Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  By now they were forcing me through the door outside the studio. The Ghen on my left slapped his hand over my mouth to silence me. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled frantically to pull my head away, but his other hand was behind my neck. My movements caused him to loosen his grasp, however, so that my nose was clear and I could breathe again. I bit him until I tasted blood. He grunted, but kept his hold on me.

  I felt the heat of the crowd pressing in all around us, could hear Bria voices calling out my name and Kirabbis’s, but they were blocked from my view by the bodies of the Ghen. Would they even know I was here, and needed their help? Creator of Wind, what did these Ghen want with me?

  The Ghen, tightly encircling me, forced their way through the crowd as quickly as possible. When I stumbled trying to keep up, their grip on my arms pulled me forward. The crowd of shouting Bria was moving too, staying with us, and for that I was glad. Surely the Ghen wouldn’t murder me in the very midst of so many Bria.

  I recognized the Council building ahead of us, but could hardly believe they were taking me there until they actually propelled me up the steps and through the door, closing it firmly behind them. Inside they released me and stepped back, the one nursing his bleeding hand.

  Briarris rushed forward, throwing his arms around me. Over his shoulder I could see Brock’an’s grimace of relief. What was he doing here? He was supposed to be on the wall.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded, releasing myself from my parent’s embrace. “What are these bullies up to?” I gestured angrily at the Ghen who had roughhoused me here.

  “Oh, I can’t believe they’d actually have hurt you!” Briarris cried.

  “Well, they came close,” I rubbed my bruised arms.

  “Not the Ghen, the Bria!”

  “The Bria? What are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t see them? Hundreds of Bria shouting outside your studio and you didn’t notice?” He was almost laughing; not a happy sound, more a mixture of relief and exasperation.

  “I was busy. I heard some voices. It was you who told me to concentrate on my work, remember? What did they want?”

  “You! They are calling you a false leader.”

  “A leader?” I had never wanted to lead others. Mostly I wanted them to leave me alone to work. To admire my discoveries from a respectful distance. “What do they mean?” I asked.

  “They say you have promised something that cannot be done. Haven’t you been paying any attention at all?”

  “But I see them! Every day they come to my studio, begging me—”

  “Those are the young Bria, the ones who aren’t yet joined, who are waiting for you to fulfill your promise. It’s their parents who call you false.”

  “They want their offspring to bear Broghen?”

  Briarris sighed. “They want grandchildren, Pandarris.”

  “They want to stop my work?”

  “They say we need faith to lead us through this, not your discoveries.”

  “Rubbish.” But I said it with less force than I once would have. My parent did not respond. “You agree with them?” I demanded.

  “That we need Faith? Yes. I need all the faith I can muster now, as do we all. That your work is wrong?” He sighed. “I don’t know what’s right or wrong. I’m Council Chair, and I don’t know what’s right or wrong!”

  Surely this wasn’t my parent; my parent was never indecisive. “You have to know,” I said. How could he suddenly doubt my work? What if he ordered me to stop? He was Council Chair.

  “My work isn’t a lie! It’s knowledge that they’re fighting,” I said urgently. “I’m not making it up, I’m learning it. But it’s true, whether we know about it or not. Let me learn, and then you can decide what to do with it.”

  “The knowing and the doing can’t be separated. Knowing changes us, changes everything.”

  “For the better.”

  “Knowledge doesn’t solve problems; it just changes the problems.”

  “Then what is the solution?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.” He sighed. “There’s more.”

  The way he said it made me certain I didn’t want to hear. When he paused, I remained silent. But he wasn’t waiting for me to ask, he was trying to find a way to say it. “Kirabbis...”

  “Where is Kirabbis?” I asked when he didn’t continue. I looked at his face and fear stole my breath.

  “He’s dead, Pandarris.”

  I swayed. Brock’an hurried over with a chair and I sank onto it. The Ghen who had brought me here had already deployed themselves about the room. The rest of the councilors moved away, giving my parent privacy to comfort me. I didn’t want comforting. “Tell me,” I said.

