Halfway to the Old Man’s Meadow, she stopped walking and turned to gaze at Silili; she could see the gilded roofs of the school buildings peeping through the dark yews, oaks and willows planted along the walkways and in the water-gardens. She was startled by how much of the south slope of Utar’s Temple Mountain the school took in. There were no vistas inside the walls, just gardens like green gems for teaching and meditation, so it was impossible to judge the size of the place when one was in it. She’d known the school was important from the way that merchants treated her when they saw the patch sewn on her shirt, but this was the first time she’d had any real idea how important it had to be. Only the Temple grounds were larger. You did me well, Maks my friend. I suppose I’ll have to thank you for it. She sighed again and trudged on. Hmm. I expected to see you before this. Well, busy busy, I suppose, setting the world right. She’d gotten very fond of the man and was a little hurt because he hadn’t come.
Watersong filtered through the trees; she went over a hump on the mountain’s flank and looked down into an ancient cut at a stream leaping along a series of steps, swirling about black and mossy boulders. The path continued along the rim of the ravine, crossed over it on an elegant wooden bridge, each timber handhewn and hand-polished and fitted together with wooden pegs and lashings of thin tough rope. On the far side the path curved through a stand of ancient oaks that almost immediately opened onto the Old Man’s Meadow.
His small neat but was across the meadow, half-hidden by the droopy limbs of a monster oak; like the bridge the but was built of ax-smoothed planks with a roof of cedar shakes. Korimenei pulled off the rucksack, rummaged inside and took out the gift she’d brought for the Old Man, a half pound of the most expensive tea found in Silili Market; it was wrapped in a swatch of raw silk and tucked into a carved ebony box.
The Old Man was kneeling between rows of onion sets, pulling gently at grass and tiny weeds growing around them. Ghost children ran in silent games among the dying vines on the beanpoles, ghost grandmothers so ragged they were little more than sketches watched over them, ghost grandfathers squatted beside the Old Man, chatting with him, pointing out weeds for him. A strangled man ghost hovered close to the trees, watching Korimenei with frightening intensity. A headless woman, her battered head clutched under one arm, came rushing at Korimenei, veered off, trailing behind her an anguished wail more felt than heard. Korimenei ignored all of them, stopped at the end of a row and waited politely for the Old Man to reach her Her first sight of the ghosts of Silili had startled her, Owlyn ghosts stayed decently among the treetops until they dissipated, but habit and time had made her accustomed to the sometimes vocal and always present dead.
The Old Man settled onto his haunches, his dirt-crusted hands dropping onto his thighs. Morning light cool as water and filled with dancing motes picked up every wrinkle, wart, and hair on his still face. He blinked, mild ancient eyes opening and closing with slow deliberation; with his shaggy brown robe, the tufts of white hair over his ears, his round face, he looked like a large horned owl. He also looked harmless and not too bright, but there were many stories about him and certain brash intruders who thought they could force his secrets from him. “Saцri?” His voice was the dry rustle of dead leaves.
Korimenei bowed and held out the chest. “This unworthy student will be much honored if the Satir considers accepting this handful of miserable tea.”
He took the chest, tucked it into a pocket of his robe. “Leave the mountain as you found it,” he said.
“This one hears and swears it will be so, SaOr.”
He grunted,.swung round still squatting and began pulling grass from around a set.
Korimenei flared her narrow nostrils, but swallowed the laughter bubbling in her throat; the Old Man could be touchy about his dignity at the most unexpected times. She resettled the rucksack and began walking again, following the path.
3
The tiny meadow was stony and dry in its upper reaches. An ancient conifer had fallen to a storm a decade or so past and now lay denuded of bark, slowly rotting into the earth it had grown from. Thinner now and noisier, the Old Man’s Stream curved around the stubby root-shield and squeezed past boulders at the bottom of the roughly circular meadow and disappeared into shadows under the shivering gold leaves of a grove of aspen saplings. Korimenei shrugged out of the rucksack, set it on the dead trunk. She wriggled her body, reached high, stretching all over as she did so, stayed on her toes for a long long moment, then exploded out a sigh and dropped on her heels.
She pulled loose the thongs binding her dream-blanket to the rucksack, shook it out and spread it on the grass. Toward the end of her first year at the school, she’d bought wool in Silili Market. She dyed it and wove it into a dreampattem blanket which she kept wrapped in silk for the day she’d need it, for now. She sat on the trunk and smiled at the sharp-angled patterns and the brilliant colors. I did good, she thought, pleased with herself. She unbuckled her sandals, closed her eyes and flexed her toes; the earth was cool and silky against her soles and she had a curious sense that she was momentarily cut off from the flow of time, that she was a part of the Mountain. Her mind drifted into phrasemaking, ephemerally eternal, eternally ephemeral. The Mountain and the life parasited on it changed, died, was continually reborn. She sighed and yanked herself back to her own purposes. Settling herself on the blanket, she folded her legs and dropped her hands onto her knees. Her mind drifted to yesterday…
##
Shahntien Shere sat behind her desk and frowned at Korimenei. She was a tall woman, thin, her abundant gray hair dressed in a soft knot at the nape of a long neck. She wore a simple white dress with close fitting sleeves and a high soft collar, over that an unadorned sleeveless robe of heavy black silk. It was her customary dress, effectively elegant, underlining her authority without making too oppressive a point of it. Abruptly, unexpectedly, she smiled, her dark eyes narrowing into inverted echoes of her mouth. “The ten years are up,” she said. “Of course you know that. You’ve done well, better than I expected. Maksim is most pleased with you, though he seems rather shy about telling you himself” She paused, rubbed the tips of her fingers together. “I don’t know what his plans are, Kori; I expect he’ll show up when he’s ready. I’ve taught you all I can,” the ends of her thin mouth tucked deeper into their brackets, turned into a mirror image of her earlier smile, “All anyone can, I think. The rest is up to you.”
Korimenei laced her fingers together and stared down at them. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she said nothing.
“Yes,” the Shahntien said, “and that is essentially what this is about.” She sighed. “To it, then. I have consulted yarrow and water and tortoiseshell and considered your family lines. Your people are… urn… remarkably untouched by Talent, always excepting that imposed by the Chained God on his priests; however, that has nothing to do with you since the priests are always male and as far as I can determine chosen by the God himself without much concern about any inborn Gifts. Your Talent has come to you from your Ancestress Harra Hazhani, the Rukka Nagh; there were, no doubt, other women before you with much the same abilities, but things being the way they are among your people, the Gifts were denied and they withered without being used.” She tapped her nails on the desk top, a tiny clatter like a flurry of wheatsized hail against a window. “An obscenity…” She spread her hands flat on the desk, frowned at them… “Which is a digression… I’m explaining too much. It’s not needed. More than that, it’s probably counterproductive. You are to go to the Old Man’s Mountain across the bay. You are to find a sufficiently quiet and secluded place. You are to fast and meditate for three days. Do nothing. Accept what comes to you. Forget nothing. You won’t understand most of it now, you don’t know enough about the world or yourself. Accept for the moment what I tell you, it comes from my own experience, Kori Heart-in-Waiting; you will return again and again to this time, finding new richness, new meaning in it.” She straightened her back, looking past Korimenei. “Again I explain too much. You seem to have that effect on me, young Kori. Go and do.”