“I hope you have made proper notes,” he said at one point. “I am always having to impress on you young people that being a teknoguilder is not just exploring and digging. It is good careful records.…”
I decided it was simply a waste of energy to be angry with the Teknoguildmaster. Let Rushton rage at him. But I would learn exactly what the teknoguilders were up to, and unless I was satisfied there was no danger, I would exercise my power as interim master and demand the entire guild’s return to Obernewtyn.
An hour later, it was full dark, and we were all seated around a roaring fire, which threw an eerie dancing light against Tor’s weathered rock face. I felt somewhat calmer since Garth had explained that in the Beforetime, many people had dived deep in the great sea out of sheer pleasure at seeing the world beneath the water. It was an ancient science of submerged exploration, and there were many ways in which people had carried air with them. There were tanks, which had somehow compressed air into pod-shaped metal cylinders that were strapped to divers’ backs; there were entire sealed vessels that could be driven beneath the water; and there was also something called a hookah, which allowed air to be pumped from the surface. This was the simplest method and the one used by the Teknoguild. They had constructed a simple pump that could be worked by hand to force air down long, flexible tubes constructed from the same material as the suits.
Of course, it meant the divers could not venture anywhere the tubes could not freely follow. If they were bent or snagged, the air supply was instantly cut off. This had happened, but additional air lines were always sent down with the divers, and in an emergency, several could take turns breathing from the same tube.
The flabby suit I had taken for grotesquely waterlogged flesh had been constructed by the guild to preserve heat and had in fact been formed from melted and remolded plast. Three divers went down in a strictly timed sequence. They wore thick belts into which were sewn heavy lumps of metal or stone. Before pulling themselves back up by a knotted rope, they could remove the belts and place them in a basket with the small glass bulbs of glow insects they took down for light. The basket of weights and glows could then be retrieved separately.
Garth explained that each of the divers had a teknoguilder monitoring their air hose above the water, ready to stop the air three times, by the simple means of pinching the tube closed, if there was a need for the divers to return quickly to the surface.
“Yet you said they stayed down longer than was safe,” Miryum said.
Before Garth could respond, all three of the Teknoguild divers began talking at once of how the world shivered green and mysterious far below and of how it felt to fly down and down to it. There were many incomprehensible machines to be puzzled over in the Beforetime roads. One had seen a skeleton inside a machine, and another had seen what appeared to be a face but had been a monstrously deformed statue. Another talked of savage eels that lurked in the water, and another had been frightened by a strange glowing snake coiling in and out of the wavering purple forest that rose from the streets. I found myself envying them their unique experience, though in truth I had no desire to descend into the cold, silent darkness of that long-dead city.
But even as these thoughts passed through my mind, a vision rose before my eyes of Rushton swimming in darkness. I shook my head. No doubt I was putting things together wrongly. My every instinct told me that Rushton would never make such a dive.
I caught Louis Larkin’s eye, and he came around the fire. “Not often ye gan away from Obernewtyn these days,” he said.
I smiled ruefully. “I wish I could do it more often, but it becomes harder to justify it. Rushton and guildmerge always speak against guildleaders putting themselves in danger.”
Louis shrugged. “It makes sense not to let yer head gan chopped off, if ye can lose a hand instead.”
It was a harsh philosophy, but I made no comment about the ill fortune of being a hand. I had wanted to see Louis for another purpose than to complain about my lot.
“You know the great carved doors that used to be at Obernewtyn’s front entrance?” He nodded. “Do you remember anything about them being installed?”
Louis chuckled. “I remember they were a memorable pair that brought them.”
“Brought?” I could not help a note of excitement entering my voice.
