ZYGRADON (33 page)

Look,
he thought to her, and showed her what he had seen of the
unconnected Threads as the bowl neared completion.

Yes, I see.
She leaned back into his support. Mrillis felt her trembling in
body and spirit after the great effort she had put forth.
Did we do a good thing
here?

"We did a very good thing. Rest now," he whispered, and wrapped his arm
around her waist. He picked her up, cradling her like a child, and carried her to her neat
pallet of blankets.

Ceera smiled and closed her eyes, and was asleep almost before he finished
standing up.

Too full of questions to sleep, Mrillis kept guard. Even here, below the sea, with
the magic of the tunnel to protect them, he kept watch. He knew they needed to be
even more alert than ever, after what they had accomplished.

Where the Threads emerging from the Zygradon ended, nothingness took over,
and that fascinated him. He knew the bowl connected to all the Threads around it, with
no
visible
connection. Nothing that he could feel, even when he traced the
Threads with his mental hands.

Strangely, the nothingness had a familiar taste and smell and reverberation. If
nothingness
could
have a taste or smell or vibration. He blamed his weary
mind for the imagery and askew words. Still, he grew more certain he had encountered
something just like this before. But where? He never would have known what the
sensation was, so how could he have marked it in his memory? What sensations could he
liken it to?

The Scry of Graddon
, he mused, and snorted wry laughter, muffling
the sound in deference to the others, who were exhausted under their giddy elation.
Just like Graddon's visions, this is hard to decipher.

Mrillis leaped to his feet as an idea crashed through his weary mind.

He had tried to find Graddon through the Threads, after the seer vanished.
What if he had found the man's hiding place, but hadn't realized it because his mind
brushed up against something that evaded his mind, his skills, his strength?

Could he find it now, with the nothingness around the Zygradon as a clue of
what to look for? Could he touch the something-there/nothing-there power at the ends
of those Threads and use it to find the nothingness that enclosed Graddon?

Before he could think of problems or doubts, Mrillis approached the
cloth-covered stone where the softly glowing bowl rested. It was inscribed inside and out with
ever-twisting, spiraling, interconnected lines--etched by the Threads into the hot metal as
it cooled. Mrillis suspected a mind could become lost in those endless spirals and loops
and lines. He reached out both hands, physical and mental, and tried to grasp the
invisible Threads coming from the end of each blunt flower petal that formed the
bowl.

Blackness shot through with a rainbow of impossible colors exploded inside his
mind.

Slowly, he grew aware of time passing with the slow dripping of honey in
winter. His sense of self and body returned.

How long he hung there in darkness that shimmered with that same
non-glowing non-darkness, Mrillis had no idea. He felt like he had been there forever. He
opened his eyes and tried to move. His questing hand touched something warm and
rough. Stifling a gasp, he braced to find he had knocked himself unconscious and had
landed on someone's blanket. He opened his eyes.

Graddon lay before him, stretched out on his back, hands folded across his
chest. A faint smile lit the big, bald man's broad face. His chest didn't move with breath,
but Mrillis saw healthy color in his skin. He reached out a trembling hand and touched
the seer's sleeve and arm. The flesh was warm.

Mrillis looked around. He knelt in a domed cave where multicolored streaks
broke the dull golden brown grain of the rock. This was no place inside Whispering Vale.
Could this be the Vale of Lanteer, which Graddon had mentioned in his final letter?

Just like the nothingness coming off the edges of the Zygradon, Mrillis knew no
one would ever find this place if they didn't know it was there and didn't know it
existed.

Mrillis started to shake the sleeping man's arm, to wake him. Surely if they ever
needed Graddon's advice and visions, it was now.

As if he had known this moment and temptation would come, the rest of
Graddon's letter slipped through Mrillis' memory.

Mrillis knew he had found Graddon for a reason--so he could find his hidden
resting place some time in the future, when he needed it. Not to wake the man, who
had looked forward to his well-earned rest. Against future need. To protect someone. An
important, endangered someone who needed to rest and hide, perhaps for years,
decades, generations.

