The Knight. Part 19

"Well, they sure didn't act like it." I found the durian I had been trying to eat and started all over again trying to get it open with my fingernails. It was just as bad as it had been the first time.

"Did you act as though you feared them?"

There did not seem to be anything I could say to that.

"I was not present, yet I know the answer. So do you, who were present. You mastered your fear until you fell wounded. They mastered theirs--for a time. When a knight is on a ship, that ship flies his pennant from its foremast. Did yours do that?"

I shook my head. "I don't have one, and I didn't know about it anyway. Maybe that's why the captain didn't think I was a real knight."

"In most cases, the Osterlings will not attack such a ship. They must have been surprised, and frightened, when they found you were on board." I said all right, what about the rest?

182.

CHAPTER 26.

THE SECOND ITEM AND THE THIRD.

"V ery well, let us move on to the next item. You brought a gla.s.s tube, as well as the goblet, back from the lime tree. Certainly it must have struck you that I would see it sooner or later. Are you going to let me examine it?" I said, "After we had talked about the other things, I thought." It had been pretty well hidden in the long gra.s.s, and it was green anyway. But I picked it up and pa.s.sed it to Ga.r.s.ecg. "There's a paper rolled up inside." He nodded. "Did you break the seal?"

I told him there had not been any, and Uri leaned over to look. Baki came over so she could see better. They did not have anything on, then or after, and it was hard for me not to look at certain places, but I did it. Ga.r.s.ecg pulled out the stopper and took out the paper. "It is a scroll," he told us. "A kind of book." He was untying the strings.

"I untied them too," I said, "but they were tied just like that."

"Did you read it?"

I shook my head. "I looked at it, but I can't read that kind of writing."

"Nor can I. This is the script of Celidon, presumably." 183.

He handed the scroll to Baki, who said, "Huh-uh. I can read our writing, but not this stuff."

Uri snuggled closer. "If Baki cannot, I cannot."

Ga.r.s.ecg took the scroll from Baki, rolled it up again and tied it, and put it back into the tube. "This may be the testament of the woman whose bones we found, but I have no way of knowing. You may keep it if you like, Sir Able, or return it to its place."

After I had put it back under the tree, I asked if he thought she knew she was going to die.

Ga.r.s.ecg pointed to the goblet. "When one finds a cup beside a body, one a.s.sumes poison. That was why I advised you to rinse it thoroughly, although it has certainly been weathering here for a long time. If she was poisoned, she may have poisoned herself, and grasped her testament until she died." I tried to imagine why a woman would kill herself in such a beautiful place.

"You may have more questions about this. Ask them if you like, but I confess I have no more answers."

"You said you'd seen the bones," I reminded him. "Did you see that gla.s.s tube too?"

He shook his head. "I looked around, but the sun was only just coming up. I did not see it."

"You were talking about a big war when the Aelf drove out Setr." I said it like that because I thought Ga.r.s.ecg did not want Uri and Baki to know who he really was. So I felt like I was being smart, but Uri started shaking and I had to promise her I would not say the name any more.

"We were supposed to die," she told me. "If we came up here, we were supposed to die." Baki said that, too.

"He forgives you," Ga.r.s.ecg told them. I could see they did not understand, but the way he said it made them believe it, or almost.

"A thousand of your years have pa.s.sed since that war," Ga.r.s.ecg told me. "I can give you a wealth of detail, if you want it. But do you?"

"I guess not. Only I was thinking about that woman. Those bones can't have been here that long, can they?"

"In this well-watered place? Certainly not."

"Then the person who built this skysc.r.a.per we're on didn't put her up here?" 184.

"Who can say? A thousand years here might be a hundred in Aelfrice, or even less."

Baki said, "Besides, he comes back. Let's not talk about him at all." I was thinking hard. For one thing it seemed to me like the woman might have been shipwrecked, but if she had been, why did she kill herself? I asked Ga.r.s.ecg again about the top of the skysc.r.a.per being an island in Mythgarthr, and he said again that it was. Then I said, "All right, if it's an island, why don't I hear the sea? I haven't heard the sea the whole time we've been up here."

"When it is calm, as it often is, it makes no great noise."

