The Ring Оf Fire. The Wolf Bell

FIVE

Tra. Hoppa’s house rose tall and narrow, alone at the edge of the village. Not attached to other houses, it found its own shelter in the ancient grove of twisted plum trees that had been there even before the Herebian Wars, before Burgdeeth was built.

People said Tra. Hoppa was the only woman in Burgdeeth who didn’t work for her keep. As if teaching a bunch of fidgeting boys wasn’t work! The Landmaster sent only the youngest girls to tend her housegarden, thinking they wouldn’t be curious about the history of Ere, wouldn’t hunger to learn to read. For no Cloffi woman could read or do more than the simplest ciphering.

Zephy had been only five when she tended Tra. Hoppa’s first garden; but Tra. Hoppa had made it easy for her, in her quiet way, to reach out: when the lessons began secretly they were wonderful to Zephy, who had been told all her short life that little girls did not yearn after reading and history, that only boys could attempt such tasks.

But now, it was getting more difficult each day for Zephy and Meatha to make their way to Tra. Hoppa’s unseen. The excuses, when they were stopped by a Deacon, had become harder to think up. “What are you doing away from your garden? Why are you not in your sculler, threshing mawzee, baking bread?” There was a limit to how many times you could blame it on a loose donkey or an errand for Mama that might be checked on.

Yet they needed these times with Tra. Hoppa. The Cloffi teachings in Temple were so depressing. Evil and sinning was all the Luff’Eresi seemed concerned about, and humans were weak vessels indeed, if you believed all the Covenants and rituals. Only when they were with Tra. Hoppa did they see, fleetingly, dignity and strength in humankind. Without Tra. Hoppa, they might have grown as sour as the dullest Cloffi woman.

Tra. Hoppa’s house had just one room to a floor, the ground floor making the kitchen with a sitting place and a table, the next floor the lesson-room, and the third floor, the loft, Tra. Hoppa’s bedroom and study. That a woman should have books and a study was suspect among the other women of Burgdeeth. Perhaps they tolerated it partly because Tra. Hoppa was not a Cloffa but Carriolinian, and those of Carriol had an aura about them that seemed to soften even the staid Cloffi women. Tra. Hoppa had been the only foreigner allowed residence in Burgdeeth—until the Kubalese came. She was the only woman who had ever occupied the position of teacher. But in spite of her sex and her learning, there was a grudging respect for Tra. Hoppa, for she spoke quietly, did not raise her voice in temper, kept her eyes cast down when in public. Only in the loft, where the real books were hidden, did she come truly alive. Then there was nothing docile about her, she was as bright and eager as a child.

The girls stood in her stone kitchen, out of breath as Tra. Hoppa closed the door behind them. Little and thin and wrinkled she was, her white hair tied in the traditional bun. But she moved with quick eagerness, and her deep blue eyes were not the eyes of an aged woman at all. “Come quickly, then. I’ve such a surprise for you.”

The furnishings of the loft were simple. Below the window was a long floor cushion covered with Zandourian weaving in bright colors and a low chair for Tra. Hoppa. At the other end of the room, Tra. Hoppa’s bed was tucked between the bookshelves.

Always in this room Zephy felt freed from Burgdeeth: here she felt she could touch the farthest shores of Ere and touch times long past Sometimes, here, she could nearly comprehend the vague plane on which the gods dwelt, the plane that came closer only in the years the star Waytheer was close. Here she could give rein to the feelings that made life in Burgdeeth tolerable; feelings which, at the same time, drove her into a passion to leave Burgdeeth behind forever.

The surprise must be a forbidden book; yet that was hard to believe, for it could only have been brought secretly by a trader, and there had been few in the last weeks. Zephy hoped that was it, though: Meatha needed something to take her mind off the vision that had haunted her constantly, turning her pale and silent

“It is the Book of the Drowning Land,” Tra. Hoppa said, drawing forth a frail, leather-bound volume. “I have it from that trader with oil from Sangur—we have . . . mutual friends in Carriol. It tells all the history and the myths of Ere from the point where the Book of Three Cities leaves off, just as it is told in Carriol; tells of the Drowning of Opensa. . .”

When Tra. Hoppa had finished reading to them, Zephy sat staring before her, seeing the island of Opensa, honeycombed with caves that made the ancient city; hearing the earth rumble and seeing it shake as the island began to crack. She could see the gods and their consorts leaping into the sky as the mythical sea god, SkokeDirgOg, sank Opensa in a shower of thunder.

Tra. Hoppa laid the book down and sat quietly studying Meatha. Meatha looked up once, then looked down at her hands again. Zephy started to speak, but the old lady stopped her with a look. “Meatha, you are troubled; will you tell me?”

