Although they traveled with all the speed the Old One might command—and between hoarded coin and favors, he commanded far more than Julyan would have imagined—days passed before the waters of Spirit Bay glistened on the horizon.
“Go ahead,” the Old One commanded. “Take Seamus with you. Travel as rapidly as possible. At the loremasters’ college ask for Flamen. When you have him in private, show him this.” The Old One held out a square of embroidered fabric. “Ask him what has happened since he and his friends sent that message. Based upon what he tells you, I will decide how best to present myself.”
Julyan nodded. He had been about to say that he could travel much more quickly if he left Seamus behind. Then he understood. The Old One would witness the meeting with Flamen through Seamus. No time would be wasted carrying messages back and forth. Nor did Julyan doubt that the Old One would be close by. Julyan’s going ahead was a safety measure, nothing more.
They had discarded the costumes they had used in Crystalaire but, when he arrived at the loremasters’ college, Julyan thought it best to give his name as Ryan Trader and present Seamus as his son. He didn’t know how much their enemies had revealed about the Old One and his associates, but nothing was ever lost by taking precautions.
The youth who was porter that day seemed unsuspicious. He directed them to wait in a small parlor and refresh themselves while he sent for Flamen. The wait lasted long enough that Julyan was fighting an urge to bolt when Flamen finally arrived.
The loremaster was a thin, wiry greybeard with worry carved into the lines of his long face. He paused in the doorway and spoke in a querulous tone of voice. “Yes? I was told you wished to see me.”
Julyan extended a hand as if in greeting, showing the folded cloth in his palm. “We have friends in common. One of them sent me to consult you on various matters.”
The lines on Flamen’s face sketched both shock and eagerness. Then he became all the suave scholar. “No doubt you are interested in consulting me about further education for this young man. The day is pleasant. Walk with me and I will show you something of our college.”
Only when they were well away from possible eavesdroppers did Flamen ask anxiously, “You come from the Old One? He received our message?”
“He did. He sent me to learn what has developed.”
“Little, but that little is having great effect. He told you how something fell from the heavens into the bay?”
“Yes.”
“It came down by night, unseen except for fire burning along its flanks. It splashed into the bay, causing considerable upheaval. No ships were lost, although sailors tell of being rocked as if in a terrible storm. Many smaller craft were swamped. Later, lights were seen on Mender’s Isle.”
“You wrote this.”
Flamen looked exasperated, but finally came to the point. “There have been few developments since. Craft have been sent out to watch the islands, but nothing significant has been reported. Even sightings of lights have become more rare. A loremasters’ conclave has been held to discuss the matter. All this has managed to confirm is that there is much dissent among our numbers. Some are saying that nothing crashed into the bay at all, that the disruption was caused by waters settling into subterranean areas and ebbing out in an erratic fashion.”
“How do they explain this thing that fell from the heavens?”
“Reflected moonlight. Hallucination. Bits of the sky trash that have fallen from times immemorial, unconnected to aquatic disturbances.” Flamen rubbed his temples. “As for the lights seen on Mender’s Isle, those are being dismissed as relics of the disturbances there.”
Hypocrites! Julyan sneered. Five hundred years of piously proclaiming that all will be right when the seegnur return … Now they do all they can to deny the possibility. But much would change if the seegnur did return. The loremasters would go from dictating right living to being dictated to by the returning masters.
Seamus stirred, blinked, stretched, then spoke, his voice full of strange flats and sharps. “Ryan, meet me at Chankley’s Harbor. Flamen, say nothing about my arrival to any, even our closest allies. Glory will be yours. The Old One has spoken.”
Flamen’s pale scholar’s complexion turned distinctly green. Julyan hid his own discomfort—he never liked when the Old One used Seamus as an extra mouth—beneath a knowing chuckle.
“Got it,” he replied. “I can be there in a couple hours.”
“I hear,” Flamen said, swallowing hard, “and will comply.”
Seamus shook his head as if to dislodge a bug from his ear, then started chewing the nail on his right index finger. Apparently, the audience was over.
“Well, we’ll be off, then,” Julyan said. “If some emergency arises, you’d do well to send a note via Captain Bore Chankley at Chankley’s Harbor. I’m sure you and the Old One already have some sort of code worked out. Use it. Captain Chankley is not wholly in the Old One’s confidence.”