  “It isn’t only Bria parents who are upset. Some of the Ghen also question your attempts to stop the birth of Broghen.”

  This was insane. Ghen were the ones who killed them at our walls to protect us. And what had that to do with Kirabbis?

  “Tell me,” I repeated.

  “A number of Ghen disapprove of your work. They want things to remain as they are. Igt’ur says they are saying, ‘Today they won’t bear Broghen; tomorrow they won’t bear Ghen.’ They sound a little like Anarris, actually,” he grimaced.

  “They killed Kirabbis?” I whispered, afraid to say it out loud. It was inconceivable that Ghen would harm a Bria to save Broghen: a reversal as unlikely as the sun rising at night.

  “It wasn’t intentional. They meant only to keep him—and you—in the forest until stillseason, and then escort you back to your homes. To prevent you from continuing your research.”

  “They took him to the forest?” Kirabbis was so timid. They’d forced on him all his worst fears—being alone with Ghen, the dark night, the forest...

  “He died of fright.” Briarris confirmed my unspoken thought.

  “Why didn’t they take me instead?” I wailed, thinking of Kirabbis’s eager curiosity, his humility, his brilliance.

  “They planned to take you both.”

  “Why didn’t they? I would have kept him alive! He wouldn’t have been so frightened if I’d been there.”

  He put his arms around me and I leaned against him. “The ones who did it have been punished,” he said.

  It brought me very little comfort.

  ***

  The crowd of Bria stood outside Council Hall for several removes before they finally left. I offered to go outside and talk to them, but Briarris forbade it.

  “Seeing you will only incite them further.”

  “They wouldn’t harm me,” I said, “and if it appeared that they might...” I nodded at Brock’an and the other Ghen still positioned around the Hall.

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Briarris said. “The last thing we need right now is a confrontation between Ghen and Bria.”

  ”Yes,” I agreed, “it’s better to keep them united against me.”

  He looked at me, about to deny it, until he caught my grin. There was nothing funny about the situation, but we both laughed until we wept.

  ***

  When the crowd had gone, I wanted to return to my studio, but again Briarris forbade me. “I’m not in danger anymore,” I protested.

  “My whole city’s in danger right now. And you’re the spark of lightning that could set it off.”

  “How long do you mean me to stay here?”

  “Until stillseason. Bria will stay in their houses then, and you’ll be safe. Although, with your house so close to the wall...”

  “We’ve been over that before,” I said firmly. “I have work to do. What have you decided?” I tried to appear calm while waiting to hear his verdict. Surely he wouldn’t try to stop my research?

  “I’ve decided there’s no turning back. No standing still. Continue your work. But you’ll have to do it here, where you’re safe. Keep me informed of everything you learn. And only me. That will take us to the next corner of this labyrinth. Perhaps there’ll be a sign when we get there.” He shrugged wea
rily.

  ***

  Brock’an brought my younglings to me after storytime and again after school. He also brought sleeping mats. At night my younglings and I slept on the floor like Ghen, in the small room that was used for closed-Council. It had a fan, but no windows. Brock’an and his youngling slept there with us. I set up my enlarging tube and samples in a separate room with a window into the courtyard.

  It was obvious where I was staying, but a triad of Ghen guarded the main door, day and night. No more crowds of Bria formed. I expect they were ashamed; especially when Briarris announced in Council that Kirabbis had died of fright. He didn’t give the circumstances, but let the Bria think it was their fault; meanwhile, Igt’ur made sure the Ghen knew it was theirs. The radicals on both sides were temporarily subdued.

  Igt’ur and my parent were a formidable pair as Council Chair and Chair Ghen. If anyone could get us through this crisis, it would be them.

  Living in Council Hall was inconvenient, but I’d never been particularly attached to my house or the studio. It was only my enlarging tube that I cared about, that and my samples.

