Helliconia Spring

VIII • IN OBSIDIAN

The room in which Shay Tal stood erect was ancient beyond her computation. She had furnished it with what she could: an old tapestry, once Loil Bry’s, once Loilanun’s—that illustrious line of dead women; her humble bed in the corner, built of woven bracken imported from Borlien (bracken kept out rats); her writing materials set on a small stone table; some skins on the floor, on which thirteen women sat or squatted. The academy was in session.

The walls of the room were leprous with yellow and white lichen which, starting from the single narrow window, had, over uncounted years, colonised all the adjacent stonework. In the corners were spiders’ webs; most of their incumbents had starved to death long ago.

Behind the thirteen women sat Laintal Ay, legs folded under him, resting his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee. He looked down at the floor. Most of the women gazed vacantly at Shay Tal. Vry, Amin Lim, were listening; of the others, she could not be sure.

“The effects in our world are complex. We can pretend they are all a product of the mind of Wutra in that eternal war in Heaven, but that is too easy. We would do better to work things out for ourselves. We need some other key to understanding. Does Wutra care? Perhaps we have sole charge of our own actions…”

She ceased to listen to what she was saying. She had posed the eternal question. Surely every human being who had ever lived had had to face up to that question, and answer it in her own way: have we sole charge of our own actions? She could not tell the answer in her own case. In consequence, she felt herself totally unfit to teach.

Yet they listened. She knew why they listened, even if they listened without understanding. They listened because she was accepted as a great sorceress. Since the miracle at Fish Lake, she was isolated by their reverence. Aoz Roon himself was more distant than before.

She looked out through the ruinous window at the ecrhythmous world, now freeing itself from the recent cold, its slimes and snows spatchcocked with green, its river streaked with muds from remote places she would never visit. There were miracles. The miraculous lay beyond her window. Yet—had she performed a miracle, as everyone assumed?

Shay Tal broke off her talk in mid-sentence. She perceived that there was a way of testing her own holiness.

The phagors charging at Fish Lake had turned to ice. Because of something in her—or something in them? She recalled tales about phagors dreading water; perhaps the reason was that they turned to ice in it. That could be tested: there were one or two old phagor slaves in Oldorando. She would try one out in the Voral and see what happened. One way or the other, she would know.

The thirteen were staring at her, waiting for her to go on. Laintal Ay looked puzzled. She had no idea what she had been saying. She perceived that she had to conduct an experiment for her own peace of mind.

“We have to do what we’re told …” one of the women said from the floor, in a slow puzzled voice, as if repeating a lesson.

Shay Tal stood listening to someone tramping up the steps from the floor below. There was no way in which she could answer politely a statement she had been contradicting since the Hour-Whistler last blew; any interruption was welcome at this point. Some of the women were irredeemably stupid.

The hatch was flung open. Aoz Roon appeared, looking rather like a great black bear, followed by his dog. Behind him came Dathka, to stand poker-faced in the rear, not even casting a glance at Laintal Ay. The latter stood rather awkwardly, and waited with his back to the cold wall. The women gaped at the intruders, some giggling nervously.

Aoz Roon’s stature seemed to fill the low room. Though the women craned their necks at him uneasily, he ignored them and addressed Shay Tal. She had moved back to the window, but stood facing him, framed against a background of muddy village, fumaroles, and the parti-coloured landscape stretching to the horizon.

“What do you want here?” she asked. Her heart beat as she beheld him. For this above all she cursed her new reputation, that he no longer bullied her, or held her arms, or even pursued her. His whole manner suggested this was a formal and unfriendly visit.

“I wish you to come back into the protection of the barricades, ma’am,” he said. “You are not safe, living in this ruin. I cannot protect you here in the event of a raid.”

“Vry and I prefer living here.”

“You’re under my control, for all your reputation, you and Vry, and I must do my best to protect you. All you other women—you should not be here. It is too dangerous outside the barricades. If there was a sudden attack—well, you can guess what would happen to you. Shay Tal, as our powerful sorceress, must please herself. The rest of you must please me. I forbid you to come here. It’s too dangerous. You understand?”

