‘As it was in the ancient days,’ she said.
She went on to say that here men did not rule their wives and daughters. No one, in truth, ruled anyone else: no king was there on the Island of the Swans, nor duke nor master nor lord. Their most prominent personage seemed to be a woman named Lady Nimaiu, who was also called the Lady of the Lake. Yakira suggested that Piliri should present us to her.
‘She says that she would take us down to the lake herself,’ Liljana explained, ‘but she can’t walk so far anymore.’
It seemed that the Maii had no horses to ride nor even any oxen that might pull a cart. We might have managed to carry Yakira the few miles down to the city by the lake, but this her dignity would not permit.
Here Yakira spoke to Piliri for a few moments. Then Liljana translated her words: ‘She said that Piliri must tell her everything that happens there.’
‘Ah, I hope nothing happens,’ Maram said. ‘At least nothing more eventful than us finding that which we came to find.’
And with that, Piliri took her leave of her husband and family, and we set forth, with Piliri leading the way. Soon we came to a little road that led down the valley’s center. It was paved with smooth stones cut so precisely that they showed only the narrowest of seams. Flowers of various kinds lined the sides of the road, which wound through the meadows and fields. With the soft sun providing just enough heat to warm us nicely and the many birds singing in the orchards to either side of us, it was one of the most pleasant walks I had ever made.
We stopped more than once to greet other shepherds and farmers curious as to the strange sight that we must have presented. After they had eyed my gleaming armor and studied my friends with amazement, more than one of them joined us. By the time we reached the edge of the city, we made a party perhaps thirty strong. And there, from the neat little houses painted yellow, red and blue, many more of the Maii stepped out to behold us. All of them had the look of my countrymen back in Mesh. Cries of, ‘Nisa, Nisa!’ sang out as Maii emptied out of the shops and houses and lined the streets before us. As we passed, they closed in behind us and formed up into a procession of hundreds of excited men, women and children.
Piliri, walking now with great dignity, led the way straight toward the temple. From this massive structure, which appeared made of marble, bells began ringing and sent their silver peals out over the city. And now it seemed the whole of the city had been alerted to our coming, for thousands of people crowded the streets. In bright streams of kirtles and flowing garments dyed every color, they converged upon the temple from the south, west and east. There, in a tree-lined square beneath the temple’s great, gleaming pillars, they gathered to greet us and witness what to them must have been an extraordinary event.
A tall woman, perhaps forty years of age, accompanied by six younger women, emerged from between the temple’s two centermost pillars and slowly made her way down the steps toward us. She was as beautiful of face and form as my mother, and she wore a long white kirtle trimmed with green along the sleeves and hem. A filigree of tiny black pearls was sown into the kirtle’s front while a fillet of much larger white ones had been set around her forehead and over her long, black hair. She stopped immediately in front of us. Then Piliri stepped forward, knelt and kissed the woman’s hand. Upon straightening again, she said, ‘Mi Lais Nimaiu-talanasii nisalu.’
She turned toward me and my companions and continued, ‘Talanasii Sar Valashu Elahad. Eth Maramei Marshayk eth Liljana Ashvaran eth …’
And so it went until she had presented us all. Then she spoke to Liljana, who stepped closer with her blue gelstei to translate for her.
‘Talanasii Lais Nimaiu,’ Piliri said, presenting the tall woman to us. She spoke a few more words before nodding at Liljana.
Liljana pressed her little figurine to her head as she smiled at the tall woman. To us, she said, ‘This is Lady Nimaiu. She is also called the Lady of the Lake.’
Lady Nimaiu, as Rhysu had, spent quite a few moments examining us. Atara’s hair seemed to hold wonders for her as did Master Juwain’s complete absence of it. But she reserved her greatest curiosity for me and my accouterments. Her dark eyes took in the lineaments of my face, and then she rapped her fingernail against the steel of my helmet, which I held in the crook of my arm. With my leave, she touched this same elegant finger to the silver swan and stars embroidered on my surcoat. She gasped as if these shapes might be familiar to her. Her breathing quickened as she examined the hilt of my broken sword. She spent another few moments running her hand over the steel links of my mail and the swan and stars embossed on my father’s shield. Finally, she wrapped her fingers lightly around my throwing lance before stepping back and regarding me warily.
