Corvan reluctantly followed Gavyn and slipped in behind the waterfall that would take them to the boy’s secret garden room. When they departed from Molakar through Saray’s dwelling, Corvan had assumed that Gavyn would take him directly to the Kadir palace so he could find his way down to Dubok Kholm. Instead, upon reaching Kadir, the boy had immediately gone into the tunnels below street level and headed toward his seven-sided room.
Gavyn ran on ahead and as Corvan entered the garden, he immediately noticed that although it was daytime, the large lumien hanging in the center of the room had shrunk to half its former sized and was barely giving enough light to distinguish the pathways radiating out from the low stone wall and the huge tree. Leaves crunched underfoot and all the plants were withered and dry. Did they have seasons in the Cor? Walking past the gate, he discovered the tree itself was as bare as the maple outside his home in the dead of winter.
A thick branch had broken off and lay across the spring at the base of the trunk. Gavyn was attempting to push it away and with Corvan’s help they were able roll it to one side. The spring was just bowl of dried-up leaves; no water was flowing. Gavyn stared at it for a moment then ran around the tree, through the far archway and climbed up the rope towards the temple above.
Corvan knelt in the brittle moss and pulled the debris out of the spring. Gavyn’s carvings had been knocked off the ledge by the tree limb and the head broken off the carving of the mother, making it look like the statue in the central plaza of Kadir. Setting them up on the shelf behind the dried-up spring, he lay on his stomach, and reached into the hole at the bottom of the spring. There was something thick and somewhat flexible wedged inside. Twisting it about, he tugged and manipulated it slowly towards himself. It inched closer and he leaned back hard, tumbling onto his back as it finally came free. A geyser of water shot a foot into the air then dropped back to fill the small pool before flowing out again into the channels that lead to the various sections of the garden.
It turned out a thick piece of cloth had been blocking the spring. Smoothing it out on the ground Corvan stared at the piece of the old tapestry the Chief Watcher had cut from the tapestry in the High Priest’s Hall. It felt like years had passed since that event. After the Chief Watcher cut out the piece near the roots of the tree, he had said it was all over. Corvan had no idea what that could mean but then Jorad had picked this same piece up and tucked it away in his tunic. It must have some significance but covered in mud it certainly didn’t look like much of anything, just a tangle of roots, gnarled and intertwined in a design reminiscent of the outer edges of the medallions.
Gavyn reappeared from behind the tree, as did his smile when he saw the water flowing again. However, when he caught sight of the piece of fabric on the ground, the smile vanished. Kneeling by the cloth, he traced a finger along the paths of the roots and for the briefest of moments Corvan thought he might have muttered a few words, or was it just a fearful groan?
“It came from upstairs in the High Priest’s Hall,” Corvan said. “It was part of that hole we walked through when the large picture of the tree was still hanging on the wall, remember.”
Gavyn nodded, waiting for more.
“Jorad had this piece last, but I can’t see him coming here to intentionally plug your spring. Maybe he hid it somewhere but then it washed down and got stuck?”
Gavyn nodded and pointed back the way he had come from.
“Should we throw it away?”
Gavyn shook his head vigorously, then picked up that tapestry and carefully rolled it up. Taking the tube of cloth over to the tree he felt between the vertical ridges of its roots until he located a cleft between them. He slid the cloth tube up and out of site, then patted the trunk of the tree before looking into its branches as if he were telling the tree that the tapestry was now its responsibility.
Gavyn took a deep breath, stretched his back, then set to work making sure all the small channels from the spring were cleaned out and diverting their measured amounts of water to the rest of his garden. Going outside the gate, he mounded dirt in rings around the larger plants to capture the water and direct it down to the roots. His chirps of pleasure and joyful smile increased with each plant that was reconnected to the life-giving water.
Corvan worked to gather up all the dead leaves and piled them in the far corner where Gavyn had a compost pile started. The increasing light from the lumien overhead confirmed that there was no great hurry as they would be waiting until the night before attempting to sneak into the palace and Tyreth’s bedroom to open the secret passage in the shower stall.
Once the leaves were gathered up, Corvan washed his hands in the spring, then relaxed against the tree trunk. This was where he first met Atiya. He frowned. She might have been a good friend to him but his using the lumien seeds had ruined that relationship to the point where Atiya, Morgan and Madam Toreg had left him in Morgan’s tomb because they were sure he was in league with TaKalian. About the only good thing about being abandoned was that they were going to rescue Tyreth.
His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since they left Saray’s home. He had grabbed some of the kokur globes from her kitchen counter as he passed through, but he wasn’t about to try those right now, not on an empty stomach.
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Pushing himself to his feet called over the low wall. “Are you hungry Gavyn? Should I climb up to the pantry room and get us some food?”
Gavyn only nodded and continued with his work.
