Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (6 page)

Then again, was Rigg
really
leaving it up to him? How could Umbo possibly say no?

I can say no, if I want to, thought Umbo. “No,” he said.

Everyone except Rigg seemed surprised. “Umbo?” asked Param.

Now that he had refused, he had to come up with a reason. “Are we going to change it?” asked Umbo. “And what if it changes
us
? What if I send Rigg back and he gets killed? We don’t know how violent these people were. Or what diseases
they had. What if Rigg catches the plague that wiped them out? What’s the
point
?”

“Don’t send him back alone,” said Olivenko. “Send me and Loaf along to protect him.”

“From disease?” asked Umbo.

“Whatever happened here to empty the city,” said Rigg, “I think it has everything to do with what Vadesh wants us to do here.”

“He hasn’t asked us to do anything,” said Param.

“But he wants it all the same,” said Rigg. “Didn’t you see how attentive he was to us? We matter to him. Father was that way—Ram was. If you mattered to him, he homed on you like a bat after a fly. You filled his whole gaze. But if you didn’t matter, it was like you didn’t exist.”

“True,” said Umbo. “Sometimes I mattered to him, but mostly not.”

“Vadesh couldn’t take his eyes off us,” said Rigg.

“Off
you
,” said Olivenko, chuckling.

“And Param, and Umbo,” said Rigg. “The time travelers.”

“We all traveled in time,” said Loaf, with a slight smile. “He just has a thing for children.”

“Someday, Loaf, I’m going to be big enough to smack you around,” Rigg answered him.

“I’ve seen both your parents,” said Olivenko, “and no, Rigg, you’ll never be that big.
I’ll
never be that big.”

“Good to keep that in mind,” said Loaf.

Olivenko rolled his eyes. “I’m trying to show you proper respect here, Loaf. You don’t have to put me in my place. I know my place.”

“I was just joking,” said Loaf uncomfortably.

But he had not been joking—nobody in this group knew Loaf as well as Umbo did, and he knew Loaf had spoken his mind.

“What I think,” said Rigg, “is that I should walk around out here and see what the paths can tell me. There’s no purpose to going back in time if we arrive at some point where nothing decisive is happening, right? And if I can’t find anything that looks promising, then we won’t do it. Agreed?”

Umbo wanted to laugh. Rigg sounded so conciliatory, as if he was giving in. But in fact what he was really getting them all to agree to was that if, in Rigg’s sole judgment, there was some point in the past where they
could
learn something, then they
would
go back. Rigg hadn’t argued with anybody, but he was
getting his way
.

Nobody else seemed to notice, and nobody else seemed to mind. And what bothered Umbo most was the fact that he knew Rigg was right, they had to find something out before trusting Vadesh another moment, and Umbo had only disagreed because he couldn’t stand having Rigg decide everything. But what could he do when Rigg was right?

Umbo and the others tagged along, watching Rigg as he got lost in thought, seeing whatever it was that he called “paths.” For an hour they watched him move around through the lawns and meadows surrounding the city. Finally he sat down and Loaf immediately led the others closer to him. Only Umbo hung back and looked, not at Rigg, but at the city. It was more magnificent than anything Umbo had seen in O or Aressa Sessamo. Every building was a separate work of art, and yet they were all pieces of
something much larger and more beautiful. It’s as if each building were part of a tapestry, some parts raised, some parts kept low. Perhaps if we could stand inside the tallest tower, we could see what the tapestry depicted. Maybe a map, like the globe inside the Tower of O. Maybe a portrait of a person. Maybe some message spelled out in towers, or the shadows of towers at sunset.

Umbo became aware of voices coming closer.

“The last thing we want to do is go back into the middle of a battle,” said Loaf. So apparently Rigg had learned something about what had happened here.

“Not in the middle,” said Rigg. “At the edge. Far back from the edge. Out of danger. Nobody was dying right here, for instance.”

“You can see death?” asked Umbo.

“No,” said Param. “Rigg already explained—if you had come with us you’d know. He just sees where paths end.”

“There were people watching the battle,” said Rigg. “Just a few. Umbo can send me back to their time—”

“Send
us
,” said Loaf.

