Liar's Oath

Chapter Eight

Luap did not, after all, have to decide when and how to tell Gird about that distant land. Gird himself suggested they travel together, when it became obvious that the Marshal-General’s presence would settle some festering disputes in outlying granges. The cave lay on the obvious shortcut from one problem to another, and Luap took that as a favorable omen.

“I don’t know that I like this any better than I did the first time.” Gird’s voice rang off the stone walls.

“You don’t have a cold.” Luap grinned over his shoulder. Gird had one hand on the wall, feeling his way. He wouldn’t fall over the ledge this time.

“And you don’t have that tone of voice you had.” Gird’s look was friendly enough, but unsmiling.

“Yes.” Luap remembered the previous occasion entirely too well; he had been almost hysterical with fear and elation, Now his mouth went dry. He had sworn and been forsworn, all in less time than heating a kettle of water. This place was the very focus of Gird’s distrust of him, however he’d proven himself since. How could he expect Gird to believe him now?

“Yes,” he said again, flattening his tone to avoid the least taint of charm. “But I will tell you what I can. You remember that you, too, felt an influence here?”

“I felt the god’s presence, not an influence like your magery.” Gird had decided to be difficult; Luap smothered a sigh. Gird’s expression, in the gloom, looked one with the rock walls. Luap felt as bruised by that as by his memories.

“I felt both.” Luap paused, and thanked the gods’ mercy that Gird did not comment. He drew another long breath and plunged on. “That inner chamber, floored and ringed with strange designs . . . ?”

“Umph” More grunt than word, it meant Go on, I’m listening.

“It can take you to a place.”

That should have been clear enough, but Gird stared, eyes suddenly brighter in dimness. “Take you? How?”

“I don’t know how. And—” forestalling another question, “I don’t know where the place is, or why, or anything else. I don’t know if it will take you, or only me. But I thought you should know.”

Gird had that crafty look Luap most disliked. He would complain. He did. “Gods’ teeth, lad, you keep thinking I should know things that don’t help at all.”

Damned mulish peasant, thought Luap, an indulgence he allowed himself only in the dark. Gird read his face too well.

“You told me to assess all magical dangers. This may be one. If I can go somewhere and return, so may others.”

“Your kind.”

“Or others. I think the Elder Races have used this.”

“Gnomes?” Gird sounded almost cheerful about that; unlike Luap, he still got on well with his former advisors.

“I don’t know. You might know the symbols I found in that other place.”

“So—have you asked them?”

“Not without talking to you. I wondered if you’d try it with me.”

“Try—you mean go somewhere?”

Luap nodded. Gird heaved one of those sighs Luap had learned were as dramatic as necessary. “Has the place gone to your head, then, as it did last time? Will you try another of your tricks?”

“No.” Surely he knew that already.

“Well, then. Yes. I will. But—” a blunt finger hard against Luap’s chest. “—But I still own a hard fist and strength to use it.”

“I know.” He let his own light come, in this hidden place, until it shone as bright as was needful, looking away from Gird’s face in conscious courtesy. . . . Gird still hated to see magelight, even Arranha’s. Then he led the way to the chamber for which he had no proper name, the bell-shaped space with its carved decorations, its inlaid design on the floor. “We’ll stand here,” he said, stepping boldly out onto it.

“You’re sure?” Gird edged his boot forward as if he thought the smooth stone might be glass, and break. In here his voice echoed, waking a resonance more metallic than stony. He spoke more softly then. “I don’t like this—the gods—”

“Will sense no impiety.” Luap waited until Gird moved close to him, the broad shoulders slightly hunched, apprehensive. He stretched his own chest, wondering, in the last possible moment, if this was wise. But he had to try; the need for that squeezed his mind painfully. He felt inside for the power he had inherited, that the Rosemage was so determined he would learn to use. As if his feet were moving in a dance, he could feel the interlacing patterns below him in the stone, and his mind sang a response. . . .

And they stood in the great hall with its arches at the far end. He felt Gird’s sudden shift of weight, heard the indrawn ragged breath, that came back out as a shaky whisper.

“Somewhere . . . you said . . .”

