The Longest Way Home

by Robert Silverberg

  “It was in the night,” Joseph said. “They came into the Great House and killed all the Masters there.” He searched about in his memory for the names old Waerna had mentioned, the dead Masters, the leader of the rebels, but he could not remember them. If Stappin queried him about that, he would have to invent the names and hope for the best. But Stappin did not ask for names.

  “They killed everyone, the men and the women both, and even the children, and they burned their bodies, and they burned the house also. The place is a complete ruin. There is nothing left there but charred timbers, and all of the Masters of Ludbrek House are dead.”

  “Did you help to kill them?”

  “I? No, not I!” It was easy enough to sound genuinely shocked. “I must tell you, Governor Stappin, I was of the Folk of Ludbrek House. I could never have struck a blow against the Masters of the House.”

  “A stendling, yes,” Stappin said. His tone did not seem so much one of contempt as of simple acknowledgment; but, taken either way, it left Joseph with no doubt of the word’s meaning.

  “It would not be in my nature to turn against my Masters that way,” Joseph said. “If that is a mark against me, I am sorry for that. But it is the way I am.”

  “I say nothing about that.” And then, with an odd little flicker of his eyes: “What work did you do, when you were at Ludbrek House?”

  Joseph was unprepared for that. But he did not hesitate to answer. I must not lose my way, he told himself. “I was in the stables, sir,” he said, improvising dauntlessly. “I helped care for the bandars and the ganuilles.”

  “And where were you while they were killing the masters and burning the house?”

  “I was hiding, sir. Under the porch that faces the garden. I was afraid they would kill me too. I have heard that many Folk who were loyal to their Houses were killed by the rebels, everywhere in High Manza, and elsewhere too, perhaps.”

  “When the killing was over, what did you do then?”

  “There was no one in sight when I came out. I fled into the forest and lived on my own for a few days. Then I met a noctambulo in the woods who took me to a nearby village of Indigenes. I had hurt my leg and was unable to walk, and the Indigenes took me in and helped me.”

  There still was obvious skepticism in the governor’s expression. These stories must seem like children’s fairy-tales to him, Joseph thought. Since everything Joseph was telling him now was the absolute truth, though, he began to feel that he had passed a critical stage in the interrogation. So long as he had been making things up, or borrowing pieces of the other Waerna’s account of the uprising, there was always the risk that Stappin would catch him out in a lie. But from this point on he would not be making things up. Sooner or later Stappin would have to accept his narrative as the truth.

  He said, “When I recovered, I went into the service of the Indigenes. That may sound strange, yes. But I have some skills at healing the sick, from my work with the stables. When they discovered that, the Indigene villagers used me as a doctor for their own people for a time.” Joseph went on to explain how they had sold him, finally, to others of their kind, and how he had been passed from village to village in the high country while the winter rainy season came and went. Here, too, the governor would not be able find any chink of falsity in his tale, for it was all true. “At last,” he said, “I grew tired of living among the Indigenes. I wanted to be back among my own people. So I escaped from the village where I was, and came down out of the mountains. But I did not know that the land down here was as empty as it proved to be. There were no Great Houses, no villages of the Folk, not even any Indigenes. I used up the food I had brought with me and after a time I could find nothing anywhere to eat. There were many days when I ate nothing but insects, and then not even those. I made myself ready for death. Then I was found by two men of Eysar Haven, and the rest you know.”

  He sat back, wearied by the long speech, and tried to ready himself for what Stappin was likely to ask him next, which he supposed would be a question about what he planned to do now. It would hardly be prudent to say that he was heading south, for what reason would he have for wanting to go in that direction? The best thing to reply, he guessed, was that he had no plan at all, that with his House destroyed he was without affiliation, without purpose, without direction. He could say that he had not taken the time to form any plan yet, since he would be in no shape to go anywhere for weeks. Later, when he was healthy again, he could slip away from Eysar Haven and continue on his way to Helikis, but that was nothing he needed to tell Governor Stappin.

