by Ron Collins
He would have to try to explain his decision to Bethleen. But he could already hear her voice and see the edge to her central as she glared at him: You’re not going to tell me you believe the ravings of a few desert-baked philosophers, are you?
But that is exactly what he believed.
He believed it because more than a few philosophers said it.
Medics explained about traits that passed through clans and Families. Scientists told him about the outsiders, quadars like Taranth who braved and survived in the harshlands outside the ring of Esgarat and proved that it could be done. Geologists revealed how the water reservoirs in the depths of the caverns that ran below might once have rushed across the lands, and how the ridges of the Esgarat itself may not have always been there.
And then there was Louratna, a teacher at the university where Hateri had been learning.
At first Jafred met with her to discuss his son’s progress, but their conversations quickly bloomed. She was brilliant, and the fact that she worked in many fields meant she was able to tie things together in ways others could not.
As she matched her studies to others, shivers ran through his plates.
She had wanted to know how many quadars could live in the space of the Esgarat, so she gathered records from across history, and she laid her mathematics out on sheets of scrollwork. As is the way of scientists, her results made her ask more questions. She plotted root yields and leaf yields, apparent populations of kax and piela and the many types of flying jah. Against each of these she tallied every cycle’s water yield, and noted as much information as she could gather on how those water levels changed in the deep caves under the One Great Esgarat around which the council city itself was built.
The message in her work was clear.
Disaster loomed if they couldn’t find more space.
It might take generations, but Louratna’s work showed events she called “decompressions” were not only possible, but as long as the quadarti remained inside the great ring, their population was almost guaranteed to go into one—a deep crash, a time when quadars would die off to almost nothing.
In fact, her report suggested that this had already happened to them, over a period of many thousands of cycles each time. Each such period saw their quadarti ancestors crawl from the caves, grow to a critical mass, then suddenly disappear into the safety of the underground once again. Each time was the same, just as Eldoro’s passing was, but less predictable.
“Less certain,” she said to him that last evening they were together. “The event itself is predictable, but the timing can be quite different each pass.”
“Can we stop it?” he replied.
Her expression was not really an answer, but it was the closest to the truth he could imagine. Yes, that expression said. But, no.
He understood that expression much better now.
When he brought the work to the rest of the council, they laughed just as certainly as Bethleen would. The leaders of the Families would never make the kinds of adjustments—the kind of investments—needed. But knowing the facts, Jafred could not bring himself to leave his position now.
An expansion would not bring immediate profit, so the Families could not be trusted to think this way. The council must drive the quadarti to expand beyond the ring. Only the council could focus on what others might see as senseless exploration. Only the council could drive the Families and the clans together. Only the council was in a position to help the quadarti avoid the decompression that Louratna had proven to be somewhere in their future.
This is why the Families could not be trusted to study this Taranth Stone, also—whatever it was. The Light That Fell from the Sky was part of the answer he was looking for, the source to the decompression.
Jafred knew that the moment he saw it.
It had to be, didn’t it?
If someone could discover its true nature, Jafred was as certain as he could be that this equipment would change the way they looked at the world.
Now he just needed to find a way to get Hateri to see this his way.
He took a deep breath, reveling in the quiet of the darkness in his garden.
CHAPTER 18
Two hands of heats passed before Hateri was fit enough to stand before the council, which is what he was now preparing to do. He waited at the back of the Greater Council chamber, watching the space fill up. His father—his da, as Taranth would have called him—was working the floor, playing the diplomat, his expression swinging from jovial to dour and back in the space of the flap of a jah’s wing. He wore his orange council robe, the lapels fabricated of the thick silk of rock spiders.
How apt.
The spiders wove tunnels of the stuff into the crevasses, tunnels that collected dew in the mornings and enticed their prey in to be feasted upon.
Politician, meet rock spider. Spider, politician.
Given that his father had been a council member for so long, and given that Hateri had grown up and gone to university here in Esgarat City, he had often imagined himself addressing this group. The reality of this moment, however, was nothing like his imaginings.
The chamber was crowded, and growing more so as heads of Families and their entire entourages filed in. Their footsteps and their hushed greetings reverberated against the walls of the stone chamber in such a great cacophony that it nearly drowned out his thoughts.
The quadars were here to get the full story of the expedition.
They wanted to hear about Yip Kil and Gis’le Ombat, Senni Gash and Jasneed Parity. The Dareh Family perched themselves on the front row, left, sitting in their golden robes of mourning, faces as firm as if they had been chiseled from the rock that made up the eastern slopes they called their homeland.
Attendance was not mandatory for any Family, but lack of attendance would show both regretful negligence and public disrespect for the dead of the most powerful Families in the community.
Hateri realized now that his talk would be half lecture, half eulogy.
He put his hand to his chest and felt the stone Pietha had given him underneath the cloth shirt he wore over his clean travel leggings.
