Schism: Part One of Triad (13 page)

“Jan, be quiet so he can sing,” one of the other men said.

“You’re lucky,” Jannor told Eldrinson. “You’re saved from ignominy by the demands of your audience.”

Eldrinson laughed heartily. “Just in case you believe this notion about knocking me off a lyrine has merit, we will hold a tournament when we get back.”

Jannor grinned. “Your challenge is accepted, O inglorious Bard.”

“Inglorious!” Eldrinson said. “You will rue your words.”

“I rue the day the two of you met,” one of the men called from his nook under the cliff. “The one-upping hasn’t stopped since.”

“Sing, already!” another said.

Eldrinson smiled at his longtime friend. “Go on with you, Jannor. Leave me some silence so I can think of what to sing, inglorious or otherwise.”

“Actually, otherwise,” Jannor said. He disappeared quickly, before Eldrinson could catch him in the compliment.

Eldrinson sat considering his options. He didn’t usually sing without warming up first, but he doubted they wanted to hear vocal exercises. He hummed a low note, testing his voice. It felt full and clear tonight, so he launched into a simple but popular ballad of the suns.

Valdor was born first, Born first of the two; First of the two sons, First of the two suns; But Aldan came soon after.

Rillia shot the gourd in the sky,

Pierced the gourd in the sky,

Pierced the gourd in two,

And made the moons,

The two true moons,

The Lavender and Blue Moons.

Rillia made the gift moons, Two gifts for the gods, The two sun gods, Valdor and Aldan, The brother suns.

Then he added a new verse of his own.

Delighted with his namesake, With his namesake true, Valdor smiled upon the Bard, The Bard of Dalvador, The Bard of the great sun gods. Valdor sent his sister, His incomparable sister, His luminous sister goddess, To wed the noble Valdoria Bard.

“Hey!” Jannor yelled. “That isn’t part of the song.” Eldrinson laughed and continued. His voice was warming up, so he decided to stretch it a bit. He would begin in his deepest range, a low bass, and work through several octaves, taking the melody higher on each line, until he ended at the highest tenor notes.

The clouds had come to the ground, Come to cover the land, Cover the land in snow, In blue, cold snow. The clouds had come to the land, But the suns melted the ice, Melted the blue ice and snow, Melted the cold ice of Lyshriol.

<: The world filled with warmth, ?Filled with a golden warmth, A lucid golden warmth.

It brought forth the people,

The Lyshrioli people,

It brought the golden people, Golden people into the light.

He hit a note on “light” one octave above what Roca called middle C and let the word soar, holding it for as long as he had breath. Then, with a smirk, he dropped down two octaves and added a new verse.

The suns brought light to their kin,

Golden light to their kin,

Light to their namesake,

Their namesake true:

The glorious Valdoria Bard.

A snort came from the hollow where Jannor had set up his bedroll, followed by a laugh from farther away. Eldrinson settled back, pleased with the song, pleased with the night, and pleased with the company. Then he thought of why they had come here and his pleasure faded.

The stars came out and wind whistled through the Backbone like spirits calling. Eldrinson thought of the ancient warrior Rillia, namesake of the Rillian Vales, who had shot his arrow into the night sky and cracked the Double Gourd into the Blue Moon and the Lavender Moon. He had long ago realized the tales of the Lyshriol gods and goddesses were probably myths. He wasn’t sure about the sun gods, though. Roca shimmered like sunlight and she had come from the sky. Yes, he knew about Skolians and stars and astronomy.

Even so. The suns might have sent Roca to him. Just to be safe, to make sure they didn’t take her away again, he performed the proper rituals to them once in every octet of days, lighting guardian flames in bowls of oil set on a stone pedestal in the woods, with gem-bubbles floating in the oil.

He fished the air syringe out of his travel pack and made sure it was set for his medicine. Then he checked the comm in its handgrip. No messages. He pressed in Roca’s private code and waited. A moment later, the syringe pinged and the holo of a tiny bell appeared in me air next to the miniaturized screen that wrapped around its grip. He flicked his finger through the bell.

“Eldri?” Roca’s words came out of the comm. “Is that you?”

He warmed at her voice. “Greetings, Wife.”

“How are you?” She sounded worried.

“I’m fine, love.”

“How is Denric?”

