The Margarets (33 page)

“As soon as this was known, Gentherans began bringing their handicapped ones to Earth. Your people adopted them. Some of them lived with you, some moved out into the wild, some even evolved into other types, but they were all…happy, as they could never have been among Gentherans…”

Into the silence, I said, “She’s talking about cats, Gloriana.” I stared at Falija, trying to figure something out. “Falija, your people are the Gibbekot, right? Then who are the Gentherans?”

“The spacefaring moiety of us,” she said. “Half of us are spacefarers, the other half are settlers, but we’re all one people.” She sighed. “The afflicted were no longer such a great sorrow to our people because they were happy. Everywhere there are humans, they’re still happy, and we owe their happiness to you.”

“Anyone would have loved them!” cried Gloriana.

Falija replied, “Not as you do. Gibbekot are not perfect. No creature is perfect. Gentherans expect their children to be like themselves, and they grieve when that is not so. Seeing the unfortunates still makes us uncomfortable. Ever since then, the Gentherans have felt a debt to humans, and they’ve kept in touch with Earthian people, even though they’re not happy about the way humans behave.

“Up until meeting humans, our race believed that each intelligent race was either ethical or vile; either it had evolved a moral and ethical system or it hadn’t. The K’Famir and the Frossians are vile races. They take what they want, they kill when they feel like it, they’re amused by torture, and they never identify with their victims. Some humans are exactly like them.

“The Gentherans and the Gibbekot have an ethical system, along with rules of morality. They try to be fair to all thinking beings as well as some or all living beings that don’t think. Some humans are exactly like them, too.

“Before that time, we thought every species had one kind of mind or the other, but not both. Except for you humans. Human politicians brag about the good they’re pretending to do while they take bribes not to do it. Human commercial interests talked about helping people while they destroyed all the fish, trees, and clean water on Earth. The Gentherans know a lot of evil races and a lot of good races, but the human race is the only hypocritical race we’ve ever encountered.

“The only race that espouses virtue and can’t practice it?” I murmured.

“Exactly, and our people wanted to know why. When they investigated, they found there was a physiological difference. They learned that every ethical race has a racial memory, and every vile race has none. Ethical races are fully aware of their own history. We Gibbekot have millions of years of increasingly intelligent, purposeful being in
our minds along with all the happenings and all the consequences of those happenings along the way.

“But humans don’t have a racial memory, and neither do the K’Famir or the Frossians, or the Quaatar, or the…well, a good many others.”

I was dumbfounded. “You can remember everything?”

“Yes. We really can, though it’s not so much remembering as it is just knowing. You don’t have to remember which way is up or what green is, you just need to learn the word for it. Even though my people were very fond of the strange humans, they were upset that every generation of them made the same mistakes. Instead of knowing what war was by remembering their own children screaming as their entrails spilled out and their skins burned off, your people talk about patriotism and bravery. Which is more real to you? If it’s been twenty years since your last war, humans don’t recall the reality, so if some not very bright leader yells, ‘If you’re brave and patriotic, you must defend our cause,’ off you march.

“Imagine that you remembered being the very first premammal, and remembered being various primates, and remembered being every kind of prehuman. My people thought humans needed that, in order to stop making the same mistakes over and over.”

“Real do-gooders, the Gentherans,” I muttered. “We have written histories, after all!”

“Oh, yes,” said Falija, twitching her ears. “The smarter ones of you can read about the past, and you can record what you see, and you have retained enough information between generations for science to develop, but few people pay attention to history. If some powerful person wants to do something history says is foolish, he just claims what is written isn’t true, or doesn’t apply to the present, and since most of you haven’t read it, you believe him. You have improved, that’s true. You finally learned that human sacrifice didn’t do any good. You finally learned that slavery was evil; that is, most of you did, for a while, but not all of you forever. Some races would have tried selective breeding at some point, but you cared more about being unique than you did about being good. My people think you’ll go extinct soon if you don’t have a racial memory. I guess that makes us do-gooders.”

I stared at her a long time. “Perhaps your people were thinking of giving us the kind of minds you have.”