All evaded his gaze except the old midwife, Rol Sakil. “That’s all nonsense, Aoz Roon. This tower is safe enough. Shay Tal’s scared off the fuggies, we all know that. Besides, even you have been here on occasions, haven’t you now?”

This last was said with a leer. Aoz Roon dismissed it.

“I’m talking about the present. Nothing’s safe now the weather’s changing. None of you enter here again or there will be trouble.”

He turned, raising a beckoning finger to Laintal Ay.

“You come with me.” He marched down the steps without a farewell, and Laintal Ay and Dathka followed.

Outside, he paused, pulling at his beard. He looked up at her window.

“I’m still Lord of Embruddock, and you had better not forget it.”

She heard his shout from within, but would not go to the window. Instead, she stood where she was—alone despite the company—and said in a voice loud enough for him to hear, “Lord of a rotten little farmyard.”

Only when she heard the squelch of three pairs of boots retreating did she deign to glance out the window. She watched his broad back as he trudged with his young lieutenants towards the north gate, Curd trotting at his heel. She understood his loneliness. None better.

As his woman, she would surely not have lost stature, or whatever it was she valued so highly. Too late to think of that now. The rift was between them, and an empty-headed doll kept his bed warm.

“You’d better all go home,” she said, afraid to look directly at the women.

When they got back to the muddy main square, Aoz Roon ordered Laintal Ay to stay away from the academy.

Lainfal Ay flushed. “Isn’t it time that you and the council gave up your prejudice against the academy? I hoped you’d think better of it since the miracle of Fish Lake. Why upset the women? They’ll hate you for it. The worst the academy can do is keep the women content.”

“It makes the women idle. It causes division.”

Laintal Ay looked at Dathka for support, but Dathka was gazing at his boots. “It’s more likely to be your attitude that causes division, Aoz Roon. Knowledge never hurt anyone; we need knowledge.”

“Knowledge is slow poison—you’re too young to understand. We need discipline. That’s how we survive and how we always have survived. You stay away from Shay Tal—she exerts an unnatural power over people. Those who don’t work in Oldorando get no food. That’s always been the rule. Shay Tal and Vry have ceased working the boilery, so in future they will have nothing to eat. We’ll see how they like that.”

“They’ll starve.”

Aoz Roon drew his brows together and glared at Laintal Ay, “We will all starve if we do not cooperate. Those women have to be brought to heel, and I will not tolerate you siding with them. Argue with me any more and I’ll knock you down.”

When Aoz Roon had gone, Laintal Ay gripped Dathka’s shoulder. “He is getting worse. It’s his personal battle with Shay Tal. What do you think?”

Dathka shook his head. “I don’t think. I do what I’m told.”

Laintal Ay regarded his friend sarcastically. “And what are you told to do now?”

“I’m going up by the brassimips patch. We’ve killed a stungebag.” He exhibited a bleeding hand.

“I’ll be there in a while.”

He walked by the Voral, idly watching the geese swimming and parading, before following his friend. He thought to himself that he understood both Aoz Roon’s and Shay Tal’s points of view. To live, all had to cooperate, yet was it worth living if they merely cooperated? The conflict oppressed him and made him long to leave the hamlet—as he would do if only Oyre were to agree to come with him. He felt that he was too young to understand how the argument, the growing division, would resolve itself. Slyly, seeing nobody was looking, he brought out from his pocket a carved dog given him long ago by the old priest from Borlien. He held it forward and worked its tail. The dog began to bark furiously at nearby geese.

Someone else was wending her way towards the brassimips and heard the imitation dog bark. Vry saw Laintal Ay’s back between two towers. She did not intrude on him, for that was not her way.

She skirted the hot springs and the Hour-Whistler. An easterly breeze took the steam from the waters as it emerged from the ground, to blow it hissing across wet rock. Vry’s furs were pearled with a bead of moisture at every hair end.

The waters ran gargling, yellow and chalky in their crevices, full of an infectious fury to be somewhere. She squatted down on a rock and absentmindedly dipped her hand in a spring. Hot water ran up her fingers and explored her palm.

