Urulani bowed slightly. “Elder Kintaro honors me once more.”
The central, balding Elder leaned forward. “What is your report, Urulani?”
The tall black woman opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and then began. “As instructed by you, Elder Shasa, I journeyed southward through the Cragsway Pass and onto the Vestasian Plain. I made my way southward to the first of the Hak’kaarin mud domes to begin my search.”
“That was but three days ago,” Elder Kintaro said, his eyebrows raised. “We had expected your journey to take many months to complete.”
“I had not been in the mud dome a day when this man Drakis and his companions came to me.”
Kintaro raised his eyebrows. “Indeed? You did not look for them then?”
“I had intended to search for them as instructed,” Urulani corrected gently. “We had heard stories of their passing through the mud domes in the deep parts of the Vestasian Plain-indeed, it was impossible not to hear of it from the Hak’kaarin. But as it happened, they arrived at the same mud dome where I first began my search at nearly the same time I did.”
“A miracle of the ancients!” Harku intoned, closing his eyes.
“Perhaps,” Urulani said, again looking away toward the ceiling. “Or it may have been an accident. I cannot say.”
“And so your journey is over before it has begun,” Elder Shasa intoned. “You have done well, Urulani. You are among our most trusted sisters of our clan. Will you then assist us? We wish to begin our investigations at once.”
“Direct me, Elders,” Urulani replied.
“We will find the heart of the tree by starting with the leaves,” Shasa said, pressing the fingers of his hands together and lightly touching his own lips. “Let us begin with his companions.”
“Elders of the Sondau,” Urulani said, bowing low. “I present to you Mala, an escaped slave from the House of Timuran in far Rhonas.”
The man with the iron-colored gray hair leaned forward. “Mala. . is that not a Merindau Clan name? Are you of the Merindau Clan?”
Mala stood shivering in the torchlight.
The gray-haired man glanced at Urulani. “Does she not understand our speech?”
“She understands, Elder Kintaro. . I cannot explain her silence as she would hardly keep her words to herself during our return journey today. Indeed, I had soon begun to dread our rest periods as she was always so full of words after we stopped.”
Mala shot an angry glance at the woman.
Urulani smiled in response. “Perhaps you might ask her again now, Elder Kintaro.
“I am not of any clan,” Mala said at once then her eyes fell to gaze unfocused at the floor. “I was. . I was born a slave and know of no clan but the Houses in which I served.”
“But you are no longer a slave,” said the balding man seated between the other two, his voice calm and quiet. “You no longer serve any ‘House’ as you call it. How it is that you have come to be free?”
“Free, Master?”