Sharon Lee: Adventures in the Liaden Universe. Collaterial Adventures

Panopele strained, stretching toward the edge of the song, the limit of Naratha’s will. The blot shimmered, growing; the malice of its answering song all at once plain.

Far below, the body of Panopele gasped, interrupting the song. The scintillance of the star-lanes paled into a blur; there was a rush of sound, un-song-like, and Panopele was joltingly aware of cold feet, laboring lungs, the drumbeat of her heart. Her throat hurt, and she was thirsty.

A warm cloak was draped across her shoulders, clasped across her throat. Warm hands pressed her down into the wide seat of the ancient wooden Singer’s Chair. In her left ear the novice Fanor murmured, “I have water, Voice. Will you drink?”

Drink she would and drink she did, the cool water a joy.

“Blessings on you,” she rasped and lay her left hand over his heart in Naratha’s full benediction. Fanor was one of the two who wept in the song.

“Voice.” He looked away, as he always did, embarrassed by her notice.

“Will you rest here, Voice? Or return to temple?” That was Lietta, who danced, and was doubtless herself in need of rest.

Truth told, rest was what Panopele wanted. She was weary; drained, as the song sometimes drained one; and dismayed in her heart, she wanted to sleep, here and now among the dewy evening. To sleep and awake believing that the blot she had detected was no more than a woman’s fallible imagining.

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 from that direction. That knowledge fed her strength 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 remaining water jugs; Panopele stopped him with a gesture.

“One approaches,” she told him. “You are swiftest. Run ahead, and be ready to offer welcome.”

One glance 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 arm, her face still wet with tears.

“My willing support, Voice,” she said, as ritual demanded, though 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 arm of her escort.

THERE WAS OF COURSE nothing resembling 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 warm her.

Frowning, omnipresent ache centered over her eyes, Montet brought the Scout ship down. Her orbital scans had identified two large clusters of life and industry—cities, perhaps—and a third, smaller, cluster, which nonetheless put forth more energy than either of its larger cousins.

Likely, it was a manufactory of some kind, Montet thought, and home of such technology as the planet might muster. She made it her first target, by no means inclined to believe it her last.

She came to ground in a gold and green field a short distance from her target. She tended her utility belt while the hull cooled, then rolled out into a crisp, clear morning.

The target 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 atmosphere slightly lower in oxygen than Liad’s. Checking her stride, she bounced, verifying the scan’s assertion of a gravity field somewhat lighter than that generated by the homeworld.

Topping the rise, she looked down at the target, which was not a manufactory at all, but only a large building, and various outbuildings, clustered companionably together. To her right hand, fields were laid out. To her left, the grassland continued until it met a line of silvery trees, brilliant in the brilliant day.

And 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 came riding 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-knew-what, no matter how desperate her difficulty. There was no one here who was the equal—who was the master—of the thing in her ship’s hold. How could there be? She hovered on the edge of doing damage past counting. Better to return to her ship, quickly; rise to orbit and get about setting the warning beacons.

…and yet, the legends, she thought—and then all indecision was swept away, for the plain white wall she faced showed a crack, then a doorway, framing a man. His pale robe was rumpled, wet and stained with grass. 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 hem, were bare.

He was taller than she, and strongly built, she could not guess his age, beyond placing him in that nebulous region 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, palm up. “Has the house any comfort for a stranger?”

Surprise showed at the edges of the man’s face. His hands rose, tracing a 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 coming,” the man continued. “The Voice will speak with you.” He paused, hands moving through another pattern. “Of comfort, I cannot promise, stranger. I hear a dark chanting upon the air.”

Well he might hear just that, Montet thought grimly, especially if he were a Healer-analog. 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 room, like the hall, was brightly lit, the shine of light along the white walls and floor adding to the misery of her headache. Deliberately, she used the Scout’s mental relaxation drill and felt the headache inch, grudgingly, 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.