“Sleeping, I think.” It was a good guess. He had already decided not to mention they had split up. Denric might call her and tell her, or ISC might let her know, since they were keeping track of the searchers by satellite, but he didn’t want to be the one to say it. She would worry too much. He loved her for caring about his health, but he had no need of coddling.

“Any word on Shannon?” he asked.

“Nothing, yet.” She sounded tired. “We searched over the Backbone and Ryder’s Lost Memory.”

“Ah, love,” he murmured. “He will be all right.”

Her voice caught. “He’s so young.” Ť’• “I don’t think he feels that way.”

i-n v i=

“We will find him.” • Eldrinson knew she spoke as much to reassure herself as him. “Yes, we will. And he will be fine.”

“Sleep well,” she said.

“You also.”

He flicked off the comm, then leaned against the rock wall and closed his eyes, as worn-out from worrying as from the long ride.

Eventually he slept. He dreamed that Brad Tompkins came to him, concerned about an inexplicable power surge in webs of energy that crisscrossed the planet. Eldrinson became aware of a hole of darkness. He would fall into it forever, suffocating, suffocating.

The power spiked.

Eldrinson woke with a start. Sweat was running down his neck despite the chill air. He shuddered, unable to clean out the sour memory of the dream. It’s only a nightmare.

He wished it hadn’t felt so real.

Beyond the Backbone

hannon awoke with tinted daylight filtering over him, dim and cool. He rolled painfully onto his back, under a canopy of bubbles, some flat and others inflated, all clustered above him. A lyrine snuffled. Turning his head, he saw Moonglaze licking up the multicolored glitter that had gathered in drifts around the glasswood columns of the trees.

“Moon?” Shannon’s voice didn’t chime this morning. His words came out rough and rusty. By Rillia’s arrow, he was hungry! He grabbed a handful of glitter and poured it into his mouth. It tasted like flinty dust and had almost no nutritional value, but it was better than starving. After several handfuls, though, he couldn’t force any more down.

Shannon struggled to his feet and limped to Moonglaze, his legs stiff. His bladder-sack hung from his travel bags. He had to ration his water; he had no idea when he might find more up here. But he was so thirsty, he drained the sack before he realized he had finished.

Moonglaze pushed his nose against Shannon’s shoulder.

“I know,” Shannon said. “I could have planned this better.” At least Moonglaze seemed in reasonably good shape.

As he tended the lyrine, he pondered his situation. He didn’t like to analyze, but his reluctance to do so had landed him in this mess. If he turned back now, it would take a day to reach the outlying hills of Rillia, longer to find a village or farm. He hadn’t seen any streams on his way here, which meant he probably wouldn’t on his way back, either. Water had to be here somewhere; these trees couldn’t survive without it. He could probably manage another day without more

supplies, but much longer and he would be in trouble. The higher he went, the farther he was from assured food and water. If he continued for another day and couldn’t replenish his supplies, he would be too far to make it back to Ril-lia in time.

Shannon didn’t want to turn back. He hated giving up. Besides, people might be searching for him. If he went to Rillia, he could run into them. They would take him to Dalvador, where he had no place. They could call it epilepsy from now until the suns fell out of the sky, but he knew his behavior had invited demons to attack his father. His love for his family had kept him home when the urge to wander prodded him onward. Now he knew the truth: denying his nature only hurt the people he loved. It was time he found his own kind. If they didn’t exist, he had to know. He needed the Blue Dales, even if he had to live mere alone for the rest of his life.

“What do you think, Moon?” he asked. “Turn back or keep on?”

Moonglaze whistled at him. >*• “What, you think I can’t find my way out of my own house?” He laughed amiably. “I might be better at it than you think.”

He motioned northward, where the forest grew even more densely, some of the glasswood trees close enough that a boy could touch both if he stretched out his arms. “You see the way those grow?”

Moonglaze watched him with one large, silver eye, his head sideways. Shannon motioned at a line of trees. “Those arcs all curve to the northeast. They do that when they’re following runoff patterns. I’ll bet you anything we’ll find a lake or river that way.”

The lyrine regarded him first with the one eye, then turned his head and watched him with the other. Then he snuffled.

Shannon laughed. “So be skeptical. I’ll show you.” He wasn’t as certain of finding water as he claimed, but it seemed a good bet.

