Andre Norton - Trillium 04 - Golden Trillium

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Golden Trillium by
Andre Norton
Prologue
THERE WERE THREE OF THEM, DAUGHTERS of the Black Trillium.
In their full womanhood, they were to be Haramis, the Sorceress; Kadiya,
the Seeker-Warrior; and Anigel, the Queen. At one birth they came into
the world (which in itself was a strange and unknown thing) and at the
moment of their birthing the Archimage Binah, she who was rumored to
be the full Guardian of all the land, hailed and named them.
They were, she prophesied, to be the hope and saviors of their people.
She bestowed upon each an amulet of amber in which was set a tiny
floweret of the legendary Black Trillium, which was both the sign of their
royal clan and of the land.
Their country of Ruwenda, though for long generations it had been
home to humankind, still held many secrets. A large part was swamp, out
of which rose some islands of firm ground. On many of these were ruins,
some large enough to be the graveyards of full cities. The King lived in the
Citadel, yet another of these remainders of an earlier day, save that it was
still whole.
To the east, humankind drained the swamp, creating polders, which
made rich farmland and offered fine grazing for herds and flocks.
Ruwenda also served as the major way station for the import of timber
from the south, which was needed greatly by their neighbors of Labornok
to the north. Other trade wares came out of the swamps themselves:
herbs, spices, the scaled shells of water creatures—some as bright as
jewels, some so tough they could be fashioned into waterproof scale
armor. And most rare of all came things—many so strange they could not
be identified—which were found in the ruins on the islands.
The gatherers of these were called Oddlings—the swamp dwellers whom
the Ruwendians had found upon their own first arrival and with whom
they had no quarrels. Neither wanted what the other desired in the way of
territory. Of these Oddlings there were two races—the Nyssomu who were
more forthcoming, some taking service even in the King's Citadel, and the
Uisgu, shy outdwellers whose chosen land lay farther west in the
unexplored swamps. What the Uisgu had to trade they brought to the
Nyssomu, who in turn offered it to licensed traders. All generally gathered
in the large ruined city known to men as Trevista, which outlanders could
reach easily by river.
There was another race within the mires, claiming as their own the
more western reaches of the north, and those none would willingly meet.
Drowners, the Oddlings called them; Skritek, the learned named them.
They were torturers and slayers, and an evil blight. At times they raided
the polders or sought prey among the Oddlings, and nothing good was
known of their saurian kind.
There was peace in Ruwenda—save for such raids as these—during the
childhood of the three Princesses. Men were unaware that a storm was
building in the north.
The King of Labomok was old and had occupied the throne for almost
the lifetime of many of his people. His heir. Prince Voltrik, was soured
with waiting. He spent much time overseas, where he learned different
ways and made allies—including the great sorcerer Orogastus. When the
Prince returned home, this man of magic was his close companion. When
Voltrik did at last assume the crown, Orogastus became his first advisor.
Voltrik coveted Ruwenda—not for its swamps, but for its control of the
lumber trade and for the treasure rumored to be found in the ruined
places. Once safely settled on the throne, he struck.
The mountain forts guarding the only pass were blasted into
nothingness by lightnings called down by Orogastus's magic. Then, guided
by a traitorous merchant and with the swiftness of a snake's strike, the
Labornoki took the great Citadel itself.
King Krain and those of his lords who survived that battle died horribly
at Voltrik's orders. His Queen fell under the swords of those pledged to kill
all the royal women, for there was a prophecy that only through them
could the invaders be conquered in turn. The three Princesses escaped,
each with the aid of her birth talisman—but they did not go together.
Haramis was carried by the witchery of Binah (now old and failing, else
no Labornoki would have won foothold in the land) upon the back of a
great lammergeier flying northward. Kadiya, with the aid of an Oddling
hunter long her tutor in swamp ways, took to the swamps through an
ancient passage. And Anigel, with her Uisgu mentor, the old herbmistress
Immu, escaped under cover of the transports of the enemy to the watery
city of Trevista.
Each Princess in turn made her way to the Archimage at Noth, and
each was set under a geas to discover a portion of a great magical weapon
which would free the land.
Their trials were many. Haramis, in the mountain lands, was tracked
by Orogastus. He skillfully wooed her, first out of policy and then because
he believed he saw in her a fit companion for his own gathering of power.
But he was unable to obtain the silver wand that was Haramis's talisman.