  Not that they had anything new to show me. Always the same two organisms; always two of them joined and the others died off. If only Kirabbis was here with his unusual insights. I tried to imagine what he might have suggested now. That the Broghen seed already lurked inside our wombs, like our Bria offspring? If so, I would never find the solution. I couldn’t cut open a living Bria as I had the mangarr’h.

  If I didn’t find the answer soon every Bria who refused second mating would miscarry. An entire year of Bria would bury their infants and never be parents. It was a horrible thought, but my mind returned to it, try as I might not to think of it. I dreamed of them at night, and when my eye grew weary staring down through my enlarging tube I thought I saw their faces, mouths wide in silent entreaty.

  They were waiting for some miracle from me. Their Ghen mates were being patient, but for how long? When stillseason arrived, and they feared their younglings might die, what then?

  ***

  Yur’i and Tibellis came to visit me. I suspected my parent, having noticed my lack of sleep and appetite, had sent for them. They were a welcome diversion from my stalled research. I had not been allowed to attend Kirabbis’s funeral and asked about it.

  “If he lived, he might have found a cure for the burning sickness,” I told them.

  “He is a wind that others will ride on,” Yur’i replied.

  He was right; young Bria were already beginning to specialize in his field. I hoped they would add his name when they were published.

  “Do you still believe that Broghen come from Ghen?” Yur’i asked.

  When had I told him that? Or had he assumed it from what the Ghen were saying about me?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My research is not going very well.” I watched his face as Tibellis translated but he, too, was non-committal. “How is your truth-telling going?”

  “Not very well.” He grinned a little. I found myself grinning back at him.

  “Which is the best solution for our people?” I asked him, still grinning as though it were a trivial question. “My truth or yours?”

  “There is only one truth,” he said. “When a door is closed, the wind blows through a window. But it’s the same wind.”

  “You think Wind is blowing through me?” I laughed. “You’re beginning to talk like Savannis.”

  Tibellis grinned as he translated that, but Yur’i shrugged. “I am now the Voice of Wind,” he replied.

  “They don’t agree with you.” I gestured out toward our city.

  “There have been too many changes. They are confused.”

  “Confused?” They had threatened me with violence and Yur’i called it confusion? “What do I do to become less ‘confusing’?” I asked sarcastically. “Hide what I am discovering?”

  “Never. If it is being shown to you, you must show it to us. You have no choice.”

  “I have a choice.”

  He looked at me, smiling sadly. “Pandarris, you are the one who has been shown these things because, for you, there is no choice but to tell what you see.”

  ***

  “What if you didn’t co-join?” I asked Brock’an that evening. He had brought our dinners to my room in the Council building.

  He put his food down. “No Ghen younglings,” he signed.

  “But still two Bria infants?” I waited as he took another mouthful.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not co-join on second mating?”

  “There would be two Broghen.”

  “You know this?”

  “That’s what we’ve been taught.” He looked up at me and sighed. “After dinner?”

  I had little appetite and Brock’an lost his under my stare. Soon he was guiding me to the room with the birth records again.

  “You’re right,” I signed after we’d examined the first few pages recording births that occurred in the early years after Dayannis’s and Heckt’er’s infants were born. “But why? Why does it take the seed from two different Ghen to produce one youngling at first mating? Why would two seeds from the same two Ghen at second mating produce two Broghen, instead?”

  “We may never know,” he signed.

  In a rage I slammed the book shut and pounded on the wooden table with my fists, screaming, “I must know! I will know!”

  Brock’an allowed me to expend my fury until I crumpled, sobbing. He caught me as I fell and held me. We sat there, beside the book that held all our knowledge and gave us no answers.

  ***

  It was almost stillseason when Tyannis came to see me. He brought two vials, one of his breast fluid and the other of Saft’ir’s mating fluid.

  “You never told me what you saw in Cammis’s breast fluid,” he said, “but it had you upset enough to come to my house in stillseason.”