“You’ll scare them,” said Param.

“I’ll smile very nicely,” said Loaf, demonstrating his best battlefield grimace.

“Oh, don’t do that,” said Olivenko. “You’d scare your own mother.”

“I need to ask them what’s happening,” said Rigg. “That’s all. I hope Vadesh was right when he said the Wall contains all languages.”

“If you can’t understand them,” said Umbo, “just signal me and I’ll bring you all back.”

“All who?” asked Param.

Loaf and Olivenko looked at her stupidly. “Us,” they said in unison.

“I’m going too,” said Param.

“Too dangerous,” said Loaf.

“As if anything we’re doing is safe,” said Param. “One of you needs to stay here with Umbo, somebody who can protect him.”

Loaf turned to Param. “You really want to see a battle? War is messy.”

“And you’re afraid I can’t deal with bodies torn apart and people screaming in agony?” asked Param.

“If you
can
avoid it, you should,” said Loaf.

“My mother nearly protected me to death,” said Param. “I’m done with that. I’m not strong enough to wield a sword or cut down a tree or lift a corner of a coach, like some of you. But I have eyes and ears and I want to be part of this. Directly.”

It never occurred to any of them that maybe Umbo himself would like to see the past. No, he was the anchor, he was the one who
couldn’t
go. “I’ll send you all,” said Umbo. “Stop arguing and hang on to each other. Rigg, tell me when you’ve picked your path.”

Olivenko rounded on Umbo. “Don’t you even care what happens to Param?”

Umbo tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “Wanting to get on with it is not the same thing as not caring. She wants to go. Why shouldn’t she?”

“Because it’s dangerous,” said Olivenko. “Because members of the royal family get no special protection against death.”

“Special protection is exactly what you’re trying to give me,” said Param.

Umbo pointed out the obvious. “If anybody can take care of herself, it’s Param.”

Then Rigg spoke, much more softly than any of the others, and yet somehow his voice made them all fall silent. How does he
do
that? thought Umbo.

“The thing that worries me,” said Rigg, “is that if Param starts slicing time, back there ten thousand years in the past, and
disappears
, how can you bring her back?”

Rigg must think we’re all stupid. “I have a really special plan to keep that from happening,” said Umbo. “Watch this.” He turned to Param and spoke very solemnly. “Param, when you’re back in the past: Don’t. Slice. Time.”

She answered in the same spirit of mock soberness. “What an excellent idea. But what if it gets really dangerous, Umbo? What if I can’t help it and I just start chopping time into little bits?”

“Well, you simply mustn’t,” said Umbo. “If things get scary, you just signal me the way Rigg does. Do you think you can do that same hand motion he does? Do your hands work like that, or do you need Rigg to show you?”

Rigg flushed with embarrassment; he wasn’t used to people mocking him.

“Stop that,” said Loaf angrily.

“Why is Umbo the only one who sees that I have as much ordinary common sense as anybody?” said Param. “Come on, Rigg, pick your path and let’s get cracking.”

“What’s the rush?” murmured Olivenko. “It’s not as if the past is going anywhere.”

“The present is,” said Umbo. What if Vadesh came out and stopped them?

Rigg still looked embarrassed—or was he angry? But he made no complaint. “I’ve got the path I want,” said Rigg. “Push us back, Umbo.”

They were all holding on to each other, the way Rigg and Loaf and Olivenko had held on to Barbfeather when they went through the Wall. And, just like that time, Umbo felt a great lurch as his push into the past swept out quickly like the current of a river, carrying them much farther into the past than Umbo could have sent them on his own. It was Rigg’s ability to hook on to someone in the past that drew them, as much as Umbo’s pushing. And it was so far that they went, ten thousand years, almost as far as the whole history of the human race on Garden.

They did not disappear, of course—Umbo could see them as well as ever. But they all stumbled because the ground must have been lower then; perhaps the thatch of the grass had not built up so high. They fell a bit, then rose up and their eyes were riveted on the grassy field in front of the city, where apparently there was a war going on. As usual, Umbo saw none of it. But when Rigg reached out and touched someone there in the past, Umbo saw a glimpse of clothing, a brief outline of a person. Rigg let go almost at once and the image disappeared.

