Authors: Andre Norton
To her right and left Tamisan caught glimpses of the wall curving, and more stone
figures with flower or shrub plantings. Gathering up her skirts more firmly, she began
to walk up the curve of the higher slope in search of some road or path leading to
the roof.
She came across what she sought as she detoured to avoid a thicket of heavy brush
in which were impaled huge scarlet flowers. It was a wide roadway paved with small
colored pebbles embedded in a solid surface, and it led from an open gateway up the
swell of the slope to the front of the rear structure.
In shape the building was vaguely familiar, though Tamisan could not identify it.
Unless it resembled something she had seen in the tri-dees. The door was of the same
brilliant green as the roof, but the walls were a pale yellow, cut sharply at regular
intervals by windows, very narrow, and so tall that they ran from floor to roof level.
Even as she stood there wondering where she had seen such a house before, a woman
came out. Like Tamisan she wore a long-skirted robe with laced bodice and slit sleeves.
But hers was the same green as that of the door, so that, standing against it, only
her head and arms were clearly visible. She gestured with vigor, and Tamisan suddenly
realized that it must be she who was being summoned—as if she were expected—
Again she fought down unease. In a dream she was well used to meetings and partings,
but always those were of her own devising, did not happen for a purpose which was
not of her wish. Her dream people were toys, game pieces, to be moved hither and thither
at her will, she being always in command over them.
“Tamisan—they wait—come quickly!” the woman called.
T
AMISAN
was minded in that instant to run in the other direction. But the need to learn what
had happened to her made her take what might be the dangerous course of joining the
woman.
“Fah—you are wet! This is no hour for walking in the garden. The First Standing asks
for a reading from the Mouth. If you would have lavishly from her purse, hurry lest
she grows too impatient to wait!”
The door gave upon a narrow entryway, and the woman in green propelled Tamisan toward
a second opening directly facing her. She came so into a large room where a circle
of couches was centered. By each stood a small table now burdened with dishes which
serving maids were bearing away as if a meal had just been concluded. And tall candlesticks,
matching Tamisan’s own height, stood also between the divans, the candles in each,
as thick as her forearm, alight to give forth not only radiance but a sweet odor as
they burned.
Midpoint in the divan circle was a tall-backed chair over which arched a canopy. And
in that sat a woman, a goblet in her hand. She had a fur cloak pulled about her shoulders
hiding almost all of her robe, save that here and there a shimmer of gold caught fire
from the candlelight. Only her face was visible in a hood of the same metallic-seeming
fabric, and it was that of the very old, seamed with deep wrinkles, sunken of eye.
The divans, Tamisan marked, were occupied by both men and women, the women flanking
the chair, the men farthest away from the ancient noblewoman. And directly facing
her was a second impressive chair, lacking only the canopy; before it was a table
on which stood, at each of its four corners, four small basins, one cream, one pale
rose, one faintly blue, and the fourth sea-foam green.
Tamisan’s store of knowledge gave her some preparation.
This was the setting for the magic of a Mouth, and it was apparent that her service
as a foreseer was about to be demanded. What had she done in allowing herself to be
drawn here? Could she make pretense her servant well enough to deceive this company?
“I hunger, Mouth of Olava, I hunger—not for that which will feed the body, but for
that which satisfies the mind.” The old woman leaned forward a little. Her voice might
be the thin one of age, but it carried with it the force of authority, of one who
has not had her word or desire questioned for a long time.
She must improvise, Tamisan knew. She was a dreamer and she had wrought in dreams
many strange things. Let her but remember that now. Her damp skirts clung clammily
to her legs and thighs as she came forward, saying nothing to the woman in return,
but seating herself in the chair facing her client. She was drawing on faint stirrings
of a memory which seemed not truly her own for guidance, though she had not yet realized
that fully.
“What would you know, First Standing?” She raised her hands to her forehead in an
instinctive gesture, touching forefingers to her temples, right and left.