Flamen nodded.
As Julyan chivvied Seamus along, he thought, Captain Chankley is not wholly in the Old One’s confidence, but then who is? I suspect that one keeps secrets even from himself.
It was not a comfortable thought.
* * *
After they’d been exploring Leto’s complex for several days, Terrell suggested to Adara that they go check on the horses and Sam the Mule.
“Leto may have assured us that Maiden’s Tear was designed to keep large predators out,” he said, “and certainly we’ve seen no evidence of them, but Sand Shadow had no trouble entering the area.”
“She is in a demiurge relationship,” Adara reminded him. “That makes her different.”
“Still…”
Adara was always glad to get outside. Leto’s complex was an unsettling place. They’d cleared away the dead bodies. Since Griffin had insisted on preserving all of the equipment, this had consisted more of removing fragments of bone from within clothing and armor than a more usual burial detail. Leto made the task extremely unsettling. Whenever she recognized someone by some detail of clothing or insignia, she lamented with passionate intensity.
After the bodies were dealt with, they had made a rapid check through the remainder of the facility. Over half was given to tasks Adara hardly comprehended. However, there were areas that reminded her of the Sanctum: sleeping rooms, rooms for socializing, what Griffin identified as a hospital. These had been thoroughly wrecked, but at least they contained few bodies.
To facilitate cleanup, Leto had opened a door into the valley, so her human visitors no longer needed to pick their way through the cavern. This secondary door was hidden from view by a chance-seeming tunnel of rocks and foliage. After Leto supplied them each with crystalline keys to the valley door, she reflooded the underground lake and sealed the door.
Once more out in the open, Adara stretched, glorying in the freshness of the mountain air. “I’m glad to be outside again.”
“It is stuffy in there,” Terrell agreed. “Leto admits that a great deal of the facilities’ functions are nonfunctional. I was relieved when she found how to activate the lights. Walking through those closed corridors, never certain when you might stumble over a body or a wall splashed with blood, was wearing on my nerves.”
Adara nodded. Those lights remained a source of astonishment to her and Terrell. It was one thing to hear tales about lights that worked without smoke or flame, another to actually experience them. Leto was now working on activating what she called the heating/cooling system—as if one thing could do both jobs. To Adara, that made about as much sense as thinking you could kindle a fire with an icicle, but Griffin took the terminology for granted, so she supposed there must be some sense behind it.
Once they were well out of the valley, Terrell spoke. “Griffin is behaving very oddly. He’s acting like when we first came to the Old One’s Sanctum Sanctorum—before Sand Shadow shook him out of his introspection.”
Adara nodded. “I suppose it is only reasonable. If Griffin is to find a way off planet, he needs to find an undamaged communications array.”
“He’s obsessed,” Terrell disagreed. “Can an hour away now and then matter? Griffin has been on Artemis for months, yet, last night, he wouldn’t stop his burrowing through the guts of some machine even to join us to eat. It wasn’t as if he was looking at anything that might lead him to a communications array. He was down on one of the manufacturing levels, assessing if the machines there had only been turned off or if they’d been damaged beyond use.”
“I remember. I was surprised. Sand Shadow had hunted wild turkey and saved the better part for us. And there were early raspberries. Instead of coming to enjoy dinner, Griffin just jammed a slice of the roast between two stale flat breads and went on with checking the machines. I thought he’d be more interested in the living quarters and the facilities associated with them. After all, wouldn’t we be more likely to find working communications equipment there? But when I suggested we shift over there, he looked at me as if I had two heads.”
Terrell looked side to side uneasily. “I wish we could be certain we can’t be overheard. I know Leto told us she cannot hear anything in the valley, but still … To her, Griffin is the seegnur. She might not lie to him, but she would to us.”
“True,” Adara agreed. She shifted away from the most direct path to where the riding animals were pastured. “We can see Sam the Mule and the horses from over here,” she explained, “and the view is much more enjoyable than blood-splattered walls and cluttered corridors.”
Terrell followed without question. When Adara stopped and leaned against a slim aspen ornamented, coincidentally or not, with some elegant shelf fungus, he asked, “All clear?”
“This is within the area Artemis could see. She might hear us, but Leto should not be able to.”
