The Noris caught her hand and took the pen from her. “Later. Come here.” He led her to a rack on the wall a little way from the table. “These are books.” Slipping a roll of parchment from the top of the small pyramid, he unrolled it in front of her. She stared at the black marks on the smooth cream-colored surface, touched them tentatively, exclaimed with delight at a delicately painted design on the border. After returning the parchment to its place, he slid a section of the wall aside. Serroi gasped with surprise as she saw her own clothing hanging on hooks and a spare pair of boots pegged to the back wall. “The servants will keep these clean for you. You can dress yourself?”
“I’m not a baby,” Serroi snorted with disgust.
He nodded, the twinkle back in his eyes. He opened a door and displayed a small neat bathroom, showed her how to use the toilet and bathtub. With a chuckle he led her away from the toilet, which fascinated her almost as much as the pens, taking, her back into the bedroom. In their short absence the hands had been busy scattering potted green plants around the room. The Noris turned to Serroi. “Does this please you?”
Serroi nodded shyly. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.
“Good. Come. There’s another thing I want to show you.”
She followed him out of the room and back down the spiraling stairs, still disliking intensely that wormhole in stone.
The Noris moved down the corridor, his booted feet making no sound at all. Serroi was startled by this; her own boots made scuffing and grating sounds that echoed dully in the dimly lit hall. As she followed him, she looked about curiously, saw a number of alcoves sealed off with bronze slabs like the door to her room. The corridor wound downward, Widened abruptly into a high-walled, four-sided court open to the clean blue of the sky.
A hundred eyes watched as she stepped, blinking, into the brilliant sunlight. Cages lined two of the four walls of the court, walls made of the same shiny black-brown stone as the tower. Each cage was roomy enough to provide its inhabitant with pacing or climbing room. Since the shapes and sizes of the beasts varied considerably, so did the sizes and shapes of the cages. There were dead sections of trees in some, ledges of molded rock, paddings of straw or gravel on the solid floors; in some cases a total environment was provided for the beast, nothing living, though, no green in any cage. Each cage had its feeding tray and waterwell. She recognized several of the animals-chinin with pups about two passages old, an unhappy looking vinat, a prowling irritated sicamar, several carrion birds of the kind that followed the herds-but most of the creatures were strange. There was one sad-faced grey beast with long skinny arms and legs that looked like a parody of man. She watched it as it stared at her then began rooting about in its straw. It startled a giggle out of her when it came up with a piece of nutshell and threw it at her. She dodged the shell and started toward the chinin.
“Serroi, come here.” The Noris sounded amused but she hastened to his side. She was still uncertain about him. He’d done nothing to hurt her, had, in fact, taken good care of her, but she still didn’t know what he wanted from her and he changed sometimes into something she didn’t know. She was gaining a certain amount of assurance, progressing step by tentative step, but she did sense there were things he wouldn’t accept from her. He smiled down into her eager face-but changed again, an empty charming smile; he’d withdrawn himself, she felt he was tired of trying to keep tied to her needs against his own need to soar. “These animals will be your responsibility for the coming year,” he said. “Keep them well and content, feed them, water them, give them exercise. Open any cages you feel safe about. Go up and down between your room and the court whenever you wish, day or night. Anything you need my servants will bring you.”
Serroi plucked nervously at threads in the embroidery on her cloak. “Will I see you?”
He was silent a long time. She sneaked several glances at him, wondering. He was staring at the cages, not seeing them, an odd expression on his face as if she’d startled him again and he’d startled himself by his reaction to her question. She endured the long silence as best she could. He was thinking and when he’d finished, he’d give her an answer.
He looked down at her, his eyes warming again. “You can come talk to me. I’d like that.” He swung a hand in a wide gesture, encompassing all the cages. “Start getting to know the beasts, Serroi. Get yourself settled in your room. My servants will give you your first lessons in writing later this afternoon?” He looked away from her, gazing instead into the featureless blue above. “I’ll send for you after the evening meal.” His feet still making no sound on the stone flags, he walked quickly to the center of the court where a gleaming copper pipe rose from the paving stones. The top end made an abrupt right-angled turn with a bronze hook projecting from a vertical slot. “Come here, Serroi.” When she stood beside him, he pointed at the hook. “Pull down on that.”
Serroi wrapped her small fingers about the hook and tugged. Water gushed from the pipe’s end. Laughing, she thrust her free hand into the cool rushing stream, bent and drank, then let the hook snap back and straightened to look up at the Noris.
He’d put aside, for the moment, his irritations and was smiling gravely down at her. “You can get water for the animals from this. The servants will bring the other things you need to care for them. Can you do this?”
