Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (46 page)

When the buffoonish Vadeshex left, the people swam their dance and cheered the tale, its teller, and the singers and dancers.

“Now that song is part of their lives for at least this generation,” said Knosso. “And if they forget it, some later Auntie Wind will echo it in other words, and it will be sung to other tunes. Nothing is lost. This is their library, the poetry of their life on land.”

“No wonder you love this place,” said Olivenko. “If only you could have sent a message to us.”

“But I did,” said Knosso. “I told the Landsman to tell the Gardener to tell you I was safe. I wouldn’t be coming back, of course, since I had left only in time to save my life, and those who wanted me dead would make short work of me if I returned.”

“Who wanted you dead?” asked Olivenko.

“My wife,” said Knosso. “Hagia told me herself that she had no choice but to have me killed, so that if my researches didn’t take me out of the wallfold, then someone’s knife or a bit of poison would do the job before too long. I thought it was kind of her to warn me.”

“Kind!” cried Param. “She tried to kill me, too!”

“That was wrong of her,” said Knosso.

“That’s all? Wrong of her?”

“Kings- and queens-in-the-tent have been killing their mates and children for a good many generations, and parents and siblings, too. That’s what royalty’s about among the Sessamids. Didn’t they teach you history?”

“They didn’t teach me anything,” said Param.

“We got the People’s History,” said Rigg.

“We always thought that it was lies, made up by the People’s Revolutionary Council to discredit the royal family,” said Umbo.

“It would be hard to invent stories of worse atrocities than those the royal family inflicted on each other,” said Knosso. “But no matter. She failed to kill you, and here you are, and I am happier than I ever thought I’d be.”

“So you left your daughter to save your own life,” said Rigg, “knowing that her life was also in danger.”

“I was rarely allowed to see my daughter,” said Knosso, “and I had no reason to think that Hagia would harm her heir. Killing children is common but not universal among the royals, or there’d be no royals left. Usually it’s done upon remarriage, so that only the children of the new mate will be left alive to inherit. I had no way of knowing that your mother would remarry after I left. But it makes sense to me now. I well knew Haddamander Citizen, an ambitious man. I thought that when your mother died, it would likely be at his hand; it never occurred to me that they would mate, until the Landsman told it to me as a bit of gossip from my old life.”

“He couldn’t have protected her if he had stayed,” said Olivenko. “He couldn’t have protected himself.”

“I knew that,” said Param. To Rigg she added, “But it’s sweet of you to be outraged on my behalf.”

I don’t like the way these people think, thought Rigg. When I saved Param, I didn’t understand that she was as utterly arrogant and self-obsessed as Mother; and now I find that Knosso is the same. A nice man, a good scholar, but unable to see past his own needs and desires. Now, though, I understand Param’s behavior since we left Aressa Sessamo. She’s a child of her family.

“Thank you for giving me to the Gardener, sir,” said Rigg, “to raise me outside of court.”

“It was the only way to keep a pathfinder like you alive,” said Knosso. “In the royal house, as soon as word of your gift seeped out, those who believed in the female line would have had you killed, for fear you’d use your powers to displace the queens from the Tent of Light and take it back for the male line.”

“You knew I was a pathfinder?” asked Rigg.

“You were tracing the paths as soon as you could crawl.”

“But how would you know?” asked Rigg.

“Because I’m a pathfinder too, of course,” said Knosso. “But nothing like you are, according to the Landsman. He says you can see paths a hundred years old.”

“Ten thousand years,” said Umbo. “And older.”

Knosso beamed. “I knew you would be something, my son!”

“What paths do you see, sir?” asked Rigg.

“I can barely make out paths ten years gone. And those are blurred and hard to trace. Easier to track yesterday’s path, or last month’s. But it did mean none could sneak up on me—don’t you find it convenient to be able to sense paths behind you as easily as those in front?” Knosso squeezed Rigg’s shoulder. “I’ve been out of the water a long time now, and Mother Monk and the Aunties even longer. We also spread our gills to show you, and now the gills are dry. So we’ll return to the water for the night, I think. Will you stay here on land, so we can talk tomorrow?”

“Of course,” said Param.

“We have so many questions,” said Olivenko.

“I never thought I’d meet a king,” said Umbo.

