“When do the women get to…”–she whistled–“… at the men?”
Lejikh, standing nearby, glanced at her and chuckled. Glancing at the other men, Baluka smiled at their grins. “Any time you want,” he replied, to which they laughed.
“Now?” she suggested.
“There will be a good time later tonight,” he promised, then as the men laughed again he added, “When the dancing begins.”
As the oldest of the women, dressed in an elegant rich purple tunic against which her long silver hair contrasted beautifully, joined the family, Lejikh’s voice rose above the chatter.
“It is time to complete the cycle,” he said. “Take your places.”
As on all the previous shifts between worlds, Rielle stood between Ankari and Baluka. All took hold of their neighbour and a part of the circle of wagons. Lejikh checked that all were present, then the Travellers began their chant. Since Baluka had stopped opening his mind to her she hadn’t been able to understand much of the verses, though the more words she learned the more details she’d come to recognise.
This time, however, the phrases she identified were not about landscape or climate, but people. She recognised the words for marriage, birth, dance, feast and family, all linked with words of plenty like “many”, “large”, “hundreds” and “a thousand”. The latter related to cycles and number of Travellers, if she had translated correctly.
At last the stone ground below their feet and the purplish blue sky above began to fade. The sensation of travelling between worlds was familiar now. Baluka had not attempted to teach her how to do it again–not even the basic uses of magic–for which she was mostly relieved, yet a little disappointed as well.
She had to admit, she did not know how to regard magic now. While using it in her world was to steal from the Angels, her world had been very poor in magic. It had occurred to her that if Valhan had stripped her world of magic in order to leave it, no Angels could now enter it to right an injustice, as Valhan had done at the Mountain Temple, without becoming trapped. Maybe that was why they’d forbidden the use of magic. Maybe that was why they hadn’t, elsewhere.
So much of what the priests had believed about Angels was wrong. They didn’t even know Valhan’s name. Oddly, that made it easier to accept that nobody knew of Angels outside her world or believed using magic was forbidden. All were wrong about Angels, and who was to say which level or kind of “being wrong” was more unacceptable?
Maybe the Angels were content to remain unknown outside magically poor worlds so long as they had enough magic to work with. Maybe Angels were happy for humans to use magic when there was plenty to go around.
She remembered what Sa-Mica had told her the day she’d sailed for Schpeta. “Valhan once told me that this world will not be so depleted of magic for ever. One day, many generations from now, mortals will be free to use it again.”
One day her world would be more like the ones she had travelled through. Yet they would not be as free to use it as Valhan had said. The Raen forbade the teaching of magic, and travel between worlds. Was he, then, restricting the freedoms the Angels had allowed?
He killed powerful sorcerers. Except, obviously, the allies the Travellers had referred to. And Travellers.
If the Angels were working quietly to help humanity, why hadn’t they done something about the Raen? Did they approve of his laws? Were they unable to stop him murdering people? Did he learn to change his appearance to look like an Angel in order to deceive people? She would have caught her breath, if she had been conscious of breathing. That would explain so much!
Warm air surrounded her and her lungs flexed to draw in fresh air. Ankari moved away. Gently undulating grassy hills covered in grazing lom surrounded them. Wagons were clustered on the tops of hills. In the centre, a wide, flat-topped hill–a small plateau that looked as if it had been levelled for human purposes–was free of vehicles. On this, colourful shelters had been built to protect the people gathered there from the wind, which was whipping the streamers attached to the edges of the shelters into tangles.
“Let’s move,” Lejikh bellowed.
Baluka squeezed her hand, and she looked down, surprised but not displeased to find he was still holding it. “We have to get off the arrival area quickly to clear the space for other families to arrive,” he told her.