Falija said slowly, “It would be logical, wouldn’t it, but there’s nothing about that in my mind, and I can’t imagine how it would be done. Where would they get one? You don’t remember your first ancestors. You have no memory of ninety-nine percent of what makes you what you are! Instead you have comfy baby-stories you tell yourselves to explain why you’re not good people. What sin you committed or how you didn’t do what this god or that god told you. Instead of learning how not to be bad, you learn how to be forgiven and carried off to heaven. Most of you find it easier to believe the baby-stories than to learn from history and science, because it takes brains and hard study to understand history and science, but the stories are simple and comfy. People who want things easy and comfy resent people who study things. They teach their children the comfy stories and tell them not to worry about studying, just buy a ticket to go to heaven, and gradually, everyone becomes as ignorant as everyone else. It’s happened time after time on Earth.”

From what I knew of Earth’s history, she was right. “Yes, Falija, I know how that works. And I have never until this moment been envious of cats.” I picked up my teacup, found it empty, and poured a bit more. “What else do you remember?”

Falija nodded. “There’s another group, the Siblinghood…”

I snorted. “Even I know about that! You remember Ella May, don’t you, Glory? Mayleen’s second eldest, Janine Ruth’s sister? She was accepted by the Siblinghood, and more power to her!”

Falija went on, “The Siblinghood helped the royal family when Thongals attacked on Fanjard.”

I said, “If I remember my studies, Fajnard was overrun by the Frossians.”

“That was later. The royal family was attacked by Thongals twice. The first time was thirty-six or -seven years ago when they killed King Joziré the First. His wife fled into hiding with the crown prince, who was only a baby. The Siblinghood helped hide Prince Joziré, while he grew up and was educated.

“Meantime, the Frossians stayed in the lowlands of Fajnard while the Gibbekot and most of the Ghoss fortified the highlands. A few of
the Ghoss always pretend to be slaves on the lowlands in order to keep an eye on the Frossians. Peace was maintained, and after a number of years, the Gibbekot and Ghoss thought it would be safe for Prince Joziré to return to Fajnard.

“He was about twenty then. He married his childhood companion, and they were crowned as King Joziré the Just and Queen Wilvia the Wise…”

“Wilvia?” I faltered. “Queen Wilvia?”

“Why?” asked Glory. “Is there something wrong with that name?”

I shook my head. “No, child, it’s just a case of imagination meeting reality head-on. I used to play dress-up as a child. Most children do, I suppose. I often played I was a queen, and that was her name, Queen Wilvia. I can’t believe it.”

“The young queen became pregnant,” Falija said. “And then, suddenly, with almost no warning, a group of dissident Thongals invaded the highlands, and again tried to capture the king and queen. Well, the queen was taken into hiding at the first sign of trouble, and the king was smuggled off Fajnard in another direction.”

“Does this have something to do with the great task your parents said you were to perform?” asked Glory.

“I believe so,” said Falija, ears forward and eyes slitted. “I have a story in my head, about the man who talked to the fish. I remember a saying. ‘Who knows? The Keeper knows. Well then, ask the Keeper. Where do I find it? All alone, walk seven roads at once to find the Keeper.’ If my mother memorized all that and put it in my mother-mind, it had to be important, didn’t it? And all that about young King Joziré and Queen Wilvia. The threat against them hasn’t stopped! Some race or group is trying to kill them!”

I asked, “Do you have any other languages in your head?”

“P’shagluk khoseghu bahgh,” said Falija. “Ephais durronola.”

I gasped. “Quaatariis. Pr’thas!”

“What?” cried Gloriana.

“She speaks Quaatar,” I cried. “And Pthas! Oh my blessed soul. We only studied Quaatar because it was a precursor to an obscure Mercan tongue. It’s a foul language, full of nasty words, and only the Quaatar could consider it holy. As for Pthas, well, they were the an
cient and revered ones, the only people, it is said, who knew the name of the Great Experimenter…don’t ask. That’s just what was said. We have much of their language preserved, but of course it’s not spoken anymore. Oh, I wish I’d known about this earlier.”

Glory’s face went red, all the way back to her ears. “If I’d told you, you’d have accused me of making it up!”

I stared at my shoes, ashamed. “You’re right. I would have. I humbly beg your pardon. You’ll have to forgive me without holding a grudge, Gloriana, because you and I must share this secret cooperatively, to keep Falija safe.”

