David had spoken of a path, but, once they’d left the valley, there hadn’t been the trace of one. Sill, Zoë made a point of being confident that they were heading in the right direction. She kept calling it “David’s plan.” But Jon, who knew that it had not been David’s plan at all, began to doubt the wisdom of his own advice. Yet, the higher they climbed, the more his spirits rose. He found himself overpowered by the sense that he was going somewhere important, and it was more like a return than a discovery. He knew he’d never been here before, but, as at other places, the sense of familiarity was inescapable, and he wasn’t at all surprised when Zoë, from the head of the party of climbers, cried out “We’ve made it!”
Catching up to her, he saw that their way now led downhill. Equally important, the western slope of the mountains was less steep than the eastern. You could even make out a path here, winding down among the boulders. Had travelers from the West climbed to the summit only to take in the view? Jon looked back in the direction from which they’d come. The plateau where they’d concealed the Emperor’s library was sharply defined against the Eastern horizon. From the central valley, it was nothing, but from here the general configuration of the terrain made it a significant site. But so was the place they were standing. Had no one but Jon noticed that the rock they were standing on was both too flat and too perfectly level to be a natural formation?
But he was alone by now. Alf was already well ahead, racing down the mountain to see what lay ahead. “The day is late,” Zoë had announced. “And at this altitude it’s sure to be frigid once the sun sets.” So everyone had taken off behind her, leaving Jon to contemplate the landscape in solitude. As he watched, the line of travelers rounded a spur of rock and disappeared. Like the afternoon he’d met John, he was utterly alone, high above the world. He lingered, hoping the moment would never end. But Zoë was right—the air was growing chill. He couldn’t stay here forever.
Hurrying to catch up with them, Jon found his companions standing at the edge of an alpine lake bluer than any water he’d ever seen before—like a piece of the sky that had fallen to earth. Or was it an eye staring up at the heavens? Half melted snowdrifts circled its rim, and on the far side stunted trees marked the upper edge of the timberline. You’d have trouble imagining a more barren scene, yet, gazing into the depths of the water, Jon felt a stir at the core of his being—as if this place were speaking to him, but in a language as meaningless as the chattering of birds. As before, it was like remembering something without knowing what you were remembering. Perhaps an effect of the altitude, he told himself. Several of the party were complaining of lightheadedness, yet for Jon it wasn’t lightheadedness, but a strength that seemed to emanate from the fabric of the planet itself.
“We can’t stay here,” Zoë reminded them, and once again the group started forward.
Yet, as the others continued their trek, skirting the edge of the lake, Jon once again lingered at the end of the procession, watching the water reflect the changing face of the sky. This place meant something—he was certain of that—but its meaning eluded him. But then, suddenly, he realized the shape of the lake. It wasn’t merely circular; it was a perfect circle, as if inscribed on the land with a compass. Alf may have missed the strangeness of the platform at the summit, but surely he’d noticed this.
Jon quickened his pace, passing through the line of travelers to find Alf.
“What did you think?” Jon asked.
“That lake was quite a place,” Alf said.
“Yes, quite a place,” Jon murmured.
“I’ve never seen water that looked so cold. So cold and so deep. It gave me the shivers.”
It hadn’t given Jon the shivers—at least not in the way Alf meant them. He knew that it must have been cold, but it hadn’t looked cold to him. It had looked—well, it was hard to say. And as for the shape of the lake, since Alf didn’t appear to have noticed it, he said nothing about that either. Was the world Jon saw different from the world his friends inhabited? First the level summit, now the circle lake. Among the boys in the Valley of Women, one had been unable to tell blue from green; Jon had tried to imagine how the world would look without that differentiation. Could something similar apply here?
Below the lake, the path fell steadily and soon the air grew warmer and more humid. Before long they entered a forest of tall, red-blossoming trees that filled the air with heady perfume. Despite the late hour, Zoë was for going further—as long as there was light to see by—but the Emperor convinced her it was time to stop.
“Do you realize how far we’ve traveled?” he said. “It’s been a very long day.”
