by M. A. Foster
He observed, “It is chilly tonight, is it not?”
“Oh, indeed it is.”
“The traveler looks upon the house of a friend after a long journey as his own, and dreams of food, beds, and talk among those who would share experiences.”
The girl nodded, agreeing most pleasantly.
“So now. Were you a Perklaren, I would ask to be admitted within.”
At this, the girl seemed to lose the air of bland bemusement, and brightened a little. It was, Morlenden thought, an excellent transformation, for once animated, the girl’s plain face became extraordinarily pretty. She exclaimed. “Me? A Perklaren? Oh, no. Not by a long way and a half. Did you think I was Mael? No? She doesn’t live here anymore, I mean, she doesn’t stay around here much. . . .” She stopped, as if she had perhaps said more than she had intended to. She continued, “But do come in. I think it would be all right.” With that last remark, she vanished back into the yos, behind the door-flap.
Morlenden could hear her moving back into the other parts of the yos, calling to someone she named “Kler.” Yes. This was the right place. That would be the Nerh, Klervondaf Tlanh Perklaren.
Morlenden pushed the door-flap aside and entered, pausing in the entryway to remove his boots. By the time he had finished taking off his outer walking clothes and entered the hearthroom proper, another person was climbing out of the children’s compartment to meet him. Out of the children’s compartment, that is, if they followed the same notions of left and right as did the Derens. The girl was peering around the edge of the compartment entryway, looking at him with undisguised curiosity.
Morlenden imagined the newcomer to be Klervondaf, the Perklaren elder outsibling; Klervondaf was a late adolescent of slender build, rather dark complexion, and a long, mobile face that suggested considerable flexibility of expression. Morlenden knew him to be approximately twenty-five or so, but in some ways he looked much older. He carried himself with a weary diffidence that suggested many things. This one, he thought, knows much, or has had to do much, a long way beyond what he expected. Klervondaf turned to face Morlenden, rearranging the front of his overshirt, looking at the visitor out of muddy brown eyes, a rarity among the ler.
He said, in a measured, careful manner, “I am Klervondaf Tlanh Perklaren, Nerh, and, for the moment, within the yos, responsible for Braid affairs. What was the matter you wished to discuss? If you are looking for the public house, you missed the turn back down on the main pathway; it is back down by the old dock.”
Morlenden answered, “I am Morlenden Deren, Kadh and Toorh.”
“Aha! Of the Derens! I know of your Braid, sir. Have you come,” Klervondaf asked saturninely, “with weaving offers for what remains of us?” In itself, the question was a curious one, certainly made not less so by the trace of sarcasm underlying the boy’s voice.
Morlenden answered diplomatically, “No, it is hardly that. At any rate, we are not weaving-brokers, but rather registrars. I am aware, though, in general, of the plight of your in-siblings, and have been on the lookout for suitable young men who are to be available. But for the moment, let us disregard that problem, for it is not for that I have come. I have something more immediate: Maellenkleth and Mevlannen.”
“Mael and Mev? Oh?” His guard, invisible before, immediately became apparent. The boy added, “And what is it that a registrar would wish to know?”
Morlenden decided to proceed honestly. “In a word, everything you can offer me that would assist me in locating them, in particular Maellenkleth. She is now believed to be missing, and we Derens have been given a commission to find her. I do not think it possible unless I have some idea of her life.”
For some reason, this seemed to allay Klervondaf’s suspicions, and he relaxed somewhat. But not completely. “That will take some time, yes, some time. Maellenkleth . . .” He stopped abruptly and made a nervous little motion. “You must excuse my impoliteness. You must be tired, if you walked all the way up here, and hungry as well. Please sit, make this dwelling your own, to enjoy at your pleasure. I will fix some things.”
The boy turned from Morlenden and said, over his shoulder, “Plindes, I hate to ask, but can you leave for a little while? I need someone to go down to the Rhalens and tell them to send Tas home.”
