The Sage

by Christopher Stasheff

  They followed that light.

  Lastly came Illbane, and down they went, into deeper darkness than Kitishane or Culaehra had ever known before. Children of the forest and the meadow, they were accustomed to the stars above even in the deepest night, or at least a little light diffused through the clouds to show sky from earth. Here, though, the darkness beyond their torchlight was total. Kitishane shivered and, without realizing it, moved a little closer to Culaehra with each passing step. The walls began to close in about them, turning a cave into a tunnel, but oddly, Kitishane drew comfort from that—at least her torchlight showed her what was on each side, even if it disappeared into the gloom before and behind. She glanced at it anxiously, wondering how long it had left to burn, for she had only three more sticks in her belt. Then she stared, amazed, for her torch had not burned any more wood than when she had taken it from the fire! She glanced at Culaehra's brand and saw that it, too, was no shorter. Amazed, she turned to stare at Illbane behind her, but he only winked at her and smiled. For a moment she could only stare. Then she found herself smiling, too, and turned back to the gnomes, oddly comforted.

  Down they went, the sloping floor seeming to tug them forward—down and down, in a spiral, Kitishane thought Then the floor leveled off and they went straight for a while. Glints of light began to appear in the walls, growing larger and larger until she could see jewels protruding from the stone. She gasped in delight and would have stopped, but the gnomes scarcely seemed to see the gems and would not wait. She followed, her heart torn with the loveliness of the space, especially as veins of pure gold began to show in the rock—but on and on the gnomes went, giving her no chance to tarry.

  They came out into a grotto, and even Yocote had to stop and draw breath at the sight. Their torchlight winked back at them from jagged edges of quartz, but within and between and all about gleamed jewels of bright color and amazing purity, and runnels of gold all through both.

  “How could such beauty happen by chance?” Kitishane cried, looking about her, enthralled.

  “It could not.” Yocote peered closely at the gems and gold. “This is the work of hands. Gnomes dwelt here once.”

  “Gnomes?” Culaehra frowned. “It could not have been dwarfs?”

  “No.” Yocote sounded rather insulted. “Dwarf work is altogether different—more square, more rigid. They are smiths; the models for their work are in their heads. Gnomes fashion curves and fluidity, modeled after water and light, brought about by gathering gems and persuading crystals to grow. Dwarfs scarcely notice our work, until centuries have gathered it to such a concentration as you see here.”

  “Centuries?” Kitishane looked about her. “To tend this garden of rock so long, and abandon it?”

  “They left when Wauhanak came, I doubt not,” Yocote said, his voice harsh, “and I do not wish to think by what magic he drove them out.”

  Lua laid a gentle hand on his. “Perhaps they did not wait to be driven.”

  Yocote nodded, still curtly. “Likely enough. They would have known when an Ulharl was near, and did not hesitate in departing. Yes, they would have fled, no matter how lovely their creations. Life is worth more than art.”

  “I have known some who would have said otherwise,” Illbane mused.

  “Then their art was their lives, but their lives were not art,” the gnome-shaman said. “Gnomes' lives are. That does not mean,” he added reluctantly, “that all of us succeed in art.”

  There was a note almost of despair in his voice. Lua gazed at him, eyes wide and moist, and slipped her hand into his. He did not thrust it away.

  Out from the grotto they went, on down through another spiral, then into a cavern where the torchlight was swallowed by the darkness and diminished, where that darkness was absolute and their hushed footsteps set up thousands of echoes. Kitishane was about to ask if they were at all close to the treasure when Yocote held up a hand. “Hist!”

  They all stilled, listening, and heard, ever so faintly, the susurrus of water, moving ever so gently.

  “This is odd.” Yocote scowled up at Culaehra.

  The warrior was surprised to see the gnome's huge eyes in the light of the torch, then realized it was because he was unused to seeing him without his goggles. “What is odd?”

  “The water. Underground lakes are not uncommon, mind you—but I fear the treasure may have been caught inside the rock when the cracks closed.”

  “With the chest splintered, and the gold spread to a foil within the stone!” Lua cried.