And so they made camp among the trees, too exhausted to do more than pass around a little food and find places to sleep.
Jon couldn’t say why, but he felt safe here; and the others appeared to share that feeling—although weariness may have explained their ready sleep. By night, the forest seemed empty, but, with the light of dawn, it came alive. High in the branches, green parrots cried out to one another and shimmered in flocks among the leaves, while, lower in the canopy, troops of red-and-black lemurs chattered in an unintelligible language and blue butterflies flapped lazy wings. Even the ground was alive. Yellow and red beetles wandered among the fallen leaves and orange lizards slipped through the undergrowth. Brilliant orange, Jon noted, like fire. Had nature embraced a new love of color here? And this time he wasn’t the only one aware of the surroundings; others were speaking of the beauty in subdued voices, as if they were afraid to break its spell. Jon understood their wonder, yet the voice he’d heard yesterday kept telling him he’d been here before. Had he read about this place in the Foresters’ books? No. None of the writers had described a land beyond the mountains with green birds and orange lizards. The most farfetched accounts they’d put to paper had portrayed nothing so extraordinary. But Talis had been right. There were monkeys here. But they did nothing to interest him.
Looking up, Jon watched one, two, and then three parrots alight on a branch above his head. They were watching him the same way the cats had watched him in Kar. What would happen if he reached out to them?
“Don’t be afraid,” he said in a quiet voice, holding up his right arm. “Don’t be afraid. I’m your friend. You know that, don’t you? Your friend.”
Despite his invitation, Jon was surprised when one of the birds dropped and landed on his sleeve, just above the wrist, clutching his forearm with its black talons. He lowered his arm slowly and turned it so that the parrot was staring into his face with its round yellow eyes. Alf, who’d been walking beside him, watched this maneuver with incredulity.
“Aaark,” the parrot said.
Jon did his best to imitate the sound. “Aaark.”
The parrot shifted its position, raising one leg and then the other.
“Aaark,” it repeated.
“Aaaaark.”
“Aaaaark.”
“Ark.”
“Aaark.”
The bird cocked its head, then spread its wings and flew back into the canopy.
“You were talking to that bird,” Alf said.
“Don’t be silly, Alf. Birds can’t talk—at least not the way we do.”
“Well, it sounded like talk to me. You said something and then the bird repeated it back—except for that last time.”
“But what was I saying?” Jon asked.
“Aaa . . . No, that was the sound you made, but I don’t know what you were saying.”
“Of course you don’t, because I wasn’t saying anything. Just imitating the bird. You can’t call that talk. But we’ve got to catch up with the others.”
Of course it hadn’t been anything like talk, and yet he’d felt a connection with the parrot. That was the only way to describe it—a connection.
▲
After two days of travel, the forest dwindled; and the third night they camped in a clearing where the trees gave way to grassland. Here, the air held the scent of the sea and Jon felt its puls
e running through the earth.
The next morning he woke before anyone else and, moving soundlessly, walked to the top of a low hill, where he sat and watched the stars in the black sky. The air was warm and heavy with moisture. Touching his cheek, he found it damp.
Hours later, when they finally broke camp, he joined Zoë and the Emperor at the head of the procession.
“Do you think we are nearing the Western Ocean?” the Emperor asked him.
“Near? Yes, I think we must be near. Can’t you feel it?”
The Emperor laughed.
“Feel it? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The air. The smell.”
“Feel a smell?”
Did the man understand nothing?
“It’s the air,” Zoë said, coming to Jon’s rescue. “I feel it, too. A dampness, but not the dampness of rain. Something different.”
“I must defer to my Foresters,” the Emperor said. “You perceive things that elude us mere mortals.”
Jon smiled at Zoë, but she refused to respond. She’d already done more than enough to defend him. So he walked on in silence. What was the point of calling attention to himself?
Yet, once the grass gave way to sand, he sprinted ahead. The gesture may have made him look foolish, but it was worth it to see the line of breakers stretching below him. However he was not alone for long, for others began running, too, and it didn’t take them long to reach Jon.