With Liljana translating for us, she began conversing with me: ‘You bring strange things to our land,’ she said. ‘Are suchlike common in yours?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘most warriors, at least the knights, are accoutered thusly.’
Liljana hesitated a moment in her translation because she could find no words in Lady Nimaiu’s language for knight or warrior. And so she simply spoke them as I did, leaving them untranslated.
‘And what is warrior?’ Lady Nimaiu asked me.
‘A warrior,’ I said, hesitating as well, ‘is one who goes to war.’
‘And what is war?’
Now the six women attending Lady Nimaiu pressed closer to hear my answer as did Piliri and many other of the Maii. I traded swift, incredulous looks with Master Juwain and Maram. And then I said, ‘That might be hard to tell.’
I looked around at the gentle Maii, who stood regarding us with great curiosity but no fear. Could it be possible that they knew nothing of war? That the bloody history of the last ten thousand years had completely passed by their beautiful island?
As I stood there wondering what to say to Lady Nimaiu, she again touched the hilt of my sword. ‘Is this an accouterment of war, then?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is.’
‘May I see it?’
I nodded my head as I drew what was left of my sword. Its broken hilt shard gleamed brightly in the light of the late-afternoon sun.
‘May I hold it, Sar Valashu?’
I did not want to let her hold my sword. Would I so readily give into her hands my soul? Nevertheless, upon remembering why we had come to her island, I fulfilled her request for the sake of a little goodwill.
‘It’s heavy,’ she announced as her fingers closed around the hilt. ‘Heavier than I would have thought.’
I did not explain that if the blade had been whole, it would have been heavier still. But Lady Nimaiu, whose bright eyes missed very little, seemed to understand this as she gazed at the ragged end of my sword where it had been broken.
‘Of what metal is this made?’ she asked me, tapping the blade.
‘It’s called steel, Lady Nimaiu.’
‘What is this thing called, then?’
‘It is a sword,’ I said.
‘And what is sword for?’
Before I could answer, she moved her finger from the flat of the blade and started to run it across its edge. ‘Be careful!’ I gasped. But it was too late: the kalama’s razor-sharp steel sliced open her finger.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, instinctively clasping the wounded tip against her breast to stanch the bleeding. ‘It’s sharp – so very sharp!’
She gave me back my sword while one of the women close to her tended her cut finger. To the murmurs of grave disapproval spreading outward among the crowds around us, she explained that although the Maii used their bronze knives to shape wood and shear their sheep, none were so keen of edge that they cut flesh at the faintest touch.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said sadly as she held up her finger. The white wool of her kirtle was now stained with her blood. ‘This is what sword is for.’
I felt my own blood burning my ears with shame. I tried to explain a little about warfare then; I tried to tell her that all the peoples of Ea stood ready to prote
ct their lands by going to war.
She spoke her amazement to Liljana, who continued to make her words understandable: ‘But what do your lands need protecting from?’ she asked me. ‘Are the wolves that fierce where you live?’
Behind me Maram muttered, ‘No, but the Ishkans are.’
Liljana either didn’t hear this or chose to ignore him. And then I took upon myself the task of trying to explain how we Valari had to protect ourselves from our enemies – and each other.
I spoke for quite a while. But what I said made no sense to Lady Nimaiu – and, in truth, little to me. After I had finished my account of the world’s woes, she stood there shaking her head as she said, ‘How strange that brothers feel they must protect themselves from each other! What strange lands you have seen where men take up swords because they are afraid their neighbors will as well.’
‘It … is not as simple as that,’ I said.
‘But why would men go to war?’ Lady Nimaiu said. ‘For pride and plunder, so you say. But do your men have no pride in anything other than their swords? Are your men thieves that they would take from each other what is not theirs?’