Kadiya was led to the lost city of the Vanished Ones and there took up
the sword which grew from the stalk of the Black Trillium which had led
her there. Anigel, fleeing southward with the aid of the Uisgu, came to the
forests of Tassaleyo, where she plucked a crown from the maw of a
life-devouring plant. There also she met the Prince Antar, son of Voltrik,
sent to bring her back prisoner but already so revolted by the excesses of
his father and fearful of the growing power of Orogastus, he would not
fulfill his orders, but rather became Anigel's sworn defender.
Kadiya, leading her gathering army of both Uisgu and Nyssomu, joined
with Anigel to storm the Citadel. It was Haramis who brought to an end
the life and power of Orogastus, by uniting the three talismans into one
great and overpowering magical focus.
Haramis refused the crown which was hers by right of first birth,
choosing rather to follow Binah as the Archimage, when the dying
sorceress left her cloak of guardianship. Kadiya also put aside her
heirship, for there were secrets in the swamplands which called to her,
and she knew in her heart that crown and throne were not for her.
Anigel wedded with Antar and joined the two once-enemy lands. As
Queen and King of Laboruwenda, both swore they would rule as one and
hold the peace.
Haramis departed for the northern mountains and the knowledge
stored there which drew her heart as no living thing might do. Before she
went she sundered again the three talismans, taking with her the wand.
The crown Anigel set within her own as part of her heirship. Kadiya again
took up her sword, the point of which was missing, the pommel of which
could unlid into three force-shooting eyes—one the color of her own, one
that of an Oddling, and the topmost a brilliant one which had no bodily
counterpart.
Kadiya joined her Oddling army and went swampward just at the
beginning of the monsoon. She did not know what she truly sought, only
that she must seek it.
Chapter One
RAIN LASHED THE SWAMP. THE WATERWAYS flooded, roiled with
mud, carried burdens of uprooted trees and brush. Vines writhed in the
water like serpents, and true serpents were belly up and tangled fatally
among reeds. Some of the monstrous growth swirled out making
temporary traps to catch flotsam, to the danger of any craft daring to
attempt upstream travel. The pounding of wind deafened all sound except
the roar of rain and water.
Yet there was travel against all odds. Even as much as those who knew
the swamp feared their world gone wild, this one season they had dared it.
An army had come out of the mires: clans had drawn to clans, peoples to
peoples.
There had been such a battle as even the ancient songs had never
pictured. Evil had struck with a power of fire and sorcery beyond
knowledge, and had gone down to a defeat of charred ashes. Now those
who dared the streams and rivers felt only an overpowering need to turn
their backs upon that battlefield, to withdraw into their own places.
Victory had been theirs, yet the shadow of what had happened was like the
storm clouds above.
Their number shrank constantly during the journey. This force and that
took to side ways, peeling away to seek out their home islets or the lake
villages of the clans. The Nyssomu went early since their holdings lay the
closest. Their distant cousins, the Uisgu, rode in shallow skiffs drawn by
those who were both fighting comrades and aides—the water-dwelling
rimoriks, even their great strength taxed by the fury of the waters. They
disappeared more and more into half concealed tributaries which led to
their fortresses, still unknown to those not of their kind save a few far
venturers, none welcomed.
Though the fast diminishing army fought hard to leave the past behind
them, there were gruesome reminders of what horror had held sway here.
Trussed in one patch of mud burdened reeds were the remains of a
human, one of the ill-fated invasion force.
The girl, swinging her paddle violently in one of the foremost skiffs,
looked away hurriedly. Some Skritek had feasted there—satisfied the
abominable hunger of his kind upon the flesh of his one-time ally.
Skriteks—many now must be on the run before the storm fury. They
knew only too well what would happen to any of their kind who had
survived the defeat of the invaders within reach of the victors.
The small party left had pushed on now into the Thorny Hell, a place of
dread in which the innermost heart of fear seemed trapped in the tangle
of thorn-sprouting growth. A sense of peril appeared to cling in leprous
patches to the trunks of dead trees. Those who ventured here because it
was the straightest path to their destination did not attempt to see beyond
the bristling curtain which walled the river on either hand.
The rain formed shrouds across the open water which shut out much of
the view ahead. Bowed head and hunched shoulders could not help.
Kadiya— who had once been a Princess housed in all the soft life known to
her kind— endured, even as she endured the weight of the sheathed
weapon which dug against her ribs when she swung to the paddle's need.
The same stubbornness which had brought her an army held. Kadiya
could not and would not turn aside with any of those who continued to
urge her to shelter with them. Nor could she have remained at the Citadel,
now cleansed of the evil which had struck down those of her house.
Payment had been taken. However, she was not yet free…
Once more that weight resting upon her was greater than all that the
storm could hurl at her, stronger than any floating trap she and her
companions fought their way through.