“This is . . . it. Wherever it is. Whatever it is.” However it works and we got here, he went on silently, hoping Gird wouldn’t ask about that. At least not yet. “We can walk around,” he went on, taking a step off the pattern’s center. He could damp his own magelight; the place lay under the cool silvery glow of deeper magic. Would Gird notice the difference? Gird did.

“More magicks than yours,” he said. “And how big is this place?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I didn’t go far.” He watched Gird move around, and finally leave the pattern that here centered a raised area of the floor. The man could still surprise him . . . an old man, a peasant born, distrustful of any magicks . . . and here after being snatched from a cave to a hall, he was looking around with alert interest and no apparent fear. He could still taste the fear that had choked his own throat the first time he’d come—but of course he’d had no warning. No . . . Gird was simply the braver man. He followed him down the hall, noticing without analyzing the odd ring of their boots on the stone floor, the way the walls threw the sound back less harshly than he’d expected.

“Harp and tree . . .” Gird muttered, looking up at the carving. “The treelords, the oldsingers, that would be. I wonder if the blackhearts ever had a place here.”

“Blackhearts?”

“I may not have told you.” A long pause, in which Luap tried to remember if he’d ever heard of blackhearts. “And I’m not sure this is the place for it. There’s a feel . . . a good feeling here.” Gird looked around. “Anvil and hammer . . . Sertig’s folk, then.”

“Gnomes?”

“Nay. Dwarven; the gnomes follow the High Lord as judge. But I heard the lore of Sertig there, and from the first smith I knew, back in the woods. ’Tis said all smiths learned metalcraft of dwarves, and the dwarves say Sertig hammered out the world on his anvil. Gnomes themselves think the High Lord ordered chaos as we might sort seed or stones for building—at least I think that’s what they meant.”

“And elvenkind?”

Gird’s face wrinkled. He had never said much about the elves, receiving the first elven ambassador with evident embarrassment and awe. “Think that their god made the world like a harper makes a song, if I understood what I was told—and I doubt I do. A song’s not a thing, like a stone you can count, or a lump of iron you can shape . . . it’s . . . it’s just a thought in the mind, until someone sings it again. It’s not really there, between singings. So how can the world be a song?”

“Maybe it’s not finished.” But even as he said it, Luap felt a shiver go down his spine . . . the world was, as Gird said: you could touch it, smell it, taste it. He could not imagine it as something becoming, not in its essence. Humans might move across the world, even change it, as the Aarean lords had laid waste some tracts of forest, but its basic reality didn’t change. He hoped.

Gird had grunted; now he prowled near the arches. “Dwarfkind, elvenkind, and this . . . I suppose . . . is for the gnomes?”

“What—lords of light and shadow!” That was a magelord’s oath, and earned him a sharp glance from Gird, but he could not help it. Luap swallowed an angular lump of confusion, and wondered if he should tell Gird that the arch he stood under had not been there before. Not there the previous trips, and not there a few—minutes?—ago when they’d first arrived.

“I don’t remember seeing this at first,” Gird said. His voice was husky; was he finally afraid of something? Luap swallowed again and forced the truth past his teeth, which wanted to grip it.

“It wasn’t here.” Gird gave him a long level stare. “I swear, Marshal-General—” in this context the title came easily, more easily than his name. “It was not here when I came before, and it was not here when we arrived.”

Over his head the arch bore the single unflawed circle of the High Lord, glowing with its own light, as the harp and tree, and the anvil and hammer. Up either column ran the same intricate interlacing patterns as on all other columns in that place, patterns he had seen in weaving or pottery all his life, now graved deep in polished stone. Gird’s hand reached out, drew back, went out again, thumbfirst, to follow one of the lines a short way.

“It must . . . must mean something. . . .” All the resonance had left his voice; his brow wrinkled. Of course it meant something; what else? But Gird stared up, mouth gaping as he leaned back. Luap wanted to say something, do something, but couldn’t think of anything effective. He wanted to think Gird was disrespectful, but couldn’t manage that, either. Gird reserved disrespect for humans. Now he gave Luap another one of his looks. “Did you go through, before?”

