Griffin’s thoughts swirled down another course, as they so often did. The men’s role in the Old One’s plans is an interesting part of the puzzle … Are the men volunteers? Do they know what they are doing? It’s often been said men can be led by their little heads, but still …
Griffin’s conjectures were interrupted when the cabin’s front door opened and a big, bald man shambled into the room. The newcomer was tall and heavily built, although softer and more fleshy than was usual among the people Griffin had encountered on Artemis. The man’s skin was unusually pale, as if he had been ill and his skin had not regained its natural coloring.
But none of these things were what made the man seem odd. There was something peculiar about his manner of progress. He shuffled and held his head bent down. His right hand frequently drifted up to shadow his eyes, although the room was far from brightly lit.
Griffin wondered if the man was an albino. Then he realized the truth was stranger still. Although the man had perfectly functional eyes—there was no doubt that their brilliant blue saw everything—he kept closing them, as if not only didn’t he need them in order to see, but that somehow they kept him from seeing.
“This,” Lynn said, as Hal went to guide the newcomer forward, “is Ring.” She went on to introduce each of the visitors while Ring continued his shuffling progress, ending by plopping heavily down onto one of the vacant benches.
Ring raised his head. With that horrible sense of effort, he opened his eyes. He looked carefully at each one of them, ending with Bruin. Then he dragged his right hand over his eyes, closing the lids. Hand still over his eyes, Ring shaped a thick-lipped smile and spoke in a deep, guttural voice.
“So the bear followed the fish. We caught the fish. I saw.”
Lynn nodded. “As you saw. This is the bear. He has come for the fish.”
“That is good. The fish will swim well in the bear’s wake, as long as the bear does not go to the bay. I see the knobby man lived. The wolves did not eat him.”
Although Ring had not opened his eyes, he turned to face Fred. Griffin’s flesh crept. He realized he’d half expected to see eyes on the back of that hand.
Ring continued, “I sorrow for the pain, but death is worse than pain, or so I was taught. Sometimes, I am not sure.”
Fred replied uneasily. “I don’t suppose you could have taken me with you. It didn’t feel very good hanging there.”
“No. It was not the time. The bear must follow the fish. The fish must swim among the fort. That is the only good vision. All the others led to worse than pain.”
Fred made a small noncommittal noise. Ring turned his self-blinded gaze to inspect the visitors but, although his thick lips moved, no words came forth. Eventually, he settled his hands into his lap. Although his eyes remained shut, he said, “I have seen.”
Lynn apparently took this for an indication she should speak. “Winnie said we rescued her but, as I said, she helped us as much as we her. The one who assisted all of us was Ring. Ring is—as best we can guess—one of the children raised by the Old One. Without him, none of us would have escaped.”
Ring said, “Or you me, me you. All is intertwisted. You, me, Hal, poor sad Mabel, Winnie. Fred, Kipper, Bruin, singing Adara, Griffin, Terrell. Dead horses. Hungry wolves. Metal spiders. Little tiny spores. All. One must sometimes wait, sometimes dig.”
Griffin let this nonsense wash over him. He guessed that Ring had been abused as a child and was perhaps mentally deficient as well. Then two words startled him from his complacency.
“Metal spiders?”
Lynn laughed, but there was unease in the laughter. “Ring sees things differently from the rest of us. You can’t imagine how long it took us to figure out that when he said the fish would bring the bear, he meant Kipper was what would bring Bruin to us. We didn’t know what this fish was, but we had been discussing how we could consult Bruin without giving too much away. At last, Ring said he could show us what fish and—well, based on his past advice, we decided to trust him.”
Hal spoke for the first time. “When we found out the boy was called ‘Kipper’ and that he was to be Bruin’s student, it all made sense, enough so that when Ring told us to make Fred an ornament on the hickory tree, well, we did it.”
He sounded both apologetic and defiant. “And I’m sorry you were harmed, Fred, but too much rests on us getting things right.”
