In the Earth Abides the Flame (41 page)

Our land is taken from us. Our people work harder and longer to coax any kind of life from the tired soil and yet are poorer than ever they were, and finally we are forced into small villages to live on charity and listen to the First Men tell us about the goodness of the Most High, while behind our backs they call us lazy and worse. We cannot walk on the cool grass of our home. We cannot shelter under the tall trees of our youth. We get no succour from the dried'Up remnants of land we are so graciously given. But we are expected to be thankful.

Would you be?'

'No,' said Leith. 'I would be angry.'

The old man sighed. 'To be angry takes great energy, and we who have lost our land have lost our energy. But we hurt, and we remember. We remember the treaties and wonder about a chosen people who seem so faithless, so selfish and so thoughtless. If your god is like you, I have no desire to make his acquaintance. But of course you don't know. You have no idea what this god of yours is like. All this has been done to us in the name of an unknown god.'

The fire crackled and spat as it burned the green wood, and the flames it gave out were orange and yellow, lending an unnatural cast to the faces turned towards the old man.

'I have no answer to make to you,' Leith said quietly, 'so I will tell you how I feel. Is that all right?'

'That I cannot say until I hear your words and measure their truth.'

Leith nodded his head, and a number of things hidden thus far came into focus. The Arkhimm had ahead of it an urgent task, an imperative mission, and any delay increased their peril. Yet there were things in Faltha deeper even than the Destroyer's lust for Instruere. He could not go on until he made a reply to this old man beside his fire. If no reply came, the quest ended here.

Something important was being shaped beside this fire.

Then, suddenly, Leith knew what to say. 'Pass me that carving,' he said, to the old man's surprise. 'The one around your neck.'

Reluctantly, the man drew it over his head and handed it to Leith.

It was of abstract design, a delicate swirl of waves and wind perhaps, or of a tree swaying in the morning breeze, carved in translucent stone of deepest green. It was altogether lovely, a treasure, and not lightly touched. As Leith drank in its beauty, the steely eyes of the old man softened measurably.

'Did you make this?'

'Yes,' the old man said. 'It took me six years.'

'Do you have the tools?'

'I have had the tools since I was a youth,' the man said proudly. 'I carry them with me all the time.'

'May I see them?'

Leith fingered the stone blades in his hand. Three roughly fashioned blades and the infinite skill and patience of this man had created a masterpiece out of a piece of rock. He shook his head in amazement.

'You made these tools.' It was a statement, not a question, and the old man nodded his head.

'My rite of passage,' he said simply.

'Tell me,' said Leith. 'Did you ever visit the markets of Instruere on your travels? Have you seen the fine implements on display there, tools made by master craftsmen the world over?'

A glance at the old man told him his guess had been right.

'Yet these are the tools you use? Why?'

The old man had the answer. 'Because the old tools allow the skill of the master to be exposed. Only by harnessing the skill and patience needed to use such tools can the true beauty of the stone be revealed.' The look of puzzlement on his face told Leith he was aware there was a trap in the words, but could not see what it was. Te Tuahangata, however, grinned and nodded his head.

'The First Men are a chosen people,' Leith said in measured tones, 'but not for the reason you might think. They are chosen not because of their strength, their toughness or their sharpness.

They are chosen because their brittleness and bluntness allow the full glory of the Most High to shine forth. What is being made here is yet to be revealed, but when we all see it no one will think of praising the tools. All the First Men show is how weak we all are, how apt to crumble, how false when placed under pressure. We are your example, the tools who demonstrate the skill of the Most High.

'I am such a tool, it seems. In my village I am nothing, a boy not yet considered a man, a tongue-tied fool with a reputation for tears and fears. Yet it might be that I was plucked out of my village by the Most High, chosen above many far more qualified, far more deserving, and fashioned into a tool for his use. I have many rough edges, and splinter and chip when used, but the Most High is apparently doing something with me. To be chosen means to glorify Him, not to be glorified by Him. It is the carver, not the tools, who receives the praise. Please do not mistake the dullness of the tool for that of the carver.'

