The Knight

Chapter 26. The Second Item And The Third

“Very well, let us move on to the next item. You brought a glass tube, as well as the goblet, back from the lime tree. Certainly it must have struck you that I would see it sooner or later. Are you going to let me examine it?”

I said, “After we had talked about the other things, I thought.” It had been pretty well hidden in the long grass, and it was green anyway. But I picked it up and passed it to Garsecg. “There’s a paper rolled up inside.” He nodded. “Did you break the seal?”

I told him there had not been any, and Uri leaned over to look. Baki came over so she could see better. They did not have anything on, then or after, and it was hard for me not to look at certain places, but I did it.

Garsecg pulled out the stopper and took out the paper. “It is a scroll,” he told us. “A kind of book.” He was untying the strings.

“I untied them too,” I said, “but they were tied just like that.”

“Did you read it?”

I shook my head. “I looked at it, but I can’t read that kind of writing.”

“Nor can I. This is the script of Celidon, presumably.”

He handed the scroll to Baki, who said, “Huh-uh. I can read our writing, but not this stuff.”

Uri snuggled closer. “If Baki cannot, I cannot.”

Garsecg took the scroll from Baki, rolled it up again and tied it, and put it back into the tube. “This may be the testament of the woman whose bones we found, but I have no way of knowing. You may keep it if you like, Sir Able, or return it to its place.”

After I had put it back under the tree, I asked if he thought she knew she was going to die.

Garsecg pointed to the goblet. “When one finds a cup beside a body, one assumes poison. That was why I advised you to rinse it thoroughly, although it has certainly been weathering here for a long time. If she was poisoned, she may have poisoned herself, and grasped her testament until she died.”

I tried to imagine why a woman would kill herself in such a beautiful place.

“You may have more questions about this. Ask them if you like, but I confess I have no more answers.”

“You said you’d seen the bones,” I reminded him. “Did you see that glass tube too?”

He shook his head. “I looked around, but the sun was only just coming up. I did not see it.”

“You were talking about a big war when the Aelf drove out Setr.” I said it like that because I thought Garsecg did not want Uri and Baki to know who he really was. So I felt like I was being smart, but Uri started shaking and I had to promise her I would not say the name any more.

“We were supposed to die,” she told me. “If we came up here, we were supposed to die.” Baki said that, too.

“He forgives you,” Garsecg told them. I could see they did not understand, but the way he said it made them believe it, or almost.

“A thousand of your years have passed since that war,” Garsecg told me. “I can give you a wealth of detail, if you want it. But do you?”

“I guess not. Only I was thinking about that woman. Those bones can’t have been here that long, can they?”

“In this well-watered place? Certainly not.”

“Then the person who built this skyscraper we’re on didn’t put her up here?”

“Who can say? A thousand years here might be a hundred in Aelfrice, or even less.”

Baki said, “Besides, he comes back. Let’s not talk about him at all.”

I was thinking hard. For one thing it seemed to me like the woman might have been shipwrecked, but if she had been, why did she kill herself? I asked Garsecg again about the top of the skyscraper being an island in Mythgarthr, and he said again that it was. Then I said, “All right, if it’s an island, why don’t I hear the sea? I haven’t heard the sea the whole time we’ve been up here.”

“When it is calm, as it often is, it makes no great noise.”

“Well, I’m going to look. You stay here with these sick girls.”

Really humbly Baki said, “Uri and Baki, Lord. I am Baki.” That was when I got them straight. I never did get them mixed up again after that.

Garsecg shook his head, meaning he was not going to stay, but I did not pay any attention. The sun was still only halfway up the sky, so to keep it out of my eyes I turned my back to it and went west. I broke twigs and let them hang every hundred steps or so, and after a while I heard Garsecg behind me. He said, “Why do you do that?”

I did not look. “So I can find my way back, of course.”

“And why do you want to go back?”

“Because those girls are sick, and we ought to be taking care of them. I was hoping you’d stay with them and do it.”

“The Aelf have struggled to free themselves from the monster called Kulili throughout their history. You are their last hope, and their best. I am not letting you out of my sight—no, not for ten thousand puking maidens.”

I had stopped to look at a tree of a shade of green I had never seen before. I am sure it came from Aelfrice, but it was so fresh and new-looking that it seemed like God had just made it. Like He had planted it a minute before I got there. It had blue and purple flowers, and the long feelers or whatever you call them inside the flowers were bright red. I have never seen another one like it, and I have remembered it all this time.

Anyway, I heard Garsecg laugh behind me, but I still did not look at him. But when I started walking again I asked if we were going the right way.

“I have no means of knowing. Or say, rather, that I know that any direction will prove right if we cleave to it long enough. This may be the shortest way. It may be the longest. In any event, it will take us to the sea in the end.”

“I still don’t hear any waves.”

“Nor do I. But if we continue as we have begun, we will hear them if there are any.”

I thought about that, and the weather. There was hardly any wind, and so I said, “That’s right, it’s pretty calm.”

“It is, and it is in just such weather as this that this isle is most often sighted by seamen. It is a thing of heat and calm, most often seen at twilight.”

“If it’s too calm to sail, couldn’t they row here?”

“They could, and some do.”

I had been pretty mad at Garsecg because he had gone away and left Uri and Baki to take care of themselves. But I got to thinking about all the things he had done for me, and how I had left them just as much as he had. So I stopped and motioned for him to catch up to me, and we walked together a little. We were in the shade of the trees all that time.

Before long we came to where the shade was only spotty, sunshine coming through the leaves in bright patches, sort of dappled. Then it seemed like something a whole lot bigger than Garsecg was walking beside me. Only it was not.

It was not really like a snake, and it was not really like a bird either. But I have to write those because they are as close as I can get. It was beautiful, and terribly scary. I do not remember all the colors and they changed anyway, but the thing was that whatever colors there were, were the darkest those colors could ever be. The blue was darker than black usually is, and so was the gold, a sort of brown gold with a deep, deep luster you felt like you could fall into. And dark, like you had seen something gold in the middle of a storm, but nowhere near as real as smoke.

I could hardly see Garsecg at all right then, but he looked like he was about to laugh. I told him I liked him better when he was Garsecg.

“I know.”

“That’s what you really are, isn’t it? You’re Setr. Are you really from the world under Aelfrice?”

“I am. Will you turn aside for a step or two now, Sir Able? There is something to be seen here more important than any view of the sea, and if you will consent I will show it to you.”

I felt like I had already seen something important, but I said I would.