Return to Eddarta (17 page)

It was hard to watch the torment in her face, her eyes.

“You are asking me to abandon the responsibility I
know
is mine,” she said.

“I’m not forcing you to choose between Eddarta and Raithskar, Tarani. All I want—what I believe is right—is for you to delay your work in Eddarta until the matter of the Ra’ira is settled for certain.”

“I have begun here with a pledge to work for change and betterment, for both Lord and landservant,” Tarani said. “To leave now would mean breaking that pledge and destroying the faith and goodwill I can already feel building among the Lords.”

I forced back the panic I was feeling, and kept my voice soft as I asked: “Are you saying that you won’t go?”

“I am saying that I am not convinced of the
need
for me to go,” she answered, “and I am unwilling to risk the damage to my cause in Eddarta on the
chance
that we do not have the true Ra’ira in our safekeeping.

“Rikardon, please try to understand. I am still committed to our original task, but we have no real and recent experience with the Ra’ira, and no reliable way to judge whether this”—she pointed—“is or is not the powerstone.

“Conjecture is not enough, my love.”

“If it were real,” I said, “it would be easy to prove it. You, Indomel—Zefra, probably—could use it. But proving a negative is nearly impossible, Tarani. You tell me—is there anything that would convince you that this is
not
the Ra’ira?”

She snatched it from my hand and threw it at the floor with a lot of strength.

It bounced.

She kicked it against the wall, knocking a puff of dust from her glith-hide boots.

It ricocheted toward the window and hit the stone sill, narrowly missing a diamond-shaped pane of glass.

I picked it up from where it landed and examined it beside the lamp. It seemed to be undamaged. I handed it back to Tarani.

“Good try,” I said. “The fact that it didn’t shatter like the duplicate Indomel broke means that it’s either the real Ra’ira or a better duplicate.”

She tossed the stone lightly, thinking.

“I see your point about negative proof,” she said. “Let us leave it at this: one more item of evidence that the stone is powerless will convince me.” She tossed the blue gemstone to me. “Until then, I shall continue to work at being High Lord.”

“I’m not sure that’s fair,” I said. I waited long enough for her to tense up, then I smiled. “But I accept it.”

I put the Ra’ira—or not—into the small, decorative box and tucked the box under my arm.

“I have only one more question,” I said. “Where do I sleep?”

She laughed, and offered me her hand.

We were up early the next morning. After we had bathed and dressed (the Ra’ira went with me to the bathhouse), Tarani asked that our breakfast be served in the High Lord’s suite.

Indomel and his predecessors had lived very well, and their personal living quarters were roomy and luxurious. Delicate tapestries adorned the walls, and all the furniture was made with fine materials and studied craftsmanship.

“The family’s doing fine,” I reported, after the servers had left our food on the table in the small dining room. “Keeshah says there is plenty of game, and the cubs are pretty nearly pulling their own weight in the hunting department these days.”

“Yayshah seems content, as well,” Tarani said. She was tearing a piece of bread into little pieces. I grabbed her hands.

“Ricardo had a relative—his grandmother—who used to tell him: ‘Suppose you talk about what’s worrying you, boy, instead of taking it out on my good food.’”

Tarani smiled, and turned one hand upward to grab hold of mine and squeeze. She had long, tapered fingers that were, like the rest of her body, stronger than they looked.

“I was thinking that if we had no question as to the authenticity of
this
Ra’ira, you would be leaving soon. When you mentioned the sha’um, I wondered about the cubs. I have been assuming they would remain here, with Yayshah. But their mindlink with you creates as strong a bond as the parental bond to Yayshah.”

“If we have to separate,” I said, “it will be because I need to take the stone back to Raithskar as quickly as possible. Keeshah can travel faster without the cubs.” I squeezed her hand. “And I could be back sooner.”

“There must be a decision point,” she said. “Do you not feel the urgency?”

“I feel it very strongly. If we have the Ra’ira, it is needed in Raithskar. If we don’t have it, then
we
are needed in Raithskar. I understand what you’re trying to say, Tarani. You’ve given me the opportunity to convince you, but the time frame can’t be open-ended. You said that a ceremony is planned to install you as High Lord?”