After that the old man spent some time looking at his blades, saying nothing. Leith could not be certain, but he thought he could see a smile playing on the corners of the old man's mouth, and the suspicion began to grow within him that he had arrived at exactly the conclusion the old ones had wanted him to. Somehow the decision he had made in Deruys had been undone.

The voice had spoken through him again. He was not entirely happy at the thought.

'What do you want with me?' Leith asked eventually. The question was addressed to the old man and the old woman, but not to them alone.

'That's what we wanted,' said the old woman. 'We wanted you to ask the question.'

'And we wanted to ask you a boon,' added the old man.

'What do I have that I can give you?' Leith said, puzzled.

'When you come into your own, remember the Children of the Mist,' the old woman said.

'Remember all those peoples who live in Faltha, yet are not of the First Men.'

'What do you mean?' Leith wanted to know. He heard the words, but they made no sense.

'Just remember,' said the man and the woman together. 'Now we must go. Our children, our grandchildren, await us.'

'Goodbye,' said Leith, and embraced them in farewell.

'He iti na Hinepukohurangi, e kata te po!' cried the woman. 'Although just a small offering from the Mist, the night laughs!'

Like shadows of the mist, the frail old couple seemed almost to dissolve where they stood, a trick of the flickering fire, no doubt. In the space of a heartbeat the glade was empty save Leith and Te Tuahangata. Leith took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair.

'Who were the man and the woman?' The sense of otherworldli-ness that had settled upon the two men was now slowly lifting from them.

'My ancestors.'

'Your grandparents?' Leith hazarded a guess.

'No. Much older than that. My eldest ancestors.'

'That's not possible. They would have to be hundreds - thousands - of years old.'

'Who are you to come here and say what is possible?' Te Tuahangata was roused now, and his eyes flashed forth flame. 'Do you see that tree over there? It was a sapling before you and your kind were expelled from the Vale. Up on that ridge - don't look, it's too dark to see - is a rock that has been there for all of living memory. They are my ancestors.'

'Have I just been speaking with a tree and a rock?' Somehow, in this place, that did not seem entirely unlikely.

Te Tuahangata smiled. 'Something like that. My ancestors do not walk the world as you and I do, but they have not yet left it. They guard the land for us, establishing our place, our right, our home. You've heard some of their stories as you've travelled through this land. But where the First Men have overrun us, the ancestors no longer walk. Understand that we, too, have our contact with the gods, but through the earth, not through the fire. Yet we are not loved the less because we were given earth, not fire; and now we sit and watch as fire scorches the earth. Do you wonder now why no fire may be set in this forest? Or why we are forbidden to descend to the Valley of a Thousand Fires?'

'But what of the fire the old ones set?'

'What fire?' Te Tuahangata asked. Leith spun round: there was no fire, just darkness. No embers, no heat, no memory of a fire.

'So I've just been talking to ghosts?'

'No,' said Te Tuahangata gently. 'To them you are the ghost, not yet substantial enough to take your place in the land, scurrying across it and not a part of it. They are more real than you and I.'

'But what was it all about?'

'You will know better than I,' the Child of the Mist answered him. 'And even if I knew, I would not tell you. Truth is most meaningful when discovered by the one seeking for it.'

Together they made their way back to the silent camp, and Leith lay down again with his thoughts.

Te Tuahangata left the camp again and retraced his steps to the sacred grove. His eyes were hot and his face flushed.

'How could you?' he hissed into the darkness. 'You have shamed the Children by appearing to a stranger! I was polite, as you asked, yet you betrayed our people. Never before have you spoken to the First Men. Why have you done so now?'

A voice, gentle as the night breeze, answered him from the darkness. 'The season has changed, my little one.'

'Are we undone?' Te Tuahangata thrust the question into the night.

'Everything is undone, and will be remade. See to it that your hands do not injure what is being done.'

'But what about Deruys?' The question burst out of him. 'When is the day of our revenge?'

There was no answer; the voice was gone, replaced by the gentle whisper of the wind in the trees.

