Part 44 (2/2)
Truth told, rest hat Panopele wanted She eary; drained, as the song sometimes drained one; and dis the dewy evening To sleep and awake believing that the blot she had detected was no The voice of Naratha is not allowed the luxury of self-deceit And the blot had been growing larger
Weary, Panopele placed her hands on the carven arras of the chair that dwarfed all present but herself and gathered her strength Her eyes sought the blue star Alyedon: The blot approached froth and resolve Slowly she leaned forward and, as the chair creaked with her efforts, pushed herself onto her feet
”Let us return,” she said to those who served her
Lietta bowed, and picked up the chair Fanor bent to gather the reesture
”One approaches,” she told him ”You are swiftest Run ahead, and be ready to offer welcolance he dared, full into her eyes, then passed the jug he held to Darl and ran away across the starlit grass
”So” Panopele motioned and Zan stepped forward to offer an ar support, Voice,” she said, as ritual deh her own voice was soft and troubled
”Blessings on you,” Panopele replied, and proceeded across the grass in Fanor's wake, leaning heavily upon the ar a spaceport on-world, and the only reason the place had escaped Interdiction, in Montet's opinion, was that no Scout had yet penetrated this far into the benighted outback of the galaxy
That the gentle agrarian planet below her could not possibly contain the technology necessary to unravel the puzzle of the thing sealed and seething in its stasis box, failed to delight her Even the knowledge that she had deciphered legend with such skill that she had actually raised a planet at the coordinates she had half-intuited did not war, oht the Scout shi+p down Her orbital scans had identified two large clusters of life and industry-cities, perhaps-and a third, sy than either of its larger cousins
Likely, it was a ht, and hoht et, by no round in a gold and green field a short distance froet She tended her utility belt while the hull cooled, then rolled out into a crisp, clear et was just ahead, on the far side of a slight rise Montet swung into a walk, the grass parting silently before her She drew a deep lungful of fragrant air, verifying her scan's description of an at her stride, she bounced, verifying the scan's assertion of a gravity field soenerated by the hoet, which was not a , and various outbuildings, clustered coht hand, fields were laid out To her left, the grassland continued until it met a line of silvery trees, brilliant in the brilliant dayAnd of the source of the energy reported by her scans, there was no sign whatsoever
Montet sighed, gustily Legend
She went down the hill Eventually, she came upon a path; which she followed until it abandoned her on the threshold of the larger building
Here she hesitated, every Scout nerve a-tingle, for this should be a Forbidden World, socially and technologically unprepared for the knowledge-stress that ca in on the leather-clad shoulders of a Scout She had no business walking up to the front door of the local hospital, library, temple or who-knehat, no matter how desperate her difficulty There was no one here as the equal-as thein her shi+p's hold How could there be? She hovered on the edge of doing da Better to return to her shi+p, quickly; rise to orbit and get about setting the warning beacons
and yet, the legends, she thought-and then all indecision ept away, for the plain white wall she faced showed a crack, then a doorway, frarass His hair was dark and braided below his shoulders; the skin of his face and his hands were brown
His feet, beneath the stained, wet hely built, she could not guess his age, beyond placing hiion called ”adult”
He spoke; his voice was soft, his tone respectful The language was tantalizingly close to a tongue she knew
”God's day to you,” she said, speaking slowly and plainly in that language She showed her empty hands at waist level, paler?”
Surprise showed at the edges of thea stylized pattern in the air at the height of his heart
”May Naratha's song fill your heart,” he said, spacing his words as she had hers It was not quite, Montet heard, the tongue she knew, but 'twould suffice
”Naratha foretold your co,” the man continued ”The Voice will speak with you” He paused, hands h another pattern ”Of co upon the air”
Well he ri Carefully, she inclined her head to the doorkeeper
”Gladly will I speak with the Voice of Naratha,” she said
The man turned and perforce she followed him, inside and across a wide, stone-floored hall to another plain white wall He lay his hand against the wall and once again a door appeared He stood aside, hands shaping the air
”The Voice awaits you”
Montet squared her shoulders and walked forward
The rooht along the white walls and floor adding to the misery of her headache Deliberately, she used the Scout's ly, back Montet sighed and blinked the room into focus
”Be welcome into the House of Naratha” The voice was deep, resonant, and achingly melodic, the words spaced so that they were instantly intelligible
Montet turned, finding the speaker standing near a niche in the left-most wall
The lady was tall and on a scale to dwarf the sturdy doorkeeper; a woman of abundance, shoulders proud and face serene Her robe was divided vertically in half-one side white, one side black-each side as wide as Montet entire Her hair was black, showing gray like stars in the vasty deepness of space Her face was like a htful She raised a hand and sketched a sign before her, the ainst the air
”I am the voice of Naratha Say your name, seeker”
Instinctively, Montet bowed One would bow, to such a lady as this-and one would not dare lie
”I a her own voice thin and reedy in comparison with the other's rich tones
”Co'Norba”
Forward she went, until she stood her own short araze of far-seeing black eyes
”Yes,” the Voice said after a long pause ”You bear the wounds we have been taught to look for”
Montet blinked ”Wounds?”
”Here,” said the Voice and lay her ainst Montet's forehead, directly on the spot centered just above her eyes, where the pain had lived for six long relumma
The Voice's palm arm and soft Montet closed her eyes as heat spread up and over her scalp, soothing and-she opened her eyes in consternation
The headache was gone
The Voice was a Healer, then Though the Healers on Liad had not been able to ease her pain
”You have that which belongs to Naratha,” the Voice said, re her hand ”You may take me to it”
Montet bowed once rappled briefly with the idio it approxih for sense, and not too nearly for insult
”What I carry isaccursed of God It vibrates evil, and seeks destruction-even unto its own destruction It is-I brought it before apriestess of my own kind and its vibrations all but overcame her skill”
The Voice snorted ”A e Still, she did well, if you come to me at her word”