Chapter Two
They moved from the wallway to a network of flyover footbridges that not only joined various roofs but provided Aedmurun with an almost fanciful skyline. However, Druadaen did not miss that those graceful arches also provided excellent vantage points upon the neatly cobbled streets below.
The journey ended when they crossed a drawbridge to the fortified roof of a stately columned building. Its imposing stairs led down to a vast square, bordered by a broad expanse of trees and green sweetgrass on the other side. Water jetted upward from a wide fountain at the nexus of radial walkways that cut the greenery into tidy, well-manicured sections. Druadaen watched the spray fall back into the smooth marble basin with a sound like raindrops becoming musical notes, and he wondered: Is that mancery or not?
His father’s voice pulled him out of the trance. “She’s coming!” He pointed down toward the base of the stairs.
The entourage that Druadaen had seen debarking at the dock was already arrayed to ascend the steps. Seen more closely, the wild diversity of the Lady’s guard was even more pronounced. The silks and loose cotton tunics common in the southern lands known as Mihal’j were comfortably draped upon the limbs and necks of many of those attending her. An equal number, obviously from the regions of Nyrthule, were at pains to be quit of the fur capes and trims typical of their homelands.
The individuals wearing the sheath armor were indeed Iavarain. He had only seen two of that race before and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the men from the women; they were equally lithe and sure in their movements, like dancers who were also athletes. This pair was no different. They stood apart from the others, conversing only with a large, powerful man whose square-cut white hair ended in a jet-black fringe, wherever it hung free.
It was he who held up a hand that stilled the restless movement and mutters among the entourage.
The Lady emerged from their ranks and began ascending the steps without any fanfare or ceremony. If she had arrived in a carriage or a palanquin, Druadaen could not see it. Even amongst the equality-minded Dunarrans, it was odd that she had not been provided with some kind of conveyance, if for no other reason than to show respect.
But she looked neither road-worn nor insulted. Instead, she smiled freely as she mounted the stairs: an expression without any of the careful reserve that Druadaen had often observed upon the faces of persons of high stature. But ironically, it was her relaxed gait and unhurried acknowledgement of well-wishers on either side of the stairs that made her seem so profoundly out of place.
It was wonderfully refreshing, in one way: people of her station rarely took the time to acknowledge individual greetings. But it was not solely a product of aloofness; rather, it was a convention born of simple necessity. If a noble guest responded to but a fraction of such expressions of respect and honor, the event itself would never end. Even at the far less formal affairs back in Connæar, the endless courtesies and receiving lines made Druadaen long to be back home, mucking out the livestock pens. Though, come to think of it, there were some points in common between those two experiences.
Once the Lady reached the top of the stairs, she took a moment to rearrange her flowing raiment and passed into the building directly beneath Druadaen. “Where is she going?” he asked.
Shaananca both looked and sounded relieved. “To a formal greeting by Dunarra’s leaders.”
“I thought the empire’s leaders were in Tlulanxu.”
Varcaxtan smiled. “The Consentium’s leaders meet there,” he corrected gently, “but they have traveled here for the Conferral of Dignities.” Seeing Druadaen’s perplexity, he added, “It’s similar to the way that rulers who visit another land are shown special honors when they arrive.”
“How is this, uh…this Conferral different?”
Indryllis crouched down next to him. “The Lady isn’t royalty. She isn’t even noble. But she’s very important. There’s no one else in the world, like her, really.”
Druadaen swallowed. “It sounds as though she must be very old. But she looks young.”
Shaananca nodded. “And so she is. She is still relatively new.”
“New to what?”
“To her station. Come, Druadaen; if we are to meet the Lady, we must do so before the pretors and councilors get ahold of her!”
* * *
Druadaen was not fond of being a child; most adults did not listen to, let alone heed, anything nine-year-olds said. But on this occasion, their lack of attention was an unexpected boon. They were so focused on situating themselves where the Lady was likely to pass that he went totally unnoticed. Even his parents and their friends did little more than ensure that he didn’t become separated from them in the crowd.
