Previous Chapter Table of Contents Next Chapter
Topiara - Chapter 60
Bandriel looked on in muted shock as Jilan bent over the top of the square stone container and retrieved first the two bird-skin jerkins and then the stiff, rolled hide. "You mean, you wish to have them back?" the tall man asked, his blue eyes wide.
"Yes," Lyara answered very matter-of-factly. "Now that we've returned the robes that were lent to us by your people, we need something to keep our upper body warm while we're still up here on this mountain." She eyed the man's white tunic – obviously made of the same, warming material as the robes had been. "You probably won't have that problem."
Bandriel cast his eyes upwards and then shaded them against the glare of the morning sun. "It seems strange to not see the limits above," he commented softly as if to himself.
"It was a little strange for us to be where there WERE limits to how far up one could look," Jilan agreed, "and to the way in which you measured your time between Light and Dark."
"That's true," the tall Helmian looked all around him. "There are no bells…"
"You won't need bells to know," Lyara told him, shrugging into her jerkin. "It doesn't happen suddenly out here – there is a space of time between the two as one fades and the other gains."
"This world is indeed strange," Bandriel commented and then watched silently as Lyara and Jilan divided their belongings between them evenly.
"You have no idea," Jilan nodded vehemently and the gestured. "Our way takes us around the edge of the lake and then down the mountainside into the trees.
"Trees?" Bandriel frowned. "I don't know trees."
"You will soon," Lyara quipped with a sideways glance at her i'ilim. "Are we ready?"
Jilan nodded. "Ready when you are."
The trio walked slowly to the banks of the lake and then around the edge of the water until they were close to the small grove of trees in which Jilan and Lyara had tried to make camp. "Wait," Jilan exclaimed when Lyara was ready to start on the trail that led down the mountainside, and he pointed at the plant at his feet when the other two turned to look at him. "Hodi'ia told me that this is an herb that many of the Vri'ia'ani healers prize highly – and one they rarely ever have a chance to acquire. Maybe we can trade for water and fruit with it, especially in the h'sun that has a healer."
Already he was bent over with his dagger out, slicing first one long, wide and hairy leaf from the plant after another.
"Be sure to thank your friend for its offering," Bandriel offered as he observed the two of them collecting leaves, "and leave enough foliage for it to be able to recover from your harvest. You wouldn't want to kill the plant…"
Jilan glanced at Lyara and smiled. Evidently the Helmian proscription against killing extended even to plant life. "Here," he said, straightening and walking over to the tall man. He slipped his shi'ili bag out of his netted bag and straightened it before handing it over. "Hold this open so we can put the leaves in without crumpling them. We should be able to carry quite a few if we pack them properly."
"Shouldn't they be dried?" Lyara asked, bringing over her collection and working to slip them in with Jilan's.
"We'll let the Vri'ia'ani healers worry about that," Jilan told her. "They'll know best how to prepare them for use – we just need to collect and distribute."
"Such a deep color," Bandriel commented, peeking into the bag he was now in charge of.
"Doesn't your home have…" Lyara began, and then frowned as she looked at Jilan. "Do you remember what Helm looked like still?"
"Where?" Jilan asked, completely sincere.
The two of them gazed in confusion at Bandriel, who merely shrugged. "It is of no matter," he reassured them. "The important thing is that you found me and are willing to take me back to Tandri – and to tell me everything you know about your world while we're en route."
Lyara knew that Bandriel spoke of the end of a great journey – but the idea that she couldn't remember how the two of them had encountered the tall man who now traveled with them was a bit troubling. "Where do you want us to start?" she asked instead.
Bandriel smiled. "Tell me about these trees you speak of – and of the people that live there."
By the time the three of them were looking across at the very fringes of the Great Forest, it was already late in the afternoon. Bandriel's footwear was looking decidedly the worse for wear and he was beginning to limp from where the stones were poking up through the soles. The tall man gazed at the giant plants in front of him – taller than anything he'd ever seen other than the towers of Helm – in complete awe. "You say these trees are alive?" he asked in a reverent whisper.
"Each and every one of them," Lyara replied with a smile at Jilan. The closer they had gotten to the carpet of green that surrounded the base of the mountain, the happier and more joyful she had become.
"What an honor it must be to walk amongst them…"
"Uh," Jilan harrumphed, "we don't stay on the ground for much longer." His finger pointed out the very edge of a pathway visible a few trees into the forest. "We climb the nearest ones and then make our way up there."
"Climb?" Bandriel sounded both shocked and appalled. "Does this not harm the trees?"
"Not at all," Lyara answered, "not to mention that the vines that cover the ground at the base of the trees will eat you if you give them a chance."
"Oh!" The tall man had never heard of such a thing. "How do we… climb?"
Jilan chuckled. "It isn't as hard as it looks, believe me!"