Why did she feel this driving urge, this pressure which was sometimes
close to frantic? She felt she was being moved by a will which was not her
own. The first time she had fled there had been red death, fire, the end of
all the life she had known. Now… now what drove her?
Drive it did—through the very maw of the storm. Islets on which they
tried to camp were only sinks of mud and water-heavy brush. There was
no real shelter. Sleep was only a temporary end to an exhaustion that left
the body one great ache. Still each time she roused she was quick to settle
once more into hazardous traveling.
At least the storm kept their drenched world free of some dangers. No
voor cruised above, no scale-armored xanna arose from murky paths with
sucker-encrusted limbs to threaten them. Those plants which had their
own vicious weapons were curled in upon themselves to outwait the floods.
On the seventh day they came to the end of the river road. Now there
was only their single craft left to nose the sticky mud of the bank. At least
here the thorns did not repel.
Kadiya threw her pack ahead to a mound of earth which looked stable
enough to hold it. Reaching out for a trailing vine, she used it to drag
herself ashore. Then she turned to face those who had accompanied her
without complaint and wearily raised one hand in salute.
Many things had changed in the days just past, but old Oaths were still
honored. No matter how valorous they had been in a battle which had
wrenched their world out of the hands of the Dark, no man or woman of
the Oddlings would venture beyond this landing into a long-forbidden
land— none except Jagun, the huntsman who had taught her the swamp
ways and was now swinging ashore in her water-tilling tracks. Oathed
against this he had been, but that Oath was lifted by her own belief and
act.
Yet those others watching her now, their great yellow-green eyes
unblinking as if those very stares would hold her. were plainly loath to let
her go.
"Light-bearer." One of the two women warriors raised her hand in
entreaty. "Come with us. You have carried our hope." For a moment her
eyes sought the heavy burden at Kadiya's belt. "There is peace—the peace
which we have won. Let us shelter you. Seek not this place which is not to
be seen…"
The girl pushed back a sodden string of hair dangling from under her
xanna-bone helm. She found that she still had the power to summon a
smile.
"Joscata, this has been laid upon me." Her hand went to the bulbous
hilt of that talisman which was also a sword. "It would seem that I cannot
rest until I have fulfilled yet another duty. Let me but do this and I
promise I shall return with a full heart to you all—for such comradeship I
wish more than all else in the world. The choice is not yet mine to make. I
have something still to do."
The Nyssomu looked beyond the girl's shoulder to the drenched land.
On her face there was a shadow which might have been set by fear.
"May all good go with you, Farseer. Firm be the land for your footing,
clear the path to where you must trod."
"Swift be your boats, comrades," Kadiya replied as she hoisted her pack
to her shoulders, "quick the way. If fortune wills I shall see you again."
Jafen, war speaker of the clan who had brought them here, still held the
tie rope. "Lady of the Sword, remember the signal. There will be always a
watcher. When you have done what you must do…"
Slowly Kadiya shook her head, then blinked her eyes against the stream
of water the gesture dislodged from her helm. "War Captain, do not expect
a quick return. In all truth I do not know what lies before me now. When I
am free, then surely I shall seek out those whose spears were a wall against
the Dark."
Memory struck for a moment. It was as though not a Nyssomu faced
her but that awesome figure she had seen but once before, who had come
to her when she had been a hunted fugitive with despair nipping at her
heels. And because of the courage born from that meeting with the
mysterious presence in the garden of the lost city, she now felt the flash of
memory as a spur, urging her on.
The five left behind did not push off but held their craft steady as long
as she and Jagun were in sight.
Luckily the mud slime in which one could not find steady footing did
not last. There were sometimes pools across their path that Jagun
depth-tested with the butt of his spear. Their pace was necessarily slow
and the way was long.
There was little shelter. Game was scarce and the provisions which
made up the larger part of their packs were fast disappearing despite all
their care. There came the time when they went without food for the night
and were no better off in the morning. However, under that gray sky the
rain had mercifully slackened, and Kadiya at last caught sight of the
huddle of ruins ahead.
It was the Place of Learning—the stronghold of the Sindona, the
Vanished Ones. She paused. Would the old magic touch her once she
passed through that broken semblance of a gate? She began to splash
toward it—then remembering, she glanced back.
"Jagun?"
His face was set as if he were battle ready, yet he was following. Looking
to neither side, he marched as one does to a danger which must be faced.
The age-old Oath put upon his people: even though she had loosened it for
him when they journeyed this way before, did it burden him still?
