Читать книгу The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn - Ardath Mayhar - Страница 7

Chapter Four

Shallah Sits at Her Loom

A curving wing of shadow raced across the Bay of Shar-­Nuhn, dyeing the Purple Waters with dapplings of dark­ness. High in his pigeon loft, Kla-Noh, Seeker After Se­crets, watched with delight as the spectrum of color spread below him. The softly muttering pigeons supplied a quiet music to suit his mood, and he felt his heart lift as he saw, far to the south, a belated bird speeding its way toward his loft.

Swiftly as a cloud it came, and it alighted and entered its nook with a weary air.

“Well, old friend,” said Kla-Noh, “long has it been since you last rested in my aerie. Now what has brought you winging from the south?”

He lifted the bird, feeling its throbbing life hot be­tween his hands as he soothed and fondled it. From its leg he took the small container that bore the message, then he hurried down the steps to his sitting room. To his reading table the old Seeker went at once.

Si-Lun, entering from the terrace, lighted the lamp for his foster father, and the two sat side by side, studying the coded symbols inscribed upon the tiny bit of paper.

“Strange,” said Kla-Noh. “From Lo-Shel, who lives in the mountain fastnesses to the south, has the bird come. Always have I sought word from Lo-Shel, never he from me. Quiet are his ways and his life; strong is his mind, and great his heart. No trouble—and he has known many, living as he does upon the very edge of the lands of men—has ever thwarted his abilities. What can he need of me?”

Slowly he deciphered the message contained in the crabbed symbols. Si-Lun bent closer to see as the words formed, one by one, upon the page beneath the Seeker’s pen. “‘Shallah sits at her loom’,” he read. “Shallah?”

“Wife and heart’s heart to Lo-Shel. Seer and prophet is she, and many other things, yet tender to him and to their children and strong in any adversity.” Kla-Noh thumbed through a worn tablet, seeking for the symbol keys, then wrote again: “‘She does not speak, though the younglings cry at her side. She will not eat. She falls at night across the loom and must be carried to her couch. She looks always at the weave, with horror in her eyes. Come to me, my friend. I have great need’.”

The two Seekers looked each into the other’s eyes. They nodded, slowly, and Si-Lun rose from his chair. “We go by sea or by land?” he asked. “Steep are the an­chorages to the far south, yet few are the roads. How go you when you visit Lo-Shel?”

“We must obtain riding beasts. Send Nu-Veh into Shar­-Nuhn after supplies, for we will be many days upon the road. Go you to the farm yonder after beasts, and I shall send a winged courier to assure Lo-Shel that we come.”

Swiftly could the Seekers move when there was need, and morning saw them upon the road, mounted upon the sturdy beasts that their neighbor had supplied. Late sum­mer lit the fields with gold upon either hand, and they rode with enjoyment in the balmy air, keeping a steady gait yet never forcing their mounts.

Two days they rode before the mountains rose, a dim blue line across the southern horizon. From the warm comfort of their way they could see, glinting in the sun­light, peaks wrapped in never-melting snows.

“There lies the first pass that we must cross,” said Kla-Noh, pointing. “It is well that it is summer, for in winter the passes lie buried beneath terrible masses of snow. Even now it will be a perilous journey which, without the aid of these strong mounts, might well leave our bones upon those heights with those of many other wayfarers.”

But their pace did not slacken, and as day followed day they came upon the ragged hills that were the out­riders of the ranges beyond. As they mounted into the heights, they found a chill growing in the air, and soon they needed the warm clothing that Nu-Veh had packed for them. And still they went up, following roads that were narrow shelves, which twisted their ways up the walls of gorges beside rills of singing water. Great trees overarched their way, bracing green-furred arms across the cold blueness of sky and digging strong toes into the scanty soil between outcroppings of stone.

“Almost,” said Si-Lun, when they had paused to rest the animals, “almost this seems as my birthplace upon the Far Continent. There stand mountains fit to pierce the sky, forests such as these, green waters falling from stone. The sly beasts peering at us from their coverts might be those which I hunted in my youth. This seems a journey into the past.”