Terrell nodded. “I’m wondering. Could Leto have anything to do with how Griffin is behaving?”
“Controlling him, you mean?” Adara considered. “I suppose that’s possible. But would the seegnur have created a creature with the power to control them?”
Terrell shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t know enough about the seegnur—and we keep learning that much of what we do know about them is lies.”
“Griffin,” Adara said, “has always insisted that he does not think he is a proper seegnur.”
“Proper or not,” Terrell replied stiffly, “he is enough of one to touch my dreams. I assure you, my golden-eyed beauty, that I would not invite a man into my dreams. You, now…”
“Terrell.” Adara squeezed his shoulder, noticing that in her emotion the claws were tipping forth. “I care too much for you to use you lightly. Before…” She swallowed hard. “Before, back in Shepherd’s Call last midsummer, I could sleep with you because I didn’t care, not about you and not very much about myself. Now … You’re my friend, my trusted companion, and, worst of all, I think you honestly care for me. Please, don’t tease…”
“Is it Griffin? Tell me and I’ll work on resigning myself.”
“No. It is not Griffin. I feel for him much as I do for you, but without the added complication of a pleasant memory. ‘It’s not anyone or if it is anyone it is…”
“Not that bastard Julyan!”
“Not Julyan. Definitely not Julyan. But how I feel is all tangled up with what happened with Julyan. I adored him with a depth of passion that embarrasses me when I recall it. I would recite his name in my head rather than think. I wrote him poems, set them to music … I would have carved his name on my heart. Not only did he reject me—I think I could accept that—now I have learned that what I worshipped was a lie.”
“I’m not lying…”
Adara held a finger to her lips in a bid for silence. “Terrell, I don’t think you lie. I don’t know myself, don’t trust myself … Please! I need you as a friend. Don’t make that impossible.”
Terrell slumped against the tree. “There are times…” He left the thought unfinished, visibly wrenched himself back to other subjects. “Do you think Leto is somehow controlling Griffin or is it only that their desires run in harness?”
“I don’t know, nor do I think I would be the one to find out.” For the first time, Adara noticed that Terrell’s eyes were bloodshot, that there were smudges beneath them. “You aren’t sleeping well. Why not?”
Terrell shifted uneasily. “I don’t like sleeping in that place. The stench of death is long gone but it feels like a charnel house to me. But Griffin will sleep nowhere else. He has taken over one of the sleeping rooms, even though the air is still and stale. He resents any time spent away, so I have stayed nearby.”
Adara tilted her head and studied him. “And…”
“I don’t like my dreams when I do sleep. By day Griffin tells me what this device may have been for, what that press was intended to shape. All are horrors. The armor is the least offensive—Leto calls it ‘spaveks.’ At least the spaveks were meant to protect the wearer, but the weapons … By night I dream of old wars…” His voice dropped low and husky, as if admitting to some shame. “Or Griffin does. I’m not sure whose dreams are whose anymore.”
Adara wanted to hold Terrell, to stroke the rough velvet of his cheek in comfort, but she knew those gestures would be misinterpreted.
“I don’t think I would be the one to find out what is driving Griffin,” Adara said, “but you might, my friend. Stop running from those dreams. Take control of them. Find out why Griffin dreams so, and if his dreams are of his own choosing.”
Terrell rubbed his eyes with his fists. “I was afraid you would say something like that. But you’re right. I am factotum-trained, factotum-bred to my core. My soul tells me to protect this seegnur … But how can I protect him from himself?”
“First find out if the protecting is needed,” Adara said. “Then we decide.”
“And you?”
“Leto is a mystery, but legends call her Artemis’s mother. Perhaps in learning more about the daughter, I can learn whether or not the mother is one we can trust.” She gave a lopsided smile. “I have been saying I cannot call Artemis to me, but I’ll admit, I haven’t tried very hard. If you will take on Griffin, then I will work harder to understand Artemis.”
Terrell thrust out his hand. “Deal!”
Adara accepted the clasp with a hard squeeze, noting that her claws had retreated. “Now, let’s go down and see the horses and Sam the Mule. They look fine from here, but a closer look is never a bad idea.”