"Well, I'm going to look. You stay here with these sick girls." Really humbly Baki said, "Uri and Baki, Lord. I am Baki." That was when I got them straight. I never did get them mixed up again after that. Ga.r.s.ecg shook his head, meaning he was not going to stay, but I did not pay any attention. The sun was still only halfway up the sky, so to keep it out of my eyes I turned my back to it and went west. I broke twigs and let them hang every hundred steps or so, and after a while I heard Ga.r.s.ecg behind me. He said, "Why do you do that?"

I did not look. "So I can find my way back, of course."

"And why do you want to go back?"

"Because those girls are sick, and we ought to be taking care of them. I was hoping you'd stay with them and do it."

"The Aelf have struggled to free themselves from the monster called Kulili throughout their history. You are their last hope, and their best. I am not letting you out of my sight--no, not for ten thousand puking maidens." I had stopped to look at a tree of a shade of green I had never seen before. I am sure it came from Aelfrice, but it was so fresh and new-looking that it seemed like G.o.d had just made it. Like He had planted it a minute before I got there. It had blue and purple flowers, and the long feelers or whatever you call them inside the flowers were bright red. I have never seen another one like it, and I have remembered it all this time.

Anyway, I heard Ga.r.s.ecg laugh behind me, but I still did not look at him. But when I started walking again I asked if we were going the right way.

"I have no means of knowing. Or say, rather, that I know that any direction will prove right if we cleave to it long enough. This may be the shortest way. It 185.

may be the longest. In any event, it will take us to the sea in the end."

"I still don't hear any waves."

"Nor do I. But if we continue as we have begun, we will hear them if there are any."

I thought about that, and the weather. There was hardly any wind, and so I said, "That's right, it's pretty calm."

"It is, and it is in just such weather as this that this isle is most often sighted by seamen. It is a thing of heat and calm, most often seen at twilight."

"If it's too calm to sail, couldn't they row here?"

"They could, and some do."

I had been pretty mad at Ga.r.s.ecg because he had gone away and left Uri and Baki to take care of themselves. But I got to thinking about all the things he had done for me, and how I had left them just as much as he had. So I stopped and motioned for him to catch up to me, and we walked together a little. We were in the shade of the trees all that time.

Before long we came to where the shade was only spotty, sunshine coming through the leaves in bright patches, sort of dappled. Then it seemed like something a whole lot bigger than Ga.r.s.ecg was walking beside me. Only it was not.

It was not really like a snake, and it was not really like a bird either. But I have to write those because they are as close as I can get. It was beautiful, and terribly scary. I do not remember all the colors and they changed anyway, but the thing was that whatever colors there were, were the darkest those colors could ever be. The blue was darker than black usually is, and so was the gold, a sort of brown gold with a deep, deep l.u.s.ter you felt like you could fall into. And dark, like you had seen something gold in the middle of a storm, but nowhere near as real as smoke.

I could hardly see Ga.r.s.ecg at all right then, but he looked like he was about to laugh. I told him I liked him better when he was Ga.r.s.ecg.

"I know."

"That's what you really are, isn't it? You're Setr. Are you really from the world under Aelfrice?"

"I am. Will you turn aside for a step or two now, Sir Able? There is something to be seen here more important than any view of the sea, and if you will 186.

consent I will show it to you."

I felt like I had already seen something important, but I said I would.

187.

CHAPTER 27.

KULILI.

T here was not any path, just soft gra.s.s and ferns underneath the big trees, down, around , and down again until it brought us to a little toy valley that could not have been more than a hundred yards long and wide. It was so pretty down there it took your breath away. There were tiny little waterfalls coming out of the rocks, and a pool in the middle with white lilies growing all around it, and some other kind of white flower that was prettier than the lilies. More ferns, too. The ones I had seen before had been little, but there they were huge, like the ferns were in Aelfrice. They arched up over my head so high I could have ridden a horse under them and never taken my helm off. It was dark shade there and Ga.r.s.ecg looked completely real, so real I knew if I touched him I would not feel the thing he really was at all.

Where the shade was thickest there was a white statue. It was a naked woman, but where it was in that dark shade it sort of loomed out at me like a ghost. One hand looked like she wanted to cover up her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the other 188.

hand looked like she was begging for something.