Fred wagged his head, not so much refusing the apology as to show his own confusion. “Well, I’m alive. Mind, I’d have preferred to do my job and be left out of it. But I’ll accept that you folks have different ways of doing things.”
“How do you know Ring is one of these children raised by the Old One?” Adara asked.
Lynn replied, “From things he has said, mostly. He has no memory of any other place than that facility, but that didn’t make a sheep of him. He wanted out. Apparently there was something in the combination of our hunting for Mabel and Winnie’s desperation that let Ring know this was his chance.”
“This is a lot to take in,” Bruin said. “We need to talk—just those of us who came after Kipper. You understand, Lynn?”
“I do. You are not our prisoners. Even if you leave, we trust you not to betray us. Dinner will be good. We shot a bunch of waterfowl, still fat from wherever they wintered. We hope you’ll join us over the table.”
Interlude: 1—1–OO
Fragments of purpose
Of porpoise
Re-porpoised
Dive into salt, wet, fresh
Swim, broken-finned, lopsided
Seek + (you shall) = Find
Seek. Find. Activate. Subvert.
Re-por-
Poised to strike.
11
The Unspoken
“We may not be prisoners,” Bruin said as they walked out through the gates and ambled over the cleared ground toward an inviting patch of sunlight, “but it’s likely Lynn will learn something of whatever we say. I can’t make out that Ring. How did he know about the spider?”
“You heard him say that, too?” Griffin asked. “Good. I thought I might be imagining it. I sometimes lose words in the accent.”
“That means something to you?” Fred said. Adara thought it interesting that he had reacted more calmly to assault than he had to Lynn’s revelation. No wonder. The Old One was legendary—and very little of what Lynn had said fit the legend. “Meant less than the rest of all that craziness to me.”
“It sounded,” Adara said, trying be soothing, “like a reference to something that happened in Shepherd’s Call before we left, that’s all. We didn’t think anyone could have carried the story before us.”
“If they did, they didn’t pass me on the road,” Fred said, rubbing the ears of Scout and Shout, “or, if they did, they chose to pass me by and I don’t see that happening. You folks from Shepherd’s Call are decent sorts.”
“Thank you,” Terrell said. “But this Old One, if we’re to believe what Lynn said, he’s not the decent sort we’d all imagined. Maybe what we imagine is not to be trusted.”
As they sat in silence, Honeychild and Sand Shadow came to join them. Sand Shadow began to play with her earrings, but Honeychild snuggled up to Bruin as if to warm him.
“I’ve just one question,” Fred said. “Bruin, are you taking charge of Kipper?”
“I am, if the boy will have me.”
Fred laughed. “That won’t be a problem. Well, then, I’d be happy to have an escort as far as Blue Meadow. Then I’ll be making my way back to reassure Kipper’s folks all is well. It will be, won’t it?”
“For Kipper,” Bruin assured him, “most certainly. Even that Ring seemed to think so.”
Adara was relieved to see that this, at least, cheered her mentor.
“Good, then.” Fred rubbed his jaw. “I’m feeling my aches. If you folks don’t mind, I’ll just mosey back into the fort and see if I can find a corner to roll up in and rest before supper.”
“That’s fine,”
Bruin said. “You might ask after your and Kipper’s horses. I think you’ll find Lynn will be returning them, and I’ll get you as far as Blue Meadow, no problem.”
“Right, then,” Fred said. With more alacrity than was reasonable, he hurried back toward the fort.
Adara reached and tickled Sand Shadow at the base of her tail. “Fred’s afraid of us. He wasn’t before but now, what with all Lynn said, he’s scared.”
Terrell nodded. “And Fred’s not dumb.”
Silence held for a moment, a silence in which Adara imagined each of the humans were, in one way or another, reshaping the world as they had known it. All but one of them.
Griffin Dane broke the silence.
“Until Lynn described the place where this Old One lives, I hadn’t realized that the facility as much as the man might be what I need. No matter what we’ve learned, still, I’ve got to go there.”