I entered the oasthouse through the summer door, which would have been enough to make those inside dislike me even had I not brought sleet gusting in to make a brief fog above the hearthstones. Their thoughts were on their faces: icetime was hard enough on the men, offering few and seldom comforts, without having them sullied by some fool southlander woman who couldn’t tell a summer door from an icelock.

High-booted and wrapped in heavy furs, burdened with a high basket securely strapped to my shoulder, I stood for a moment in seeming ignorance of their hostility, though the lack of any greeting confirmed I had set myself wrong with them. B’Oag, the oastkeeper, made the matter clear, snarling, “Dja ne’er see an icelock where’er in devil’s keep yah come from?”

The chill voice that came from behind my thick scarf was well practiced to have all the power it needed. “The summer door was nearest, Oastkeeper, and I have come too far to consider niceties.” I unwound the scarf from my mouth, then from my neck and shoulders, and finally from around my head to display the golden diadem banding my forehead. At once the oasthall was murmurous with contrived conversation, all the men staring intently into one another’s faces, talking of the season, the temperature, the monotony of the winter diet, anything ex
cept me. Even B’Oag’s eyes darted toward his other guests, as though to anchor his intention elsewhere, before reminding himself that he was, after all, on home ground, his name on the oasthouse sign, and not, therefore, required to give way.

“I’ll be needing a room,” I said. “Supper, also. Wine if you have it, or cider, or tea, if that’s all there is.”

The oastkeeper’s eyes roved quickly over the company in the room. That meant his rooms were all filled. I saw his assistant, perhaps his son (they resembled one another), nod covertly from his chair in the corner, indicating he would take care of it, and B’Oag nodded shortly in return. “M’boy Ojlin’ll have a room made up, mistress.”

“Envoy, Oastkeeper. My title is envoy. One who wears the circlet has that name and no other outside the Siblinghood. I am come for a reason you already know. Let us not fence with one another. The night is too long and cold for that.”

He flushed and fumbled while I regarded him with level, amber eyes. He, like many others, was fascinated by my eyes. He considered them catlike. These people told stories of us. They said it was something we ate off there in the badlands that made our eyes glow. Or if not something we ate, some dreadful thing we did. They were only lenses of a particular kind, which anyone should have been able to figure out. Human worlds are always awash in superstition, only a stubborn elite proof against it.

“I’ll also need a lockroom,” I murmured, easing the straps over my shoulders and putting an end to his speculation.

At this he paled, his nostrils pinched shut, as though to shut the very smell of me out. “Ask Ogric there.” He nodded toward a dwarfish man near the stair. “Ogric keeps the key. I’ll be putting your supper on the table by the copper.”

Ogric did indeed have the key, though we had to go out into the storm to use it, for the lockroom opened onto the oasthouse courtyard. Still, it was in a sheltered corner, so I did not bother rewrapping myself before opening the door and peering into the closetlike space, floored and walled with square stones, a handspan to a side. “Is it sound?” I asked, holding out my lantern to survey it.

“D’rocks tall as me, everone in wall, everone in floor. Top slab, d’tooken ten umoxes lif ’ it.”

I nodded, half smiling to myself as I calculated mentally: each rock a handspan square, each one a man’s height long, laid so that the walls were a man’s height thick, the interior space two man’s heights high, one wide, one long, the slab on top a veritable mountain. It had taken only fear to move these northerners to this prodigious labor and only stupidity to go to all that trouble, then put a wooden door on the place.

“Ah,” I murmured. “So it’s tight, is it?”

“Aye…ma’am, dad’is. Comes ere ragin’ crazies mid ice, we drow’m in dere. Dey stay. Dairn’d nodin geddin ou’vit.”

“I’ll take the key,” which I did, from a hand that trembled slightly before Ogric turned and fled back to warmth, leaving me alone in the dim light of the lantern. I stepped inside with my basket, shutting the door behind me. A short time later I stepped out without the basket, shut the door firmly, and locked it behind me, then put my ear to the heavy, ironbound planks to listen for what sound might come from within. Hearing none, I took a deep breath, and another, pushing all the stench of it from my lungs, gasping as I replaced foul air with clean. Finally, I picked up the lantern and made my way back to the oasthall, now bereft of the greater number of its former occupants.

“Ruinous on business, envoys,” B’Oag was saying to his son when I entered. He looked up and flushed. “Meaning no disrespect, ma’…that is, Envoy.”