“Day after tomorrow,” she said, nodding.

“I wouldn’t ask you to leave before that. Shall we agree to start for Raithskar the morning after the Celebration Dance? Whoever is going back?”

She looked relieved.

“Agreed,” she said.

“I don’t think we’ll have to wait all that time before the issue is settled, however,” I said, taking a sip of water. “I remembered something while I was bathing this morning that may constitute the evidence we need, if we can find it. If you can spare me today to help me look for it, then
not
finding it will convince
me
that—that I’ll need to ride out of Eddarta alone.”

“Can you doubt I would help?” she asked. “What is this piece of evidence?”

“When Gharlas first told us about the Ra’ira’s power—we were in Dyskornis—he mentioned finding a book, a diary written by one of the Kings. That’s how
he
learned about the stone’s usefulness. I should think that diary would contain a description of the stone and, perhaps, a description of what it feels like to use it.

“
If
we can find it, and
if
it does describe a subjective experience of using the stone, and
if
that description says that it’s one, easy, and two, imparts a kind of power feedback so that one would
know
the stone’s power was active—will that convince you that what we have here is Volitar’s second replica?”

“It would not speak to the possibility of the mindgift changing across the years,” she said, “but yes, I would consider that enough evidence to make my returning to Raithskar to find the truth worth the risk of leaving Eddarta now.” She frowned. “You told Indomel of the book, and he searched for it in vain, both in the vault and in Gharlas’s home. How do you expect to find it?”

I finished eating, and cleaned my hands on the linen napkin.

“That’s where you come in,” I said. “Gharlas used the old passage called Troman’s Way to get into the vault unseen, right?”

She nodded.

“Troman built that passage so he could visit his paramours in secret. If he had that kind of a mind, why might he not build a secret hiding place inside the house, as well?”

“If he did,” Tarani said, “would it not be hidden in the same way as the entrance to Troman’s Way, and open only when weight was applied to the floor tiles in a specific pattern?”

“Very likely,” I said. “If Gharlas knew one entry code—why would he not know the other?”

She dropped a piece of fruit on her plate and stared at me, growing pale. “You are not proposing that I—that we—enter the All-Mind and search Gharlas’s memory?”

Her reaction made me hesitate. “Well, yes,” I said, “that’s what I was thinking.”

She shook her head almost violently. “No. Even if I could bear the thought of touching that mad mind,” she said, shuddering, “Recorder training forbids contact with the recently dead.” She held up her hand. “I do not know why. I do know that such rules are not given without reason. I cannot do it.”

“Troman, then,” I pressed her. “
Someone
who knew whether the hiding place is there, and how to open it.”

“Troman,” she repeated, calming down. “Yes, that is possible.” She dropped her napkin on the table. “The food we have eaten will keep our bodies strong while we seek,” she said. “I will instruct the household staff that we are not to be disturbed.”

A few minutes later, we were lying side by side on the double-thickness pallet that served as a bed. We held hands, and I stared at the ceiling while Tarani breathed deeply, preparing.

I had my own preparation to make, minimizing the Ricardo aspect of my mind to allow this purely Gandalaran force to take hold of me. It occurred to me to wonder if Antonia’s memories might interfere with Tarani’s action as a Recorder—Tarani had been able to act as Recorder in Kä only because Antonia actively kept out of the way.

I was relieved when Tarani began the formal ritual.

“Will you seek?”

“I will seek, Recorder,” I said.

“What do you seek?”

I had to think about that a moment; Somil had taught me that the seeker’s goal must be phrased very specifically.

“I want to know whether there is a second secret door in Gharlas’s house, and how to open it.”

“Then make your mind one with mine, as I have made mine one with the All-Mind… .”

The sensation of
separateness
from my body was familiar now, but still disquieting. And my vision of the All-Mind as a huge and roughly spherical, congested network of interconnected rods was no less beautiful than on the other two occasions. Each rod was a cylinder of light, shining and translucent.

