Quibble, 45. Cave
Stuck in Nemo’s cave on a rainy day, Quibble and her amber’s relics think things through.
45. Cave @Quibble
The blind boy’s house was a thatched hovel of logs and sticks constructed at the mouth of a cave. The roof did little to keep out rain, I learned on the labor. We retreated then to the cave, and I saw why the boy preferred the hovel.
The cave wasn’t dark or deep. It was more a granite overhang protruding from the mountainside than a real cave. Except at its mouth, a wall of granite rose to meet the overhang, and between them burst a beam of daylight. The floor was sloped and rutted. Rainwater dripped in at the back of the cave, and in many places water ran in ruts. Dry places to sit or lie down were few, and no place suited me for stretching out. The roof was low. Nemo trailed a hand over his head, ducked where the rock jutted down, felt a way by memory. I gave up seeking a better place to settle after knocking my head twice.
Almost all my life, I had lived in caves. That was all a spiral Within was: a large series of caves. But as One, I’d never known a cave like this. I’d lived in luxury, with flat floors, vaulted ceilings, smoothly curved arcs and walls. I was seldom sensible of them, wakeful, for longer than perhaps six hours at a time. Ones don’t lie down Within: they sleep when orbs light up, and as they dream, they float in the air. A rainy, do-nothing day in a natural cave, in a northern summer where daylight lasted almost twenty hours, was a misery. An ill-tempered boy and an overfriendly wolf hardly improved it.
Nemo didn’t like my being there. His temper, shorter than it had been yesterday, told me I was an unwelcome guest disrupting his usual habits. Rain came down heavier as the day dragged on, and he was sorry it kept us from heading for Glossary’s cabin.
Even rained in, he wasn’t idle. On the way yesterday, after we left the trail by the stream, he’d gathered thin saplings, first running a hand up and down them as if testing for straightness, then hacking them off near the ground with his knife. Now, perched on a smooth stone in the dark near the back of the cave, he stripped long strands of cottony bark from the saplings. He made one pile of bark, another of bare wands.
“Are you making arrows?” I asked him.
“Know any blind archers? I’m making rope, cord, fishing line. Useful stuff.”
“Oh.”
After a spell of silence, he muttered, “Gloss gets most of my rope. I give him the sticks, too. He makes arrows with them.”
Clarity wouldn’t leave me alone. Even if the boy called her, which he seldom did in the cave, she stayed with him only a few minutes, then came back to me. She nuzzled close to lick my hands, face, ears. Once, when I moved, she snapped at me. I jerked my hand away in fright. She growled softly, then padded off of her own accord to sit by the boy. When she came back a while later, she was all sweetness again.
I wasn’t so quick the second time she snapped. Her lips brushed my fingers and a canine pressed against my palm’s flesh, but her jaws didn’t click shut as they had the first time. She growled, left, sat with the boy, returned. Lick, lick, lick.
I understood then. In her own language, Clarity was saying she wouldn’t bite me but she was unhappy with my quick movements. Be slow, she was telling me. Let me see what you’re going to do. I adopted the boy’s patient, fluid manner. She didn’t snap again. All the same, she wouldn’t be still.
“Clarity really is a sweetheart!” I said to Nemo at last. “She just sits with you, but every time she comes to me, she paws and licks me everywhere.”
The boy laughed. It wasn’t a rarity, but he liked to laugh at my expense. “Light the kindness,” he said.
As soon as I took the glass out of my pocket, Clarity backed off a little ways from me, cavorting as she had after seeing the glass-dream the previous day. I imagined not lovemaking but adroitness this time. A person in moonlight, her skin a tablet where you write light. The glass flickered on. Clarity sat still and gazed at it.
“She takes like a One to kindnesses!”
“Thank Vega for that.”
“You know the lady Vega?”
“I know Zeros!” Nemo said in just the way he’d spoken of birds.
“And what do you know of Vega?”
Despite my even tone, Nemo fell silent on hearing this question. He’d realized he was on the cusp of indiscretion.
