And All Between (11 page)

“I—I was told not to speak of—of the things I did today,” Teera faltered.

Hearba laughed and lifted her hands, palms downward, in the Kindar gesture that asked for pardon. “Of course,” she said. “And wise counsel, too, I am sure. The Ol-zhaan will know when it is time for you to speak freely. In the meantime, I beg pardon for having questioned you. But I will ask one more question. Have you eaten lately, or would you like a few morsels?”

Teera smiled delightedly. “I am very hungry, Hearba. I thank you greatly for your question.”

So Hearba hurried away to the pantry, and at last Pomma was free to speak. “What happened? What happened?” she cried. “I was so frightened. I was so sorry I had not helped you more.”

Teera threw her arms around Pomma. “Don’t be troubled.” She laughed. “There is no need. I could tell you why quickly, all at once, but I think I will tell you in the way it happened. Like a story.”

Seated cross-legged, facing each other with palms joined, in the position of Five-Pense, Teera began her story, and the telling was not only by words, but also by images and shared emotions. “When D’ol Genaa began to question me,” she said, “I was terribly frightened. It seemed to me that her anger was blazing out like flames from an open furnace. I felt that she would become so angry she would kill me if I didn’t speak, but I was so frightened that I could say nothing at all. But then, when she saw that I could not speak, she began to plead with me, and to tell me why she had to know about the Pash-shan. She began to speak of her father, who had been killed by the Pash-shan, and what a great man he had been and how much she had loved him. And then she said his name was Hiro D’anhk. And I said I knew a Verban in Erda whose name was Hiro D’anhk.”

Teera paused, waiting for Pomma to realize the great significance of what she had just said. Then she went on. “D’ol Genaa didn’t know what a Verban was, so I had to tell her all about them and how they are banished to Erda by the Ol-zhaan. But then D’ol Genaa said, ‘But how? How can grown men and women pass through the Root?’ and I told her that no one knows for sure, but most people think that the Ol-zhaan make the Root shrink away long enough for the Verban to be put through into Erda. And then she asked me all about Hiro D’anhk, and I told her what he looked like and how he was a very learned and honored man who taught in the highest classes at the Academy. And then we were both crying. And D’ol Genaa asked me if I would go with her to the forest floor to look for a way to get a message to her father. So I said I would, and I was so excited and happy to find out that it was not really Erdlings that D’ol Genaa hated, but only whoever had stolen her father, that I did not even remember that I would have to climb down the Vine again. I was afraid at first, on the Vine, but I remembered the imaging of gliding and the fear went away.

“When we got to the forest floor, we looked and looked for a tunnel opening; and when we finally found one, we began to call for someone to come to help us. But the first ones to come were D’ol Raamo and D’ol Neric, who had come looking for us and heard us calling. While we were explaining to them about D’ol Genaa’s father being a Verban, Tocar came up the tunnel, and D’ol Genaa saw him.”

“Tocar?” Pomma asked. “Who is Tocar?”

“Tocar is an Erdling who knows my father and who has been to our cavern, and he knew me, and he said that my parents had been—” Teera paused briefly and the happiness was gone from her face as she continued. “He said that they had looked for me for a long time and that they had set the time for a Ceremony of Weeping. But then”—Teera’s smile returned—“Tocar went away to get D’ol Genaa’s father and to take a message to my parents to tell them I was still alive. We waited for a long time until finally Tocar came back with D’ol Genaa’s father. They talked for a long time, and everyone was very happy. They decided that no one in Erda should be told yet about me, except for my parents, or about any of the things that they were planning. So Tocar promised he would say nothing—and then we came back here.”

Pomma shook her head as if to set to rights the muddle that Teera’s amazing story had made of her understanding. “But isn’t D’ol Genaa unjoyful at the Erdlings anymore?” she asked at last. “Even if her father isn’t dead as she thought, he
is
below the Root. Doesn’t she think the Erdlings stole him?”

“No,” Teera said. “She knows the Erdlings are not to blame because her father told her so. And I told her that no Erdlings know of a place where a grown man can pass through the Root, because if they did, all of Erda would be free. It is only the Ol-zhaan that can make the Root grow and shrink away. But D’ol Raamo and D’ol Neric say it is not all the Ol-zhaan, only the Geets-kel, who put the Verban below the Root; the Geets-kel are the only ones who know how it is done.”

