“It was not!” shrieked the gnome. Several of his fellows held him back as he tried to make an impulsive dash toward the giant, who was two tiers below and halfway around the chamber.
“Before we tend to this weighty matter, there is another piece of news I am forced to share,” declared Cillia. Belynda wondered if she had used magic to propel her voice-it fairly boomed through the chamber. In any event, the giant and gnome were quickly seated and silent.
“There is a druid who lives beyond the lake, one of the wisest of our number. Her name is Miradel, and she has mastered much magic, and been trusted to read at the Worldweaver’s side. I must report, however, that she has gone against the will of the council, and performed the forbidden spell.”
Now there were real gasps in the chamber. Rallaphan stood, his face locked in an expression of fury. “Scandal-blasphemy!” he shouted.
“Miradel!” whispered Belynda at the same time, horrified for her friend.
“Why would she do that?” asked Praxian, in a voice like a squeaking donkey.
“She claims that it was her last chance… that this human is a warrior of a doomed culture, a realm that faces imminent destruction.”
“These… these are things that require dutiful discussion!” declared Praxian, with a shake of that gray-cropped head. “I hereby table the matter until we have had time to meditate, to think…”
“And to think some more!” Cannystrius added. “Not tomorrow, certainly!”
“No,” agreed the co-speaker. “Nor the day after.”
“And I don’t think we can…” Cannystrius was suggesting reasons for further delay, but by that time Belynda had already run out through the giant marble doors.
“Y ou will start by learning about Earth,” Miradel announced after Fallon had whisked away the dishes from Natac’s next breakfast.
The warrior merely nodded, his mind still darkened by the lessons of the past few days. He felt an unnatural chill, as if the shadows of the men he had killed were drawing across the sun. The mindless brawling of Owen and Fionn was a fresh memory, as well as Miradel’s statement that those two were human warriors, like him. Fluttering around the fringes was the image of Yellow Hummingbird, the knowledge of a daughter’s life offered-and horribly claimed-in the name of a god who didn’t exist.
And when the burden of this guilt seemed like a crushing weight, he would see Miradel, and be reminded again of the sacrifice she had made in bringing him here. Why did she think him worthy of that gift, the loss of her eternal life? Whatever he did, he knew there was no way he could live up to her expectations-hers would be just another meaningless sacrifice, a life wasted for fruitless purpose.
But so far she had brusquely ignored his brooding, chiding him that self-pity was only a waste of time. Now she led him into a small room, and closed the door behind them both. They were immediately plunged into utter darkness, and Natac knew that extra care must have gone into chocking up every crack and cranny around this chamber. Though it was midday and cloudless, it seemed that absolutely no light could reach them from outside.
He blinked in the light of a flaring match, saw Miradel touch the flame to the wick of a fat candle. Illumination surged into the room, brighter than any candle Natac had ever seen. Miradel held a small glass crystal in one of her hands, and in the fingers of the other she pinched a small tuft of some kind of soft material.
“This is the Wool of Time,” she said, following his glance. “Trace threads drawn from the Tapestry of the Worldweaver, and used for the casting of the spell of seeing.”
“That spell is what you are doing now?”
“Yes. You should look at the wall, there.”
Natac saw that one wall of the room was smooth and whitewashed to a bright finish. It was not marred by any shelves or other features. Abruptly the light flared and then waned, and he saw from the corner of his eye that the druid had dropped the threads into the flame of the candle. Now she held up the crystal, between the candle and the wall, and again Natac’s attention turned to that unmarred surface.
He saw a brown swath there, with an appearance of bumps and other irregularities across its surface. In places there were patches of white or large stretches of green, and snaking lines of blue crossed here and there.
“You are looking at the land you called Mexico,” Miradel said. “Imagine that you are a bird flying very high… Now, picture these places: The bumps here are the hills of Tlaxcala, and this direction is west. The white splotch is the snowy cap of the great volcano, and these are the lakes in the valley of Mexico.”
Awestruck, Natac tried to follow her words, and quickly grasped the truth of what she was saying. He pointed to a shadowy notch on the border of his homeland. “There is the pass where we met the Aztecs in ambush, chased them back toward their city.”
“And where you were captured.”
“You know about that?” he asked, amazed.
“The Tapestry shows all to one who knows how to look,” Miradel replied. “I have been following your thread for a long time, so, yes, I took note of your capture, and your place in the ceremony honoring the Aztec gods.”
“I… yes, I see.” He found it disturbing that this woman, and perhaps many others, could have watched all aspects of his life. Yet he shook off that discomfort amid a growing sense of curiosity. “You can see all of Earth through this crystal?”
“Of past and present… we can only guess as to the future. Watch.” Abruptly the image on the wall began to shrink, as if the watcher were rising upward with dizzying speed. “You see the northern and southern oceans, now?”
“Yes.” Natac had heard of these great bodies of water, though he had never set eyes on either of them. Now they were blue splotches on the wall, growing larger as the vast realm of land was shrinking to a small piece of land between great seas. Indeed, he was soon stunned to see that two great continents existed, one north and the other south of his homeland. The place that he had once thought encompassed the whole world was no more than a link in a chain of lands connecting these two land masses.
“One of those lands is the place you called Europe?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Watch.”
And then even those continents were reduced, and so much of the image before him was blue water. To the right was a great stretch of ocean, and then more continents, irregular masses of green, brown, and white.
“This is Europe, here,” Miradel explained, pointing. “This is the land that will send the warriors who will destroy Tlaxcalans, the Aztecs… In time, it seems likely that all the peoples of these two continents will fall under the sway of the men from Europe.”
“Have they conquered all the rest of the world?”
“No… I will show you.”
For an hour Natac gawked at astonishing sights. He saw men like Owen and Fionn, and others who were clad in metal and rode great beasts into battle. He saw huge nations of black-skinned men, and teeming lands farther to the east in a place Miradel called the Orient. Particularly impressive was a massive wall, a battlement running across mountains, valleys, and plains, a structure that Miradel informed him could have wrapped all the realm of the Aztecs within its serpentine length. There were palaces in the Orient too, and sparkling arrows that trailed flame into the sky and then exploded in bursts of bright color. Great boats plied the rivers and coastal waters, and the sheer number of people he saw was overwhelming. Some of these were warriors, and they formed armies that darkened the ground with their numbers.
“They are so many-surely they will conquer all of Earth!” Natac exclaimed.