A World Divided

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Kennard said swiftly, “We have told you already that we have no will to harm even the least of your people or creatures, Honorable One.”

  “Yes.” But it was at Larry that the trailman chief looked. He said, irrelevantly, it seemed, “Among my folk, my title is Old One, and what is age if not wisdom? Have you wisdom for me, son of a strange land?”

  Larry reached behind him for the honey pot, containing still a few glowing embers of fire. The Old One shrank, but controlled himself with an effort. Larry tried to speak his simplest Darkovan; after all, the language was strange to both himself and this alien creature.

  “It is harmless here,” he said, searching for words. “See, the walls of your clay pot keep it harmless so that it cannot burn. If you feed it with—with dead twigs and little bits of dead, dry wood, it will serve you and not hurt you.”

  The Old One reached out, evidently conquering an ingrained shrinking, and touched the pot. He said, “Then it can be servant and not master?

  “And a knife made clean in this fire will heal?”

  “Yes,” said Larry, bypassing the whole of germ theory, “or a wound washed with water made very hot, will heal better than a dirty wound.”

  The Old One rose, bearing the firepot in his hands. He said, gravely, “For this gift, then, of healing, my people thank you. And as a sign of this, be under our protection within our woods. Wear this”—and he extended two garlands of yellow flowers—“and none of our people will harm you. But build no red-flames-to-eat-our-woods within the limits of these branches.”

  Larry, sensing that the Old One spoke to him, said gravely, “You have my pledge.”

  The Old One threw open the door of the hut.

  “Be free to go.”

  Awkwardly they settled the crowns of yellow flowers over their heads. The trailmen surged backward as the Old One came forth, bearing in his hands the pot of fire. He said ceremoniously, handing it to a woman, “I place this thing in your hands. You and your daughters and the daughters of your daughters are to feed it and bear responsibility that it does not escape.”

  The scene had a grave solemnity that made Larry, for some reason—perhaps only relief—want to giggle. But he kept his gravity while they were escorted to the edge of the trailmen’s village, shown a long ladder down which they could climb, and finally, with infinite relief, set foot again on the green and solid ground.

  CHAPTER TEN

  All that day they walked, through the trails of the forest. Now and again, from the corner of their eyes, they caught a glimpse of movement, but they saw not a sign of a trailman. They slept that night hearing sounds overhead, but now without fear, knowing that the yellow garlands would protect them in trailman country.

  So far neither of them had spoken of their escape. There was no need for words between them now. But when, on the second day—a day clouded and sunless, with a promise of rain—they sat to eat their meal of berries and the odd fungus the trailmen had shown them, which grew plentifully along these paths, Kennard finally spoke.

  “You know, of course, that there will be fires. Houses will burn. Maybe even woods will burn. They’re not human.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Larry said thoughtfully. “Among the Terrans, they would be called at least humanoid. They have a culture.”

  “Yet was it safe to give them fire? I would never have dared,” Kennard said, “not if we died there. For more centuries than I can count, man and nonhuman have lived together on Darkover in a certain balance. And now, with the trailmen using fire—” He shrugged, helplessly, and Larry suddenly began to see the implications of what he had done. “Still,” he said stubbornly, “they’ll learn. They’ll make mistakes, there will be mis-uses, but they will learn. Their pottery will improve as it is fired. They will, perhaps, learn to cook food. They will grow and develop. Nothing remains static,” he said. He repeated the Terran creed, “A civilization changes—or dies.”

  Kennard’s face flushed in sudden, sullen anger, and Larry, realizing that for the first time since his rescue they were conscious of being alien to one another, knew something else. Kennard was jealous. He had been the rescuer, the leader. Yet Larry had saved them, where Kennard would have given up because he feared change. Larry had taken command—and Kennard, second place.

  “That is the Terran way,” Kennard said sullenly. “Change. For better or worse, but change. No matter how good a thing is—change it, just for the sake of change.”