“But what are they going to do about D’ol Genaa’s father? How are they going to get him back to Green-sky?”

“I don’t know, but I think they have a plan about how to do it, and how to get me back to my parents. They talked for a long time through the opening of the tunnel with Hiro D’anhk; but they sent me away to the other side of the clearing so I didn’t hear much of what they were saying. I heard them say they were going to try to set all the Erdlings free from below the Root, but they are afraid of the Geets-kel. They made plans about what to do about the Geets-kel; that’s what I couldn’t hear. I could only pense that the plans troubled D’ol Raamo. D’ol Raamo was very troubled about what they were planning to do.”

Teera’s face puckered with concern as she spoke, but Pomma smiled confidently. “Raamo will know how to make everything come out all right,” she said. “I know he will.”

At that moment Hearba returned with a tray laden with fruits and nuts and pan-bread, and taking comfort in Pomma’s words, and in the sight of the heaping dishes, Teera’s joyful mood quickly returned. Soon afterwards, as the rain intensified and the moon moths’ glow faded in their honey-baited cages, Pomma and Teera slept soundly in the soft springy comfort of their nids, and awoke the next morning in unusually high spirits.

After the long hours of fright and uncertainty of the previous day, there was great relief in returning to the secure comfort of a daily routine, a joyous relief that Teera, at least, found almost impossible to contain. Pushing, pulling and tickling, in what almost amounted to the rough and tumble romping of Erdling children, Teera made Pomma shriek and laugh with excitement. Watching the wildly romping children, Hearba and Valdo experienced delight in their daughter’s renewed strength and vigor, as well as some parental concern—since they were well aware that it was their duty to discourage any form of play that might lead to harmful aggression. But the rough play continued to be good-natured, and the morning food-taking came and went amid pranks and jokes and fits of giggling, before the adults of the household went about their accustomed duties.

It was near the hour of high sun, and Pomma and Teera were seated on the floor of the common room playing with their pets, Haba, and the sima, Baya, when, very suddenly, there was the sound of strange voices in the entryway. A moment later three men strode into the chamber. Pomma recognized one of them as the Ol-zhaan D’ol Regle, but the others were Kindar and strangers.

Too startled and surprised to respond with proper courtesy, Pomma remained seated as the men approached, silently and purposefully. The Ol-zhaan gestured, and one of the men lifted Teera from the floor; and her fear was like a silent scream in Pomma’s mind as she, too, was seized and carried from the room.

O
N THE NIGHT BEFORE
, while Teera and Pomma had slept peacefully in their silk-lined nids, there were others in Green-sky who slept little or not at all. All over the city of Orbora, from the grand and luxurious nid-places on the lower branchways, to the smallest and simplest dwellings high up in the upper grand heights, the Kindar slept in placid reliance on the holiness and wisdom of the Ol-zhaan. And in the Temple Grove most of the Ol-zhaan slept too, secure in the tradition that set them apart behind barriers of honor and power. But in one of the most palatial dwellings of the grove, in a nid-place reached by a long covered rampway that led directly up from the central platform of the Temple grounds, the honey lamps shone long into the night. There, seated on a thronelike chair of ornately inlaid pan-wood, an elderly Ol-zhaan of stately build had remained awake and alert through most of the long hours of darkness. And when he at last arose, sighing heavily, he did not make his way to his nid-chamber, but instead only crossed the reception hall to a large padded settee. There, after carefully arranging a number of beautifully embroidered pillows, he stretched out his bulky frame in a manner that could hardly have provided great comfort to a person of such ample proportions.

The rains waned and the soft brightness of the seven moons shone briefly through the latticed windows of the palace, and then newly formed clouds again brought rain and darkness. Lying stiffly on the hard settee, D’ol Regle had stared as unseeingly in moonlight as in darkness, while he waited for the return of his messenger, and for the dawn of a day that would bring deeds unprecedented in the history of Green-sky. And while he waited, he laid his plans and thought back over the events that had made them not only necessary but inevitable.

