The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (32 page)

“I brought my own food,” Orion told him.

The kid must have been reading his mind. “You did?”

“Cured meat and traveler’s bread for sure. But none of your tablet stuff. There aren’t any in Lyddington.”

“Figures. What about a filter pump, did you bring one?”

A guilty expression flashed over his face, making the freckles bunch up. “No.”

So he showed the boy how his worked, a neat little mechanical unit that clipped onto his water bottle. Its short hose was dropped into the nearby stream, and he pumped the handle grip, pulling water through the ceramic filters. It wasn’t quite as effective at eradicating bacteria as a powered molecular sieve, but it would get rid of anything truly harmful. The kid had fun, splashing about and filling his own ancient plastic pouches from Ozzie’s bottle.

“What about toothgel?” he asked.

Orion hadn’t brought any of that, nor soap. So he loaned the boy some from his own tube, laughing at Orion’s startled expression when it started to foam and expand in his mouth. He rinsed it out as instructed, spitting furiously.

Chemistry worked here, its reactions a universal constant. When Ozzie checked his handheld array, it remained as dead as a chunk of rock. The damping field, or whatever the Silfen used, had grown progressively stronger as he approached the forest yesterday. Now, it was even affecting his biochip inserts, reducing their capacity to little more than that of a calculator. His virtual vision interface was reduced to absolute basic functions.

As a concept, it fascinated Ozzie, rousing all his old physicist curiosity. He started to ponder mathematical possibilities as they rode off down the path.

“They’re close,” Orion announced.

It was late morning, and they were riding again after giving the horse and pony a rest for a while, walking alongside them. The forest trees were darker now, pines taking over at the expense of the other varieties. Although, to counter their darkling effect, the canopy overhead was letting through a multitude of tiny sunbeams to dapple the ground. The carpet of fallen needles that covered the path gave off a sweet-tangy scent.

“How do you know?” Ozzie asked. Even the lontrus’ heavy foot pads made no sound on the spongy loam.

The boy gave him a slightly superior look, then pulled his pendant out. Inside its metal lattice, the teardrop pearl was glimmering with a strong turquoise light, as if it contained a sliver of daytime sky. “Told you I was their friend.”

Both of them dismounted. Ozzie glanced suspiciously around the gray trunks as if there were going to be an ambush. He’d met the Silfen a couple of times before, on Jandk, walking into the woods with some Commonwealth cultural officers. To be honest he’d been a little disappointed; the lack of communication ability made his human prejudice shine out, it was all too much like talking to retarded children. What some people classed as playful mischief, he thought was just plain irritating; they acted like a play group at kindergarten, running, jumping, climbing trees.

Now, he could hear them approaching. Voices flittered through the trees, sweet and melodic, like birdsong in harmony. He’d never heard the Silfen singing before. It wasn’t something you could record, of course; and they certainly hadn’t sung while he was on Jandk.

As their voices grew louder, he realized how much their song belonged here, in the forest; it ebbed and flowed with a near-hallucinogenic quality, complementing and resonating with both the flickering sunbeams and gentle breeze. It had no words, not even in their language, rather a crooning of single simple notes by throats more capable than any human wind instrument. Then the Silfen themselves arrived, slipping past the trees like gleeful apparitions. Ozzie’s head turned from side to side, trying to keep them in his sight. They began to speed up, adding laugher to their song, deliberately hiding from the humans, dodging behind thick boles, darting across spaces.

There was no doubt about what they were. Every human culture had them in folklore and myth. Ozzie stood in the middle of the giant wood, surrounded by elves. In the flesh they were bipeds, taller than humans, with long slender limbs and a strangely blunt torso. Their heads were proportionally larger than a human’s, but with a flat face, boasting wide feline eyes set above a thin nose with long narrow nostrils. They didn’t have a jaw as such, simply a round mouth containing three neat concentric circles of pointed teeth that could flex back and forth independently of each other, giving them the ability to claw food back into their gullet. As they were herbivores, the vegetation was swiftly shredded as it moved inward. It was the only aspect that defeated the whole notion of them as benign otherworldly entities; whenever they opened their lips the whole mouth looked savage.