Terrell laughed. “Well, my first impulse is to say that’s crazy. My second, too. Then I remember that metal spider. If such things are going to keep turning up, then exactly how is the Old One more dangerous? If we play dumb, don’t let on what we learned from Lynn, the Old One will probably be just fine.”
Adara nodded. “There’s sense in that.”
Bruin said heavily, “Then you believe all of that? All that about captive women and breeding adapted children?”
“I do,” Adara said. “There’s no reason for Lynn to lie. She never struck me as a storyteller. Do you think she’s lying?”
Bruin shook his head. “I don’t. I can even put together the pieces she didn’t spell out. She wanted to talk with me because I’ve always welcomed adapted children as students. Maybe she wanted to find out if any of my students came from the Old One—they haven’t, by the way. Maybe she wanted to find out if any of them have vanished. That will be harder to learn, but I can do some checking once I get back, write some letters.”
“But Lynn couldn’t come to you,” Adara said, “because she didn’t know if you could be trusted.”
“She still doesn’t know,” Bruin said, his voice breaking. “She told me anyhow.”
“She told you because of that Ring,” Griffin said. “I’m guessing that Ring assured her that if you came after the ‘fish’ that meant you could be trusted. She puts a lot of faith in that Ring’s visions.”
“Ring makes my skin crawl,” Terrell said. “All of this makes my skin crawl, but I don’t see how we can turn back. As Helena might say, if we start balking at jumps, pretty soon we’ll be good for nothing but quiet trail rides. I’m not ready for that.”
Adara grinned at him, then grew somber. “And I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to find out more. Griffin is our excuse for going in, for staying on, for poking around. He can act all seegnur and imperious, insist on seeing the facility. If the Old One is as determined to unravel the old mysteries as we’ve always thought, then he’s going to be welcoming.”
“Winnie said,” Terrell reminded them, “that she didn’t know where she spent all that time, but Lynn must know. We’ll need to find out if the two places are the same.”
“Going to the Old One won’t be safe,” Bruin warned them. “It will be terribly dangerous—and I would be sending you on without me. I owe Kipper the safety of my home. My students are arriving even now. Moreover … The Old One has a sway over me I don’t think he has over any of you. He was my first teacher and kept an interest in me even after I began to learn a hunter’s craft. When my years of wandering ended, he convinced me to think of myself as a teacher. I already knew how to read, but he loaned me books, encouraged me to continue growing at a time when many men settle into ruts. I fear myself near him.”
Adara flung an arm around Bruin. “You are my teacher, old bear, not him. Honestly, the Old One’s charm failed to win me. I wonder now…”
I wonder if he met me, considered whether I could serve as one of his brood mares, saw my budding claws and reconsidered. It’s possible to disarm a poor creature like that Winnie, but me? That would be a challenge. So I was dismissed to Bruin’s care.
“Then we go on as planned,” Terrell said. “Bruin will return to Shepherd’s Call with Kipper. Adara and I will take Griffin to Spirit Bay and snoop around.”
“It seems like the best thing to do,” Adara agreed. “It’s not much of a plan, but at this point, trying to come up with something more detailed would simply be a waste of energy.”
* * *
They rode out a few days later. Lynn provided maps, drawn with the sensitivity for the land of one who had been both hunter and gamekeeper, but even as she shaded lines indicating not only location but elevation, augmenting her pictures with little notes regarding quirks of the terrain, she warned them that what she was giving them was likely to be of little use.
“Whatever I think of his morals and ethics, the Old One is no fool. He knows that place is no longer the secret it once was. Although we have not made any fresh attempts after his captives, he doesn’t know if or when we might try again. I’m guessing that even if you find this place it will either be abandoned or adapted to some completely innocent purpose.”
No one disagreed. Griffin noticed that Adara made a careful copy of the map, entrusting the copy to Terrell before tucking the original away inside the front cover of a leatherbound notebook that occupied its own pride of place in a special pocket in her pack.
