The Mirror After the Cavern
Page 23
Speakers weren’t able to speak to non-Speakers. The words didn’t penetrate the consciousness of those who hadn’t breathed the fumes. But if Silas was so different, perhaps the restriction wouldn’t apply to him. Perhaps he could talk to Mata. From a distance. From any location.
But she wouldn’t be able to speak back to him. He wouldn’t know if she heard his comments, the jokes he might share, the dreams he might want to tell her about. He had no way to discover if his hypothesis was true.
However, he considered, he might try to speak to Jade. She would have a way to respond to him. He could speak to her, and she could use the mirror to reply. He laughed at the notion of such an unbelievable means of communicating – mirrors and Wind Words!
He opened his pack and he pulled out the mirror, then peered into it. Jade was not present; nobody was visible in the room. He’d have to wait until she was at the mirror, he thought dejectedly. He wanted to act – his mind was racing with the idea of communicating through the power of the Wind Words, if he truly had such power.
Or, perhaps, he didn’t have to wait long.
“Jade!” he closed his eyes, focusing on the picture of her face in his mind, her pert chin and sparkling eyes, while he tried to recreate the feeling his body had produced when he had exercised his Speaker ability with Jimes. “Jade, this is Silas, asking you to come to the mirror so that we can see each other.” He sent the message. It felt right – he felt as though he had done everything correctly in order to communicate with Mata’s sister in the palace.
He sat with the mirror on his lap. The line of wagons began to inch forward, and Silas split his attention between watching the wagon in front of him and the attendants directing traffic, as well as watching the mirror to see if Jade might make a dramatic appearance.
The image of the girl suddenly filled the mirror. She was pale and wide-eyed, and stared intently into the mirror. She opened her mouth and spoke, but Silas could not hear her words or read her lips. He held his hand to his ear and shook his head to show that there was no voice traveling to him, then remembered his own ability again.
“My voice can travel to you, but yours can’t travel to me,” he said slowly.
She stared at him intently as he spoke, then a moment later her head jerked up and she looked around, then looked back down at him.
She looked down again, then her hands seemed to fiddle with something. A moment later she held up her pad and began to write.
“I hear you! How?” she wrote in bold letters, underlined.
“I’m not sure,” Silas answered. “I’m doing what Wind Word Speakers do, except I can speak to ordinary people,” he paused, as he saw her head give a barely perceptible nod, apparently indicating the arrival of his words. “Most Speakers can’t speak to regular people, but I’m not an ordinary Speaker,” he told her.
“I met Mata yesterday. We talked for a long time,” he spoke next about what had prompted him to speak to her.
“Silas! Move your wagon! What is wrong with you today?” a shouted reprimand made him raise his head quickly, and he realized that a wide gap had opened up in the loading queue, a gap in front of his wagon.
He held up a finger to Jade, then flicked his reins to speed up Hron, who looked back over his shoulder at Silas with disdain before moving as directed.
“She’s a wonderful girl! I love her so much,” Jade wrote in response to his comments about Mata.
“We’re leaving the island today. I’m getting on the ferry. Will you tell Mata I said farewell? I’ll try to talk to you again soon,” he told the girl in the palace. He needed to put the wagon in position, which meant he needed to put the mirror away.
Jade received his message. “I’ll tell her when I see her. We’ll miss you. Stay in touch,” Jade told him, then looked over her shoulder at something out of the mirror’s sight, as Silas slid the piece of glass into his pack.
He maneuvered the wagon into its tight quarters, then led Hron away to the stalls for the animals, and gave the mule extra attention to make up for the neglect he’d suffered.
“Silas,” an hour later, the ferry began to move away from the dock, and the boy heard Prima call his name.
“Silas, can you really do Speaker magic?” Prima leaned in close to the boy.
“I think I can. It works,” Silas replied.
“How? Why?” Prima asked.
Silas shrugged. “It may be part of the things that the fumes in the cavern did to me, like my eyes and my knife,” he suggested without total conviction.
“Well if it’s true, it could be a great advantage for our trading!” Prima said eagerly. “You can send messages ahead to the cities we’ll visit, telling them we’re on the way, what we’ve got,” he paused as he considered the mercantile opportunities.
“It would be worth money to you?” Silas asked shrewdly after a moment.
Prima studied him through slitted eyes. “That’s a good question. You’re not as cotton-headed as you’ve seemed this morning. Yes, I’d be willing to offer something extra in return for delivered messages.”
“I need to find out who the Speaker is in,” he paused, “where are we going?” he asked.
“Barnesnob,” Prima replied. “You find out who you need to talk to, and I’ll think about the message I want you to deliver. If I have proof that it went through, I’ll pay you,” he explained.
Silas nodded as Prima walked away, and he tried to evaluate the deal that had just been struck. He had a feeling that it could have been better struck, but he wasn’t sure how.
