What this time, Gird wondered, remembering the many things his so-called luap had not told him until circumstances forced it. Would the man never find truth, and cease his lying?
“I was bred for magic.” It came out in one gulping rush. Gird said nothing, listened to Selamis’s breathing as it slowed again. “They do that now—”
“I asked you about that,” said Gird softly. It made sense, now. “Go on,” he said, more gently than he might have a moment before.
“I—I had none they could find,” his luap said. “That’s why they sent me away—the real reason.”
“You know,” Gird began as delicately as his nature allowed, “if you’d just tell me the whole damn truth to start with, we wouldn’t have these little problems.”
“I know. But if you’d known—”
“Damn it, I’m not a monster!” His voice echoed off the walls, most monster-like, and then he had to laugh, muffling it as best he could. “Oh lad, lad, you are too old for these tricks. I can believe your heritage of blood, true enough, the way you never trust outright—”
“Trust is dangerous,” muttered Selamis.
“And you trusted me with this.” As always, the rage and mirth had passed quickly; he felt a pressure to reassure this frightened man, a certainty that he must be saved for them.
“It has to be the magic,” Selamis said, his voice now steady but very soft. “But I don’t know—”
“When?” asked Gird, rather than let him entangle himself in his uncertainties.
“Two days ago, when we came. Raheli asked me to come back here and see if anything threatened. I fell over a ledge, just beyond here, and suddenly felt I’d fallen a long way. It was dark—darker than this—utterly dark inside and out, despair and grief. What I fear in death, only worse.”
Gird grunted. Darker than this end of the cave, after that uncanny light had left it, he could not imagine. Fear? They all feared, but Selamis was braver than he knew. He had a storyteller’s gift of tongue, that was all, that let him talk himself frightened.
“Then I called on Esea,” the luap went on. Darkness pressed on Gird’s shoulders, so hard he nearly gasped. Esea! Was he so much a lord’s son he still reached for their god in his trouble? “And the Lady—both of them. Light came to my mind—not as memory of light, but light itself, within.” Gird felt the hairs prickling on his arms and neck as the luap talked. “Silver as starlight, cool. Then under the silver light flowers grew in a wreath, but colored as in sunlight, sweet-smelling: the midsummer’s wreath, fresh-woven. But the light was silver yet.” Gird’s eyes filled with tears, and he felt them hot on his cheeks. Not magic, then, but the gods’ gift? It had to be. “Then the light came, in my clenched hands, just as I showed you, and in the light I could see the symbols on the rock.”
“The what?” Gird muted that roar even as it came out. Again the light bloomed in front of him, the same serene rosy glow, but this time the luap’s face was calm.
“Come on. I’m supposed to show you. They said tell Gird.”
“They?” He didn’t expect an answer, and got none, following the luap over that ledge of rock to a bell-shaped chamber in the cave. In its center was a smooth polished floor, inlaid with brilliant patterns. Something glittered there, as if faceted, but the light was too dim to make it clear. Selamis stepped around it, and Gird followed, eyeing it doubtfully. Selamis stopped before a recess in one side of the chamber.
“There,” he said.
The light in his hands brightened. Gird looked uncertainly at the wall, as the designs became slowly visible, then glowed of their own light.
“It’s something about elves,” Selamis said, when Gird said nothing. “And something about the rockfolk, and something about the gods—”
“And men,” said Gird, tracing one line with a blunt thumb, for he did not put the pointing finger, the shame finger, on anything that might be sacred. Something rang in his head, a sound he later thought of as the ringing of a great bone bell, his skull rapped by the god’s tongue—but at that moment he was conscious only of the pressure, the vibration shaking wit and body alike.
When it ended, he was flat on his belly on the cold stone, eyes pressed shut, and he heard Selamis’s equally shaken breathing nearby. He opened his eyes deliberately, rubbed his palms on the stone, and then over his head.
“You might have told me you were the king’s bastard,” he said, mildly enough he thought. Selamis had already come to a stiff crouch, the light still glowing between his hands.
“I should have.” It was the first time he hadn’t made an excuse. Whatever had happened had affected him, too. “I—I should have.”
“You could be the heir. Bastardy’s no bar, not with magic.”
“I—don’t have that much—”
“They should never have let you live.” Gird heaved himself up, shook his head, and glanced cautiously at the graven designs. Now he could barely tell what they were, interlacing curves and patterns that meant more than any ordinary man could understand. Or should. He looked over at that mysterious pattern on the floor. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Huh. Bring your light, can you?” The light came, and Selamis with it, almost affronted to have Gird interested in something else. He could make nothing of it, even with more light and finally shrugged. “Well. Whatever that is, now we know what you are—do we?”
“King’s bastard. Outcast. Light-maker.” Selamis’s voice was bitter.
“Do you want that throne, king’s bastard?” The growl in Gird’s voice made the chamber resonate. “Is that what it is, you’d like a peasant army to put you on your father’s throne, let you rule instead?”
“No!” That howl, too, resonated, a reverberating shriek that seemed to pierce the stone itself. “No. I want—I just want—”
“Safety.” Now it was contempt that shook the air.
“There is none.” A mere whisper, but Gird heard it. He looked across the comfortable, cozy light into a face that had grown into its years. Almost.
“Right you are, lad. No safety, no certainty, and hell to pay if the others find out who you are. Is that what you see? Or do you also have the foreseeing magic?”
“Some, yes. Since the light came.”
He would not ask. Pray to the gods for favor, yes, and make the sacrifices his people had always made, but he would not ask the future. That was for the wild folk, the crazy horse-riders, and the cool arrogant lords who had no need to ask, because they knew.
“I will not be what he is,” Selamis said. “I renounce my own name, and name myself luap—I swear I will not inherit that throne, that way, that habit of being—” It sounded like a vow to more than Gird, and Gird did not interrupt. “I am no true heir; I renounce it.” But the light glowed on, even when he spread his hands wide.
Gird waited, then into the silence said, “Lad, you can no more renounce what the gods give—that magic—than I can the strength of my arm or the knowledge of drill that forced me into this in the first place. I’ve been that road; it turns back on you.”
“I will not be the king!” shouted the luap, eyes wide.
“No. You will not be the king. But you cannot divide the king’s blood from your blood, or the king’s magic from your mind. You have only the choice of use, not the choice of substance.”
“What can I do?”
Gird’s belly rumbled, and he had a strong desire to hawk and spit. Clearly that would not do in this place; he didn’t want to find out what would happen if he did. Grow up, he thought to himself, but to the luap said, “For one thing, you can guide us back out. I’m hungry.” Then, at the indignant expression, he said “By the gods, you’re half-peasant: use sense. You can be who you are, and do what is right. What’s so hard about that?” Then he strode away, past the patterns on the floor that seemed to have tendrils reaching for his feet, and stumbled into the ledge. “Damn it,” he roared. “Come on.” His shin would hurt for days, he knew it, and there was too much to do and not enough time.