CHAPTER 4

Battle

In all her life, Param had never been in the presence of more than about fifty people at a time. Even that was unusual, and she had preferred to avoid large dinners or recitals or whatever was being put on in Mother’s honor. And while social events could be full of vicious infighting, it was done with words, looks, and gestures. Nothing had prepared her for war.

She had imagined war, of course—that was what most of history was about, the Sessamoto lords-in-the-tent leading their marauders on devastating raids against whatever village or town looked least protected, and then as kings-in-the-tent forcing the other tribes of the northeast to unite under their rule. Finally the King-in-the-Tent had conquered every nation of the Stashi Plain and subdued every freehold and every wild tribe of the woodlands and every fishing village of the coasts and through all of her
study of that history, Param had pictured it all like a combination of the game of queens and the game of clay-casting, with the clay balls alternately knocking over pawns and queens, and dashing to pieces against them.

She had an intellectual knowledge that war was bloody. King Algar One-eye was an obvious example, and General Potonokissu had worn a wooden leg when he walked, though never when he rode. They had been maimed in battle, and if such things could happen to the rulers of armies, Param could only imagine what happened to the ordinary soldiers.

But when all but Umbo joined hands and suddenly dropped into the past, Param was almost overwhelmed by the noise of it. She could hear yelling: fierce cries of warriors, shouted commands from officers, screams of wounded men. And there was a smell of burning meat that almost gagged her, mixed as it was with the other stinks of the battlefield.

Her reflex was to sliver time so she could disappear. She relied on this ability to retreat from anything that frightened her. But she caught herself, realizing that Rigg had not been wrong after all when he worried about her disappearing in the past.

She knelt up and saw that Rigg, who was more used to sudden shifts of time, was already standing up and striding toward three adult women who were watching the battle. Rigg would speak to them; Param had no desire to. The women looked careworn and grief-stricken. They stood near a stockade that surrounded the city and sheltered their party from the view of the soldiers where the battle was being waged.

The stockade looked as if it had been hastily thrown up in
a day, braced from behind here and there. She wondered how well it would hold up against a determined enemy. It had been clumsily built; through gaps between the poles it was possible to see the battle.

But Param did not want to see the battle. She had thought that was what she was coming to see, but now that she was here, it was the city that fascinated her, because it was only half built. Only the lower buildings existed, and instead of the uniform black of the towers in Param’s own time, these had been brightly painted, though many were faded and weathered. Yet the colors seemed vivid on this sunny day; it was as if the city had been decorated for a festival.

From the top of one of the towers, a beam of pure heat shimmered the air. Param followed the beam and then strode the five steps to the stockade and peered through. Where the beam landed, the grass was erupting in flame, and men were fleeing from it.

At first Param noticed little distinction between the two armies—they were masses of human shapes brandishing weapons. The numbers seemed evenly matched. But soon, from looking at those nearest her, she realized that all the defenders were better armed—swords and bows against clubs and crude spears.

Yet instead of cutting through the attackers, the swords of the defenders seemed rarely to slice flesh. The attackers always dodged away, avoiding the cuts and blows. However, the clubs and spears of the attackers landed all the time; if it had not been for the armor of the defenders, many would have fallen.

Why were the attackers so much better at fighting?

Then Param realized that the attackers all had large, strangely
shaped heads; a moment later she saw that their heads were deformed because they had facemasks almost entirely covering their heads. Many of them seemed to have weirdly misplaced eyes, as if the parasite, having covered the face of a man, grew him a new eye out of its own rough flesh. Param found them repulsive and fascinating. The men with facemasks fought savagely and skillfully. They were quick, dancing to dodge incoming arrows from the defenders, darting forward to strike blows which rarely missed, though the defenders’ armor usually turned away the blade.

Another beam came from the tower. It should have been a devastating advantage for the defenders, to have that beam of fire. But instead of striking into one of the masses of the attacking army, it struck an area that was mostly empty of living men of either side. Again flames gouted upward, and men of both sides ran from the area of flame. The battlefield was dotted with patches of flame or cinders or ash, so that neither army could maintain good order.