I sat with Tomar and watched the flatbills-two common Narfee-playing in the water garden, and thought of the distant north. Tomar was walking and climbing well now;( 185 ).eat up. Call a chair for your ancient and use that 11.his first-fur had all lifted, his front teeth were through, and he said "Bin-bin-bin" for his pouch-mother, "Een" for Narneen and sometimes "Dar" for myself. It seemed strange to me that he might grow up and never recall Hingstull, where he was born and hidden. I made a vow that he should return one day and hear the story of our old life there and of how the Luck came.

So we amused ourselves one day longer and were planning a trip to the delta to seek out bird farming land. I walked out with Ablo and Diver at the setting of Esto to buy fruit from a stall; we turned up a short basket way, empty save for a porter with a net lounging against the wall.

As we pa.s.sed, I noticed that it was an omor. I had no warning until Diver gave a shout, and they leaped upon us from three directions. The omor with the net had Diver down before he could help us; I hardly felt the blows that brought me down, but I saw Ablo shouting and fighting.

Then a blow from a cudgel made blood stream from his forehead and he Jay still. I heard the voices of the Gulgar- vor, panting and rough; I remember the cart being wheeled up, then as I struggled, a foot struck my chin. My head bounced on the cobblestones, and I dived suddenly into a black pit; my last thought was, Ablo is dead.

So the Luck of Brin's Five was taken easily in the midst of Rintoul by the three omor, Meetal, Artho and Alloo, still bound in Gulgarvor. For good measure they took me along too, as a member of Brin's Five. But our luck had not quite run out, for Ablo was not dead. He was left bleeding in the street after the Gulgarvor wheeled off Diver and myself in their cart. He dragged himself back to the wig-house and the alarm was given.( 186 ).

I CAME TO MY SENSES slowly and painfully. For a long time I saw nothing but a blur of yellowish white; I felt a rocking motion and dreamed I was on the barge again or the keel boat bringing us to Rintoul. I heard voices and bell chimes and a long way off someone laughing and sobbing. Then I was fully awake; none of my bones were broken; I was wearing my own clothes and I could still feel my Bird Clan token around my neck. Yet the waking made no difference, I was in a place so strange it was as if I could see for the first time. I lay on a bare shelf stuck to the wall of a small room shaped like a teardrop. The wall, which had no corners, was a smooth yellowish expanse of plaster, drawn up to the top, like the folds of a cloth bag. In front of me was a big bubbled piece of gla.s.s that distorted whatever lay beyond it. Colors and shapes moved on the other side of the bubble gla.s.s, and I saw that there was a small round door in it.

My head ached but I oriented myself as best I could and put a foot down from my shelf to the curving floor. The whole room rocked gently. I lay back again, thinking I was dizzy, but then I saw a water bag hanging across from the shelf, and it rocked by itself. I wriggled a little on my shelf and sure enough the whole room responded. The place hung suspended in some way, like a basket. I was struck( 187 ).

with the awful notion that it was a basket, or a honeybee's cell: I had been enchanted and made small and stuck in some insect's larder! I stifled a cry and lay still.

There were voices and footsteps and shapes swelled as they pa.s.sed the bubble gla.s.s then faded away. I became calmer and more naturally sleepy as I experimented with the movement of the room, and, like a beam of light penetrating the darkness, it came to me where I was. This was a sleep-cell. It was not a prison or a place of punish- ment but one of the golden globes of painted wicker that nestled under the beams on the highest levels of Rintoul.

Through the round door was a solid corridor, a courtyard or even a sun chamber and a water garden. Another thing was sure-for me the place was a prison. I doubted very much if the door would let me out. Before I had time to pursue this thought, the sobbing laughter I had heard in my dreams sounded again, very close.

It was a horrible despairing sound in a voice quite light and young; another person, another prisoner, lay in another sleep-cell close to my own, so close that I could hear the broken words and pleading.

"Let me out . . . let me see you. I am the only one, they have need of me, my teacher has need of me. It has been so long. There are fifty fixed stars in the constellation of the Loom, I could name them all, but I have forgotten-they have been stolen from me. . . ."

There followed a dreadful sobbing. "Blue . . . the eyes were blue . . . it made no secret . . . I have told, and I will tell again if only you will not leave me in this awful place . . ."

I sat up, trembling, on my shelf.

"There is a cave above Stone Brook ... please let me out, let me see your faces, let me die. Send me back to the north. The blessing has all left me. Oh my dear Teacher, the power has waned, and I have lost the blue barge and the( 188 ).

mountain Five with the devil will be utterly destroyed.