Vry licked the liquid off her fingers. She knew the sulphurous flavour from childhood. Children were playing here now, calling to each other, running across slippery rock without falling, agile as arangs.

The more adventurous children ran naked, despite the stiff breeze, inserting their androgynous bodies into clefts between rocks. Spurning waters cascaded up their stomachs and over their shoulders.

“Here comes the Whistler,” they called to Vry. “Look out, missus, or you’ll get a soaking.” They laughed heartily at the thought.

Taking the warning, Vry moved away. She thought that a stranger here would credit the children with a sixth sense, able to predict exactly when the Hour- Whistler blew.

Up it went, a solid column of water, muddy for a moment then brilliant pure. Ascending, it whistled on an ascending note—its unvarying note, sustained for an unvarying duration. The water sailed upwards to about three times the height of a man before falling back. The wind curved the jet towards the west, hammering the rocks where Vry had squatted a moment earlier.

The whistle stopped. The column died back into the black lips of earth from which it had sprung.

Vry waved to the children and continued up the brassimip track. She knew how they knew when the geyser was about to blow. She still remembered the thrill of wriggling naked between ochre rocks, plugging one’s body into the streaming earth, toes among hot slimes, flesh tickled by bursting bubbles. When the hour was near, a tremor shook the ground. One wedged oneself into the rock and felt in every fibre the strength of the earth gods as they tensed themselves to deliver their triumphant ejaculation of hot liquids.

The path she followed was trodden mainly by women and pigs. It wandered hither and thither, unlike straighter paths created by hunters, since its course had been dictated largely by that wayward creature, the hairy black sow of Embruddock. To follow the direction in which the track tended was to arrive eventually at Lake Dorzin; but the path ceased long before that, at the brassimip patch. The rest of the way was still a wilderness of marsh and frost.

As she moved up the path, Vry wondered if all things aspired to a highest level, and if there was a competing force trying to drag them to the lowest. One looked up to the stars, one ended as a gossie, a fessup. The Hour-Whistler was an embodiment of the two opposed forces. Its spouting waters always fell back to earth. In her unobtrusive way, she willed her spirit to soar to the sky, the region she studied without Shay Tal’s aid, the place of sublime movement, the riddling place of stars and suns, of as many secret passages as the body.

Two men came towards her. She could see little of them but legs, elbows, and the tops of their heads, as they staggered downhill under heavy loads. She could identify Sparat Lim by his spindly legs. The men were carrying slabs of stungebag. After them came Dathka, carrying only a spear.

Dathka gave her a grin of welcome and stood to one side of the path, surveying her with his dark eyes. His right hand was bloody, and a thin trail of blood ran down the spear shaft.

“We killed a stunge,” he said, and that was all. As usual, Vry was both embarrassed and comforted by his lack of words. It was pleasant that he never boasted, unlike many of the young hunters, less pleasant that he never revealed his thoughts. She tried to feel something for him.

She halted. “It must have been a big one.”

“I’ll show you.” He added, “If you’ll let me.”

He turned back along the track and she followed, unsure whether she ought to speak or not. But that was silly, she told herself; she understood perfectly that Dathka desired to communicate with her.

She blurted out the first thing that came into her head.

“How do you account for human beings in the world, Dathka?”

Without a backward glance, he said, “We came up from the original boulder.” He spoke without the consideration she would have wished him to give to such an important matter, and there the conversation languished.

She regretted that there were no priests in Oldorando; she could have talked to them. Legends and songs related that Embruddock had once had its fair share of priests, administering an elaborate religion which united Wutra with the living of this world and the fessups of the world below. One dark season before Wall Ein Den ruled, when breath froze to people’s lips as it issued forth, the population rose and slew the priesthood. Sacrifices had ceased from then on, except on festival days. The old god, Akha, was no longer worshipped. No doubt a body of learning had also been lost. The temple had been stripped. Now pigs were housed in it. Perhaps other enemies of knowledge had been about, when pigs were preferred to priests.

She risked another question of the ascending back.

“Do you wish you understood the world?”

“I do,” it said.

She was left wrestling with the brevity of the reply; did he understand or did he wish he understood, she asked herself.