At first, that is. As their attention waned, he lagged further and further behind until, with a sideways step, he was able to slip away and observe what interested him the most: the Lady.
In some ways, her behaviors were very like those of the Dunarrans. She did not use nor expect proud-sounding titles and seemed to possess a great deal of knowledge about, and familiarity with, even the most unusual of their devices. But on the other hand, her guards were routinely frustrated by her incautious movements, and she often appeared uncertain when commencing one of the ritual introductory exchanges with nobles from different lands.
As Druadaen watched her complete yet another intricate set of diplomatic courtesies, a sizeable crowd passed by, blocking his view. When it cleared, the Lady was gone. He craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of her but to no avail. He rose up on his toes to get a better look…
“I’m right here,” said an amused voice behind him.
Druadaen turned and found himself staring up at the Lady herself. He swallowed, made his best bow. “My Lady,” he said.
She laughed easily. “One of my guards thought you might be a sly assassin disguised as a boy”—Druadaen tried not to let his shoulders or face fall in dejection—“but the only danger I perceive is that you might kill me with courtesy. So, since you are clearly not an almost full-grown assassin”—he stood straighter at that—“to what do I owe the intensity of your attention?”
Druadaen strove after the kind of answer that stuffy adults would have called “seemly.” But no such words came to him, so instead, the truth jumped out of his mouth: “I’m curious, my lady.”
Her smile became quizzical. “Curious? About what?”
“Why, about you!”
She laughed. It was a silver sound. “There’s very little to tell. I have come from Far Amitryea, at the invitation of the Propretoriate of the Dunarran Consentium, to be formally recognized.”
“As what?”
The voice that answered came from behind him. “As the locator of lost children, evidently.” Shaananca drew alongside him. “In addition to her other roles.” She sounded cheery, but when adults used that tone, it often meant they intended to scold a child in private. But instead, she glanced sideways at him and winked so quickly that he wondered if he’d imagined it.
The Lady laughed again. “Actually, Senior Archivist Shaananca, I didn’t find this young fellow so much as he found me.” She looked over Druadaen’s head, smiling at whoever had come up behind him. “Which, I gather, is what the rest of you were trying to do. He simply succeeded first.”
“He is quite resourceful,” his father’s voice said with hints of both irony and pride. He rested his hands gently on Druadaen’s shoulders.
His mother stepped forward. “We are his parents, Mressenë and Tarthenex.”
“Of Dunarra?” she asked.
“We dwell in Connæar,” his father answered.
That spawned a quick exchange of glances, the kind that went back and forth between adults who were uncertain of what to say next, if anything. It was Shaananca who broke the silence as Varcaxtan and Indryllis arrived to either side of her. “They have a long history with the Consentium and would be welcome within our borders. But the current arrangement in Connæar was deemed more suitable.”
The Lady’s frown deepened, and she nodded. “I see.” Her tone said that she did not but understood that it would be awkward for her to inquire further. She straightened and brightened. “And will you be attending the Conferral of Dignities?” she asked Druadaen.
“Yes, I hope so!” He looked at his father and mother. “I mean, if we are permitted.”
The Lady laughed again. “You are not merely permitted but invited. And I would be sad not to see you among those who attend.”
Shaananca reached out and put not merely a gentle, but almost uncertain, hand upon his head, as if she were touching an animal that might prove to be snappish. “And I’m sure that he will be quite pleased to sample the refreshments laid out in your honor.”
The Lady bowed and they responded in kind. “I shall look forward to seeing you there. And learning more about you and your family, young master…?”
“Druadaen!” he supplied proudly.
She nodded, smiled, and walked on. Her retinue quickly formed a palisade of armored and ready shoulders around her.
“So,” asked Shaananca as the formation withdrew, “how did you like the Lady? Is she what you expected?”
Druadaen shook his head. “I did not expect anything. But I like her. I think.”
“You ‘think’?” exclaimed his mother.
Druadaen looked after the Lady’s retreating retinue. “She spoke very kind words to me, and I believe her smile shows what is in her heart. And yet, having met her, she seems more a mystery than before.”
