the house has heard of your existence. So he intends to use you in his secret practices. But, my dear lady, it is inevitably true that a man obsessed is half blind, and it seems to me that he has never looked at you as the powerful person you are. Is it not true that he sees you only as he wishes you to be, an instrument of his will, brought into being by himself for his own purposes?”
“True, Seeker. You are a man learned in the ways of men. Thus it is and has been, and I have said little and done nothing to rouse in him the notion that I may have a will of my own. In small things I have aided him, yet I have watched the way they are trending, and I fear in my soul’s soul that he means harm to my mother and to her people. For her father is now dead, and she rules in that place beyond the wall of time. My father is no king, and his jealousy is bitter. He is not beautiful, nor wise, nor good, nor powerful as she is. So he seeks petty powers in this place, dominion over those too weak to battle him, riches to flaunt before those he despises. And this does not salve his raw jealousy. Vengeance he must have, against one who has done him only good.”
“And when did your talisman vanish?” prompted the old man.
“A month has passed since my father set sail for the Far Islands to attend to his business there. The Cat was within its case of carven wood. Yet four days agone I opened the little doors and set my hand within, and it was not there. None has the key but I, and I believed that my father thought it only a trinket or a keepsake, such as a foolish girl might treasure. So great is the fear of his servants, I doubt that they would steal, even from one whom he keeps prisoner. In all places open to me I have searched, and in despair I have at last sought your aid.”
Kla-Noh rose painfully to his feet and struggled up the incline below her. Staring up into her eyes, he said, “You have given this burden to me. Let me now bear it, and keep yourself free for other things. You have power, even without the talisman. Exercise it then, as a gymnast strengthens his muscles. Your father is not here. Good. That gives you the time and the leisure for work. Despair saps the will and the spirit. Discard it as an unworthy thing. Focus your attention upon your arts and bring them to the fullness of fruition. Then, should I succeed, you will be doubly armed. Should I fail, you will have greater strength than you would have done had you despaired alone.”
She peered through the deepening gloom, seeing only his small shape black against the darkness. “Old man, I will,” she said. “You are wise and clever. Do you seek the Cat; I will seek other things. Together we will thwart Tro-Ven.”
* * * *
For a day and a night Kla-Noh sat upon his terrace, looking across the Purple Waters. Si-Lun waited in silence, knowing his companion’s inscrutable methods. Once they sailed across the bay, lighted by one waxing moon, Ralias, and stood off the cliff shore by the house of Tro-Ven. High in the ranks of tall windows blackly watching the bay, one window glowed with a strange and flickering luminescence. Then, though Si-Lun could not see the smile on the face of his friend, he could hear a smile in his voice as he said, “Ah, she is at work. Let us go home, Si-Lun, and begin our own.”
But what he began was not apparent. No mysterious messenger came or went. No stealthy footfall was heard in the night. None who watched the house would have suspected that the old Seeker was frantically busy with his part of the project. Only one who could mark the pigeon’s flight could have learned of his working. But his dovecote was an old pastime, and none who knew him had ever learned that it was his communication line to the world of secrets.
When a week had passed, the old man summoned Si-Lun and asked that his craft be made ready for a voyage of several days.
“We will approach rough coastlines and berth in unpeopled coves, so provide for all our wants. No man shall know when we leave or when we return, for when we sail away at moonset another craft shall be moored in the place of this, and our quiet lives will continue, so far as any watcher can discern.”
The younger man’s eyes glowed with excitement, though he spoke softly. “It begins, then?”
“We go to consult an...oracle,” said Kla-Noh. “I suspect that I know the answer to my questions, but we must know certainly. There is a spot in the wild, Si-Lun, my friend, which I know of old. I strongly suspect that it is a place where the veil is thin, or there is a hidden door, or a passage exists between this world and that of Li-Ah’s mother. I have before now consulted there with voices from the air and the earth, and their words have always been truthful and wise. Only there may we find the track of the Cat with the Sapphire Eyes.
“For I have made inquiry among the high and the low, the subtle and the crafty, and none among the men of Shar-Nuhn has pilfered that talisman.”
“Then we shall leave at moonset,” said Si-Lun, “for the craft has been provisioned and prepared these two days. Somewhat do I, also, know of the ways of the Seeker.” And he grinned in his hollow-cheeked way.
At moonset their dark sail merged with the dark sky as they slid from the bay into the full current of the Purple Waters.
Within two days they sighted a grim cape, thrusting its shoulder into boiling waves amid tumbled boulders. Standing well off, they rounded its profile and hove to in a steep-sided cove, then waited for darkness.
When the full moon and the waning one were the only light left in the sky, the two Seekers paddled to the shore and found a perilous path that led through young growth upward toward the lip of the circling cliff.
Though Kla-Noh affected the infirmities of age, when pressed by need he moved with the ease of a young man. Long before moonset the two reached the meadows that topped the cliffs and moved along a line of pines toward a distant wood.
“There,” whispered Kla-Noh, “lies the place of the oracle. This is my greatest secret, and I have had no son to share it. You are my spirit’s son, and this is my bequest to you, for with this you have the answer to any question unanswerable by other means.”
“This is a great gift,” said Si-Lun softly. “You have taken me, who had no home and no father, and have given me both. It is enough. Yet with this you have given me a life of ease and honor. Be certain I will use it well, Seeker.”
The wood glowed dimly in moonlight as they approached. No night bird sang, no current of air moved the branches. They entered and moved along a faint path that their feet felt, though their eyes could not see. So quietly did they move, and in such an enchanted stillness, that when Kla-Noh paused, his companion felt that he had been waked from a dream. But the old man was busy with the pack Si-Lun carried, feeling among its contents for a bundle of herbs, and a fagot of wood and his heat stone. When his torch was lit at last, a fragrance moved with them along the path and into a circle of stones and giant trees.
At the center of the little amphitheater the Seeker stopped and thrust the torch into a riven pillar that stood there. At once the silence, which had seemed complete, became a thing of agony, pressing into the ears like rods of wax. For a long moment they floated in a bubble of nothingness, then the bubble popped, and they again drew breath. From the air about them came voices, faint yet strong, remote yet so near that they sounded within their skulls.
“We are,” they said. “We have been. We shall be. What need have you, young friend?”
Kla-Noh sank to his knees, and Si-Lun covered his ears, that he might not hear the voices, and staggered from the circle until he stumbled upon his own pack, fell, and lay, waiting for his friend.
* * * *
The warped fragment of one waning moon hung over the Purple Waters. Under the golden-flowered bush waited Kla-Noh and Si-Lun, apprehensively.
