Mercadian Masques

Orim rose and almost fell. Black spots swam before her eyes. She felt hands catch her arms, Cho-Ma

At the entrance, Cho-Ma

Cho-Ma

Orim turned to the Cho-Arrim healer. "I thought the child Was dead."

Ta-Karnst shrugged. "Sometimes the child has a hard birth and will not breathe. But a little cold water helps."

"Of course," Orim chuckled. "You turned the hot water cold and then immersed the baby." She laid a hand on the healer's arm, but he pulled away as if embarrassed, touched a hand to his forehead, and slipped silently into the darkness beneath the trees.

Cho-Ma

She shook her head.

"Then come with me. We will sit by the waters and talk until our souls fall into the everlasting river that races through the sky."

He guided her footsteps over the causeway, over root and branch, until before them Orim saw the soft glint of distant moonlight on the still waters of the lagoon. Cho-Ma

Orim did. Listening to the murmur of night noises, she felt a sense of peace such as she had never experienced.

Beside her Cho-Ma

He looked at her, his eyes gleaming. "You are strong, Orim, yet gentle. I admired you as you brought that child into the world tonight."

"As I helped," Orim corrected. "Ta-Karnst deserves credit."

"You are two sides of the same coin, chavala. Ta-Karnst is the head, while you are the heart. He himself has come to see this." Cho-Ma

Orim, in her days among the Cho-Arrim, had become used to such water magic, but it never ceased to delight her.

Cho-Ma

"You are tired."

"Yes. The watchers reported today, and I spoke long with them."

"Who are the watchers?"

"Those who watch from the eaves of the wood. They speak with the trees and the water and watch the people of the mountain."

"And what do these watchers say to you?" Cho-Ma

Orim felt a painful jolt, as if cold arms had suddenly embraced her. "What will you do?"

"Fight, again. Mercadians are not the children of Ramos.

They would destroy the soul of the Uniter before it could be joined with the mind and body."

"Tell me of the Uniter," Orim said, her eyes searching his. "Tell me."

"Your arrival on this ship, flaming through the nighttime sky, was foretold in the Sixth Prophecy of the Uniter. You saw the tale performed in part by the separi. It is the story of our creation and of our future. We came to this world riding on the back of a great god-Ramos. This great god carried us in an argosy-like this ship here-but the Mercadians flung it from the sky. It fell in three parts-soul, mind, and body-and so created Cho-Arrim, Saprazzan, and Rishadan. The Sixth Prophecy tells that the soul of Ramos will return again, blazing in the sky. Should his soul be reunited with his mind and body, he would live again and unite the people. Now, we Cho-Arrim have the soul of Ramos. The Saprazzans have his mind-called by them the Matrix. And in the ghoul-haunted Deepwood lie the Bones of Ramos. Unite these all, and the folk who possess them, and we shall drive off the evil of the land forever."

Cho-Ma

He found one of the small canoes the Cho-Arrim kept alongside the lagoon and boarded it. Orim sat in the prow, while Cho-Ma

Orim felt sleep pulling at her. The journey became a dream in which she floated endlessly on a glass sea. There was no wind, and from time to time the trunk of a mighty tree thrust up high out of the waters. The trees were silver shafts in absolute blackness.

At last, before them, Orim saw a slender line of light that seemed to grow out of the water itself. As they drew nearer, she saw it was a small island, some fifty yards in breadth, ringed by trees. Unlike the other trees she had seen, these were mere saplings, no more than eight or nine feet in height. Curiously, their trunks shone with a brighter sheen than the larger trees, as if they were more vital, more aliveyounger.

Cho-Ma

The light in the center of the circle was bright after the dim light of the forest. Orim stood still for a few moments rubbing her eyes. When she could see again, she observed that at the very center of the circle was a short stone pillar with a broad top and narrow bottom. As they came closer, she saw the pillar was carved with runes, many of them worn with age. From a broad, shallow bowl at the top bubbled a spring of clear water. It coursed over the edges of the disk and down to the earth in a sparkling mist. From there it ran through the circle of trees to the lagoon.

"This is the Fountain of Cho," Cho-Ma

"What is the writing on the stone?" the healer asked.

"It tells our story. The story I have just recounted to you." He smiled wryly. "I ca

"May I look closer?" Without waiting for an answer, Orim released his hand and neared the pillar. The characters on it had been deeply carved and wound around the stone in a spiral, but many of the carvings were faded, worn by the ceaseless action of the water. She reached a hand out to touch them.

"Orim, no! No one may touch the Fountain of Cho." He remained where he was, watching her intently.

Orim stared at the characters. Like the separi's performance around the village bonfire, they stirred a memory within her.

Cho-Ma

"Then, gradually, the mountain people pushed back our boundaries, cut down trees, scarred the land. The plains of dust arose around their city, and only dust clouds lived on them." He shook his head sadly. "We live here, clinging to a tiny portion of what was once ours. It may be that a few generations hence, there will be nothing left of the ChoArrim. Do you see now why the Uniter is so important to us?"