Seas of Ernathe Page 7

  Lo'ela blinked. Seth shrugged. You speak very confusedly with your thoughts, Lo'ela said, but offered no elaboration on what she had or had not understood. Seth nodded.

  A skrell shrieked overhead. Seth looked up, startled, and watched it dive like a bolt into the lagoon. Moments later it erupted from the water into sunshine, a silvery fish glinting in its mouth. It spiraled upward over the watery ripples of its exit, its black leathery wings beating solemnly. Another skrell cried in a wounded, angry voice and joined it in flight.

  Mists again began to move, to close over the reflecting surface of the lagoon.

  What now? Seth wondered, looking restlessly back at Lo'ela. They couldn't stand here all day.

  Lo'ela broke the silence to speak briefly with her brothers. She turned to Seth again. Where beyond the sky, stranger starman Seth, do you come from? she asked.

  "Rorcan. Venicite. Rethmere. The central worlds of the Cluster," he answered, unhesitatingly, though he was surprised by the apparent sophistication of her question. He pointed to the sky; a few stars were visible along with the afternoon sun, Lambern.

  Yes, she said brightly, though he sensed that his answer had failed to convey its entire meaning to her. Would you like to see our home?

  "This is your home. Ernathe."

  This is our world. Would you like to see our home? she said, chuckling.

  Seth hesitated for a fraction of a second; his thoughts flashed to the ship that was as much a home as his homeworlds, and to Racart, and to the search team he had lost. "Of course," he said with a nod, and those other thoughts lost themselves in the warm confused glow of this new encounter. "Yes, Lo'ela. I would."

  The Nale'nid woman spoke to Al'ym and Ga'yl. She stepped forward and touched Seth lightly on the chest; suddenly the two sea-men were on either side of him, touching his arms gently with dry, cool hands. He breathed nervously and, despite his best efforts lost his smile.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, twinkling, a flush of mist obscured his sight of Lo'ela like a cataract, an impenetrable fog gathering between him and the other. He started to speak, but now every sound around him was muffled, and he forgot the impulse. Twisting slightly, he felt the three hands still touching him like the pads of soft, gentle paws. Though they touched rather than held him, he sensed that he was nevertheless held within a grip, that an unbreakable if undetectable bond held them woven together. The mist shimmered and drove inward coiling into his eyes, splitting his vision into fragments of fuming chaotic movement. He huffed in confusion but did not move . . . and then he felt a skidding movement beneath his feet as if he were adrift upon glassily wet ice beneath the sea-mist. Trying to recover, without knowing from what, he spun—and sank through the ice into a milky gloom, half liquid, half vapor, a realm of dreamy transient quiet in which he instantly felt at home. He was no longer aware of the Nale'nid with him, and he sleepily wondered if he had been abandoned, turned free, to the tides of this curious land; but he wondered without fear, with merely a sense of relaxed bewilderment. When the milky quiet caved into dark oblivion he was saddened and perplexed.

  Darkness swarmed and buzzed. His ears hurt, briefly, until someone removed the pain. The darkness lifted, collapsed into brilliant stunning light, and voices whispered at him and about him, and touched him like soft plucking fingers.

  He squinted. The light was not so bright as he had thought, but it bathed him with liquid blue radiance, cool, consoling. A dome, clear but traced with a woven pattern, held an ocean—a real ocean of water—serenely secure over his head and entirely about him. The air seemed almost liquid in his throat, denser than a mere single atmosphere. He was reclining, staring upward. He turned his head and found the Nale'nid girl, Lo'ela, sitting patiently beside him, her delicate hand resting lightly upon his shoulder.

  Stirring, he blinked, felt the muscles come alive in his arms and legs. He was dry; and yet he was in a dwelling beneath the sea. Outside this dome, in the near ocean distance, there was a number of apparently similar domes, magnificent with ghostly translucence. Looking at Lo'ela, he asked, "What, please tell me, have I just been through?" He blinked again.

  Lo'ela removed her hand with a smile and a little laugh. We are here.