The forces that had thrown up the Quzint Mountains had folded the earth in all directions, causing attendant deformations like buttresses, like the roots of trees, to extend outwards for many miles from the mountains themselves. Between two such rocky extrusions grew a line of brassimips which had long been essential to the local economy. Today, the plot was a scene of mild excitement, and several women were clustered round the open tops of the brassimips, warming themselves and herding their pigs while watching the work in progress.

Dathka indicated that this was where the stungebag was killed.

His gesture was scarcely necessary. The carcass lay about in piles, sprawling up the desolate hillside. Towards its tall, Aoz Roon himself was investigating it, his yellow hound about his heels. The stubby legs of the immense corpse pointed into the air, fringed by stiff black hairs and spines.

A group of men waited about the body, laughing and talking. Goija Hin supervised the slaves, human and phagorian, who wielded axes. They were splitting the fibrous carcass into slabs that could be carried down to the hamlet. They stood up to their knees in coir and woody sections of the stungebag’s flesh. Great splinters flew as they dismembered the remains.

Two older women dodged about with buckets, gathering up spongey white entrails. They would boil the mess down later to distill a coarse sugar from it. The coir would be used for ropes and mats, the flesh for fuel for the various corps.

From the paddlelike digging paws of the stungebag, oils would be extracted to form a narcotic called rungebel.

The older women were exchanging impolite remarks with the men, who grinned and stood in nonchalant poses about the hillside. It was unusual for stungebags to venture near human habitation. The beasts were easy to kill, and every part of them was useful to the fragile economy. The present kill was thirty metres long, and would benefit the community for days to come.

Pigs ran squealing round Vry’s feet as they rooted among the fibrous debris. Their swineherds were working below in the brassimips. Nothing of the giant trees was visible above ground except heavy fungoid leaves, cossetting the earth with their twisted growth pattern. The leaves stirred like elephant ears, not from the prevailing breeze but from draughts of warm air blowing out of the crowns of the trees.

A dozen brassimips formed the patch. The tree rarely grew singly. The soil about each tree bulged upwards and was starred with cracks, suggesting the considerable bulk of vegetation below. The heat that the trees syphoned up to their leaf system enabled the plants to thaw frozen ground, so that they continued to grow even in permafrost conditions.

Jassiklas lived under the leathery leaves. They took advantage of the sheltering warmth to put forth timid brown-blue flowers. As Vry stooped to pick one, Dathka returned to her side and spoke.

“I’m going into the tree.”

She construed this as an invitation to join him, and followed. A slave was pulling up leather buckets full of chips from the interior and throwing them to the pigs. Pulped brassimip chips had fed Embruddock’s pigs through the dark centuries.

“That’s what attracted the stungebag,” Vry said. The monstrous animals were as fond of brassimip as the pigs.

A wood ladder led into the tree. As she followed Dathka down, her eyes came for a moment level with the ground. As if drowning in earth, she saw the leather leaves waving about her. Beyond the backs of the pigs were the men, fur-clad, standing among the wreckage of the giant stungebag. There was snowy high ground and a sky of slate over all. She climbed down into the tree.

Warm air assailed her cheeks, making her blink, carrying with it a perfumed rotting smell that both repelled and attracted her. The air had come from a long way down; brassimip roots bored far into the crust. With age, the core of the tree commenced a fermenting process which released a hardening substance resembling keratin. A tube formed through the centre of the tree. A heat pump was established, warming leaves and underground branches with heat trapped at lower levels.

This favourable environment created a refuge for several sorts of animal, some decidedly nasty.

Dathka reached out a hand to steady Vry. She climbed off the ladder beside him and stood in a bulb-shaped natural chamber. Three dirty-looking women were working there. They greeted Vry, then went on scraping chips of brassimip flesh from the walls of the trees, loading them into the bucket.

Brassimip had a flavour rather like parsnip or turnip, but was bitter. Humans ate it only in times of starvation. Normally, it made pig feed—in particular, feed for the sows whose milk went to the making of rathel, Oldorando’s staple winter drink.

