The Chantry Guild

CHAPTER 20

Over the weeks that he had now been at the Chantry Guild, Hal's sitting by the pond to watch the sun rise when he was not walking in the circle at that time had become a ritual. Seated, he unchained his mind to its own ways of abstracting his thoughts, ways that produced inner thoughts and visions also. Although those evoked as he sat by the pond tended to be of a different character than those he produced for himself in the circle.

One morning he had just seated himself while the world beyond the ledge was still lost in the grayout of predawn, when a figure materialized from the dimness at his back and also settled by the pond, not far from him and also facing the mountains over which the sun would rise.

It was Old Man. He and Hal looked at each other companionably. Hal, however, found himself vaguely disturbed. Not by the other's presence, but by something about it that felt not quite right. He puzzled over this feeling for several moments and then understanding came to him.

Old Man was sitting on his heels, quite comfortably but undeniably squatting, rather than seating himself cross-leg as Hal had, and if there was anyone on the ledge whom Hal would have expected to sit naturally in a cross-legged position it would be the white-bearded older man now beside him. Moreover, Old Man had obviously Joined Hal and the natural thing would have been for him to signal the fact by taking the same posture.

But years had gone by since Hal's early training by the Exotics among the three tutors he had had as a boy, and the occasions on which a lotus position might have seemed appropriate for him to assume had become fewer and fewer. He had become careless. His legs were almost in the half-lotus position, but his toes were not tucked in behind the calves of the opposing legs the way they should have been. With an old-fashioned sort of politeness, Old Man had evidently taken the position he had to avoid seeming to go Hal one better by sitting down in a proper half-lotus himself.

Hal was out of practice, but not so much that the half-lotus was impossible to him. He tucked his toes in. Old Man dropped immediately into the same position with one fluid motion. Hal bowed gravely from the waist to him. Old Man bowed as gravely back. They both turned their attention to the mountains over which would come the sunrise.

Hal's gaze went away beyond the cliff edge. For him, the Chantry Guild and the place it occupied had now effectively ceased to exist. He knew the names of the area that surrounded him as anyone would know his own, familiar neighborhood.

He sat on the eastern face of the range of the Zipaca mountains. Behind him, the thickness of that range ran eastward until it was out of sight. But Hal now knew it descended at last to high, nearly perpendicular cliffs overhanging the coastal forest, which was too steamy and hot to be more than sparsely inhabited. That forest was called the Tlalocan - the "land of sea and mist'' in the ancient Mayan language of Old Earth. It reached to the shores of' the Zephry Ocean, which stretched some thousands of miles onward to the next large continental mass of Kultis. At his feet lay the Mayahuel Valley, up which Amanda had led him to this place, and beyond where he sat now, the Zipacas continued, angling in so that they, and the Grandfathers of Dawn, opposite, became one range to the north after the upland forest below had given way to high altitude desert. It was the Grandfathers over which the star Procyon Would rise to bring daylight to the Chantry Guild and the people in the valley below.

Watching the far dark bulk of the distant mountains, as their details began gradually to emerge from the mist under the steadily brightening overhead, he let his mind flow in whatever direction might attract it, as water seeks its own way down a slope. This was not his way in the circle, where he deliberately turned his mind over to understanding the Law he repeated as he walked. Here and now, he only set it free like a hawk to soar with the waking day.

It had come to him some morning since, seated in this place, that for the first time since he had been a young boy and dedicated himself to ending that which had killed his uncle James, he had a chance to step back and add up the gains and losses of his own lives.

They were part-lives, really, for Donal Graeme had ceased to be before middle age, so that he could become Paul Formain. And Formain had existed only a few years as a shell for him who had once been Donal, before he had been abandoned, along with the rest of the already-dead twenty-first century. From there, what was essentially both Donal and now Hal had returned to the courier ship of the twenty-second century: and to the timeless wait of eighty years that had passed before he became the two-year-old child who had grown into what he was now.

But all those lives had been aimed and controlled by a single mind and a single purpose, and they had achieved some things and failed to achieve some others - so far, at least. It was ironic that at the Final Encyclopedia for three years, where he had had nothing to do but concentrate on his goal, that he had never found time to do this sort of self-survey. And now, immersed in walking in the circle, watching the sunrise. serving food, fixing, cleaning - he had been set free to do just that.

