ELEVEN
Meatha seemed unaware of the dank, forbidding atmosphere of the fissure as she pushed farther in, leading eagerly. Boulders stood across their narrow path so they must force their way around them; the river slipped by dark as a rock-snake on their left, the cliff walls had little growth except the yellow moss. The fissure, cut by the ancient river and perhaps by lava flow, seemed to Zephy to breathe an evil life of its own.
Meatha whispered something Zephy could not make out, and reached back to take Zephy’s hand as one would take the hand of a small child. They came around a boulder with Zephy pulled close to Meatha, and they were standing before a cave that opened black in the fissure wall. Meatha entered it at once and Zephy was pulled along; Thorn followed, silent, watching Meatha with interest.
The blackness became absolute as they thrust themselves in. How did Meatha know where she was going that there was no drop-off? Zephy pulled back, but Meatha would not allow that; she dragged Zephy on, pushing ahead with calm certainty. Only when Zephy glanced behind could she see anything at all, and then just the rapidly shrinking cave opening; she felt they would leave the world behind completely when they left that feeble light. Meatha pulled too hard in her eagerness, pushing into the darkness as steadily as if she carried a lantern.
Zephy strained to see or to feel with some sense what lay ahead and around them, but she could not; there was only the heavy blackness as if she could remember nothing else, did not know what light was. At one point they heard water running and felt a cool surge of air. There was a wall on their left now, smelling of dirt and satisfyingly rough and real. But what lay on the right? Was there an abyss? Zephy clung to the left-hand wall and felt Thorn’s hand on her arm. But whether to steady her from a fall or from her own fear, she did not know.
If you lived in darkness all your life, she thought, and had never seen light, you would not be able to imagine what the world looked like. Do we, Zephy wondered, live in a world where there is something we can’t see, but is there around us just the same?
The vision in the tunnel had implied that this was so. And the Cloffi Covenants taught that there was another world invisible to them. Before, she had never really believed that. Could part of the Cloffi teaching be truth, while the rest of it was not? But of course, Tra. Hoppa had told them that, that the most successful lies had enough truth in them to lead you into belief. Well, she had seen the vision in the tunnel; she had seen that other world for herself.
But then that stubborn doubt nagged at her again: it could all have been imagined. Still she followed Meatha blindly, though her thoughts were confused and uncertain.
At last they began to see something ahead, black shapes in the blackness. The dark was less complete, and Zephy felt as if she could breathe again. After an interminable time more she was seeing the sides of the cave. And finally she could see that they were on a wide flat path walled by earth and stone. It seemed to Zephy now that she could define the murky spaces around her with other senses than her eyes, with the feel of the space, with some sense of air on her skin—though she had not been able to in the blackness.
The ceiling was twice as tall as Thorn in some places, and at others rose to a height Zephy could not judge. The tunnel was still growing lighter. It turned and twisted as if it had been cut by natural forces through the softer areas of rock, as if perhaps the river had run here once. She wanted to ask Thorn, but she could not bring herself to speak, even to whisper.
Then they turned a corner and saw brighter light directly ahead; the tunnel widened into a sweeping cave lit from above. Meatha had stopped, but now she broke away from them to stride quickly on. Zephy stood in the entrance, the space opening before and above her; space and light, for the walls of the cave rose to an incredible height and opened to the sky as if a plug had been cut deep down into the mountain, a round hole revealing a drift of clouds. The floor of the cave was sparsely grassed and the wagon stood at one side, its colors bright against the stone, the two mares grazing near it. A thin line of smoke rose from an open fire like a thread pulled taut to the sky, and on the fire a haunch of meat was browning. The smell of crisp meat filled the cave, making the saliva come in Zephy’s mouth.
The light seemed translucent, gave an other-worldly quality to the cave. She stood quietly, feeling the silence and the mystery, the rightness of it—and then she saw Anchorstar standing at the edge of the clearing.
Over his leather tunic and trousers he wore a brown cape against the chill. It swept the ground and was hooded, his white hair showing at the temples. He gave the impression of great height and strength. Meatha stood facing him. Neither spoke, but their expressions were changing softly, as if with shared thoughts, and Zephy was drawn to watch them in spite of the sense that she was intruding, for the silent speaking was wonderful and frightening to her. She stood staring, half-believing in him and half-afraid.
And then she turned and saw Thorn’s expression, and felt his trust and satisfaction in Anchorstar.
At last Meatha moved away and Anchorstar looked across at Zephy and Thorn and smiled, and the tenseness went from Zephy so she relaxed and was engulfed by a sense of warmth.
He was of Sangur, she knew that at once in a sudden flood of knowledge. He had come up from Sangur’s cape coast through Pelli and Farr, and then Aybil, singing and juggling in the villages, doing his tricks of magic. And she knew that he had come seeking. She had a blurred sense of faces, children’s faces, and of Meatha among them, then a sense of people running—faces full of fear, their open mouths shouting wordlessly: a sense of terror and repulsion . . . then of sadness.
Thorn steadied her, for he had seen it too.
When Anchorstar spoke to them, he spoke in silence from his mind, and they knew at once that he was pleased that each of them responded, had the skill for which he searched. There was a sense of his great wonder as their thoughts filled with his silent words, You have the gift of seeing, of true seeing.
“Ynell’s gift,” Thorn breathed huskily.
Yes, Ynell’s gift, Thorn of Dunoon. You think you have only a trace of it, young Cherban, only enough to tease you, but that is not the fact.
Thorn blanched, dropping his head as if he had been chastened.
“And Zephy Eskar does not understand,” Anchorstar was speaking aloud now. He clapped a strong hand on Zephy’s shoulder and stood looking into her eyes. His eyes were golden, flecked with light, and as she stared into them, Meatha and Thorn faded, the cave faded. There was brightness, a wind. She was swirling, weightless. She was lifted above the land, she was rising on the wind . . .
She was the wind; she was looking down on Ere. She was drifting and blown at a great height above the land, could see clouds swimming below her, and beneath them the green sweeping reaches of Ere, bright green hills washed with moving shadows as the clouds passed below in a space, in a distance, that was overwhelming. The land swept below her, the dark bristling stands of woods and forests, the twisting rivers. She could see how land touched sea in a lace of white beaches and foaming surf, see Carriol’s outer islands like green gems, see the Bay of Pelli curving in between two peninsulas. And in the Bay of Pelli, beneath the transparent waters, the wonder of the three sunken islands and the sunken city, lying still and secret. She could see the pale expanse of high desert with the Cut running through it like a knife wound, the river deep at its bottom lined with green—a trench of lush growth slashing across the pale dry desert.
How bright the other three rivers were, too, as they meandered down through Ere’s green countries from the mountains. And the mountains themselves, black and jagged and thrusting, that circle of mountains, the Ring of Fire, pushed up toward her as if she could touch the highest peaks—snow-clad, some. Then between the peaks a glimpse of a valley so beautiful she was shaken with desire for it, something . . . but it was gone at once, faded, the vision taken abruptly from her.