mounted into the heights, they found a chill growing in the air, and soon they needed the warm clothing that Nu-Veh had packed for them. And still they went up, following roads that were narrow shelves, which twisted their ways up the walls of gorges beside rills of singing water. Great trees overarched their way, bracing green-furred arms across the cold blueness of sky and digging strong toes into the scanty soil between outcroppings of stone.
“Almost,” said Si-Lun, when they had paused to rest the animals, “almost this seems as my birthplace upon the Far Continent. There stand mountains fit to pierce the sky, forests such as these, green waters falling from stone. The sly beasts peering at us from their coverts might be those which I hunted in my youth. This seems a journey into the past.”
“Lo-Shel is to be thanked,” answered Kla-Noh, “for bringing us out into this world of strong stillness. Study and song are well, in their place, yet I would not miss the joy of testing my skill and my will against these uncaring fastnesses.”
Then they went up again, and up, until the clouds closed around their heads and stopped their vision. Yet they moved along the tenuous trails, which now were closed in on either hand by rocky cliffs whose tops were hidden in the drifting mists. They crossed the pass before evening and moved again downward into fir-green valleys.
For more than a week they journeyed thus, doggedly challenging passes clogged with snow, invisible with cloud, perilous with loosened stones. They grew thin, and their beasts also. Altitude and effort took their toll of energy and flesh. But there came an afternoon when they descended a twisting track upon the side of a great beast of a mountain and saw, across a little valley enclosed on all sides by forested ridges, a column of smoke rising in the still, chill air.
“There,” said Kla-Noh, halting his panting mount, “is the house of Lo-Shel. Soon we will shelter again within walls, for which the gods be thanked.”
The valley through which they rode was narrow, following a stream that ran swiftly over a rocky course. Upon either side of the water they could see tilled fields and meadows where kine grazed upon the late-summer grasses. Hands had been busy drawing life from the soil and the plants and the waters. Soon they could see byres for the cattle and tall barns for the winter’s store of hay, which was standing ready for the blade. Yet no human form could they see, though the sun was not over the ridge to the west and some hours of light were left in the day.
The house of Lo-Shel stood at the end of a lane lined with flowering trees, which had dropped their rosy petals into the track. So the two Seekers walked up a way strewn with blossoms, leaving their beasts to graze among the grasses by the roadside. Only the chimney smoke spoke of the presence of living beings, for the windows were blank and no welcoming face looked from the panes of the door.
As Kla-Noh’s tap sounded through the rooms, there came a sudden susurrus of voices, hushed exclamations, then the clicking of feet upon stone flags. The heavy door opened, and a small face looked up at them from just over waist height. Round blue eyes grew rounder, and the little maid lifted her skirts and said, with a matronly air, “Come in, good sirs. My father is within, and I shall call him if you will but wait in the sitting room.”
She scurried out of sight down the passage, and the two Seekers smiled as they sat in comfort, awaiting her return. Instead there came a heavier tread, and Lo-Shel himself hurried into the room. His weathered face wore the print of care as he took Kla-Noh’s proffered hands and said, “Little did I think that you could arrive so soon, my friend. Heavy has been the burden of life these past weeks, and only the promise of your help has given me hope for the present or the future. But you are weary and must rest. Li-Tha! No-Ri! Come and show the Seekers to their chamber, that they may wash and refresh themselves before the evening meal.”
When they had satisfied their host that their comforts had been well attended, Si-Lun and Kla-Noh sat with Lo-Shel privately in his chamber and asked of his trouble.
“This is a strange malady which has stricken my Shallah,” he sighed. “You know that she has ever been a seer of the future and the past and has many a time woven at her loom in a trance, to find that her weaving depicts events of the faraway and the near at hand, that which has been and that which is to be. Often has she wept bitterly that the things she has woven must prove to be true, yet she is wise and strong and always has she conquered her grief. Over the past years the trance loomings had waned until she had begun to hope that the burden had been lifted from her. Happy was she as I have seldom seen her, and the house rang with her song and laughter, and the children bloomed in the blessed light of her cheer. Our life was joyful as never before, and all seemed clear as a summer sky.
“The ending of the spring brought a change. Through the early summer she remained in good cheer, yet she seemed to be ever listening to something far away, something that she could not quite hear. At midsummer, suddenly in the night she rose from our couch and went to her loom. Though her eyes were open, yet I could see that she neither heard nor saw that which was before her. She did not change the colors but set at once to weaving, looking with dread at the strange patterns that emerged in the cloth.
“Long did I watch, studying the runes, but none save she can decipher them. I returned to our couch, but did not sleep, and through the long night I could hear the thumping of the loom. I lay in dread, for I had seen that in her eyes which never had been there before. Not until the next night did she fall at the loom, and I carried her to bed and forced milk between her lips. And thus have I done for all the weeks since, though I know not how she walks to the loom of a morning, when she has eaten nothing except that which we can coax her to swallow in sleep. She sleeps now, for the hours when she can sit and weave grow fewer each day, and she falls into slumber before the sun sets.”
Kla-Noh leaned forward and laid his hand upon the man’s knee. “Be comforted, old friend. What we can do will be done. Long have I lived amid strange secrets and unearthly matters. Mayhap there will be among my recollections one that will work the cure for your beloved Shallah.”
Si-Lun also leaned forward. “Not so wise or so old as Kla-Noh am I, yet I, too, have traveled far and seen much of the ways of other places than this. Surely we may manage, between us, relief for your helpmate.”
“Let me, then, take you to her, that you may look upon her in sleep. She will not awaken until dawn, whatever the disturbance within her chamber. Perhaps you may see some sign that my anxiety has caused my eyes to miss.
The red light of sunset lay across the couch where Shallah lay, and the color gave her slender face the flush of health. Yet Kla-Noh, touching her forehead and her wrist, felt a chill in her flesh, and the pulsing of blood through her wrist was light and rapid. There were blue shadows about her eyes, and her small frame was worn away to the light bones. The Seeker felt a chill in his own frame as he summed up her state.
He turned to Lo-Shel and said, “In my pack there is a box that contains a powder. We shall add that to her milk and soup. It will strengthen her body, though it will not aid her spirit. Yet we must keep that spirit burning in this frail flesh, if we are to give it help. We shall think long this night, Lo-Shel, on this matter.”
Then the two Seekers went to their chamber and talked long as night drew in. Yet no similar sickness had either seen, in all their varied experiences.
Morning found the house of Lo-Shel a hive of activity as the four sons and three daughters of the family accomplished their forenoon tasks. After breakfast all went into the fields, for the hay was ripe for harvest. Only Lo-Shel remained behind with the Seekers.
“We have propped her in our arms and spooned milk between her lips,” he said to Kla-Noh. “Soon now she will awaken and, if I am not by to wrap her in her house gown and place slippers upon her feet, she will go in her nightrobe to the loom and begin