A voice, belonging to the girl, answered from deeper within the yos. “Oh, I suppose so.” After a time, the pale-faced girl Morlenden had seen earlier behind the door-flap reappeared, dressed now in an outer overshirt as well. What he could sense of the concealed body beneath the heavy winter garment would have been pale-skinned and slender, somewhat like Peth, but older and a little more rounded, fractionally closer to adulthood. Her hair was indeed a muddy, rich brown, still tousled, full of undisciplined curls. She hurried by, unspeaking, pausing only briefly by Klervondaf to brush his hand with hers. He returned the gesture shyly, and the girl departed the yos, pulling up the hood of her overshirt as she slipped through the inner curtain of the entryway. For another few moments, Morlenden could hear her rummaging about in the dark, finding her cloak and boots, but finally he heard her clatter down the stairs, and there was silence.
The boy waited, listening. Then he walked quietly to the entryway inner flap, looked sidelong through it, and then also outside, peering carefully through the outer flap. He returned momentarily and explained, “Plindestier and I are close enough, as doubtless you may see for yourself. But she is a most curious one and in this yos we do not speak overly loud of the doings of the Perklaren insiblings. I would not put it past her to eavesdrop.”
Morlenden asked, to pass some small talk and set the boy more at ease, “Have you been lovers long?”
“Off and on,” he said, noncommittally, and busied himself with the task of adding some more wood to the hearth fire. After a bit, he added, almost disarmingly and candidly, “Plindestier is excessively shy and I effectively have no Braid. We console one another.” He checked the teapot to ensure there was enough water within to prepare an infusion, then turned back to Morlenden, who was sitting on a hassock, idly looking about the hearthroom.
Hearthrooms were, as a rule, laid out in much the same fashion no matter whose yos. But as Morlenden looked about this one, he could not escape the impression that there was something about this one that set it off. For instance, the decorations around the walls. It was considered traditional to clothe the bare walls of the hearthroom with antique geometric patterns, or at the least deviation from this, simple woven tapestries illustrating stereotyped religious images. Where this one differed was in two striking aspects. The first was that the walls displayed several excellent photographs, startlingly clear and beautifully mounted, of objects in the night sky. Morlenden knew that they were images of stars or starlike objects, but he recognized none of them; they were obviously greatly magnified. One appeared to depict a violent explosion somewhere in deep space, the tangled streamers of its detonation writhing outward into space, glowing with blues and violets. Others seemed to be large and small groups of stars, some of the assemblies globular in shape, others of loose, random associations, with tantalizing suggestions of an order that was, or might be yet to come.
The other difference was more subtle, for after all these were indeed woven wall-hangings. But unlike all others he had seen, these seemed to be representations of Game patterns. They were, one and all, strikingly suggestive, but Morlenden couldn’t quite see through the symbolism into exactly what it was they suggested. Some were of a single color; others showed wild variation of hue and texture.
Klervondaf waited politely for Morlenden to finish looking. Finally, sensing an appropriate moment, he asked, “You wished to become knowledgeable about Maellenkleth and Mevlannen?”
“Yes, I did. Excuse my inattention. I was admiring the fine pictures.”
“The photographs are the work of Mevlannen; she is a photographer of some note as well as other things. On the other hand, the Game tapestries are Maellenkleth’s.”
“It is in both cases
admirable work, I agree. But with the girls, where is it that we begin?”
“Best at the beginning, less some minor things you would not wish to burden yourself with. So, then. As you know as well as I, at the vrentoordesh 31, both insiblings turned out to be female. Had conditions been as in the expected norm, of course the insiblings would have commenced instruction in earnest at fifteen and would by now be deep in the Game, playing at least in the novice class in exhibitions and tournaments. But for many reasons, it was decided not to go this way with Mael and Mev.”
“Curious, that. I am no enthusiast, I confess, but I have seen Games in which both centers were female. They could have played . . .”
“True, but only until weaving-time. And consider,” he added with a minatory gesture of the hand, waving it didactically, “it surely would have done no one any good to become tournament level Players and then find themselves in, say, Braid Susen.”
