Liar's Oath

  “Up those stairs,” Luap said, “is a land unlike any I’ve seen. Bare red stone, deep canyons with trees and rivers—” He had not actually seen the rivers, but where there were trees, rivers must be also. “Not good land for farming, Gird said, but I think it would support a small number.”

  “Mmm.” Arranha looked at the stairs. “Shall we go up, then?”

  “Certainly.” Luap led the way, wondering again why the light that filled the hall and passages below did not extend to this. Because it was an entrance? As before, the sound of their boots on the steps echoed off the floor below, and as before they came to a darkness close above their heads. But this time Luap called his light before it was too dim to see, and pointed out to Arranha the whorls and interlacements Gird had noted. He himself, this time, put his thumb in the groove and traced the interlocked spirals in and out, and Arranha prayed.

  When the ceiling close above them vanished, Luap half-expected the snowy blast of his first visit. But even here—wherever here was—spring had come, and warm sunlight spilled down the stair. Only a light breeze stirred his hair as he climbed the last few steps and came out to the view he remembered so clearly.

  It was still there. He had been afraid, in some corner of his mind, that it was less majestic than he remembered, but in the clear cool sunlight that land lost none of its grandeur. The vast blocks of red stone, the endless vista of stone and sky. He could see farther than before, but still had no idea where the place lay, or how deep the canyons were.

  Arranha and the Rosemage reacted as he had hoped. “It’s… like nothing I’ve seen anywhere,” Arranha said. “Certainly it’s not anywhere near Fintha, nor down the Honnorgat valley as far as I’ve traveled, nor like anything I heard of Aarenis or Old Aare.”

  “It’s so—big,” the Rosemage said. Luap glanced at her. Few things ever seemed to daunt her, but this did. “Even the sky seems bigger. And how do you get down from this, or up into those trees?”

  Where Gird and Luap, in the cold and snow, had seen what might be the bristling thatch of a forest above another level of stone, now the forest showed clearly. It seemed to stand on the topmost level of the stone, far above their heads or across great crevices on other blocks, as if Luap’s imagined city of castles were roofed with trees and not slate.

  “We didn’t stay long enough to find out,” Luap told the Rose-mage. “It was snowing when we got into the open, and though the snow ceased, it had been blown away by a bitter wind. We were glad to get out of it.”

  “And you never came again, to explore?” Arranha asked. He had put back the hood of his cloak, and turned his face up to the brilliant sunlight. With his eyes closed, and his arms held out, he looked to Luap a little like a bird drying itself after rain.

  “I had no time,” Luap said, “and no reason. I suggested to Gird that he allow me to bring the mageborn here, when all that trouble started. But you know what he thought of that.”

  “Mmm. Yes.” Arranha opened his eyes, as bright and penetrating as hawks’ eyes. They seemed to have absorbed the brilliant light and now it poured from them. Luap blinked. It must be something to do with being the Sunlord’s priest. Arranha stared in all directions, as if looking for something in particular. “I don’t feel anything dire,” he said finally. “I see no sign that anyone inhabits this land. Do you?”

  Luap shook his head. “It felt empty to me from the first. That’s why I thought it would bother no one if we came here.”

  “Lady?” asked Arranha of the Rosemage. “What can you sense about this land?”

  “Its size,” she said, her voice still muted by the land’s effect on her. “It is so large, so empty… it does not care about us at all, did you realize? Everywhere in Fintha or Tsaia, there’s a sense— I think the elves call it taig—that the land is almost aware, that it cares what we do. I’ve heard the farmers say a field is generous, faithful, or that another field is bitter and hard-hearted. When I had sheep, I felt that way myself at times, held in the land’s palm. Nothing so grand as Alyanya’s notice, but perhaps some of her power running over into the land itself. But here— ” she shook her head. “If this is even in Alyanya’s realm, it would be hard to think so. This land has no interest in us, in our welfare; it is neither generous nor mean. It has its own affairs, and what they are I cannot imagine.”