A narrow gallery opened to one side. It led into the topmost branch of the tree, the leaves of which would surface in a bunch some distance away. Mature brassimips had six branches. The topmost branches were generally left to grow without interference; being nearest to the surface, they harboured a variety of sheltering nasties.

Dathka indicated the central tube going down into the darkness. He climbed down. After a moment’s hesitation, Vry followed, and the women paused in their labours to watch her go, smiling part in sympathy, part in mockery. Directly she got into the tube, it was completely dark. Below was only the eternal night of earth. She thought that she, like Shay Tal, was having to descend into the world of fessups to gather knowledge, despite her protests.

The tube was marked by growth rings which formed ridges. The ridges were used as steps. The tube was narrow enough for anyone ascending or descending to plant her back securely against the opposite side of the tube.

Rising air whispered in their ears. A cobwebby thing, a living ghost, brushed Vry’s cheek. She resisted an impulse to scream.

They climbed down to a point where the second branches left the main trunk. Here the bulb-shaped chamber was even smaller than the one above; they stood close, heads together. Vry could smell Dathka and feel his body against hers. Something stirred in her.

“See the lights?” Dathka said.

There was tension in his voice. She fought with herself, terrified by the lust that flooded her. Should he lay a finger on her, this silent man, she would fall into his arms, would rip away her furs, strip herself naked, fall copulating with him in the dark subterranean bed. Obscenely delightful images filled her.

“I want to go up again,” she said, forcing the words from her throat.

“Don’t be scared. Look at the lights.”

In a daze, she looked about, still catching his scent. She was staring into the second branch down from the surface. There spots of light, starlike—galaxies of red stars, imprisoned in the tree.

He shuffled in front of her, eclipsing constellations with his shoulder. He thrust something pillowlike into her arms. It was light, covered with what she took for coir, as stiff as the hairs of a stungebag. Its star eyes looked unwinkingly up at her. In her confused state she did not identify it.

’What is it?”

For answer—perhaps he felt her desire after all; but could he make no stronger response, if so?—Dathka stroked her face with a clumsy tenderness.

“Oh, Dathka,” she sighed. Trembling took her, beginning from the viscera and spreading through her eddre. She could not control herself.

“We’ll take it up. Don’t be scared.”

The black-haired pigs were scuttling among the brassimip leaves as they emerged into daylight. The world seemed blindingly bright, the ring of axes intolerably loud, the scent of jassiklas unduly strong.

Vry sank down and listlessly regarded the small crystalline animal she held. It was in a state like the phagor’s tether, curled into a ball with its nose tucked into its tail, its four legs folded neatly into its stomach. It was immobile, and felt as if made of glass. She could not uncurl it. Its eyes fixed her with a remote gaze, unwinking between immobile lids. Through its dusty grey coat, striations of faded colour showed.

In some way, she hated it, as she hated him—so insensitive to a woman’s feelings that he had mistaken her trembling for the vibrations of fear. Yet she was grateful that his stupidity had prevented her from certain disgrace, grateful and resentful.

“It’s a glossy,” Dathka said, squatting by her, looking aslant into her face as if puzzled.

“A gossie?” For a moment she wondered if he was trying to be uncharacteristically funny.

“A glossy. They hibernate in the brassimips, where it’s warm. Take it home.”

“Shay Tal and I have seen them west of the river. Hoxneys. That’s what they’re called when they emerge from hibernation.” And what would Shay Tal have thought if …

“Take it,” he repeated. “A present from me.”

“Thank you,” she said, with contempt. She rose, emotions in place again.

She found she had blood on her cheek, where he had stroked her with his cut hand.

The slaves were still hacking away at the monstrous carcass. Laintal Ay had arrived, and was talking to Tanth Ein and Aoz Roon. The latter summoned Dathka vigorously, waving his hand over his head in command. With a resigned look of farewell to Vry, Dathka made off towards the Lord of Embruddock.

The busy things men did were nothing to her. She tucked the glossy between her arm and her shallow bosom and turned downhill towards the distant towers.

When she heard the sound of someone running to catch her up, she said to herself, Well, he’s too late now, but it was Laintal Ay.