  Larry, with a growing wisdom, was silent. It was, he knew, a deeper conflict than they could ever resolve with words alone; a whole civilization based on expansion and growth, pitted against one based on tradition. He felt like saying, “Anyhow, we’re alive,” but forbore. Kennard had saved his life many times over. It hardly would become him to boast about beginning to even the score.

  That evening they came to the edge of the trailmen’s rain forest and into the open foothills again—bare, trackless hills, unexplored, rocky, covered with scrubby brush and low, bunchy grass. Beyond them lay the mountain ranges, and beyond that—

  “There lies the pass,” Kennard said, “and beyond it lies Hastur country, and the home of Castle Hastur. We’re within sight of home.” He sounded hopeful, even joyous, but Larry heard the trembling in his voice. Before them lay miles of canyons and gullies, without road or track or path, and beyond that lay the high mountain pass. The day was dim and sunless, the peaks in shadow, but even at this distance Larry could see that snow lay in their depths.

  “How far?”

  “Four days travel, perhaps, if it were open prairie or forest,” Kennard said. “Or one day’s ride on a swift horse, if any horse could travel these infernal arroyos.”

  He stood frowning, gazing down into the mazelike network of canyons. “The worst of it is, the sun is clouded, and I find it hard to calculate the path we must follow. From here to the pass we must travel due westward. But with the sun in shadow—” He knelt momentarily, and Larry, wondering if he were praying, saw that instead he was examining the very faint shadow cast by the clouded sun. Finally he said, “As long as we can see the mountain peak, we need only follow it. I suppose”—he rose, shrugging wearily—“we may as well begin.”

  He set off downward into one of the canyons. Larry, envying him his show of confidence, stumbled after him. He was weary and footsore, and hungry, but he would not show himself less manly than Kennard.

  All that day and all the next they stumbled and scrambled among the thorny, rocky slopes of the barren foothills. They went in no danger of hunger, for the bushes, so thorny and barren in appearance, were lush with succulent berries and ripening nuts. That evening Kennard snared several small birds who were feeding fearlessly on their abundance. They were out of trailmen country now, so that they dared to make fire; and it seemed to Larry that no festive dinner had ever tasted so good as the flesh of these nutty birds, roasted over their small fire and eaten half-raw and without salt. Kennard said, as they sat companionably munching drumsticks, “This place is a hunter’s paradise! The birds are without fear.”

  “And good eating,” Larry commented, cracking a bone for the succulent marrow.

  “It’s even possible that we might meet a hunting party.” Kennard said hopefully. “Perhaps some of the men from the Hastur country beyond the mountains hunt here—where the game roams in such abundance.”

  But they were both silent at the corollary of that statement. If no one hunted here, where the hunting was so splendid, then the mountain pass that lay between them and safety must be fearsome indeed!

  The third day was cloudier than the last, and Kennard stopped often to examine the fainter and fainter shadows and calculate the sun’s position by them. The land was rising now; the gullies were steeper and more thorny, the slopes harder to scramble up. Toward that evening a thin, fine drizzle began to fall, and even Kennard, with all his skill, could not build a fire. They gnawed cold roast meat from the night before, and dampish fruits, and slept huddled together for warmth in a
rock-lined crevasse.

  All the next day the rain drizzled down, thin and pale, and the purplish light held no hint of sun or shadow. Larry, watching Kennard grow ever more silent and tense, could not at last contain his anxiety. He said, “Kennard, we’re lost. I know we’re going the wrong way. Look, the land slopes downhill, and we have to keep going upward toward the mountains.”

  “I know we’re going downhill, muffin-head,” snapped Kennard, “into this canyon. On the other side the land rises higher. Can’t you see?”

  “With this rain I can’t see a thing,” said Larry honestly, “and what’s more, I don’t think you can either.”

  Kennard rounded on him, suddenly furious: “I suppose you think you could do better?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Larry protested, but Kennard was tensely trying to find a shadow. It seemed completely hopeless. They were not even sure of the time of day, so that even the position of the sun would have been no help, could they have seen a shadow; this damp, darkish drizzle made no distinction between early afternoon and deep twilight.

  He heard Kennard murmur, almost in despair, “If I could only get a sight of the mountain peak!”