  “Does it frighten you?” asked Luap.

  “No. Not as a threat would. But that indifference feels strange; I did not know how I had depended on our land’s sensitivity until I felt nothing like it here.”

  “I felt it as cleanliness,” Arranha said. “As if this were newmade land, its stone washed clean by light and water on the first day, untouched by history. And yet it feels old, at the same time. I wonder if it is just untouched by our history— we have no little stories about this rock or that, about who chased a stray cow into which canyon—and so we feel it has no history. Surely it must.” His face sobered. “And surely we should know that history, however strange it is, before we lay our own upon it. As there are metals that must not touch, for they cause corrosion in each other, so there may be histories that must not be laid one upon another.” He looked from one to the other; Luap wanted to argue that expression, but could not. Then Arranha sighed and shook his head. “No—I feel no menace here; the Rosemage is right. But it is in the nature of Esea’s priests to seek knowledge and more knowledge, the god’s light upon ignorance. We expect trouble to come from ignorance more than malice—our weakness, as Gird showed, but nonetheless trouble can come from ignorance. Here is a land— a great land, as the Rosemage has said—about which we know nothing, not even how to find our way to water. So I have qualms, which will probably be foolish in the end.”

  “I hope so,” said Luap soberly. “I feel nothing but promise here, a promise of peace and—with enough hard work—security. If you have definite warnings—”

  “No,” said Arranha. “Nothing definite, and not really a warning. Just the awareness that what you don’t know can kill you.”

  “We’ll learn,” said Luap, feeling confidence rebound in him. “And the first thing, I suppose, is to map the inside of this place, and find another outlet. Surely there is one.” He gestured. “Shall we go back inside?”

  Down the stair, under the arch, into the great hall. With their footsteps behind him, he could feel it a procession, almost a homecoming. He led them past the dais, into the corridors behind. To his surprise, he remembered clearly which turnings he had made, both on his own and with Gird. Both Arranha and the Rosemage were more uneasy than he felt; his courage rose as he perceived himself the boldest of the party. He chose a downward-trending ramp at one turning, and found himself in an unfamiliar passage.

  “Listen!” The Rosemage held up one hand. They all held their breath. A distinct musical plink repeated at irregular intervals. “Water,” she said finally. They followed the sound along the passage to an opening in one wall; it gaped a few handspans wide and high, dark within, unlike the regular doorways they had seen so far. Luap put his hand through, made his magelight, then looked. A chamber as large as the common dining hall in Fin Panir held clear water… he could not tell how deep, but he could see the stone below it clearly. Its surface lay within reach of his hand. Above, the chamber rose higher than the passage ceiling, marked here and there with the dark stain of dripping water. From a line around the chamber, Luap saw that the water rarely if ever rose as high as the opening in the wall. He stretched his hand down and touched the surface: ice-cold. He sniffed it: pure, with no hint of salt or sulphur.

  “We need not fear thirst,” Luap said. He stepped back; Arranha and the Rosemage both leaned in to look, kindling their own light. “Now if we can find a lower entrance—” He was sure a lower entrance existed. It must be there. Farther down, they found a great room that could only be a kitchen, with hearths and ovens cut into the stone. Here was a draft of cool air, sweet and fresh, from the chimney shaft. Another passage, that seemed darker, less full of that sourcele
ss light. Luap headed for it. The spiralling stair had been darker… did all the outside ways begin where the light failed?

  The passage ended in a blank wall; Luap was not surprised. Nor was he surprised when his own light revealed the same incised patterns on the passage wall to one side. He traced them carefully as before, and as before the wall melted away, letting in a fresh breeze, pine-smelling. The opening let in abundant light; Luap thought two horsemen could ride through it abreast. They looked out onto a narrow terrace supporting great pine trees, and heard the cheerful gurgling of water among rocks below. One tree, larger in girth than Luap could span, stood square athwart the opening… clearly it had grown there since someone last used the passage. Luap edged past it, and came out into the sunlight. Some small animal let out a squeak and fled upslope, a flurry of gray fur, hardly seen. High above a hawk squealed; Luap could not see through the pines where it flew.