  The question that he had been expecting, though, did not come. Stappin confronted him again in inscrutable silence for a time, and then said, with a tone of finality in his voice, as though he had reached some sort of verdict within himself, “Once again your luck has held, young Waerna. There will be a home for you here. Saban and Simthot are willing to give you shelter in their house as a member of their own family. You will work for them, once you have your strength again, and in that way you will pay them back the cost of your lodging.”

  “That seems quite fair, sir. I hope not to be a burden on them.”

  “We do not turn starving strangers away in Eysar Haven,” said Stappin, and began to move toward the door. Joseph, thinking that the interview was at its end, felt a sudden great relief. But the governor was not done with him yet. Pausing at the threshold, Stappin said suddenly, “Who was your grandfather, boy?”

  Joseph moistened his lips. “Why, Waerna was his name also, sir.”

  “Is a Folkish name, Waerna. I mean your real grandfather, the one whose blood runs in your veins.”

  “Sir?” said Joseph, baffled and a little frightened.

  “Don’t play with me. There’s Master blood in you, is it not so? You think I can’t see? Look at you! That nose. Those eyes. Small wonder you stayed loyal to your House when the uprising came, eh? Blood calls out to blood. As much Master blood in you as there is Folk, I’d venture. Stendlings!” There was no doubting the contempt in his voice this time.

  And then he was gone, and Joseph sank back against his pillow, numb, empty.

  But he was safe. Despite their suspicions, they had taken him in. And in the days that followed, his strength began quickly to return. They fed him well; Joseph felt guilty about that, knowing that he would never stay here long enough to repay Saban and Simthot for what they were providing for him, but perhaps he could do something about that when, if, he reached his homeland again. Meanwhile his only consideration must be to make himself ready for a continuation of his journey. As Joseph grew accustomed to regular meals again, he ate more and more voraciously each day. Sometimes he ate too much, and went off by himself to hide the nausea and glut that his greed had caused in him. But his weight was returning. He no longer looked like a walking skeleton. Thayle trimmed his hair, which was shaggy and matted and hung down to his shoulders, now, cutting it back to the much shorter length favored by the people of Eysar Haven. Then Velk brought him a mirror and a scissors, so that Joseph could trim his beard, which had become a bedraggled disorderly black cloud completely enveloping his face and throat. He had not seen his own reflection in months, and he was horrified by what the mirror showed him, those knifeblade cheekbones, those crazily burning eyes. He scarcely recognized himself. He looked five years older than he remembered, and much transformed.

  No one said anything to him, yet, about working. Once he was strong enough to go out on his own, he spent his days exploring the town, usually by himself, sometimes accompanied by Thayle. He found it very pleasant to be with her. Her strapping Folkish physique, the breadth of her shoulders and her wide staunch hips, no longer troubled him: he saw that he was adjusting his ideals of feminine beauty to fit the circumstances of his present life. He did indeed find her attractive, very much so. Now and again, as he lay waiting for sleep, he let his mind wander into thoughts of what it would be like to press his lips against Thayle’s, to cup her breasts in his hands, to slide himself be
tween her parted thighs. The intensity of these fantasies was something utterly new to him.

  Not that he attempted at all to indicate any of this to Thayle. This journey had changed him in many ways, and the uncertainties he once had had about girls now struck him as a quaint vestige of his childhood; but still, it seemed very wrong to him to be taking advantage of the hospitality of his hosts by trying to seduce the daughter of the household. His times alone with Thayle were infrequent, anyway. Like her father and brother and sometimes her mother, she went off for hours each day to work in the family fields. It was high summer, now, and the crops were growing quickly. And gradually Joseph learned that Thayle was involved with one of the young men of the town, a certain Grovin, who was almost certainly her lover and possibly her betrothed. That was something else to consider.

  Joseph saw him now and then in the town, a lean, sly-faced sort, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, quick-eyed, mean-looking. He was not at all surprised, though he found it a little embarrassing, to find himself taking a dislike to Grovin. But he had no direct encounters with him.

