Читать книгу The Constant Tower - Carole McDonnell - Страница 8

CHAPTER 2

JOURNEYING TOWARD THE TRUCE FESTIVAL

Like all keening rooms, the one in the royal longhouse enclosed the tower’s base. The tower, its door, its internal stone staircase winding upward, the watchtower in its spire—all were Psal’s sanctuary. Except for those days when Nahas, his chief captains—Lebo, Seagen, Cyrt—and his stewards entered it for council meetings. As they did now.

The king leaned his elbows on the oval council table. “This harvest festival comes just in time. All this squabbling about regions. Raids committed by the Peacock Clans, burnt fields, looted longhouses, wounded stewards.”

“A lasting truce with the Peacock Clans is possible.” Gaal stood to the left of the tower door. “We lost much in the past year. Our stewards battle more often than they plant, and when they do plant and sow, the harvest is stolen by Peacock Clans. We stewards fight as well as any true Wheel Clan warrior. But…to defend one’s self all day against enemy longhouses knowing help cannot come until the next morning…it is a hard thing. Tsbosso and the other chiefs use their domestication science to steal our livestock and raid our orchards. And we answer them with words? Nahas, the Peacock Clans do not fear our words.”

Lebo, the oldest of Nahas’ warrior, drew his fingers through his cropped gray hair. “As things are, we’re on the verge of a war. I fear war even more than the neutral clans fear it.”

“There must be something we can give to the Peacock Clans.” Gaal spoke to Nahas but gave Psal a sly wink. “A peace marriage, perhaps?”

“Gaal,” Nahas answered, “do not give the boy foolish hopes. Although Tsbosso is much-honored among the Peacock Clans, one truce marriage would not suffice. The Peacock sub-clans are too numerous, scattered, and cantankerous.”

“The truce with the Voca has held these sixteen years,” Cyrt said. “If we—”

“Truce or not,” Lebo said, “when that vindictive queen presented us with the peace child, the seal of the truce between her clan and ours, I trembled at her coldness. Pale as the snow, she is. And lovely. But the blood in her veins is like the icy floes of the Wintersea. And just as unpredictable.”

“Ezbel’s anger is misplaced,” Cyrt’s adopted brother Seagen, Dannal’s son, said. He winked at the king then tousled Ephan’s hair. “A good man between her legs and she’ll lose her anger.”

“That I cannot say,” Nahas said. “But I doubt Tsbosso wants a good man between his legs.”

That elicited much laughter from all but Gaal. He spoke solemnly as he looked at the tower crystals in their sockets, “How many new discoveries, culled from their own observances, and improved upon the teachings of their old masters, have our studiers made! And yet, we must wait until morning to aid an attacked longhouse!” He stood in front of the primary keening tree, which was called the Lesser Light, and spoke to it. “Lesser Light, you who steer this tower, and you other keening trees as well, can you not share your secret with us? Is it so difficult? Why so silent? Can you not reveal more of yourself to your stewards and your studiers?”

The two keening trees that tracked Wheel Clan towers, the two others that charted towers from other clans, and the two that sent and received messages—all remained resolutely silent.

“Plead with them all you want,” Cyrt said. “These towers are a secretive clan.”

Gaal continued toward the final keening tree—the eighth tree, called by all Odunao clans The Greater Light. Its sockets empty without crystals, it stood behind the Lesser Light in the traditional place assigned it by the Creator. “Greater Light, perhaps you have some secret to tell us.” He turned to Psal. “Is this tree as useless as some say, Firstborn?”

“It is,” Psal said. “I keep it here because it is a concession to the old superstition…and because the towers complain when I remove it.”

But his thoughts were not on towers or even on the skirmishes and raided longhouses. All his heart’s thoughts were on Tsbosso’s beautiful daughter and their meeting at the festival.

* * * *

Psal woke earlier than usual, and in a good mood. His eyes had opened upon the twinkling blue crystal in the socket of the Lesser Light keening branch: the longhouse had fully materialized at the festival region. Ephan wasn’t in the room, probably sorting specimens or grinding pharma. Or perhaps Chief Studier Dannal had foisted some new burden on him. Psal looked at the parchment at his feet. Tracking towers and annotating parchments. And all the while, my beloved Cassia awaits.

He limped to the window, pulled the woolen curtains aside and opened the shutter. Outside lay sandy desert, gathered longhouses, the Great Mesa, and a ruined city. The sooner he finished his duties, the sooner he could wash the stale Emon from his body and race outside to the spontaneous city of longhouses and the ancient edifices on the desert plain and see Cassia.

To those trained to hear them, tower songs sounded like tinkling bells or like rams’ horns or like wind blowing through the reeds, like drums great or small. Unlike the restrained songs of the Wheel Clan towers, Peacock Clan towers sounded of rhythmic drumming—wild and sultry, like Tsbosso’s daughter. So many towers! A delightful cacophony. But among the varied songs of the scattered clans, a song from a dying, possibly uninhabited, tower. Psal could not place it. Perhaps Ephan can.

* * * *

“It certainly sounds night-tossed, doesn’t it?” Ephan’s face reflected Psal’s curiosity. “Sounds like a Waymaker clan tower. It doesn’t sound abandoned though. But we were planning on going to the Mesa.” He glanced at Psal’s leg. “Are you able to make both journeys?”

Psal considered the day’s challenge: to speak with his beloved and embrace her, to translate treaties for his father, to travel to the Mesa, to explore the possibly-abandoned tower, to return and lie in his beloved’s arms until the third moon rose and night forced them to part. It can be done! He picked up a spyglass from a nearby shelf. “I’m not as weak as others think. Or, Nahas would’ve sent me off to a steward longhouse long years ago. We should claim this tower before others do. Our stewards can repair it. And Nahas would be pleased that we found it.”

Just then Netophah appeared at the door wearing a brown tunic and brown leggings.

“So you wear warrior’s clothes now?” Ephan remarked.

Netophah smoothed his tunic and smiled. “I’m too big for yellow.”

Psal turned to his brother. “Why are you here, birthright-stealer?”

“I heard you speaking just now. I wish to wander with you today. May I?”

“Spying on me for Father?”

Netophah’s eyes widened. “Why would I do that?”

Psal glared at Netophah until the shamed boy lowered his head and left the room.