Plik felt question after question rising to be asked, but his sore and swollen throat made it necessary that he wait and listen, hoping Isende would anticipate his questions in the course of her tale.
"The Old World rulers haven't come back, in case you're wondering," she said, perhaps in response to a little squeak that had slipped out "That's an entirely other story..."
"Finish telling Plik about querinalo," Tiniel said. "He needs to know."
Isende looked as if she might rebel. Then an expression that strangely mingled anger and pity warmed her brown eyes and she nodded.
"Very well. As I said earlier, it seems as if querinalo isn't as severe as it used to be. People live through it now, but rarely without serious damage either to body or - more usually - to, well, remember the doctor's name for the disease? 'Burning down the wick'?"
Plik nodded, feeling every bone and muscle ache at the effort
"His people called it that because they realized that magical ability was the dung the disease fed on - like the flame of a candle centers on the wick. They believed that once the disease destroyed that wick, then it began to diminish, unable to tap into the rest of the victim's strength. That's why those with just talents tended to survive - though often with the talent reduced or lost altogether. Talents are minor magics, hardly more than an extra sense. Major magics, those that can be trained or adapted to multiple uses, those are really intertwined with all parts of the person. If querinalo runs its course, it burns out the person's magical ability. Usually, that ability doesn't return or if it does, it's diminished."
Tiniel interrupted, his words rushing out as if they had been dammed behind his breath.
"That's what happened to Isende and me. If you came searching for us, you must have learned something about us first, about how from when we were small we were aware of each other in a way no other people were."
He raised his hand and revealed the small white scar along the outer edge. "We were connected at birth. Even after that physical bond was severed, we remained connected. The connection changed and altered as we grew, but it was always mere. Then we caught querinalo, and when we recovered the connection was gone. Isende doesn't like calling the disease Divine Retribution, but I wonder, I wonder! We had something special. I wasn't satisfied. I wanted..."
Isende glowered at her twin and Tiniel halted in mid-phrase, gulping breath. When Tiniel continued, his voice reminded Plik of a horse under tight rein.
"I wanted to add to it I thought my ambition gave us the right to investigate, to probe our heritage. When Gak refused to name us a clan - although I still think the right was ours - I came up with this idea. Come here. Find our heritage. Find something... I wanted to go back and show them... show them that they were wrong to dismiss us as minor members of a vast clan. Isende didn't care how the others felt about us. At least she didn't care as much as I did. Now look what we've done!"
Plik stared at Tiniel, half certain this outburst was an-other of his own feverish hallucinations. Then he felt Isende's hand - still automatically feeding him water - tremble, felt the water splash onto his fur, and knew that this was no hallucination.
I should have known, Plik thought. They behaved so normally. They summoned each other by voice or gesture. There was no special link between them. They were close, true, but no closer than would be usual for two people who had dwelled together all their lives. The very normalcy of the situation hid its significance from me. But for them, poor children, for them there is nothing normal in this lack of connection. It is as if they have lost speech or hearing. They are crippled for life, and Tiniel blames his ambition for this injury, and for...lam sure there is something more. I must have the rest of the tale.
Plik waited until fresh water had washed his throat, then croaked, "Where? Who? "
Unlike when he had asked this a few days before, Isende no longer pretended not to completely understand.
"Plik, we're in the Old World. The doctor you saw, the others you said you smelled - they're residents of the Old World."
"Worse," Tiniel said, his self-loathing making him blunt "Worse than residents. They're Old World sorcerers. Now, for the first time in over a hundred years, they have a route to the New World - and it's my fault that they do."
"Oh, stop it!" Isende snapped at her brother. "That's your problem, always taking too much on yourself, assuming others feel as you do. They were already here, trying to make the gates work. Maybe we sped things along but..."
Plik reached out and tapped her arm. Immediately Isende softened.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've spilled water all over you, and you've a fever, and our shouting must make your head ache. Do you want me to let you rest?"
Plik shook his head. 'Tell more," he whispered. He wished he could tell them about the Meddler. Maybe knowing how that being had pressed the impulse that had fired the twins' exploration would soothe some of Tiniel's guilt, but telling them about the Meddler would have to wait until he could speak more clearly.
Isende put her hand to Plik's forehead. "If Tiniel would get some cool compresses, then I will continue talking. By the way, Zebel, that's the doctor, told us water alone - no food - is best for you at this stage of the illness. Food will just feed the fever, give it fuel to burn hotter. He says you're rather fat, so you can do without eating for a day or two."
Plik tried to smile. He didn't feel in the least hungry, but he could tell that Isende was troubled at having to deny him food.
"Tell," he whispered.
Tiniel brought cool compresses and put them at points where Plik's fur was thinner: forehead, wrists, feet. They felt very good. Plik let himself drift away from the discomfort of his body, but kept himself firmly anchored with the thread of the tale Isende began to unfold.
"We came to our ancestors' stronghold," she said, "for pretty much the reasons Tiniel mentioned - except that he forgot to mention how terribly lost we felt when our father died. Our famer was the last person who didn't mink of us as very strange - or at least that was how we felt at the time. We came out here, and really it was sort of a relief having to work hard to establish ourselves. We didn't have energy left to tear ourselves up with grief. We mourned, but we didn't mope.
