Eternity Road (7 page)

“I think,” said Avila, “that, in this case, you
are
the Temple.”

“Exactly,” said Silas. “If a message were laid before you, with supernatural claims, how would
you
arrive at a judgment?”

Kaymon’s gaze swept left and right, seeking help.

“There
is
no way to be sure,” said Telchik, “unless you are standing there when it happens. And even then—”

“Even then,” said Orvon, an advocate’s son, “we may be seeing only what we wish to see.”

“Then we may safely conclude,” said Telchik, “that there is no way to know whether a communication does in fact have divine backing.”

Several of the disputants glanced uncomfortably at Avila, to see how she was taking the general assault on her career. But she watched placidly, with a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“And what have you to say of all this?” Silas asked her.

“They may be right,” she said matter-of-factly. “Even assuming that Shanta exists, we cannot know for certain that she really cares about us. We may well be living in a world that has come about by accident. In which everything is transient. In which nothing matters.” Her eyes were very dark. “I don’t say I believe this, but it
is
a possibility. But that possibility is outside the parameters of the discussion. I would propose to you that the gods may find us a difficult subject for communication.”

“How do you mean?” asked Orvon.

She pressed her palms together. “Orvon, may I ask where you live?”

“Three miles outside the city. On the heights above River Road.”

“Good.” She looked pleased. “It’s a lovely location. Let us suppose that, this evening, when you are on your way home, the Goddess herself were to walk out from behind some trees to wish you good day. How would you respond?”

“He would lose his voice,” laughed Telchik.

“I suppose it would be a little unnerving.”

“And if she gave you a message to bring back to us?”

“I would most certainly do so.”

She nodded and raised her eyes to encompass the others. “And how would we respond to Orvon’s claim?”

“Nobody’d believe it,” said Selenico, youngest of the participants.

“And what,” asked Silas, “if the Goddess had said hello instead to Avila? Would we believe
her
?”

“No,” said Orvon, “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” asked Avila.

“Because you are not objective.”

“No,” said Silas. “Not because she is not objective, but because she is
committed
. There is a difference.”

“Indeed,” rumbled Telchik. “I should like to hear what it is. Shanta would do better to give her message to
me
.”

“Yes,” said Avila, brightening, “because if
you
came with such a story, we still might not believe it, but we would know that something very odd had happened.”

Sigmon, a young man whose primary interest was in the sciences, suggested that a deity who wished to communicate would necessarily want an unbeliever, to allay suspicions. “And furthermore,” he said, “he might want to go for drama, rather than a simple statement that we should do thus and so.”

“How do you mean?” asked Kaymon.

Sigmon’s brow wrinkled. “Well,” he said, “if I were a god, and I wanted to tell the Illyrians that Haven exists—”

All faces turned in his direction.

“—I can think of nothing better than inspiring Karik Endine to produce a copy of the
Connecticut Yankee
.”

The moon set at about midnight. It was well into the early hours when Chaka got out of the bed in which she had lain sleepless, and dressed. She put on dark blue riding breeches and a black shirt. She had no dark jacket and had to make do with a light brown coat that was more awkward than she would have liked. (The temperature had fallen too far to try to get by without wearing something warm.) She pulled on a pair of moccasins, attached a lamp to her belt, and stopped in her workshop to pick up a couple of thin shaping blades.

Shortly thereafter she stood in the shadow of Flojian’s villa, listening to his horses move uneasily in the barn. A brisk northern wind shook the trees. The night was dark under banks of clouds. The only lights she could see were out on the river, moving slowly downstream.

The villa was dark. The tree on the northern side was higher than she remembered, its branches flimsier. But she got lucky. Before attempting the climb she circled the house, trying windows and doors. The latch on one of the shutters in the rear had not been properly secured and she was able to worry it loose. She opened the window, pulled the draperies apart, and peered into the darkness beyond.

Seeing nothing to give her pause, she threw a leg over the sill and climbed into the room. This was the first time in her adult life she had flagrantly violated someone’s property, and she was already trying to compose her story in case she got caught.

Too much alcohol. I didn’t think this looked like
my
house
.

Or,
I fell off my horse last night. Hit my head. I don’t remember anything since. Where am I?