“What comes to me—and mine.” The last two words had come almost as an afterthought.
Tamisan’s hands went out without her conscious ordering. She stifled her amazement—this
was as if she were repeating an act as well learned as her dreamer’s technique had
been. With her left hand she gathered up a palm full of the sand from the cream bowl.
It was a shade or two darker than the container. She tossed this with a sharp movement
of her wrist, and it settled smoothly as a film on the tabletop.
What she was doing was not of her concious mind, as if another had taken charge of
her actions. And judging by the way the woman in the chair leaned forward, the hush
that had fallen on her companions, this was right and proper.
Without any order from her mind, Tamisan’s right hand went now to the blue bowl with
its dark blue sand. But this was not tossed. Instead, she held the fine grains in
her fist and that upright, passing it slowly over the table top so that a very tiny
trickle of grit fed down to make a pattern on the first film.
And it was a pattern, not a random scattering. What she had so drawn was a recognizable
sword with a basket-shaped hilt and a slightly curved blade tapering to a narrow point.
Now her hand moved to the pink bowl. The sand she gathered up there was a dark red,
more vivid than the other colors, as if she dealt now with flecks of newly shed blood.
Once more she used her upheld fist, and the shifting stream, fed from her palm, became
a space ship! It was slightly different in outline from those she had seen all her
life, but it was unmistakably a ship. And it was drawn on the table top as if it threatened
to descend upon the pointed sword. Or was it that the sword threatened it?
She heard a gasp of surprise—or was it fear? But that sound had not come from the
woman who had bade her foretell. It must have broken from some other member of the
company intent upon Tamisan’s painting with the flowing sand.
It was to the fourth bowl now that her right hand moved. But she did not take up a
full fistful, rather a generous pinch between thumb and forefinger. She held the sand
high above the picture and released it. The green specks floated down—to gather in
a sign like a circle with one portion missing.
She stared at that, and it seemed to alter a little under the intentness of her watching.
What it had changed to was a symbol she knew well, one which brought a small gasp
from her. It was the seal, simplified it was true, but still readable, of the House
of Starrex, and it overlaid both the edge of the ship and the tip of the sword.
“Read you this!” The noblewoman demanded sharply.
And from somewhere the words came readily to Tamisan. “The sword is the sword of Ty-Kry
raised in defense.”
“Assured, assured.” The murmur ran along the divans.
“The ship comes as a danger—”
“That thing—a ship? But it is no ship—”
“It is a ship from the stars.”
“A woe—woe and woe—” That was no murmur now but a full-throated cry of fright. “As
in the days of our fathers when we had to deal with the false ones. Ahta—let the spirit
of Ahta be shield to our arms, a sword in our hands!”
The noblewoman made a silencing gesture with one hand. “Enough! Crying to the reverend
spirits may bring comfort, but they are not noted for helping those not standing to
arms on their own behalf. There have been other sky ships since Ahta’s days, and with
them we have dealt—to
our
purpose. If another comes, we are forewarned, which is also forearmed. But what lies
there in green, O Mouth of Olava, which surprised even you?”
Tamisan had had precious moments in which to think. If it were true as she had deduced,
that she was tied to this world by those she had brought with her, then she must find
them. And it was clear that they were not of this company. Therefore this last must
be made to work for her.
“The green sign is that of a champion, one meant to be mighty in the coming battle.
But he shall not be known save when the sign points to him, and it may be that this
can only be seen by one with the Eyes.”
She looked to the noblewoman, and meeting those old eyes, Tamisan felt a small chill
rise in her, one which had not been born from the still damp clothing she wore. For
there was that in those two shadowed eyes which questioned coldly and did not accept
without proof.
“So should the one with the Eyes you speak of go sniffing all through Ty-Kry and the
land beyond the city, even to the boundaries of the world?”
“If need be,” Tamisan stood firm.