Turning to leave, Mrillis saw the Threads that intertwined and formed a cocoon
that enclosed and made invisible this sheltered spot. He laughed and the sound echoed
along all the dangling ends of the Threads. He caught them up and his body began to
grow so he felt like a fabled giant in a matter of seconds. Or was it that the Vale of
Lanteer had shrunk to the size of a soap bubble? Mrillis held on tight to the Threads until
the blackness swept over him again.

When he opened his eyes, he stood in front of the Zygradon. He anchored the
Threads surrounding the Vale of Lanteer to the streaks of star-metal Ceera had embedded
in the walls of the tunnel. The star-metal would give strength to the protective magic,
and now Mrillis had made it so that only someone who came down the tunnel could
enter the Vale of Lanteer.

Graddon--and whoever would sleep there someday--was safe. He had been
found, his fate finally revealed, and he would remain safe and hidden. The Nameless
One, the only enemy who could truly threaten the seer, could not touch the Threads. It
was only common sense that the safest place to hide was literally within the Threads. It
was laughable that none of them had thought of the answer before.

Mrillis smiled when his watch ended and he curled up in his blankets close by
Ceera's side.

* * * *

Their company traveled in silence, exhausted by what they had done, though it
had seemed so easy and swift when they formed the Zygradon. The star-metal
embedded in the walls of the tunnel glowed in slowly shifting, soft rainbow streaks in
reaction to the passage of the bowl, so they had no need for their torches or the floating
globes of
imbrose
light.

Just before noon, the star-metal chimed in slight discord, warning of another
company approaching from the Lygroes end of the tunnel. None of them spoke or even
glanced at each other in silent communication. Mrillis stepped back and flung a blanket
and then a ground cloth over the Zygradon, to hide it. No one but Rey'kil could come
down the tunnel, but not all Rey'kil were friends. If there were traitors and rebels in
Moerta, attacking innocent Noveni, there had to be twice as many in Lygroes.

Haster led the ten who rode with torches and
imbrose
light blazing,
spears at ready and arrows ready in their bows. The stargazer let out a shout and raised
his hand, bringing his warriors to a halt. He stared at the weary, triumphant band. Then
he tipped his head back and laughed.

"We should have known it was you. What mischief have you three--no, wait,
where's Endor?" He shook his head and waved his hand, pushing aside the question.
"What mischief have you created this time?"

"No mischief," Ceera said. She glanced at Mrillis, eyes sparkling, and bit her lip
to fight a grin.

"What happened?" Mrillis said. He gestured at the spears, which had finally
been returned to the traveling straps on the saddles, and the arrows being put back into
quivers. "You thought we were someone else, didn't you?"

"We didn't know who was coming. The sentinels raised the alarm when you just
appeared, no warning, halfway down the tunnel." Haster dismounted. "What have you
been doing?"

"Show him." Ceera turned to Loereen, who muffled a giggle and hurried to
yank the coverings off the Zygradon, in its place of honor at the front of the supply
cart.

Haster's smile froze, then slowly faded. He looked at Ceera, then Mrillis, then
back at the wagon. He shook his head.

"I see... nothing."

No one else in Haster's party could see anything. Mrillis would have discounted
them, since they were all warriors with little
imbrose
. But Haster had the
clearest sight when it came to magic. After years of working with star-metal, learning to
direct the fall of starshowers, his
imbrose
had grown stronger. How could the
stargazer not see the Zygradon?

"Not that I doubt you," Haster said, when their combined group had started up
the tunnel to Lygroes again.

Because Ceera and Mrillis' company were on foot, the warriors walked too, five
ahead of them and five behind. Like guards. Mrillis didn't like the feeling that he and
Ceera and their company had suddenly become suspect.

Or was it that they had suddenly stepped beyond their places and their elders
and peers feared them?

"You two, together, have caused more change among our people, added to our
knowledge, changed our entire vision of magic and star-metal... I would be a fool to
doubt when you say something is so." Haster shrugged and glanced back at the wagon,
which was directly behind him.