Camp was struck just before dawn the next morning, but Te Tuahangata would not let them move on. He had already indicated to Leith he should remain silent about the events of last night, though Leith had already come to the same decision, and this latest move just added to his mystery and menace. 'We will wait for the Song of Dawn,' he said.

He led them up a nearby slope. After they had walked for about fifteen minutes he motioned for them to stop. The party found themselves in a somewhat open space: not open to the sun, but cleared of undergrowth. In the centre of the clearing stood a huge tree. It was not tall, but it had the girth of many, many men, and put out roots and branches a prodigious distance on all sides.

'This is Eldest,' said Te Tuahangata; and something in the phrase made Leith look closely at the tree. 'He was here before the First Men came to Faltha. Here we will wait for the Song of Dawn.'

As silence settled on the slowly lightening scene, Leith could make out sights and sounds he would otherwise have missed. On the branch of a tree to his right perched a small, perky bird, chattering quietly to itself; then, with a flick of a wonderful tail that spread wide like a queen's fan, it flitted past and found another branch a little closer to him. Other birds moved about invisibly in the forest canopy, and as the sun began to rise they started to sing. There was a rich, booming sound like the ringing of the bells of Brunhaven at sundown, but fuller, more liquid somehow. There were trilling songs, clicking sounds, piping tunes repeated, then echoed on the other side of the clearing in a different key. For a while Leith tried to isolate individual songs within the Song of Dawn, but could not. As the sun rose and played her beams upon the ancient forest the chorus rose to its height, and those listening in the clearing were moved to something approaching awe. And as the birds sang the mist drifted down from the heights to their left, flowing like smoke through the trees and rolling silently across the ground, so that Leith felt as though he beheld the dawning of the world's first day. An indefinable longing awoke within him, a longing for he knew not what; something about this country ate into his heart, called him into itself; but he was not at leisure to remain here and contemplate the calling. Another voice, purer and sharper to him than the thick green voice of the forest, called him forward to Kantara and beyond. He had heard this voice before, and it was edged with fire.

Reluctantly the Arkhimm left this place, this holy place, each consumed by his own thoughts, and climbed higher up the exposed ridge. The mist flicked insubstantial fingers at them, as though wanting to prevent the humans leaving its domain. Then the mist cleared away and they crested the ridge.

Ahead of them, at eye level and above, a bright sky stretched from left to right. Below them, far, far below, lay a landscape unlike any the northerners had ever seen. A wide valley of brown and grey earth, devoid of vegetation, pocked with craters, geysers and lakes, rimmed with lava flats, framed by huge volcanoes; a.vast, ugly landscape which shimmered below them like a sweating, diseased animal. And the animal's breath came up the ridge to blast them with heat. A mere taste of what lay in store.

Gradually Leith became aware that a small knot of people awaited them some distance down the far side of the ridge. He noticed Prince Wiusago scramble frantically down through the stiff brown grass towards the group, calling out as he went. Te Tuahangata stiffened, and a scowl smeared his handsome features into a fearsome aspect. Leith gave thanks that it was not directed at him.

Waiting for the Arkhimm was the paramount chief of the Children, accompanied by two beweaponed attendants and a woman standing tall with an unconscious dignity. A great cloak of piebald feathers, intricately and skilfully woven, sat on the shoulders of the chief. On his weatherbeaten face were the marks of a full tattoo. He rested an arm possessively on the woman's shoulder. It was she to whom Leith directed his gaze as they drew close. Thus he set eyes on Hinerangi, the most beloved of all the Children. Her hair was long, straight and dark, darker than anything he had seen, coal-black. Wide brown eyes were set either side of a small, upturned nose. But it was her mouth that glorified her face. As she smiled in recognition of the Prince of Deruys, her features assumed a beauty that Leith would have regarded as impossible in mortal woman. It was not beauty as those of Firanes would have regarded it.

Instead, the woman appeared to have the ability to allow the joy in her spirit to shine on her face; and her smile was the means by which it gained access. The Arkhimm approached slowly, almost reverently, afraid, perhaps, to interrupt the tender meeting now taking place between Wiusago and the woman.