Fourteen: Plummer's Way

We kept watch turn and turn about all the rest of that day, and got what sleep we could. Once the sun was down, we used the last bit of light in the sky to get back down to the road, and then got moving quick and quiet. We’d talked it over, and neither of us could think of better advice than the one Ergon gave Freddy and Sam in the stories: travel by night and not by day, and stay off the road when there was anybody else likely to be on it. A thin crescent moon was out; it didn't give us a lot of light, but what there was helped us find our way.

I’d spent more than a little of the day we hid in the ruin wondering what to do if we came to another fork in the road, but as it turned out I needn’t have worried; a few muddy tracks veered off one way and the other, but even by moonlight it didn’t take much more than a look to tell which way the main road went. Once we went past a farmhouse where one flickering light still showed in a window. Another time a dog somewhere off in the distance started barking, and that really had my hackles up, because wild dogs are not something two people can risk facing out in the open. Still, it must have been a farm dog yapping at the night wind; there was never more than the one bark, and it came from the same place, ahead of us, beside us, behind us, until we couldn’t hear it any more.

That was a long night, as long as the first one Berry and I spent out in the forest, and Berry and I didn’t say more than a handful of words to each other from dusk to dawn. Partly we both wanted to hear hoofbeats or footsteps as far away from us as we could; partly, I think, we were both remembering the black riders out of the stories and the terrible lonesome cries they made when they were hunting. If someone had asked me just then if I expected to hear that, I’d have denied it, but I think more than half of me was waiting for that.

Still, there was more to it than either of those. In the old world they used to shine bright lights all night long, so that people didn’t have to see the stars and feel small by comparison. Nowadays we don’t have anything like enough electricity to do that, and the priestesses would forbid such a thing even if we could do it; they say that we need to be reminded now and then of just how small and unimportant people are, and how big the universe is, so we don’t make the same mistakes the ancients did. If they’re right, Berry and I got a good double helping of Mam Gaia’s favorite lesson that night.

The sky was clear, and we were a long way from the nearest city; the moon was thin enough that it didn’t drown out more than a few small stars near it, so we got to see the Milky Way just as bright as it gets, and more stars than anyone this side of the old world could ever count. The moon crept across the sky, and all the true stars moved with it; a couple of false stars, the ones the ancients put up in the sky, cut across the sky following their own angled paths; and once one of them fell out of the sky in a sudden line of light that ended somewhere off to the east.

When I was small and my father was still alive, the priestess who visited us now and again used to say that when the very last false star finally dropped back to Mam Gaia, that would be the sign that people had worked off the debt we owed to the rest of life for what the ancients did. That’s not anywhere in the holy books, I learned that in Melumi, but even now that I know that, and know why the false stars got put up there in the first place, I still feel a little better whenever I watch one burn up in the air.

Anna was the one who taught me about the false stars. That happened much later in my story, just a few months ago, after the whole band of us who set out for Star’s Reach crossed the Suri River and left settled country behind for Mam Gaia alone knew what. We were maybe a week out of Kansiddi, and none of us really knew Anna very well yet, since Kansiddi was where she joined us; but that night I couldn’t sleep, and she was sitting up by the fire, and right about the time we got to talking, one of the false stars fell out of the sky, good and bright, off to the west of us.

“What is it your priestesses call them?” she asked me, meaning by that as she always did that they weren’t her priestesses.

“False stars.”

“That’s hardly a proper name for a satellite. They’re nothing like stars, you know.”

“I don’t,” I told her. “Where I grew up, we didn’t learn a lot about them.”

Anna nodded, after a moment, and gave me one of the odd sidewise glances that make her look a bit like a white-feathered bird. “No, I suppose you didn’t. They’re just machines, put up above the air so they can do their job better. The ancients must have put thousands of them up there for one reason or another. There were still a few in working order when I was a girl.”

“What sort of things did they do?”

“Some of them looked down at the earth and sent back pictures. Some of them listened for radio signals from the ground and sent them down somewhere else. A lot of them were put there to learn something about space, or the sun, or the stars, and send that back down to people on the ground. And then there were some that were part of the Star’s Reach project: long gone by my grandparents’ time, for they weren’t needed by then.”

I was looking up at the sky as she talked, and another false star came past, this one still following its path across the sky. I pointed to it. “There’s one.”

“Probably,” she said, with an odd little smile I couldn’t read at all. “It might be something else.” She never did explain what else it might be; maybe I’ll find out when we’ve searched more of Star’s Reach.

Still, the night when Berry and I walked under the stars toward Melumi, I didn’t spend much time thinking about false stars, and by the time the first whisper of gray showed up over the hills to the east I was tired enough that I wasn’t thinking about much of anything. We were well away from farmland at that point; the road wound through low hills thick with forest, and so we started looking for a place to spend the daylight hours as soon as we could see anything at all. Being ruinmen, the first thing we looked for was a glimpse of old concrete, partly because a good sturdy ruin might offer a bit of shelter and more than a bit of concealment, and partly because most people nowadays won’t go anywhere near a ruin unless they have to.