“Lo-Shel is to be thanked,” answered Kla-Noh, “for bringing us out into this world of strong stillness. Study and song are well, in their place, yet I would not miss the joy of testing my skill and my will against these uncaring fastnesses.”

Then they went up again, and up, until the clouds closed around their heads and stopped their vision. Yet they moved along the tenuous trails, which now were closed in on either hand by rocky cliffs whose tops were hidden in the drifting mists. They crossed the pass before evening and moved again downward into fir-green val­leys.

For more than a week they journeyed thus, doggedly challenging passes clogged with snow, invisible with cloud, perilous with loosened stones. They grew thin, and their beasts also. Altitude and effort took their toll of en­ergy and flesh. But there came an afternoon when they descended a twisting track upon the side of a great beast of a mountain and saw, across a little valley enclosed on all sides by forested ridges, a column of smoke rising in the still, chill air.

“There,” said Kla-Noh, halting his panting mount, “is the house of Lo-Shel. Soon we will shelter again within walls, for which the gods be thanked.”

The valley through which they rode was narrow, fol­lowing a stream that ran swiftly over a rocky course. Upon either side of the water they could see tilled fields and meadows where kine grazed upon the late-summer grasses. Hands had been busy drawing life from the soil and the plants and the waters. Soon they could see byres for the cattle and tall barns for the winter’s store of hay, which was standing ready for the blade. Yet no human form could they see, though the sun was not over the ridge to the west and some hours of light were left in the day.

The house of Lo-Shel stood at the end of a lane lined with flowering trees, which had dropped their rosy petals into the track. So the two Seekers walked up a way strewn with blossoms, leaving their beasts to graze among the grasses by the roadside. Only the chimney smoke spoke of the presence of living beings, for the win­dows were blank and no welcoming face looked from the panes of the door.

As Kla-Noh’s tap sounded through the rooms, there came a sudden susurrus of voices, hushed exclamations, then the clicking of feet upon stone flags. The heavy door opened, and a small face looked up at them from just over waist height. Round blue eyes grew rounder, and the little maid lifted her skirts and said, with a matronly air, “Come in, good sirs. My father is within, and I shall call him if you will but wait in the sitting room.”

She scurried out of sight down the passage, and the two Seekers smiled as they sat in comfort, awaiting her return. Instead there came a heavier tread, and Lo-Shel himself hurried into the room. His weathered face wore the print of care as he took Kla-Noh’s proffered hands and said, “Little did I think that you could arrive so soon, my friend. Heavy has been the burden of life these past weeks, and only the promise of your help has given me hope for the present or the future. But you are weary and must rest. Li-Tha! No-Ri! Come and show the Seekers to their chamber, that they may wash and refresh them­selves before the evening meal.”

When they had satisfied their host that their comforts had been well attended, Si-Lun and Kla-Noh sat with Lo-Shel privately in his chamber and asked of his trouble.

“This is a strange malady which has stricken my Shal­lah,” he sighed. “You know that she has ever been a seer of the future and the past and has many a time woven at her loom in a trance, to find that her weaving depicts events of the faraway and the near at hand, that which has been and that which is to be. Often has she wept bitterly that the things she has woven must prove to be true, yet she is wise and strong and always has she conquered her grief. Over the past years the trance loomings had waned until she had begun to hope that the burden had been lifted from her. Happy was she as I have seldom seen her, and the house rang with her song and laughter, and the children bloomed in the blessed light of her cheer. Our life was joyful as never before, and all seemed clear as a summer sky.

“The ending of the spring brought a change. Through the early summer she remained in good cheer, yet she seemed to be ever listening to something far away, some­thing that she could not quite hear. At midsummer, suddenly in the night she rose from our couch and went to her loom. Though her eyes were open, yet I could see that she neither heard nor saw that which was before her. She did not change the colors but set at once to weaving, looking with dread at the strange patterns that emerged in the cloth.