"After we became acquainted with some of the local yarimaimalom, we even began to have some hope we could make our venture work. They spared us a lot of searching for things we needed. They showed us where old orchards were, for example, brought us meat In return we made clear we wouldn't set up pit traps or snares that might hurt any of them. We weren't quite friends with them, but I think we might have become so in time.
"When winter came we couldn't roam as much. We had moved into the stronghold by then, so we had a good roof and solid walls to keep out the weather. We'd stocked up on food. There was ample water. Useless old furniture gave us more firewood than we could bum in five winters. At last we started investigating the heritage our father had told us about We'd located the library early on. While we'd pulled out bits and pieces of documents, we hadn't really searched systematically. Now we did.
"That's when we realized that this place had been more than the residence of a sorcerous family. It had housed an important magical artifact - a gate for traveling between the New World and the Old. I wasn't joking when I told you before that we're in the Old World. We are, and we came here by means of that gate.
"Remember all the stories about how the Old World sorcerers took to their ships and fled when querinalo spread? Didn't it ever seem strange to you that they managed so organized a retreat, and managed to get so much of their stuff away with them?"
Plik rocked his head side to side, trying to indicate he hadn't really ever thought about it.
"I did," Isende said, "not because I was terribly practical or anything, but because I kept hoping that someday I'd stumble on a hidden treasure - gems and gold and beautiful jewelry, not magical artifacts - that the sorcerers couldn't get away in time. One of our nursemaids when we were little was full of stories
like that, and when she moved on I made up new ones for myself and Tiniel."
Tiniel sighed in fond exasperation. "You've gone off again, 'Sende. Plik doesn't want to hear about our childhood games."
Actually, Plik didn't mind, but he did want to know how the twins had managed to get themselves from a dilapidated stronghold in the western foothills into the Old Country.
Isende stuck her tongue out at her brother, but she did resume the main point of her narrative.
"According to what we learned - both then and since - there weren't a great many of these gates between the Old and New Worlds. Apparently, they are very, very difficult to construct. However, back then the sorcerers were growing weary of long sea voyages. Their initial desire to keep all the secrets of greater magic from the New World was ebbing in their desire to travel more easily. A compromise was reached. A few gates were constructed in semi-isolated areas like this one. In order to keep those who didn't like the idea at all at least somewhat appeased, the gates all opened to one place, a central nexus.
"This nexus already existed, and was one of the most highly protected and guarded and otherwise watched over places in the Old World. It didn't belong to any one nation, but was a neutral space. I can't say I understand all the reasons, but they had something to do with not wanting rivals to be able to use gates to attack each other, or to march armies through and all.
"When all the parties involved - and don't ask me who they were because I don't really know - finally agreed that there would be gates made between the Old and New Worlds, they also agreed that the gates would arrive in the Old World at a new complex attached to the existing nexus. That way they could be protected from abuse along with all the rest And when querinalo came, well, who would take a long sea voyage when they could use a gate? And the sick came through the gates and brought querinalo with them."
Tiniel interrupted. "Some think querinalo was already here. That it started here, and that the gates spread it the other way - back to the New World."
Isende sighed at him, and Plik wondered if they had disagreed this much when they were still linked. If so, there must have been a huge number of barely audible arguments.
"Tiniel has a point," she said, "but wherever querinalo began, what's important is that the gates helped it to spread more quickly. And the gates made possible the removal from the New World many artifacts and valuable texts - not to mention more mundane valuables - that would otherwise have been left behind."
Although, Plik thought, if the tales I heard were true, this wouldn't have mattered much. Between the remaining humans and the Beasts, very little that even faintly resembled an artifact was permitted to survive. Magic was too much feared and hated.
"And when," Isende went on, "someone finally realized what was happening, the gates were closed down and sealed. In the confusion, no systematic effort was made to eliminate all mention of them. That mention is what we found in the library. There was nothing so neat as a formula for how to use the gates. Our first reference was an old journal, and for the longest time we thought that this place just had rather a lot of visitors for someplace in the countryside. Tiniel was the first to wonder."
The young man looked as if he were about to say something along the lines of "Woe is me, cursed with such curiosity" but a glare from his twin stopped him.
"I," Isende said firmly, "located the gate itself. I'd wondered about that central courtyard. It didn't seem quite right - those big corridors leading to what was basically a dead end. The cold weather helped by killing back the vines. We were still going out there for water, and on one of those trips I noticed the markings on the walls. You probably can't see them now that the plants have grown thick again, but the stones in the gate area are incised with some really intricate patterns. Tiniel and I were fairly bored with each other by then, so we set about figuring out what the patterns stood for, and, well, one thing led to another.
"We realized we had found a route to the Old Country. It was like one of those nursery tales. We imagined an entire land, empty of human inhabitants but for some decorously laid-out skeletons in tattered robes. There would be heaps of jewels lying about Old tomes explaining how to achieve wonderful powers. Empty castles.
