Below the Root Read online

  “Let us now swear—” Raamo chanted, and paused while the crowd repeated the words after him, “—by our gratitude for this fair new land—that here beneath this green and gentle sky—no man shall lift his hand to any other—except to offer Love and Joy.”

  The familiar words, so often repeated as to become meaningless, seemed suddenly new and strange and frightening in their hidden depths. Raamo was frightened also by the thunderous echo of the crowd to the weak thin sound that was his own voice. It was a hidden fear, obscure and nameless, but so strong that when, a moment later, Raamo was lifted high above the crowd in the symbolic Elevation, he felt something within him recoil as if in terror.

  “No,” he found himself sending in mind-speech. “Do not look up to me. I am only Kindar. I am only Kindar like yourselves.”

  The shouting and singing continued. Doubtless, none among the Kindar were able to pense him, except perhaps for a few children who were too young to understand what they had heard. But as his fear subsided and the full realization of what he had done became clear to him, Raamo looked back furtively to the ranks of the Ol-zhaan. Surely some of them must have pensed his sending, and their faces would show their shock and horror. But as his eyes passed down the lines of white robed figures, he read in their faces only solemn pride, calm repose, and, in one or two, what appeared to be a brief attack of drowsiness. But then, halfway down the back row, a pair of eyes met his, staring up at him with bright intensity from under a white hood. Thin lips smiled crookedly in a narrow face and, as the eyes bored into his, Raamo pensed a sending as clear and distinct as the clearest voice-speech.

  “So Raamo,” D’ol Neric was sending. “I did indeed choose wisely. They don’t have you yet.”

  The great hall still echoed with songs and cheers. Sitting stiffly on the ceremonial throne, held high over the heads of the crowd by a dozen strong Kindar men, Raamo stared back over his shoulder, unable to tear his eyes away from D’ol Neric, or to understand his meaning.

  “I don’t understand,” he sent at last. “What is it that you want of me, D’ol Neric?”

  The smile sharpened. “What do I want of you?” D’ol Neric was sending. “I want you to meet me here, in the great hall tonight. Beneath the Spirit Altar. During the first fall of rain.”

  “Why?” Raamo sent, but no answer came. “I can’t!” He sent the words with all the force of his being, centering every fiber of his body and Spirit into the sending.

  “You can,” the sending came again. “Come!” And then D’ol Neric lowered his eyes and sent no more.

  When the ceremony was ended and all the Kindar had left the Temple Hall and the grove of the Ol-zhaan, Raamo and Genaa were given the green tabards that marked them as novices and taken to their new home. There in a cluster of chambers built around a large central hall, they would live during the three years of their novitiate. Surrounding the central hall, which was used by all as common room, dining hall and classroom, were many smaller chambers, several of which were assigned to the private use of each of the novices.

  As soon as Raamo and Genaa entered the Novice Hall, D’ol Salaat presented himself and announced that it was his duty as second-year novice to make the newcomers welcome and acquaint them with their new surroundings. This he proceeded to do with great thoroughness and verbosity, making it immediately clear that the silent reserve that he had previously demonstrated had been the result of something other than natural inclination. As he chattered on and on about everything from the seating order at food-taking, to the singular honor of his recent assignment as Orchard Protector, Genaa’s responses became more and more openly derisive. At last, D’ol Druva, who was also in the second novitiate year, intervened and led Genaa away, leaving Raamo alone with his relentlessly informative host.

  Staggering a little from exhaustion, Raamo followed D’ol Salaat from chamber to chamber, until at last, to his great relief, he was left alone in the chambers that had been assigned for his use. Climbing into the large, freshly woven nid, he collapsed gratefully, staring up at the empty honey lamp and trying to force the swarming turmoil of his thoughts and emotions into some sort of an orderly and meaningful whole. He had made little progress when, sometime later, he was summoned to the central hall for the evening food-taking.

