Читать книгу The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn - Ardath Mayhar - Страница 5

Chapter Two

The Cat with the Sapphire Eyes

Kla-Noh sat upon his terrace, looking over the silken furrows that ridged the Purple Waters. His heart was leaden beneath his green robe, and his hands fidgeted in his lap. He said nothing, but now and again he breathed a deep sigh, gazing across the curve of the bay toward the Tower of Truth.

Then his companion would nod in sympathy and offer him fruit or wine. For Si-Lun knew what it was that trou­bled the old Seeker After Secrets, and his heart also was full of unrest.

“We must not look back, my friend,” he said at last to Kla-Noh. “The world is full of secrets. To let our hearts yearn over one, no matter how great, is not the course of wise men. We looked into each other’s eyes and turned our backs on the great secret of Shar-Nuhn, and now we must busy our hands with other things.”

The old Seeker turned his eyes upon Si-Lun, as one waking from a dream. “Other things?” he asked. “But I have retired from my profession. No longer do I sniff in the shadows for secrets to peddle in the hidden places. I have no need for more riches than I possess. And small, tawdry secrets no longer tease my palate. The great secret was strong wine, though we only sniffed at it. It has spoiled my taste for the petty and the trivial.”

As he spoke, his servant approached from the house door. Now he folded his hands and bowed his head and said, “My master, there is one who would speak with you.”

Kla-Noh raised his grizzled brows. “Now who would be seeking an old man dreaming by the bayside?”

“One of the Great Ones, it seems to me, Lord,” an­swered the servant. “Her robes are fine, though simple, and her bearing noble.”

“Then I will go in to her,” said the Seeker, and he rose and sought the arm of his friend.

Within the high-ceilinged receiving room waited one who filled it with her aura. The two Seekers looked into her eyes, then bowed low.

The lady rose from her chair and looked upon them with eyes the color of smoke across summer-blue sky. She extended her fan and directed them to rise, and with a dip and a swirl of her wrist indicated chairs, and they all sat.

“Lady,” said Kla-Noh, “you honor my house. What service may this old and useless Seeker perform in your behalf?”

She glanced slantwise at Si-Lun and spoke softly. “It is a secret matter, Wise One. Is this a confidant?”

The old man smiled. “This is Si-Lun, my strong young hands and sturdy legs in my elder days. He is a Seeker himself, and other things, many of them secrets in them­selves.”

Her pointed chin dipped into the cup of her lotus hand as she studied the two. “Some tale I have heard whispered,” she said, “of two who mounted through the Tower of Truth to the very top, but were wise enough to turn their backs upon the Third Secret of Shar-Nuhn. Such wisdom, coupled with an affinity for...secrets...and the ability to ferret out that which is hidden, for these I have need. I have lost the Cat with the Sapphire Eyes, and it must be found before my father returns from his voyaging. You perhaps know my father,” she said to Kla-Noh. “He is the mer­chant lord Tro-Ven.”

The old man’s face seemed to shrink upon its bones. His breath hissed through his teeth as he answered, “Some little dealing have I had with that noble and...talented... lord. But that he had a daughter I had never heard, and secrets are—were—my stock in trade.”

“Your tact, old one, is gentle, for you do not mention that my father is also a powerful warlock. He it was who found the First Secret of Shar-Nuhn, for he had need to still the savage waters for the protection of his fleet. Something he had to do with the Second Secret, and his enemies have known the earth to tremble beneath them. And I am his daughter, whom he has sought to conceal from the eyes of men and even the ears of rumor. Little does he love me, but so long as I have my talisman... which I have lost. Lost! Oh, help me, Seeker, for I am in dire need!”

“Gladly would I, Lady, but I have never been a finder of lost objects,” the old man whispered.

“But this object is a terrible secret also,” she cried. “It is a powerful thing, and its loss must be even more a se­cret than its existence. And if you can find it, I may be able to enrich you beyond your dreams.”

“Not riches do I need,” said the Seeker quietly. “But I will help you in your need, for I am old and need useful work to do until I find my grave.”

The lady bowed her head into her hands for one heartbeat, then lifted her chin and said to the two, “You have my gratitude, do you succeed or fail, for there are few in these days who will succor the needful for that poor coin. And I am, or shall be again, powerful when my talisman is in its place.”

She stood abruptly, and her gray robe moved lightly about her. “I can be away from my place for only a short time. The simulacrum that I left cannot endure for long to deceive my watchers. And it is dangerous for me to at­tempt the deception more than once. Know you my fa­ther’s house?” she asked Kla-Noh, who nodded.

“Upon the seaward side there is a buttressed seawall, rooted in the deeps. The years have riven it and the crea­tures have worn it away into paths for their own uses. One who came from the sea”—and here she looked at them from the depths of purpose—“would find no guard and no watcher, for my father fears nothing from that di­rection. Each evening I walk there, to watch the darkness rise from the east. Then I am unwatched, for none can approach save through my father’s house.”