“Through one of these?” At Gird’s nod, he shook his head. “I would not chance it, marked as they were. And it felt wrong.”

“Humph.” Gird shook his head, to what question Luap could not guess, and turned away from the middle arch to Luap’s great relief. Back up the long, silent, echoing, empty hall, around the dais. “Back there?” Gird’s broad thumb indicated the openings hewn in the wall. Luap felt himself flushing, though why he couldn’t imagine.

“Yes . . . I did. Not far; I wasn’t sure of the light, of the directions—”

“Show me.” That was plain enough; Luap shrugged and led the way through the left-hand door. Heartwise, the peasant lore had it. Sunwise, to Arranha and the magelords. The passage ran as he remembered, with no surprising additions, level and dry, wide enough for three men to walk comfortably together. Gird crowded him, nonetheless. “Find any stairs to the outside?”

“No.” That had worried him; he knew there must be ways out, for the air to be so fresh. But in his limited explorations, all he’d found were empty chambers and these passages. Around a corner, then another. Ahead the passage forked. “I stopped here, and went back.”

“Wise, I would think.” Gird licked his finger and held it up. “Ah . . . we’ll try the left again.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“What?” Then he grinned, mischievous; Luap could have smacked him. “You mean being understone like this? That’s right—you came later. You knew I was with the gnomes, but not how long. All the winter that was, and never a day’s clean light, or living air. An hour or so of this won’t bother me.”

He wanted to believe that negated the courage, but he knew better. Gird had earned the right to be casual here, in those months with the gnomes. He followed Gird left away from the junction of passages, hoping his trailsense would hold here. Empty corridor followed empty corridor. Rooms opened here and there, blank and empty, floors gritty under his boots. Gird seemed to know where he was going, and Luap followed, stubbornly forcing his fear under control. Finally Gird stopped, and leaned on the wall.

“I’m tired. This could go on forever.”

“Mmm.” Luap leaned on the opposite wall, and looked down at his scuffed boots. He felt as if the stone were leaning back against him.

“We’ll go back.” Gird sighed. “I’d like to know where this is—which mountains. Dwarves would know.”

“Would they?” asked Luap. “If it doesn’t come out somewhere, maybe they never saw the outside. . . .”

Gird snorted. “They had to, to take out the stone they cut. And I’ve heard they know stone by its smell and taste . . . that a dwarf will know a rock brought from leagues away. The gnomes could do that, and they said dwarves could too.” He pushed himself off the wall. “Well. Back we go.” He led the way again, and Luap came behind, trying not to look back over his shoulder at what might follow the clangor of their voices. “You found a good surprise, Luap, I’ll give you that. Not like before, indeed.” He led on at a good pace, and soon they came back to the great hall; they could hear their footsteps ring in it before they arrived, as if it were a bell.

Luap let out breath he had not realized he held. “How did you know your way?” He could ask, now that they were safe.

Gird’s brows rose. “You didn’t? You count the turns, the doorways you pass, keep track of lefts and rights—”

And this was the man who formed half his signs wrong in writing, whose brow furrowed over a page of clear script, who could not reckon except by placing objects in a row and counting them. Luap managed not to shudder or glance back through the doorway. “And now?”

“Mmmm.” Gird looked around, up, around again. “I would still like to see the outside of this rock.”

And I, thought Luap fervently. He opened his mouth to say “Then we’ll go back.” and shut it, for Gird was strolling with perfect assurance—or what looked like it—down the hall toward the arches. He had never heard Gird pray, and he did not hear him pray now—but he was sure that pause before Gird walked under the arch with the High Lord’s sigil had in some manner been a request for permission. He himself did not run to follow, because (he told himself) it was disrespectful—he walked, quickly and quietly, and was in time to see Gird standing straddle-legged at the foot of a narrow curving stair that rose into the first darkness he had seen in this place. Gird turned and gestured.

“Come on, Luap; if it didn’t scorch me, it’s not going to hurt you.” Luap would have liked to be sure of that, but stepped gingerly through the arch, his heart pounding. It had not been there before, and now he had walked through it, and—he glanced back, to find the hall just as visible, just as empty, just as silent as before. From this side, too, the arches stood clear, each with its holy symbol.