  The food was good and plentiful, and the other novices were friendly and curious. Genaa, too, seemed to be in excellent spirits. Apparently untouched by the stresses and strains of the long day, she joined in the conversation at the table with poise and self-assurance, laughing easily and often, and coolly refusing to be patronized by the still busily officious D’ol Salaat. But Raamo, still feeling tired and spent, and increasingly troubled by the memory of D’ol Neric’s eyes and his strange command, hurriedly finished his meal and returned to his own chambers.

  Time passed, the green-tinged forest light softened and grew dim. The air cooled and freshened and at last the silence was broken by a soothing murmur. The first fall of the night rains had begun.

  Raamo rose from his nid and went to the window. What should he do? What strange secret purposes lay behind D’ol Neric’s weird behavior, and what part could he, Raamo, play in those purposes? In vain, he searched his memory for a custom, a tradition or a rule that might help him determine what the proper behavior would be in the situation in which he found himself. For many minutes he trembled on the edge of a decision, moving one moment toward the window and the next back to the safety of his nid. Several times he reminded himself that he was now an Ol-zhaan and therefore undoubtedly possessed of a new and superior ability to act with wisdom and good judgment. But when his decision was finally made, it was surprisingly true to his old familiar nature.

  Since his faulty memory failed to remind him of a helpful rule or custom that would solve his dilemma, his ever-troubling curiosity took over and made the decision for him. He very much wanted to know what lay behind D’ol Neric’s strange behavior. Quickly, before his resolution could waver, Raamo climbed out his window and launched himself into the rainy darkness.

  Night gliding was dangerous, not only because of lack of visibility, but also because the almost constant night rains quickly soaked through silken shubas, making them uncomfortable and difficult to control. Under ordinary circumstances, anyone who was forced to venture out at night confined himself to walking and climbing. But there was nothing ordinary about any of the circumstances in which Raamo found himself, and a short terrifying drop into almost total darkness seemed, at the moment, only a natural part of a completely unnatural whole. Once airborne, however, Raamo was immediately panic-stricken, and when, a few seconds later, his flight ended abruptly in a tangle of Wissenvines, he vowed to climb down them until he reached a firm footing, if he had to go all the way to the forest floor. Fortunately, however, the tangled network of vines soon passed near a narrow grundbranch, which led down to one of the large connecting branchpaths of the temple grove. In a very short time Raamo arrived at the huge arching doorway of Temple Hall.

  The empty hall, dimly lit by three small honey lamps, seemed to have grown immensely larger than it had been only a few hours before, when it had been filled with the pomp and splendor of the Ceremony of Elevation. Seemingly endless expanses stretched away into deep shadow and then on into caverns of darkness. Except for the muffled whisper of the rain, the silence was wide and soft. And yet there seemed to be in the silence a deep secret meaning, as if the huge recesses of the ancient hall were alive with memories that spoke to Raamo of things too mysterious and important to be captured in any language of tongue or mind.

  Straining to hear and understand, Raamo stood silently for a long moment, before a furtive movement near the central altar caught his eye and brought him back to the present with a shattering jolt. In the darkness, the white shuba of D’ol Neric was dim and shadowy, but his sending was strong and clear.

  “Raamo,” the sending asked. “Is it you?”

  “I have come, D’ol Neric,” Raamo replied.

  Moving slo
wly forward, he was soon close enough to see the strange eyes, round and dark and restless as a sima’s but at the same time possessed of a force as piercing and irresistible as unfiltered sunlight.

  “I have come,” Raamo repeated, speaking now in voice speech. “But I don’t know why. What is it that you want of me?”

  Grasping Raamo’s arm, D’ol Neric led him to a small cubicle behind the altar screen, apparently a storage place for robes used in the many ceremonies conducted in the Temple Hall. Draping a richly decorated robe over Raamo’s wet shoulders, D’ol Neric motioned him toward a carved panwood settee. Seating himself at the other end, D’ol Neric busied himself for several seconds with the arrangement of the settee’s cushions, positioning them carefully for his greater comfort, apparently unmindful of Raamo’s bewildered stare. At last he looked up grinning.