“Well, it was nowt th’ doors they brought,” Louis corrected himself. “Them carved panels that was in th’ midst of th’ doors came in a wagonload of carved work. Th’ idea of havin’ them made up as doors came from th’ master’s bondmate.” He curled his lip in memory of Marisa Seraphim, whom he had feared and disliked. “She turned those yellow eyes on th’ master an’ said she would like two grand front doors fashioned about th’ panels. She said she had some special idea fer the border carvin’, if it could be done. Th’ gypsies said it would take a while, but they was happy to stay an’ do th’ job.”
“Gypsies?” My voice was so sharp that Miryum looked over at us. I lowered my tone. “Are you saying that the people who brought the carvings were gypsies?”
Louis nodded. “Nowt just gypsies. Twentyfamilies gypsies, though I didna truly ken th’ difference back then. I was just a lad, an’ my mind was more on fishin’ an’ catchin’ sight of Guanette birds than on gypsies.”
I thought of Swallow’s elaborately carved gypsy cart and remembered his saying proudly that such work was a specialty in his family. The style of carving had even reminded me of the Obernewtyn doors.
I forced my reeling mind back to Louis, who was watching me expectantly. “Do you remember if these gypsies seemed to offer the panels for sale especially, or did Marisa simply choose them of her own inclination?” I was not sure what I was groping for.
The old man screwed up his eyes as if he might pierce the veil of time and see back to that day. “We didna have many visitors in th’ mountains, an’ any were occasion fer interest. But it’s long ago just th’ same. I recall us young ‘uns was all about crawlin’ over th’ wagon an’ pettin’ th’ horses an’ gawkin’ at th’ carvin’s. There was th’ old man almost like a carvin’ hisself, an’ a sturdy young lad with dark curly hair an’ dark eyes. Th’ old man was kin to th’ boy, I’d guess. His grandfather, mebbe.” His forehead crinkled. “Now I think back, I wonder that an old gaffer like that made such a trip.
In them days, all above th’ Gelfort Range was wild country, an’ th’ road little more than a rutted animal track, yet up they come uninvited, sayin’ they’d heard there might be work fer carpenters an’ carvers. Th’ master was pleased to have them, of course, fer it were hard to get any workers up here. Then Marisa come out an’ … yes. I do remember. Th’ old man sparked up suddenlike, though he’d let th’ lad do most of th’ talkin’ afore that. He said as how they had a couple of special panels as she mun like.” He nodded, confirming his memory. “Yes, th’ old man offered them in particular.”
I could barely take it in, let alone respond in any sensible way to Louis’s obvious curiosity.
Louis interpreted my silence as the desire for more information. “They stayed all winter, carvin’ th’ design th’ mistress wanted round th’ edge of the doors an’ tappin’ tiny sheets of gold into th’ gaps. It was a thing she had seen in one of them books she was always gettin’ sent to her, an’ she worrit an’ worrit at them gypsies till they did it exact as she wanted. They finished all th’ chores th’ master wanted th’ first sevenday, but he was glad they were about workin’ on Marisa’s doors when this or that cropped up, an’ they ended up doin’ a lot of small jobs. They was here fer ages, but they pretty much kept to theyselves. To my mind, th’ oddest thing was that there was just two of them. Gypsies always travel an’ camp in troupes.”
Unless they had been sent to perform a special mission, I thought. “What about the panels? Did they say anything within your hearing about why they offered them to Marisa? Or about who had carved them?”
Louis reflected for a while. “It’s funny ye should ask. At th’ tim
e, I supposed th’ old man had done th’ work. But thinkin’ back, I dinna recall either him nor th’ boy ever sayin’ th’ work was their own. You could see th’ panels were finer work than th’ rest of th’ doors, though. Pity ye burned th’ doors, else ye could see fer yerself. To tell ye th’ truth, I always felt it was a shame to destroy them fer a bit of gold.” He scratched at the fluffy tufts of hair rising from either side of his bald pate until they stuck out comically.
I took another breath but still felt breathless. I watched Miryum bring more wood to the fire, wondering if it was madness to speculate that the panels had been carved by Kasanda. Yet the overguardian said she had possessed futuretelling abilities, and so might she not have foreseen Marisa and her desire to hide her map to the weaponmachines?