  “With running water so near, why store water inside?” asked the Rosemage, coming out into the sun. “There’s enough in there for three rivulets this size.” She had moved to the lip of the terrace, and was looking down into the minute creek, which made far more noise than its size suggested. Then, before Luap could answer, she had moved lightly downslope and skipped across, a matter of hopping on two rocks and grabbing the drooping branch of a bush on the far side. She climbed out of Luap’s sight; he followed her, out from under the pines, and then realized how narrow the place was. The Rosemage stood atop a cottage-size boulder at the foot of a rock wall that matched the one they’d come out of. He looked up… and up. Those soaring red walls, so near and high that he could not see the flat shoulder of the mountain, or its higher forested crown, delighted him even from below. Nothing had ever looked so impregnable, so defensible. Once inside, no imaginable army could possibly harm him or his people.

  Chapter Twelve

  Once they came out of the passage, Luap began to wonder if he would ever get his companions back inside. Arranha clambered up and down the narrow cleft in which they had come out, observing the angle of the sun and attempting (as near as Luap could understand it) to determine from that where they were. The Rosemage followed the water up to its source, a crack beneath a wall of stone, and then down to its joining with the larger stream Luap had been able to see from above, a stream that ran almost sunrising and sunsetting. She came panting back with her hands full of red berries, having seen, she said, two deer, fish in the stream, frogs and strange shapes of rock she wanted Luap to look at.

  Luap followed her down the streambed. It felt like returning to childhood, when one could explore a new corner of the garden, or a stretch of meadow or woods. Surely he should be more careful, he thought, nearly turning his ankle on a loose stone, but he could not imagine how, in this unknown land, he should know what hazards to watch for. The walls on either side ended as suddenly as the walls of a building; he found himself looking across a wider space, with a noisy stream racing down to his right, to the facing wall. Low bushes, some laden with berries, tufts of a coarse tall grass, and—on this side of the narrow valley—no trees. The trees— more pines and others he did not know—filled the space between the stream and the foot of the opposite cliff.

  The Rosemage touched his shoulder. “The deer… there.” He followed her pointing finger and saw four of them, tails twitching nervously, ears wide. Then three of them returned to browsing. They seemed larger and grayer than the deer of Fintha, but he was not sure… everything seemed larger here. He gazed down the valley. On either side, high walls of red rock shut out any distant view. The valley seemed to widen somewhat at its lower end. He saw more trees there, many that were not pines. Up the valley, it narrowed, the walls closing in; it seemed to be cut off by another wall of rock. He tried to remember what he could see from above, but he could not make sense of it.

  What he did understand was the sheer size of it. From above, the larger valley had seemed a narrow slot, hardly wide enough to walk in, but he thought an archer would just be able to shoot across it. Hard to tell, with the steep slopes of broken rock below the cliffs, but if it were level… it would be large enough to farm. He tried to convert its irregular slope and shape to something approximating the teams and selions by which traditional fields were measured. At least they would have plenty of stone for building, if the day came they wanted to live outside the—he wondered what to call it, that vast hall understone. Castle? No… more a fortress, a stronghold. Stronghold: he liked that.

  He imagined stone-walled cottages nestled against the walls, fields terraced and leveled, green with young grain, fruit trees trained against the foot of the cliffs. In his mind, laughing children played in the noisy stream, scampered along the narrow paths between plots of grain and garden vegetables, climbed the great rocks. He saw the harvest festival, with everyone gathered in the great hall, and a feast prepared in that huge kitchen; he could smell the food even now. He imagined caravans coming and going from Fin Panir, bringing news of the Girdish lands, bringing those who wanted to study Gird’s life, taking back the freshly copied scrolls, the memory of great beauty.

  “Luap!” That was Arranha, who had now made his own way down into the larger valley. “I think I know something of where we are.”

  “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 measur
e 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…”