  Chapter Seven

  Overhead, a trio of mellings glided to and fro in the sunlight, sculling the air rhythmically with treacherous looking tails. Racart Bonhof scowled until the creatures disappeared and traced a hand absently over the cool rock wall of the labyrinth in which he was lost. He looked wearily both ways down the passage, but there was no hint of the secret of the maze.

  Taking me nowhere, he decided. He had thought, originally, that he was making progress in escaping from the forest labyrinth, but all he had actually accomplished was to wander out of the forest and into the depths of a series of rock-gully passages with insurmountably steep walls. It did not seem an improvement. But at least he was cool now, carrying his jacket over his shoulder; and the constant if narrow overhead view of the sky was some slight comfort, some familiar reference to reassure him that he was not going mad, at least not yet.

  He settled, now, on backtracking through the passage. The perspective, the dwindling of the passage in the distance, induced fantasy rather than claustrophobia; he imagined he was treading the basin of some long-abandoned stone aqueduct, which in another time had swirled with fast-running water. Actually, the watercourse appeared carved by natural forces; the walls and even the stone floor were fluted and asymmetrical, exposing slanting clay sediment layers in various browns and yellows and reds. His footsteps echoed coolly down the passage. Racart followed two left turns and one right; then he stopped in confusion at an intersection. He vaguely remembered the juncture, but all the passages looked different when faced from the opposite direction. He started up the far left path, then changed his mind and took the next one over. This seemed familiar, and he walked quickly.

  After a time, as he looked up, he began to see the heads of trees peering shyly over the tops of the channel walls—and he knew that, if not precisely retracing his steps, he was at least returning to the forest. The passageway took several sharp bends (and he realized now that he was not on the same path, but it hardly seemed to matter), and the tops of the walls sloped lower and became thicker with trees. Unfortunately, when he reached a point at which, by jumping, he could sight over the walls, the tree trunks appeared too closely spaced to penetrate. He tried anyway, stuffing his jacket up first; he muscled himself onto the top ledge, and with a spine-wrenching twist angled himself head first between two oddly curved trunks. He got his arms through, then pulled and wriggled. Knobs of wood dug painfully into his chest and back, caught on his tunic, and gouged his hips. He cursed, ignored the pain, and struggled through and out, rolling clear onto sodden earth; then he picked himself and his jacket up, brushed feebly at the clay staining his clothes, and finally looked around.

  His hopes sank. Two dense thickets of trees bracketed a wide pathway winding off into the forest. The sky shimmered overhead. The spot was virtually indistinguishable from the one in which he had first rubbed his eyes that morning, following a daze of blurry dreams and strange memories. Now, almost a day later, he scarcely remembered his actual arrival; and only with great effort could he recall the events preceding—a foundering ship, thunderous seas, panic and bewilderment. Hardly real; hardly a true or credible story. He started walking again.

  Lambrose had burned fiercely, but its rays were easing as the day wore on. He was reasonably sure that he was in a tropical or semi-tropical region, though he had no real experience on which to base the judgment. He was thirsty. His throat hurt, and his skin was so hot it ached. But there was no more a sign of fresh water here than there was of a purpose to the whole bizarre ordeal. He had simply accepted it from the beginning, and walked, hoping to find . . . he could not imagine what, except an end to the maze.

  The forest was not an entirely natural feature of the land, he had decided early on—yet who had created it, the Nale'nid?
He had been astonished to find so many trees; that, more than anything else, was beyond his experience. He had seen pictures from other worlds; but the Ernathe he knew supported only token flora, and the sight and smell of such lush verdancy had nearly overwhelmed him. That the forest was laid in an intricate mazework, that the trees were high-trunked as if sculpted specifically to discourage climbers—these had been only secondary mysteries.

  He trudged, not concerning himself about the direction. He plodded, pounded his fists against tree trunks as he passed, and cursed whatever quality within him had led the Nale'nid to single him out. The path wound, intersected, and moved on beneath the sun and the trees. Racart followed. And followed.

