you’re the masters of Ansul. That makes us slaves.”
“You don’t do anything I tell you to do,” he said. “You aren’t any kind of slave.”
He had a point there.
We had come out of the stableyard and were walking under the high north wall of the main house. It was built of massive squared stones for ten feet up from the ground; above that was a story of finer stonework with tall double-arched windows, and high above that carved cornices supported the deep eaves of the slate roof. He glanced up at it several times, quickly, askance, the way a horse eyes something that spooks him.
We came round into the forecourt, which goes the whole width of the house. It’s raised a step above the street and separated from it by a line of arcaded columns. The pavement is of polished stones, grey and black, firtted into a complex geometrical pattern, a maze. Ista told me how they used to dance the maze on the first day of the year, the spring equinox, in the old days, singing to Iene who blesses growing things. The pavement was dirty; dust and leaf litter had blown across it. It was a big job to sweep it. I tried sometimes, but I never could keep it clean. Simme started to walk across the maze.
“Get off that!” I said. He jumped, and followed me down the step between the columns into the street, staring with a startled, innocent look, almost like the kittens.
“Demons,” I said with a grin, a snarl, gesturing to the grey-and-black pattern of the stones. He didn’t even see it.
“What’s that!” he said. He was looking at the stump of the Oracle Fountain.
The fountain is to the right as you face the great doors. The basin is green serpentine—Lero’s stone—ten feet or so across. The water had sprung from a central jet; the bronze spout stuck up, now, out of a marble lump so broken and disfigured you could hardly see that it had once been shaped as an urn and carved with watercress leaves and lilies. Dust and dead leaves lay in the basin.
“A fountain full of demon water,” I said. “It ran dry centuries ago. But your soldiers smashed it all the same, to get the demons out.”
“You don’t have to talk about demons all the time,” he said sullenly.
“Oh but look,” I said, “see, around the base of the urn, those little carvings? Those are words. That’s writing. Writing’s black magic. Written words are all demons, aren’t they? You want to go nearer and read them? Want to see some demons close up?”
“Come on, Mem,” he said. “Layoff.” He glared at me, hurt and resentful, That was what I wanted, wasn’t it?
“All right,” I said after a while. “But look, Simme. There isn’t any way we can be friends. Not till you can read what the fountain says. Not till you can touch that stone and ask blessing on my house.”
He looked at the long, ivory-colored Sill Stone set into the center of the step, worn into a soft hollow by the hands that had touched it over all the centuries. I bent down now and touched it.
He said nothing. He turned at last and went away down Galva Street. I watched him go. There was no triumph in me. I felt defeated.
ORREC CAME TO DINNER that evening, recovered and hungry. We talked first of his recitation, he and Gry and I telling the Waylord what he had said and how the crowd had responded to it.
Sosta had been down to the market to hear him and now was swoonier than ever, gazing at him across the table with her face gone all soft and loose, till he had to take pity on her. He tried to joke, but that didn’t work, so he tried to turn her mind from him to her real future, asking where she would live after she married. She managed to explain that her betrothed had chosen to join our household and be a Galva. Orrec and Gry, who had a great interest in the ways people do things, asked all about our customs of marriage-bargain and chosen kinship. Mostly Sosta gazed, mute with adoration, and the Waylord answered; but when Ista sat down with us at table she had a chance to boast about her son-in-law to be, which she loved to do.
“It seems hard that he and Sosta can’t see each other all this time before the wedding,” Gry said. “Three months!”
“Betrothed couples used to be able to meet at any public occasion,” the Waylord explained. “But now we have no dances or festivals. So the poor things have to catch glances in passing…”
Sosta blushed and smirked. Her betrothed strolled by regularly with his friends every evening, just when Ista and Sosta and Bomi happened to be sitting out in the side court facing Galva Street to take the air.
After dinner the rest of us went to the little north court. We found Desac already there waiting. He came forward and took Orrec’s hands and called blessing on him. “I knew you’d speak for us!” he said. “The fuse is lit.”
“Let’s see what the Gand thinks of my performance,” said Orrec. “I might get a critical commentary.”
“Has he sent for you?” asked Desac, “Tomorrow? What time?”
“Late afternoon—is that right, Memer?”
I nodded.
“Will you go?” the Waylord asked.
“Of course,” said Desac.
“I can scarcely refuse,” Orrec said. “Though I could ask to postpone.” He looked at the Waylord, alert to catch the meaning of his question.
“You must go,” Desac said. “The timing is perfect.” His tone was brusque and military.
I could see Orrec didn’t like being told he must go.
He kept his eyes on the Waylord.
“No profit in postponement, I suppose,” the Waylord said. “But there may be some danger in going.”
“Should I go alone?”
“Yes,” Desac said.
“No,” Gry said in a calm, flat voice.
Orrec looked at me. “Everybody gives orders except us, Memer.”
’’’The gods love poets, for they obey the laws the gods obey,’” the Waylord said.
“Sulter, my friend, there’s danger in any undertaking,” Desac said with a kind of impatient compassion. “You’re walled up here, away from the life of the streets, the doings of the people. You live among shadows of ancient times and share their wisdom. But a time comes when wisdom is in action—when caution becomes destruction.”
“A time comes when the will to act defeats thought,” the Waylord said grimly.
“How long must I wait? There was no answer given!”
“Not to me.” The Waylord glanced very briefly at me.
Desac did not notice that. He was angry now. “Your oracle is not mine. I was not born here. Let books and children tell you what to do. I’ll use my head. If you distrust me as a foreigner you should have told me years ago. The people who are with me trust me. They know I never wanted anything but the freedom of Ansul and the restoration of the bond with Sundraman. Orrec Caspro knows that. He stands with me. I’ll go now. I’llcome back here to Galvamand when the city is free. Surely you’ll trust me then!”
He turned and strode out of the courtyard, not through the house but down the broken steps at the open north end. He turned the corner of the house and was gone. The Waylord stood silent, watching him.
After a long time Orrec asked, “Was I the fool who lit the fire?”
“No,” the Waylord said. “A spark from the flint, maybe. No blame in that.”
“If I go tomorrow I will go alone,” Orrec said, but the Waylord smiled a little and looked at Gry.
“You go, I go,” she said. “You know that.”
After a while Orrec said, “Yes, I do. But,” to the Waylord, “if I went too far today, the Gand may be forced to punish me, to show his power. Is that what you fear?”
The Waylord shook his head. “He’d have sent soldiers here. It’s Desac I fear. He will not wait for Lero.”
Lero is the ancient, sacred soul of the ground where our city stands. Lero is the moment of balance. Lero is a great round stone down in the Harbor Market, so poised that it might move at any time and yet has never moved.
The Waylord soon excused himself from us, saying he was tired. He gave me no sign to follow or come to him later. He went into the house, slow and lame, holding himself upright.
I woke again and again that night seeing the words in the book,
