Earthborn (Homecoming) (7 page)

“How long?” asked Husu.

“Eighty days,” said Monush.

“It’s the wet season in high country,” said Husu. “Are we to freeze or starve? What is the plan?”

“Keep five men there for ten days,” said the king. “Then another five, and another, for ten days each.”

Monush raised his left hand in agreement. Husu raised his left wing, but muttered nonetheless, “To bring back worthless bigots, yes, I’m sure that’s worth the trouble.”

Mon was surprised that Husu was allowed to speak so boldly.

“I understand the anger the sky people feel toward the Zenifi,” said Father. “That’s why I take no offense at the mockery in your acceptance of my proposal.”

Husu bowed his head. “My king is kinder than his servant deserves.”

“That’s the truth,” muttered bGo. “Someday Husu will go too far and the rest of us will pay for it.”

The rest of “us”? He must mean the sky people as
a whole, thought Mon. It was a disturbing thought, that somehow the sky people would all be held responsible for Husu’s audacity. “That wouldn’t be fair,” said Mon.

bGo chuckled softly. “Listen to him, Bego. He says it isn’t fair—as if that means it couldn’t happen.”

“In the secret heart of every human man,” whispered Bego, “the sky people are nothing more than impertinent beasts.”

“That’s not true,” said Mon. “You’re wrong!”

Bego looked at him, bemused.

“I’m a human, aren’t I?” demanded Mon. “And in
my
heart the angels are the most beautiful and glorious people.”

Mon had not been shouting, but the intensity in his voice had stilled all other voices. In the sudden silence, he realized that everyone had heard him. He looked at his Father’s surprised expression and blushed.

“It seems to me,” said Father, “that some of the council have forgotten that only those with the king’s ear can speak here.”

Mon rose to his feet, hot with shame. “Forgive me, sir.”

Father smiled. “I believe it was Aronha who said that when you dug in your heels, you were always right.” He turned to Aronha. “Do you stand by that?”

A bit uncertain, Aronha looked his father in the eye and said, “Yes, sir.”

“Then I believe it is the opinion of this council that the angels are indeed the most beautiful and glorious people.” And Father raised his glass to Husu.

Husu stood, bowed, and lifted his glass in response. Both drank. Then Father looked at Monush, who laughed, stood, and lifted his glass to drink as well.

“The words of my second son have brought peace to this table,” said Father. “That is always wisdom, to these ears, at least. Come, have done. The council is over and there is nothing more for us here except to eat—and ponder how the dreams of young girls,
brought by young boys, have set in motion the feet and wings of warriors.”

Edhadeya waited for her father to come to her small room to talk with her as he did every night. Usually she was happy that he was coming, eager to tell him how she did in school, to show off a new word or phrase in the ancient language, to tell him of some adventure or gossip or achievement of the day. Tonight, though, she was afraid, and she wasn’t sure which she feared more—that Mon had told Father of her dream, or that he hadn’t. If he hadn’t, then she would have to tell him now herself, and then he might pat her shoulder and tell her that the dream was strange and wonderful and then he would just ignore it, not realizing that it was a true dream.

When he came to her doorway, though, Edhadeya knew that Mon had told him. His eyes were sharp and searching. He stood in silence, his arms bracing the doorframe. Finally he nodded. “So the spirit of Luet is awake in my daughter.”

She looked down at the floor, unsure whether he was angry or proud.

“And the spirit of Nafai in my second son.”

Ah. So he wasn’t angry.

“Don’t bother explaining why you couldn’t tell me this yourself,” said Father. “I know why, and I’m ashamed. Luet never had to use subterfuge to get her husband’s ear, nor did Chveya have to get her brother or her husband to speak for her when she had wisdom that others needed to know.”

In one motion he knelt before her and took her hands in his. “I looked around the king’s council tonight, as we finished our meal, thoughts of danger and war in our minds, of the Zenifi in bondage and needing to be saved, and all I could think of was—why have we forgotten what our first ancestors knew? That the Keeper of Earth cares not whether he speaks to a woman or a man?”

“What if it’s not so?” she whispered.

“What, you doubt it now?” asked Father.

