The Constant Tower. Carole McDonnell
Читать онлайн книгу.
answered, “What is ‘reason?’ It fails us always. It failed me. For had I used heart-sense instead of reasoning, I would have seen the old man’s scheming from afar. It is my own fault that all these innocents across Odunao have lost their lives. I should have heard the girl’s heart and married her, should have.…” Self-recrimination and sobbing overwhelmed his words and he lay on the floor and wept.
“Are you entirely to blame?” Ephan asked. “He sent Tzaddi to me after we returned. The very one I had longed for. In the meadow, I lay with her, amazed that one so beautiful, so regal, would lie with me. And yet, as I think back, I see clearly that the old chief was trying to seduce me as well, and was planning to betray us and to kill our mothers. So I was as foolish, as unreasonable, as you.”
Psal walked to the window where Tsbosso’s staff leaned. Geometric engravings carved on it marked events in their friendship, oaths of loyalty, and even private jokes. Before that day, Psal had imagined the Peacock Clan his haven, and Tsbosso’s longhouse his true home. But now—tears blurred that memory. He pushed the thought away and raised the staff high. He tried to break the staff—his heart also—tried to push away all hope of escaping the Wheel Clan royal longhouse. Three times he tried to break it. But the thing was made of hard wood and even harder memories; it would not break. He unsheathed his dagger and tried to hack it in two.
But Ephan took the staff from him. “Better to break the owner of this staff than the staff itself. Put aside all tears.”
PART II
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE IDEN Peacock Clan
CHAPTER 7
AN UNEXPECTED TOWER
During the next two years, the war waged on. Warfare, congenital illnesses, and Tomah had exacerbated the illness—and claimed the lives—of many studiers. Many, like Mion, were dispersed from their home sub-clans. Only Psal and Ephan remained in the royal longhouse. Fewer in number, the studiers’ duties narrowed to tending the wounded, tracking towers, and war communications. The Wintersea Master, too, had died, but not the wanderlust he had poured into the spirits of his charges. Those fires remained alive within Psal, along with his love for Cassia and his desire to prove himself worthy of becoming a chief.
When the war began, each Wheel Clan longhouse warred against the Peacock sub-clan that had devastated it. But as longhouse after longhouse became decimated or destroyed in battle, many Wheel Clan longhouses merged. Moreover, many Peacock sub-clans not part of the original treachery allied themselves with Tsbosso. War flourished and so plagued Odunao that the neutral Falconer, Macaw, Grassrope, and Waymaker clans continually attempted to effect a truce between the warring clans; but to no avail.
It happened then that one day, in the second month of the year, the Qerys longhouse was engaged in a battle with the powerful Full Blossom Peacock longhouse, the Peacock sub-clan Cassia had married into. Throughout that day and sleepless night, as the royal longhouse keened toward a home region, and as the studiers tended to warriors newly rescued from Chief Orian’s longhouse, Psal’s mind was set on these two towers. He sent more queries to Renan, the Qerys studier, than to all other battling longhouses. In the morning, when most of the Wheel Clan towers sang victory or rest, the Qerys tower was faint. Moreover, its tower song was undirected and the tower itself had missed its home port, docking instead in a nearby region.
Pacing, weary from sleeplessness, Psal climbed the tower staircase to the rampart to see if Renan or any warrior of the Qerys had sent a smoke signal but no smoke darkened the horizon. The Qerys has landed in a valley. The lack of smoke doesn’t necessarily mean all are dead. Caverns abound there. If they remained there, protected from the night—but they need pharma.
He looked out over the burial grounds in the far distance. The air was redolent with the aroma of orchard fruits, the scent of the lake, and the odor of burned flesh from pyre burnings. In the near orchards, nets swayed under the trees catching fruit windfall. The lovely Waterfall home region had become a place to bury chiefs and burn corpses.
Psal turned his face to the east, listened. The tower wails of itself; No one directs it. Does Renan yet live? Faint though the Qerys tower was, he heard it. Its tower music was fading fast. Perhaps Lan could reach them. He’s swift. Using the horses in the longhouse and in the home field corrals? Too far a journey, though. Even the fastest horse will not return before the third moon reaches its height. And, what do our warriors know of mixing pharma? Perhaps Ephan…but Ephan’s been working all night. And Cassia, Cassia. Your tower weeps.
Psal closed his eyes and listened. An unexpected tower song arose. He descended the stair again. Why do we not know how to keen in the daytime? We will have to wait for night to keen the Qerys to a home region.
“Daris!” he called.
The boy appeared at the door, his yellow tunic stained with blood. Pale, white-haired, eight-year-old Daris was the son of the comfort woman Lyrenna and had been born with the Wheel Clan’s evil. Had not war prevented it, he would’ve been a studier, learning from one of the old masters.
“Chief Studier,” he said, “Ephan says he’s already told you all he knows. Therefore if you’ve called me to relay your question about the Qerys and the Full Blossom, he will not answer it. He also says—”
“Tell him to come now.”
The boy wiped his bloody hand on his tunic. “He won’t.”
Psal shouted in the corridor. “Cloud! I’ve heard another tower. Come now!”
“He has an answer for that as well.”
“Don’t you have duties to attend to? Garlic and fig poultices to make?”
“Already made. I was about to take inventory of our pharma after leaving the sick room.”
“Oh? Well, then…do the inventory. And after…try to sleep.”
The child frowned. “Are Chief Orian’s rescued warriors to live with us?”
“It seems so. Nahas has his reasons, I suppose.”
“Orian is hard to endure, is he not?”
“Quite hard to endure.” Psal raised his voice. “Cloud! Have you not heard me?”
Moments later, Ephan appeared, his tunic also stained with blood. He leaned against a nearby wall as if the wall alone could hold him up.
“Did you hear this other tower?” Psal picked up a spyglass from a nearby shelf.
“I have.”
“Remember the day I thought I charted a Falconer tower and it turned out to be a Peacock tower. Could it be…I was wondering…maybe Cassia’s tower added some false notes to their own song. The Peacock Clans have been experimenting with coded and musical interference—”
“While it is true that the Peacock Clans have learned some tricks from the Mockingbird clans, it is not a Peacock tower. Truly, Storm, is this why you’ve called me?”
Psal pointed to the forest. “Then, a night-tossed tower’s nearby. Several different rhythms, but primarily Peacock rhythms.”
“Sleeplessness has made you wary. The Peacock Clans are not ‘upon’ us ready to strike. Now, may I return to my sick room?”
“You’ve taken Rangi,” Psal observed. “You’re always nasty when its influence begins to wane. Even if it helps you bear your duties better, you must avoid it. Daris imitates us and—”
“I have not enslaved myself to Rangi. But you.…” Ephan took a deep breath. “You exasperate me, Storm. All night and morning you have been agitated worrying for Cassia. If Nahas suspected.…”
“My only concern is this stray Peacock tower in our fields,” Psal defended himself.
“Give me the parchment.” Ephan slowly slid down the wall to sit. A gray parchment that tracked the warring Peacock Towers lay near, but he reached for a blue one and a yellow chart that noted changes in level two