wheeled cart with supplies, and they set off on their journey.
They had not gone far from the feast grounds when Psal turned to see Netophah following them.
“Return home!” Psal yelled back at him. They pelted him with stones and twigs but he continued following them.
Thus, the three sons of King Nahas walked toward the abandoned tower—the tall, puny, and peevish Firstborn, the too-pretty albino foundling, and the well-favored, nature-blessed heir of all Wheel Clan lands.
CHAPTER 4
THE VOCA
Persistent sand fleas and the sun’s heat assaulted the boys as they journeyed past ancient stone archways depicting male athletes engaging in sexual acts, past the ruins of brothels where the tiny bones of aborted children littered the long-dried up sewers, past the faded chipped wreckages of fertility temples. In their younger days, the studiers had wondered at the stability and constancy of those ancient edifices. Older now, they understood no more than they did when they traveled with the Wintersea Master. They now contented themselves with the words he always used when faced with some incomprehensible planetary cipher: There are more things in the universe that can be understood with even my great mind, boys.
They traveled until the stone road lost itself to the desert. All the while they collected such things that interested only studiers. About halfway in their journey, they saw vultures circling over sparse bush. There, amid scavenging ravens, a woman’s rotting body lay clothed in a blue tunic—the common dress of Falconer women. The woman had the features of different clans. Maggots swarmed in her ripped-open womb. Psal looked about. There was no boy corpse anywhere nearby, but that meant little. A living newborn boy would’ve been borne away by the night. A girl would be nursed in the arms of the Voca chief.
“Is it…the Voca?” Netophah asked, hiding behind Psal.
“Of course, the Voca! No other clan rips children from their mothers’ wombs.” Psal turned about, his back to the body. “I sincerely hope you will not force the Principles on me and make me bury this woman.”
Ephan grimaced. The thought had probably been in his mind. He surveyed the sandy desert, at the sparse plants. “The Voca tower song still echoes throughout the region.”
“Where?” Netophah’s fingers dug into Psal’s arm. “Where? I don’t hear it.”
“You’re not a studier,” Ephan said. “Listen. It has a sweetness to it. The sound of honey or very sweet nectar. Can you hear it now?”
“Honey has a sound?” Netophah sniffed at the air.
Psal rolled his eyes. “You’re no use at all. Sniff with your ears, not with your nose!”
Netophah wriggled his nose. “I don’t hear anything.” He looked backward toward the leagues of red sand that lay behind them. “Maybe we should go back.”
“Farewell.” Ephan poked at something in the body’s open cavity with a small twig. “Who knows when we will meet each other again?”
“Alone?”
“You’re Nahas’ son, Netophah. The truce will protect you.” Ephan knelt beside the body. “Storm, come and see. She’s a beautiful specimen.” He gathered several maggots into a clay jar. “I’m finished. Storm, you can turn around now.” His head bowed, he spoke a prayer they had learned from a studier in the Waymaker clan.
The vestige of age-old superstitions, Psal thought but did not rebuke his friend.
They continued on and reached the abandoned longhouse when the sun was high in the sky. The tower had materialized inside a large boulder—an error indicating a damaged tower. The right side of its longhouse had been shattered by the rock on which it had floundered.
The original builders of the towers—thought to be men, gods, or spirits, depending which clan lore one believed—often reveled in creative fancies, making towers of various shapes and of brick, colored stones, metals, or wood, often painted or decorated with precious gems. Seventy men standing side-by-side could encircle this tower, and its height was like that of an evergreen. It was round like most, and its watchtower at the topmost spire perfectly squared. The rampart was extended along the roof—a sign that a large Waymaker clan had once inhabited it.
Psal shaded his eyes. “The tower’s song is faint, but it’s reparable.”
The longhouse door swung back on its broken hinges at Ephan’s touch and bricks in the nearby wall crumbled under his hand. On the wall opposite the door, three long parallel lines—markings of the Lake Waymaker Clan—flowed like a winding river past drawings of flowers, beasts, seeds and berries. The warm peppery scent of Naro spice permeated everything.
Ephan shook the dust from his hand. “If Nahas makes you a chief, our stewards could make this a longhouse suitable for you. Claim it for your own.”
Psal entered the gathering room with his dagger drawn. No squawk of bird or lowing of animal echoed through the longhouse. Yet.…“Do you hear that?” he asked Ephan. “The tower pulses, as if faint life…are you sure no one’s within?” He leaned his staff against a nearby wall and called out in the primary Waymaker dialect. “Is anyone here?”
No answer. He tried again, using a Peacock dialect. Again, no answer. Once more he spoke. This time in the Wheel Clan language, the last of the three universal languages. Still no answer. He whispered to Ephan. “Someone hides within. Do you hear?”
Dagger drawn, Ephan walked down the left-hand hall toward the sleeping quarters, while Psal limped toward the storerooms, Netophah behind him.
“Come quickly!” Ephan called out.
Psal and Netophah raced to the sleeping rooms. Ephan held a skeletal boy—no more than three years—in his arms. A slightly older girl in a hemp tunic stained with excrement clung to Ephan’s arm. Their eyes were slanted like those of the Waymaker Clan, Netophah’s people.
“Is no mother with them?” Psal sheathed his dagger.
“None. Another child lies in the back. Near death.” Psal began walking in that direction but Ephan stopped him. “It’s best not to see that one.”
Psal paused, then nodded.
“These little ones are too young to care for themselves,” Ephan continued. “And the tower’s broken. Another night’s keen and the longhouse will be completely destroyed. It’ll end up in the middle of an ocean or on the edge of a cliff probably.”
“And there’s the Voca,” Netophah added.
All three looked at each other in silence. Yes, there was the Voca.
“Father won’t take the boy,” Psal said.
“They’re from a Waymaker clan,” Netophah said, eyeing the boy with pity in his voice and eyes. “As a peace child from a Waymaker Clan, I can plead with Father to take—”
Psal opened his studier’s pouch. “We’ll call Lan.” He limped toward the longhouse’s keening room. “I’ll ask him to bring a cart to carry these foundlings. The clans are all gathered. Someone will surely take them.”
The keening room contained only one upright keening tree, the useless one common to all keening rooms, the one superstitiously called The Greater Light. The main keening tree, the Lesser Light, had fallen. Crystals were broken, wrongly aligned, or in the wrong settings. But Psal and Ephan were worthy studiers. With the few tools they carried, they managed—moving crystals here, aligning others there, chipping there—to make the tower chirp, even if they could not make it sing.
* * * *
Lan arrived, dragging a wheeled cart filled with bowls of Naro juice and roasted Yisin grain.
“You took a long time coming.” Psal carefully settled the girl into the larger cart, propping her head upon a blanket.
“It’s a long way!”