He had grown smaller in the eyes of his race and larger in dimensions, where the vision of other people did not penetrate. It was as if to grow as a human being he had needed to give up more and more of what other humans had desired and admired. On all the worlds only a handful now knew him, in any real sense of that word, and nearly all on the Younger Worlds had known Donal, in Donal's later years.

He had started out to kill a dragon, and had ended up striving to climb a mountain others could not even see, to a doorway they had yet to imagine. And yet, to him his goal had become more concrete and infinitely more worthy and solid as it became progressively more invisible and inconceivable to others. Yet it was the same goal - only now, sitting here, he seemed for the moment to see it clearly, while in the beginning, like all the rest, he had seen only that false facade within the real universe that was a tiny part of it.

Now, all the universe had become his classroom: and everyone and everything in it, subjects of his study.

The first isolated sparks of sunlight were beginning to find crevices in the top line of the mountains. He reached out to the limits of his imagination, now, then stretched on beyond the veil at the end of known limits, reaching through it metaphorically with both hands, into the Creative Universe he could not yet wholly enter and with his hands hidden from him he molded the place he now sat into the place of its own future.

About him, in his mind, the ledge changed. The few heavy blocks of stone that had so far been hewn from the mountains and polished, multiplied and fitted themselves together to make the finished structure for which they were destined. The House of the Chantry Guild, constructed of the warm, green-threaded marble of the mountain that contained it, was lifted up, roofed itself, and sent walls and pathways forward to enclose that space of the ledge not covered. The little stream ran now between narrow borders of native grasses and flowers to the pool, which had become enclosed by a rim of stone terrace. On that rim he sat, now in the far future. Behind him, he heard the timeless chanting of those in the circle. He sat, young and waiting for a sunrise, centuries ahead in time.

The surface of the pool now showed white flowers upheld on the surface of the waters by flat green leaves. Variform lilies, stirred only occasionally when their stems, reaching down underwater, were brushed by the passing of one of the fish among those living in the pool, raised there, then as now, to be part of the food for the Guild members. Then, as now, the sun had just joined together its sparks of light into one line of illumination marking the chain of the mountaintops.

He sat, in lotus position, waiting for the sunrise as he did every morning. Behind him the walker adults chanted and turned, and the brightening day drew his attention to the clouds of the sky reflected in the pool beside him, and to a Hower on its surface, almost within arm's length.

There was a particular spark of light from one white petal. Procyon had climbed high enough to strike a diamond glitter off a dewdrop on the blossom of a flower. There was something powerfully memorable about that, but he could not divine what it was. He looked away once more, back out to the crest of mountains itself, and watched the actual breaking through of the sun, its upper edge reaching at last over the barrier of the mountains to look directly onto the ledge, at the Chantry Guild and at him. Then with one crescendoing upsurge of light it burst fully and directly into his eyes and made him blind to all about him.

He blinked and looked away. His eyes met the eyes of Old Man. They exchanged a smile, and got to their feet, parting as they went their separate ways into the daytime activities of the ledge.

Hal turned his mind from the sunrise just past, and back to the present practical requirements of life. He had now been here seven weeks, nearly double the time Amanda had asked if he intended to stay. In itself this should be no great time. but in his mind he could see the image of Tam, fighting off death, hour by hour, waiting, and he felt the urgency like a hand pressing always on his back.

He was to begin a walk in the circle again early this afternoon, but first, this morning, he was scheduled to go with a foraging party to collect edible wild fruits and vegetables growing in the forest below. The foraging group was to consist of six people and meet at Amid's reception building. He turned in that direction, accordingly, and the sight of it, together with the thought of the land below, brought back to his thoughts the matter of Cee. Ever since Amanda had first suggested it, Artur had let one of the female Chantry Guild members, a roundfaced, brown-haired, cheerful young woman named Onete, go down to sit in the forest. But not seemed his niece - at least not being able to feel her presence there, and have direct personal evidence of the fact she was alive and well - had been painful to Artur.