She was in the reception room where she had first met Silas. To her left was the inner parlor in which Flojian had told her of her bequest. And to the right was the north wing, Karik Endine’s solitary domain. Curtains were drawn across all the windows, and the room was quite dark. She waited for the tables and chairs to appear, and then navigated among them until she found a doorway in the right-hand wall. It opened into more darkness. She went through and closed the door softly behind her.

It was a passageway. She bumped into a chair, started to feel her way around a server, and knocked over a candlestick holder. It fell with a terrible clatter and she froze.

But the noise seemed not to attract anyone’s attention. She righted the candlestick holder and passed through another door into a large sitting room, illuminated through a bank of windows. This was, she knew, Karik’s wing. She looked outside to assure herself no one was about, and used a match to light the candle in her lamp.

The room was masculine, filled with hand-drawn charts and drinking mugs, and heavy oak furniture of a somber cast. (The charts depicted areas of political influence during various eras in the valley’s history.) A chess game, with ornate pieces, was in progress on a tabletop.

A wide set of carpeted stairs led to the second floor. The lower level consisted of three rooms. She opened cabinets, inspected desk drawers, examined closets. The area had been thoroughly cleaned. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, everything was gone. No empty glass nor scrap of paper remained to show there had been an occupant only a few days ago.

She was about to start upstairs when she heard a squeal. The hinges on the door from the corridor. She doused her light and ducked behind a curtain just as the door opened and someone thrust a lamp into the room.

“Who’s here?” Toko’s voice.

Her heart beat so hard she could not believe it wasn’t audible.

He came into the room a few steps and raised the lamp. She tried not to breathe. The shadows lengthened and shifted as Toko looked first this way and then that.

Then, apparently satisfied, he withdrew and closed the door. His steps faded, but she waited several minutes. When she was convinced he would not come back, she tiptoed upstairs.

There were two rooms on the upper level: a bedroom and a work area. The bedroom was made up, and it too retained no sign of its former owner.

The workroom was long, L-shaped, with wide windows. The curtains were drawn back, providing a view of the river. Glasses and goblets filled a cabinet. The windows opened onto a wide balcony, where several chairs surrounded a circular table. One might have thought the occupant had been accustomed to entertaining.

There were two padded chairs inside, a long worktable with several drawers, a desk, a pair of matching cabinets, some empty shelves, and a chest.

The chest was locked.

The worktable drawers were empty, save for one or two pieces of paper. The desk contained a few pens, some ink, and a blank notebook. She found a sweater in one of the cabinets, somehow missed in the press to collect everything. And a revolver, which she recognized as the work of the same gunsmith who had supplied most of her own family’s weapons. Strange, she thought, that we forgot how to print books. But we remember how to make guns.

She knelt down in front of the chest.

The lock was designed to keep out curious children, rather than thieves. She produced the narrower of her blades, and inserted it. Minutes later the mechanism gave and she raised the lid.

She looked down at an oilskin packet. It was roughly sixteen inches wide by a foot. She lifted it out, set it down under the lamp, and released the binding cords.

It contained a sketch which she recognized immediately as her brother’s work. It was dated July 25, making it later than any of the others.

The drawing depicted a rock wall rising out of a frothy sea. A sliver of moon floated in a sky swept with dark clouds. It was one of his better efforts, but there was nothing extraordinary about the drawing itself.

Nothing extraordinary, that is, until she saw the title, which appeared in its customary place below his signature.

Haven
.

In an age that depended on sails and oars for power, the
Mississippi was a cranky partner at best. Northbound cargo had to be hauled upriver by a combination of flatboats and draft horses. To complicate matters, the river was prone to change course periodically. It had swallowed but only partially digested many of the concrete and brick cities that had sprouted along its banks in ancient times. These had now become navigational hazards. There were seven major collapsed bridges, three of which, at Argon, at Farroad on the Arkansaw, and at Masandik in the south, effectively blocked any vessel larger than a canoe. This was the factor that made Illyria the crossroads of the League, and its center of power. And which created economic opportunities for Flojian Endine.

His draft animals were raised on two ranches near Cantonfile. He’d been planning for some time to expand the number of horses in his stables, and his conversations with business allies in Masandik convinced him that the traffic would support the investment. On his return to Illyria he met with his groom at the pier to devise a strategy. When the morning-long meeting ended, and the groom had left, he sat back with a cup of tea, feeling satisfied with his life. Business was good, his financial health assured, and the future bright. He was living in the morning of a new age, now that his father was gone. The brooding presence was removed from the house at last. Only the shadow of his ruined name remained.

