Shifting Perspectives

The search for the young seraph had already reached the point where the same place was inspected for the third or fourth time. He was not found in any of the family chambers, nor in the state rooms, nor in the kitchens, offices and storerooms. Miriel led a group of attendants in the royal gardens, while the captain of the guard had his men search the stables and outbuildings. Pallando and Sâlian had gone out onto the plaza to look among the mansions of the Sixth Rung. In Hamûjil’s bedchamber, Majani clung to the little ones as if they, too, might disappear.

“I have no doubt he will be found soon,” said the Archseraph. “Remember how he got himself lost during the Lantern Festival?”

“That was different and you know it,” said Majani.

“Tell me from the start,” said Alatar.

“He was in the gardens,” said Majani. “He gets to play alone in the gardens every day, you know, to foster independence. And when Miriel went out to fetch him, she couldn’t find him. She thought he’d gone back inside by himself, because it was drizzling. But we couldn’t find him in the palace either. I don’t think he would run away, but what if he’s fallen into a well…?”

“What do the guards say?”

“There were no guards with him,” explained Hamûjil. “We used to have a couple of guards watch him discreetly from a distance, but now with the Krâ situation we are so short-staffed, and we thought it was quite safe... Of course there are guards on the perimeter of the palace grounds.”

“Could anyone sneak past them?”

“Probably, I’m afraid.”

“What are you saying?” wailed Majani. “You think he has been abducted?”

Alatar spread his hands. “The Archseraph was poisoned, Majani. Clearly there is a traitor among us. I fear it was reckless to let the boy out unguarded.”

Pallando and Sâlian had entered while Alatar spoke.

“A traitor?” said Sâlian. “Could that be…?” She exchanged looks with Pallando. “Do you remember that day on the Quack Run when we came from the exhibition?”

“Oh my, yes, I do.” Pallando shook his head slowly. “We saw two people on a bridge, a Kûzar woman and a stranger.  They seemed to have a clandestine meeting. The stranger may have been the ambassador, and Jarin thought she’d seen the woman at the palace before.”

“That’s not much to go on,” said Hamûjil.

“No, and it may have been nothing to do with all this. But we should be alert.”

By now, it was dark outside. Miriel set out on one more circuit round the gardens, calling Alamûjil’s’ name. She held her lantern high – it made no difference to the search but it just seemed the thing to do. There was, of course, no sign of the child now where there hadn’t been a sign previously. The gravel crunched under her feet and from the pink marble aviary came the piercing call of some peacock that hadn’t settled for the night yet. A scrap of moon flickered briefly and then was hidden again by the racing clouds. The drizzle turned into a downpour. Miriel shrugged and returned to the palace.

-oOoOo-

When the boy awoke, he was confused by the darkness and the strange smells. Then something brushed against his hand and he called out in fright. His cry was answered by a shriek that seemed familiar though he couldn’t remember what it was. Shrill, but nothing bad.

He realised he was lying down and one of his arms had gone numb underneath him. He sat up. There was movement in the darkness, and then he made out a vague, pale shape. When he placed a hand on the ground to steady himself, it touched something soft and moist. Suddenly, he remembered.

“Vani!” he whispered.

The pale shape came closer and leaned against him.

Later, after he had been hugged and bathed and hugged again, after he had told his story several times over, after he had eaten saffron cakes and drunk hot elderberry juice, he slept properly, as befitted a seraph, under the silk covers of his own bed. The adults sat watching him, unsure what to believe. Had he really escaped from hooded figures and found a hiding place all by himself? How could that possibly be true? Had he dreamt it? Was it a story he had invented and then come to think of as real? Miriel explained for the fifth time why she hadn’t thought of searching the aviary, even though nobody had disagreed with her the first time. Ninod sat still clutching the boy’s filthy clothes until Majani told her to take them to the laundry.

“We will probably never know,” said Hamûjil. “But we must be more vigilant than ever, and we must renew our efforts to track down the ambassador.”

“Not you!” muttered Alamûjil in his sleep, but when he was questioned again the next morning, he couldn’t tell who he had meant.

-oOoOo-

Three weeks on and the progress on the flute and on clearing the road through the pass were equally slow, the former because such was the nature of the process, the latter because heavy rain had caused further landslides. As one day shuffled into the next, Jarin began to lose her sense of urgency to return home, until she reached some kind of inner tipping point. From then on, an unacknowledged but persistent tangle of feelings whispered to her, Not yet, just a little longer.