  The town itself was a modest little place, no more than two or three thousand people in all, Joseph guessed, although spread out over a fairly extensive area. All the houses were in one place, all the public buildings in another, and the farmland was beyond—the entire town holdings divided into small family-held plots, nothing communally operated as among the Indigenes, though Joseph gathered that all the townsfolk worked together at harvest-time, moving in teams from plot to plot.

  This must have been the way the Folk lived before we came here, Joseph thought. A simple life, a quiet life, raise your crops and look after your cattle and have your children and grow old and give way to the next generation. That was the way the Folk of the Great Houses lived as well, he supposed, but everything they did was done in the service of their Masters, and although a wise Master treated his Folk well, the fact remained that they spent their lives working for their Masters and only indirectly for themselves.

  Stendlings. A whole planet of stendlings is what we have turned them into, sparing only these few cuyling towns here and there in the outback. Joseph still could not see that there was anything seriously wrong with that. But obviously Governor Stappin and the citizens of Eysar Haven might have something different to say on that subject.

  There was a statue in the middle of the little group of public buildings that formed the center of the town: a man of middle years, a very Folkish-looking man, thick-thighed and heavy-chested with his hair coming down over his forehead in bangs, carved from gray granite atop a black stone pedestal. He had not been very deftly portrayed, but there seemed to be wisdom and benevolence and much warmth in his expression as he stood there eternally looking out over the heart of the town.

  Joseph could find no inscription on the base of the statue to indicate the identity of the man whom it represented. He did not dare ask any of the people strolling nearby. But certainly this must be Eysar, Joseph thought, since this town is named for him. Everyone would know what Eysar looked like: it is not necessary to put a label on his statue. He wondered if he would ever find out who Eysar was.

  These were warm, lazy days. Joseph felt almost strong enough to set out for home once more, but the concept of “home” had become such a vague, remote thing in his mind that he saw no urgency in resuming his trek. Who could tell what new hardships awaited him once he took his leave of Eysar Haven? He knew what it was like, now, to starve. Here he was fed well, he had a soft place to sleep, he felt a certain warmth toward Saban and her family. It struck him as quite a plausible choice to remain here a while longer, working with Thayle and Velk and Simthot in the family fields, helping with the harvest, living as though he were really and truly the Folkish boy Waerna of Ludbrek House, now adopted into citizenship at the cuyling town of Eysar Haven.

  The Master within him knew that this was foolishness, that it was his duty to get out of here as soon as he was capable of it and take himself onward toward Helikis, toward Keilloran House, toward the father and brothers and sisters who probably had never ceased mourning the loss of him and whose lives would be brightened beyond all measure by his return. It was only the weariness in him speaking, the damage that his time of eating roots and ants had caused, that made him think of lingering here. It was a sign that he was not yet healed.

  But he let the days slide easily by and did not force himself to wrestle with the problem of becoming Joseph Master Keilloran again. And then, one warm humid summer evening at dusk, when he was walking through the fields with Thayle, amidst the ripening heads of grain, the whole thing was abruptly thrust upon him once more, out of nowhere, striking like a sudden lightning-bolt, an earthquake, a cataclysmic volcanic eruption.

  He had just said, “Look how full these heads are, Thayle, how dark. It will be harvest-time in another month or so, won’t it? I’ll be able to help you with it by then.”

  To which she replied sweetly, “Will you be staying here that long, then, Waerna? Are you not beginning to think of returning to your own people?”

  He gave her a puzzled look. “My people? I have no people anymore. The Folk of Ludbrek House have scattered in every direction, those that are still alive. I don’t know where anyone is.”

  “I’m not talking about the Folk of Ludbrek House. I mean your real people.”

  The quiet statement rocked him. He felt like a small boat suddenly adrift in a stormy sea.

  “What?” said Joseph, as casually as he could. He could not make himself look at her. “I’m not sure that I understand what—”

  “I know what you are,” Thayle said.

  “What I am?”

  “What you are, yes.” She caught him by the sleeve and pulled him around to face her. She was smiling. Her eyes were shining strangely. “You’re a Master, aren’t you, Waerna?”

