“Supplies?” His wife looked hopeful. “Like what?”
In a few minutes he had retrieved the cache, a small backpack that he dropped to the ground between them. “Spare boots-they should fit you,” he announced, remembering Darann’s bare feet. “A few sacks filled with water, an empty pouch or two. Not much.” Karkald felt apologetic as he looked at the meager stash.
“That’s good!” The dwarfwoman was already pulling on the boots. “At least enough for us to get started. I can carry this, and you can carry your tools.” She stood, lifting the backpack, nodding in satisfaction as she tested the feel of the supple boots.
Karkald, meanwhile, had stopped thinking of objections. He was heartened by his wife’s enthusiasm, determined to do what he could to maintain her rising spirits. “Let’s go to Nayve, then,” he declared. “Are you ready to climb?”
With a resolute motion, she nodded, cinched the straps of the backpack, and looked up the steep cliff overhead. “Can you brighten the first stretch for a minute, so that we can see the best way to go?” she wondered.
“Yes… and we can take some flamestone along with us, enough to light our immediate surroundings for a few intervals.”
“Good. Then let’s go.”
Karkald too looked up, running his hands over his tools out of long-trained instinct. “Hammer, chisel… I don’t have a hatchet!” He almost raised his voice when he encountered the empty loop on his belt.
“It’s planted in a Delver’s forehead, remember?” Darann said wryly. She pulled something from her own waistline, and he saw that she had one of the cleavers from the kitchen. “Will this do instead?”
“I… I guess it will have to,” he replied. The cooking implement was neither as heavy nor as well-balanced as his own hatchet, but it had a similar shape and, in the back of his mind, he admitted that it would perform many of the same functions.
“Hammer, chisel, hatchet, file.” These were now in order, arrayed in leather loops around his belt. “Knife, pick, rope, spear.” And his final tools were also in place, knife and pick in chest pouches, rope around his shoulders, and spear in its tube on his back.
“One more thing,” Karkald said, as he led Darann up the ladder beside the beacon. He scooped up some of the flamestone in his hands, then trickled as much of it as he could into the loose pouches of his tunic. His wife held out a watertight sack, and he filled that as well. Then he turned the gauge on the feeder down to its tightest setting. The beacon faded to to a pale spark, barely brighter than a candle flame.
“It will last for years at this setting,” Karkald informed her. “It might let some other Seers know, sometime, that we were here.”
She nodded mutely, and he knew she was remembering her family. Could they be alive? Given the utter extinction of Axial’s lights, he knew there was very little hope.
But then Darann put her hand on his arm. “Shouldn’t we leave a message… some kind of note, to let people know what happened-to us, and with the Delvers?”
“You’re right,” he agreed immediately. “I know where to write it.”
He reached into the door of the feeder and pulled out the upper hatch, which was a thin sheet of pure gold. Removing his file, he poised it over the surface. “What should I say?”
“Give the date.”
“Year six hundred and seventy of the Tenth Millennium, interval three, cycle thirty-two, right?”
She nodded-Darann had always been better than Karkald at keeping track of dates.
“Attacked by Delvers… World rocked by tremors… saw Axial darken…” He murmured as he wrote, painstakingly engraving each letter into the soft gold.
“We are climbing away from here. Signed, Karkald and Darann, Clan Watcher.”
“And Clan Silkmaker,” added Darann, stating her family’s clan. “Put that there, too.”
Karkald stifled his urge to object. She had joined his clan with the marriage… but still, it was only practical to put as much information here as they could.
“Very well… Clan Silkmaker.”
He placed the sheaf of gold against the hopper, and stood. “There are stairs leading partway up from here-they’ll take us some way toward the roof,” he said, indicating the narrow stone steps.
Darann started up, while Karkald’s hands moved through the routine.
“Hammer, chisel, hatchet, file. Knife pick rope spear.”
And then he, too, started toward the highest reaches of the only world he had ever known.
6
The Tapestry
Threads of life and lovers, colors bright or gray, a picture made of human life,
And warriors born to slay.
Tamarwind and Ulfgang came to her rooms as Belynda prepared to attend a meeting in the Senate forum.
“Just to say goodbye,” Tam explained. Once more he was dressed in his green traveling clothes and boots of soft leather. Ulfgang pranced around, white coat groomed to a cottony fluff. The dog was clearly anxious to go, but the elven scout seemed inclined to linger. “And I wanted to tell you that it was nice to see you again.”
“Yes…” Again Belynda felt that unusual flush spreading up her neck. “I… me, too. May the Goddess watch over your journey.” She felt jumpy, unusually worried-which she took to be a lingering reaction to the quake of several days earlier. “Do you know if the road to Argentian suffered any damage?”
“A few rockslides in the hills-that’s what the enchantress saw. Even if they’re not cleared out, we’ll have no trouble getting over them. The elves of the delegation are gathered and waiting for us on the Avenue of Metal. They’re anxious to get back home-I think the city has overawed them a bit. In any event, we should get across the causeway by midday.
Ulfang, who had been quivering, tail wagging while he tried to stand still, suddenly uttered a short bark, then hung his head in embarrassment. “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s just that I haven’t traveled in a long time… I guess the excitement of departure got to me.”
“Well, you have a good trip too,” Belynda said, touching the dog’s tufted white topknot. “And hurry back.”
Tamarwind took her arms in his hands, startling Belynda with the embrace as he stared into her eyes. “I would like to see you again… I hope that I can.”
“Yes!” she replied, holding absolutely still until he turned and, with an easy wave, ambled away. Ulfgang, tail still wagging, trotted ahead, then waited impatiently for the elf. In both of them she perceived-and envied-the eagerness to be starting on the journey that would carry them halfway across Nayve.
Belynda felt a sadly contrasting emotion as she joined several other ambassadors in the slow, dignified procession to the white-columned building that rose in stately majesty beside the College. Here the Senate convened in Grand Forum once every interval of forty days. The sessions were held in the great chamber, and were attended by elven sage-ambassadors as well as at least one spokesperson from the druids Grove. Normally Belynda found the sessions tedious and time-wasting. She had long ago determined that the more people involved in a process, the slower and more frustrating that process became, and there would be very many people indeed in the Grand Forum.
The senators themselves numbered nearly threescore, as every race of Nayve was represented by anywhere from two to twenty senators in that august body. Of course, it was the elves who had the twenty-the next most numerous group were the eight gnomish ambassadors. Some groups, such as the dryads and goblins, were limited to only a pair of senators. In theory, however, the Senate gave voice to every one of the cultures inhabiting Nayve.
As to the sage-ambassadors, there were more than a hundred in attendance. Each represented an elven community in the Fourth Circle-or at least a part of such an entity. Indeed, twelve of the ambassadors represented neighborhoods in Circle at Center, while the others, such as Belynda, were there in the interests of more rural realms like Argentian. The eldest of the local representatives was Rallaphan, a silver-haired patriarch who had held his seat for nine centuries. Belynda dipped her head as he marched past, honoring her with a cool nod. The sage-ambassador, like everyone else, stepped back to allow the regal senator to go by.