Shaananca patted his head once. “Perceptive, indeed,” she said. “Come. If you are to have any food, we must not be stuck at the rear of the hall during the ceremony. And then we must make a quick exit; there is much to see in this city, and you haven’t much time to see it.”
“But we’ll be here for days!”
“Trust me,” Shaananca said, smiling down at him, “they will pass all too quickly.”
* * *
Shaananca had been right. The days in Aedmurun passed all too quickly, and nothing reinforced that feeling so much as the utter dullness of their return to the Connæaran countryside. Having seen all the sights on the barge to Dunarra, the barge trip back offered no surprises or novelties.
On their first day back at the farm, Druadaen awoke to the normal round of chores. Nothing had changed…except that now, merely being there at all felt…well, it felt peculiar. Having seen his parents so lively and engaged—youthful!—in Aedmurun, he now had to wonder why they were on a Connæaran farm at all. As ever, they struggled for mere adequacy in the many requisite skills that came naturally to their neighbors. And although they were diligent, they did not evince the same intense concern over the state of the weather, the crops, or the thousand other factors that were portents of plenty or privations, come harvesttime.
All told, the first day was a wearying reminder of just how exhausting and repetitious the work was. After supper, none of them had the energy to immediately set about cleaning up, but instead, sat half-collapsed around the table. Druadaen, slumped down in his chair, surprised himself by saying, “I wish we lived in the city.”
His parents exchanged glances.
“Couldn’t we move there?” Druadaen asked. “You don’t seem to like the farm, or at least the farming. And there’s so much to do there. And so much to see. And so much to learn.”
His father folded his hands and nodded slowly. “Maybe we shall do that, one day. We will certainly talk about it.” He smiled. “It doesn’t seem like you have any interest in becoming a farmer.”
Druadaen cocked an eyebrow as his father often did, only realizing the mimicry after doing so. “No, I don’t want to be a farmer. But Father, Mother, you don’t seem to want to be farmers, either. Even for a small family, we don’t raise many crops or keep many animals.” Druadaen paused, but his parents had no reply. Instead, they were watching him with strange looks on their faces: part surprise, part resignation, and maybe some pride. Undeterred, he continued. “It’s the coin you earn at the walltower that keeps us alive, isn’t it?” More silence. “But what do you do there, that the Dunarrans would pay you so much for only a few days every other moonphase?”
HIs mother sat slightly straighter. “Your father and I are—we work with books. With ideas.”
Since leaving Aedmurun, Druadaen had imagined them on brief but urgent riverine adventures or on secret missions with Varcaxtan and Indryllis. Something exciting, at any rate. But…books? He frowned. “So, you are archivists then?” It was a term that he’d heard often during their few days in Dunarra. In neighboring lands, even here in the countryside of Connæar, the closest equivalent was “scribe”—but that just meant someone who made their living by writing and, sometimes, reading. But in Dunarra, where literacy was almost universal, the term archivist took on a meaning closer to “scholar” or even “researcher.”
His father answered slowly. “Our work is often similar to that.”
Druadaen didn’t miss the measured, even careful, nature of his father’s response. Something else to find out about—but later. “Then why are we living on a farm at all? Why don’t we live near the walltower that you go to? Or near the sea? I would much rather live as you did: a mariner traveling the world! Like you and Varcaxtan.” Druadaen looked at his mother. “And, maybe, like you and Indryllis.”
His parents exchanged glances again. There was a hint of surprise, but only a hint.
Druadaen shook his head. “I just don’t understand why we’re all up here, instead of down there near them. And all the interesting things in Aedmurun.” He looked up. “I think you’d be happier there. I know I would be.”
His mother had come up behind him; she put her hands on his shoulders. “I can see that we have a lot to talk about. I also see that the sun will be touching the horizon in an hour.”
Druadaen frowned. “But we will talk about…all of this?”