Kla-Noh coughed. “There are ways of watching that the watched cannot know.”

She smiled grimly. “When the watched are but normal men...or women...it is so. But I am the daughter of my father, and also the daughter of my mother. And my mother, o Seeker, is a secret that even you may find it difficult to winnow from the past. Oh, be sure, I know when I am overseen.”

“Then, by your leave, there will be intruders upon the paths of the creatures,” said the old man, “three evenings hence, lest by chance this day’s deception might have roused suspicions. Walk round about the edges of the ter­race, and we will lie close under the edge, wherever is best concealed and easiest of access for my old limbs.”

The lady nodded slowly. “Often I speak with the empty sea and the sky,” she mused, “and should any see, they would not wonder at it.”

She took her leave, and the two Seekers stood beneath the arbor at the door and watched as she drifted away across the meadow as a wisp of smoke moves on the wind. Before she had gone many paces she was a shadow, and then she was not to be seen.

Kla-Noh lifted his brows. “That is a strange lady, my young friend,” he said. “There are secrets beyond secrets there. For I have heard before of the mysteries of the Lord Tro-Ven, and once I heard a breath of a rumor...the merest wisp of conjecture...concerning a powerful talisman that he brought from afar. Only that fact, and a name. The Cat with the Sapphire Eyes....”

* * * *

The ghost of a new moon hung dimly in the west on the evening of the tryst. Si-Lun made Kla-Noh comfort­able amidships and, under a reefed sail, scudded quietly across the bay, cutting in toward shore beneath the curve of overhanging cliff long before he reached the house of Tro-Ven. The buttressed seawall bulked darkly in the waning light as the craft hove to in its shadow.

The way to the top was soon found, for, as the lady had said, the wall was greatly worn away and was nearly as easy to climb as a flight of steps, though the footing was uncertain. Near the top they found a spot in the lee of a thorny bush that had thrust its toes into the crevices and flung masses of golden bloom down the slope. The lip of the terrace was just above, and they waited in silence for the lady to come.

The Purple Waters grew darker as the light withdrew, but before darkness descended they heard the light tap of heels on stone and knew that their companion had come.

“Who now will answer me from the sea and the sky this night?” came her musing whisper. “Many nights have I cried to the wind without succor, but mayhap this time it will be different.”

“Aye, Lady, it will,” said Si-Lun softly. “We are here, beneath the golden flowers.”

“How fitting.” She laughed. “No man ever brought me flowers, but now flowers bring me two men to champion my cause.”

Kla-Noh sneezed irritably and said, “All very well, but they tickle my nose and drip pollen in my beard. Let us say what is to be said and have done.”

Instantly the lady was contrite. “My apologies, Seeker,” she said. “It ill befits one of your age and wisdom to crouch on a seawall in the night mist to listen to banter. I will begin by telling you my name, which is a secret to all but my father, my mother, and me. This to prove my trust, as well as to aid your endeavor. My mother (of whom I will tell you more) called me Li-Ah, and though my father willed that I be called otherwise, that is my name. In the tongue of my mother’s folk, it means Fruit of Truthfulness, and for this reason it angered my father past endurance. For if you know aught of him you know that truth is not his friend or his companion.

“You must know also that my mother is not of this place. Yet the way to her realm lies not across the Purple Waters, nor yet over the barren lands to the west. My fa­ther found it when he was about his journeyings, those voyages which he makes, not in a vessel of this world but in a powered crystal that bears him through the edges of here and into otherwhere. He found her realm, he saw her, and he desired her, for her beauty is marvelous and her wisdom wonderful.

“Yet not in all things is she wise, for, seeing Tro-Ven and finding him different from all that she knew, she chose to wed him, knowing him not as he was but as he wished to appear. And when he had learned what he could of the arts of her country and taken what he could of the riches of her father, and tired of her love, he chose to depart as he came, leaving her with an empty heart until I came.

“There was I born and there nurtured until I became a woman grown. My mother was my friend and my teacher, my guide and my benefactress, and she taught me all that she knew. Yet always she feared that one day my father might return and claim me as his child, to bear me away into this other world, so different from her own. So she tutored me in mysteries that only those of her own blood may know or practice, hoping that they would be useful to me, wherever I should be. And she placed within a talisman a part of herself to act as a focus for my powers and my arts, at need. And that talisman is the Cat with the Sapphire Eyes. Without it I can do much, but not, I fear, so much as my father. With it I can best him and thwart his purposes, when they mean me harm.”

Kla-Noh had listened in silence, but without surprise. “Somewhat of this I expected to hear,” he said. “But if your father came for you and brought you as his daugh­ter to his home, why should he seek your harm?”