“I understand that a hog-farmer would probably have little use for the esoterica of Game enigmas.”
“Exactly. And concurrently, decision was made to allow future Games to be conducted under the aegis of Klanh Terklaren, which will be renamed simply Klaren, as soon as Taskellan can be woven. After that, the Game is intended to come to an end, which will necessitate the reorientation of the Terklaren-Klarens. But that will be later; there are some final actions to be taken before termination of the program.”
“Ended? Just like that?”
“The utility of it has, I understand, come to an end; perhaps more properly, I should say, will come to an end.” Klervondaf stopped momentarily. “Understand, I am not the originator of these plans, nor was I included in any discussion of them. I relate to you such as I have been told.”
Morlenden mused, “Since this will involve considerable manipulations of Braid-lines and -roles, I would imagine at that the Revens are deeply involved and fully knowledgeable.”
After some hesitation, Klervondaf concurred. “Yes, of course. So in our case, the Perklarens, the parents picked up certain terminal commitments, and began spending most of their time with the Past Masters, developing the Game further. So they seldom sojourn here, but are busy with affairs. As you can imagine, as the carriers of the Perklaren traditions, they possess considerable lore, most of it carried solely in the minds of insiblings, to be passed on verbally and secretly in the initiation and weaving ceremonies. Much of this must be recorded, transcribed, analyzed, recorded for posterity.”
“Strategy and tactics . . .”
“That which enabled us to keep the Terklarens in their place during most of the history of the Game.”
“They are zealous and dedicated indeed, to so cleave to a dying Game and leave the four of you children to fend for yourselves.”
“Zeal and dedication? Indeed. So are we all.” He added the last vigorously, as if now expressing his own feelings. “And speaking for myself and Mael, I should wish it no other way, given what has been. Considering circumstances and plans, the configuration of eventing, what we have done has been generally for the best. Of course, they spent much more time with us all when we were younger; we were not abandoned, nor are we hifzer waifs, by any means. For the past several years, I have been in charge of Braid affairs outside-Game, and nominally over the two girls. And I have raised Taskellan.”
“You said, ‘nominally.’ ”
“Yes . . . Mevlannen is perhaps the easiest to explain. And if you require, easiest to find. Now let me explain: the Game is a game, true enough, but it is rather intricate and multiplex, and capable of truly bottomless subtleties. Therefore each who enters it comes to see different things in it. Some see music; others, language. Still others, life processes; and others, chemistry and the like. Mevlannen saw science and technology. And gradually, she drifted that way, into the life of a researcher, a technician, an engineer. We ler do not develop those modes save in certain elder lodges, so for fulfillment she would have had a long wait, and Mevlannen is not, may I say, particularly patient of nature. She made contacts through the Institute, entered, became knowledgeable in astrophysics and optics; other things, too. Two years ago she joined the human Trojan Project in those capacities, and so went to space. We hear from her still, occasionally, but ever more rarely. I do not know her intentions for weaving, which would occur in ten years, more or less; she has lived in the human world for some time and has naturally acquired some of their values.”
“What is the Trojan Project?”
“As I understand it, the humans are building a large telescope system, multiband, in the trailing Trojan position, equidistant from Earth and the moon. They are not finished with it yet. It is, just the telescope proper, so large that it had to be sent up piecemeal and assembled in place. Mev was in charge of the optical systems . . . in fact she developed the mirror material that would make such a large structure possible in the first place.”
Morlenden expressed astonishment. “Mevlannen? An astronaut? Working in space?” He was truly incredulous.
“Indeed just so. Rest assured, we are not less astounded. She spends little enough time on the ground anymore . . . her base is on the West Coast somewhere, close by the launch site and the fabricating works, and of course she spends most of her time there now.”
“And what about Maellenkleth? Did she go also to the humans to learn the mongering of strange metals?”