As his mother sat down next to him, his father nodded. “We promise.” After a long silent second, he smiled and picked up a just-washed pumpkin that was sitting at the center of the table, drying. “But before you’re ready to go to the city and learn everything there, there are still some lessons you can learn here.”
Druadaen couldn’t keep a dubious tone out of his voice: “Lessons about…pumpkins?”
His father’s smile broadened. “No, about the world.” He rose and took down one of the two lanterns framing the hearth, lit it, and slid the bullseye cover down over the glass. The broad wash of light was suddenly choked down into an intense beam.
Druadaen glanced out the window. “We won’t need a light for at least an hour, Papa.”
“True.”
“Then why have you lit the lantern?”
“To illuminate the truth of the world,” his father answered, his smile a little more serious.
“By shining it on the pumpkin?” Druadaen asked.
“By shining it on the pumpkin,” his father affirmed. Mischief wrinkled his smile.
Druadaen wondered if maybe, despite his strength, his father had worked a little too hard during this first day back on the farm. But if he saw Druadaen’s dubious stare, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he put the pumpkin in his son’s hands and brought the lantern close so that the beam from the bull’s-eye aperture brightened one side of the pumpkin. “Imagine that this light is the sun and that the pumpkin is our world.”
“So the world is round!” Druadaen exclaimed triumphantly.
“Why, yes,” his father answered, startled. “Of course it is. Who told you otherwise?”
Druadaen’s mother grumbled from over his shoulder. “Let me guess: Heyna.”
“Well,” Druadaen admitted, “actually, it was Heyna’s mother. I’m not sure Heyna believed her, either.”
His father shrugged. “So as I was saying, imagine this lantern is the sun. The pumpkin is our world. And if we are right here”—he put his finger on a slight dimple in the side of the pumpkin facing the light—“then how is it that the sun comes up to the east of us and goes down in the west?”
Druadaen would never say so, but for a moment, his father’s question seemed, well, like nonsense. Why would one even need to know such things? “Well,” Druadaen started, “at dawn, this point of the pumpkin”—he poked his finger into the dimple—“has to begin in darkness. So you need to move the light to the other side of the, er, world.” His father moved left. As he did, the beam moved similarly. The line of shadow advanced from the right side of the orange sphere until the dimple was fully in darkness.
“And now?” his father asked.
“Now, move to the right.”
His father nodded and complied. The circle of light on the pumpkin crept back to the right until its rim touched the dimple. “There,” Druadaen said, “that is dawn.” He nodded for his father to resume moving.
The beam inched further to the right until the dimple was in the center of the illuminated half of the pumpkin. “Now it is noon.” His father nodded, smiling, and kept walking until the left edge of the light passed the dimple, plunging it into darkness. “And now, nightfall.” Druadaen smiled. “That wasn’t so hard.”
His father cocked his head. “No, it wasn’t,” he agreed. “But tell me, what about the stars? Do all of them move the way the sun does, but at night? Is that why we see them track across the heavens?”
Druadaen frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” his father said with a shrug, “Do the stars all circle around us, too?”
Druadaen felt the frown return, deeper this time. It was tempting to say “yes,” but something about that didn’t make sense. Particularly not since Arrdanc’s three moons (which some said were other planets) did not obey the orderly pattern of the sun and the stars. Although it was clear that they, too, followed in some strange dance around Arrdanc, they did so in a pattern—a “moonphase”—that repeated every fourteen nights.
So, if they did not revolve evenly around Arrdanc, then how could it be the center of all things? And if not, then why presume it was at the center of anything?
However, the hieronoms and sacrists of every temple insisted that their world was the locus of the universe, and it was unwise—and thus, uncommon—to question those who were in direct communication with the gods. Still, every time Druadaen listened to temple consecrants explain how creation was arranged so that Arrdanc was always at its center, there came a point where he could no longer follow the logic. But the older he grew, the more he began wondering if their explanations weren’t, well, just a little too complicated. More than once he had thought that there had to be a simpler answer, something that didn’t involve so many exceptions and special details and rules in order to work.