Three comets . . . this is a three comet year . . ."I braced myself against the wall, although it rocked crazily, and shouted with all my might: "Gordo Beethan!"

There was an absolute silence, and I shouted again.

Gordo Beethan!"

The voice came again, so low I could hardly hear it.

"Who calls me?"

IS "Dorn Brinroyan. I am in the next sleep-cell."

"You are dead. You are a ghost come to mock me, for I have been kept so long, and I have betrayed you all."

"I am alive, Gordo, and so are we all. The blue barge is safe."

"Dorn, Dorn Brinroyan ... is it you?"

"Truly Gordo. Have courage."

"Dorn, what is this place, this dreadful swinging basket room?"

"It is what they call a sleep-cell. The grandees use it when they cannot sleep."

But where? In what place?"

"In Rintoul, of course."

"Rintoul!" There was a pause,, and I heard muttering and thought he had lost his wits again.

"Gordo?"

"I was taken before the New Year, returning from the east to Otolor,'having delivered the Ulgan's message."

"Have you been . . . mistreated?"

"At first, a little. Then I was left here. It has been so long, Dorn. There is food put through the door, but I % cannot eat much. I have lost my powers, perhaps forever. I sleep and dream and remember all that I told the question- ers."

"Please Gordo, you are not to blame."

er, "The old one is kind, Dorn. All it does is ask and send me the back again. I hate the blanket, I am wrapped in a blanket( 189 ).

when they take me out of here, so that I cannot see. But no more beatings . . ."A distant set of bells chimed, sweet and silvery.

"Gordo?"

"Quiet, they are coming!"

I lay quietly on my shelf, although my heart was pounding so hard I felt it must make the cell rock. I prayed to the North Wind; I prayed to Eenath; I called upon, Odd-Eye to give me strength. I reasoned that they could not hurt me or make me mad as they had poor Gordo. I was protected by all that I knew, and I was given power by my duty. I must find Diver or at least where he was being held.

I must find this out and return to my Family.

Then a shadow of yellow and gray appeared before the distorting gla.s.s of my door, almost destroying my courage.

The round door opened and an ancient peered inside, smiling.

"Have you slept well, child?" My visitor was a grandee, I saw at once, and probably a male. I sat up a little.

"Come along, come along," said the old one. "We'll take a walk." There was no sign of the blanket Gordo hated so much; I slithered across the curved floor and half fell out of the door into the corridor.

It was frightening enough without the blanket ...

indeed it may have been another "kindness" not to let Gordo see where he was perched. The walls of the corridor were gla.s.s and wide-meshed wickerwork; we seemed to be on a narrow strip of paving, high, high up, with the blue and white and golden gulfs of the city reaching down on every side. The ancient wore an elegant robe of yellow silk, with gray facing, and carried a wooden staff, set with milky pink jewels. Yet there was something old and dusty and food-stained about these clothes; the long hands gripping the staff were furry and tremulous; only filmed eyes glittering in its temples told of a mind still alert.( 190.).I.iI.

i"Come along, little string!" I followed the wavering figure along the bright corridor; we pa.s.sed two omor, in neat gray, effacing themselves in alcoves opposite the sleep-cells. I counted five sleep-cells; they looked every bit as strange outside as they did in, oval gold baskets with the gla.s.s doors like bulging eyes. They were strung irregularly on the beams of the skyhouse so that each could move freely; between them one could see daylight, the empty air, yet the winding of the corridor allowed each one a firm entrance. Could Diver possibly lie in one of the other three?

As we pa.s.sed, I asked in an innocent voice, as loud as I dared, "Highness, where are we going?"

The ancient replied without turning. "Into the sun chamber, child."

I was seized with a terrible frustration and began to have an inkling of Gordo's plight. This was the time, surely, when I should run away, bang on the sleep-cells to see if Diver were there, climb bravely up or down, elude the omor and the ancient ... but it was useless and I knew it.

There was nowhere to run to; the omor would have me instantly or I would fall to my death. I could only follow as I was bidden.

The sun chamber was as s.p.a.cious as the one I had seen already but made more homely, less grand, by the use of furled cane blinds and circular tan mats and dwarf red- wood trees. It had been turned into something more like three rooms: in the first s.p.a.ce we pa.s.sed were three females, all in filmy vented robes, although they were middle-aged and past the time for carrying children. They were carding and spinning; I had never seen grandees at this work before, but they seemed to know it well enough.