It just seemed right that he come to the discussion dressed for the trail.
The stone pressed against his chest. The room, despite the crowd, felt empty somehow. The air tasted bland. The odor of the stone was dead. He took a breath and turned his head back and forth to ease his tension.
His central went to the M’ktals.
Pietha’s mother was standing in the far corridor to his right. She was as tall as Pietha had been, but broader, wearing the same expression on her witze-oiled face that Pietha got when she was serious. It hurt him to look at her. Pietha’s da was seated. His primaries and his central were all focused sharply on Hateri, his robes properly arranged, and his witze worn only over his skull and down the jawline as was traditional.
Hateri looked away, thinking about the work he did to place the stone Pietha had given him into a chain of pounded metals. If they loved her, they would have loved him, he thought, turning his gaze back to Pietha’s da, and finding the edge of the elder’s glare had not dulled.
Yes, he thought, these Families mourned their losses grievously.
And they would properly honor those who were lost.
When Hateri’s father—his own da—introduced him, Hateri would tell the story fully and openly, giving the Families what they needed to finish their grieving and to see that to come together was to honor their children.
This was the way of the future.
They were ready for this. The death of his friends would be the flint that started the fire.
This idea burned in his chest, and nearly brought tears to his eyes.
He would see to it that his friends had died for something, and that something would be the thing that brought together their Families once and for all.
Hateri clasped his hands behind his back, and stood as tall as he could.
As he settled, his father ste
pped up the stairs to the podium and flagged the crowd to a silence broken only by the stray clacking of a throat or the random shuffle of bodies in seats.
“My friends and Families,” Jafred E’Lar said. “We all know why we are here. As devastated as I am at your losses, I am nearly as ashamed at the joy I am filled with to say that my son is able to be here to speak with you. He has promised me in no uncertain terms that he will tell you nothing but the truth, because the truth—no matter how harsh that truth might be—is what is best for our world. So I request forgiveness in advance for him if his words cause any pain.”
Jafred cleared his throat, then glanced at Hateri with a heavy expression.
Hateri flexed his hands, preparing to step forward, not certain what his father was attempting here. This wasn’t the introduction he expected, but it would serve nonetheless. The thinly veiled admonition that cloaked his father’s words would not change his testimony in the slightest.
“Before I have my son speak, however, I want to present a memorial that I and the rest of the council have commissioned to stand at the base of our chambers.”
His father beckoned to the far side of the hall, and a pair of doors opened. Workers pushed and pulled a wheeled platform—three times as long as it was wide—across the chamber’s polished floor. Hushed voices and the creak of wheels echoed in the open space. A large, lumpy object was on the platform, draped with sheets.
The audience edged forward on their seats.
When the platform arrived immediately center of the dais, Hateri’s father nodded to three of the service crew. They stepped to the platform and grabbed corners of the drapes.
“My friends,” Jafred said loudly, “I give you the expedition.”
The drape came off to the sound of rustling fabric.
When the reveal was complete, fourteen individual statues stood on the platform, each perhaps a bit more than half life-size, each depicting a member of the team.
A hush came over the chamber.
“When each of you entered,” Jafred said, “you may have noticed the newly smoothed section of the chamber grounds before the steps that lead to this very chamber. It is the council’s intention that, to honor the sacrifices of our Families, each of these representations will be affixed to that span.”
Like the rest of the audience, Hateri viewed the statues.
Their faces were not perfect, but done well enough that they reminded him of places and moments: Hiva handing him a hammer to fix a board on the cart as they loaded it. Ogala blushing as she gave him a piece of her bread. Gis’le striding beside him.
He saw his own image and immediately hated it.
At the front of the party was something that was clearly supposed to be the gnarled shape of Taranth, but seemed to be nothing but a caricature. Hateri discerned no wisdom in the statue’s expression, no nobility in its stature. He pressed his lips together to fight back a surprising burst of anger at both the artist and at Taranth himself.
He drew a breath and lingered on Pietha’s statue, feeling almost as if the stone on his chest was being magnetically drawn to her.
Cestral’s mother, Ellay of the Taler Family, came forward and touched the cheek of the figure that represented her daughter.
“I want to take this back,” she said.
For too long of a pause Hateri heard only the sound of shuffling feet and awkward hesitation. All eyes went to Jafred.
“I understand your desire completely, Mother Taler,” Jafred said. “But to take one piece away would…be…”
“She belongs on the east slopes,” Ellay said, turning sharply toward Jafred. “You have your son. How can you keep this image of our daughter from us?”
“But—”
The head of the Kil Family spoke next. “We will take our figure with us, also. Yip Kil was a Kandar. She belongs in the east.”
Voices burst in a wave then, a chaotic clamor of what might have been argument and dissent, or merely just anger and grieving.
“Ogala can come to the west with us,” said a Tael.