The pain had been evident, but he had borne it with a quietness and patience that made no lessening of his usual activities in the Guild. It wits behavior which had reminded Hal of something he had almost forgotten. The Exotics, for all their original apparent softness and tendency to surround themselves with what many thought of as luxuries, had proved to have the inner strength Hal had seen in them, that was even now making at it hard for the Occupation to kill them off. It was a strength they had its roots in the constancy of their individual philosophies, regardless of how each one might and did interpret it, that was as characteristic of them, as unflinching faith was of the best of those on the Friendly worlds, and courage was of the Dorsai.

He remembered with a sudden pang of sadness and loss, even after all these years, Walter the InTeacher, who had been the Exotic among his tutors. as Malachi Nasuno had been the Dorsai and Obadiah Testator the Friendly - until Bleys' thugs had gunned the three of them down, that one warm, late summer afternoon in the mountains of Earth, years ago. Walter, who had ordinarily seemed the most persuadable of the three old men who had brought Hal up, had been in fact the most unyielding, once his mind was made up. So it was with the best of his fellow Exotics under the heel of the Occupation.

Remembering this, Hal found he had reached Amid's reception building and that he was in advance of his fellow foragers. There was no one else waiting outside. The thought of Cee returned to his mind, and, since he was here, he knocked at the door of the building, "Come in - come in, anyone"' called Amid from within. Hal pushed open the door and went in, closing it softly behind him.

Amid was seated on one side of the fireplace, in which small fire, probably built against the chill of the early hours, was now burning from unheeded to it few glowing coals. His chair had been pulled around to face two other chairs. in which sat Artur and Onete.

"Ah, it's you.'' Said Amid. "I'd almost have bet it'd be you. Hal. Come, join us. Sit down. I was going to call you in on this, anyway."

"Am I that predictable?" asked Hal, entering and taking chair which he also pulled around, so that they sat in a round circle, he and the three others. "You sit out there to watch the sun come up every morning," said Amid. "As soon as the sun's up. you go to whatever duty you've got. That duty's foraging below, today. So you were bound to come here, weren't you'?"

"But not necessarily to knock at your door," said Hal. "You're ahead of time - watching the sun come up makes you that way." said Amid. "What are you going to do, stand around alone out there? Or am I so unapproachable? You know I like talking to you."

Hal smiled. "When you've lot of time to spare," he answered. "But of course, I'd forgotten. You sit here all day doing nothing, just hoping for someone to stop and talk to you," he said. "As a matter of fact, I was going to ask about how things are progressing with Cee and you've got the sources of information right with you. "It's Cee we're concerned about," said Artur. "What's gone wrong?" "Nothing, as far as my trying to win her trust is concerned," said Onete. "But while I was down there, yesterday, Elian, one of the people from Porphyry - came looking for me. I've got in the habit of sitting in the same place down there every day, and the local people have come to know I'm there. He wanted to pass on the word that there was some interest, none of the townspeople knew why, about the Guild among the soldiers in the garrison. " "You see," said Artur to Hal, "we thought they'd given up looking for us long ago. No one knows the location of this ledge but the Guild members, Amanda and yourself. Even the local people below only know that we live out there, somewhere, and even they've no idea how many of us there are or anything else pertinent about us. The garrison soldiery hunted for the better part of a year for us, after they first moved in here. But we stayed up on the ledge, except in emergencies, and they finally gave up looking - for good, I thought. Our guess was they'd assumed we'd left the district, if not this part of Kultis, completely, and scattered." "But not, according to Elian," said Onete. ''the soldiers arc talking, about some sort of new hunt of the area here for us."

"The trouble is," Said Amid. "if the soldiers begin making an organized sweep through here, they're almost certain to catch sight of Cee, because she'll come to look at them. If she wanted to, she could probably dance all around and through them and none of them would know she was there. But she - won't realize the danger of being seen. She won't realize that with enough people, acting in concert, there's a danger that she can be surrounded and caught." "And there's no way for us to make her understand this," said Artur.

"Any thoughts on the matter, Hal?"- Amid asked. Hal shook his head. "Short of' our capturing the girl first, ourselves-," he began.