I was naked myself, as I guess I have already said, and when I saw that statue something happened that had happened at school when I watched the girls play volleyball. I did not want Ga.r.s.ecg to see it, so what I did was to jump right into the pool. It worked, too, because the water was good and cold. When I came up I tossed my hair out of my eyes the way you do and tried to grin. Ga.r.s.ecg bent over to look at me. "Why did you do that?"

"To cool off and wash away my sweat. Aren't you hot after all that walking? I was."

He gave me his hand, and I swam over and climbed out.

"Look. Wait until the ripples die, and look carefully."

"You said you wanted to show me my reflection," I said, "so I'd know why the Osterlings were scared of me. Only I don't think they were. Is that all this is?"

"No. Look deeply into the pool, Sir Able."

I did. It looked like that pool went down forever but kind of crooked and off to the side, and I said so.

"Like many such waters, it is a gate to Aelfrice," Ga.r.s.ecg told me. "I am showing it to you so that you will know how such gates look. Could you not tell, when the Kelpies carried you to me, that you were entering Aelfrice?" I shook my head.

"Does it not seem to you that you should be peering down into the topmost story of the Tower of Glas?"

It had not hit me before, but he was right. The dirt on the island could not have been more than ten or twelve feet deep. I really stared after that; and I remembered that even though I had sunk down quite a way when I jumped in, I had never touched bottom.

"Here one may stand in Mythgarthr and scrutinize the gate," Ga.r.s.ecg said.

"Remember what you are seeing. Fix it in your mind. In times to come, what you learn may be of value to you."

I could not believe that pool went down to Aelfrice, and I said so. It did look funny, very funny, down there. But I had jumped in already, and the only thing that happened was what I had wanted to happen. (I still could not look at the statue. It made Uri and Baki look like boys.) I said, "Are you telling me I could 189.

get to Aelfrice like that, if you were with me so I wouldn't drown?"

"You will never drown," Ga.r.s.ecg told me. "You are one with the sea--more than you know."

The way he said it, I knew he meant it. And all'I could think about then was that Disiri was in Aelfrice. I want her more than I have ever wanted anything in my life, and I dove right in. I would do it again.

It did not even feel very cold the second time, and as soon as I started to slow down I began swimming hard. I had been a pretty good swimmer even back in America, and while I had been with Ga.r.s.ecg I had gotten so good you would think I was putting you on if I told you how good I was. I went down and down.

It should have gotten darken and darker, only it did not. There was beautiful blue light, like I had seen under the sea before, and seeing it before did not make it any less beautiful now. After a while I decided I could use a little rest, and I just let myself float in it while I tried to figure out which way was up. It probably seems to you like that ought to be pretty easy, and the fish always know, but when there are no fish in sight and you cannot see anything but that beautiful blue haze, you have to think about it.

I floated there a long time, or anyhow it seemed long to me. There was a little current that turned me slowly, around and around, and carried me along, and that felt great. I was thinking about Disiri and the statue, and they got mixed up in my mind, and I started wondering if I was really real at all. It seemed to me this might be what it was like when you were just a memory, and maybe Disiri was remembering me, and would always remember me, would always love me like I would always love her, and this was me in her mind. I am Kulili. It was not really a sound in my ear at all. It was more like a sound in the bones of my skull.

Down. Come down.

I did, and I knew which way down was because that was where her voice was coming from. The blue light went purple, then everything went black. Fingers touched my face, only I knew they were not really fingers at all. It seemed sort of not fair, and I said, "I can't see you."

You shall, by my will.

"Who are you?" I said. All of a sudden it seemed to me I did not even know 190.

who I was. Was I really just a kid from America? A knight? Bold Berthold's brother?

I am Kulili. You are the man who has sworn to fight Kulili.

"Able," I told her. "My name's. . . Able." Will you fight me?

"I don't know." It did not seem to matter much either way. "I suppose I'll have to try. I promised."

So I judge. Your honor is sacred to you.

"You're a monster. That's what Ga.r.s.ecg said." It had been really, really dark up until then, but when I said that there was a green light off in the distance. I thought, what the heck is that?

A luminous fish. They come here sometimes.

"It's hard to think." I don't know why I said that, but it was true. "Why is it so hard to think here?"

My water is cold.