  “Come, friend,” he said, “relax and make yourself comfortable. What I have to say to you will take some time in the telling.” His smile faded and he added grimly, “—and there will be pain enough for you in the hearing without further paining your tired bones.”

  “Pain?” Raamo asked uneasily. He remembered suddenly that D’ol Neric had twice conducted the Ceremony of Healing when his sister was among the ailing. Fighting a desire to walk away without asking, without having to face the answer, Raamo forced himself to say, “You are speaking, then, of my sister? Did you call me here to tell me that she is ill of the wasting?”

  For a long pain-filled moment Raamo was sure that the frown on D’ol Neric’s face was caused by the need to be the bearer of such terrible news. But then he realized that he was pensing—and pensing not a reluctance to cause pain, but only surprise and bewilderment.

  “I know nothing of your sister, Raamo,” D’ol Neric said at last. “I did not know of her illness.”

  “But I was told that you twice sang the Psalm of Healing for her at the public ceremony in Orbora,” Raamo said. “Her name is Pomma D’ok, and she only in her eighth year and small even for her age.”

  “It could well be so,” D’ol Neric said. “I have led Ceremonies of Healing in Orbora many times. But I seldom know or remember the names of the ailing. I am sorry, but I have no news of your sister.”

  Relief washed over Raamo, leaving him limp and mindless, so that the strange words that were next spoken echoed in his ear chambers for several seconds before his mind allowed them to enter.

  “But it is, perhaps, true that I called you here to speak of the wasting,” D’ol Neric was saying. “I called you here to speak to you of the wasting of all Green-sky.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  HE INSISTED THAT RAAMO call him simply, Neric, except, of course, in the hearing of others, as the respectful title D’ol was only another symptom of the illness that plagued the whole planet.

  “They set themselves apart,” he said, “in every way possible. They make themselves unknowable and unapproachable—so that the Kindar will not learn the truth about them.”

  “What truth?” Raamo asked.

  “What truth!” Neric repeated, his voice rising almost to a shout. “A thousand truths. The truth, for instance, that the Spirit-skills are gone—dead! The fact that any Kindar, picked at random off any branchpath in Green-sky, has as much ability at pensing or grunspreking as the most honored among the Ol-zhaan. Didn’t you wonder how I dared to send you messages that would have placed me in great jeopardy had they been intercepted by my fellow Ol-zhaan?”

  “But you are able to pense,” Raamo said. “If pensing is dead among the Ol-zhaan, how is it—”

  “I am the only one,” Neric said. “One or two of the ancients were once able, but they are no longer. And my skill is very slight. I can pense only what is sent, and then only if the sender is skillful and possessed of great Spirit-force. Until your coming, I had not pensed anyone clearly for several years, except children, of course.”

  “But why?” Raamo asked. “Why has this happened?”

  “Perhaps there are many reasons, but there is one that is reason enough by itself. For many years, now, no one has been chosen who was suspected of having any skill at pensing. I, myself, would not have been chosen had they known of my slight skill.”

  “But why then—” Raamo began.

  “Were you chosen? Because they are desperate. They have tried everything else. They knew, of course, of your abnormal skill at pensing—and there were many who opposed your choosing, but there was one—D’ol Falla herself—who felt that your Spirit-force must be used. I had not expected them to choose you. I had almost resigned myself to the inevitable, but when I heard that they had chosen the child Raamo D’ok who, according to his teachers, was still able to pense and kiniport and grunspreke at the age of thirteen years, I was given new hope. I decided that there might be a way to stop the evil that is spreading in Green-sky—if only I could reach you in time. And if only you would help me.”

  “But what evil?”