Although he was no foreteller, D’ol Regle could almost have foretold, simply through his longstanding interest in history with its logical progression of causes and effects, that a disaster was in the offing. And he had certainly tried to warn everyone involved. Not only at the meetings of the Geets-kel, but also in the Council of Elders, and before the assemblies of all the Ol-zhaan of Orbora, he had spoken out against the choosing of the boy Raamo D’ok. He had even gone privately to the palace of the high priest of the Vine and tried to reason with D’ol Falla, herself. It was she who had insisted on bringing into the ranks of the Ol-zhaan, the strange child with his abnormally prolonged skills of the Spirit. But, as always, D’ol Falla had made light of him, and of his well-founded concern.

Actually, of course, it had all begun with D’ol Falla. And not just with her strange demand that the D’ok child should be a Chosen. It had begun perhaps, long before, when D’ol Falla, herself, had been chosen to join the Ol-zhaan.

Of course he had not known her then, since he was a few years younger than she, and was not yet an Ol-zhaan, but he had heard many stories of her early days in the Temple. Already, while she still lived among them, her fellow Ol-zhaan had made a legend of the tiny woman who, as high priest of the Vine, had for so long exerted so much influence throughout Green-sky. Stories were told of the early days of her novitiate when, so small and delicate that she appeared to be but a child, she astounded her fellow Ol-zhaan with her brilliance and her many skills and talents.

But to some it had always been apparent that, along with her undeniable accomplishments, she had also used her charm and beauty to gain quick and easy admittance into every stronghold of honor and power. In the old records of the Geets-kel it was recorded that D’ol Falla had been asked to join that most select group before she had reached the age of twenty years. D’ol Regle, himself, had been asked to join at an unusually early age since the rule had been to limit membership to those who had proven themselves true Ol-zhaan over a period of many years. But, still, he had been past thirty when he was initiated into the secrets of the Geets-kel.

There had been, of course, a reason why D’ol Falla had been accepted at such an early age. Even in those days, now so many years past, the Council of Elders had begun to fear that the waning of the Spirit-skills among the Ol-zhaan would threaten the Spirit-evoked qualities of the Wissenvine. Not that there had been, at that time, any noticeable withering or deterioration of the Root. But since all the supernatural qualities of the Vine—the strange intangible beauty of the Blossom, the soothing comfort of the Berry, and the invincible strength of the Root—had been called forth by the Spirit-force of the great D’ol Wissen, there was concern that a lack of the Spirit-skill of grunspreking might, in time, allow those qualities to disappear. Even then, most of the recent novitiates had demonstrated no ability at all in grunspreking, or in any other of the Spirit-skills. Thus, when the brilliant new novice, D’ol Falla, was able to show that she still retained some degree of Spirit-power, the Council was eager to have her become not only one of the Vine-priests but the First among them.

If there had not been pressure to make D’ol Falla the high priest, she might not have become a Geets-kel at such an early age. There were priests of the Vine who were not Geets-kel, but they, of course, never accompanied those special processions that carried the drugged body of a banished Kindar to the opening in the Root. But since tradition demanded that the high priest accompany every procession to the forest floor, it had been essential, since the time of D’ol Wissen and the spreading of the Root, that the high priest of the Vine be also a member of the secret organization of the Geets-kel. So it was that when the Council—which in those days was not so completely controlled by members of the Geets-kel—elected the youthful D’ol Falla to the position of high priest of the Vine, it was also necessary that she be quickly initiated into the society whose duty it was to carry the burden of secret knowledge concerning the true nature of the Pash-shan.

The honor and power of the high priest of the Vine was a matter of ancient and holy tradition dating back to the first high priest, D’ol Wissen himself, the greatest and most powerful Ol-zhaan who had ever lived. There were, of course, some who might argue that D’ol Nesh-om, the early teacher and Spirit-leader, was of as great importance. And it was true that D’ol Nesh-om, as the guide and teacher of the first generations of Kindar, had been a great force and influence in the early days of the planet. But as all Geets-kel knew, it had been D’ol Wissen who had prevailed in the great controversy concerning the protection of the innocence of the Kindar. And it was D’ol Wissen who, after the death of D’ol Nesh-om, evoked the protection of the holy Root and thereby made possible the continued peaceful security of all Green-sky under the protection of the Ol-zhaan.