“Well, technically you have,” said Knosso, indicating Rigg. “Though I’m not dead, I think I can be considered to have abdicated my right to the Tent of Light. So Rigg is king, if you believe in kings. And if you don’t, then Param’s next in line to be the queen. Or neither of them is anything, if you’re republican.”

“More to the point,” said Loaf, “we’re not in Ramfold, so we really don’t care anymore, and won’t care in the future, either, unless we decide to go back to Ramfold.”

“A born republican,” said Knosso, “but I remember meeting you as a soldier in my army, I believe.”

“Yes,” said Loaf. “We met once at a victory celebration, sir, but why would you remember me?”

“Left to myself, I wouldn’t have,” said Knosso. “But my Companion brings all my memories to life, and the moment I saw you, the mantle saw behind your facemask and knew you, and replayed for me the memory of when we met.”

Loaf bowed his head. “I am republican,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I bear any enmity against the royal house.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Knosso. “And now good-night. Sleep peacefully in the sharp hard air of land; I’ll be rocked to sleep in cool darkness for another night.”

The Larfolders were on their feet, walking into sea and river, their mantles rising, covering them, their gills emerging as they sank or splashed or launched themselves into the water. And soon the Ramfolders were alone on the shore, and filled with wonder, all of them.

All of them but Rigg, who was filled with something else. There had been a plague at the very beginning of human life
on Garden that forced the Larfolders into the water. And the expendables had told each other far more than the Odinfolders had known, or admitted they knew. Had the mice known all this?

Rigg looked around and saw that there had been no mice here listening today. Good. For the moment I know something that they don’t know. Or at least, I know something that they knew but didn’t want to share with me. Either way, I’m ahead of them by just a little. For I know now what the mice intend to do, and I know that I must stop them, and I cannot do the thing from here, from Larfold, and I cannot do the things that I must do with anyone beside me. I will have to act alone, and quickly, before it can be known or guessed by anyone what I must do.

“May I borrow the knife from you, Umbo?” Rigg asked.

“Of course,” said Umbo, drawing it out and handing it to him.

“Thank you,” said Rigg. “I’ll try to return it as soon as possible after this moment.”

Rigg started walking back to the flyer.

“Where are you going?” asked Umbo, falling into step beside him.

“To Vadeshfold,” said Rigg.

“That liar? That snake? What for?”

“I need to ask him something,” said Rigg.

“And what might
that
be?” Umbo asked.

“I need to ask him for a facemask,” said Rigg. “And I need to know when Ram Odin died, and which wallfold he was in when he did.”

“You’re going back,” said Umbo. “You’re going to talk to him.”

“No,” said Rigg. “That might undo the whole world. It might undo ourselves.”

“Nothing we do undoes ourselves,” said Umbo. “We’ve had that discussion too many times. Or at least Loaf and I have.”

“I’m going forward,” said Rigg.

“You can’t do that,” said Umbo. “Only Param moves forward in time.”

“Not true,” said Rigg. “All of us move forward, at the rate of one minute per minute.”

“Well, yes, that way. What do you mean? That you’re going to just . . . pass the time away from us? Take me with you! I can keep you company.”

“The thing I’m going to do, Umbo, I wouldn’t ask you to do, and you wouldn’t do it if I did.”

“I’ll do whatever you think is right. Don’t you believe me, Rigg? I’m over being jealous of you. I really am. I’m your friend, and loyal to you to the end.”

“I’ll come back to you and give this knife to you when my job is done, if I succeed in it.”

“What job?”

But they were at the flyer now, and Rigg solemnly shook Umbo’s hand, a thing which he couldn’t remember ever having done before. “You’re the most powerful shifter in the world,” Rigg said to him. “Learn all you can from Knosso—he’s wise and clever, and he’s a pathfinder, too. So if you need to go into the past the way a pathfinder can help you do, he’ll help you.”

“He looks like you, Rigg, but he’s not you. I don’t know him.”

“Get to know him, then. And please don’t be angry with
Param. She’s what she was raised to be, and she’s trying to get over it.”

“I’m not angry,” said Umbo. “I just don’t like her.”

“I know,” said Rigg. “And that’s a shame, considering that you’re still in love with her, and it doesn’t make sense for either of you to marry anybody but each other.”

And with those words, Rigg left a flabbergasted Umbo behind him as he jogged up the ramp into the flyer and gave the command to take him to the Vadesh Wall.