"Time for honey water!" one cried in a shrill voice as we pa.s.sed.

"He is busy!" said another.

"Playing games ... playing( 191 ).games ... playingI.I.

games...

77.. said the third, in a mad bird voice. Then all three laughed aloud, and the ancient waggled his staff at them.

I examined the sun room carefully, still hoping for a way of escape but it offered even less hope than the corridor.

There were two or three servants, tending to the,flowers and making refreshments on a tall, wheeled piece of furniture, with racks and drawers and little colored paper sunshades to cover the trays of food and fruit. Another omor, this time in pale gray, and another still, in striped gray and green, lounged in the second room of the sun chamber. The blinds were open and on a beautiful carpet a dwarf was practicing a dance before the omor. A young musician, half-hidden among vines, played for the rehearsal on a pouch-pipe, repeating the phrases as the dwarf practiced turns and somersaults. I felt a sudden chill spreading through my bones as we came to the next room, the most soothing place of all.

The chairs were of wicker, and there was a brazier of wood and metal, unlit for the summer and filled with dried red leaves. A big legged basket was overflowing with skeins and scrolls; in one corner stood a scribe's tall desk, with paper on the platten and skeins half-woven on the hooks.

The ancient pointed briskly and cheerfully to a heap of cushions and sank down himself in one of the wicker chairs.

In the other sat a middle-aged male in a figured black and tan robe and handsome, curled, gold slippers. His hair was lit by the sun through the blind: a reddish brown, heavily streaked with gray. The face in repose was full of scholarly concentration, the long eyes light and thoughtful under the jutting brow.

"Here is our young guest," said the ancient, "and none the worse for a sleep."

"Then we have something to say to one another," said Tiath Avran Pentroy.( 192 ).

I was already seated on the cushions for I could not remain standing, from fear perhaps or surprise, or both.

Yet where else could I have been? And how would the Great Elder look, at his ease among that Family, which had been called "a tangle of the old threads". But I could only stare at this strong-faced, richly dressed Moruian grandee and see, in my mind, the black barge on a winter's night. I could hear, instead of the c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.s dishes, the poison cups rolling about in the cabin of the old brown bird-boat.

The twirlers drowned, or kicked out their lives on Wellin's trees; the Gulgarvor fought and died, like engines of destruction; a world of cold and death and darkness lived at the behest of this Highness in the scholar's robe and the curled slippers. And now he had his will-the devil from Hingstull was in his grasp.

The Great Elder gazed at me with a trace of curiosity.

"Don't stare, mountain child," he said, "or the wind will blow away your eyelids."

"It is afraid," said Old Av Avran. "Perhaps it has lived too long on your land, dear sib."

"No," I whispered. "No ... it is just that I have seen your Highness once before."

"Where?"

"At Wellin, by night. After you had I was about to say "held a.s.size" but I choked on the soft words. "After you had hung the twirlers."

The ancient head of the Family chuckled to himself. Not a ripple pa.s.sed over the Great Elder's face. "You were at Wellin?"

"We sailed past in a boat."

"And the devil was with you?"

"All our Family was there."

"Including this foreigner ... the one called Garl."

"Garl Brinroyan is our Luck."

"Why? Is he deformed then? Or mad?"( 193 ).

"His hand was burned when he first came to us. And he has blue eyes, as you have seen, Highness."

"I have not seen it," said Tiath softly. "I think it would frighten me."

I hung my head and let my fear and hopelessness wash over me in a great wave.

"One thing," said Old Av, knitting his bony fingers together. "Does your devil speak another language?"

"Surely. But he has learned Moruian."

"How many in its nest in the islands?" snapped Tiath.

"Three."

"What is their purpose?"

"To find out what can live, what can breathe on Torin."

"The constellation of the Loom," murmured the Great Elder. "So far?"

"I do not know," I mumbled. "Please, Highness ...

spea,k with Garl Brinroyan. He comes in peace."

"Speak with the devil? I do not have it," said Tiath.

"No devil and no air ship . . ." chuckled Old Av. "What do you think of that, little string?" I hung my head again, and the ancient laughed. "I don't think it believes that . . ."

he said. "Speak up child, what do you say? Has my sib got the devil or the air ship?"

"He has myself," I said.

"How does this follow?" asked Old Av.

I was taken, on the streets of Rintoul, at the same hour as our Luck, by the members of the same Gulgarvor, who admitted to serving the Great Elder."