  I sighed, and put some of his breast fluid onto a glass. Under the enlarging tube I located the tear-drop organisms I’d seen in Cammis’s fluid.

  Tyannis looked at them, amazed. “These are the same as in first-year mating Ghen,” he said at last. “Why haven’t you told us about them?”

  “Because it doesn’t mean anything. We smear them on our belly rash.” I thought of Kirabbis’s blood organisms and their contest with the burning fever organisms. “Maybe they’re good-health creatures.”

  Still looking down the tube, Tyannis reached for the vial with Saft’ir’s sam-ple. “What if we put them together, the way you did with the first- and second-mating samples?”

  “But one’s Ghen and one’s Bria...” My voice trailed off as I remembered the tufts of Bria hair on the little Broghen in Tibellis’s statue, on my own infant Broghen. I felt ill. So obvious, and I had missed it.

  Because it wasn’t the answer I was looking for, the one I wanted.

  Already Tyannis was pouring some of the fluid onto the glass which held his own sample. I didn’t want to look. It was all I could do not to stop him.

  Kirabbis would have thought of this days ago. Kirabbis had been bound to the truth.

  Tyannis’s cry of surprise was no surprise to me.

  “They joined,” I said, when he looked up to tell me.

  “You knew?”

  “Not until now.”

  “It’s the Broghen.”

  “I think so.”

  “How do they get into our womb?”

  In unison we looked at his belly rash. Without a word, he lay down on the floor in front of the window while I found an enlarging glass and held it over his belly. He winced when I accidentally touched his rash. I hesitated, feeling a little silly, but he motioned me to continue.

  I was used to looking at specimens through an enlarging tube. It took a while to angle the glass correctly over his belly to show anything. When the rash became visible, it was no longer a solid flame of red, but a cluster of scarlet circles. I moved the glass closer. Each circle was a tiny opening, large enough to admi
t the Bria embryos, each opening surrounded by a pucker of red skin, like wounds cut into the center of his abdomen.

  ***

  Briarris and Igt’ur came to see me the next day. I told them what I had seen and what I believed about the organisms in Ghen fluid, as well as the mystery of Bria breast fluid. They heard me out in silence.

  “Write up your findings,” Briarris said. “We’ll tell the Bria who are ready for second mating that they can prevent Broghen by not soothing their rashes with breast fluid. Keep a record of those who agree. They’ll believe in records. Tell them it’s safe to mate, then.”

  “I can’t know for sure if that’s the Broghen seed,” I protested. “It may be a Ghen, or even a Bria. The Broghen seed may be entirely different, something I can’t even see with my enlarging tube.”

  “Tell them anyway.”

  “And if I’m wrong?”

  “Right now, the most important thing is that our civilization continues to exist. We have to make the pregnant Bria see past their own fear and go to Festival Hall to mate.”

  “We tried that once, combating fear with lies.”

  “This isn’t a lie,” he said. For a moment he faced down my stare, then he grimaced. “It is a slight distortion.”

  I did not answer.

  “I admit it’s only a partial answer,” he said. “Do you think you’re going to achieve all knowledge in your lifetime, Pandarris? Even you can’t be that arrogant.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “It has to. It’s all we’ve got.”

  “Why don’t you tell them, if you want to?”

  “They’ll believe you. They’re counting on you because of your foolish promise.”

  “I promised the children, not those already joined. I need more time!”

  “You don’t have more time. What do you think will happen to my city when stillseason ends and those Bria begin to miscarry? You think you saw an angry crowd before? Wait till we’re burying babies.”

  Beyond The Wall

  (Igt’ur)

  Brock’an and I escorted Briarris and Pandarris to every house in the city, to tell Bria the news. We could not risk a public meeting, with awkward questions and accusations from Anarris and his followers. Pandarris brought his findings for the Bria to read, and a ledger to record the names of the second-year mating Bria, declaring they would be the first who would not birth a Broghen. He spoke with such confidence that most agreed not to exchange breast fluid.