For most, catching their first sight of the Western Ocean was a moment of discovery. Some shouted joyfully—as if they’d fulfilled a dream. Only a cook named Lias had ever seen the ocean before—in Tarnak, where he’d been raised—and he assured them it had been nothing like this.
“I remember a harbor with boats—that’s all. And no sand. Just a wall next to the water, with iron rings to tie up the ships. There were waves—not as high as these, though—but enough to make the ships rock in their moorings.”
Zoë and the Emperor stood beside Jon, looking to the West.
“How could you have kept such a secret?” she asked him. “It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. But I understand. You don’t have to explain it to me.”
▲
They camped a few yards inland. After the events of the past days, it seemed right to rest, but the next morning they recommenced their journey.
As they followed the coast south, their first obstacles turned out to be the rivers that carried rain and snowmelt from the mountains to the sea. Some were shallow streams that spread over the sand in fingers, but others ran fast and deep, creating broad estuaries, forcing them to construct rafts and pole across in relays, for the two moons were close so tides ran high. On the second such crossing, an unexpected current had swept a raft out to sea. What happened to the three men and women it had carried they never discovered. Alf maintained they’d be able to make it back to shore somewhere, but no one could be certain. Afterwards they timed crossings to inbound tides, even though the waiting could stretch out over two days.
Further south, outriders of the mountains began to extend westward, terminating in headlands against which the surf broke in fury. At first sight, these capes seemed impassable, but most were low enough to cross and, when they were steep, they took Alf’s advice and waited until the tide had ebbed before scuttling along the exposed shoreline.
As the journey linked itself to the changing length of days and the cycle of tides, their flight from the Chosen ceased to feel like a flight and more like a natural process. At the same time, it also became an expedition of discovery. Encountering no signs of other humans, they abandoned the effort to conceal their whereabouts, building nightly fires of brush and driftwood and, after the first week, setting no watch. Still, the going was slow, for they were living off the land—spearing fish in the shallows, scraping mussels from the rocks at low tide, hunting game in the foothills (full of rabbits, as Jon had promised, and even an occasional deer). And they gathered wild greens—nettles, sorrel, and a kind of cabbage that stank when you picked it, but grew savory after it had been roasted over the coals. And there was also a root like a distended onion, with a taste at once sweet and bitter, which, along with strands of kelp, they boiled to make soup. With heroic effort, Falco’s staff had brought two copper kettles over the pass, wearing them on their heads like hats, and now they used them to cook extraordinary meals. But gathering and preparing food took time, so some days they made only a few miles progress. However no one complained. As spring turned to summer, the weather grew warm and each mile brought something new. One day they crossed a stretch of sand covered with purple jellyfish, washed up by the tide. Alf tried to pick one up only to be stung by its tentacles. Afterwards, they stayed clear of similar creatures. On another occasion they passed a rocky islet covered with nesting birds that shrieked and wheeled as they approached. Falco was for wading through the surf to gather eggs, but the Emperor forbade him.
“Let them be,” he said. “We have food enough, and the rocks may be more difficult to climb than you think. Why else would they nest there?”
With each week, the sense of a common purpose grew stronger, yet, for some reason, Marekko’s hostility toward Jon never diminished. Jon treated him with scrupulous politeness, but Marekko seemed to regard this as further offense. Otherwise. it was impossible to resist the camaraderie of Falco’s staff. Gathering shellfish or firewood or sitting around the fire after a meal was like being back at the Forest House, where Jon had first felt he belonged to a family.
The Emperor, too, seemed to relish each day of their journey. Zoë had taught him archery, and hunting became an excuse to explore the land. Zoë told him he was “just like a Forester”—but Jon realized his concerns were more than geographical, for the Emperor marveled to see so much fertile soil as yet uninhabited.
“Our eyes were always turned to the East. No one had seen this land—or acknowledged seeing it—so we assumed no such place existed. By rights, I should grant Jon a tract here and send colonists to live under his governance. He has the mind of a governor, and there must be other ways over the mountains. With planning, we might be able to build a road. That would make it easier for your settlers. What do you say, Jon?”