Many skin shades had been seen since first contact, they had almost as much variety as the human race, except none of them were ever as pale as Nordic whites. Their skin was a lot tougher than a human’s though, with a leathery feel and a spun-silk shimmer. They wore their hair long; unbound it was like a cloak coming halfway down their backs, though more often they braided it into a single long tail with colorful leather thongs. Without exception they were clad in simple short toga robes made from a copper and gold cloth that shone with a satin gloss. None of them had shoes, their long feet ended in four hook toes with thick nail tips. Hands were similar, four fingers that seemed to bend in any direction, almost like miniature tentacles, giving them a fabulous dexterity.

“Quick,” Orion called. “Follow them, follow them!” He let go of the pony’s reins and slithered down the side. Then he was off, running into the trees.

“Wait,” Ozzie called, to no avail. The boy had reached the trees at the side of the path, and was running hell-for-leather after the laughing, dancing Silfen. “Goddamn.” He hurriedly swung a leg over the saddle, and half fell from Polly’s back. Hanging on to the reins, he pulled the horse along behind him, urging her into the forest proper. His quarry was soon out of sight, all he had to go on were the noises up ahead. Thick boughs stretched out ahead of him, always at head height, causing him to duck around the ends, with Polly whinnying in complaint. The ground underfoot became damp, causing his boots to sink in, slowing him still further.

After five minutes his face was glowing hot, he was breathing harshly and swearing fluently in four languages. But the singing was growing louder again. He was sure he heard Orion’s laughter. A minute later he burst into a clearing. It was fenced by great silver-bark trees, near-perfect hemispheres of dark vermilion leaves towering a hundred feet over the grassy meadow. A little stream gurgled through the center, to fall down a rocky ridge into a deep pool at the far end. As arboreal idylls went, it was heavenly.

The Silfen were all there, nearly seventy of them. Many were climbing up the trees, using hands and feet to grip the rumpled bark, scampering along the arching branches to reach the clusters of nuts that hung amid the fluttering leaves higher up the trees. Orion was jumping up and down beside one trunk, catching the nuts a Silfen was dropping to him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ozzie snapped. He was dimly aware of the song faltering in the background. Orion immediately hunched his shoulders, looking sullen and defensive. “What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t kept up? Where is your pony? How are you going to find it again? This is not a goddamn game, we’re in the middle of an unmapped forest that’s half as big as the planet. I’m not surprised you lost your parents if this is what you did before.”

Orion raised an arm, pointing behind Ozzie. His lips were quivering as he said, “The pony’s there, Ozzie.”

He swiveled around to see both the pony and the lontrus being led into the clearing by a Silfen. Instead of being relaxed and amused as the Ozzie-of-legend should have been, the sight simply deepened his anger. “For Christ’s sake.”

“This is a Silfen world, Ozzie,” Orion explained gently. “Bad things don’t happen here.”

Ozzie glowered at the boy, then turned and walked over to the Silfen holding the reins.
Come on,
he told himself,
get a grip. He’s just a kid.

Who shouldn’t be here screwing up my project.

He started to dig down into the memory of Silfen language that had been implanted at the Augusta clinic. Nobody had ever taught the Silfen to speak any Commonwealth language. They weren’t interested.

“Thank you for collecting our animals,” he said; a messy collection of cooing sounds and impossible Welsh-style tongue-twister syllables that he was sure he’d got completely wrong.

The Silfen opened its mouth wide, showing its snakelike tongue wobbling in the center of the teeth rings. Ozzie wanted to turn and run before he was devoured—but his ancillary cultural memory reminded him it was a smile. An answering stream of gibberish flowed out, far more melodic than the clumsy sentence Ozzie had spoken. “It is our delight that we are met this fine day, dearest Ozzie. And your poor animals needed only guidance that they might be with you once more. Such teachings are but a trifle of all that we are. To give them is hardly onerous.”

“I am pleased and charmed that you remember me.”
From another world, decades ago.

“Nothing so treasured should be lost to that which we are. And you are a splendid treasure, Ozzie. Ozzie, the human who taught humans their first steps along the true paths.”