  It was the first time the Darkovan boy had sounded despair, and Larry felt the need to comfort and reassure. He said, “Kennard, it’s not as bad as all that. We won’t starve here. Sooner or later the sun will shine, or the rain will stop, and the pass will be before us clearly. Then any one of these little hilltops will show us our right direction. Why don’t we find a sheltered place and just wait out the rainstorm?”

  He had not expected instant agreement, but he was not prepared for the violence, the fury with which the Darkovan boy rounded on him.

  “You damned, infernal, bumbling idiot,” he shouted, “what do you think I’d do if it was only me? Do you think I can’t have sense enough to do what any ten-year-old with sense enough to tie his own bootlaces would do in such a storm? But with you—”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “You wouldn’t,” shouted Kennard. “You never understand anything, you damned—Terranan!” For the first time in all their friendship, the word on his lips was an insult. Larry felt his blood rise high in return. Kennard had saved his life; but there was a point beyond which he could not rub it in any further.

  “If I have so little sense—?”

  “Listen,” Kennard said, with suppressed violence, “my father gave his surety to the Terranan lords for your safety. Do you think you can never let any man live his own life or die his own death? No, damn it. If you visit my people—and you vanish and are killed—do you suppose the Terrans will ever believe it was accident and not a deep-laid plot? You head-blind Terrans without even telepathy enough to know when a man speaks truth, so that your fumbling insolent idiots of people dared—they dared!—to doubt that my father, a lord of the Comyn and of the Seven Domains, spoke truth?

  “It’s true, I rescued you for my own honor and because we had sworn friendship. But also because, unless I brought you safely back to your people, your damned Terrans will be poking and prying, searching and avenging!” He stopped. He had to. He was completely out of breath after his outburst, his face red with fury, his eyes blazing, and Larry, in sudden terror, felt the other’s rage as a murderous, almost a deadly thing. He realized suddenly that he stood very close to death at that moment. The fury of an unleashed telepath—and one too young to have control over his power—beat on Larry with a surge of power like a ship. It rolled over him like a crashing surf. It pounded him physically to his knees.

  He bent before it. And then, as suddenly as it had come, he realized that he had strength to meet it. He raised his eyes gravely to Kennard and said aloud, “Look, my friend—” (he used the word bredu) “—I did not know this. I did not make my people’s laws, no more than you caused the feud that set the bandits on our hunting party.” And he was amazed at the steady force with which he countered the furious assault of rage.

  Slowly, Kennard quieted. Larry felt the red surges of Kennard’s fury receding, until at last the Darkovan boy stood before him silent, just a kid again and a scared one. He didn’t apologize, but Larry didn’t expect him to. He said, simply, “So it’s a matter of time, you see, Lerrys.” The Darkovan form of Larry’s name was, Larry knew, tacit apology. “And as you care for your people, I care for my father. And this is the first day of the rainy season. I had hoped to be out of these hills, and through the passes, before this. We were delayed by the trailmen, or we should be safe now, and a message of your safety on its way to your father. If I had the starstone still—” he was silent, then shrugged. “Well, that is the Comyn law.” He drew a deep breath. “Now, which way did you say you thought was west?”

  “I didn’t say,” Larry said, honestly. He did not know until much later just how rare a thing he had done; he had faced the unleashed wrath of an Alton and a telepath—and been unharmed. Later, he remembered it and shook in his shoes; but now he just felt relieved that Kennard had calmed down.

  “But,” he said, “there’s no point in going in circles. All these canyons look exactly alike to me. If we had a compass—” He broke off. He began to search frantically in his pockets. The bandits had not taken it from him because the main blade was broken. The trailmen had not even seen it. As a weapon it was worthless. He had not even been able to use it to help Kennard clean and gut the birds they had eaten.

  But it had a magnetized blade!

  And a magnetized blade, properly used could make an improvised compass....