They covered the remaining distance relatively quickly, and then discarded their sandals at the base of the nearest tree. "Watch!" Lyara told their new friend and let her toes and fingers find all of the support she needed to climb up onto the lowest branch. "Use the vines as rungs, and you'll do fine."
Once back in the trees again, Lyara relaxed. It was amazing, she decided – if Jilan ever asked her again where she would like to call 'home', she would be answering that the Great Forest was where she felt the most comfortable. With amused eyes she watched the tall man make his way painstakingly up the trunk of the tree until she could extend her hand down to him and help him onto the branch – and then wait until Jilan had scrambled up the trunk as well.
"We can do without these now," Jilan sighed in relief and pulled the bird-skin jerkin over his head and dropped it to the ground below, with Lyara following his example only moments later. Bandriel watched as the tendrils eventually covered the animal skin garments – and he shuddered.
"What do we want to do about this?" Jilan asked, unslinging the stiff hide from his shoulder.
Lyara shook her head. "It's heavy, and we aren't going to need anything like that anymore. Drop it." She let a bit of her frustration show. "Up north, such a prize as this would be worth its weight – and here, it's nothing but a nuisance."
Bandriel looked very nervously about him and clung to the trunk of the tree. "Now what?"
"Follow us and do as we do," Jilan directed and pointed. "We're heading up there."
The tall man gaped. "All that way!"
Lyara was already moving along the branch until she could step onto a slightly higher branch of a neighboring tree. She looked back to see Bandriel following, although more slowly, and moved along that branch until she could see a way to clamber up even higher. It took about an hour for the three of them to make their way down one branch and climbing to another and then across to another tree before Lyara was pulling herself up and rolling onto the zumi vine pathway. She moved a little so as to make room for Bandriel's arrival and grinned contentedly.
The tall man carefully maneuvered his body onto the pathway and slipped a small distance down the woven platform to make room for Jilan, and then peered over the edge. "Oh my!" he breathed, not having realized just how far away from the ground they had been climbing all this time. Below, he could see the way the vines seemed to seethe and slither against each other and shuddered again at the thought that plants themselves could kill.
"We're safe up here," Jilan told him once he had his breath back.
"Ta'alanru'an lies in the direction of the evening sun," Lyara stated, remembering some of the last words Yiren had said to her and reversing them. "I think I remember the way."
"There's no hurry," Jilan told her indulgently. "Our friend here needs to learn the language of the Vri'ia'ani a little before we go much further – and we're going to need to gather fruit and collect water for our journey."
"We can hang our sleeping net here and forage," Lyara stated, pointing out from the platform. "Look! In our absence, more of the fruit has ripened."
Jilan smiled. "We can't be sure this is the same place we were, Lya," he chided. "We've probably just found a different piece of the pathway."
"But this looks so familiar," Lyara complained and then looked about here. "Look! Here's where you took the bark for…" Her words stopped, and her face folded in confusion.
Jilan rose to his feet and walked over to look at what she'd been pointing at and then frowned too. The marks of where he had taken the bark from the trees to fashion the soles of his sandals were still clearly visible, but they were no longer fresh and sharp. The tree had already started to heal itself. "Do you think these trees grow that fast?" he asked her with a wary tone.
Lyara shook her head. "We've been living in these trees for weeks now," she reminded him, "we know how fast the fruit ripens." She gestured. "Look around you – does it look as if we were just here, stripping all the ripe fruit away?"
"We were on the mountain only for a few days, right?" Jilan asked and then turned to look at the tall man who continued to sit and watch the two of them with an unreadable expression. "Right?"
Bandriel shrugged. "I can't be sure," he stated, knowing his answer to be less than helpful.
Lyara took gentle hold of the pouch holding Topiara in hopes that her power stone would help clarify matters, only to see a brief vision of the morning sun over the mountain that was still visible through the trees. "We rest here tonight, and we move on in the morning," she announced firmly. "I want to find a h'suni'il – Ma'at, if memory serves. Something's not right here. If our friend here needs to understand and can't, one of us can translate for him."
"I don't believe it!" Jilan stared at the daughter of the leader at Ma'at as she nursed her infant. This was the young woman – young unattached woman – who had so coyly tried to catch his eye and interest the last time they'd been here only a few days earlier. Certainly she hadn't been a widow hiding her dead i'ilim's child at the time…
"You left us over an entire Turn of the seasons ago, Ji'ilan," she replied with a gentle and maternal smile, "about one tenday before I went with my father to the trees of Tor and met Si'un. Rishi was born three tendays ago."
"This can't be," Lyara agreed with a frown. "By our counting, we've been gone no more than two or three tendays – two days to the edge of the Forest, a tenday to prepare, a tenday on the mountain, and three days back here."