  “No.” Culaehra shook his head. “I had not thought, but now I remember that I did hear a splash.”

  “Why did you not say so!” the gnome said sharply, but with relief.

  “But you said it was a lake!”

  “Aye, which means it is deep enough so that the chest is probably not broken—and what is sunken can be raised. Come, let us see if this is a puddle or a sea.” He turned away and went toward the sound.

  They stepped through a huge irregular archway—and came out to see the most eerie sight they had ever encountered. The water rolled away from them in a cavern so vast they had no hint of its size, except for echoes. The waves, perhaps a foot high, washed the rocky ledge near their feet and receded—but they bore with them a strange light of their own, an eldritch glow that served to give the companions some notion of how vast a water it was. There seemed no end to it—the surface undulated into the distance until it disappeared.

  “It fell into this?” Culaehra felt his stomach sink. “How shall we ever find it?”

  Yocote shrugged. “One league or a hundred makes little difference, warrior. It will find us.”

  Culaehra turned a blank stare of incomprehension upon him—until the little man knelt by the water, took one of the spare sticks, and laid a torch upon it to make a small fire, then took powders from his belt and sprinkled them into the flames, chanting arcane verses. In spite of himself, Culaehra's nape hair prickled; he stepped back, bumped into someone and spun to see it was Illbane. “What does he do?”

  “He commands the waters to yield up what they have swallowed, and summons the chest to rise of its own accord.” Illbane frowned. “It is a good thought, and he does the spell correctly, but I must tell him .. .” At the thought, his eyes widened, and he stepped quickly toward the gnome—

  But not quickly enough. The water rose with a roar like a cascade, drawing together and swelling up to tower over the companions, parting and coalescing to form a huge, glowing, angry face. “WHO DARES COMMAND THE WATERS!”

  A wave reached out, washing high, to fall upon Yocote's fire, and he leaped back, crying, “Illbane! What have I done?”

  “You sought to command the waters, not to beseech them!” the sage called. “Their spirit has risen in anger! Calm it, shaman! Apologize!”

  “WHO DARES SEEK TO COMMAND THE HIDDEN WAVES?” the huge face demanded. Slowly, its cavernous eyes turned toward the companions. “YOU DO!” It rushed toward them, looming above them, its vast maw opening wide, and within they saw a whirlpool about to fall on them and pull them in.

  “Your pardon, Great One!” Yocote cried. “I had not meant to offend!”

  “HAD NOT MEANT TO ANGER ONE MORE POWERFUL THAN YOURSELF, YOU MEAN!” But the face turned slowly toward Illbane. “WHAT SPELLS DO YOU WORK, SAGE?”

  “Charms to calm the troubled waters, O Spirit—and I pray you, be calmed indeed! My apprentice does not yet know all the spells . . .”

  “APPRENTICE?” The spirit turned back to stare down at Yocote.

  “Less than fully accomplished, I fear,” Yocote said in chagrin, hiding his fear. “I pray you, O Mighty Wave, let us recover what we have lost to your immensity!”

  “What I have lost, he means!” Culaehra stepped forward, coincidentally between Yocote and the wave. “It was my carelessness by which it fell to your bosom!”

  “Your good judgment, you mean!” For a moment Illbane was the stern disciplinarian again. “He had to choose between the gold and a
comrade's life, O Spirit! He chose the comrade's life, and let the gold fall to you!”

  Yocote stared up at the wave, trembling and aghast. Illbane had just told the spirit that it had missed the eating of a living person!

  But the sage seemed to have judged well; the wave said, rumbling rather than thundering, “I dislike the taste of flesh, and must praise you for letting the only dead thing fall to me. Yet if you seek to command me, I shall take all the living together!”

  “Forgive, O Mighty Water!” Yocote called. “I have only recently learned the shaman's language, and am still uncertain as to which voice to use with which entity! I did not know the waters have a spirit; I thought them devoid of life of their own.”

  The spirit peered more closely. “Of course—you are a gnome, so would think that only rock and earth have spirits. Do you know your mistake now?”

  “I do,” Yocote said fervently. “Oh, be most sure that I do!”