  The word struck him with explosive force. He felt his heart starting to race and his breath came short. But Joseph struggled to permit nothing more than a look of mild bemusement to appear on his face. “This is crazy, Thayle. How could you possibly think that I’m—”

  She was still smiling. She had no doubt at all of the truth of what she was telling him. “You have a Master look about you. I’ve seen some Masters now and then. I know what they look like. You’re tall and thin: do you see anybody tall and thin in Eysar Haven? And darker than we are. You have the darkest hair I’ve ever seen. And the shape of your nose—your lips—”

  Her tone of voice was a gentle one, almost teasing. As though this were some sort of game. Perhaps for her it was. But not for him.

  “So I have some Master blood in me.” Joseph kept his voice level, which was not an easy thing to manage. “Stappin said something about it to me, weeks ago. He noticed it right away. Well, it’s probably true. Such things have been known to happen.”

  “Some Master blood, Waerna? Some?”

  “Some, yes.”

  “You know how to read. I know that you do. There are books in that pack you were carrying when you came here, and one night when I was outside the house very late I looked in your window and you were awake and reading one. It’s a Master book. What else could it be? And you were reading it. You look like a Master, and you read like a Master, and you have a little case that’s full of Master tools. I’ve looked at them while I was cleaning your room. I’ve never seen anything like them. And your books. I held the book-thing right in my hand and pressed the button, and Master words came out on the screen.”

  “I dwelled among Masters at Ludbrek House. They taught me to read so I could serve them better.”

  She laughed. “Taught a stable-boy to read, so he could be a better stable-boy?”

  “Yes. And the utility case that you saw—I stole that when I fled from Ludbrek House. The books, too. I swear to you, Thayle, by whatever god you want me to swear by—”

  “No.” She put her hand over his mouth. “Don’t lie, and don’t blaspheme. That’ll make everything worse. I know what you are. It
has to be true. You hadn’t ever heard of Eysar, and you don’t know the names of our holidays, and there are a thousand other things about you that just aren’t right. I don’t know if anyone else here has seen it, but I certainly have.”

  He was stymied. He could bluff all he liked, but nothing he could ever say would convince her. She thought that she knew what he was, and she was sure that she was right, and she was right, and Joseph would have to be the best actor in the world to make her believe now that he was of the Folk. Even that might not be good enough. She knew what he was. His life was in her hands.

  He wondered what to do. Run back to the house, collect his things, get himself away from this place while he still could? He did not feel ready for that, not now, not so suddenly. Night was coming on. He had no idea which way to go. He would have to live off the land again, at a time when he was still not entirely recovered from his last attempt at that.

  Thayle said, as though reading his mind, “You don’t need to be afraid of me, Waerna. I’m not going to tell anyone about you.”

  “How can I be sure of that?”

  “It would be bad for you, if I did. Stappin would never forgive you for lying to him. And he couldn’t let a runaway Master live among us, anyway. You’d have to leave here. I don’t want that. I like you, Waerna.”

  “You do? Even though I’m a Master?”

  “Yes. Yes. What does your being a Master have to do with it?” That strange glow was in her eyes again. “I won’t say a word to anyone. Look, I’ll swear it.” She made a sign in the air. She uttered a few words that Joseph could not understand. “Well?” she said. “Now do you trust me?”

  “I wish I could, Thayle.”

  “You can say a thing like that, after what you just heard me swear? I’d be furious with you, if you were Folk. But what you just said would tell me you’re a Master if nothing else I knew about you did. You don’t even know the Oath of the Crossing! It’s a wonder no one else here has caught on to you before this.” Joseph realized that somewhere in the last moments Thayle had taken both his hands in hers. She stood up on tiptoe, so that her face was very close to his. Softly she said, “Don’t be afraid of me, Waerna. I won’t ever bring you harm. Maybe the Oath of the Crossing doesn’t mean anything to you, but I’ll prove it to you another way, tonight. You wait and see.”