Yasi'im simply smiled and shook her head. "Perhaps you took a step outside of the Turning of the World," she suggested with a curious eye on the stranger that had returned from the mountain of fire and ice with the two fa'unshani. "It matters not, though. Lend us the story of what happened after you left us during the Time of Telling, and two sleeping nets will be yours, along with all the water and fruit you might want to carry."
Lyara flinched. They would have to ask Bandriel's help with the Telling this evening, because she was very aware that neither she nor Jilan remembered anything that had happened between when they had jumped into the lake on the side of the mountain and when they had finished harvesting the strange leaves with Bandriel's help. Perhaps Yasi'im was right – that more time than they had thought had passed – but the only one who would know was Bandriel, and he'd been less than forthcoming on the topic so far.
"What is it?" Bandriel asked, completely at a loss to understand what was going on around him.
"It seems we were gone longer than we had originally thought," Jilan filled in their tall friend easily. "And when the story-telling time comes this evening – which is when we will exchange our story for the shelter and food we get tonight – we will need you to help fill us in of some of the details that neither Lyara nor I can remember."
"I am prohibited," Bandriel told him gently. "Perhaps you can expand on what you and Lyara do remember to make the story seem complete."
"We'll need a believable reason for coming back with you, when we went up on the mountain of fire and ice alone – and everybody knows that nobody lives up on that wasteland."
"You can tell them that you found me, wandering about lost," Bandriel suggested hopefully.
"The Vri'ia'ani prize truth among all the virtues," Lyara complained softly and then sighed. "You're prohibited?"
Bandriel gave her a sad smile. "I'm afraid so – but for a very good reason that you agreed with when you were given it, for what it's worth."
Jilan gave Lyara a long glance. "We'll tell them what we remember, and do a little creative speculation. As long as we let them know when we stop telling what we know and when we begin speculating, we shouldn't offend anybody."
Lyara fingered the darkened and crumpled scar at the base of her throat. "That will have to do, I guess…" She grew quiet. "A whole Turn. I wonder that Farranby and Sharin may have left to go home again, believing us dead."
Jilan grew a little quiet and reserved at that. Bandriel sighed and decided the best thing for him to do would be to emulate his escorts in everything they did – and to work at learning the language of these tree people as quickly as possible.
"And that's all you remember?" Si'un gaped.
"I remember when the Rememberer from Hun'ta visited our h'suni'il a few years back," Yasi'im remarked, putting her infant up on her shoulder. "He told a Telling that came to the trees many, many Turns ago about a chan'vrii who traveled through the trees and then up onto the mountain of fire and ice. When he finally came back down nearly a generation's worth of Turns later, he looked not a day older than when he'd left." She looked at Jilan evenly. "The Rememberer told us that the Telling was done by a man who was a child when the chan'vrii arrived in his h'suni'il and an old man when the chan'vrii returned. And, according to the Rememberer, this chan'vrii couldn't say where he'd been, what he'd seen or even how he'd stayed alive all that time without food or shelter."
The small gathering around the firebowl all nodded sagely. "I remember that Telling too," Ri'on, the leader of the h'suni'il, spoke up in a deep voice. "The Rememberer told us that there were many similar Tellings – always having to do with chan'vrii go up on the mountain and coming back later, sometimes a little later and sometimes a great time later, unable to remember where they'd been or what they'd seen." The watery blue eyes settled on the tall stranger that had returned with the fa'unshahni. "But this is the first time that a stranger has returned with the ones who climbed the mountain."
"Perhaps he is another chan'vrii who wandered up there – and this time, we found him before he found his own way back off the mountain," Lyara suggested. "To be honest, I cannot say that this is what happened or not – but it seems reasonable, considering the Tellings this Rememberer told you."
"And your friend cannot tell you anything more than what you remember yourself?" Si'un pressed.
"Si'un asks if you can tell us anything more than what we've already said," Lyara leaned toward Bandriel.
The tall stranger shook his head regretfully. "I'm sorry," he pronounced in very careful Vri'ia'ani, then looked at Lyara. "I wish I could help you," he finished in accented Talandri.
"It is an odd Telling we've heard this evening," Ri'on pronounced formally. "But at least we know that our fa'unshahni friends have returned safely from that strange mountain. Is there another Telling waiting?" He looked around the little group, and then said when no one spoke up, "Then we thank our visitors for their Telling, and wish them a good rest. May the trees give us all good dreams."
"What now?" Bandriel asked quietly as the small band of Vri'ia'ani began to rise and move toward the ladder that led up to the shelter where the sleeping nets hung.
"Now we sleep," Lyara told him. "Tomorrow, we head for Tala'anru'an, and eventually to I'ilansru'an."
"I have heard that name," Bandriel stated, rising to his full height and ready to follow his escorts to wherever it was they were going to spend the night. "I need to speak to someone called Rotal?"
Jilan nodded as he pointed their tall friend up the ladder. "We know her. We'll see you get an introduction."
Previous Chapter Table of Contents Next Chapter