* * *
Unlike Spirit Bay or Crystalaire—both of which had been designed by the seegnur not only to provide habitation for some of the residents of Artemis, but also to cater to the whims of the visiting seegnur—Chankley’s Harbor had evolved organically. The difference showed. The seegnur’s building materials had been incredibly tough. Even after five hundred years, many buildings looked fresher and newer than those of more modern construction. The trim on those structures never needed repainting and it took a ferocious storm to damage the roofs.
By contrast, Chankley’s Harbor was a grungy place, looking exactly like what it was: a village that had grown up because the small harbor was a good one. There were sheds for storing nets, rope, and extra sail, dwellings that were hardly any better than sheds to hold the fisher folk when they came ashore. Probably the best maintained structure in the place was the stone well. Fresh water so near a saltwater bay was not a resource to be treated lightly. The docks were built on stone pilings, with wooden planks, meant to bear against both storm and hard use.
“A working village,” the Old One said as they approached down the overgrown, twisting landside trail. “Not a remnant of ancient privilege.”
Since until a short time before the Old One had lived in the seegnur’s former landing facility, spending a fair amount of time in the abandoned shuttle repair facility beneath Mender’s Isle, Julyan did not think he was out of line for finding this statement hypocritical.
He held his tongue. The Old One enjoyed seeing how people would react to his various odd comments. After being lured into several “philosophical” discussions that only served to prove that the Old One could think with more twists than a basket full of baby snakes, Julyan had decided stoic silence was his best course of action. He suspected his silence amused the Old One, too, but at least silence didn’t force him to think in a fashion that made his head ache.
“They know me here,” Julyan said. “Unless you want to be seen before I have a chance to tell Captain Bore Chankley that you’d prefer word of your return did not spread, it’s better I go ahead.”
“Go, by all means,” the Old One said, his pale grey eyes twinkling with mild amusement. “Although I think Bore would be wise enough to anticipate my wishes and assure his people’s silence.”
Julyan replied with a terse nod, thinking that the Old One was probably correct. The Chankley Clan had worked for the Old One for some time now, arranging for supplies to be dropped off at Mender’s Isle. Although many of those who crewed the ships had no idea who their mysterious client was, Captain Chankley certainly did. He was the sort of slimy eel who would do almost anything—including violating a prohibited area—if paid enough. But he’d want the security of knowing who he was working for, so he could drag him under with him if he started drowning.
Perhaps because the landside trail was so infrequently used—it was far easier to reach Chankley’s Harbor by boat than by land—Julyan’s approach attracted attention. Slatternly women and sloppy men drifted out of various structures, looking—despite the midday hour—as if they’d just woken up.
Of course, Julyan thought, most of them probably have. The boats would have been out either very early or overnight, depending on where they were fishing. Unless they had an extraordinary catch, most of the work would have been finished hours ago.
Julyan swaggered into the village square, chucked the prettiest of the young women under the chin, and said, “So, where’s the captain? I’ve news for him, news worth coin, not just barter.”
Lots of the sailors here could have claimed the title “captain,” since the boss of any boat with a crew larger than two merited the title, but in Chankley Harbor only one man was “the captain.” It was rumored that Bore Chankley had assaulted his own father for the title, so Julyan guessed that no one was willing to push the point.
“I’m here,” came a rasping voice from the doorway of the least offensive of the structures—the one that nearly merited the word “house” rather than “hut” or “shack.” “Julyan Hunter! Almost didn’t know you with that white hair and those clothes. So, you weren’t drowned. Figured not. You’re too mean to drown.”
Julyan didn’t protest. He and Captain Chankley understood each other too well for that, and their mutual respect made certain the rest of the captain’s people treated Julyan with proper deference.
Bore Chankley had hips like a snake and shoulders that testified to a lifetime of hauling on lines and setting sail. His eyes were framed by deep lines that gave his face a serious cast, but his mouth showed he knew how to laugh. Of course, what he laughed at wasn’t what amused other people. A scar ran from his hairline, across his left eyelid, over the nose, and trailed off somewhere in his cheek. The formal explanation was that it was a cut from a rope, but legend said it had been bestowed by his father in a drunken rage.
“A word with you, good captain,” Julyan said, at his most polite. “I’ve brought with me a bottle of excellent brandy…”
Captain Chankley was not an alcoholic as his father had been, but he liked a nip or three when he wasn’t going to be sailing.