He walked between Mrillis and Ceera, at the head of the company. Mrillis held
the lead reins for the horse that pulled the supply wagon, and only had to glance back
over his shoulder to see the Zygradon, gleaming softly in its nest of blankets among the
supplies. The star-metal in the walls responded as it had done all morning, shimmering
softly, glowing more brightly as the Zygradon approached, then slowly fading away as
the bowl passed. As if he could read Mrillis' thoughts, Haster nodded and gestured at the
streaks of light on the walls.

"That proves you've done something, and something is definitely here... but I
can't see it. None of us can. You say Threads are bound tightly to it, and all the Threads
of the world now flow through it... and I don't doubt you. That's what alarmed our
elders more than all of you appearing in the tunnel so suddenly. The music of the
Threads has changed."

"How?" Mrillis' voice threatened to crack at the sudden shock that jolted
through him.

"What have we done?" Ceera whispered.

"Oh, no, it's a good thing. I think. Where the strongest of us have always sensed
a slight discord, as if the Threads sang their own songs and didn't care if they were in
tune, now..." Haster grinned. "Now they are one massive harp, not fifty." He glanced
over his shoulder again. "If only I could see. It must be a marvelous and awesome sight,
the Threads going through it, the power of all that star-metal in one place."

"That's probably why it is invisible," Ceera said, nodding. Her frown deepened,
her thoughts almost visibly swirling through her head. "Just as a large lump of star-metal
made us invisible and untouchable through the Threads...the Zygradon hides itself. But
why can
we
see it? Shouldn't it have become invisible as soon as it was
formed?"

"We put ourselves into the making of it," Loereen offered.

"Yes, of course. You are bound to it," Haster said, nodding. "Consider this,
children." He winked as he said the word, because half the company were as tall as he,
or taller. "Because no one but you can see it, no one can steal it."

"But what happens when we are dead and no one can see it? How can it be
guarded?"

"That is a question to be answered later. Perhaps those of you who have
children can pass the gift on to them." He shrugged. "If only..." He shrugged and grinned
and turned his face forward again.

"What?" Ceera asked.

"I'd like to at least touch it."

"Why not?" Mrillis gestured for the guards to halt, and tugged on the horse's
lead reins to stop the wagon. He picked up the bowl in both hands. The base was small
enough he could hold it on his flattened palms. Despite the amount of star-metal that
went into it, and its size, the bowl felt as light as if made of gossamer.

Haster licked his lips and glanced around at their company before reaching out
his gloved hand to touch the bowl. His hand glanced aside, sliding around the bowl as if
pushed by an invisible hand. He tried again. He pressed his hand against Mrillis' hands,
then pushed up, so the young man thought the stargazer would push the Zygradon off
his hands. But Haster's hand never touched the bowl.

"I feel nothing... yet something guides my hand away." He frowned and wiped
a few drops of sweat off his forehead. "Most strange and strong magic, children. Thank
the Estall you are on the side of right, and not allied with the Nameless One."

"It doesn't make sense," Nixtan said. "It's right there. We can touch it." To
demonstrate, he ran his index finger up the edge of one of the petals of the bowl and
flicked the top edge, making the metal chime.

Haster and the guards flinched as the star-metal lining the tunnel caught and
amplified the sound.

"For a moment there..." He frowned. "Little Star... Guide my hand?" He tugged
his riding glove off and held out his hand.

Ceera nodded, her frown relaxing a little. She took Haster's hand and guided it
to the bowl. Reaching out, she touched the upper edge of the petals with her other
hand.

"Blessed bright fires!" Haster roared, and jumped back, yanking his hand free.
He scrubbed his eyes with his fists. "It's enough to blind a man."

"If one of us touches the bowl..." Mrillis muffled a chuckle into a snort. "We are
the doorways, the windows, I suppose. No one can touch or see the Zygradon, except
through us and our help."

"And a blessing of the Estall that is, I'm sure." The old stargazer nodded, his gaze
fixed more surely on the place above Mrillis' hands. "All the
imbrose
in the
entire World rests in your hands, lad. Guard it well." A crooked grin brought some color
back to his face. "That's a glimpse I'm grateful for, and just as grateful I won't get
again."