But how had gypsies become involved? There was no doubt that they were the perfect messengers because of their wandering ways, but under what circumstances could Kasanda have encountered them? And when?
Then an incredible thought smote me: If the panels had been brought to the mountains with the gypsies at Kasanda’s behest, then how that had come about was less important than why. And there was only one answer to that.
She must have wanted me to see them.
8
“WHAT IS IT?” Louis asked.
“Nothing,” I said, forcing myself to be calm, though I felt like riding to Obernewtyn at once and demanding that Maruman take me on the dreamtrails to see the doors, for I was suddenly certain they contained the first of the clues I had to uncover before returning to Sador to learn the fifth clue from the Temple overguardian. What a terrible irony that I had ordered them burned! Maruman was now my only hope of learning what message Kasanda had left for the Seeker.
“What has you so pale and thrilled?” Garth demanded, coming to join us.
“Gypsies,” Louis said, giving me a sharpish look as if to ask if that was still what we were talking about.
“Ah well, they’re fascinating enough for a study all on their own,” Garth grunted. “I should certainly like to speak with that fellow you met. What was his name? That Twenty-families pretending to be a halfbreed.”
“Swallow,” I said. “He only called himself that when he was disguised as a halfbreed, though. I don’t know his real name, nor much else about him except that he is the son of the leader of the gypsies.”
Garth shook his head. “It is a dangerous game he plays, given that purebloods are supposed to be estranged from halfbreeds.”
“Did you ever find out anything about that Govamen mark the Twentyfamilies wear?” I asked.
“Not much, save that it is called a tattoo. Such marks were mainly decorative in the Beforetime, though occasionally they signified allegiances just as our guild bands do. Possibly the gypsies descend from those who supported Govamen and decided to adopt their mark.”
“But why Guanette birds?”
“Perhaps the Govamen people thought the birds striking. Who can know? But they were at hand, because Govamen was experimenting on them.”
My heart jerked in my chest. “Are you certain of that?”
“I am,” he said. “Jak came upon some mention of the experiments in the plasts. There may be more about it once we get into the records kept in the basement.”
The Teknoguildmaster was staring into the fire now, his eyes full of reflected orange light. “On the next expedition to the lowlands library, I will instruct my people to look specifically for mentions of Govamen and the Reichler Clinic and also of the city under Tor—which seems to have been called Newrome,” he murmured dreamily.
“You mean to mount another expedition to the lowlands?”
He gave me a bland smile. “I thought quite soon, while the weather is fine and people are too busy planting and basking in the warmth to be suspicious of travelers or to spend time gypsy baiting. I will be proposing it at the next guildmerge.”
“Rushton will be back by then, and I can’t see he will gainsay it, though he might have a word to say about this business of diving,” I added tartly.
Garth leaned forward. “Did he say what Brydda wanted?”
I repeated the brief message and my interpretation, with which he concurred.
“I am not sorry that we are out of this brewing confrontation,” Garth said. “War is a terrible waste of time and life. When I think of the Council and this Malik, I fear that people learned nothing from the destruction of the Beforetimers.”
“ ’Twas a lethal lesson that killed all its pupils, so none were left to teach the lesson on,” Louis said.
I shivered as a breeze stole under my hair to the back of my neck, and Garth shrugged massively and said, “War or an accident. Either way, they did it with their weaponmachines.”
“Were there many accidents with weaponmachines?”
“Well, there were accidents and things made to seem so,” Garth said. “Accidents the books say, but you can feel the writers believe they were often deliberate attacks blamed on weaponmachine errors so countries did not have to take responsibility for the killing and destruction they had wrought. We know that the Beforetimers were doing a lot of writing and talking about how such incidents might be monitored and punished.…”
“Computermachines,” I murmured.