“I won’t say no.” He gestured to a gazebo that stood apart from the other structures and offered a pleasant view of the bay. “Wait for me there. I’m just awake and need to splash water on my face.”
Julyan moved in that direction, listening carefully when Bore Chankley stopped to talk with a couple of the women, but all he caught was an order for food to be brought to the gazebo. He didn’t think it was a code of any sort, but he resolved not to eat anything the captain didn’t first.
He slouched into the chair that offered the most cover from being seen. He wasn’t worried about keeping the Old One waiting. When things were going his way that one had a hunter’s patience, and he didn’t plan to sail until well after dark. Julyan wouldn’t be surprised if the Old One hadn’t found a comfortable spot and was catching a nap, leaving Seamus to watch.
When Bore Chankley joined Julyan, he had taken time to comb and braid his long chestnut hair, then tie it beneath a bandana. He brought two wineglasses with him—very fine cut crystal that looked like seegnur vintage—and set them on the tabletop between them.
“Old One gifted them to me,” he said. “He alive?”
“Yes, though he’d prefer that not get around.”
“Figured he would be. Take more than water to kill that one. I’ve heard stories from before he settled here. Weathered the worst hurricane anyone had seen and came ashore, clinging to a spar, nothing more than leather and bones. Been eating shark. Had wedged the teeth in a crack in the spar to prove it. Man who told me had one of those teeth as a charm from his grandfather. Swore it made him proof against drowning.”
“Did it?”
“Don’t know. Got killed in a squabble over a woman.”
“Heh…” Julyan chuckled. “Old One wants to go to Mender’s Isle tonight if weather’s fit. He says it will be. Got a crew who’ll dare it?”
Bore Chankley snorted. “Take more than a few lights and weird voices to scare my sailors.”
“Voices?”
“Yeah. Heard ’em myself, since the waters around the Haunted Islands are my fishing grounds. Don’t know if they were spirits, but they didn’t speak like humans. I’ve sailed far enough to hear lots of dialects. This was different. Nothing like anyone had ever heard. Scared some of the crew.”
“Not you,” Julyan said.
Bore Chankley shrugged. “Ain’t heard a sound yet that can kill a man. Things that make a sound, sure, but some of the worst sounds are made by little things like loons and bullfrogs.”
“Point.” Julyan spilled more of the amber brandy into Captain Chankley’s glass, feeling a familiar thrill. It was almost the color of Adara’s eyes. “You’ll sail then?”
“To the reef. Won’t bust a ship, not even for the Old One.”
“Fair. I suspect he has worked out a way to deal with the reef.”
“He would.”
Julyan asked a few more questions about the apparitions on the Mender’s Isle, but Bore Chankley hadn’t heard much more than Loremaster Flamen. When the bottle was empty, Julyan excused himself.
“I’ll just go and make arrangements on my end. We’ll be down after full dark.”
“And we’ll sail.” Captain Chankley’s smile was sardonic. “It’ll be just like old times.”
* * *
Leto’s complex was an archeologist’s dream come true. Parts of it were still sealed off—Leto claimed not to be able to operate the door locks. However, what was available was sufficient to keep Griffin occupied for months. The complex had two main sections: one for research and development; the other for residential needs. The research and development area consisted of a large lab with numerous open workstations, a bunker in which prototypes were racked, and, on a lower level, a fabrication area. Almost all the equipment was nonfunctional, but Leto had reactivated a few of the stations.
Griffin would have been perfectly happy, except that Leto seemed to have taken a dislike to Adara. The facility coordinator (which was the title Leto gave herself) had been fine with Adara’s presence as long as there had been clearing away to do. However, now that the hauling and carrying was done, Leto grew sulky whenever Adara entered the complex. When Leto grew sulky, lights flickered, air circulation grew poor, and Griffin’s investigation was hampered in a dozen ways, small and large.
“I don’t understand,” Griffin said to Leto one afternoon when Terrell and Adara were both outside. “You don’t mind Terrell. Or me.”
“This is a restricted access facility. Although you are not on the list, I can see a rationale for admitting you. You have many of the right qualifications. In any case, I cannot expect you to be included on a list that was made centuries before you were born.”
“And Terrell?”
