways—"
"Iridai, my brother," Jegrai said softly, but with veiled menace, "the old ways would have let Yuchai die, or left him a cripple. The old ways would reduce us to thieving swords of steel instead of honorably forging our own. Is that what you want?"
Iridai gaped at him in surprise; Jegrai was quite well aware that his brother had claimed one of the first new swords with the glee of a child claiming a honeycomb.
"And uncle," he continued, turning to face Gortan before he lost his advantage, his menace no longer veiled, "would you have us break water-pledge? Would you have us less in honor than the Talchai, cursed be their name and Clan?"
Gortan shrank visibly.
"You are Clan Singer—would you record treachery such as not even Khene Sen dared in the songs of Vredai?"
"No." Gortan shook his head. "Khene, it maddens me, this waiting at their table for crumbs—and their choice of what we shall have, and what we shall not have. They treat us as children, as fools."
Jegrai chose to keep silence upon that point, for it sometimes galled him as well. And it is well that Gortan does not know this. My friend Teo knows—but can do nothing. He is at the orders of his Khene, Master Felaras. And Master Felaras does things for reasons only she knows.
Shaman Northwind spoke up at this point. "Gortan," he said pleasantly, "if you were to train a child to wield a sword, would you place your brother's sharp new steel blade in his hands?"
The Clan Singer snorted. "Of course not! I would give him a weighted practice blade of wood suited to his age, and . . . ah. I think I see where your words take you, Northwind. You are -saying that these wizards teach us things that are like to a wooden practice blade."
"I am," the old man said, his eyes twinkling. "And it is a very humbling experience for a man of my years to find himself less in knowledge than the youngest novice in their Fortress. But a child must learn to walk ere he can run—and even I, perforce, must learn with the children before I can understand some of their mysteries." He sighed heavily. "Though it chafes at me, I have not the tools of understanding to compass much of what I have seen in their place of stone. I must wait to have those tools before I can understand what they do, and not simply mimic it."
Gortan mumbled something, still plainly unhappy.
But the Shaman continued, and his voice held a power no less persuasive than the Singer's. "We must work with these wizards of the Order, Gortan. There are many, many things they wish to learn of us, as well. You all know that I have spoken with Master Felaras at great length. I think, although I do not know, that she has some distant plan, a plan that involves both our peoples—but as allies, Gortan, as equals. And equality implies that we will have the secret of the lightnings, and certainly have it before the passing of too many seasons. I advise patience; and I shall take care to follow my own advice, hard though it may be."