Gird had already started up the staircase, grunting a little. Luap sighed and followed. He might as well. If something happened to Gird, he could not go back without him. The stair rose in a spiral around a central well; Luap tried to keep a hand on the wall, but felt that the stairs tipped slightly inward. The staircase had no railing; his stomach swooped within him like a flight of small birds. His legs began to ache. From silver light, they passed to dusk, and then to dark. Gird stopped abruptly, and Luap almost ran into him.

“Why is there no light here?” His voice sounded flat, almost as if they were in a tiny closet, then it rang back from far below.

“I don’t know.” Luap felt grumpy, and his voice sounded it.

So did Gird; he heard a grumbling mutter, then: “Well, make some, then.” That was a concession. Luap called his light, dim enough after the gloriously clear light below, and close above Gird’s head the stone sprang into vision, arced into a shallow dome, scribed with patterns as intricate as any below. Within Gird’s reach was a doubled spiral; Gird reached a cautious hand toward it.

“You know that?” asked Luap.

“Gnomes used it.” Gird’s broad peasant thumb traced the spiral in, then out, missing none of the grooves. He looked up, and said, “At your will.” Not to Luap; Luap’s hair rose. Suddenly a gust of cold air swirled in, and he felt the sweat on his neck freezing. Above the red stone vanished, and out of a dark gray sky snowflakes danced down upon them. “Blessing,” said Gird, and climbed on. Luap followed, pushing against the gusting wind and shivering in the cold.

He came out over the lip of the opening onto a flat windswept table of red stone. Gird crouched an armslength away, back to the wind, eyes squinted, hair already spangled with snow. Luap looked around. He had never seen anything like their surroundings. They seemed to be on the flat top of some mass of stone, like a vast building. To one side—in that storm he could not guess the direction—rock rose again, a sheer wall as if hewn by a great axe. On the other sides, their table ended as abruptly. Snow streaked the rock, packed into every crevice, but swept clean of exposed surfaces. Its irregular curtains cloaked more distant views, but gave tantalizing hints of other vast rock masses.

“Not a place I’d expect to find elves,” said Gird. “Not a tree in sight. Gnomes and dwarves, though . . . I’m surprised we haven’t seen them.”

Luap shivered. “If we stay here, they’ll find us frozen as hard as these rocks.”

“Not yet. I’ve never seen any place like this—or heard of it, even in songs.”

Luap sighed, and climbed the rest of the way out, shivering, to crouch beside Gird. “Probably no one ever saw it before.” At Gird’s look, he said, “Human, I mean. Gnomes, dwarves, elves, yes.” He squinted, blinked, and realized that the snow came down less thickly . . . he could see downwind, now, to the dropoff and beyond. . . . “Gods above,” he murmured. A wet snowflake found the back of his neck and he shivered again.

“Uncanny,” said Gird. It was the same voice with which he’d come down from the hill before Greenfields, quiet and a little remote. As the last of the snow flurry wisped past, scoured off the stone by the incessant wind, Gird stood and looked at the wilderness around them.

It seemed larger every moment as the veils of falling snow withdrew, and a little more light came through the clouds. Vast vertical walls of red stone, cleft into narrow passages . . . Luap realized that Gird was moving toward the edge of their platform, and followed quickly.

“Don’t get too near—”

“—the edge. I’m not a child, Luap.” A gust of wind made them both stagger and clutch each other. Gird pulled back and glanced upward. “Nor a god, to stand in place against such wind. I will be careful.” He looked back and up. “There are trees—up on that next level—” Luap squinted against the wind and saw an irregular blur of dark and white, that might have been snow-covered trees. He looked into the wind, and saw the edge of cloud, with light sky beyond it, moving toward them, visibly moving even as he watched. He nudged Gird, who turned and stared, mouth open, before turning his back to the wind again. “A very strange place indeed, you found. Not in the world we know, I daresay.”