He did not answer but he came on. There was a great burst of wind
driven rain, as if the monsoon itself would bar their passage at this last
moment. Then they stumbled forward, through the wreckage of the gate,
falling to their knees from a last blow of the wind.
But… the beat of the storm was gone! They might have passed under a
roof, though the sky was open over them. In the air hung a heavy
moisture, more like a morning fog. While before them—
No ruins, no tumble of age-struck stone. Kadiya had seen the
transformation work before, passing in the opposite direction. Ruins
without to the eye; within, a city silent, deserted, yet unpitted by years.
Streets stretched empty before them. The buildings bordering them,
though half clothed with the green of vines, showed no crumbling. Just as
the Citadel in which she had been born had survived time without decay,
so had this place though all other sites the Vanished Ones had left behind
were tumbled stone.
Jagun's pack thudded from his back to the pavement. He muttered
something as might one who lived by natural laws and did not welcome a
confrontation with what put those in abeyance.
"This is a place of…" He hesitated as if he could not find the proper
words.
The clouds were darker. Night was overtaking the storm. Kadiya was on
her feet. Twilight, or black night, she was now so close—
"This is a place of Power," she said, and her words seemed softened by
the mist which was growing stronger. "And I have something to do."
She did not turn her head to see if he would follow, nor did she linger
for any word of agreement. Instead she hurried onward. To either hand
the intact buildings loomed. The curtains of vines which draped them took
on a darker hue in the twilight. Windows like great lidless eyes watched
her from behind those living screens. No flicker of lamp, flare of torch gave
honest welcome. Still she felt no alarm, no fear that anything here lay in
wait.
From street, to square, to street, she went to find that which she knew
was the heart of this place. She rounded a mist-veiled pool to come to a
stairway. There she stopped, both hands gripping the sword she wore but
had not drawn. On either side, mounted on each rising step, were life-size
(or perhaps larger than life-size) statues, facing each other so that none
could pass between them unseen.
The artist who had carved them had given them a kind of shimmering
life as if each were bespelled. Men and women in company, they were
surely representations of the Vanished Ones. Each countenance differed
from the others so that one could well believe they were portraits of the
once-living.
Kadiya slipped off her pack, then drew the sword. This she held by the
pointless blade. As if the gesture assured her right to entrance, the girl
climbed the stairs.
Gaining the columned platform above, she paused. There was the
second stairway which she sought, leading downward to a garden which
was not of any world she knew. Here fruit and flower shared the same
branch. Time vanished: There was no past, no future, only the moment in
which she moved. The mist was nearly gone. Even the twilight lingered, as
if night had no place here.
Sparks of light danced in the air. They were many-colored, as if jewels
had taken wings. From flower to flower, swelling fruit to fruit, they
wheeled and spun. She had never seen their like elsewhere in the
swamplands.
With a sigh Kadiya dropped to the top step. At that moment all the
weariness of her travel settled upon her. She raised her hand to push off
the helm which suddenly had taken on an intolerable weight. It fell, to
clang on the white stone, and she frowned at the noise.
Her hair was plastered to her mud splattered cheeks, or lay in lank
strings upon her mail clad shoulders. It held the darkness of peat waters.
Swamp smells were strong about her body. The fragrance of the garden
seemed a reproach.
Across her knees rested the sword. The three eyes which formed the
pommel were sealed, closed as tightly as if they had never been opened to
loose raw powers. Kadiya slipped her hands along the blade. Once her
touch had awakened tingling life, but that was gone now. This was
certainly what was meant to be.
Though she caressed the sword, her eyes were on the garden. The one
who had come to her here, who had sent her into battle with the Dark to
learn for herself a little of what she was, or could be, would that one come
again now?
No. Instead the twilight was slowly dimming at last. Nothing moved
save the gemmed flyers. With a sigh, her shoulders slumped. Kadiya arose
and went down step by lingering step into the garden.
The thick turf which covered all the open land between shrubs, beds of
flowers, and twining vines was broken in only one place. Where that patch
of earth was visible there seemed to be also a hovering luminosity.
Kadiya stumbled toward it. She stooped and, with both hands clasped
tightly over the ovals which held the eyes, drove the squared-off blade tip
摘要：

ScannedbyHighroller.ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.GoldenTrilliumbyAndreNortonPrologueTHEREWERETHREEOFTHEM,DAUGHTERSoftheBlackTrillium.Intheirfullwomanhood,theyweretobeHaramis,theSorceress;Kadiya,theSeeker-Warrior;andAnigel,theQueen.Atonebirththeycameinto...

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