“Well asked, had he brought me as his daughter,” she said. “But he did not. He brought me as his talisman, even as the Cat is mine. He found that many of the arts learned in my mother’s realm were ineffective save when practiced by those of her blood. So he returned, hoping, expecting that a child of his had been born to her, and took me away, over her agony and my tears. But the law is the law, there as here, and a father disposes of his child as he will. So long,” she whispered grimly, “as the child will let him.”

“Ah,” sighed Kla-Noh. “And I’ll warrant that you are not his daughter to his servants, eh? And none outside the house has heard of your existence. So he intends to use you in his secret practices. But, my dear lady, it is in­evitably true that a man obsessed is half blind, and it seems to me that he has never looked at you as the pow­erful person you are. Is it not true that he sees you only as he wishes you to be, an instrument of his will, brought into being by himself for his own purposes?”

“True, Seeker. You are a man learned in the ways of men. Thus it is and has been, and I have said little and done nothing to rouse in him the notion that I may have a will of my own. In small things I have aided him, yet I have watched the way they are trending, and I fear in my soul’s soul that he means harm to my mother and to her people. For her father is now dead, and she rules in that place beyond the wall of time. My father is no king, and his jealousy is bitter. He is not beautiful, nor wise, nor good, nor powerful as she is. So he seeks petty powers in this place, dominion over those too weak to battle him, riches to flaunt before those he despises. And this does not salve his raw jealousy. Vengeance he must have, against one who has done him only good.”

“And when did your talisman vanish?” prompted the old man.

“A month has passed since my father set sail for the Far Islands to attend to his business there. The Cat was within its case of carven wood. Yet four days agone I opened the little doors and set my hand within, and it was not there. None has the key but I, and I believed that my father thought it only a trinket or a keepsake, such as a foolish girl might treasure. So great is the fear of his servants, I doubt that they would steal, even from one whom he keeps prisoner. In all places open to me I have searched, and in despair I have at last sought your aid.”

Kla-Noh rose painfully to his feet and struggled up the incline below her. Staring up into her eyes, he said, “You have given this burden to me. Let me now bear it, and keep yourself free for other things. You have power, even without the talisman. Exercise it then, as a gymnast strengthens his muscles. Your father is not here. Good. That gives you the time and the leisure for work. Despair saps the will and the spirit. Discard it as an unworthy thing. Focus your attention upon your arts and bring them to the fullness of fruition. Then, should I succeed, you will be doubly armed. Should I fail, you will have greater strength than you would have done had you despaired alone.”

She peered through the deepening gloom, seeing only his small shape black against the darkness. “Old man, I will,” she said. “You are wise and clever. Do you seek the Cat; I will seek other things. Together we will thwart Tro-Ven.”

* * * *

For a day and a night Kla-Noh sat upon his terrace, looking across the Purple Waters. Si-Lun waited in si­lence, knowing his companion’s inscrutable methods. Once they sailed across the bay, lighted by one waxing moon, Ralias, and stood off the cliff shore by the house of Tro-Ven. High in the ranks of tall windows blackly watching the bay, one window glowed with a strange and flickering luminescence. Then, though Si-Lun could not see the smile on the face of his friend, he could hear a smile in his voice as he said, “Ah, she is at work. Let us go home, Si-Lun, and begin our own.”

But what he began was not apparent. No mysterious messenger came or went. No stealthy footfall was heard in the night. None who watched the house would have suspected that the old Seeker was frantically busy with his part of the project. Only one who could mark the pi­geon’s flight could have learned of his working. But his dovecote was an old pastime, and none who knew him had ever learned that it was his communication line to the world of secrets.

When a week had passed, the old man summoned Si­-Lun and asked that his craft be made ready for a voyage of several days.

“We will approach rough coastlines and berth in un­peopled coves, so provide for all our wants. No man shall know when we leave or when we return, for when we sail away at moonset another craft shall be moored in the place of this, and our quiet lives will continue, so far as any watcher can discern.”

The younger man’s eyes glowed with excitement, though he spoke softly. “It begins, then?”

“We go to consult an...oracle,” said Kla-Noh. “I sus­pect that I know the answer to my questions, but we must know certainly. There is a spot in the wild, Si-Lun, my friend, which I know of old. I strongly suspect that it is a place where the veil is thin, or there is a hidden door, or a passage exists between this world and that of Li-Ah’s mother. I have before now consulted there with voices from the air and the earth, and their words have always been truthful and wise. Only there may we find the track of the Cat with the Sapphire Eyes.

“For I have made inquiry among the high and the low, the subtle and the crafty, and none among the men of Shar-Nuhn has pilfered that talisman.”

“Then we shall leave at moonset,” said Si-Lun, “for the craft has been provisioned and prepared these two days. Somewhat do I, also, know of the ways of the Seeker.” And he grinned in his hollow-cheeked way.