… We begin
, said Tarani’s mindvoice.

I was only a place, a presence. Seeking with Tarani was a little different from seeking with Somil. I might have noticed the contrast in Kä, except that urgency had driven us to hurry.

Somil’s presence had enclosed mine. Tarani’s presence touched mine closely, but did not surround it. A physical analogy might be that Somil had carried me, but Tarani and I walked hand in hand. Still, there was no doubt that Tarani was controlling our movement.

Each of the shining bars represented the lifememory of a person, birth to death—not their personalities, but only their memories. A study of Gandalaran history would begin at the center of the sphere and work toward the amorphous glow that marked its outermost edge. Tarani skimmed quickly along the network just inside the boundary of light.

I am searching for Gharlas
, she said.

I thought you couldn’t share memory with him.

No. But I will know him, and begin our search first with his family.

She pulled us along at a dizzying speed, hovering so that it was her presence, and not mine, that came into contact with the cylinders of light. The sideways rush stopped abruptly. We were “resting” on a cylinder that extended all the way to the edge of the sphere, its far end merging with the glow. Tarani pulled us in the direction of the distant center of the sphere, moving slowly.

She had not gone far when she stopped us and said:
This man was uncle to Gharlas, and lived in the house before him. I touched him only lightly, yet I know he had the secret to Troman’s Way.

He’s probably the one who gave it to Gharlas
, I said.

Will you share memory with this one, or do you wish only Troman?

Do we have time for both, if we don’t find the answer here?
I asked.

Yes.

Then I will try this man
, I agreed.

I was a young boy, sitting on the patterned floor of the midhall and playing with a set of the dice-like mondeana. One piece skittered away, and I rose on one knee to reach for it.

The tile underneath my knee moved slightly, and I lost interest in the mondeana. I shifted my weight, feeling the tile move. I tested the tiles around that one triangular piece, and found them to be solidly mounted. I tried all the nearby tiles that were the same color of blue, and found three that moved.

I was alone in the house, sulking a little because my older brother was at the second testing, and my father had gone down to the city, to commission a Celebration gift for the next High Lord. He didn’t expect my brother, Usal, to be selected as the successor to the present High Lord. Everyone knew there were only two who had a real chance: Horinad, the son of the present High Lord; and Tinis, of the house of Rusal. Today they
—
and the other fifteen-year-old boys who had shown some outward sign of a mindgift
—
would know the answer for which they had waited for three years.

The tiles absorbed my attention, and I began a game with them. I jumped with both feet from one to another. They were just large enough for one whole foot and another toe to rest on them comfortably. I straddled the distance between two of the tiles, but they were a little too far apart to make staying like that comfortable.

The four tiles formed a rough square, and I began to imagine lines drawn between them, wondering how many ways they could be connected. I acted out the drawing I imagined by jumping between the tiles. Starting with the tile furthest from the wall, I “connected” the square around the tiles, going first in one direction, then the other. I “drew” crossed lines, starting with the first line toward the wall, then doing it again with the first line parallel to the wall… .

The wall moved.

The sound made me jump backward. I stepped on one of the mondeana and it slid out from under me. I landed with a painful jolt on my backside. I hardly noticed the pain, I was so excited. A strip of wall as wide as a man had pulled back and slid aside, revealing a narrow alcove with shelves carved into the back wall. I stared at the alcove, wondering who and how and why. And while I stared, I heard the same faint grating sound, and the wall closed up again.

“No!” I shouted, finally roused from my trance. I ran to the wall, pushed at it, barely pulled my fingers out of the way as the wood-paneled section moved forward to blend in again with the rest of the long wall.

I was crushingly disappointed, until I made the connection: the tiles must be the key. I struggled to remember the patterns I had used, and I recreated them carefully.

The wall opened again, and I shrieked with delight. I grabbed a small table and dragged it to the opening and wedged it there. Once I had made sure that I wasn’t going to be trapped inside, I climbed over the table, so excited I could scarcely breathe.