“I dreamed the dream, and it was true—but it was Mon who said it was the Zenifi. I didn’t understand it at all till he said that.”

“Keep talking to Mon when you have true dreams,” said Father. “I know this: When Mon spoke, I felt a fire kindle in my heart and I thought—the words came into my mind as clearly as if someone had spoken them in my ear—I thought, A mighty man stands here in boyshape. And then I learned the dream was yours, and again the voice came into my mind: The man who listens to Edhadeya will be the true steward of the Keeper of Earth.”

“Was it—the Keeper who spoke to you?” asked Edhadeya.

“Who knows?” said Father. “Maybe it was fatherly pride. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe it was the voice of the Keeper. Maybe it was the second glass of wine.” He laughed. “I miss your mother,” he said. “She would know better than I what to make of you.”

“I’m doing my best with her,” said Dudagu from the door.

Edhadeya gasped in surprise. Dudagu had a way of moving around silently so that no one knew where she might be eavesdropping.

Father rose to his feet. “But I have never charged you with my daughter’s education,” said Father gently. “So what in the world would you be doing your best
at
?” He grinned at Dudagu and then strode out of Edhadeya’s room.

Dudagu glared at Edhadeya. “Don’t think this dream business can get you anywhere, little girl,” she said. Then she smiled. “What you say to him in here, I can always unsay to him on his pillow.”

Edhadeya smiled her prettiest smile back at her stepmother. Then she opened her mouth and jammed her finger down her throat as if to make herself throw up. A moment later she was smiling prettily again.

Dudagu shrugged. “Four more years till I can have you married off,” she said. “Believe me, I already have my women looking for someone suitable. Someone far away from here.”

She glided silently away from the door and down the hall. Edhadeya threw herself back on her bed and murmured, “I would dearly love to have a true dream of Dudagu Dermo in a boating accident. If you arrange those things, dear Keeper of Earth, keep in mind that she doesn’t swim, but she’s very tall, so the water must be deep.”

The next day all the talk was of the expedition to find the Zenifi. And the morning after that, the lofty people and the officials of the city turned out to see the soldiers march away, the spies flying their daredevil maneuvers in the sky above them. Edhadeya thought, as she watched them go, So this is what a dream can do. And then she thought, I should have more such dreams.

At once she was ashamed of herself. If I ever lie about my dreams and claim a true one when it isn’t so, then may the Keeper take all my dreams away from me.

Sixteen human soldiers, with a dozen spies shadowing them from the air, set out from Darakemba. It was not an army, was not even large enough to be a serious raiding party, and so their departure caused only a momentary stir in the city. Mon watched, though, with Aronha and Edhadeya standing beside him on the roof.

“They should have let me go with them,” said Aronha angrily.

“Are you that generous, that you want the kingdom to come to me?” asked Mon.

“Nobody’s going to be killed,” said Aronha.

Mon didn’t bother to answer. He was perfectly aware that Aronha knew Father was right—there was a touch of madness to this expedition. It was a search party trying to find the location of a dream. Father
took only volunteers, and it was only with great reluctance that he let the great soldier Monush lead them. There was no chance that he would send his heir. “They’d spend all their time worrying about your safety instead of the mission I’m sending them on,” Father had said. “Don’t worry, Aronha. You’ll have your first sight of bloody battle far too soon, I’m sure. If I sent you out this time, though, your mother would rise up from the grave to scold me.” Mon had felt a thrill of fear when he heard this, until he saw that everyone else was taking it as a joke.

Everyone but Aronha, of course, who really was furious at not being included. “My sister can have the dream, my brother can tell you the dream—and what is for me? Tell me that, Father!”

“Why, Aronha, I have given you exactly as much involvement as I have given myself—to stand and watch them go.”

Well, now they were doing just that, standing and watching them go. Normally Aronha would have seen the soldiers off from the steps of the king’s house, but he claimed it would be too humiliating to stand beside the king when he had been declared too useless to go. Father didn’t argue with him, just let him go to the roof, and now here he stood, furious even though he had already admitted to Mon that if he were in Father’s place he’d make the same decision. “Just because Father’s right doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”

Edhadeya laughed. “By the Cottonmouth, Aronha, that’s when Father makes us the maddest!”