  “Please, O Spirit!” Lua stepped forward, holding up her hands in supplication. “Take pity! Give us back what we have lost!”

  “Pity!” the spirit boomed. “What would the flood know of pity?”

  “Water is life,” Lua replied. “We speak of peace and mercy flowing in imitation of it. Please relent, please give up what you have taken!”

  “Give it up?” the water roared in a sudden upthrust, and skeletons danced in its flow, mixed in with waterlogged stumps, boulders, ironbound wheels, broken pottery, worn stone axes, chipped bronze spearheads, and all manner of other castoffs. With the voice of the flow, it thundered, “HERE IS WHAT

  YOU ASK! ALL THE SKELETONS OF THE DROWNED, ALL THE REFUSE THAT THE RIVERS HAVE BROUGHT TO ME FOR CENTURIES! SHALL I THROW YOU THESE?”

  The gnome-maid shuddered, crying “No!” in tones of such distress that the upthrust subsided on the instant. “Thank you, O Water,” she sighed with relief. “I do not even ask that you raise the drowned to the surface—only that you allow one of us to dive down to fetch it.”

  “Lua, no!” Yocote cried in alarm.

  Culaehra cast him a puzzled frown. “It would not be her who dives.”

  But the spirit was demanding, “Give me reason!”

  “Because the gold is not ours,” Lua said simply. “It would not even suffice for us to dig up more gold to replace it; this very gold is the sacrifice we take to Agrapax the Ulin in fulfillment of a vow King Oramore made to him years ago.”

  “You bear it for the king?” the spirit asked. “How foolish! Why do you do his work for him?”

  “Because he is twenty years late in the task,” Lua replied, “and fears the Ulin's wrath.”

  “Wisely so!”

  “And because we did not trust him not to change his mind and bring the gold back to his castle when we were gone,” Culaehra explained.

  “Did you not!” The spirit turned to regard him. “Why did you take others' burdens on yourself?”

  “Because—it was right.” Culaehra spread his hands, searching for words to explain it. “Because the same wicked councillor who persuaded him to forget his vow also persuaded him to grind his peasants down lower than his hounds. It would have been wrong to pass by, when we could bring about a change.”

  “Yes, that was our intent,” Yocote said.

  “Fair words, for one who sought to command a spirit!” the wave rumbled.

  “I said I was sorry!” Yocote cried.

  “Still, I cannot censure when the intention was noble,” the wave rumbled. “Very well, you may dive within my waters to seek your gold. I shall withhold any grasping tendrils or menacing water-dwellers; I shall see you return safely to the surface. But be quick!” And with that last admonition, the spirit sank, the waters flattening again with a huge roar. The companions leaped back from the reaching waves, staring at the surging surface that was suddenly only a lake again.

  Yocote went limp with a huge sigh of relief. “Thank heavens! Your pardon, my friends—I mistook my spell!”

  “An easy mistake to make, but quite understandable,” Illbane assured him. “Never seek to command the elements, for each has a spirit. Indeed, never seek to command where you can petition. Now—who will dive?”

  “I shall,” Culaehra and Lua said in one voice, then turned to stare at one another.

  “You, little sister?” Kitishane stared, too.

  “Women's bodies are better suited for diving,” Lua said, “if there are no dangers to fight off, if it is only a matter of going down to fetch something, then coming up—and gnomes are far better divers than humans, if the waters are underground.”

  “I would not know how to swim where the only light is the water about me,” Kitishane admitted reluctantly.

  Culaehra scowled. “I do not like the sound of danger within it.”

  “There is no danger unless the chest lies deeper than I can swim,” Lua assured him. “The water itself has promised us that.”

  “It is all true,” Yocote said, then visibly plucked up his nerve and stepped to the edge of the water. He made passes with his hands, chanting.

  “Yocote, no!” Lua cried, running toward him—but Illbane stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

  “He only asks the water how deeply the chest lies, and where. Culaehra, give her a coil of rope. Gnome-maid, tie an end through one of the chest's handles, then leave it where it lies and bring the other end to us. Let Culaehra's be the back that bends to haul the gold ashore.”