“Into space? No, unless you could call where she went a kind of inner space, a truly unexplored region. Here I am facetious, for which I apologize. Mael, as a fact, despite all, stayed with the Game. She showed an unusual affinity for it at an early age, and was, well, something of a prodigy. We tried to discourage her, but of course she was never expressly forbidden, for we hated to lose such talent, you understand. We had hoped that when she was old enough to understand what had happened to us, she would abandon it on her own resolve as a lost cause. This was not the case. Maellenkleth is intensely competitive; she does not, in her own words, acknowledge the existence of odds. Her idea, which became over the years something of an obsession, was to become so good at the Game on her own that the Revens would be forced to weave her in-Game to retain the lore.”
Morlenden interrupted Klervondaf here, saying, “Weave in-Game, you say? But since you and the Terklarens are out of phase in time, that could only mean that an outsider would have had to be brought into it. Or am I astray?”
“No. Distasteful as is this to speak of, that is exactly how matters were going. In the Game, she was considerably ahead of her plan, and had already won back much influence in support of her larger plan. But the choice she made for outsider. Many spoke openly against her, saying they’d rather have a human than whom she wanted to bring.”
Morlenden laughed aloud. “Now there’s a one, for sure. Sounds just like my own Toorh, Fellirian. Really, I intend no offense; but I would have supposed that if he was acceptable to her, it wouldn’t matter what his Braid.”
Klervondaf spoke back proudly. “Had he but a Braid! But alas, he did not, but was a half-wild hifzer from the Eastwoods, scion of a defunct Braid line that went astray. Oh, it was a scandal, never fear. The shame of it stung us all to the core. They were deeply emotionally involved as well. Just imagine—Dirklarens, whose shartoorh was a hifzer.”
Morlenden said mildly, “Well, I understand the objection, but of course we all were just such in the beginnings. All the original Braids had members whom now would be called hifzer.”
Klervondaf obviously found the subject distasteful, and Morlenden’s bland acceptance of it even more so. But he held whatever comments were in his mind, and proceeded with his story. “It was considered hopeless, and most wrote Mael off as simply gone mad. But things began to change; there were rumors, whisperings, shocked expressions. And I myself, as far from the Game as I am, have heard that there were some in the Council of the Past Masters who were now supporting her. And that the Reven, too . . .”
“Pellandrey Reven, himself?”
“Indeed. He implied he w
as like the rest, but took no action to stop it. And he had never approved it, either, but when the Terklarens formally petitioned him, neither would he forbid it, either. The Perwathwiy examined Mael for truth and testified that Mael had not revealed the Inner Game to the hifzer.”
Morlenden thought a moment, then said, “It would seem that she was slowly succeeding, against the odds, just as she felt she could. It would seem, then, to ignore odds would be the good course.”
“You can ignore odds only if you are supremely good at what you do. I would not dream of doing such a thing. Even if I could stifle my repugnance at touching a hifzer.”
“So, then, she was successful?”
“Who can measure success? But she had now made the possibility of Third-players real. And I do know that Maellenkleth was immeasurably better in the Game than Sanjirmil of the Terklarens, our rivals. But Sanjir is older—she and her Toorh are within a year of weaving, something very close to that. I have heard some of the old Past Masters say that as a mature Player, Mael would have been the best in the history of the Game. Without question. Not even close to anyone of the Greats. I am not deep in the Game myself—no outsibling can be. But I have heard Mael explain aspects of it with insights I have not heard elsewhere, and of the living Greats, even the Perwathwiy deigned to ask her opinion from time to time.”
“Tell me more about this hifzer. Who is he?”
“He styles himself Krisshantem. He is a bit younger than Mael, but well within the tolerances. And recently, she never stayed here at home, but away with him. They were together all the time. They had built themselves a place to live together and work. A treehouse, not a yos. It is far east of here, in the forest. And besides the practical aspects of such a venture, them using one another to mutual advantage, they were deeplovers, and since meeting him, Mael did become somewhat more restrained. He is reputed to be something of a mystic; fey, strange, full of all sorts of knowledge of wild things.”