  In time, the pattern of the forest changed; the trees were spaced farther apart, and he could look through the thickets—to more forest. He seemed amidst a company of soldiers frozen in the act of falling out: gray-green, stooping torsos topped by leaf-camouflaged helmets. The uniform, thin-leafed stuff carpeting the ground was becoming a jumble of mixed species, some of them buttoned with blue and purple and yellow blossoms. Racart stopped and once more took stock of the surroundings. Was he out of the maze? Probably not. He could abandon the path, find his own way through the woods. Might be tricky, depending on what surprises, if any, his captors had prepared. Perhaps escape lay in striking off on his own—or in playing their game straight. Or in neither. Perhaps he was meant to be trapped here forever, wandering in endless spirals and zigzags, for someone's amusement.

  The memory of his previous abduction rushed into his mind, images he had forgotten: Stolen from Seth's side, a cataclysm, a whirlwind of changing sights and sensations—(like Seth's dosage of the strange mynalar-g?)—and dashed rudely to earth on the shore of a freezing, tempestuous sea. But not to stay there, wherever there was—he was yanked silently and with laughter in his ears to another place . . . grottoes: caverns and dripping rock formations, ghostly illumination and Nale'nid, sea-people scurrying around and about, never seeming to remain in one place, except . . .

  except a long-jawed smiling sea-man who danced ritualistically around him, beaming at his fellows and then at Racart. Another man, smaller, more subdued in his movements, but shifting in a curious motionless way from one side of Racart to the other, and occasionally jabbing an arm at him in a strange but apparently serious gesture. Trying to frighten me? he wondered. Why—because they are angry? Would they tell him why? No, but for minutes, hours he was scrutinized, his very thoughts invaded and searched with humiliating disregard for his privacy. Then . . .

  stolen away as suddenly as before, there were fragments of landscape flashing and vanishing, flashing and vanishing, as if he were being transported by someone unsure just where to go. He landed dizzy, exhausted, and alone on the northern seashore—shaken to the bones. In the grip of a calm that he knew was only shock, he set off in search of Seth.

  Racart shook his head determinedly, filing the memory. This new experience was to be different, evidently. Left on his own, thirsty and hungry. A test? Damn them, then; he would be tested on his terms.

  He plunged away from the path and stalked furiously through the unblazed woods. Anger and frustration kept him going, but he was seriously weakened by sun and exhaustion, more so than he realized. When his anger began to fade, his pace slowed as well. From a jog, he slipped to a desperate, slumping walk, pushing himself from bole to bole, but unwilling to yield to fatigue.

  The trees fell away, and he was fuzzily aware that he was in a clearing, a glade; and he heard the sound of nearby running water. His eyes blinked open—he had been dozing as he walked—and he caught a sparkle of light off to his right. He hurried, dropping his jacket, and fell to his knees at the edge of a marvelous, clear-running spring. He sprawled on the bank, on the wet stone, and scooped his hands slowly into the water, not quite believing it real. Crystalline and cool, not cold. He rinsed the dried clay from his hands, and splashed his face, sputtering, murmured aloud at the coolness, the wetness. He rubbed his hands on the wet stones, sighed, and rubbed them again as though absorbing strength from the rock itself. And he wondered: Was this planned, too?

  Finally, he drank—slowly, in small sips, grimacing at a terrible temptation to gulp quickly and to slake his thirst. When he finished, he got to his feet to look around. A clearing. A glade—small, verdant, beautiful. He had never seen a place quite like it, would never have guessed that such places existed. Woods surrounded the grass floor in a sheltering but not confining way; several flying animals moved about, neither skrells nor mellings, and even more astonishing, a four-legged ground animal browsed casually along the limits of the trees. Before he could move closer, the animal vanished into the woods.

  Several of the trees bore brightly colored objects upon their branches—some of them reddish-orange and spongy-hard, others small green fleshy fingers nestled among great clusters of leaves. He touched the fruits thoughtfully. He had heard of fruits. Another test? He knew nothing of the safety or hazard of such things, but since some of the pieces seemed gnawed and nibbled upon by animals he reasoned that they were probably edible. And if not, what alternative? Starvation?

  He grasped one of the red orbs and pulled it clumsily from its branch, then with only a moment's hesitation took a bite. It was sweet, juicy, and tart; delicious. He finished it quickly, finding a seed in the middle, which he inspected, gnawed, and threw away; then he took another and ate it more slowly. Next he went to try the green fruit. It was crisply tender, hollow in the center with clusters of small, bitter seeds. He ate three and was startled to realize that his stomach was tight and full; though he still felt hungry. He walked away before he could start eating again, and cut across the clearing to explore further.