“I take no offense, Oastkeeper. We are not good for business. We are not supposed to be. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that if I find what I seek, I will not be here long.”

“And that would be…?”

“Do not trifle with me, Oastkeeper. You know what I’m here for and probably where it is and who has it. It’s likely everyone in the district knows, including the children in their cradles. I have no doubt the whispers began the day he or she brought it home, whoever that person may be.”

B’Oag mimed innocence, widening his eyes and pursing his lips. “Envoy, I have no idea…”

I turned away from him impatiently. “I left my burden in your lockroom, Oastkeeper. When my task is done, I’ll go my way, taking it with me. If my task is weary and long, it will grow tired of its
imprisonment, and then…then you will wish you had made it easy for me.”

Without waiting to judge the effect of this threat, I went to the table by the wide, bell-shaped copper that hung over the heat source: a hot spring, a little fumarole, maybe a boiling mud pot, though it didn’t smell like a mud pot. The copper funneled the heat upward into coiled flues that ran first through the oasthall, then into the rest of the place, including the spaces for animals. The laundry probably had its own source, preferably a hot spring that provided hot wash-water for clothes and linens.

The cider was already on the table, along with a plate covered by an overturned bowl to keep warm a dish of stewed meat, legumes, grain, and herbs. I took off the scarf, then the coat, hanging them on the back of a nearby chair. I wore boots to my knee, and trousers above that, thick with padding to keep out the cold. I stripped off my gloves and my padded jacket, becoming smaller as each layer was removed. At last I sat down in my shirtsleeves. I knew what they saw. A slender woman not yet of middle years, pale brown hair in many tiny braids making up a complex pattern that ended in a beaded knot at the nape of the neck, golden eyes glittering in the firelight, skin reddened by the unaccustomed heat. I must have looked quite ordinary, except for the eyes and the gold Siblinghood diadem with its jewel blooming upon my forehead as though it carried fire within itself.

Something moved at my throat, and I took it from beneath my shirt, a tiny feathered thing that blinked in the firelight before settling itself on the table beside my plate. I beckoned, and B’Oag came to my side. “A pinch or two of raw grain, Oastkeeper. I found this little one in the snow, barely alive. Do you know what sort it is?”

“Chitterlain: one that waited too long to go south.”

“Well, I am of no mind to let it freeze.”

He fetched the grain, a small handful, and scattered it on the table where the chitterlain lay. It stirred itself to peck at the offering, at first doubtfully, but then with renewed energy, stretching its four wings, first one pair, then the other. I poured a bit of water into a saucer and put it where the creature could drink from it.

B’Oag whispered to his son while I ate, the others in the room kept
their voices down. Several times, all speech stopped when sounds came in from outside, a ragged howling, a snuffling at the summer door, a low growl, almost like a purr, a shrill yap or two followed by shriller yips. Dire wolves and their pups. Ice cats and their kits. The great ape-bears had already gone deep into their dens. All feathered creatures except the thunder-buzzards had fled south long ago. Now there were only the winter beasts, the winter men (for their womenfolk stayed home in snowtime), and one envoy from who knew where.

“What’s in the basket?” the boy asked B’Oag, in a voice I could hear clearly, his curiosity overcoming his prudence.

I saw B’Oag go white again, lips pinched. “Ojlin, hush, or I’ll hush you! We don’t mention it! We don’t question it! We don’t know about it! It’s not of us, it’s of them!”

The opening of the icelock door went unnoticed among the howling and growling outside until a chill draft announced the cracking of the inner door to admit a tall form, as thickly bundled as I had been. From the corner of my eye I saw him removing his gloves one finger at a time, slapping them against his thigh to remove the ice crystals, laying them on the nearest table while he unbuttoned the thick coat, furred outside with a shag woven of the long, curly winter locks of adult mountain gnar, furred inside with the soft woven fleece of the young. Beneath it were seemingly endless layers of other clothing, which he merely unbuttoned in series, all the while looking about himself, ceiling, floor, shuttered windows, the hot copper with its armspan wide coil of metal flue above it, both hood and flue radiating welcome heat.

I ignored him and went on with my meal.

“Oastkeeper?” he asked at last, through the scarves still hiding his face.