“Likewise Pietha,” said her father, his eyes flashing deep gold that reminded Hateri of her. The M’ktal motioned to his entourage, and they went to the platform to remove her figure.
Hateri’s central constricted, and his jaw went slack.
He wanted to shout out as the M’ktal entourage huffed to lift Pietha’s stone image, but no words would come. He took one step, but halted. It was like watching the killing fields at Harshish Point, but being without a gun.
He did not know what to do.
A flash of orange came from the podium, his father turning toward him, his council robes flowing with the momentum of his movement.
Do you see? his father’s gaze said to him. The Families cannot even honor their dead together. What makes you think they will act as one when it comes to the Taranth Stone?
Hateri watched the chaos, as members of each Family took their piece of the collective. He didn’t know what hurt most—that they were desecrating the very point of their Family members’ deaths, or that his father had been right. Anger and loss burned through him to leave behind a cold, detached essence that reminded him of Taranth looking out over the horizon. The words came to him, then. The desert takes what it wants.
But Taranth was wrong—and in truth even Taranth knew he was wrong, though the gnarled old trail guide couldn’t admit it. The desert had wanted Hateri. It had been ready to take him. But Taranth wouldn’t let it. Taranth alone kept the desert from swallowing him when Hateri himself was unable to do it. Taranth alone had decided whether Hateri E’Lar would live or die.
Hateri looked at the statue that represented the guide.
Taranth had saved him.
“Enough!” Ranya Waganat pounded his staff on the floor to ring in silence. “Enough! I said.”
When silence finally came, the head of the Waganats spoke again.
“I thank the council for creating the memorials. They will serve to make our Families stronger for our loss. But I remind everyone that we are here to listen to the young E’Lar tell his story about the trip, and to hear what he has to say about the Light That Fell from the Sky. I think we can wait to make final arrangements for the transport of our honorariums after we are finished with the young quadar’s conversation.”
The Families nodded and gave grumbles of agreement.
They gathered both their robes and their composure, and they made their way back to their positions. Their voices hushed again, and the shuffling of their feet quieted as they shifted and settled.
Hateri glanced at his father, who motioned him to continue, his gaze carrying the question that only Hateri could read.
He approached the platform. His first few steps were tentative and worried, but they grew stronger as he came to take his father’s place at the podium.
The fourteen statues were all scattered now, twisted by the Families to face in haphazard direction, some already off the platform.
The point of Pietha’s stone pressed against his breast, and he glanced to the artist’s hunched representation of Taranth.
“I’m sorry to report,” Hateri began, “that we were unable to find the Light That Fell from the Sky.”
He saw his father’s shoulders move with a deep breath.
Then he proceeded to tell the rest of the story, finding something each member of the team had done or said, reporting on valiant actions, and how they each played such important parts.
He related a joke that Yanil had told, and sang a snippet of a song Cestral had written after seeing Eldoro set in the wild lands outside.
It was, everyone agreed later, a beautiful eulogy.
After he was finished, and after the Families had voiced their approval, Hateri’s father met him as he came off the podium. His expression was a mixture of relief and intensity that was hard to interpret, but the strength of the hug that came next was impossible to miss.
“I’m proud of you, son,” his father said as he wrappe
d his arms around Hateri’s shoulders. “I’m very proud of you.”
CHAPTER 19
Taranth sat on his haunches in the depths of a cave far below the Esgarat.
He was hungry.
Merely sitting in the perfectly contoured gardens of the council member’s household had been enough to remind him that he did not belong in Esgarat City. The smoothed surfaces of the brush in the council gardens were false to him. The shaped path of rounded rocks that meandered around the grounds held the sense of a sham. It all felt wrong in the way that even a well-intended lie was wrong.
When he left the city he thought he would go back to Harshish Point, but now he knew that idea was also folly. For him, staking claim to surface rock would be just as much a lie as the garden path was. Being where Alena had been could never replace being with Alena.
The truth of that fact settled harder than he expected.
The idea of being on the surface at all turned his stomachs sour.
Fighting the wind.
Working his way over the desert.
Setting water traps.
Hearing neantha bray and piela skitter across the rubble.
Those thoughts all brought back memories of young faces scrubbed raw by the sand, slack-jawed, heads thrown back, teeth dried and brittle as if they were screaming into the wind.
Five bodies laid out on the flats, waiting, the rest just gone.
The memories drilled into his mind like drist leeches through sand.
Life was nothing but hard, they said. Any beauty it held was both harsh and fleeting. A quadar lives life as it is, and then gives it up.
These were the facts.
Life is cruel, too.
For one instant life had let him think that he could change something, that maybe he could make a difference with those whelplings before he, too, was gone forever. For that brief time, Taranth had thought that what he did might actually matter.
Now all he had left for that idea were images of M’ran and four dead quadars who would never see a full cycle, all laid out on the desert floor, and the knowledge that he had lost even more who would never be found.
