“D’Huna has served well.” Carefully she schooled her voice. This one must not suspect she had scored with her news.
“She may serve even better.” A pointed tongue showed, caressed D’Atey’s lips as if she savored some taste and would prolong that pleasure. “There is a meeting of the warriors’ council—“
D’Eyree stiffened and then forced herself to relax, hoping that the other had not seen that momentary betrayal of emotion, though she feared that nothing escaped those vicious, envious eyes of D’Atey’s.
“Such is not by custom. The Eyes did not attend—“
“D’Fani holds by the Law of Triple Danger. In such times the warriors are independent of the Eyes. That, too, is custom.”
D’Eyree, by great effort, bit back an exclamation. D’Fani was the fanatic, the believer in the old dark ways the people had set aside—D’Fani who talked of the Feeding — If D’Fani gained followers enough what might happen?
“They meet now, the warriors.” D’Atey moved a little closer, her eyes still searching D’Eyree’s face for some sign of concern. “D’Fani speaks to them. Also the Voice of the Peak—“
“The Voice of the Peak,” D’Eyree interrupted her, “has not uttered for as many years as you have been hatched, D’Atey. D’Rubin himself could not make it answer when he worked upon its inner parts this past year. The ancients had their secrets and we have lost them.”
“Not so many as we thought were lost. And perhaps it was because we sought other paths, less hard ones, weaker ones. But D’Tor has found a way to make the Voice utter. He follows his brother in seeking the wisdom of the old ways. Rumor says now our future will be shortened if we do not find a way to rebreed the Lurla. D’Huna failed with three of them during the storm.”
Three? She had failed to spur three! But there had been four that resisted D’Eyree. And D’Huna had resigned the Eyes. Thus it would follow that she must also — But what had D’Atey earlier hinted at? She must know more.
“You spoke of D’Huna serving better.” She hated to ask a question of D’Atey; there was a gloating about the other which fed her own inner fear. “What mean you by that?”
“If the Voice foretells another storm, then D’Fani will have a powerful voice in the council. Are the Eyes not vowed for their lifetime to the service of Nornoch? How better can they serve, once their power over the Lurla has waned, than to provide strength for the Lurla to procreate in greater abundance? Once the Feeding was custom. It is only the weaklings of these latter days who want it set aside—“
This time D’Eyree could not control her slight hiss of breath, though she writhed inwardly a second later when she saw the flash of triumph in D’Atey’s eyes.
“The Feeding was of the old days, when the people followed dark customs. There is the Pledge of D’Gan that we be no longer barbarians of the dark. Have we risen from the muck to choose once more to live in it?”
“D’Fani believes that our weakness in listening to D’Gan and his like has doomed us. How find you the Lurla, Eyes Wearer? Are they as strong, as obedient to your orders as they have always been?”
D’Eyree forced a smile. “Ask that of Nornoch, D’Atey. Has a tower tumbled? Have the walls cracked in any storm?”
“Not this time perhaps. But if the Voice says there will be a second storm, a third—“ Now D’Atey smiled. “I think after D’Huna’s report, D’Fani will have many listening to him. He may even call for a trial of power, D’Eyree. Think you well on that.”
She nodded and slipped away. D’Eyree looked once more to the sea. The Voice—had D’Fani’s brother really repaired it? Or was it, as more likely, some trick of D’Fani’s to influence the council and the people to plunge back into the old ways from which D’Gan had raised them? The Voice was set on the highest peak within the Three Walls. In the old days it had predicted accurately the coming of storms. But custom had been its conqueror. For by custom only one line of the people serviced the Voice, understood its intricate mechanism. And when the Plague of the Red Tide Year had struck, those who had understood the Voice had been, for some reason, the first stricken.
For years it had continued to operate even though those who had once tended it were gone. And the people had been lulled into believing that it was indestructible. Then it slowed, became inaccurate by days with its warnings. Finally it stopped. Though men had labored for two generations now to relearn its workings, they had been uniformly unsuccessful. The belief had been held for a long time that, like the Lurla, the Voice answered to mental control—a control inherited by the one clan that no longer existed. There were no visible focus points of communication to be discovered, nothing like the Eyes.
The Eyes—and D’Huna had surrendered hers! Perhaps she had surrendered even more as D’Atey had suggested. Of course the Lurla no longer bred as they once did. But their number had always been carefully controlled as was needful. However, suppose that a mutant strain had developed, one not so quick to answer to the dominance of the Eyes? The people had changed over the centuries since they had ventured forth step by step from the sea. They were amphibians now. But the fear had always hung over them that if they were forced out of Nornoch, which was their grip upon the land, they would lose their hard-won intelligence and revert again to sea creatures who could not think of themselves as human.
To return to feeding the Lurla on food long forbidden—could that be right? D’Gan had taught that such practices were savage, reducing those who held them to the status of one of the fanged sea raiders.
The band that held the Eyes seemed to press so tightly on D’Eyree’s forehead that it was a burden weighting her head; she could not carry it proudly aloft as became her. She returned to the window slit, resting her head against its solid frame, the breeze from the sea cool and moist against her scaled skin. She was so tired. Let those who had never worn the Eyes, carried that burden, think of the powers and privileges of her position. The weight, fear, and responsibility of it was far heavier than any respect could bolster.
Why then not follow D’Huna, admit that the Lurla had been sluggish for her, that four had failed? But if she did that, she was surrendering another kind of wall to D’Fani and those who followed him. The only possible wearers of the Eyes were very young, easily influenced, and one was D’Wasa, whom D’Eyree did not trust.
No, as long as she could, she must not surrender to her weariness, the more so if the Feeding returned. Not only did her whole being shrink from the very thought of that horror for herself; she knew it would also be throwing open the gate to the worst of the people.
Yet if the Voice proclaimed another such storm ahead, and D’Fani called for a trial of power before that came—
She was like one swimming between a fanged raider and a many-arms, with cause to believe that each was alerted to her passing and ready to put an end to her. And she was so tired—
D’Huna—she would go to D’Huna. She must know more of the failure of the Lurla—whether the other believed what she herself suspected, that it was not the fault of the Eyes, but of a mutation in the Lurla themselves. Knowledge was strength and the more knowledge she could garner the better she could build her own defense.
Even if D’Huna had surrendered her Eyes, she would not have left her tower. That by custom she could not do until the new wearer entered into it and took formal possession. So there was yet time.
D’Eyree threaded a way along nacre-walled corridors, climbed down in one section, up in another. The majority of the people never came into these link-ways between the towers. The privacy of the wearers was well guarded, lest they be disturbed at some time when it was necessary to check upon the Lurla or otherwise use their talent. And with a council in progress and the possibility of the Voice making some pronouncement, the attention of most of Nornoch would be centered elsewhere.
She passed no one during her journey; the towers might be deserted. Though there were six wearers on permanent duty, two for each wall. If D’Caquk and D’Lov had heard the news, there was no indication they stirred to hear more. The pale glow of the in-lights shone above their doors as she passed. Then she came to D’Huna’s tower.