  Culaehra stepped to the pack, drew forth the coil, then handed it to her. “I lost it. It is certainly my place to draw it up.”

  Lua took the rope, nodding. “As you will, then.”

  Yocote finished chanting, and huge bubbles floated up, bursting off to their left, perhaps fifty feet out.

  “The chest lies there,” Yocote said, then counted bursting bubbles. “One ... two .. . three . . . four .. . five ... six! It lies six fathoms down.”

  “That is easily within my depth.” Lua stripped off her furs, standing before them in her shift, but not standing long; she waded through the little waves till she was waist deep, then dove and swam.

  “There!” Yocote called, and Lua kicked her heels high, then disappeared beneath the waves.

  “You do not seem at all concerned,” Kitishane said caustically.

  “Concerned? I am.” Yocote stared at the spot where Lua had disappeared, eyes fixed with an intensity that seemed to will her safe return. “But I cannot argue with her decision to go. Gnomes are good swimmers and good divers in underground water, but we have always known that the women can dive deeper and more safely than the men—so long as there are no huge fish to fight, or mermen, or buried snags to catch and hold.”

  “Can we trust the—” Kitishane bit her lip in time to keep from saying the words aloud. Surely they could trust the water spirit, when it had spared their lives—but voicing the question might have angered the elemental and moved it to revenge. She held to Yocote's shoulder, meaning comfort and not realizing that she was seeking reassurance until she felt the little man wince under her hand.

  “Here, maiden.” Culaehra offered his great paw. She took it gratefully. “Squeeze as hard as you please,” he rumbled, and she did.

  The water broke in a small fountain, and Lua jetted halfway out, gasping in a huge breath. She fell back into the water and struck off swimming toward them. Yocote cried out and waded into the water to catch her up in his arms in relief, then turned quickly away to limit himself to holding her arm and helping her through the little waves.

  “You found it, then?” Illbane asked, and Lua nodded, gasping and holding up the end of the rope. Culaehra took it and began to draw.

  Chapter 18

  Culaehra hauled, and the pack erupted from the water. He pulled it ashore, water streaming off its leather sides. “Quickly! Is it damaged?” he cried, tearing the flap open.

  “Peace, warrior,” Yocote said. “Water cannot harm gold, neither salt nor fresh. If the chest is not broken, the metal is safe.”

&
nbsp; Culaehra's panic ebbed; he threw back the flap and opened the lid of the chest without wrenching it. Sure enough, the golden coins gleamed in the candlelight, unspilled and unspoiled. He sagged with relief. “I have not yet failed in my promise.”

  “You have not,” Illbane agreed. “However, we must still bring the chest to the Wondersmith.”

  Culaehra sighed, closed the chest, latched it, pulled the leather up about it, and buckled the flap, then stood, heaving the burden up to his back again. “Well, it will be a long climb, but I am pleased to have this load on my back nonetheless. Lead on, gnome-folk.”

  Yocote turned away, but Illbane stayed him with a touch of his staff. “Not that way—not upward.”

  The gnome turned back to him, frowning. “How, then?”

  “Take us to the lake of molten rock.”

  Yocote and Lua both stared at him, rigid. Then Lua said, “How did you know of that lake, Illbane?”

  “He knows many things,” Yocote told her, “very many, and I am not surprised that he knows of that. But Illbane, that place is very dangerous!”

  “It is indeed,” Illbane returned, “but we will not come so close to it as that.”

  “We need not,” Yocote said sourly. “The heat will bake us long before we see its glow, and if that is not enough, the bad air will choke us!”

  “Not even so close as that, Yocote,” Illbane said, smiling. “We shall find what we seek before danger rises.”

  “The noise is horrendous,” Lua protested. “That horrible clanging will break our ears.”

  Culaehra frowned, puzzled. “How can rock be molten? And why would it make a clanging sound?”

  “Rock, too, melts if the fire is hot enough,” Yocote assured him, “even as iron comes running out of rocks when charcoal burns beneath it. As to the clanging, I have no idea what makes it.”

  “You shall discover it,” Illbane told them. “Come then, Yocote—lead us past this lake, to hotter water.”