“B’Oag Thenterson,” he said. “An ’ow may we serve you, sir?”

“Food. Whatever she’s having smells good. And a pitcher of cider, if you have it.”

“This early in the icetime, we’ve got it,” said B’Oag, as the stranger paced slowly across the floor.

Before I realized what he was doing, he was at my shoulder, leaning above me. “Envoy?” he whispered, almost in my ear.

I turned, startled, looking up into a face I remembered as in a
dream. “Fernwo…” I breathed. “Where did you…what are you…?”

“Hush,” he murmured. “There’s a roomful of ears about us, don’t you know? Ears ready to mishear, noses to smell conspiracy where none exists, mouths to twist good intentions into evil certainties. We know all about it, Envoy. We were told often enough.”

“Sit down,” I quavered, taking a deep breath. Then, more evenly, “You’re being conspicuous.”

“Thank you, yes. I’ll sit here next to your friend. Chitterlain, isn’t it? A bit far from its kindred. But then, so am I. It’s been a long road, finding you.”

I set my spoon down, lifted my glass to sip at the cider it contained, willing myself to appear impassive. Envoys were always impassive, facing life or death with the same quiet comportment, the same emotionless mien. This wasn’t death. It was suddenly too much life, but appearance could be everything.

B’Oag arrived with plates, bowls, a pitcher of cider, another glass. He stood uncertainly nearby.

“Put it here,” said the new arrival. “The envoy is an old acquaintance, and I’ll sup with her.”

The oastkeeper had only waited for the word. The plates came down with purposeful clatter, Fernwold pulled out a chair and sat facing me. I had again dipped my spoon.

“Good?” he asked.

“Passable,” I said. “Anything made with smoked or salted meat is passable at best. This is dried in the smoke, not too salty, and the oastkeeper has traded for seasonings, too, which some of them up here don’t bother to do. They figure people get hungry enough, they’ll eat anything.”

“Including envoys?”

“I doubt they consider envoys among the general run of people who frequent oasthouses.”

“And you’re here for…?”

“In pursuit of duty, Fernwold…”

“Ferni,” he suggested, smiling. “You called me Ferni.”

“Fernwold,” I said again firmly. “Why are you here?”

“I learned you were sent. I had some time and a reason or two. I decided to offer assistance to my old friend, Margaret.”

I shuddered, only slightly. How long had it been since I had heard that name? “Say it as B’yurngrad says it, if you say it at all. I am M’urgi, shaman of B’yurngrad steppes. You are Fernwold, seeker and assessor. I am, from time to time, given the crown of an envoy—as are you, I’ve been told—and we’re not allowed assistance.”

“We’re not allowed to ask for it. It can be given, and it often is.”

“By whom?” I whispered. “I’ve never had help!”

He shrugged, took a great gulp of the steaming cider, belching slightly as it expanded the cold air in throat and belly. “Perhaps they never thought you needed it until now. No. Perhaps I knew you never really needed it until now. Don’t go all proud on me, love. We know one another too well for that.”

“Knew,” I breathed. “Once.”

“We need one another’s help, whether you know it yet or not. And everything we knew of one another, we still know, Shaman, and it was a good deal more than can be dismissed as ‘once.’ I told you then what I tell you now. I knew you the moment I saw you. We are mates, M’urgi, whether we meet once a lifetime, once a decade, or every day. Nothing changes when we are apart.”

My hand on the pitcher trembled only slightly. “Some of that is right.”

“Which part?”

“Nothing changes when we’re apart. It’s when we’re together things must change. Ferni, where have you been!”

He gritted his teeth. “My recent life has not been one I wanted to drag you into. Or thought I had the right to. I worry about the parts of my life I don’t remember!”

I paled. “The Siblinghood wiped your mind?”

“Perhaps they. Or someone, something else that’s left me missing a few years here and there. I remember everything since meeting you, however. And before that, the academy, I remember that.” He drank again. “Are you carrying?”

I bared my wrist, letting him see the round sucker marks where it had drunk my blood, not much of it, just a little every day, enough to
keep it from going dormant, but not enough to give it the power to overcome my will, so long trained and tried, like steel forged, folded, beaten, and hardened, over and over again. I pulled the sleeve back into place. “They have a lockroom. Built of stone, a maht thick.”