The Red Dragon is much worse than a thief, I thought. And he would take from men their very souls.
‘It is not so simple as that,’ I repeated. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and continued, ‘What would your people do if two neighbors disputed the border of their lands and one of them made a sword to claim his part?’
While Liljana translated this, Lady Nimaiu looked at me thoughtfully. And then she said, ‘We Maii do not claim land as your people do. All of our island belongs to all of us. And so there is always enough for all.’
‘As it was in the ancient days,’ Liljana said quietly, pausing a moment in her translating duties.
I took a breath and asked Lady Nimaiu, ‘But what if one of your men coveted one of his neighbor’s sheep and tried to claim it as his own?’
‘If his need was that great, then likely his neighbor would give it to him.’
‘But what if he didn’t?’ I pressed her. ‘What if he slew his neighbor, and then threatened others as well?’
What I had suggested plainly horrified Lady Nimaiu – and the other Maii, too. Her face fell white, and her jaw trembled slightly as she gasped out, ‘But none of us could ever do such a thing!’
‘But what if someone did?’
‘Then we would take his sword from him and break it, as yours is broken.’
‘Swords are not so easy to take,’ I told her. ‘You would have to forge swords of your own to take such a man’s sword.’
‘No, we would never do that,’ she said. ‘We would simply surround him until he couldn’t move.’
‘But then many of your people would die.’
‘Yes, they would,’ she admitted. ‘But such a price would have to be paid if one of us fell shaida.’
Now it was my turn to be puzzled as Liljana mouthed this Maiian word that had no simple translation into our tongue. After some further discussion between Lady Nimaiu and Liljana, I was given to understand that shaida meant something like the madness of one who willfully disregards the natural harmonies of life.
‘But what would you do with such a shaida man once you had disarmed him?’ I asked. ‘Slay him with his own sword then?’
‘Oh, no – we would never do that!’
‘But if you didn’t, he might just make another sword and more of your people would die.’
I started to tell her that once war between peoples had begun, it was very hard to stop. And then Lady Nimaiu said, ‘But it could never come to war, don’t you see? Such a man would be given to the Lady, and all would be restored.’
I stood there confused. I didn’t know what she meant by ‘given to the Lady.’ Wasn’t she Lady Nimaiu, the Lady of the Lake? And what would she do with such a murderous man?
After some rounds of Liljana passing our words back and forth to each other, Lady Nimaiu smiled sadly and said to me, ‘I am the Lady of the Lake, as you’ve been told. But I am not the Lady, of course. It is to Her that we would give your sword-making man.’
So saying, she pointed above the temple at the smoking mountain across the lake. She said that anyone who fell shaida would be dropped into its fiery cone.
‘The Lady takes back everyone into herself,’ she explained. ‘But some sooner than others.’
‘Is this Lady the mountain, then?’ I said, trying to understand.
My question seemed to amuse her, as it did many of the other Maii, who gathered around laughing softly. And then Lady Nimaiu smiled and told me, ‘Oh, no, the mountain is only the Lady’s mouth – and only her mouth of fire at that. She has many others.’
She went on to explain that the wind was the Lady’s breath and the rain her tears; when the ground shook, she said, the Lady was laughing, and when it quaked so violently that mountains moved, that was the Lady’s anger.
‘The Maii,’ she said, stretching out her wounded finger toward her people, ‘are the Lady’s eyes and hands. And that is why none of us would ever make a sword.’
I paused to look at the many men and women all around us. And then I asked, ‘And does this Lady have a name?’
‘Of course she does,’ Lady Nimaiu said. ‘Her name is Ea.’
At the utterance of this single word common to both our languages, the earth seemed to tremble slightly. Smoke continued pouring out of the cone of the mountain above us, but whether this signaled the Lady Ea’s gladness at our arrival or displeasure, I couldn’t tell.