  The first turn-out of his pockets failed to find it; then he remembered that during their time with the trailmen, fearing they might regard any tool, however small, as a weapon, he had thrust it into his medical kit. He took it out, and snapped the magnetized blade off against a stone, then tested it against the metal of the broken main blade. It retained its magnetism. Now if he could only remember how it was done. It had been a footnote in one of his mathematics texts in childhood, half forgotten. Kennard, meanwhile, watched as if Larry’s brain had snapped, while Larry experimented with a bit of string and finally, looking at Kennard’s long, square-cut hair, demanded “Give me one of your hairs.”

  “Are you out of your wits?”

  “No,” Larry said. “I think I may be in them, at last. I should have thought of this from the beginning. If I could have taken a bearing when the sun was still shining, and we had a clear view of the pass ahead of us, I’d know—”

  Without raising his head, he accepted the hair which Kennard gave him gingerly, as if he were humoring a lunatic. He knotted the hair around the magnetized blade and waited. The blade was tiny and light, hardly bigger than the needles which had been the first improvised compasses. It swung wildly for a few moments; stopped.

  “What superstitious rigamarole—” Kennard began, stopped. “You must have something on your mind,” he conceded, “but what?”

  Larry began to explain the theory by which the magnetic compass worked. Kennard cut him short.

  “Everyone knows that a certain kind of metal—you call it a magnet—will attract metal. But how can this help us?”

  For a moment Larry despaired. He had forgotten the level of Darkovan technology—or lack of it—and how could he, in one easy lesson, explain the two magnetic poles of a planet, the theory of the magnetic compass which pointed to the true pole at all times, the manner of taking a compass direction and following? He started, but he was making very heavy weather of explaining the magnetic field around a planet. To begin with, he simply did not have the technological vocabulary in Darkovan—if there was one, which he doubted. He was reminded of the trailman chief calling fire “the red thing which eats the woods.” He felt like that while he tried to explain about iron filings and magnetic currents. Finally he gave up, holding the improvised compass in one hand.

  He said helplessly, “Kennard, I can’t explain it to you any more than you can explain to me how you destroyed that blue jewel of yours—or how your psychics herded a
batch of clouds across the sky to put out a fire. But I helped you do it, didn’t I? And it worked? We can’t possibly be any worse off than we are already, can we? And the Terran ships find their way between the stars by using this kind of—of science. So will you at least let me try?”

  Kennard was silent for a moment. At last he said, “I suppose you are right. We could not be worse off.”

  Larry knelt and drew an improvised sketch map on the ground, what he remembered of the mountain range he had seen from the distance. “Now here’s the mountains and here is the edge of the trailmen’s forest. How far had we come before you lost sure sight of exactly where we were going?”

  Hesitantly, with many frowns and rememberings, Kennard traced out a route.

  “And that was—exactly how long ago? Try to be as accurate as you can, Kennard; how many miles ago did you begin not to be absolutely sure?”

  Kennard put his finger on the improvised map.

  “So we’re within about five hours walk from that point.” He drew a circle around the point Kennard had shown as their last positive location. “We could be anywhere in this circle, but if we keep west and keep going west we’ll have to hit the mountains—we can’t possibly miss them.” He tried not to think of what would lie before them then. Kennard thought of it as just the final hurdle, but the journey with the bandits through their own dreadful chasms and crags—bound and handcuffed like sacked luggage—had given him an enduring horror of the Darkovan mountains that was to last his lifetime.

  “If this works ...” Kennard said, skeptically, but immediately looked an apology. “What do I have to do first? Is there any specific ritual for the use of this—this amulet?”

  Larry, by main force, held back a shout of half-hysterical laughter. Instead, he said gravely, “Just cross your fingers that it will work,” and started questioning Kennard about the minor discrepancies, of the seasons, and the sun’s rising and setting. Darkover—he knew from its extremes of climate—must be a planet with an exaggeratedly tilted axis, and he would have to figure out just how far north or south of true west the sun set at this season of the year in this latitude. How he blessed the teacher at Quarters B who had loaned him the book on Darkovan geography—otherwise he might not even have been sure whether they were in the southern, rather than the northern hemisphere. He boggled at the thought of trying to explain an equator to Kennard.