He’d been surprised to see the notebook and wondered at his own surprise. When the answer came to him, it embarrassed him to the depths of his soul.
You’ve been thinking of Adara as some sort of noble savage, his inner voice chided him. Close to nature, as lovely and as free of thought as any wild animal. Now you’re shocked to realize she reads the written word with as much ease as she interprets the tracks of the beasts along the trail. You’ve been fancying yourself half in love with her, haven’t you, Griffin Dane? But how can you love her if you don’t know her?
Griffin had no answer for that. He had no answer for a lot of things. Knowing that he’d be of little use preparing for the next stage of their journey, he assigned himself the task of talking to Ring. Ring, after all, was the closest they had to a clue as to what the Old One was hoping to achieve. However, other than confirming his initial impression that Ring was inflicted with some form of precognition, Griffin learned little.
“Because, you see,” he explained to Adara and Terrell once they had left the fort, “we can’t know whether the Old One considered Ring a success or a failure—or something in between.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Adara said, “that such a tormented creature could in any way be considered a success.”
Terrell, who was riding in front, glanced back over his shoulder. “I wish I could agree, Adara, but from what Winnie told us—from what was done to Mabel—I’m not certain that the Old One particularly cares whether or not his subjects are tormented, not as long as he gets what he wants.”
Adara nodded. “I knew you were going to say that. Let me put it another way. How useful to anyone would someone like Ring be? The man can’t walk across the room without checking to make sure the floor is still in front of him. He speaks in riddles that make perfect sense if you already know most of the answer. If the Old One wanted an oracle of some sort, surely he wanted better than that.”
“Point,” Terrell agreed, “a definite point. As Griffin said, we won’t know until we learn if the Old One considered Ring a success or not.”
“And that’s not,” Griffin added, “exactly a question we can ask.”
“No,” Terrell admitted. “We can’t. That’s why it’s going to be your job to keep the Old One busy so that Adara and I can look around without arousing his suspicion.”
Griffin didn’t much like the possessive way in which Terrell spoke of Adara, the way the factotum assumed they were a team. Griffin had looked for evidence that Adara shared Terrell’s feelings, but, other than the fact that she’d given Terrell—rather than Griffin—the spare copy of t
he map, he couldn’t find any indication of favoritism. She was equally polite to them both. As far as Griffin could tell, she wasn’t favoring either of them with her attentions …
Or rather, his inner voice corrected, you know for certain she isn’t favoring you and you don’t think she’s favoring him. On the other hand, there are times you sleep or they’re both off …
“Oh, just shut up,” Griffin muttered aloud, then flushed to his collar. Terrell didn’t appear to have heard. If Adara had done so, her only response was the tiny smile that quirked the corner of her mouth.
There was a great deal that was not commented on during that journey. Neither Griffin nor Terrell commented about how they felt regarding their lovely female companion—although Griffin would have bet any or all of his meager possessions that he was not alone in lavishing a great deal of thought on her.
They did not talk about where Griffin was from. Griffin wondered how much of this was politeness—a desire that he not feel too acutely homesick—and how much might be some leftover bit of etiquette from the days of the seegnur. After all, those long-ago tourists would not have wanted to be questioned by those they would have viewed, at best, as some sort of servants.
Most of all, they did not talk about what they would do when they got to Spirit Bay. Griffin—always one to speculate—tried to introduce the matter a few times, but found that both of his companions were more practical in their mindset.
“We’ve settled what we can, based upon what we know,” Adara said, her gentle words not completely concealing a certain tension. “Think, Griffin, if we had not met up with Lynn by chance…”
“Or by Ring,” Terrell cut in.
Adara nodded curtly. “If not for that, we would be going on to Spirit Bay with one set of facts. Perhaps these would have served us well. Perhaps not. Now we have what Lynn and the others have told us. Is there a third set of facts or a fourth or a fifth?”
Artemis Awakening Page 16