Garth’s brows rose. “Yes. There was talk by the World Council of all the computermachines concerned with defense being linked into one great, neutrally located computer with the power and intelligence to evaluate information and retaliate against any country that attacked another, whether the aggressor claimed it was an accident or no. The Sentinel project, it was called, if my memory serves.”
The man in the flying machine had spoken of the Guardian program, but it had to be the same thing.
“What did the Beforetimers fight over?”
“Land mostly, or for coin or power.”
“Not religion? Dameon told me that the Sadorians are descended from Gadfians, and I read that Gadfians wanted to kill anyone who didn’t believe in their Lud.”
Garth’s eyes sparkled with interest. “So the Sadorians hatched out of that fiery egg, did they? Yes, the Gadfians were very violent and ruled by their religious mania—which was also, in a way, a desire for power.”
I told him in more detail what Dameon had said of the connection between the Sadorians and Gadfia, and he wagged his head judiciously. “It fits neatly with what we have been learning. It seems the world was mostly divided into five powers in the Beforetime, and Gadfia was one of them—the largest in terms of land and people, but it was very poor in resources. We believe that our Land was once part of another of the five powers called Uropa. If Dameon is right in saying this land mass links with Gadfia, then we have further proof of that, for we know that Gadfia bordered Uropa—or it did before one of those ‘accidents’ turned the border land between them into an impassable Blackland. Jak says both nations were probably quite glad to have that buffer between them, which makes me wonder if one or the other was responsible for it. Of course, that border area had once been a country, and every single person in it died.…”
And was that country called Turka? I wondered. “Garth, do you have any idea of the location of the very first Reichler Clinic? The site that was destroyed?”
“It was in Uropa, near to a place called Inva, which was the capital of Old Scotia.”
“Was this Scotia mountainous?” I demanded.
Garth nodded. “Very much so. But Hannah did not hail from there. She was not even Uropan. She belonged to another of the five powers, Tipoda—an awkwardish melding of very different islands and cultures on the other side of the world. But Tipoda and Uropa were allies, probably because both their peoples, as well as the peoples of Mericanda, spoke the same language—urolish. They hadn’t always, though. In ancient times, there were hundreds of languages, particularly in Uropa.”
“Strange to think of people living in adjoining lands not being able to understand one another,” I mused.
“Indeed. It is very possible tha
t the different languages led to misunderstandings that, at least in part, ended in the five powers being established and only three main languages being spoken. Other than urolish, Gadfians spoke gadi and Chinon spoke chinanka. But even with only three, trouble invariably erupted regularly on borders where one language group met another, because the language difference was only an obvious mark of vast cultural differences. You might talk to Fian about that; he has some interesting ideas. We do know that Gadfia and Chinon each had as many people as there were in all three urolish-speaking powers put together.”
“How does anyone know how many people were in Chinon if their borders were closed?”
Garth smiled approvingly. “Chinon continued to send diplomats to meet with the other powers, because all of the countries traded with one another. There were people in each of the powers who made it their business to understand the other two languages because of the advantages it would afford them in trade, or for diplomatic reasons.”
“Do you know anything of a Beforetime people called Tibans?”
Garth frowned and sank into his multiple chins for a moment. “I seem to remember some mention of a small mountainous land called Tiba, which was swallowed up by the Chinon Empire. Would that be what you mean? But that was long before the five powers were established.”
He was looking at me so oddly, I felt he would ask me at any moment what book I had got that from, so I cast about for a diversion. “I wonder why the Sadorians speak as we do if they started out speaking gadi.”
“Maybe your Sadorian friends would know. Otherwise, you might talk to Fian. Always assuming that his adventures in Sador and his enthusiasm for the deeps have not erased his previous interest in languages.” His eyes flicked in amusement to the young highlander, who was still enthralled in his guildmates’ talk of diving.
We fell into a companionable silence, lulled by the buzz of their talk and the crack and hiss of the fire. I stared up at the dark mass of Tor and shivered.