“Terrell is your bondsman,” Leto said primly. “Although such situations were exceedingly rare, there is precedent for him to be admitted. However, there is no precedent at all for Adara, less than for the great cat. After all, some of the residents of this facility did keep pets. However, under no circumstances were any unbonded savages permitted within—much less permitted to come and go at their own whim. I was in violation of my own dictates when I let her enter. I have since regretted it.”
Could you have done anything about it? Griffin thought. From what I have seen, the defensive weaponry within this facility was thoroughly disabled. Even now, you can only show your displeasure by making the facility unpleasant.
He wanted to care more, knew he should care more, but he felt detached from everything other than this fascinating facility. Even with the damage it had taken, it was easily the most complete pre-war R & D complex he had ever seen.
Than anyone in the Kyley Domain has seen. Possibly than anyone in all the inhabited galaxy has seen. If my suspicions are correct and this facility was doing covert research, it may have been advanced even by the standards of those days. I press tabs, read instructions, piece through bits and pieces, and am all too aware that I am like a child who sits at the helm of an interstellar battle cruiser and imagines that he is in command. Even Leto does not seem to comprehend the half of what is here. Was her memory tampered with or was she created to keep this complex running and nothing more?
He found his thoughts drifting back to this puzzle, the question of whether or not Leto welcomed Adara becoming less and less important.
“Well, Leto. Adara may not be bonded to me, but I’d like it if you’d continue to give her access. Without functioning food synthesizers, I do need food and fresh water. Terrell cannot both assist me here, and take care of hunting and other such menial chores.”
“She will not stay here?”
“She will if I need an extra pair of hands,” Griffin replied sternly, “but otherwise, no, I don’t think we will try your patience. Now, I’d like to go back to figuring out the operating system for this console. You say you remember the headset being used, but I haven’t found the necessary access codes. Still, if the seegnur built in this complex as they did everywhere else, there will be an alternate means of access.”
“Very good, sir,” Leto replied. “Perhaps these manuals I located will be of use? Wise O’Rahilly was fond of detailed documentation. The reader is a primitive enough device that it is functional.”
If there was a certain smugness to the disembodied voice, Griffin found it very easy to ignore as he went to fetch the data reader.
* * *
The Old One did indeed have a means of getting over the artificial reef that barred access to the Haunted Islands by ship. Julyan had always assumed the reef was of the same width throughout—but it turned out that in at least one place it was narrow enough that a small boat could be dropped over. The currents that kept such small vessels from approaching on the seaward side were not a hazard within the reef.
This wasn’t to say the experience wasn’t frightening, since the boat couldn’t simply be lowered over the side, but had to be swung out some distance using a device jury-rigged from the ropes and pulleys more often used to haul in heavily laden fishing nets. Once they were in the water, Julyan, of course, was the one set to the oars.
The waters within the artificial lagoon were seeded with carnivorous sharks, a fact Julyan was well aware of, since the sharks had done in a couple of the men who had decided that they didn’t like the terms of the Old One’s employment. He suspected—although he’d never asked—that the sharks had something to do with a couple of the women who had disappeared as well. Now they bumped lazily against the hull of the rowboat, attracted, no doubt, by the lingering smell of fish blood and guts permeating the wood. Captain Chankley kept a strong fleet, but not necessarily the tidiest.
A couple of times one of the sharks grabbed hold of an oar blade, mistaking it, no doubt, for a struggling fish. With unsurprising coolness, the Old One walloped these bolder fish with the end of the boathook, being careful not to draw blood, since that would send the sharks into a feeding frenzy. Seamus huddled in the bow, shivering slightly but otherwise showing no awareness of his surroundings.
Eventually, the bottom of the rowboat scraped against the sand and gravel of the shore. The Old One did not wait for Julyan to ship the oars, but leapt over the side into the shallows and, working with the surge of the waves, pulled the boat clear of the water. Once again, Julyan was reminded that, despite his somewhat effete appearance, the Old One was very strong.
“It was obviously necessary that we arrive here by night,” the Old One said softly. “However, I do not think it would be wise for us to begin our explorations until dawn. If, as I believe, someone else is now inhabiting this island, they may have laid traps. I would have.” He gave a slight, humorless smile. “Indeed, I did. Best we not run afoul of those either.”