This far north, night fell earlier than in Levare at the same time of year. The dark evenings felt wintry to Jarin and she wanted to sit by the fire, half nodding off, but Nara often said she wanted some time to herself and encouraged Jarin to go for walks with Diri since it was still mild and the air particularly wholesome, and if the night skies were cloudless, strange sights might sometimes be seen. Diri never suggested such walks, and nor did Jarin, but they went without fail whenever Nara told them to go.

On this occasion, they had gone to a lookout point where a curved terrace had been cut into the mountainside long ago. This was high up on a slope looking eastwards, where further mountain peaks were more felt than seen in the velvet dark. It was a warm night for December, and they had cast back their hoods to get a freer view of the sky.

Diri pointed. “And there, those three in a row with the two above and then another three to the left, that’s the Wheelbarrow.”

“We call it the Cupped Hand,” said Jarin.

“Really?” Diri put his head slightly to one side. “Yes, I suppose I can see it. Does a lungi need to know much about the stars? I mean, to navigate at night?”

“No, the dragons know where they’re going. I don’t know how they do it. But they need daylight, so we don’t fly at night.”

“I see.”

They stood in silence for a while, peering up at the sky. The stars seemed clearer here and more numerous, perhaps because they were so high in the mountains, or perhaps because there were no lanterns here and no glowstones. It should have been pitch dark on a moonless night like this, but the stars cast enough light for Jarin to see the outline of the bushes beyond the parapet, and the figure of Diri beside her. There was a faint shimmer on his hair, which was smooth and sleek and fell to his waist. She extended a hand to touch it, then realised what she was doing and pulled it back.

“You mentioned once,” she said, “that you had much on your mind and would tell me about it one day.” She hesitated, then plunged ahead: “It must have been hard for you when you lost your parents.”

Diri softly shook his head. “It was, but that is not what I meant. My head is filled with mechanical problems I have to solve. I am working on an invention, a device that will allow images to – you know, it’s easier just to show you. Come.”

He led her downhill a little to one of the side gates into the mountain, and from there along a narrow tunnel that came out, quite suddenly, on the gallery that surrounded the Fourth Hall. Since it was late, few dwarves were about, and those they saw were clearly on their way home. The gallery was lined with the entrances into many storerooms and workshops, and for one of these doors Diri now pulled out a key and opened it. Jarin knew this was the workshop where he came often during the day, but she had never been inside. A smell of sawdust, wet clay and chemicals greeted them. She stepped in and looked around in the dim light, while Diri busied himself with the candles. As the room became brighter, she saw that it was larger than she had expected, and had space for the labours of at least a dozen dwarves. There were benches strewn with tools, several anvils, and a large fireplace that lay cold. The stone floor was neatly swept, but chipped and stained in many places. Diri beckoned her to one of the far corners to a table where an indistinct shape hulked under a dark sheet.

“Stand and look at the wall over there,” he said while he bustled about removing the sheet.

Jarin obeyed, puzzling as the instruction was, and scrutinised the blank wall. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it, other than that the pale grey stone was a little smoother here than in the rest of the room. Behind her, she could hear Diri moving about, and sounds of hard objects clicking. Then her eyebrows shot up when a large image of Diri’s face appeared in a circle of light on the wall. No, it was no image, the features were moving!

“So this is the device,” said the giant Diri. “Come and look.”

Jarin turned round, and there Diri stood, his usual size, beside an apparatus of wood, metal and glass more than two feet high. He grinned. Jarin stepped closer and listened to his explanations as he pointed out the various parts of the device: an array of boxes and mirrors and lentil-shaped glass blobs, a method of bundling the light of a dozen candles and spreading it out like so, and making reflections bend this way and that, and somehow this arrangement had the power to throw an image across a room and make it larger or smaller, depending on which way Diri turned a little screw. Then Diri bade Jarin stand in a certain spot, and suddenly it was her own face, in monstrous proportions, on the wall.

“Impressive,” she said and watched her own lips moving as she spoke. “What is it for?”

“Mainly for proving that it can be done,” replied Diri. “Though there are practical applications. For example, if we wanted to carve a pattern on a wall, we could project our template directly onto it without the need of complicated tracing devices. The king is also thinking that it could be used to send messages. You know, write a letter and project it across the valley.”