“Long did I watch, studying the runes, but none save she can decipher them. I returned to our couch, but did not sleep, and through the long night I could hear the thumping of the loom. I lay in dread, for I had seen that in her eyes which never had been there before. Not until the next night did she fall at the loom, and I carried her to bed and forced milk between her lips. And thus have I done for all the weeks since, though I know not how she walks to the loom of a morning, when she has eaten noth­ing except that which we can coax her to swallow in sleep. She sleeps now, for the hours when she can sit and weave grow fewer each day, and she falls into slumber before the sun sets.”

Kla-Noh leaned forward and laid his hand upon the man’s knee. “Be comforted, old friend. What we can do will be done. Long have I lived amid strange secrets and unearthly matters. Mayhap there will be among my recol­lections one that will work the cure for your beloved Shallah.”

Si-Lun also leaned forward. “Not so wise or so old as Kla-Noh am I, yet I, too, have traveled far and seen much of the ways of other places than this. Surely we may man­age, between us, relief for your helpmate.”

“Let me, then, take you to her, that you may look upon her in sleep. She will not awaken until dawn, whatever the disturbance within her chamber. Perhaps you may see some sign that my anxiety has caused my eyes to miss.

The red light of sunset lay across the couch where Shallah lay, and the color gave her slender face the flush of health. Yet Kla-Noh, touching her forehead and her wrist, felt a chill in her flesh, and the pulsing of blood through her wrist was light and rapid. There were blue shadows about her eyes, and her small frame was worn away to the light bones. The Seeker felt a chill in his own frame as he summed up her state.

He turned to Lo-Shel and said, “In my pack there is a box that contains a powder. We shall add that to her milk and soup. It will strengthen her body, though it will not aid her spirit. Yet we must keep that spirit burning in this frail flesh, if we are to give it help. We shall think long this night, Lo-Shel, on this matter.”

Then the two Seekers went to their chamber and talked long as night drew in. Yet no similar sickness had either seen, in all their varied experiences.

Morning found the house of Lo-Shel a hive of activity as the four sons and three daughters of the family accomplished their forenoon tasks. After breakfast all went into the fields, for the hay was ripe for harvest. Only Lo-Shel remained behind with the Seekers.

“We have propped her in our arms and spooned milk between her lips,” he said to Kla-Noh. “Soon now she will awaken and, if I am not by to wrap her in her house gown and place slippers upon her feet, she will go in her night­robe to the loom and begin to weave. Come with me and watch.”

So Si-Lun and Kla-Noh watched outside the chamber door while Lo-Shel dressed Shallah. Then the door opened and she stepped swiftly, surely, yet blindly down the passageway to the loom chamber, where she sat at once and began weaving.

Pressing treadle, throwing shuttle, swinging batten with hypnotic rhythm, she seemed weaving the cycles of time and of life into the growing web before her. Her eyes were set upon the pattern, her mind far away—or in­ward. No touch reached her consciousness, no word pene­trated her ear. All her being was focused upon the warp, the weft upon the loom. When Si-Lun stepped forward and grasped her hands, preventing their motion, she writhed as if in agony, her eyes still fixed, past his shoul­der, upon the cloth.

The men retreated into the passageway, their faces grave and their hearts filled with foreboding.

“Let us go into the fields,” said Kla-Noh, “and work in the hay with the others, clearing our minds and relieving our hearts with good labor. Too much thought stifles it­self, and to stretch the muscles oftentimes stretches the ability to think.”

Good was the clean air, fragrant the cut hay as they walked in the fields, forking the layers over to dry in the sun. A spatter of insects shot up before their feet with a crackle of wings, and the sweat ran down their arms and their backs, cooling them in the breezes.

In the next field the children were scything the stand­ing grasses, shouting and laughing as they disturbed nest­ing birds and sunning serpents. The air rang with birdsong from the surrounding forest, and the stream added its clear note among the stones of its bed. The lit­tle valley among the mountains seemed brimful with all the good things of living, and the spirits of the Seekers rose, even in the midst of their worry.

“The gods will not spoil this paradise with tragedy,” said Si-Lun, pausing to wipe the sweat from his face upon his sleeve. “They have placed here all that is good and given it to those who know it and prize it and nurture it as best they may. Surely they have also sent us for a purpose and with an answer to the darkness that threatens.”