Leaving the garden room through the arched doorway, Corvan climbed the rope and made his way to the hidden door into the pantry. He checked through the peephole to make sure it wasn’t occupied, then opened the door and stepped inside. The room had been cleaned out and the dusty map he had drawn that had led Jorad to the Molakar settlement had been washed away. The only thing left on the table was a piece of bread covered in tangled threads of green mold.
Kadir must be in more trouble than he thought if even the priests had run out of food. Sealing off the Molakar settlement was only going to cause new problems as hungry people were always more desperate.
His stomach rumbled. He might be able to find a piece of fruit in Gavyn’s garden, but the thought of bread had awaked a desire for something more substantial. It would be worth at least a quick look around in the hall overhead.
It took a few attempts to recall the correct sequence for the three pegs on the wall, but the secret door finally swung open, and he crept up the stairs. The door onto the parapet around the High Priest hall was open and the fading light beyond the skylights showed the day was already ending. He had been working in Gavyn’s garden for much longer than he thought.
The Hall appeared to be empty but as he crawled out the door onto the balcony, a man sneezed below.
“Do you always have to be cleaning?” The voice of the High Priest rose from below and it was obvious he was annoyed.
A woman’s shrill voice replied. “If you would prefer, I could always go back to the palace and leave you here on your own.”
“That’s a great idea. I’m sure both the new governor of Kadir and Jorad would be glad for your company.”
“At least Jorad is out there looking for solutions instead of just hiding in this drafty hole.”
The High Priest snorted. “How is Jorad even alive. He always was a bumbling fool, one too many lumien seeds is what I was told. The men who went with him to feed that girl’s body to the buraks, said he was trapped inside the passage when the animal attacked. They were certain he had died.”
“Jorad is more cunning than you know, and he is playing his own game. He obviously paid off those men to lie to you to buy himself more time. We misjudged him. He likely got rid of the girl but secured the master medallion for himself. Now that he has made an alliance with the governor of Kadir, his new plans no longer include us.”
“I have my own sources Mara,” the high priest snapped. “I know that he was the one who told the governor of Kadir that I would best serve the people of Kadir by returning to my role as High Priest. I had no option but to accept but you didn’t have to come with me, you could have stayed behind to keep an eye on Jorad.”
“I have people on the inside who tell me there are other forces at work, one of who is your ex-counterpart. So I think it’s best to stay here to make sure Toreg does not show up and worm her way back into your life.”
A chair scraped on the floor. “That is not going to happen, Mara. My contact in the palace guards tells me that the rebel soldiers are trying to trade Tyreth for some food. They say she is sick and needs assistance. No doubt they will make the same offer to Madam Toreg. If she tries to rescue her daughter, maybe she too will get thrown into a Rozan prison. I say good riddance to the both of them for betraying me.”
“You had better be right. If Tyreth shows up in Kadir, there will be a great deal of trouble. You didn’t even keep the fake Tyreth’s body around to prove it was an honest mistake.’
“We will play it out one step at a time, but if you are going keeping rearranging the dust in here, I’m going out to sit by the garden pool.” His footsteps faded out of the hall.
As soon as he left the room Mara muttered. “Why don’t you stick your head in it and drown yourself.”
Corvan backed out through the small door then retreated through the pantry and down to the tree room. Gavyn had been busy. All the leaves were swept out of the central area and Gavyn was in the moss by the spring. He had retrieved the piece of tapestry out from the tree trunk and was arranging his figurines in a pattern on top of it, like a convoluted game of chess. Corvan sat on the broken tree branch to watch him.
“There is no food left in the pantry. We might have to go hungry for a while.
Gavyn dug into the pouch at his side, pulled out a small lumien fruit then gently bit the nub on the end and used his teeth to pull out the seed before handing the fruit to Corvan.
Through the hole in the end of the fruit, Corvan could see bits of light zipping around inside. Taking a bite, he was surprised to discover the flavor and the potency was enhanced. He chewed in silence and let the sensations flow through his body.
Gavyn continued to play with his figures on the piece of cloth.
“When you are done you should dry it out before you put it away.” Corvan said. “Otherwise, it might rot to pieces inside the tree.”
Gavyn raised his eyebrows and Corvan wondered if that was exactly what he originally intended to happen.
“Is that a game you are playing with your figurines.”
Gavyn shook his head, then moved his characters around the pathways of the roots, if it were a maze that worked in to the center. He pointed to the middle, moved the now headless woman into that position, then covered her with his hand and removed her from the cloth.
“I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me Gavyn.”
The boy lined up his characters and counted them off on his fingers. Seven of them. He moved them about the pathways created by the tangle of embroidered tree roots until they were all in the middle. Folding up the cloth around his figurines he hid it behind his back, then nodded eagerly to Corvan.
Corvan shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “So, when everyone finally gets to the center, they all go somewhere else? Is that me and my family and that’s how we find a way to go home?”
Gavyn only smiled in return, before turning away to place his figurines back on the shelf by the spring. Rolling up the tapestry, he stuck it back in the cleft at the base of the tree.
The instruction with the tapestry appeared to be complete but Corvan had no idea what it could mean.