He looked at the bull’s-eye lantern in his father’s hand. Then at the pumpkin. And then at the dimple which was still in darkness. Restless, he changed position…and the pattern of light shifted upon it.
Druadaen stopped seeing the lantern or the pumpkin…because the shape of the whole universe changed in the course of his one surprised blink. It was a sensation at once disorienting, wonderful, and arresting. It was like the time he’d seen drawings in a book that tricked the eye into believing it saw something other than what was actually there.
Maybe the universe did the same thing.
Druadaen rotated the pumpkin so that the dimple was once again just beyond the edge of the circle of light. Then he started turning it slowly in his lap.
This time, the bright circle itself did not move, but as the pumpkin turned, the edge of the light advanced, revealing the new surface that rotated toward it, just as the part rotating away was swallowed by darkness. And as that slow process continued, the dimple smoothly went through the same three points it had when the light, not the pumpkin, had been moving: dawn, midday, night.
Druadaen sat looking at the round orange world in his hands. “That’s how it works.” He seemed to hear himself say it from a great distance. “That’s how all of it works. That’s why the stars turn.” He frowned, looked up. “But the moons don’t do that.”
His mother and father were smiling quietly. She nodded. “You’re right, ’Daen. The moons move in a very different pattern. There are many people who argue over how that can be and what it means.”
His father sat and leaned closer. “But in Tlulanxu, you just might find the answer. If the question interests you enough.”
Druadaen nodded. “It does.”
And at that moment, he realized that his mother and father never meant to be on the farm forever. Which explained why they hadn’t been determined to excel at the tasks and management of it, the way they excelled at everything else. The farm was a temporary home while they pursued some other purpose—whatever that might be.
“So, we were going to leave anyway,” Druadaen said. He had initially intended it as a question; by the time it came out of his mouth, it was a statement. “But then why come here at all?”
His parents nodded.
“Another good question,” his mother said softly. “And another day coming in which we may answer it.”
His father smiled and gently tousled his hair. His mother hugged him from behind. And then he had the most unexpected realization of all: I will be sorry to leave this place, this house where we have been together for as long as I can remember.
His mother hugged him more tightly. “Time to clean up. And then to bed, my darling son.”
* * *
Druadaen woke with the sun full in his face. Which meant he’d overslept. Except…
His bed did not face east.
He raised his hand to shield his eyes, discovered he was more weary than when he’d gone to sleep, smelled sweat—
“Druadaen,” a gentle voice murmured. A woman’s voice. But not his mother’s.
He sat bolt upright, looked around quickly.
A vast chamber of white stone, with windows that ran from the floor to the sharply peaked ceiling. The intense yellow sunbeams shooting through them were so bright and sharp-edged that they looked solid. Muted sounds of movement and speech echoed up into the groined vaulting high above him, returned down as indistinct murmurs. And standing nearby, looking down with smiles more mournful than any expression of grief he had ever seen, were Indryllis and Varcaxtan.
Druadaen knew why they were here, even before he could choke out the words, “Where are my—?”
“Your parents cannot be here,” Indryllis whispered, sitting swiftly on the edge of his bed—which stank of sweat. His sweat. “I know they would wish to be, but—”
“Where are they? Where am I?” Druadaen tried to hold in the fear, the rising anguish. But even as he strangled back the sobs pushing to escape his throat, he felt tears flooding down his cheeks.
“Your mother—” Indryllis started, and then her voice faltered, halted; her eyes were liquid bright.
“Your mother has passed,” said Varcaxtan, kneeling down beside the sick bed. “But we—”
“Mother is…? What about Papa? Is he still alive?” The sudden, aching rush of hope was wild, brutal: Druadaen would have tossed his own life aside without a thought if that would have bought the “yes” he so desperately needed to hear. But which he knew he would not.
However, fate had an even crueler answer in store, apparently. His parents’ friends glanced at each other, mouths opening uncertainly.
“Is Papa alive?” Druadaen screamed, his words ringing back down from the stones of the ceiling.
Shaking, Indryllis closed her eyes, her tightening eyelids squeezing out a flood of tears. “Not entirely.”