Free Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains by Sylvia Engdahl

then, in deciding you’d rather be here with me than return to the village where we’d never see each other again?”
    “Be with you?You mean I’ll be allowed to see you—often?”
    “As often as you like,” Noren told her, smiling. “We’re not going to be punished, Talyra. I didn’t understand either when I was sentenced—we weren’t meant to—but the Scholar Stefred never said we’d be put in prison; he simply forbade us to leave the City.”
    “But—but only Scholars and Technicians live in the City! And besides, we’ve broken the High Law—”
    “I broke it, but I’ve recanted and been pardoned. You never broke it at all. In the Scholars’ eyes you’re completely innocent.”
    “How could I be, Noren? Helping you to escape may have been just a civil offense, but I’m still guilty of blasphemy.”
    “No,” said Noren gently. “I was right about some things; it’s not blasphemous to think you’d like to be a Technician. Talyra, you are a Technician now! Stefred had to make sure you wanted it before he passed judgment, because no one who’s aware that not all Technicians are born to their status can be released.”
    She stared, wide-eyed. “Are you a Technician, too?”
    Noren had learned long before that one could conceal without lying. “As you said, only Scholars and Technicians live in the City,” he told her. “A heretic who recants is confined here because of the secrets he knows, but he lives and works like the others.”
    Talyra, for the moment speechless, turned to Stefred in a mute appeal for confirmation. His smile was warm, yet solemn. “There is nothing in the High Law that prevents a villager who is qualified from becoming a Technician or even a Scholar,” he said. “There can never be anything wrong in a person’s wanting to know more than he knows, or be more than he has been; the Law specifies only that those who do choose that course can never go back.”
    He rose and walked to the door. Freeing herself from Noren’s embrace, Talyra followed, holding out her hands in the ritual plea for blessing. As Stefred extended his, she knelt, and this time he did not forbid her; she would have felt crushed, rejected, if he had, for she sought not to pay homage but to receive. But before the words could be pronounced, she looked anxiously over her shoulder. “Noren?”
    In dismay, Noren watched her new glow of confidence fade to troubled confusion at his failure to kneel beside her. He moved to do so, but with a barely perceptible shake of the head Stefred stopped him. No pretense would be permitted. Not yet High Priest, he was nevertheless a Scholar, and one Scholar could neither kneel to another nor receive from his hands what faith alone could bestow; Talyra’s distress could not alter that. And this would not be the last time he would have to hurt her.
    The flowing sleeves of Stefred’s blue robe hid her face as he intoned the formal benediction: “May the spirit of the Mother Star abide with you, and with your children, and your children’s children; may you gain strength from its presence, trusting in the surety of its power.” Surety? thought Noren bitterly. But there was no surety! One could not trust that the Star’s heritage of knowledge would lead to a transformation of the world, for it was quite possible that it would not. That was the truth he’d hidden from, the thing he was learning from science, and there was indeed no going back. He wondered how Stefred could sound so sincere.
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    Alone together, Noren and Talyra forgot all doubts and fears in the joy of their reunion. Then, later, he took her through the corridor into the Inner City that was to be her whole world; and though it was strange and awesome to her, she did not seem to mind. To Noren the high spires of the towers that had once been starships were beautiful because of all that was preserved there. He’d thought that Talyra, who must remain ignorant of their