As the cloud’s edge came nearer, the wind sharpened, probing daggerlike beneath Luap’s clothes. He found it hard to catch his breath, but he no longer wanted to retreat to the safety of the magical place . . . he was too interested in the widening view. Light rolled over them from behind, as the cloud fled away southward and let sunlight glare on the snowy expanse. Luap squinted harder, suddenly blinded. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he stared until his body shuddered, reminding him of the cold.

Wall beyond wall, cleft beyond cleft, stacked together so tightly he knew he could not tell, from here, where those clefts led. Stone in colors he had not imagined, vivid reds and oranges, and far away a wall of stone as white as the snow—unless it was a snowfield on some higher mountain. And a distant plain, apparently almost level, glaring in the sunlight until his eyes watered.

“Not good farmland,” said Gird. Now even he shivered; he swung his arms and added, before Luap could replay, “Now let’s get back in; I’m famished with cold.”

They struggled back against the wind, eyes slitted, and found the entrance by almost falling in. Luap led, this time, and nearly fell into the stair’s central well when his boots slipped on inblown snow. He did not care. He felt that something had opened, inside his head, a vast room he had not known he owned, furnished with shapes he had not know he wanted to see until he saw them. Beauty, he thought, setting one foot carefully after another. It’s beautiful.

Behind him, he heard Gird’s comments about the impossibility of farming in land like that with inward amusement. He had nothing against farmland; he liked to eat as well as anyone. But these red rocks, streaked with snow were not meant for farmland. Trumpets rang in his head. Banners waved. Castles, he thought. And then again: Beauty. And then, slowly, inexorably, Mine. My own land. My . . . kingdom. As in a vision, he saw the arrival of his people, the mageborn, saw them come out into the sun atop that great slab of stone, saw the awe in their faces. He went down slowly, step after careful step, listening to Gird behind him. He did not notice how far they had gone before the cold wind no longer whistled down the central well; he simply assumed, he realized later, that the entrance would close itself.

He waited for Gird to reach the bottom of the stairs, and let Gird lead the way back into the hall. “I wonder if it’s the same every time you go up,” Gird said, in the tone of one who would find it reasonable if either way. Luap almost turned and went back to find out, but restrained himself. He could come again, alone: he could find out by himself if his land (he thought of it already as his, without noticing) was there. He didn’t notice that he had not responded until he realized that Gird had stopped and was peering at him. At once he felt the heat in his face, as if he had been caught out in an obvious lie. But Gird said nothing about that.

“You must have been cold,” he commented. “And now your blood’s coming back: your face is as red as raw meat. Mine feels like it too.” And indeed he was flushed, almost a feverish red. Luap felt an unexpected pang of guilt.

“I’m sorry—” he began, but Gird cut him off.

“Not your fault. I’m the one insisted we stay out up there so long. Brrr. It may be spring in Fintha, but it’s winter here—let’s go back, unless you have a magical feast hidden here somewhere.”

“Alas, no,” said Luap. He led Gird back to the center of the pattern on the dais, and reached for his power, this time with confidence. It seemed but a moment, a flicker of the eyelid, and they were once more in the cave’s inner chamber. Gird coughed, and the cough echoed harshly, jangling almost. Luap led him out, with a concern more than half real, to their campsite just inside the cave’s entrance. Their horses, cropping spring grass outside, paused to look, and Gird’s old white horse whuffled at him.

Outside, the day had waned to a moist, cool evening. Luap built up the fire quickly, noticing that Gird still shivered from time to time.

“Are you all right?”

“Just cold.” He sounded tired as well as cold. Luap wondered if that way of travel, which he found exhilarating, felt different for the one who was taken, like a sack of meal in a wagon. “I don’t like caves,” Gird said, peevishly. “They all have something . . . this one that chamber, the gnomehalls their secret passages and centers, and gods only know what in that place you found, whatever it is.” He hitched himself around on the rock, and spread his hands to the fire Luap had built. “And I’m still not sure why you showed me that. Do you know yourself?”

“Not really.” Luap put the kettle on its hook, and added more wood to the fire. He should have brought a keg of ale. That would have kept Gird from asking awkward questions . . . but Gird being Gird might have thought that a suspicious thing to do. “I thought you should know about it; I thought it should not be a secret.”