  He froze.

  Standing on a small knoll just above the spring, motionless as the trees, were two Nale'nid. Racart took a step that way, and then stopped, thinking: Why should I? If this is their doing, let them come. The Nale'nid did not move however. It seemed they still planned to keep their purpose secret. A confused effort to communicate . . . to understand human ways . . . to intimidate? Racart shook his head and determined to stop worrying about it. He stared at the two Nale'nid, and they appeared to stare at him. Stalemate.

  He turned around, reached, and tore a red fruit from a nearby branch. Biting it deeply, he closed his eyes to appreciate its juicy sweetness, and sucked it slowly, before turning his eyes back to the Nale'nid.

  They were gone.

  Annoyed, he cast his gaze up and down along the edges of the meadow, but if they were there at all they were lost in the shadows. Probably they had been following and watching for as long as he had been in this forest, and in the labyrinth. He shrugged, and went back to his eating, and his browsing.

  * * *

  Later, considerably refreshed, he decided to press on. The Nale'nid had shown no inclination to interfere with his journey, and there appeared to be several more hours of daylight in which he could travel. Pleasant as this glade was, there was no point in remaining. He retrieved his jacket and wrapped in it several pieces of each kind of fruit. Then he glanced quickly to choose a heading, settled on the direction of the declining sun, and marched into the woods. Surrounded by trees again, he felt less uncomfortable than before but no less unsettled as to a goal. To get out. But to where? He sighed. This time he moved leisurely, stopping at times to examine an unfamiliar plant, or to admire the solid dignity of an aging tree. Almost before he knew it, he had moved into an area of sparser growth, and, paradoxically, he found himself back in a pathway. The trees were not crowded together in a wall, but were arranged in a curving linear fashion, with the pathway marked only by a slightly wider spacing than among the trees generally. He followed it.

  The woods was breaking open, exposing its ground and its terrain to view, while Lambern moved lower and lower, losing power in its golden illumination. A reddish glow suffused the woods, lighting the ground in rich browns, and turning the trees into somber giants brooding over an autumnal
scene. Racart walked slowly, unnerved by the deepening colors. If someone were shadowing him, this was surely the place to do it. Slowly, though, as Lambern became visible beneath the treetops as a flattened, glowing orb, he felt himself drawn onward toward the sight itself, through the dwindling woods.

  He emerged from the forest, and stood awestricken. The sun Lambern lay before him, beautiful, warm and crimson—half sunk behind a tumbling, painted landscape of rocky wildlands—the sun half sunk, and sinking, so that its blood-red light pooled into the craggy, canyoned wilderness but gave up growing shards of it to half-light and darkness. Racart stood on a plateau of rock, grass covered and shrubbed, and gazed outward and downward to a land which he knew had never before been seen by Ernathene human eyes.

  He was still standing, staring, when he felt the arms of the Nale'nid touch lightly upon his shoulders and his arms. He never succeeded in turning his head to look. The plateau shook, and mist filled the tortured wilderness. His vision shimmered, and he sensed motion, fleeting motion beneath his feet, then the sight was lost to him . . . and he knew that he was once more on his way.

  He knew, also, that he had solved the escape riddle of the labyrinth—if solution it could be called.

  * * *

  Richel Mondreau looked at Holme with an expression suggesting annoyance, skepticism, and a touch of upper-rank contempt. "Very well, then," he said, "since Mr. Senrith concurs that the fog was a prime factor in Perland's disappearance, I'll accept your explanation as a working hypothesis. But unless someone has a brilliant idea, it's going to be damned impossible to find the man. Good pilot, too, I understand. Eh, Jondrel?"

  Captain Gorges smiled slowly and sympathetically, but at Andol Holme, not at Mondreau. "Yes, Richel. He is a good pilot, and considerably more than that. But it would seem, from past experience, that the man is a magnet for Nale'nid shenanigans—so I shouldn't be surprised to learn of their involvement here, as well."