Before he wasted any more time thinking about it, he needed to speak to Jimes again. As the ship sailed away from Amenozume, Silas would lose his sense of the correct direction to face in order to speak to his friend, especially as they traveled at sea. He needed to speak soon, while he still had a high degree of certainty that he could face towards the palace where Jimes lived, and transmit his comments in the correct direction. If the ship changed course, or if Silas didn’t correctly measure the angle of the sun and stars to figure his position so that he faced in the right direction, the words he spoke would float off into the ether, unheard, unknown, unanswered forever.
“Jimes, it’s Silas again. I’m on a ship that’s sailing towards Barnesnob now; we’ve left the harbor and we’re at sea. Who are the Speakers I can talk to in Barnesnob when I get there?” He asked the question, then relaxed.
He’d have to wait; his wait might only be a few moments, if Jimes heard and answered immediately. Or his wait might last forever, if Jimes sent his comments off in the wrong direction.
Silas looked up at the sun, hidden behind thin, high clouds. He could construct a rough estimate of his location in his head, knowing approximately how long they had traveled, and the general speed they traveled at. His guesses would become wilder and wilder the longer the trip lasted. He might have to resort to trying to persuade the ship’s officers to disclose any information they had about the course and location of the ship, in fact. At the academy, the student had been taught that ships navigators were the only professionals that studied the arts of determining locations as well as Speakers did.
Silas suspected the sailors probably studied better and more efficiently, since they did truly travel frequently, whereas most Speaker stayed essentially stationary in a single city for months or years at a time.
“Silas?” Jimes voice interrupted his musings. “the palace speaker in Barnesnob is Vertuco. There are a couple of other Speakers assigned or located in the city as well, but I don’t have them on my approved list of contacts for communication, and I can’t remember where I stored my complete list of all the Speakers, sorry,” the friendly voice apologized. “I hope this message reaches you. Good bye for now!”
“Your message came through loud and clear! Professor Endrow would be proud to know you were able to calculate the course for a moving ship and send a message. Congratulations, my friend. I hope I’ll see you at a conclave one of these days,” Silas replied.
He turned and wandered forward towards where Prima’s wagon sat, and he found the trader sitting in his open doorway, writing a letter.
“Here Silas, perfect timing. Send this to Barnesnob,” Prima held the sheet of paper out to the boy. “I just wish you could send messages to average people too! I’d love to tell Minnie a thing or two about this trip,” Prima chuckled.
Silas debated. Should he reveal that he could perhaps send a message to Minneota? It was very unlikely that he would have any idea where she was, so his message would fly astray. And she would have no way to respond to the message if she received it. And Silas was still grappling with his disconcertment over being asked to serve at Prima’s personal Speaker. The caravan leader was going to pay nowhere near the amount that a patron would expect to pay for the use of a speaker, Silas was sure.
He took the sheet of paper without comment and looked at it. It was lengthy. Silas began to instinctively translate it into the rhythm of short comments that a Speaker was trained to use, a combination of bursts and pauses that allowed the recipient to have time to pause in listening so that he could write the message down in the chunks and pieces it arrived in.
He slowly walked back to the front of the ship, away from everyone else, and prepared to deliver the message. He thought he could develop a rhythm for chanting the message, and he turned his body to face in what he believed was the correct direction. He would add an opening message telling where his estimated position was at the time of the delivery, in case Vertuco wanted to send a message of confirmation back by some chance.
“This is Silas, a Speaker, calling for Vertuco, a Speaker, located in the palace at Barnesnob,” Silas made the opening address a thrice-repeated comment, making his best effort to give Vertuco time to hear his own name called. He was working slowly, trying to remember to focus on both his message, and the manipulation of his body and mind to cause his words to travel via the Wind Word powers. He needed to ensure that his words would actually make the journey.
“Vertuco, I am speaking from a ship at sea, leaving Amenozume harbor an hour ago. This ship left Amenozume harbor an hour ago, sailing to Barnesnob,” Silas said. “A passenger is Prima the trader, leading a caravan, who wishes to serve the Republic,” Silas began his lengthy statement that Prima had written.
When he finished, he signed off with the traditional language he had been taught at the Academy. “May the winds carry your words quickly,” he repeated once, then let out his breath and ceased to use the fumes-induced ability.
That message was one of the few productive things he did while on board the ferry to Barnesnob. He satisfied Prima by telling the caravan leader that he had delivered the message, while hoping that it had truly been aimed in the right direction, and had been received by Vertuco.
He tried to send messages to Jade, and he tried to view her in the mirror. As the days passed and the ship drew further from the island, his ability to accurately broadcast a message to her diminished. On two occasions he managed to accurately aim a message to reach her, but then the mirror affirmed and revealed something he should have known, and something he didn’t.
He sent a message to Jade on the third day of sailing, and when he opened his pack and pulled out his mirror to see her, he found her present at the mirror, and happy to talk, by writing messages. He found that if he talked to her in response to her questions, using his Speaker abilities, his words did not arrive until sometime later. He responded to her first note, and they waited patiently, then anxiously, before she eventually heard his message, which turned out to be the very first message he had sent before he had even gotten his mirror out of the pack. The lag in delivery time had expanded to several minutes because of the distance the ship had sailed away from the island
Silas had known that Wind Words took time to travel. Every Speaker and student in the academy was taught that a message traveling across the continent might take hours to be delivered. Silas hadn’t realized that the images seen in the mirror traveled much faster however, so fast as to seem as if the two viewers were in the same room. There was no lag in the sight, only in the delivery of the sound.