Meatha fiddled with the fringe on the floor pad, hesitating for a long time. Then, “Do you remember when I had a vision and was too young to know I shouldn’t tell? And you stopped me?”

“Of course I do.”

“I never told you, Tra. Hoppa, but it happened to me twice after that, when I was old enough to understand. I didn’t want you to have to know. But now it has happened again, and it was so much stronger, not even like the others. It was as if I was there, first here in Burgdeeth and then on the mountain. I could feel the cold wind and smell the mountains, and there was sablevine rusty on the rocks as if it was early winter. I have to tell you, Tra. Hoppa. There’s no one else except Zephy, and I’m so afraid.”

Tra. Hoppa looked at Meatha for a long moment, then rose to stand staring out the window. When at last she turned back to them, she knelt down on the mat and took Meatha’s hands.

“Don’t ever be afraid, child. Not for yourself, not for me. Tell me now, you were on the mountain . . .”

Meatha, fragile and trembling, made Zephy want to hit out at something. How could the will of the Luff’Eresi demand that Meatha die at the death stone for something she could no more help than breathing?

When Meatha finished her story, Tra. Hoppa looked as drawn and pale as she. Had Meatha’s vision opened some private and uneasy place in Tra. Hoppa’s own thoughts?

“What am I to do?” Meatha asked quietly.

“Do, child?” Tra. Hoppa put her arm around Meatha. “You are to do as you have always done. You are to say nothing. You are to act in no way different from any other Cloffi girl, no matter how hard that is. And above all, you are not to be afraid. This is no evil that has visited you, it is something wonderful. You have no cause to be ashamed of it. Only you must be wary that no one learns what you have seen.”

Meatha stared back and bit her lip. “Maybe someone else already knows that I—what I am,” she said softly. “Maybe the Kubalese knows.”

“He couldn’t!” Zephy breathed.

“He watches me more than I ever told you, Zephy.”

“Yes he does,” Tra. Hoppa said. “I have seen him. And he watches the younger children, too. They take his candy, and some of them follow him, but they don’t like him much. And some of them, little Elodia Trayd for one, keep out of his way. Haven’t you noticed that?”

“Yes,” Zephy said. “And something else about Elodia. Yesterday she gave me such a strange look, so—so knowing.” She shivered. It had bothered her, she had waked in the night thinking about the child’s cool, gray-eyed stare. She had taken Mama’s shoes to be sewn, and Elodia was standing with two other little girls in front of the Cobbler’s, watching the old men play stones. The frail old men, retired from their masterships, had stood in a semicircle casting the stone across the cobbles in the sun, making bets. Half a dozen little boys had watched as they had been told, silent and docile as sheep.

Except Elodia Trayd. She wasn’t docile, she had stared up at Zephy boldly, her gray eyes kindling; and Zephy had seen something in that little face almost like herself there, something crying out wildly. “It was almost as if she felt my anger that the girl children had to be so docile, that they were so obedient,” Zephy said.

“There’s another one like that,” Meatha said. “And he stays away from the Kubalese, too. I was watching Kearb-Mattus play with some children, hiding red rags as they do in the Burgdeeth Horse mock hunt in the springtime. He had hidden one rag in a barrel. I could see it, but the children were too short. The little boy, Graged Orden, started for the barrel as if he knew the rag was there, then all at once he went pale. He turned, looked at the Kubalese watching him, and ran away out of the street as if he was terrified. He has avoided the Kubalese since. I’ve seen him slip around corners to get out of his way.”

“I wish the Kubalese had never come to Burgdeeth,” Tra. Hoppa said. “That trader brought me more than the forbidden book, he brought rumors that are unsettling. It is said in the south that Kubla is arming for war.”

“Against who?” Zephy said, going cold.

“It would not be Carriol,” Tra. Hoppa said. “They are too strong.”

“Cloffi,” Meatha breathed. “Cloffi and Urobb and Farr all lie on the Kubalese border.”

“And if they attack one,” Zephy said slowly, “they will attack all three.”

They stared at each other, the thought of war chilling them. “It is only rumors,” Tra. Hoppa said. “But I would wish you two away if such a thing should happen.”

Then she smiled. “Come, there’s otter-herb tea brewing, and nightberry muffins made with berries from the mountain. Young Thorn of Dunoon brought them down.”

Thorn of Dunoon?

But of course, he came to Tra. Hoppa for lessons. In turn, be taught the younger children of Dunoon. And, Zephy wondered suddenly, what kind of lessons did Thorn of Dunoon receive? Ordinary ones, like the boys of Burgdeeth? Or did Thorn come to the loft and read the secret books as she and Meatha did?

She had no reason to suspect such a thing. And she would never ask. Yet—perhaps Thorn of Dunoon was the kind of boy Tra. Hoppa would teach with great interest.