Speaking Stones by Stephen Leigh

Speaking Stones by Stephen Leigh

Author:Stephen Leigh [Leigh, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-203097-9
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1999-02-15T00:00:00+00:00


JOURNAL ENTRY:

Anaïs Koda-Levin, O’Sa

I MET AGAIN WITH NAGTE THIS SUMMER, KNOWing that if I didn’t take some action, the Elders of the Rock would do something on their own, something more drastic than I’d like.

He was much changed from the years when I knew him in AnglSaiye: gaunter, more restless, as if his passion had burned away any extra flesh on his body, leaving behind only wiry muscles and that searing, commanding presence that had always been his. When we finished with the polite nothings, I decided that I would simply ask him the questions I had, without dissembling or courteous padding. Since NagTe refused to speak the human language (though he knows it very well) and my Miccail has never been very good, I could hardly be anything more than direct.

“What will it take, NagTe?” I asked him in my halting Miccail. “What will make your QualiKa put down their lansa and end this violence between us?”

He grinned at me, as if he found the question amusing. “You have been gifted by VeiSaTi with many wonderful qualities, and we owe you much, O’Sa,” he told me. “The gods sent you humans down to bring back the CieTiLa and the Sa. They chose you for the task, and you accomplished it. Now your work is done—you don’t need to stay here any longer. You don’t have the power to end this struggle.”

“Pretend that I do and would use it, NagTe. What is it you’d ask?”

The grin remained on his face, deepening the wrinkles in his cheeks and along his thin snout. The triple slits of his nasal vents widened. “Leave,” he said. “Go back to the clouds. Give us back AnglSaiye. Give us back the Black Lake. Fill in the tunnels you carved in our sacred rock and destroy the buildings that deface it. Go away, and return the land to us. The gods did not send you here to destroy us after you returned the Sa to us.”

I sighed at the impossibility of what he asked. “You’re right, I can’t do what you ask. But why does it have to be that way? There must be some middle path. Be reasonable.”

NagTe was shaking his head before I finished. “'Be reasonable'—that’s what your people always tell us. ‘Yes, we’ve defiled your most sacred places without so much as a thought to you, but be reasonable. Yes, we built our homes where CieTiLa once worshiped their gods in peace, but be reasonable. Yes, this land, over here was also the CieTiLa’s, but it has the rocks we need to make our graystone, so be reasonable. Yes, our furnaces soil the air, land, and water, but be reasonable. Yes, we insist that all you “grumblers” follow our KoPavi rather than your own, but be reasonable. Yes, we’ve killed uncounted numbers of you since we came here, but be reasonable.'”

He grinned at me again, but the smile was humorless and hard. “Tell me, O’Sa. Is this simply a translation problem? Does ‘be reasonable’



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