"We grew positively fanatical about finding out how to open that gate, and yet it was mostly luck that we found the... well, call it a key, but it's really more like a dance or a recipe. Anyhow, something full of elaborate steps and stages. We never would have found it, but it seems that one of our ancestors was just learning magic when querinalo came. I think he may have died fairly quickly, because no one knew that he'd left crib notes for his studies in his room. If they had known they would have found and destroyed them, for among other things, they contained the key for opening the gate. He'd copied it down without his teachers knowing. He thought he'd impress them by getting it letter-perfect."
Tiniel got up and began changing Plik's compresses. "I guess that's something that runs in the family - the desire to impress."
Plik coughed a very quiet laugh, and Isende grinned in shared understanding behind Tiniel's back.
"So," she continued with mock brightness, "we opened the gate, but what we found on the other side was nothing all like our imaginings. What we found were the Once and the Twice Dead, querinalo, and, really, pretty much the end to our freedom."
"Who?"
Isende forced a smile. "Plik, that's a long tale in itself, and you need to rest." Plik knew he did, but he had to try and reassure her. "My friends," he whispered. "Free us."
Isende nodded. "I know you're hoping to be rescued, but really you shouldn't. Tiniel and I were curiosities, and so are you. As such, we have been kept alive and treated not too badly, but the Once Dead are as arrogant as their ancestors when it comes to those that they view as lesser beings - and by lesser they mean anyone who is not part of their tradition."
She went on gently, seeing his distress, "The best thing you can hope for your friends is that they do not find the gate, and that if they do, they cannot find their way through. You see, if they do not the fighting against those who are already here, then certainly any of them with a scrap of talent will catch querinalo."
"And," Tiniel added somberly, "even if they survive, they will be so badly 'burnt' by the disease's fire that they will surely wish themselves dead."
XXIII
DERIAN TURNED THE APPLES he was toasting at the edge of the coals, making a mental bet with himself how long would pass before Firekeeper and Blind Seer went outside to pace again. Unless they were asleep, the wolves rarely remained indoors long enough for the mud on Firekeeper's feet to fully dry.
The scraps of documentation from the stronghold's library that kept Derian amused - for a few had turned out to be written in Pellish - and Harjeedian deeply absorbed meant, of course, nothing to the barely literate wolf-woman.
When Harjeedian had dryly suggested that this might be an opportunity for Firekeeper to start learning to read more than the ten or twelve Liglimosh symbols she had memorized a year or so before, Blind Seer had so obviously agreed that Firekeeper had begun an effort to at least memorize the Pellish alphabet.
However, her gaze rose so frequently from the characters Derian had written with charcoal on a piece of broken lumber that Derian doubted she would remember much. He thought Blind Seer might be learning more. At least the wolf's blue-eyed gaze remained more fixed on the characters, but then he might have simply been daydreaming. It was hard to tell.
Derian was about to ask if Blind Seer wanted reading lessons when a man flickered into sight across the fire.
Firekeeper leapt to her feet, blade in hand. Blind Seer went from drowsing contemplative to snarling monster before the apple Derian had dropped hit the ashes. Lovable squawked alarm from her watch post in one of the trees in the courtyard.
Only Harjeedian and Truth did not react: Harjeedian because he was too absorbed in his reading to notice the disturbance, Truth because she all too obviously recognized their visitor - an
d perhaps was the only one to have had warning of his coming.
"Good to see you all so alert," the Meddler said. As before, his form was mostly solid, but if Derian concentrated he could see the wall through the image. "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I saw most of your company was here and..."
Firekeeper slid her Fang back into its sheath and resumed her seat on a blanket folded on the flagstone floor. Blind Seer's snarl was slower to fade. He remained standing, his hackles raised. Harjeedian looked up now, and Derian found himself reluctantly admiring the aridisdu's poise, for surely Harjeedian had been as startled as the rest of them.
"You have returned," Harjeedian said. "Truth has told us such manifestations are draining for you. Therefore, there must be some important reason for this honor. I would offer you a seat, but..."
The Meddler leaned back against the nearest wall - or at least gave the impression of doing so. Derian saw that his shoulder actually sunk a half-finger's depth into the stone. The Meddler must have noticed, too, for that error was corrected almost as soon as noted.
"I have come to share with you," the Meddler said, "some information that may color your decisions regarding an attempt to rescue Plik. Truth has done me the great courtesy of keeping me briefed, so I know what you have found here, and even of Blind Seer's clever plan for bringing someone to you from whom you could then learn the key to opening the gate."
Blind Seer did not relax at this praise. If anything, he became more guarded. No one else commented, and the Meddler continued.
"As I said earlier, I did not know this stronghold contained a gate, but I do know something of gates. When I realized that you were unlikely to find the key to the gate here in this stronghold, I resolved to see if I could learn anything at the other end."
"Other end?" Derian said. "You mean you know where this gate leads?"
"I had a suspicion," the Meddler said, "and my researches make me think my suspicion is correct. May I say a few words about the nature of gates?"
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