Serroi nodded; hesitantly she stepped closer to him and dared to touch his hand, sliding her fingers along his strange disturbing flesh. She sneaked a look at his face and saw that he was uneasy at her touch, yet at the same time pleased by it. Without another word he walked away, disappearing through the doorway.
The silence in the court lasted several minutes after his departure then died before the coughing roar of the sicamar, a long-haired beast with a flat face, ripping teeth, yellow-green eyes and small round ears. His long fur ranged in color from the palest tan on his underbelly to a brindled chocolate on his back. The tips of the longer fur on the top of his head and around his neck were a yellowish green while the deeper fur was a misty blue-green like the color of new spring grass that rose above the last year’s growth now dead and faded brown. He paced restlessly up and down his cage, a powerful beast, magnificently muscled, in the prime of his life-but not well. Patches of his fur looked dull, ruffled; the yellow-green eyes were filmy and his mouth hung open now and then as if he lacked the will to keep his jaws together. Serroi sucked in a deep breath, shivered. There was an almost imperceptible taint of sickness to the air in the court. Perhaps nothing lived on these islands because nothing could live there. Her head began to ache. There was so much she didn’t understand, so much she couldn’t understand-but she knew the sicamar was suffering; her eye-spot throbbed to his pain. She began walking along the cages, peering solemnly at the animals inside, tilting her head back to inspect those piled high above her. Her eye-spot continued to throb as she started feeling her way into them, but she redirected her efforts, not absorbing now but projecting, reassuring them, caressing them with that deep love she had for all of them, the love pent up inside her that had no other outlet. By the time she finished her round even the air smelled cleaner. The animals were settled in drowsy comfort, in silence or making their various kinds of purring sounds. Content again, she went to the cage with the chinin and opened the door, whistling her old call, laughing as the adults and pups leaped out and pranced around her, sniffing at her, rearing up to lick at her face.
Serroi hesitated in the doorway. The room was lit by a few candles; afire snapped and crackled in a dark-stone fireplace. Bathed in rich golden light the Noris was stretched out on a divan, propped up on velvet pillows watching the flames dance. She wanted to go to him, he seemed as lonely as she sometimes felt, but she knew instinctively that he was uneasy with her no matter how relaxed he seemed.
“Come here, Serroi.” His voice was soft and dreamy. He hadn’t looked at her but he knew she was there anyway. Serroi licked at her lips. “Sit beside me,” he said. One pale hand dropped onto a thick pillow on the floor beside the divan. The gesture was too deliberately graceful, another betrayal of his lack of ease. Serroi moved silently to the pillow and settled herself stiffly beside him, her head by his shoulder. Though she couldn’t have put what she felt into words, her discomfort came from his. She stared into the flames, waiting for him to speak.
After a lengthy silence she looked up to meet his eyes. They were fixed on her and bright with curiosity as if he were tasting his reactions and hers, probing at himself with a curious objectivity that confused her. Among her own people emotions rode surfaces. No man paused to examine his anger but was simply and thoroughly angry.
“You’ve settled in comfortably?”
“Yes, Ser Noris.” She brooded a minute. “The hands showed me how to draw a lot of funny marks.”
“Pictures of sounds, child.”
Because he sounded amused, she sniffed and complained, “Hands don’t talk, Ser Noris. How’m I ever going to tell which mark means which sound?”
“Learn the marks.” He yawned, drawing back from her mentally as well as physically.
She sensed she’d moved too fast; this was like taming a wild and wary beast. So he wouldn’t send her away, she said hastily, “What is a Noris, Ser Noris?”