"No," said Artur and Onete simultaneously. "She'd never recover from that," Artur added. "Amanda was right." "Then I haven't anything to suggest," Hal said, "at the moment, at least."

"We may just have to wait and hope," said Amid. " However, a little knowledge of what the present situation is wouldn't do any harm. You're the tactical expert here, Hal. I'd like you to go down with the foragers just as you were supposed to do. But don't stay with them. When they get down, break off by yourself and take a look around the area as far as you think you can in the time you've got to give it. You might consider delaying your normal turn at the circle so that you could put in the whole day down there?"

"Of course," said Hal. "Thank you," said Amid. "Thank you," said Artur, almost simultaneously...There's nothing needing thanks in that," said Hal. "As far as that goes, I'm walking the circle in the back of my mind all the time I'm awake anyway - and for all I know most of the time when I'm sleeping." "Are you?" said Amid. "That explains why we now have two of you, Old Man and yourself, who walk the circle without saying the Law aloud as they go. It's interesting. That's exactly what Old Man told me, when I asked him why he didn't repeat the Law aloud as he walked. I'd been obliged to ask him because others in the Guild had asked me if it was correct for him to do that. Old Man said the same thing - he didn't need to say the Law aloud. It repeated itself in his head all the time, no matter what he was doing. Jathed would never have stood for either one of you walking in his circle and not repeating the proper words. "But you will," said Hal.

Amid smiled. "I will, because I think my brother Kanin would have. Kanin had a tremendous admiration for Jathed - as I may have said, Kanin was his chief disciple. But Kanin, like any true Exotic, had a mind of his own."

Hal's ear had been picking up the slight sounds of voices beyond the closed outer door of the building. "I'd better be going," he said. "it sounds like the others are ready, outside." "I'll go too." said Onete, also rising, "since we'll be traveling the same way for the first part of it. Unless there's some reason for me to stay awhile yet, Amid?" "No. Go ahead." "Thanks."

Hal and Onete went out, joined the rest of the foragers and they all started down the mountainside. "Where's your gathering bag, Friend?" one of the men in the mixed group asked Hal. It occurred to Hal that he had become so used to answering to the name "Friend" that he had almost not recognized his own when Amid had used it during the conversation just a few moments past. He had been planning to pick up a bag after speaking to Amid - but there was no point in doing that now.

"I've been given a separate job," he said. "Oh..." They were too polite, both its Exotics still and as Guild members, to question him about what the task might be.

When they reached the forest below they split up, the foragers spreading out to the north and Hal and Onete going together southward, down toward Porphyry. "I never did get to ask how you're getting on with Cee. " Hal said once the two of them were alone. "I'm in a kina progress." Onete smiled. "What a magnificent little thing she is! I used to wonder how she could survive down there all by herself. But she really owns that forest. She knows every foot of it. I'll bet she could run through it blind if she had to. But what you want to know is have I got her to come really close to me?" "That's about it." said Hal. "I have," said Onete. "Oh, I don't mean close enough to touch, though if she'd stand still for it, she comes near enough to me, nowadays, so that I could probably stand up, reach out and touch her. But that's not what I'm after. It's curiosity that brings her close, you know. She wants to touch my clothes, and me, as much as I'd like to touch her, but she doesn't dare. She doesn't trust me enough yet. Artur grabbed at her, eventually, well, you know that, and of course she's expecting me to do the same thing. She's going to have to actually come up and touch me and walk away again without my moving, a number of times, before she'll begin to put me in a different category. Poor Artur!"

"Yes," said Hal. "He couldn't help it, of course. He'd wanted to hold her so long, that he just didn't have any patience left, when she came in reach. I can tell how he must have felt, by the way I feel myself, and she's not part of my extended family, the only part that's left. But I'll wait. I think if I wait long enough, Cee'll not only initiate the touching, she'll start to lead me around and show me things. Then, I can perhaps see if she'll let me lead her places, and so finally I can bring her up to the ledge and safety." "But not before these soldiers come," said Hal. "You think they'll really make a search through here?" Onete looked up at his face as they walked. "Yes," said Hal.

He did not say to Onete what he had also not said to Amid only because Artur and Onete had been there, which was that he was afraid it was because of him that the search would come.