What
had
the old man done out there?

Well, no matter. Maybe the speculations would stop now. It was time for people to let go and bury their dead and be done with it. But that was unlikely. The damned book had appeared, as if Karik had been determined to stir everything up again. When he’d seen what it was, Flojian had been tempted to burn it. But he could not bring himself to violate his father’s last wish, even though he’d hated him for it.

He suddenly realized Chaka Milana was standing in his doorway. Her eyes radiated hostility.

“Hello, Chaka,” he said, carefully inserting concern into his voice. “Is something wrong?”

She was clutching an oilskin packet. “I owe you an apology.” Her tone was flat.

“For what?” He got up and came around the desk. “Please come in.”

She held out the packet. He recognized it, and his heart sank.

“I was in your house last night.”

A welter of emotions rolled through him. “So I see. Is your conscience giving you trouble?”

She glanced at the oilskin. “I’d be grateful if you’d explain this to me.”

Flojian made no move to open it.

“You
do
know what’s in it.”

“Of course I know.”

“Tell me what it means.”

Flojian would have liked to put the same question to his father. “It’s a false alarm. What else could it be? They thought they’d found it, but they hadn’t. Simple as that.”

“Here’s something else that’s been kept quiet. Why?”

“Why did
I
keep it quiet? What makes you think
I
knew anything about it? My father didn’t have a very high regard for me, Chaka. I’m the last one he’d confide in. I didn’t even know the sketch existed until we cleaned up the day after the ceremony. Anyway, I suspect he didn’t make it public because it would have led to exactly this kind of reaction.”

Her expression hardened. Flojian hated confrontations. He preferred to be liked, and much of his personal success was predicated on the fact that people willingly threw business his way, and others were anxious to work for him.

“I think you owed me the truth,” said Chaka.

“What
is
the truth, Chaka? That he
might
have found what he was looking for? Or that your brother
might
have jumped to an unjustified conclusion? You know as well as I do that at least one of the sketches is pure fantasy. Remember
The Dragon?
Who knows where the truth is?

“My father devoted his entire life first to trying to establish that Haven existed, and then to trying to find the place. He dreamed about it, fought for it, and lost his reputation over it. Do you seriously believe that he could have found it but neglected in the face of all that repudiation to mention it to anyone? Does that make any sense to you at all?”

She stood her ground. “No,” she said. “But neither does his failing to mention the Mark Twain to anyone. There’s a pattern here.”

“
What
pattern? Look, he could have found the book anywhere.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “When he told me about my brother’s death, he said they got careless, that they were preoccupied because they thought they were almost
there
. In fact, if this is what it appears to be, Arin was alive at the end of the journey.”

“Chaka, it’s all guesswork.” He opened the packet, removed the sketch, and studied it.
July 25
.

“It’s the last in the series,” she said.

He sighed. “I’m sorry there’re still all these questions. But this is why I didn’t say anything. It’s why I should have destroyed it. I knew it would just start the old trouble up again.” He put the sketch back inside its wrapper and held it out for her. “Keep it if you like.”

She stared at him. “And that’s the end of it?”

Flojian’s anger had drained. He was just tired of it all and wanted it to go away. “Chaka, what do you want from me? You know as much as I do. Tell me what I can do that will satisfy you, and I’ll try to comply.”

Her eyes were wet. “Help me find out what really happened,” she said.

“And how do you propose we do that?” Flojian leaned against the edge of a table. “Chaka, you’re aware that if we make this public, my father’s reputation is going to take another beating. I don’t know, maybe he deserves it. But I can’t see what good will come out of it.”

“I’m interested in the truth,” she said, “and I’m not much worried about anyone’s reputation.” She put the oilskin into her pocket and started for the door.

“I’m sure you are,” he growled. “Incidentally, if you think about any more late night visits, please be careful. I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a prowler.”

“I wish we could be sure.” Silas hunched down on his elbows, studying the thirteenth sketch by candlelight. “But he’s right: It could just be something Arin made up. Or a misunderstanding. They thought they were there, but they weren’t. It could be
that
simple.”

She shook her head. “Why would he do that? He was along for the specific purpose of recording the expedition.”

