We went around a turn in the trail, and I heard a gasp from behind me. There, behind the guards who brought up the rear, was a rank of black-robed figures, following us. Even as I watched, stumbling along with my head turned over my shoulder, more figures came from the low growth at the side of the trail. They made no effort to move faster, or to attack us, but merely followed. They were large. As tall, almost, as Fasal Grun, though more slender.
We kept moving. After what seemed an appreciable fragment of forever, we came to the moat that separated the tower from the path, a deep rocky defile with straight sides, one we could neither leap across nor climb down into. We needed to do neither. The bridge came down soundlessly, though our wheels rumbled as we crossed it. The black clad figures came after us, most of them, at any rate, and as the last of them crossed, the bridge rose up again, like the shadow of a passing cloud. We came beneath the curtain wall, through the dark throat of the gate, and across a narrow sawdust-filled ditch into which the portcullis fell behind us with only a muffled whump. Whoever these people were, they were quiet about their business.
Now there were torches lit inside the walls, and we gathered uncertainly at the center of the courtyard.
“Have you wounded?” asked one of the black-robed persons. He spoke trade language, and we all understood him.
Izzy replied in the same language, and several of the black-robed ones helped him move the wounded into a long, low building at one side of the courtyard, one evidently used as a dormitory or infirmary, for there were rows of beds arranged along the walls. Next to this room was the stable, where the veebles, the thirteen umminhi and the one horse were taken, and next to that some sheds for wagons.
When all had been neatly disposed, one of the blackrobes went down the line, examining the wounded guards and remarking to Izzy that he could see nothing more that needed doing except for an herb tea which would speed healing. For Sahir, he prescribed poultices and provided a draught against pain.
Izzy started to explain why we had come, but he was hushed immediately.
“Tomorrow,” said the black-robed one. “Tonight, sleep. You are weary, and you are safe here.”
25
Opalears: A Twist of Time
We slept in the same large room as the wounded, rousing at their moans of pain, hearing the recurrent chatter of the umminhi that came clearly through the wooden wall, turning restlessly upon our hard beds, then falling off into sleep again. The trip had been wearying, and all our bodies needed rest. When morning came, things seemed brighter. It was then we learned that the people of St. Weel had no intention of showing us their faces. They remained veiled from head to toe, gloved and booted as well, all in black, like the shadows they had seemed to be. They were all the same size, more or less, quite tall, and variously slender. They spoke trade language when with us, and when away from us—my ears have always been very good—a tongue I had never heard before.
I mentioned this to Izzy. He put himself where he could hear them apart from the others. Later he came to me, shrugging. Though some of the words seemed familiar, he could not tell what they were saying.
“Why do they hide themselves?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “They are known to be a stranger people,” he said. “Some tribe unknown to us, perhaps from the transmontaine. They may prefer to appear mysterious rather than merely foreign. Being a stranger can be dangerous, but being mysterious is a kind of protection. Especially if they live in a fortress and are, seemingly, able to defend themselves. Think of ants. Or bees.” He sighed. “Nassif. I feel a definite…malaise.”
“You’re depressed,” I said. In the harim, we learned to recognize depression. There it was the result of too little to do, too much boredom and sameness, no challenges, no excitement. There one day was like another. The biggest event was the birth of a baby or the death of an aged inhabitant, either long expected. We had few surprises. Here, out in the world, depression came from moving in an unknown world, reacting rather than acting, from being constantly uncertain and alert to danger without being able to set a course that was more sure or less perilous. It came from this transient hesitation, this recurrent tension, this inability to stay focused on anything, including whether one could trust ones fellow travelers. I was not in charge, but I caught myself saying, “I should have done,” or “Perhaps if I had,” so I knew Izzy did it, too. I saw his face, thinking, telling over what he had decided last, wondering if it were right.
“Depressed,” he repeated. “Perhaps.”
“It will pass,” I assured him. “Once we know what we are doing.”
“Are we likely to find out here?” he asked angrily. “I have asked these people. They say wait. I am sick and tired of being told to wait.”
“While you are waiting,” I said, “you might see if you can figure out their language. You are the only one among us who is smart enough to do so, and it could be important.” I thought if he occupied himself with some intellectual puzzle, he wouldn’t have time to fret.
He gave me a long, level look, as though he were going to snap at me, then grinned instead. “Very well, Nassif. I shall find out what I can.”
The rest of us were content to rest, eat, sleep a little extra time, and eat again. It was late in the afternoon before the black-robed ones granted us an audience—us being Izakar, Sahir, and the countess, as persons of consequence, and myself, who was of no consequence. The others had come to accept me in the role Izzy had assigned me, that of recorder.
Our audience began with Izzy’s recounting of what had brought us this far. He did not mention libraries. The countess was asked to explain Fasahd, which she did with a good deal of indignation. Sahir confirmed the reading of the bones, as quoted to him by his father.
Then we began to go astray. The blackrobes were, it seemed to me, unnecessarily interested in the talisman that had been given Sultan Tummyfat.
“He sent it to Soaz,” said Sahir.
Nothing would do but we summon Soaz.