He mounted the lyrine and started off, following the arcs of trees, ducking his head to ride under their tubule

branches. Dusty spheres floated through the forest and burst when they hit other trees, Shannon, or Moonglaze. The lyrine plodded through drifts of glitter. Shannon soon fell into a trance, brought on in part by fatigue, but more because he liked to stop thinking when he rode.

Gradually a burbling penetrated his daze. Water sounds. He didn’t have to guide Moonglaze; the lyrine was already heading in that direction.

“Good Moon,” he rasped. His voice had lost its lilt.

The trees soon thinned out. Then Moonglaze walked into a small hollow. Water trickled over a stone ledge about Shannon’s height and gathered in a bowl formed by overlapping plates of rock, smooth and eroded, with long, narrow cracks. Trees grew around the tiny pool and on the ledge above it, mostly emerald and sapphire glasswood, though a few ruby trees poked their branches through the bubble foliage. A patch of lavender sky was visible above them, a deeper, more vivid hue than down in the plains.

Shannon jumped off Moonglaze even before the lyrine came to a stop. He dropped on his knees by the pool and scooped up handfuls of water. He drank so fast, he choked and almost vomited it up again. Coughing, he sat back on his haunches. He took a deep breath and wiped the back of his hand over his face, smearing his cheeks with more glitter. Then he drank more slowly and slaked his thirst.

Shannon rested by die pool, then washed himself and tended Moonglaze, cleaning away as much glitter and sweat as he could manage. Then he searched the hollow. He found a nest of puffle-wogs, small animals in yellow shells that fit the palm of his hand. He disliked killing them, but they were edible and even tasted good. He cracked their shells with his dagger and devoured his fill, relieved to appease his hunger. When he offered Moonglaze some puffles, the lyrine gobbled them up and snuffled a hearty approval. Shannon had read in one of his holobooks that horses only ate plants. Lyrine were much less picky; Moonglaze had no qualms about killing small animals for food.

After filling his bladder-sack with water and his travel bags with puffles, Shannon swung up on Moonglaze and rode back into the forest, headed north. The ground slanted steeply but the trees were thinning out.

So he climbed farther into the mountains with no clue what he would find—if anything.

Sunlight on his face woke Eldrinson. He opened his eyes to a lavender sky framed by the rock overhang. Night Charger i and several other horses stood a few paces away, nibbling at silver-blue reeds that sprouted around bluestone boulders by the trail. Jannor was holding a reed-hemp pouch for his lyrine while the animal drank.

Eldrinson crawled out and stood up, stretching his back, working out the kinks. Ah, yes. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with sweet, pure air. Two of his men were packing up their bedrolls and preparing to ride, and the fourth was cleaning his sword.

Jannor looked up at him. “So, sleepy head, you woke up.”

Eldrinson ambled over to him. “A fine morning to you, too.”

Jannor smiled and went back to tending his lyrine.

After greeting Night Charger and making sure all was well with him, Eldrinson took a trail cake from his bag and walked to the ledge beyond the cliffs where they had slept. The trail sloped steeply down from his feet, stark with gray and blue stone, but in the distance it leveled out into lush hills carpeted with silvery-green reeds. The Rillian Vales spread out beyond in a pretty haze of patchwork fields brightened by bubble crops in gem colors.

The five of them were soon on their way. As they rode, Eldrinson mulled over the past few days. In the clarity of this morning, everything looked different. He forced himself to admit the truth; he had pushed Soz and Althor away because he was denying how much he feared they would suffer or die far from home. It seemed impossible either of mem would ever have a family or a life such as he knew. Perhaps he was simplistic in what he wished for them, but his family gave him joy. He wanted that for them, too.

He had been wrong to accuse Althor about Shannon.

Whatever confusing relationship those two had, Althor would treat his brother with honor. In his anger and fear, Eldrinson had spoken words he could never take back. What if Soz or Althor died or became prisoners of war? Their last memory of him would be the moment he banished them from their home.

Eldrinson knew what he had to do. First he would convince Shannon to come home or else make sure the boy was safely escorted to the Blue Dales. If Shannon’s instincts drove him to the home of his ancestors, he had to go, but he was too young to do it alone, especially the way he had left, with no plans or preparation. He could end up injured, starving in some desolate place.