Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

learned to walk, as we teach all our children to walk.

“But because of the Companions, they learn quickly, standing upright on the first attempt, walking within the hour, and letting speech pour from their mouths with perfect understanding. Underwater we speak into the drum of the flesh-over-the-mouth, and in the kiss of speech we understand each other. But here on land, one can speak to all at the same time, the way I speak to you today.”

The audience murmured its ascent.

“After five years, another couple went into the water and took upon themselves Companions, and three years, and then one, and then another, and there were ten couples and their new children living under the sea.

“Then came the slimeworm, the disease that made the flesh rot on the body and slough away and leave only bone and agony and death. Who could live when the slimeworm crawled through his body? Only those who went beneath the waves—there the slimeworm died, and the Companion healed the flesh.

“All who were alive and could crawl or be carried came into the water, and the Companions took them all, and saved them from the slimeworm. So beautiful was the Companionable life that no longer did we call the slimeworm terrible, or think of its coming as a plague. Instead it was the slimeworm that pushed us into the water, and so the slimeworm was our friend. Only in wallfolds lacking in Companions was the slimeworm a disaster and a tragedy.”

Rigg had never heard of such a plague, and yet she spoke as if it were something that had spread in more than one wallfold. Why would Auntie Wind believe such a thing, if the expendables didn’t tell them about it? So did that mean that it was true—that it was a plague that could pass through the Wall? Or was it yet another lie of the expendables? Why was there no memory of it in Ramfold?

And then Rigg remembered the tales of the White Death and the Walking Death. They were more parable or allegory than true history, or so he had always thought. Could it be the same thing that Auntie Wind was speaking of? If so, then it must have come much earlier in history than Rigg had believed. He wondered if Param had run across these stories in every wallfold. But she was on the other side of Knosso, so Rigg could not ask quietly enough not to be overheard. He did not wish to interrupt the tale.

“In the water we lived for many generations, losing track of days in the trackless sea. We battled great sea monsters in those days, some brought from Earth and others native to this world, restored after the cataclysm. We tried and failed to swim through the Wall. We spread along the whole of our coast, and made our colonies far out in the sea and up the deep rivers. Always we returned to the land to speak and sing and dance from time to time.

“On one such time, the Landsman came to us and brought Vadesh to us yet again. Vadesh spoke of how many of the people of Vadeshfold had rejected the Companions he had made for them, even though the Companions also saved them from the slimeworm. The solitary people slew the men and women who accepted the Companions, and so the Companionable slew to defend themselves, until no humans of any kind were left alive in his land.

“‘Come and wear this land-companion,’ Vadesh invited us, but when we asked him, ‘What does it do that our Companions cannot do?’ his answer was full of things we did not care to do, and lacked the one thing most needed: The Companions he had made could not easily swim, and breathing underwater was quite impossible.

“‘Then we will have none of them!’ our motherfolk declared, and our fatherkin turned their backs on him and mantled themselves and plunged back under the waves, and Vadesh left us, sorrowing, while the Landsman laughed at him and said, ‘I told you they were content with what they have, and will not trade it for something less.’

“‘It is not less,’ old Vadesh said, ‘it is more.’ But still he walked away, and in this wallfold he has not been seen or talked with since.”

And that was the end of Auntie Wind’s story.

“Is that all?” asked Rigg quietly. “It doesn’t feel like much of a story.”

“But it’s not a story,” said Knosso. “I assure you, when they make up stories here, they know how to make an ending, one that would leave you gasping or laughing, I can promise you! But this was simply an answer to your question. No one authored it, Auntie Wind just made it up as she went along.”

“But it was poetry,” said Param.

“So it was,” said Knosso. “But that’s the way of speech among the Larfolk. What is the point of coming up onto land, if the speech is not beautiful as well as clear and loud and spoken to many at once? This is their library, their orchestra, and their dance. Watch now, and listen, as they sing it back to her and dance the story to make it true.”

To Rigg’s surprise, the gathered Larfolders really did sing what she had said to them, word for word the same, only now with many beautiful melodic lines. And when they were done with that, they sang it again, only this time without the words. Yet such was the power of the music that when Rigg heard each tune, he knew the words that went along with it. And with the singing, in many harmonies, the people also danced, and in their movements the slimeworm made their skin slough off, and the mothers birthed their young, and the men explored and fought the mighty beasts of the deep, and Vadeshex came as a comic supplicant, carrying pantomimed facemasks as if they were made of especially noxious dung. Loaf laughed the loudest at this.

When the buffoonish Vadeshex left, the people swam their dance and cheered the tale, its teller, and the singers and dancers.

“Now that song is part of their lives for at least this generation,” said Knosso. “And if they forget it, some later Auntie Wind will echo it in other words, and it will be sung to other tunes. Nothing is lost. This is their library, the poetry of their life on land.”

“No wonder you love this place,” said Olivenko. “If only you could have sent a message to us.”

“But I did,” said Knosso. “I told the Landsman to tell the Gardener to tell you I was safe. I wouldn’t be coming back, of course, since I had left only in time to save my life, and those who wanted me dead would make short work of me if I returned.”

“Who wanted you dead?” asked Olivenko.

“My wife,” said Knosso. “Hagia told me herself that she had no choice but to have me killed, so that if my researches didn’t take me out of the wallfold, then someone’s knife or a bit of poison would do the job before too long. I thought it was kind of her to warn me.”

“Kind!” cried Param. “She tried to kill me, too!”

“That was wrong of her,” said Knosso.

“That’s all? Wrong of her?”

“Kings- and queens-in-the-tent have been killing their mates and children for a good many generations, and parents and siblings, too. That’s what royalty’s about among the Sessamids. Didn’t they teach you history?”

“They didn’t teach me anything,” said Param.