The night was quite warm and the sand, while not precisely soft, could be sculpted into a bed far more comfortable than those in many a woodland camp in which Julyan had slept. They moved clear of the tideline, to where few scrubby trees stood. The Old One put Seamus on guard.
“I will need you alert come dawn,” he said to Julyan. “We shall both sleep until then.”
Julyan obeyed. One of the many things he had learned from Bruin was how to sleep restfully without fully relinquishing alertness. It was a gift possessed by most animals, lost by humans, who craved the temporary oblivion and the peculiar half-life of dreams. He also had cultivated a good internal alarm, dependent not on any sense of the passage of time but on maintaining an awareness of his surroundings. Thus it was that the sun was just tinting the sky grey and the birds were making their first querulous comments when he came fully awake.
The Old One was also stirring. He rolled gracefully to his feet, then unslung his small pack of supplies from an overhanging tree limb. Without a word, he pulled out provisions and a covered bottle of water, fairly sharing out three portions. They dined in silence. Wordlessly, the Old One commanded Seamus to take his turn at sleep. He then indicated that he would be gone for a short time and Julyan should remain.
When the Old One returned, he had clearly taken time to attend to his appearance. He wore a fresh shirt and his hair—still longer than he usually preferred—had been combed and pulled back into a neat queue. He motioned to Julyan, gesturing splashing water on his face.
Julyan went where he had been directed. While he peed against a convenient tree, he considered defying the Old One’s hint that he should wash up. Then he grinned at himself. Had he been alone, he would have taken any chance to wash. Another of Bruin’s lessons had been that a clean hunter was much more successful than one reeking of sweat and other odors that gave the prey warning.
You’re only considering skipping because you don’t like how the Old One orders you around as if you have fewer brains than Seamus, he thought as he knelt next to the stream, washing both face and mouth. Cut off your own nose to spite your face, as Mom would have said.
The sun was not far above the horizon when Julyan returned to the Old One, but there was ample light with which to see their surroundings. The Old One had pulled the rowboat the rest of the way up the beach, turned it upside down, then concealed it with dead branches to which leaves still clung. He swept away the marks with another branch, tossed it onto the pile and gave a satisfied grunt.
“That won’t hide anything if someone searches,” he said, “but it will be ample to keep anyone out on the bay from spotting it. Now, where to begin?”
Julyan, rightly guessing that the Old One had been thinking aloud, did not bother to answer. If the Old One wanted advice, he asked for it directly.
“There is an entrance into the underground facility not far from here,” the Old One continued after a moment. “A minor one. That should serve us admirably.”
He turned. “Please, take point. You are far better than I am at spotting traps. We are heading in the direction of that wind-twisted pine, the tallest one in that cluster.”
Julyan nodded. He thought he remembered the entrance the Old One referred to, although as far as he recalled, it had never been used. The Old One really was like an fox, knowing all the ins and outs of his burrows. The only traps they encountered along the way were of the Old One’s own making. Julyan was beginning to wonder if they’d returned to Spirit Bay on a wild goose chase. Maybe it was as Flamen’s associates had thought, just another bit of the seegnur’s old trash falling from the high orbits.
And the lights on the islands? he asked himself. Imagination. Or maybe there really are ghosts there, though I never saw any during the time we used the place as a base. Or maybe scavengers. There are those who would defy the prohibitions if they thought they had something to gain. Maybe even Captain Chankley or one of his lot. They might have learned some of the Old One’s secrets, though they’d never tell him.
He was close to believing that one or more of these explanations must be true when they reached the entrance. The Old One waved for Julyan to keep watch, knelt, and moved aside the accumulated leaf litter with quick motions of his hands. Even then, one would need to know what to look for to recognize the hidden trapdoor, so well did the material blend in with the surrounding soil. The Old One worked a latch, moving slowly and carefully, so as to make as little noise as possible. Then he carefully raised the hatch a few inches, pausing to listen.
Julyan, complacent in his conjectures, stiffened in shock when voices speaking some unknown language rose from the depths.
Interlude Six: Defiance
Without wings, I can fly.
Without eyes, light I spy.
Without ears, sound I feel.
Without tongue, tastes appeal.
Without legs, I can move.
What then is there left to prove?