In the quiet, Clarity lay down. Her eyes, fixed on the glass-dream, blinked more and more often. Finally, they drooped. She was falling asleep. I let her drift off and ended the dream. Then I intoned to Meissa, What do you make of this?
Another conspiracy, she said.
It has Vega’s stamp. There’s a flaw: it broke Nish’s heart.
As the vision would say, a cruel necessity. It saved Index’s life.
And left him at the mercy of wolves, I pointed out.
That’s just what makes it clever, another voice – male, gruff – broke in.
Who are you? I asked.
Kaus.
Mirror! I commanded the amber. My own reflection, radiant, coalesced in the air before me. Ghostlike, a man’s face morphed with mine. Like Alnasl, Kaus wore a beard. Seeing hair on my face made me snort. You were saying? I prompted.
The conspiracy hinges on Clarity, Kaus said. Blinding Index, the lord Alioth left him in the Vale of Teeth and declared edict satisfied. We Zeros are sticklers for the letter of the law. The wolves showed mercy. So what claim does control have to the boy’s life now?
Nemo did seem to be safe, even at home in his surroundings. How much did he know of the conspiracy? Did he remember Nish, Graph, or any of the Dazed? Would he answer to the name Index if he heard it?
Better not to test that just yet, Meissa advised.
May I advance another theory? Kaus said.
Go ahead, Meissa and I answered together.
You saw the falcon several times at the consensus. Now Chapter has led you into the Vale of Teeth. Is he your friend?
Friend? I suppose so. He’d sit on my hand if I had the falconer’s glove.
Who’s the falconer?
Quotation the Adroit. Is he helping me?
Kaus chuckled. It’s possible. But I fear just the opposite: he is Asuja’s accomplice.
How do you figure that?
Bear with me, Quibble, said Kaus. In chess, good players bring pieces to strong positions where their powers converge on weaknesses in the enemy camp, and only then do they attack.
Dispense with analogy, I begged, and say it plain.
The problem Asuja contended with was the number of people keeping watch on you. The array of kindness was close. Control was farther afield. A vision – a formidable foe – was at your side most of the time you weren’t with the Adroit. Your forays to the hilltops were Asuja’s only chances to approach you. Yet he didn’t abduct you. He hounded you.
He terrified me.
Definition left – his first success. Then he backed off. He let you know he was still there, but he didn’t chase you. He sought another way in. I believe Nihal’s revelation originated with Asuja. Perhaps he was the adept she heard the story from.
Do you think it’s not true, then – what she revealed?
I don’t know, Kaus admitted. If the revelation was a ploy, it provoked you to make your position weak. You dismissed the array of kindness. They stayed on the hilltops, but you were no longer heeding them. Asuja had the chance to attack, so he sacrificed a piece. What did Alioth say when Asuja popped in? “Your role in this is at an—” What comes next, Quibble?
End! I said, heretical Within. “Your role in this is at an end.”
Asuja unleashed control on you, then stepped in to achieve two goals at once, the same way he gave two dreams. He eliminated Alioth as a rival, and he made you flee. I think he’s been trying to isolate you, and now that’s done.
But why this way? I objected. Asuja could grab me, pop me away anytime! Why take all this trouble only to leave himself with the task of hunting me down?
Neither relic could answer this riddle.
Kaus’s theory is fanciful but pairs well with the facts, Meissa observed. I don’t see what Quotation has to do with it, though.
Asuja seems to know how Quibble thinks, Kaus replied. He plays her like Concordance plays the cello. He must be getting information from someone.
Recalling Quotation’s censoriousness in the Large Spiral and what some Dazed told me of his history Without – that Bibliography had banished him from the Adroit consensus under a cloud of suspicion – I thought the role of Asuja’s spy befitted him. Why would Quote betray his own people to utter control, though? What could it gain him? Didn’t he have more to lose?
The more pressing question, Kaus argued, is whether Asuja intended for us to end up in the Vale of Teeth. Was Chapter’s involvement another ploy?