CHAPTER 22

Warning

When Umbo walked back to the others, they were full of questions. They had seen the flyer take off, and when Umbo explained that Rigg was gone, Param was hurt, Olivenko baffled, and Loaf enraged.

“The fool!” he cried. “He thinks he wants one of these? What for? To put himself in Vadesh’s hands again—Vadesh is the champion of all the liars, and that’s saying something, since I don’t think one word in ten that I’ve heard in my life was true! And none since we left Ramfold, not one thing that anyone has told us.”

But it was done, and they didn’t blame Umbo for it.

“Arrogant little twit,” Loaf grumbled. “Rigg I mean, not you, Umbo. Arrogant foolish stupid brave little—he’s going to take this whole thing on himself, I’m sure of it.”

“I think he’s backed out of it,” said Param. “I think he’s frightened.”

“Well, he’s not,” said Umbo.

“I think he doesn’t want to face the Visitors,” said Param. “They’ll be here in only two years, and he’s making sure he’s not with us.”

“Why talk him down, when you’re glad he’s gone?”

“I am not!”

“You want your father all to yourself. You hated it when he was so happy to see Rigg—I was watching you,” said Umbo.

“Stop it,” said Olivenko. “We don’t know what Rigg is doing and we don’t know what his motive is but we know that we can trust him to do right, because he’s had so many chances to do wrong and he’s never taken them. But it’s up to us to act as if whatever he’s doing
won’t
work, so it’s all entirely up to us to try to stop the Visitors from reaching whatever decision they reach that leads to the destruction of this world. Don’t you think?”

“Father will tell us what to do,” said Param.

“He won’t tell
me
what to do,” said Umbo. “Though I’ll listen to suggestions.”

“You’re just jealous because I
have
a father,” said Param.

“I’ve had a father,” said Umbo, “and I’m not impressed.”

“When the two of you become capable of rational thought,” said Loaf, “consider this: The Larfolders have their own way of remembering things, and they know a few facts that somehow missed the all-knowing Odinfolders. I’m for laying out all that we know for them to hear, and getting their counsel.”

“
All
we know?” asked Umbo. “Even about the mice?”

“Yes,” said Olivenko.

“No!” cried Param.

“We don’t know anything about the mice,” said Loaf, “except what they’ve told us themselves, and they’re liars.”

“We know that there are thousands of them here,” said Umbo, “and that we brought them, and in the day since we arrived they’ve probably already had a thousand babies.”

“Mice aren’t
that
quick,” said Loaf.

“Really? How many of them were pregnant?” asked Umbo. “How many were about to pop?”

“Probably half of them,” said Olivenko. “The real question is, will telling the Larfolders make them trust us more, or less?”

“They’ll stop talking to us,” said Param. “They’ll cut us off from Father. Or hurt him because he’s one of us.”

“He has a mantle like theirs,” said Loaf. “He’s not one of us.”

“He’s more a part of me than you are,” said Param.

“Whatever you say,” said Loaf, turning away from her impatiently.

Umbo wanted to answer Param:
You’re
not part of
us
and never have been. But he knew that Loaf’s silence was the wiser course, and added nothing to it. He knew he shouldn’t have said as much as he already had.

“I think we need to tell them everything,” said Olivenko. “Or we’re as deceptive as the mice.”

“They’re actually
good
at deception,” said Param.

“We resent how little we can trust others,” said Olivenko, “so let’s be the kind of people that others can believe. They may not approve of what we do, but they can believe what we say.”

“If we tell the Larfolders about the mice, then we’re betraying
their
trust,” said Param.

“The mice already don’t trust us,” said Loaf, “and we never promised them we wouldn’t tell.”

Umbo realized that there was no point in arguing any further. When it involved a secret, one person’s decision to tell would always defeat any number of other people’s decision not to.

The real problem was figuring out what the mice intended to do. Umbo didn’t really know what the mice
could
do, without full-sized humans creating the real technology. He had never figured out the problem of how their tiny hands could do any serious work. They could never work with hot metals, for instance—a man with a heavy glove and apron could get close enough to a fire for him to lift iron out of it with tongs. But a short-armed mouse trying to lift a teeny-tiny bit of molten metal with teeny-tiny tongs would still have to stand so close to the fire that its entire body would be instantly cooked.