“That is astonishing!”

“It would be, but the device is not capable of something like that. Anything further than a few yards and the image gets blurry.”

“And that is the problem that has been troubling you?”

“One of the problems, yes. The key is the lenses. The mirrors as well. We cannot make either of them here in Kamenogi; we rely on supplies from Levare. It is hard to get exactly what I want when I cannot speak to them directly, and I do not savour the idea of making such a long journey in person.”

“Dragons could help you there.”

“Dragons are not available.”

“I know, I’m sorry. Dragons are much on my mind.” Jarin held her hand into what she had realised was the crucial spot, and on the wall she could see her fingers move, and every line in her palm sharply drawn. “I can think of another use,” she said.

“What would that be?”

“Education. And entertainment, too, I suppose.” She flexed her fingers. “You could show all sorts of pictures.”

“We don’t need any device to look at pictures.”

“Yes, but with the device you could show them –”

“– to large groups of people all at once, yes, I see.”

“There is a museum in Levare that has some wonderful artwork, but you have to go there to see it. But if you made small copies of the paintings and sent them round the country with the device, you could show them in every village. It would be a great way of teaching children.”

“I didn’t have children in mind when I invented this. But why not? Or if the King were to give a speech, a larger crowd could see him, or when we put on a play…”

“What’s a play?”

Diri looked surprised. “You don’t know what a play is?”

“I know what playing is, but not a play. That would a called a game, surely? Is something lost in translation here?”

“No,” said Diri. “Not a game. A play is a story performed on stage by actors. They wear the costume, they speak the lines. It’s usually some story from our history. I can’t believe you don’t have plays in Kûz. Don’t you think of yourselves as the most sophisticated culture around?”

 “Do we?” Jarin noted his hint of sarcasm and felt uncomfortable. “I think I know what you mean. I’ve heard of it, just not with any name attached. A play. The Hwenti do it too, don’t they? And the Kûzeen did it long ago, but I believe Damûjil put a stop to it. He thought it was…deceitful.”

“It’s not deceitful if everyone knows it to be make-believe.”

“No, I guess not.”

Suddenly, Diri laughed. “I know what to do. Tomorrow, I’ll take you to the Children’s Hall and ask the minders to put on a puppet show. Right, let’s wrap this thing up and go home.”

-oOoOo-

There was no full council, but those members who were in town had been asked to come to the palace. Warden Yun was there and the Mayor and Mistress Tilar and Master Leyo of the Guild of Artisans. And since it was not an official council meeting, Majani attended as well with her ladies, as did the Captain of the palace guard. Hamûjil was still unsteady on his legs and had been helped to his seat by his attendants before anyone else arrived. The Seekers came in last.

There was no leader among them, all three were held in equal regard at the Tower of Knowledge and in Kûzar society at large. They worked by consensus, they presented themselves in unity, and if there ever was difference of opinion among them, they resolved it behind closed doors. The respect they commanded almost matched that of the Archseraph and the Guardian and Wanderer. Their role, though, was different; they provided neither guidance nor leadership, only pure knowledge.

The current Seekers were two men and one woman and by custom they were known only by their tiles: The Seeker of Detail, the Seeker of the Whole and the Seeker of Connections. It was the latter who now stood up and addressed the meeting.

“Archseraph, Seraphine, honoured fellow Kûzeen, I am pleased to tell you that we have fulfilled the task you gave us. We have studied carefully the pomegranate seeds sent to us from the palace. We were puzzled, because we found nothing deadly or harmful and yet we had been assured that this dish was what poisoned the Archseraph. So we looked carefully into everything we had found that was not purely pomegranate. You see, a sample like this always contains some kind of contamination from its surroundings, for example from the vessel in which it is served. And then it occurred to us that there was rather more yuyuni than you would expect. Yuyuni is found in some cleaning preparations, and traces may have been left from the washing of the dishes, but the amount present here was much more than you would expect even if the dishes had not been rinsed at all. And yuyuni, while perfectly safe on its own, can be made poisonous when combined with another substance.” He turned to the woman beside him. “The Seeker of Detail will explain to you how.”