“Mmmm.” He lay back on the pillows staring, into the wavering shadows dancing across the distant ceiling. “A Noris is a shaper. Wind and water and stone answer his words. A Noris is a reacher into strange subworlds that would frighten you, child. A tamer of demons. A focus of forces great enough to rock the world. A Noris is a man of terrible power forever shut off from the greatest power of all.” The bitterness in the last words made her regret that she’d asked the question, but the soft voice swept on, leaving the bitterness behind. “You should have asked what is a Nor, child.” He reached out and stroked Serroi’s curls, an absentminded caress he was not even aware he was giving her. “Nor is the generic term for what I am. There are several kinds of Nor. Some are weak futile creatures who because they have mastered a few cheap tricks delude themselves into believing they belong among the mighty; often they serve as priests of the Flame among the Sons of the Flame, the only group foolish enough to pander to their egos. These are the Norids, the street Nor. Some Nor are good competent journeyman sorcerers, but they need elaborate paraphernalia or their spells will go awry; they need the incense and the candles of dead man’s fat, cat’s cradles, pentacles, signs, talismen. They can be arrogant and foolish and they often reach beyond their grasp and end up food or slaved to the demons they seek to raise. You’ll find them in the courts of those kings who like to bask in a second-hand sort of power, preening themselves that they control men who control such wonders. These are the Norits.” He sat up suddenly, staring into the dimness over her head. “Finally there are the word-masters who by much study and inborn gifts move beyond the need for apparatus, who need nothing but the actualizing WORDS to command what we are permitted to command. And there are those who try to push the limits of what we control back until… it’s not as easy as it looks.” He blinked, suddenly back with her from whatever dream he kept secret in his heart. “No, child, it’s not so easy. One doesn’t simply learn the words and bellow them into the wind. Each of the great words rests on vast amounts of study and discipline and denial, on a preparation invisible beneath the surface. I walk, my little Serroi, in the middle of a web of potencies woven over the many lifetimes I’ve known; I speak the WORD and a part of the web is actualized. I speak another WORD and it sinks back into the web.” The corner of his mouth turned up as he gazed down at her blank face. “But you don’t understand a word of this, do you.” His eyes twinkling, he reached down and stroked the tips of his fingers along the side of her head, then across her brow, something no one else had ever done. His fingers caressed the eye-spot and she felt a flush of warmth, a great rush of love for him. She could have curled up beside him and let him go on petting her forever, content as a chinin pup after a long day’s play.
He dropped his hand onto his knee. “Go to bed, child. We’ll talk again tomorrow. You can tell me about your special gifts.”
Confused and dazed, Serroi wobbled onto her feet and walked silently from the room, leaving the Noris staring into the flames, brooding over something, perhaps turning in again on himself, studying himself, toying with his unaccustomed emotions as a sicamar will toy with a small rodent it has caught away from its burrow.
The Woman: IV
The macai ambled around the base of the rocky knob, stopping as he saw Dinafar walking back and forth, taking a pace or two in each direction, careful to keep the knob between her and the village. The beast went down on his knees and rubbed his head over the grass; he tried to roll but the saddle prevented him. Honking mournfully, he lurched onto his feet and edged up to Dinafar. He pushed his head against her chest, sending her sprawling against the rocky slope. He whined and nudged at her again. She began to be frightened-then she heard a chuckle and jerked her head up to glare at the meie.
The small woman sat casually in the saddle, leaning on arms crossed over the saddle ledge, amusement vivid in her small green face. “He isn’t trying to hurt you, poor beast.” She leaned forward and whistled three warbling notes.
The macai’s head twisted around. With a series of anxious hoots he trotted to the meie, stopped to rub his head against her leg. The meie slid off her mount with a supple grace that woke a sudden envy in Dinafar’s breast. I’ll do that some day, she thought. I won’t be afraid. She scrambled to her feet, brushed her long straight hair out of her eyes, watched the meie strip the saddle from the macai and ease the halter off his bobbing head.
The meie looked back over her shoulder, her large orange-gold eyes sparking with anger. “Your fisher kin left these beasts out here all night with their gear on.” She looked down at the gear, scowled. “Maiden bless, I haven’t time. I haven’t time…” She knelt and tore up a double handful of grass, looked back at Dinafar. “Take the pad and shake it out.” She jumped up and began scrubbing at the macai’s back. “Look at these rubbed spots. Poor damn beast, he’ll be sore for awhile.” The macai moaned with pleasure as she worked.
Dinafar shook the pad vigorously, then beat it against the rock, smiling with satisfaction as the vermin tumbled out. “I suppose they’ll do something about them today. We…”
She dropped the pad, straightened her shoulders. “They don’t know much about macai.”
“Let me have that a minute.” The meie took the pad after Dinafar had scooped it up again. She held it out at arm’s length, narrowed her eyes. Dinafar saw the green spot on her forehead tremble a little, small waves passing across the oval of a green darker than the matte olive of her face. Black specks rained from the pad and vanished in the matted grass. Dinafar stood scratching absently at her stomach wondering just what she was getting herself into, the meie was stranger than she’d thought; still, she knew what she was leaving and that was enough. The little meie turned to her. “Stand still a moment, Dinafar. You’ve picked up some visitors.”
Dinafar flushed uncomfortably. She knew some of the vermin were her own, parasites she’d picked up from the posser she’d herded, the stables she’d slept in. She looked down, hate like fire for the fishers who had shamed her from the moment she was born. Then she started as cool fingers touched the junction of neck and shoulder. A moment later, most of the itching was gone. “Maiden bless, meie,” she mumbled. The meie said nothing, simply swung back into the saddle.
“Hand me that gear,” she said.