“Umph. It was meant to be a secret, I’d wager. Meant to be, and kept a secret, all those years, until you stumbled into it. And that’s something I’ve always wondered about—” He coughed, a long racking cough, and Luap offered him water. Gird gulped a mouthful, and coughed again. “Blast it! You’d think I was an old man, hacking and spitting by the fire.” Luap said nothing, in the face of Gird’s shrewd gaze. “So . . . is that what you think?” Luap managed a shrug he hoped looked casual.

“You’re older than I am, but Arranha is older. To us you’re just Gird.” Not quite true; others had commented, this past winter, on that same enduring cough.

“That horse has slowed down,” Gird said, jerking a thumb at the white blur standing hipshot just outside the cave. “He hardly moves out of an amble, these days.” Luap looked at the horse, and met dark eyes that looked no more aged than a colt’s. Gird never admitted anything unusual in his horse, but everyone else realized that it had never been a stray carthorse. Where it had come from, no one knew, but Luap had heard more than one refer to it as “Torre’s mount’s foal.”

“Horses age faster than men,” Luap said, ignoring the snort from the cave entrance. “And you were willing to sit out in that snowstorm longer than I was.”

“That’s true.” Gird prodded the fire with a stick; sparks shot up, and shadows danced on the cave walls. He looked around. “It was homelier with an army in it.”

Noisier and smellier, Luap thought, remembering quarrels and hunger. Now they had plenty of food, warm dry clothes without holes, warm blankets to sleep in. “Sib’s ready,” he said, lifting the lid on that aromatic brew. “We’ll be back to a town tomorrow.” If he was lucky, Gird would not get back to his previous topic. He dipped a mugful for Gird, another for himself, and set the loaf by the fire to warm. They had an end of ham, the mushrooms they’d gathered on the way, a handful of berries, a few spring ramps. Gird drank his sib in three gulps, then held his mug for more. Luap served him, silent and hoping to remain so. He offered a slice of warm bread, with a slab of cold ham. Gird took it as silently, and bit off a chunk.

Silence lasted the meal, then Gird belched and sighed. “Strange place. A long way from here or anyplace I ever saw. They don’t look like the mountains near the gnome princedom. Elves . . . dwarves . . . they will not thank you for sharing their secret, when they find out.”

“I thought perhaps they’d lost it.” That sounded strange, even as he said it. “Forgotten it,” Luap amended. “There’s no sign anyone’s used it.”

Gird blinked. “But you haven’t been watching. How would you know?”

“I—don’t.” He had been sure, from the utter blankness of the chamber in this cave, the empty hall there. No smells of occupation, no stir of air, no sounds. He was sure the place had been waiting for him, would be empty any time he returned to it, until he took others there. If he took others there. His heart quickened, and he took a long breath. He would not think about that now.

“How much sign did we leave?” Gird went on. “In a day or so, whatever snow we tracked in will have dried. That’s large country, out there. You could take an army through this cave, a tensquad a time, and send them out into that, and a day later no one could tell.”

Luap hoped his face showed nothing; he felt the sweat spring out under his arms and on the back of his neck. He cleared his throat and forced a shrug. “But until we know where there is, what good is that?”

Gird nodded. “That’s sense. We’re not wandering folk, any more; we have no need of more lands. There’s plenty amiss here to clean up. You’re right, lad; my mind just wandered a bit. And I should thank you for showing me, not keeping it to yourself. You’re right; someone else should know it exists, someone human, I mean. But it’s lucky we didn’t know during the fighting. Some would’ve wanted to hide from trouble that way.”

He almost told Gird then. His mouth opened; he said the first words that came into his head . . . and they were not those words. “It would have complicated things,” he said, and ducked his head and pretended to yawn. Towers, walls, castles slid through his mind, peopled with mageborn men and women and children, living together in peace, far from the quarrels Gird never wanted to hear about, where he could learn the ways of his powers, and use them to prove they were not dangerous.

“Tires you, does it? Traveling that way?” Gird prodded the fire; Luap managed another yawn as the flames danced high for a moment, and nodded. He was tired but not from that. From being caught in the old trap of Gird’s mistrust, from being penned in too small a pen.