“After much pondering, we thought of dai,” she said. “It seemed far-fetched, because dai is not used in Kûz as far as we know. It comes from the Riverlands, where the people use it to preserve wood. You wouldn’t put it into food, because there is no reason to do so, but if you did, no one would notice, since it has neither smell nor taste. And if yuyuni is added to dai, a vicious poison is created. Imagine this happening in the stomach or even in the digestive system.”

 “It is an ingenious method” said the Seeker of the Whole. “Since neither substance is harmful on its own, you are much less likely to be found out. And you can poison a whole batch of food that would be eaten by a number of people and still target a single individual if you ensure he is the only one to eat both.”

The assembly seemed stunned by the malice revealed here. Especially Tilar looked concerned. “And have you identified the source of the dai?” she asked.

“No, and I don’t think we will now, because it could have been in anything the Archseraph ate that day or even the day before, and none of this food has been preserved for us to examine.”

Tilar nodded. “So there is not much chance of finding out who did this?”

Warden Yun shook his head. “As if we need to ask! It’s that ambassador. He has burned down our library, tried to abduct the young seraph and poisoned our Archseraph. Why have we still not found him?”

“We tried everything we could think of,” said Miriel. “But we think he is not working alone. He can lie in hiding while someone else fulfils his devious plans. We know his face, but we do not know the face of the traitor among us.”

They all looked at each other and felt pained, because all their lives they had trusted their fellow Kûzeen, so how could their bear this new poison of suspicion?

-oOoOo-

It was completed, and it hung from Jarin’s neck on a new silver chain given to her by the King of Kamenogi. Earlier in the day, she had taken it outside and found a lonely spot on the mountainside and nobody had witnessed her reunion with Wan.  But now it was evening, and the home of Diri and Nara was filled with friends and neighbours wishing to say farewell to the guest. None of them had ever seen a dragon, and they were full of questions.

“The flute opens up a channel between us and the realm of the dragons,” Jarin explained. “Through it, the dragons can extend a part of their self into our world, though their true self remains in their own realm.”

“A kind of projection,” said Diri. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“Each flute links a particular lungi to a particular dragon. It is the only reliable way to connect us. Dragons can appear in our world without being called, but only randomly as chances arise, and such chances are rare. The way Wan explained it, there is some kind of, well, something like weather between our realms, and sometimes a gap opens up in the clouds, so to speak, and they can come through, but they can never know when and where that may be.”

“Can anyone become a lungi?” asked a young dwarf, who may have been contemplating the prospect for himself.

“No,” said Jarin, but then frowned. “Actually, I don’t really know. In Kûz, we seek out those who show promise and we train them from an early age. The important thing is to be pure of heart. A dragon cannot lift a person who carries a burden of guilt.”

This caused some hubbub among the assembled dwarves, who seemed to test out this idea on themselves.

The young dwarf turned to Jarin again. “So does it ever happen that a dragon rider does something bad and is rejected by the dragon?”

“I know it happened once, a little before my time. The lungi seduced his friend’s wife. Dragons couldn’t lift him after that.”

“And he was cast out with shame?”

“Well, it was not a glorious occasion for him, but nobody threw stones, if that’s what you mean. He moved to the countryside. Started growing grapes, I believe.”

There was a round of thoughtful nodding, and then the conversation turned to Jarin’s journey ahead, and to how she would be missed and how everyone wished her well. It was very late when the guests finally left.

“Are you sure you want to leave at sunrise?” asked Nara as they headed for their bed chambers. “You’ll not get much sleep tonight.”

Jarin shrugged. “Yes, but I must make the most of the daylight. It’s such a long journey. I’m hoping to make it in three days.”

“Take me with you,” said Diri suddenly.

Jarin breathed hard. “To Levare?” No, he will want to be set down in Longhaven on some business.

“Yes.”

She cast a glance at Nara but met with an impassive face.

“Why?”

“I want to see the glass makers. You know I am having trouble getting the right kind of lenses.”

“If you tell me exactly what you want, maybe give me some drawings, too, I’m happy to handle this for you.”

“I would rather go myself. Um. If it pleases you.”

“It would please me. Very much. But it’s not really up to me, the dragon has to decide if he is willing to carry you. And I don’t know what your…” She stopped, blushed.

“You don’t know what my past looks like. Well, I was never a warrior, always a maker of things. I have done no wrong according to the ways of my people. Of course I don’t know how that counts with your dragon.”

“We shall have to see, won’t we?”