Glasses don’t trance birds, Meissa pointed out. Anyway, Chapter knows Index. Might he have led Quibble here to protect her? That seems more likely. Utter control uses fear, coercion. Chapter’s involvement doesn’t smack of either.
This gave me long pause. “The intrigues of Zeros are labyrinths,” Cate was fond of saying, and now I knew it true. Actually, I reflected, had I come down the right side of the mountain, I might have found Quote waiting for me at Glossary’s cabin. I would have walked up to the Adroit with a smile and no clue.
And if you’ll take my advice, you shouldn’t go to the cabin, Meissa said. Where you are now is the best place you can be for the moment. If Asuja ever ventures here, he’s got to contend with wolves. Index is churlish, but he’s lived in the vale for years. He knows how. Get him to teach you. Meanwhile, you’ve got some protection in Clarity and the wolf packs here. Clarity’s pack accepts Nemo on her account. Clarity at least accepts you.
But Nemo’s guardian! I protested. Vega. She will come here, you know.
Yes, but not soon. She’s looking for you, too, elsewhere.
Alternatively, Kaus posited, Chapter may lead Quote to you, and Quote may then lead Asuja. Wolves can be tranced by control as well as by kindness. Asuja may turn wolves on you.
It’s all a gamble, I reasoned. I must prepare to face Asuja, and I think that means I must learn to use the kindness. That’s why Alnasl gave it to me. When I use it, I must have a subject, right? To train with the glass, I must trance someone?
Yes, Meissa and Kaus agreed.
I thought it over a while. Careful not to rouse Clarity, I got up slowly, reaching above my head to touch the cave’s ceiling. I felt my way towards Nemo’s place near the back of the cave. He was now weaving bark. I sat nearby and watched him work.
“What now, lady?”
“I can’t go to Glossary’s cabin, after all. It’s too risky.”
“Risky?”
“Running from Zeros, remember? I think they—”
“You’re scared!” Nemo laughed. “Fraidy-cat! A big fraidy-cat of a Zero!”
“May I stay here instead, just for a while?”
“In the vale? That’s less risky? You’ve got curious notions, lady. Just how do you hope to survive in the vale?”
“Will you teach me?”
The boy blew a raspberry like Nish would, then broke into giggles.
“Are you frightened of Zeros?” I queried. “Fraidy-cat?”
Nemo grew suddenly serious.
“How do you think I’m blind? Control, that’s how.”
He turned towards the sound of my voice and stared, opening his eyes wide. At the edge of each pupil, a thin circlet scintillated in the dark, bright red.
“See? I’m not scared of Zeros. You’ve done your worst. Your glasses can’t touch me now.”
“Hmm. I met a Zero with a dagger only the day before yesterday.”
“Ha! Lady, you’re not a threat to anyone here. Yesterday, you almost walked into a wolf den. You don’t even know what’s edible. If I put you out, you’d be dead in a day. You’re a fool in the woods, and I’m too busy to teach you. I have work enough, looking after myself and Clarity. We don’t need you, lady, so you can be on your way.”
“You need new thatch for your house’s roof.”
The argument had woken Clarity. She came to me now. Lick. Lick. I didn’t light the kindness. Slowly, I raised both my hands for her to sniff them. Even more slowly, I scratched under her jaw, working my way along by inches until my fingers neared her throat. She grumbled – the start of a growl – and I detoured, now sinking my fingers in the fur behind her ears. She sat, then lay with her head in my lap. I scratched the top of her head and worked backwards bit by bit towards her shoulders. She let out a wolfish sigh, almost a snort. After a long pet, I took my hands away.
“All right, Clarity,” I said softly. “Up, girl! Up!”
The wolf got up, licked my hand once, ambled over to Nemo, and licked him.
“The first thing I’ll teach you is making cord and rope,” Nemo said. “We’ll need a lot of it for the roof. If the rain stops tonight, I’ll teach you to make a fire.”
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