“Don’t swear by the Legless One,” said Aronha sharply.

“Father says it’s just a dangerous snake and not a real god so why not?” said Edhadeya defiantly.

“You’re not superstitious now, are you, Aronha?” asked Mon.

“Father says to have respect for the beliefs of others,
and you know half the digger servants still hold the Legless One sacred,” said Aronha.

“Yes,” said Edhadeya, “and they’re always swearing by him.”

“They don’t say his name outright,” said Aronha.

“But Aronha, it’s just a snake.” Edhadeya wagged her head back and forth like a maize tassel. In spite of himself, Aronha laughed. Then his face got serious again, and he looked back at the sixteen soldiers, jogging out among the fields in single file, heading up the river to the southern border.

“Will they find my dream?” asked Edhadeya.

“If the Keeper sent you the dream,” said Aronha, “it must mean he wants the Zenifi found.”

“But that doesn’t mean that anybody in Monush’s party even knows how to hear the Keeper when she speaks,” said Edhadeya.

Aronha glared but didn’t look at her.
“He
decides whom he’s going to speak to. It’s not a matter of knowing how.”

“
She
can only speak to people who know how to listen, which is why our ancestor Luet was so famous as the waterseer, and her sister Hushidh and her niece Chveya as ravelers. They had great power in them, and—”

“The power wasn’t in
them
,” said Aronha. “It was in the Keeper. He chose them, his favorites—and I might point out that none of them was greater than Nafai himself, who had the cloak of the starmaster and commanded the heavens with his—”

“Bego says it’s all silliness,” said Mon.

The others fell silent.

“He does?” said Aronha, after a while.

“You’ve heard him say so, haven’t you?” asked Mon.

“Never to me,” said Aronha. “What does he say is silliness? The Keeper?”

“The idea of our heroic ancestors,” said Mon. “Everybody claims to have heroic ancestors, he says. By the time enough generations have passed, they become
gods. He says that’s where gods come from. Gods in human shape, anyway.”

“How interesting,” said Aronha. “He teaches the king’s son that the king’s ancestors are made up?”

Only now did Mon realize that he might be causing trouble for his tutor. “No,” he said. “Not in so many words. He just . . . raised the possibility.”

Aronha nodded. “So you don’t want me to turn him in.”

“He didn’t say it outright.”

“Just remember this, Mon,” said Aronha. “Bego might be right, and our stories of great human ancestors with extraordinary powers granted by the Keeper of Earth, those stories might all be exaggerated or even outright fantasies or whatever. But we middle people aren’t the only ones who might want to revise history to fit our present needs. Don’t you think a patriotic sky man might want to cast doubt on the stories of greatness among the ancestors of the middle people? Especially the ancestors of the king?”

“Bego’s not a liar,” said Mon. “He’s a scholar.”

“I didn’t say he was lying,” said Aronha. “He says we believe in these tales because it’s so useful and satisfying to us. Maybe he doubts the same tales because the doubt is useful and satisfying to
him
.”

Mon frowned. “Then how can we ever know what’s true?”

“We can’t,” said Aronha. “That’s what
I
figured out a long time ago.”

“So you don’t believe in
anything
?”

“I
believe
in everything that seems most true to me right now,” said Aronha. “I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe now turn out to be false later. It helps keep me from being upset.”

Edhadeya laughed. “And where did you learn
that
idea?”

Aronha turned to her, mildly offended. “You don’t think I could think it up myself?”

“No,” she said.

“Monush taught me that,” said Aronha. “One day when I asked him if there really was a Keeper of Earth. After all, according to the old stories, there once was a god called the Oversoul, and that turned out to be a machine inside an ancient boat.”

“An ancient boat that flew through the air,” said Mon. “Bego says that only the sky people fly, and that our ancestors invented that flying boat story because middle people were so jealous of the fact that sky people could fly.”

“Some
sky people can fly,” said Edhadeya. “I’ll bet old Bego is so old and fat and creaky he can’t even get off the ground anymore.”

“But he could when he was young,” said Mon. “He can remember.”

“And
you
can imagine,” said Aronha.

Mon shook his head. “To remember is real. To imagine is nothing.”