“A long journey, mayhap, and many step-strides into danger. And if the ship comes
before this champion is found? A thin cord I think, O Mouth, on which to hang the
future of a city, a kingdom or a people. Look if you will, but I say we have more
tested ways of dealing with these interlopers from the skies. But, Mouth, since you
have given warning, let it so be remembered.”
She put her hands on the arms of her chair and arose, using them to lever her. And
so all her company came to their feet, two of the women hurrying to her so that she
could lay her hands upon their shoulders to support her out. Without another glance
at Tamisan she went, nor did the dreamer rise to see her go. For suddenly she was
spent, tired as she had been in the past when a dream broke and left her supine and
drained. Only this dream did not break, but kept her sitting before the table and
its sand pictures, looking at that green symbol, still caught fast in the web of another
world.
The woman in green returned, bearing a goblet in her two hands, offering it to Tamisan.
“The First Standing will go to the High Castle and the Over-Queen. She turned into
that road. Drink, Tamisan, and mayhap the Over-Queen herself will ask you for a seeing.”
Tamisan? That was her true name. Twice this woman had called her by it. How was it
known in a dream? Yet she dared not ask that question or any of the others she needed
answers for. Instead she drank from the goblet, finding the liquid hot and spicy,
driving the chill from her body.
There was so much she must learn, must know, and she could not discover it save indirectly,
lest she reveal what she was and was not.
“I am tired.”
“There is a resting place prepared,” the woman said. “You have only to come—”
Tamisan had almost to lever herself up as the noblewoman had done. She was giddy,
had to catch at the back of the chair. Then she moved after her hostess, hoping desperately
to know . . .
D
ID
one sleep in a dream, dream upon dream, perhaps? Tamisan wondered about that as she
stretched out upon the couch her hostess showed her. Yet when she set aside her crown
and laid her head upon the roll which served as a pillow, she was once more alert,
her thoughts racing or entangled in such wild confusion that she felt as giddy as
she had upon rising from her seer’s chair.
The Starrex symbol overlying both that of the sword and the space ship in the sand
picture—could it mean that she would only find what she sought when the might of this
world met that of the starmen? And had she indeed in some manner fallen into the past
where she would relive the first coming of the space voyagers to Ty-Kry? But no, the
noblewoman had mentioned past encounters with them which had ended in favor of Ty-Kry.
Tamisan tried to envision a world of her own time, but one in which history had taken
a different road. Yet much of that around tier was of the past. Did that mean that,
without the decisions of her own time, the world of Ty-Kry remained largely unchanged
from century to century?
Real, unreal, old, now—she had lost all a dreamer’s command of action. Tamisan did
not play now with toys which she could move about at will, but rather was caught up
in a series of events she could not foresee and over which she had no control. Yet
twice the woman had called her by her rightful name—and without willing it she had
used the devices of a Mouth of Olava to foretell, as if she had done so many times
before.
Could it be? Tamisan closed her teeth upon her lower lip and felt the pain of that,
just as she felt the pain of the bruises left by her abrupt entrance into the mysterious
here. Could it be that some dreams were so deep, so well woven that they were to the
dreamer real? Was this indeed the fate of those “closed” dreamers who were worthless
for the Hive? Did they in their trances live a countless number of lives? But she
was not a closed dreamer—
Awake! Once more, stretched as she was upon the couch, she used the proper technique
to throw herself out of a dream. And once more she experienced that weird nothingness
in which she spun sickeningly, as if held helplessly in some void, tied to an anchor
which kept her back from the full leap to sane safety. There was only one explanation—that
somewhere in this strange Ty-Kry one or both of those who had prepared to share her
dream was now to be found and must be sought out before she could return.
So—the sooner that she accomplished, the better! But where should she start seeking?
Though a feeling of weakness clung to her limbs, making her move slowly as if she
strove to walk against the pull of a strong current, Tamisan arose from the couch.
She turned to pick up her Mouth’s crown and so looked into the oval of a mirror, startled
thus into immobility. For the figure she looked upon as her own reflection was not
that she had seen before.