“I never got it,” he said. “I heard from one of the chamber slaves that Great-tooth intercepted it. I accused him. He said Halfnose Nazir had taken it, and he executed him. Then Great-tooth died.” His eyes glittered as he said this, and for the first time I had an inkling how it was that Great-tooth died. I felt a sudden fondness for Soaz.
“Was the talisman ever found?” they asked.
“No,” said Sahir.
“Did it occur to anyone that perhaps Halfnose Nazir had taken it?” they asked.
I screamed a denial. Father would not steal anything.
“We did not say steal,” they said patiently. “We said taken. If the talisman was intended for Soaz but was, instead, waylaid by the regent, could not Halfnose Nazir have taken it with the intent of giving it to Soaz?”
“Why would you think such a thing?” I cried.
“Because the talisman is here,” they said. “We have a detector, and for several days the detector has said it was coming. Now it says it is here. It came with you.”
“How could it be here?” I cried. “My father was executed. My mother died. I was enslaved. How could it be here?”
There, there, they said. Calm down. Did I have nothing with me that had belonged to my father?
I started to deny it, then remembered the few little books, the mantle, the little box. These were things my father had at least handled. I went to get them from our baggage, returning in mere moments.
They took the things from me and felt them. They opened the box and immediately found the secret drawer. The gems spilled out, were collected and restored, while I explained to Sahir that they had been given me to use for his benefit, by his mother. Thus far in the journey, I had not seen reason to mention them, which seemed to annoy him, though I didn’t know why he should be annoyed. We had not suffered in want of anything.
One of the Weelians went on fiddling with the box. After a moment, he said, “Aha,” in a pleased tone and pulled out another little panel, one I had n
ot known was there. Inside was a folded bit of something. Parchment, I thought. It had a seal upon it.
“Unfold it,” the discoverer told me, handing it to me with his gloved hand.
I did so. It was not folded into the likeness of a complicated animal or bird as onchiki fortunes were. It was simply folded around several layers of padding with something inside, then sealed with wax. When I had undone it, there was a device wrapped inside. It looked rather like a key, silvery and longer than it was wide, with both edges complicatedly wavy and oddly shaped holes down its middle.
“Ah,” said the Weelians. “Here it is at last.” There was something in their voices of both elation and dejection, an odd mixture, I thought. As though minds were gratified, though feelings were wounded.
“Here what is at last?” asked Izzy, irritated at them.
“I believe that’s mine,” said Sahir, reaching for it.
“No,” replied one Weelian. “It was given to your father to bring here. It was taken from here thirty years ago, by one who rejected our way of life….”
“Who went mad,” said another.
“Who for whatever reason set out to do a dreadful and deadly thing,” said the first firmly.
“Who?” I asked.
“A broken-hearted one,” said one. “A traitor,” said another. “One who wished you and all your peoples ill,” said a third.
Their voices were very alike, as though they were, perhaps, of one family, but I thought they were all male voices. The first one spoke again. “After this was stolen from us, we sent word to the seers, asking that they search for it. Evidently one of them found it.”
“What’s it a key to?” I asked. “What does it open?”
The hooded heads turned this way and that, as though they shared glances, though I doubted they could do so through all that veiling.
“We have entirely too many secrets,” I cried angrily. “Let us have done with secrets. If we are to accomplish anything, we must know what’s going on!”
“It isn’t that,” said one of the Weelians, sounding rather petulant. “It’s just that we have so much explaining to do, and we aren’t sure where to begin.”
“If it’s about libraries,” I snapped, “at least three of us know about them already.”
Well, consternation and confusion! The Weelians acted as though I had made a naughty at the dinner table. When and where and how, they wanted to know, all at once. At which point Izakar yelled at them all to sit down and we would begin by telling them what some of us already knew.
They did, and we did. Soaz was glued to every word. I know Sahir was furious to have been kept in ignorance, but he was too intelligent to let that prevent his soaking up every bit of information Izzy mentioned. When he and the Weelians heard that the emperor had a library as well, they were all quite astounded, and when Izzy said that in his own library in Palmia there were actually Librarians, we could have felled them all with a breath, so astonished they were.
“The last cycle,” one of the Weelians cried in an agonized voice. “Do you know what ended the last cycle?”
“A plague,” said Izzy. “Some religionists declared a holy war and set loose a plague that killed virtually all the people.”
The questioner took a deep breath. “Was there any mention of our various tribes during that cycle?”
“Oh, yes,” Izzy told them. “Though not under the names we use, of course. Then they were called Frynch, Cherman, Zhapanees, Merican, ah, Stralian, Scandian, Joosh—very intelligent, the Joosh. I’m not sure which ones are which, I mean, among us, though I think the scuinic tribe may have been called Ahrabic.”
“Pictures?” one of them asked. “Are there any pictures?”
Izzy shook his head. “Not in my Library, not in the emperor’s. The Librarians says it’s because of the graven image prohibition.”