  “I don’t know exactly—or perhaps I should say—entirely. Not yet. That is why you and your talent for pensing is of such great importance—as a means of—” He smiled ruefully, shaking his head. “I can see how strange and senseless this must sound to you, and how disturbing. Let me start at the beginning—at the beginning for me, that is—and tell you my story. Then perhaps you will find it more understandable.

  ”I came to the temple as a novice only four years ago. It is, I suppose, in my nature to be somewhat suspicious and critical, but I began my days as an Ol-zhaan full of eagerness and enthusiasm, and also full of admiration and respect for the noble and holy company in which I found myself. The Year of Honor had accomplished its insidious purpose, for me, as well as for others.”

  “Purpose? What purpose?” Raamo asked.

  “What purpose do you think? Have you never considered why the Chosen is subjected to a year of unrivaled glory and fame? What purpose the banquets, the assemblies, the processions of honor may serve?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Raamo said. “I did not think to question. I supposed that it was—a tradition.”

  Neric nodded, “And, as Kindar, we are not prepared to question tradition. But there is a reason behind the tradition. The reason is that the Year of Honor is a trap. A beautiful trap, baited by a lure as irresistible to Kindar as is honey to a moonmoth—the lure of fame and honor and power. Thus a humble Kindar can be caught and fed on pride and power until he is as unable to live without them as a Berry-dreamer to live without his Berries. To do this takes time, and it must be accomplished before he becomes an Ol-zhaan and begins to learn their secrets.

  “But to return to my own story. I was, as I have said, as well prepared as any when I became a holy Ol-zhaan. Perhaps even better prepared, since there were reasons why the honor and glory meant even more to me than to most Chosen. However, for some reason, I have always had a tendency to see all things skeptically, and it was not long before I began to see things here in the holy temple grove that troubled me greatly.

  “I learned very early, of course, as you will also, of the death of the Spirit-skills; though the Kindar are still led to believe that every Ol-zhaan can pense every thought, kiniport twice their own weight, and, by the slightest exertion of Spirit-force, send a full-grown Wissenvine spiraling to the treetops.

  “This deceitfulness toward the Kindar weighed heavily on my mind, and it also troubled me to learn that even as an Ol-zhaan I was not free to make use of my own intelligence. As a novice it is easy to accept the fact that one’s life is controlled and directed by the novice-master, but you will learn that there are other masters, in every field of service and at every level of honor and importance. The chain of authority stretches unbroken to a select few, the Council of Elders, and even beyond to a group even more select and less well known, of whom I will speak shortly. And it is this small group who control not only the lives of the Kindar but the lives of all other Ol-zhaan as well.

  “It troubled me also to learn of the many problems that are plaguing Green-sky, problems
that are never mentioned to the Kindar, so that they know of them only through rumor and whispered conjecture. Such things as the increase of illness, the barrenness of bonded families, the increasing number of full-grown men and women who are yearly taken by the Pash-shan and, most troubling of all, the change in the appearance of the Wissenroot, which the Vine-priests seem unable to remedy. All these things, as you will soon learn, are discussed constantly in Ol-zhaan assemblies, as is the growing fear that the withering of the Root will finally allow the Pash-shan to escape into Green-sky.”

  The words of Neric had filled Raamo’s mind with dark clouds of fear and confusion, but he managed to ask, “But why, if the death of the Spirit-skills are allowing these things to happen, did they choose those who have no such skills, as you say they have done for many years?”

  “I said,” Neric said, “they chose only those who could not pense. I am sure they would gladly have taken one who was skilled in healing or grunspreking—particularly in grunspreking—if that person could not pense. But such could not be found. Unfortunately, the skills of the Spirit are closely related, and it is not possible to pick and choose among them. So they were forced to avoid true healers and those who might have possessed the power to control and direct the growth of plant life, in order to avoid the pensers. For these might have, by their pensing, discovered secrets—secrets that are kept hidden not only from the Kindar but also from most of the Ol-zhaan. And of which I learned only by accident.”