One sketch,
River Valley
, still hung on a wall in Flojian’s villa. The others were arranged sequentially on Silas’s worktable.

Silas looked at
Frontier
. “I know this place,” he said.

“I do, too. That’s upriver, just south of Argon. It’s the fork. Where the Ohio breaks off.”

They were in Silas’s modest house in the tiny government quarter near the Imperium. A light rain fell against the windows. Chaka glanced out at the winding gravel street, which had been full of people when she’d arrived, but was now deserted. It had grown dark, from both the storm and the sunset.

Silas moved the lamp closer to the sketch titled
The City
. “Have you ever read
Showron?
” he asked.

“I never heard of him.”

“Showron Voyager was a Baranji scholar. He’s supposed to have visited Haven near the end of his life. He writes about the scholar-caretakers, still living there generations after the October Patrol era. More to the point, he describes his journey.” Silas dipped a pen into his inkwell and began to write, stopping periodically to gaze at the wall. When he’d finished, he looked critically at the result, changed a word, and handed it to her.

We fled the demon towers
,

And came at last to Mamara
,

With its restless spirits
.

“Demon towers and restless spirits,” she said, smiling. “Sounds ominous.”

He rapped his fingers against the table. “Demons are all in the imagination,” said Silas dismissively. He looked down at the sketch. “But those towers could be what he was talking about.”

“It’s all just too vague,” said Chaka.

“Maybe not.” Silas produced a sketch of his own. “This is from a Baranjan edition of
The Travels
.” The Baranjans had occupied the Mississippi Valley for a brief period before the rise of the modern cities. “The original’s in Makar.”

The sketch depicted a metal cradle and platform, mounted against the face of a cliff. A curious bullet-shaped object lay in the cradle. Two human figures stood beside it, engaged in conversation. There was a sense of deep sky.

“What is it?” asked Chaka.

“This one’s a vehicle. I don’t draw very well, so it’s hard to tell. In the original, the vehicle is drawn in a way that incorporates motion. But look here.”

She didn’t see what he was driving at until he put the thirteenth sketch,
Haven
, under her eyes. Slight bulge here. Narrow shelf there. Vertical lines in the rock face.
It looked like the same cliff
. “They
did
find it,” she said.

“Maybe. Or maybe Arin had seen this and was reproducing it. Possibly without realizing it. Or maybe it’s a coincidence. But whatever it is, how could we possibly figure out where they went?” He blurted it out, without immediately realizing what he was suggesting, and they stared uncomfortably across the table at each other.

She had not intended to tell anyone else what she’d done, least of all Raney. But somehow, after they’d shared a meal that evening at her villa, she couldn’t resist. He responded predictably by adopting a severe mien and asking whether she’d lost her mind. “What would have happened if you’d been caught?”

“I think he would have booted me out and told me not to come back.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” he said. Raney had a tendency to talk to her sometimes as if they were married. Illyria was a society in transition. It had been puritanical under its emperors, who guarded the sanctity of the family and the honor of the nation’s women with enthusiasm, while maintaining their own harems. But the overthrow of the autocracy and the rise of republican principles had fueled a new sense of liberty. The old institutions and centers of authority were being swept away. And with them, some were saying, the decency and common courtesy that made civilization worthwhile. There seemed to be more roughnecks in the streets, more pushing and shoving in the bazaars, more open sexuality, more abandoned children, more violations of good taste. Many were calling for a return to imperial rule. And almost everyone agreed that the nation was in decline.

Chaka’s age, and the lack of a controlling male hand in her household, rendered her automatically suspect among the older families, who held the balance of political and economic power in the state. Therefore, Raney saw himself as a man on a white horse as well as a suitor. He was not sufficiently sophisticated to disguise this view, which Chaka found increasingly annoying with the passage of time, although she might not have been able to say why. Yet she liked him all the same, and enjoyed spending time with him.

“Raney,” she said, “do you understand what I’m telling you? It looks as if they found what they were looking for.”

“Who cares? Chaka,
who cares
? It’s over.” He was angry that she had put herself in danger, relieved that she had escaped without harm, frustrated that she clung to this lunatic business. “It was nine years ago. Unless Endine left a map. Did he leave a map?”

“No.”

“Instructions how to get there?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Then I think you should take the Mark Twain, be grateful, and let go.”