At moonset their dark sail merged with the dark sky as they slid from the bay into the full current of the Purple Waters.

Within two days they sighted a grim cape, thrusting its shoulder into boiling waves amid tumbled boulders. Standing well off, they rounded its profile and hove to in a steep-sided cove, then waited for darkness.

When the full moon and the waning one were the only light left in the sky, the two Seekers paddled to the shore and found a perilous path that led through young growth upward toward the lip of the circling cliff.

Though Kla-Noh affected the infirmities of age, when pressed by need he moved with the ease of a young man. Long before moonset the two reached the meadows that topped the cliffs and moved along a line of pines toward a distant wood.

“There,” whispered Kla-Noh, “lies the place of the ora­cle. This is my greatest secret, and I have had no son to share it. You are my spirit’s son, and this is my bequest to you, for with this you have the answer to any question unanswerable by other means.”

“This is a great gift,” said Si-Lun softly. “You have taken me, who had no home and no father, and have given me both. It is enough. Yet with this you have given me a life of ease and honor. Be certain I will use it well, Seeker.”

The wood glowed dimly in moonlight as they ap­proached. No night bird sang, no current of air moved the branches. They entered and moved along a faint path that their feet felt, though their eyes could not see. So quietly did they move, and in such an enchanted stillness, that when Kla-Noh paused, his companion felt that he had been waked from a dream. But the old man was busy with the pack Si-Lun carried, feeling among its contents for a bundle of herbs, and a fagot of wood and his heat stone. When his torch was lit at last, a fragrance moved with them along the path and into a circle of stones and giant trees.

At the center of the little amphitheater the Seeker stopped and thrust the torch into a riven pillar that stood there. At once the silence, which had seemed complete, became a thing of agony, pressing into the ears like rods of wax. For a long moment they floated in a bubble of nothingness, then the bubble popped, and they again drew breath. From the air about them came voices, faint yet strong, remote yet so near that they sounded within their skulls.

“We are,” they said. “We have been. We shall be. What need have you, young friend?”

Kla-Noh sank to his knees, and Si-Lun covered his ears, that he might not hear the voices, and staggered from the circle until he stumbled upon his own pack, fell, and lay, waiting for his friend.

* * * *

The warped fragment of one waning moon hung over the Purple Waters. Under the golden-flowered bush waited Kla-Noh and Si-Lun, apprehensively. Long was twilight done, and the lady had not stepped upon the ter­race. For hours they had crouched in their pollened lair, debating whether to go or to risk approaching the house by stealth.

But at last a lagging step was heard, and a voice said hopelessly to the air, “One day is left before my father’s return. Where are my friends? Have I a friend? Or am I doomed to work the destruction of all I love?”

Then Kla-Noh rose up and said, “We are here, Lady. And despair you need not, though the Cat with the Sap­phire Eyes will not be seen again in this world.”

“It is gone, then, irretrievably?” she asked mournfully.

“It has returned to its maker,” said the old man sternly. “Long have I known your mother’s people, though I did not know who they were. Through a way I found long ago I have spoken with your mother herself, though hard and long the task must be to reach the ear of a queen. No man stole away the Cat with the Sapphire Eyes, that I learned soon. Then I thought long. Your father, though subtle and powerful, still could not reach across the sea—­as yet—to remove it from your care. But your mother, if my speculations were not in error, was able to do this thing.

“You are about to ask why. But think. You have taught your only child the old strengths you know. You have loved her and nurtured her, but she will be taken into a strange world by an enemy whom she must fight alone. She is untried in her arts, utterly unused to battle with sorcerers. She will need, above all things, confidence. So you create a talisman. But you are able to see into that world where she is taken, and you find that she is relying upon that talisman to the injury of her powers. You know she has more than she will need of art and of will, if she will only use them, practice with them, strengthen them. So you reach out your thought, and you take back the tal­isman. For such is your confidence in your child that you have no fear of her failure.

“Do you see, child?”

The lady swayed tiredly upon the edge of the terrace. “I see,” she said clearly. “In my unwisdom, I misused it. And in your wisdom, you made me learn to work without it. And tomorrow my father will return to find an enemy within his own stronghold, ready to wrest from him his stolen arts and to thwart his twisted schemes.

“My thanks, friends, for your aid. Without it, much that is good might have perished.” They saw the slim shadows that were her hands, and each took one and touched it to his forehead, and they turned and went into their craft and sailed away.

And when, under a red and raddled moon of the next night, the house of Tro-Ven sank upon its crumbled buttresses and heaved, amid a shower of strange lights, into the sea, they watched from afar, sitting upon their terrace. When the grinding crash had ended, they reached out their hands to each other and clasped them tightly.

“May the gods grant,” said Kla-Noh, “that the lady has found her way home.”