We had a hundred questions for Lady Nimaiu and the Maii, as they had for us. They wanted to know everything about our peoples and the lands from which we came. They were fascinated with Liljana’s blue figurine and her ability to shape the words of one language into that of another. But they saved their greatest wonder toward the answering of a single question.
‘Why,’ Lady Nimaiu said to me, ‘have you come to our island?’
My first impulse was simply to blurt out that we had joined the great quest to find the Lightstone. But Maram, fearing my artlessness, moved up behind me and whispered in my ear, ‘Be careful, Val. If the Lightstone is here, it’s surely inside the temple. If we tell them that we’re seeking what must be their greatest treasure, they’ll likely give us to this bloodthirsty Lady of theirs.’
He advised telling Lady Nimaiu that we were on a mission to aid the besieged Surrapam and that we had stopped on the Island of the Swans to hunt for fresh meat to replace our dwindling stores. We should wait, he said, and contrive a way to enter the temple. Then we could determine if it really did house the Lightstone and devise a plan for its taking.
Maram was more cunning than I, yet not every situation called for this virtue. The Maii, sensing something devious in Maram’s quiet speech, which Liljana failed to translate, began murmuring among themselves and shifting about the square restlessly. I was reluctant to tell Maram’s little lies and even more so to say anything that might get us pushed into a pool of fire. And so I looked at Lady Nimaiu and said, ‘We’re on a quest
A low groan from Maram behind me made me pause in my answer. And then I continued, ‘We’re on a quest to find truth, beauty and goodness. And the love of the One that is said to find its perfect manifestation somewhere in the world.’
My words, after Liljana had rendered them into the Maiian tongue, seemed to please them. Although I had spoken only vaguely of the Lightstone’s essence, what I had said was true enough.
Lady Nimaiu, who was now smiling, slowly nodded her head. And then she asked, ‘But why should you think that you would find these things on our island, where none but the Maii have walked since the Lady stepped out of the starry night at the beginning of time?’
Liljana needed no prompting from me to answer this question. With more than a little pride flushing her intelligent face, she recounted the finding of her blue gelstei and her conversation with the Sea People.
Again, Lady Nimaiu nodded her head slowly. It seemed
the most natural thing in the world to her that a woman should speak with whales.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Liljana. ‘You have told us much about yourselves, though much more needs to be told. And perhaps tomorrow it shall be. Until then, we invite you to remain here as our guests.’
When a king extended such an invitation, it was really a command. But as Liljana had told us, the Maii had no kings, nor even queens. I sensed that Lady Nimaiu was giving us the freedom to go or remain as we pleased. And so we decided to remain.
After that, Lady Nimaiu dismissed the crowds of her people with a few kind words. We said goodbye to Piliri, who returned home to eat her evening meal with her family. Lady Nimaiu then took her leave of us, and went back into the temple with five of her attendants as she had come. The sixth attendant, a rather homely but voluptuous young woman named Lailaiu, was charged with the task of settling us in for the night.
She showed us to one of the outbuildings adjoining the west side of the temple but not really part of it. There we were given spacious rooms in the guest quarters. We were given food and drink as well: hot bread and white ewe’s cheese, blackberries and plums and sweet salmon which the Maii pulled from the rivers near the sea and smoked in juniper and honey. Our wine was rich, dark and red. After our feast, served by other temple attendants, Lailaiu returned to fill the sunken marble bath with hot water. She brought us herb-scented soaps and insisted on using them to lather up our worn flesh. All of us, even Kane, yielded to such an unexpected delight. Everything about the Maiian dwellings and handiworks seemed designed to delight the senses. No corner of our rooms was unadorned, from the marble moldings carved with bold traceries to the tapestries and carpets that lined the walls and floors. Even the blankets that covered us that cool night, woven from the marvelously soft underhair of the Maii’s goats, were embroidered with brightly colored threads showing roses and violets, the two flowers most beloved of the Lady Ea.
‘Ah, this is a fine place,’ Maram said, after he had collapsed onto his bed with his seventh glass of wine. ‘I’ve never seen a fairer land. So rich, so sweet.’
The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom Page 63