Dinafar stared, then realized that she’d be riding the spare macai in a little while. The thought excited and frightened her.
The meie rested saddle, halter, pad on the front ledge of her saddle. “Walk beside me. The other macai will follow and help shield you from the village. As soon as we’re under the trees, I’ll rerig our ugly friend here so we can make better time.”
Half an hour later, when they were moving through high brush and scattered trees, when even the white cliffs had passed from sight, the meie pulled the macai to a stop. Dinafar was tired and hungry. Clinging to the stirrup leather had helped but in all her life she could not remember having walked so far and so fast. The meie untied the waterskin and handed it down to her. “Don’t be extravagant with this, Dina. We can’t stop to fill it for a good long time.” She glanced into the shadows under the trees and sighed. “Maiden knows what’s waiting in there for us.”
While Dinafar drank, then rested, trying over in her mind the shortened version of her name, deciding that she rather liked it, the meie saddled the stray macai and slipped the halter over his ugly head. Then she called Dinafar and boosted her into the saddle.
As they rode deeper into the forest, Dinafar clutched at the ledge of the saddle, trying to fit herself into the rolling rise and fall of the macai’s gait. She was beginning to feel sick; her hastily eaten breakfast was sitting uneasy in her stomach. She looked enviously at the small woman ahead of her who was swaying gracefully to the gait of her beast, back firmly erect as if her spine had a sword thrust down it.
Dinafar thought of the village now far behind and smiled grimly. Henser will have to find himself another girl to pester. Her smile widened to a broad grin as she pictured an angry father taking the blunt end of a fish spear to his back. I’m out of there. I’m really out of there. She shivered, sickness churning in her stomach, exacerbated by the hatred roused in her by those thoughts. Clinging to the saddle she leaned out as far as she could, yielding to her need to vomit.
Then small strong hands caught her and pulled her down off the macai, held her as her body was wrung by spasms of nausea. Sour and exhausted, she let herself be moved away and laid out on a thick layer of rotting leaves that smelled like cool rich earth. She could feel the dampness creeping through her clothing as she lay with eyes shut, entirely miserable. Then the small hands were back. A damp cloth moved over her face, cleaning away the sweat and sour liquid. She stiffened, feeling awkward, confused by the surge of emotion the meie’s gentle touch woke in her.
She pushed the hands away and sat up. Her stomach shifted uneasily but she swallowed repeatedly until the nausea went away. When she looked up, the meie was tying the waterskin back behind her saddle. The small woman turned and watched her quietly. To Dinafar’s surprise there was a haunted look in the orange-gold eyes, an instant’s revelation of pain instantly suppressed.
“Can you ride now?” The meie’s voice was gentle, calm, remote. Her pointed face was a mask, all expression disciplined away. “If you feel more comfortable walking…” The words came slowly. Behind the meie’s outward tranquility, Dinafar sensed a nervous urgency that made her offer something torn from her by courtesy alone. Dinafar thought back to the helpless rages that had wracked her since she was old enough to feel, if not understand, the hate, disgust and cruelty she’d breathed in with every beat of her heart, This gentle courtesy accorded her by one who was a little more than a stranger brought her a sudden vision of life at the Biserica that gave her the strength to stagger to her feet and pull herself clumsily back into the saddle. She settled herself as best she could and looked down at the meie. “Tell me how to fit the macai’s rhythms, meie. I can’t seem to do it.”
A half smile, little more than a rueful twitch of her lips, lit the small woman’s face. “My fault, child. I should have realized that you knew nothing about riding; you even told me so.” She moved her golden eyes critically over Dinafar, the green spot on her forehead twitching as she concentrated. The spot looked velvet soft; Dinafar was suddenly and intensely curious about the feel of it under her fingers, then she closed her hands into fists frightened by what she was thinking.
“That damn skirt.” The meie wrinkled her nose while her eyes shone with amusement and disdain. “I cannot see why or how women endure this.” She began fussing with Dinafar’s bunched skirt, pulling out the wrinkle’s, pushing at Dinafar’s thighs and knees until her legs were pressed more firmly against the wide leather aprons that protected her from the macai’s knobbly skin. Dinafar swallowed a sigh at the pain as muscles complained against being stretched in unaccustomed ways. The meie patted her on the thigh, ignoring her uneasy blush, then swung into her own saddle. “It will take a day or two for your bones and muscles to accustom themselves to this.” She laughed. “I remember my own aches. You’ll be wishing the Maiden had called you home, but the soreness will go away, I promise you.” She clucked at her mount. As it took a step forward, she leaned over and caught hold of the halter on Dinafar’s mount, forcing him to walk beside her.