The experience of trying to coordinate the viewing and the speaking diminished the pleasure of the conversation, so that Jade and Silas soon gave up, and Silas promised to try again from land when he was in Barnesnob. He promised to acquire a pad and stylus too, so that he could write messages to respond to Jade’s comments and questions.
Silas took up blade practice with the officers of the ship when they had the time. They often managed to make the time, especially whenever they perceived that the female travelers on the ferry were inclined to watch their derring-do.
The arrival of the ferry at the Barnesnob dock was a welcome relief to the tedium of the ferry ride. It also brought a significant surprise.
The harbor master who guided the ship into the dock of the busy port told the captain to report to the port authority office to pay docking fees. The man went to do so while the caravan and the other passengers unloaded.
He returned unexpectedly quickly, and spoke to Prima, handing him papers before disappearing back into the milling crowd of the docks.
Prima stood still and stared at the papers he’d received for several long seconds, then raised his head, spotted Silas, and walked directly towards the boy’s wagon.
“I hope you’ll have a good explanation for this,” he said in a flat tone as he handed the top paper to Silas.
Silas took the paper and held it in front of his face as he tried to read the unexpected correspondence.
“By order of the noble court of Barnesnob, Silas the speaker, traveling on the Amenozume ferry, is commanded to send immediate notice of his arrival to Vertuco, the Speaker of the palace, and to report at noon on the following day for a meeting at the palace.”
The note was signed by Vertuco, in a scrawling flourish of a signature on the thick, crisp parchment of the note.
“What did you tell the palace that got you summoned to attend?” Prima asked intently.
“I only sent one message, and it was the message you gave me,” Silas answered immediately. “I never heard any response or any questions after that. I wasn’t even really sure the message got through.”
“Well send your reply, let the palace know you’re here, but if you’ve gotten us into trouble, don’t tell them where we’re staying,” Prima directed, then walked away to look into other matters affecting the caravan.
“I don’t know where we’re staying, so I can’t tell them anyway,” Silas muttered to himself.
He stayed with his wagon and followed the line of trading vehicles that left the docks and went to their intended destination in a field outside the city. Silas, along with everyone else in the caravan, felt his emotions start to rise as they approached the city gates on their way out of town. The arrival at the caravan station in the field would bring the long-delayed reunion with the rest of the caravan, the wagons that had traveled under the leadership of Minnie and Ruten, and Silas looked forward with great pleasure to seeing the two leaders of the caravan group once again.
As soon as the group of vehicles approached their destination, a thin round of applause rose from the waiting group, welcoming the island-traveling merchants, as the arriving wagons pulled into place.
“Silas, go back to the city and send your message to the palace,” Prima ordered even as he still held Minneota in a heartfelt embrace.
“The palace?” Minnie pushed the clinch open to question the surprising command. “What’s our young esquire going to do
at the palace?”
“I was summoned by the Speaker of the palace,” Silas explained, waving the parchment note he held.
“How would they have any idea to summon you? Why would they summon you?” Minnie asked.
“Our young man is an individual with growing talents,” Prima said cryptically. “I’ll explain later. Silas, take care of your mule then get going.”
Silas nodded in agreement that he needed to care for Hron. He carried out his chores, then slipped out of the camp and walked back into the city.
He looked about curiously as he walked through the city streets, after getting directions from the gate guards for finding the palace. The city felt less tied to the waters of the sea than Amenozume had. Whether that was a product of Amenozume being on an island surrounded by water, or of the presence of sea-oriented commerce like the pearl divers, or perhaps simply his own lack of perception of how big cities differed, he didn’t know. In Barnesnob, there seemed to be more farmers’ carts, and vegetable stalls selling goods than he had seen in Amenozume, he was sure.
Around a corner, he suddenly spied the ornate and glamorous sight of the palace of the leaders. There was no king who ruled over the nation of Barnesnob, but a collection of wealthy traders who managed the affairs of the state from the ornate building he approached.
“I received this message from the Speaker of the palace,” Silas held up the parchment when he reached the gate.
The guard looked at Silas’s colorful eyes, then glanced momentarily at the seal on the document. “Come in. Go right through,” he ushered Silas in.
“Did you see those eyes? They creeped me out. Some kind of dark magic spawned those, without doubt,” the guard muttered to his companion, but not in so low a voice as to prevent Silas from overhearing him.
Silas walked on, pretending that he didn’t hear, but feeling shaken by the unexpected reminder of his different appearance. During his time on the island and on the ferry, he’d not faced anyone who had commented about his golden and purple colors more than once. He’d forgotten that Ivaric had put a price on his head, or at least on his eyes.