We both spotted the same bit of rough gray concrete at about the same moment, maybe half an hour before sunrise, when everything was getting light enough that I was starting to worry about being seen. It was maybe half a lom from the road, partway up a shallow slope; that was enough for us, and after a few muttered words we left the road and picked our way through the forest, trying to leave as little trace and make as little sound as possible in case somebody came along the road just then. That took a bit of time, and so it was nearly full light when we reached the ruin and ducked in through an empty doorway half full of earth and leaf-litter.

We were both inside before we found out that we weren’t alone in the ruin.

A sudden rustling, movement in dim light: steel gleamed blue. I grabbed my pry bar and jumped to one side, a trick I’d learned in the fighting circle. Berry flattened himself against the nearest wall and drew his own bar. For a moment, while I tried to get the shadows behind the knife facing me to turn into a human shape, nobody moved.

“Well, now,” said a voice with just a bit of waver in it. “And what do two ruinmen want with an old man minding his own business?”

I found my own voice after a moment. “Nothing at all. We were looking for shelter.”

“At sunrise, in the middle of the Tucki woods?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” I pointed out.

He allowed a dry laugh. “I suppose you could.” Then: “If you’ll put those very threatening pieces of iron away, this—” The knife blade twitched in his hand. “—will also go away. It occurs to me that we may have interests in common.”

I guessed at what he meant. “Like not being seen.”

“Among other things.”

I lowered my pry bar; he lowered his knife; we both put our weapons back away; out of the corner of my eye I watched Berry do the same thing, though his face was still tense with mistrust.

“I have the advantage of knowing something about you,” the old man said then. The sun was coming up and putting light in through holes in the ruin, and so I could just about see him by that point, a lean stooped figure with a mostly bald head and eyeglasses round as moons. “Or I think I do. There’s certainly been quite a remarkable bit of talk about a ruinman and his prentice going to Melumi with a very important letter.” He waved a hand. “No, you don’t have to tell me if that’s you or not. Do you have anything in the way of food, by the way? I can contribute some very respectable ham and part of a loaf of bread. Also whiskey, if that’s of interest.”

It wasn’t, but the food was, and we’d been given some things by Cob the day before, so we managed to have a creditable meal there inside the ruin.

“My name’s Plummer,” the old man said as we ate, answering a question I hadn’t quite gotten around to asking. “Or one of my names. In my line of work, a man sometimes needs more than one.”

“Must be some line of work.”

By way of answer he pulled a glass bottle out of his pack and set it on the concrete between us. I didn’t have the least idea what it was, but Berry did. “Medicine?”

“Exactly,” Plummer said. “I make it and sell it. Entirely natural ingredients, of course, but these days half the people in Meriga think that anything other than plain dried herbs is an affront to Mam Gaia, and some of them are rather too fond of expressing that opinion with sticks and stones.”

“Which is why you’re hiding here,” Berry said.

“A regrettable fact.” Plummer shook his head and made a sad noise in his throat. “I had to leave Dannul in something of a hurry several days ago. Two the farmers there took exception to my presence at the market, and went to gather their friends and a selection of weapons. I had reason to think they might try to follow me past Lebna. So you find me here.”

I thought about that while I chewed on a piece of ham. “This is pretty far past Lebna,” I said when I’d swallowed. “Did you know there was a safe place here?”

Plummer gave me a long careful glance through those glasses of his. “I can answer that question,” he said finally, “but there’s an inconvenient detail attached. If you communicate that answer to someone who shouldn’t know it, someone will cut your throat. I don’t mean that as a threat, not at all; merely an observation of fact.”

It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. “Ruinmen know how to keep secrets.”

He beamed. “Good. You take my meaning.”

So Berry and I bound ourselves by the old words of the ruinmen’s bond, and Plummer nodded once, as though that settled everything. “This is one of, shall we say, several places of the same kind,” he said then. “They change from time to time, for safety, but they can be recognized by those who know how. There are two more on this road between here and Luwul.”

Berry and I glanced at each other. “This road goes to Luwul?”

“You were told otherwise, I gather?”

I told Plummer about the farmer at the fork in the road, and he let out a little sharp laugh. “Had you taken the other road, it would have led you in a circle back to Lebna. No, we are three days from Luwul by the road down there.” His gesture pointed back to the road Berry and I had followed all night. “I cannot recommend going back toward Lebna. If you happen to be minded to go through Luwul, though, and don’t object to company, I can point out the safe places on the way.”

Looking back on it, it’s clear enough that Plummer had planned all along on making that offer. I didn’t guess that at the time, though; I didn’t know him yet, though that would change. Still, I was wary. “And you wouldn’t mind company, I would guess.”

Again the long careful glance. “There are men, I’m sorry to say, who would beat a solitary old man without a qualm,” he said. “Most of them would think twice about it, however, if the old man was accompanied by two sturdy young ruinmen equipped with those iron bars of yours. So if you happen to be going my way...”

I glanced at Berry again; his look said “Whatever you decide, Mister Trey” as clearly as if he’d spoken it out loud. “We’ll go your way,” I said then. “For now.”

“Excellent.” Plummer gestured at the remains of the meal. “More ham? It really is quite good, I think.”