“The answer will come,” said Kla-Noh, leaning upon his fork and gazing up into the ridges that shone with fir-dark and gold in the morning sunlight. “A sureness grows within me. We bear the answer in our hearts and our hands. It but remains to seek it out. In this place nothing is impossible, nothing insoluble. We were sent, and we are here. For the present, this is enough.”

At midday all returned to the house, where the thump­ing of the loom continued, regular as the pounding of waves upon a shore. The food was sweet in their mouths, and they worked the afternoon away with zest, feeling their muscles rejoicing in their strength and their lungs expanding in the fir-sharp air.

As they went, washed and cleanly clothed, to their sup­per, Si-Lun said quietly to his foster father, “It may be that a solution is knocking at the door of my conscious­ness. In some cranny of my memory there is a stored fact that is now tapping away, seeking to be re-found and brought into the light.”

Kla-Noh squeezed his arm and smiled. “When we have eaten and the younglings are about their evening sports, then we will talk of this.”

Thus, when the children went out into the twilight to play upon the lawns and in the edges of the forest, they sought out Lo-Shel and sat with him in quietude, lending their presence as Si-Lun thought long.

“What, Lo-Shel, is the use to which Shallah puts the cloth that is spun in her trances?” he asked at last.

“It is folded away and put into a chest, which she never opens save to add more,” he answered. “She seems to fear to look upon it, yet she lifts it with caution and tenderly packs it away. I have never touched it, though never has she said me nay. It seems to me such a mystery that I am wary of it.”

Si-Lun nodded. A wrinkle formed between his green eyes. “Has she never ripped out the weave?”

Lo-Shel almost blanched. “Nay, never. Such would seem almost...blasphemy. It is sent of the gods.”

“True,” the Seeker answered. “Yet this sending will end by slaying Shallah, as surely as sunrise. So we must act in unorthodox ways to break it and to bring her back into the world of life. It is in my thought that such has been done before, in another time and place, with another kind of sending altogether. Yet the principle is the same. If we destroy the thing whole, it might rebound against Shal­lah. But if we simply...unmake it, there is a hope that she may return unscathed. Will you give your leave for us to try this?”

“Truly I will,” said Lo-Shel. “I will unweave the cloth with my own hand if such will save my wife from this doom.”

“You must be there, hale and strong, to welcome her back,” said Kla-Noh. “The unweaving is work for Seekers. We have striven with strange things before and may pro­tect ourselves in ways unknown to you.”

The powder added to her food had given Shallah more than usual endurance, and still she sat at the loom. They entered the chamber, and Lo-Shel took his place behind her. Then Si-Lun approached the loom, with Kla-Noh close beside him. And when Shallah sank in sleep before the stilled heckles, the two Seekers began pulling out the weft that she had woven. Tedious work it was, and difficult for their clumsy fingers, yet they persisted, and the patterns began to disappear.

Then Shallah gave a great cry and sought to raise her­self, but Lo-Shel held her in his arms and would not let her go. Thread after thread was loosened. The light grew dim and Kla-Noh brought candles, yet still they worked, ripping from the loom the long belt of cloth woven by Shallah over weeks and months. At first she struggled wildly, but as the patterns melted away she grew quiet. And still they tugged and pulled and cut and ripped.

At last Lo-Shel whispered, “Her eyes—her eyes are be­ginning to see.”

And so it was. The blue eyes that had stared so blindly now began to shift their gaze away from that ill-omened cloth. A puzzled wrinkle crossed her forehead, and Shal­lah looked up at her husband, who held her closely.

Into the night, long and long, the Seekers worked, and before day the weaving was reduced to a great mound of yarn that eddied about their feet and stuck upon their clothing. Then Shallah smiled at them, the smile of a weary child, and drooped in sleep upon Lo-Shel’s shoulder.

Then they went away into their own chambers and closed the doors and slept, while the sun rejoiced the mountains, and the birds and the children greeted the renewal of the day.