“I had some help.” He bowed slightly and called to Orion. “Hey, let’s see you taking proper care of that pony, okay? It could do with a drink.”

Orion came over and took his animal from the Silfen, leading it away to the pool at the bottom of the small waterfall. Ozzie was thrown several disgruntled looks, obviously still not forgiven. A couple of the Silfen were already bathing, gliding through the clear water as easily as they climbed trees or ran. Orion soon joined them in the water.

“May I ask with whom I speak?” Ozzie asked.

“I am the flower that walks beneath the nine sky moons, the fissure of light that pierces the darkest glade at midnight, the spring that bubbles forth from the oasis; from all this I came.”

“Okeydokey,” He took a moment to compose a sentence. “I think I’ll just call you Nine Sky, if you don’t mind.”

“Evermore you hurry thus, unknowing of that which binds all into the joy which is tomorrow’s golden dawn.”

“Well,” Ozzie muttered to himself in English, “it was never going to be easy.” He let Polly rummage through the light lavender grass that covered the clearing. The Silfen were congregating on the edge of the pool. Flasks were produced and passed around as they munched on the nuts and berries they’d gathered. Ozzie stuck close to Nine Sky; while Orion came back to sit by his side, snacking on his own food.

“We walk the paths,” Ozzie said.

That seemed to amuse the Silfen; they laughed their warbling laugh, a remarkably human sound.

“Others of our kind have,” he reminded them. “Seekers of beauty and strangeness, for are we not all that in the end.”

“Many have walked,” Nine Sky replied. “Willful and skillful their footfalls echo fast upon hallowed lands, came them far, go them farther. Round and round in merry dance.”

“Which paths did they tread?” Ozzie asked. He thought he was getting a handle on the conversation.

“All paths are one, Ozzie, they lead to themselves. To start is to finish.”

“To start where?”

“To start here amid the gladness of the children and twittering of birds and pesky merriness of the terinda as they frolic over dale and gale. All we bid go in music and light.”

“I am starting here, where must I go?”

“Ozzie comes, Ozzie goes, Ozzie flies, Ozzie sees many stars, Ozzie lives in a cave, Ozzie leaves a cave, Ozzie sees trees, Ozzie comes. The circle is one.”

The hair on the back of Ozzie’s neck pricked up at the mention of living in a cave. “You know where the wonders live, you walk to the wonders, you see the wonders, you live the wonders, you go. Ozzie envies you. Ozzie goes with you.”

That brought another round of loud laughter, the tips of their vibrating tongues just protruding into the air.

“Ozzie walks away,” Nine Sky said. His head came forward, big black eyes staring at the human. “Embrace what you be, afraid show you not, long the seasons are among us, love you we do, for is not all stardust in the end as it begat us all. So that all is joined in eternity which turns again and again.”

“What do you become; for is it not greatness and the nobility? What do any of us become between the twin times of stardust? It is the greatness out among the stars that burn now where I walk.”

“Walk you without joy strumming its song upon your heart, travel you far without knowing will your fate unfold. For to walk among the forests is to live. See us in glory now, for this fate we ache to be.”

“Do you walk the forests of the planet whence we came?”

“All forests we walk, those of darkness and those of light.”

“And those of greatness? Walk you those?”

“Light and dark, and those alone. Strike you not the black and the gold for it leaves a terrible mark upon the sky at the height of day. Heed you loud the ides of winterfall.”

Ozzie ran that through his mind, fearing he was losing track of what was being said. But then that was always the way when you talked to the Silfen. “All of humanity needs to see what you become. I walk for them to that place. Where is the path?”

“Knowing is in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat; rejoice for it is yours as much as ours, to live among it is glorious. Look to nature in the fullest of bloom, bend the sky and the ground to your bidding if you truly can, for what will be has also been. Fond farewells and fond joinings are all part of the endless turn of worlds upon worlds, and who are we to cry judge upon which is the jolliest of all.”

“This child weeps nightly for his lost father and mother.”

“We all weep together, huddled in the breath of this iciest of winds in fell consequence we do ignore, for who has lost who in this benighted time asunder.”

The Silfen began to get up.