Jon didn’t take him seriously. It was odd the way the Emperor come to enjoy talking in this expansive way—holding out possibilities without committing himself to them. It must have been one of the ways rulers toyed with their subjects.
“I didn’t discover this territory,” Jon reminded him. “Zoë’s brother saw it first. And other people have been here before us. Remember the remains I told you about.”
“Yes, you said something about stumbling on ruins—don’t think I’ve forgotten that. But whoever built them is long gone—there isn’t a single reference to them in the library—at least none in the histories that I’ve read. Besides, we’ve been traveling for weeks without coming upon evidence of other humans. You may not have realized it, but I’ve been looking carefully, and I’ve seen nothing to suggest that anyone lived here in the past.”
“If they built houses of wood and thatch, would there be any trace of them after so many years?”
“But the ruin you described was made of stone.”
“True, but it was also very close to the sea. In stormy weather, it might have been under water. No one would build a house in a place like that. It must have had another purpose.”
“So if this famous ruin of yours wasn’t a habitation?”
“Hard to guess its purpose. Some kind of beacon?”
“Like a lighthouse?”
“What’s that?” Jon asked.
“A tall building with a light at the top. They use them to warn ships off dangerous places like hidden rocks. There’s a string of lighthouses on the coast near Tarnak—or so the accounts say.”
“I guess it could have been a lighthouse, then. But I didn’t see any rocks. It was a beach like this one.”
“Then probably it wasn’t a lighthouse—but of course you know nothi
ng about what may have lain further out to sea.”
“There were islands. Two and perhaps three of them.”
“Well, that explains it,” the Emperor said. “Your lighthouse must have been built to warn them off the islands.”
What the Emperor was saying made no sense. A light warning ships from the islands would have been on the islands, not the shore. Moreover it was the Emperor and not Jon who’d suggested that the ruin might have been a lighthouse. However explaining all this seemed useless, so, instead, Jon returned to an earlier topic.
“I’m sure you’re right about their being no mention of this place in the histories; and, without a written history, there’s little we can know about the past. That’s why your library is important—it’s all we have to connect the present with the events that preceded it.”
“Yes, my library. Only a few weeks ago nothing seemed more important, but I have to confess I’ve given it little thought recently. It’s safe now and out of our hands. Indeed, much has changed. Can you imagine—I once even contemplated writing a history of the Empire. A suitable task for a younger son, don’t you think—poring over musty volumes in a hopeless effort to get the facts straight?”
“Writing such a book would be a great accomplishment,” Jon said.
“Not so great as you imagine. Some writers scribble page after page of nonsense, and others merely rehash earlier work. I used to think as you do, but circumstances have altered my life, and now books seem less important. It’s the real world that matters. Here a man can make a difference. Here, you face facts the writers ignore. I’ve been thinking about what you said about the absence of ruins. Wouldn’t even wooden houses need a foundation of some kind?”
“Not if all they required was a few posts driven into the ground and lashed together to support a roof. With this mild climate, what more would you need?”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t expect the creatures who once lived here to have been much like us?”
“Not entirely different, but different in significant ways.”
“I won’t argue with that. But, as I said before, they’re gone now, and so nothing stops us from claiming this region—much the way Axor converted those ruins at West House to his own purposes and we in turn converted them to ours. Moreover, we’ve always called the Western Sea our border, even though we never bothered to take a good look at it. So, I meant what I said when I promised you a grant of territory. If I were to give you land to build a city, where would it be? On the bay where we camped our second day on the coast? Remember the enormous fig tree, where the bats came to devour the fruit? Or would you prefer it here, where pines reach almost to the sea? How could anyone forget their fragrance? And, to a practical man, that whiff of pine must mean the availability of timber. You may think I know nothing about such matters, but Father saw that I had a broad education.”
The Flight from Kar (The Emperor's Library Page 38