Immediately, the Weelians began to argue in their own language, using some trade language words. I heard the word “nuslik,” which means “person.” Several of those present threw up their arms and uttered cross-sounding words. If these were wizards, I thought, they certainly displayed gauche and unwizardly behavior. They were as uncertain as any gaggle of slaves in the harim, discussing how to go about cleaning out the fish pond.
“Hey,” Izzy shouted into their turmoil. “Do you want to talk with us, or shall we go for a walk?”
“Oh, we’ll talk,” said one of them. I noticed for the first time that he had a fine red edge to his hood, and realized that many of the others also had color showing at the edge of their faces. This evidently expressed either their identities or their ranks, for this voice was the one that had done most of the talking up until now.
I said, “Do you have identities, or at least something we can call you? Can we call you Red?”
Laughter, low and somewhat embarrassed.
“By all means,” he said, a catch in his voice. “Call me Red. Brother Red.”
They sat us down. Someone went to fetch tea, which was very hot and aromatic and had something added to it with a very relaxing effect. Everywhere we went, people seemed to spend a lot of time drinking tea. I suppose it gave people something to do when they weren’t sure what else to do or needed time to think. While we sat, and sipped, and shook our heads in amazement, they told us about St. Weel.
“Saint Wheel,” Brother Red said. “Because down below is a thing that resembles a wheel. This part, up top, is fairly new. We—that is, our people—built part of it. The old part is buried in the mountain, deeper than you can imagine. It may have been a laboratory. Do you know that word? Laboratory? A place where experiments and investigations were done? Or it may have been part of a ship that crashed from some other world. There’s much to be said for that opinion, and it happens to be the one I hold. Or it may have been some great wizardly center where a magic was done more marvelous than any today can imagine. Whichever of these it is, or something else entirely, its purpose has to do with the nature of time. Whoever made it or brought it or enchanted it into being is long gone. We do not know who they were.
“Our ancestors came upon this place centuries ago. Because of the mystery, and because it is a well-fortified place, able to be easily defended, some of us stayed here when the others went on, and then later, some of us were sent back, from time to time, to find out more about the place. We established a homeland west of here, called Chamony, but our people have been coming back and forth for a long time, learning what we can.”
“Your tribe?” asked Izzy. “Is it numerous?”
“It is not,” said Brother Red. “I would prefer that you not tell the world that, since it would not help in our preservation, but we are very few. Fewer now than we were generations ago. Because we are so few, we keep ourselves separate to protect us. It is a very lonely life.”
We nodded sympathetically. It would be hard, we agreed, to live all alone, with no other tribes about to lend a hand.
Brother Red heaved a deep breath. “We have known for several generations that our extinction was…probable. Some four decades ago, our researchers told us we had only a thirty percent chance of surviving the next century. Certain very stringent reproductive laws were put in place. The laws were upsetting for all of us, but most of us could…accept them. One of us, however, became obsessed with the probability of our extinction. I think he went a little mad—”
“A little!” blurted one of the others.
“Well, quite mad, then. He wanted to change the past. It was he who took the control to the Wheel, and he went back in time….”
“In time?” Izzy asked indignantly. “Come now.”
They nodded and murmured. Yes, it was ridiculous sounding. Yes, it seemed impossible, but that is what this place allowed. It allowed persons to go back.
Another of the brothers spoke angrily: “We do not call him our brother any longer. We call him Woput.” (In Finialese, Woput means low-life or pond scum, with strong implications of depravity.) “This Woput stole the control and t
he key to the Wheel and he went back. After he had gone, we found the control, but we couldn’t find the key. After he turned the thing on, he somehow got rid of the key….”
“Tied it to a bird’s leg, perhaps,” said someone. “Threw it over the wall into the chasm, where a fish swallowed it….”
Brother Red nodded. “The control relocks itself after use. It takes the key to turn it on. Woput didn’t want us coming after him, and without the key, we couldn’t. We had no idea how to make another key without taking the control apart. We were afraid to take the control apart. What if we couldn’t put it together again?”
“How long ago?” asked the countess.
“Almost thirty years.”
“What did he intend to do?”
It was Brother Red who answered. “We knew exactly what he intended to do, because he left a journal in which he had written all his thoughts, his doubts, his pain. He believed that we…our tribe was almost extinct because your people…your tribes had become so numerous. If you had died out long ago, our people would have survived. So, he went back in time to kill off the other tribes.”
“How? How could he kill off the other tribes? One person?” I blurted.
Brother Red shrugged, his robed shoulders expressing both ignorance and despair. “We don’t know, exactly. In his journal he said he would take ‘direct action,’ and he also said he would destroy the habitat of the lands where your peoples lived, killing the trees, the rivers—”
“You approved of this?” asked the countess.
He shook his head. There was a wave of general negation. “No.” “Never.” “He didn’t tell us.” “He may do more harm than good!” “He was always a hothead.” “No, we didn’t approve.”
Izzy asked. “What did he mean by direct action?”
They shrugged, they shook their heads again. He, their colleague, had spent much time looking through old records. He evidently had found something there that made him believe he could succeed. Would he have gone, otherwise?
The countess said, “And you needed the key so you could go back to the time he got there and what? Stop him?”