“I’ll walk down with you, Vry,” he said. As she remarked, he seemed in a carefree mood.

“I thought you were having trouble with Aoz Roon.”

“Oh, he’s always a bit touchy after a brush with Shay Tal. He’s a great man, really. I’m pleased about the stungebag, too. Now that the weather is warming up, they’re harder to find.”

The children were still romping by the geysers. Laintal Ay admired her glossy, and burst into a snatch of hunter’s song:

“You are in a good humour! Is Oyre being nice to you?”

“Oyre’s always nice.”

They went their different ways, Vry heading for her ruined tower, where she showed her present to Shay Tal. Shay Tal examined the little crystalline animal.

“It’s not good to eat at this stage of its life. The flesh may be poisonous.”

“I don’t plan to eat it. I want to guard it till it wakes.”

“Life is serious, my dear. We may have to go hungry if Aoz Roon sets himself firmly against us.” She contemplated Vry for a while without speaking, as was increasingly her habit. “I shall fast and defy him. I need no material things. I can be as ruthless with myself as he can be with me.”

“But really he …” Words failed Vry. She could utter no reassurance to the older woman, who continued determinedly.

“As I told you, I have two immediate intentions. First, I shall conduct a scientific experiment to determine my powers. Then I shall descend into the world of the gossies, to hold concourse with Loilanun. She must now know much that I don’t. Depending on what I learn from these things, I may decide to leave Oldorando entirely.”

“Oh, don’t leave, please, ma’am. Are you sure that’s the right thing to do? I’ll go with you if you go, I swear!”

“We’ll see about that. Leave me now, please.”

Feeling deflated, Vry climbed the ladder to her ruinous room. She flung herself down on her couch.

“I want a lover, that’s what I want. A lover … Life’s so empty…”

But after a while, she roused herself and looked out of the window at the sky, where clouds and birds sailed. At least it was better to be here than in the world below, where Shay Tal planned to go.

She recalled Laintal Ay’s song. The woman who had written the song—if it was a woman—had known that the snow would eventually disappear and that flowers and animals would emerge. Perhaps it would happen.

From her nighttime observations, she knew that there were changes in the sky. The stars were not fessups but fires, fires burning not in rock but air. Imagine a great fire burning in outer darkness. As it came nearer, its warmth would be felt. Perhaps the two sentinels would draw nearer, and warm the world.

Then the glossies would come back to life, turning into hoxneys with high- stepping tread, just as the song had it.

She determined to concentrate on her astronomy. The stars knew more than the gossies, for all that Shay Tal said, though it was shocking to find that one disagreed with such a majestic person.

She tucked the glossy into a warm corner by her couch, wrapping the pathetic little thing in fur so that only its face showed. Day by day, she willed it to come alive. She whispered to it and encouraged it. She longed to see it grow and skip about her room. But after a few days, the gleam in the glossy’s eyes dimmed and went out; the creature had expired with never a blink.

Despairingly, Vry took it to the crumbling top of the tower and flung the bundle away. It was still wrapped in furs, as if it were a dead baby.

A passion of restlessness seized Shay Tal. More and more, her statements became preachments. Though the other women brought her food, she preferred to starve herself, preparing to go into deep pauk to confer with the illustrious dead. If wisdom was not found there, then she would look farther afield, beyond the farmyard.

First, she determined to test out her own powers of sorcery. A few miles away to the east lay Fish Lake, scene of her “miracle.” While she teased herself as to the true nature of what had happened there, the citizens of Oldorando were in no doubt. Throughout that cold spring, they made pilgrimages to gaze upon the spectacle in the ice, and to tremble with fear not unmixed with pride. The pilgrims encountered numbers of Borlienians who also came to marvel. Once, two phagors were seen, cowbirds perched with folded wings upon their shoulders, standing mute upon the far shore, regarding their crystalline dead.

As warmth returned to the world, the tableau began to slip. What was awesome turned grotesque. One morning, the ice was gone, the statuary became a heap of decomposing flesh. Visitors encountered nothing more impressive than a floating eyeball or a mop of hide. Fish Lake itself drained and disappeared almost as rapidly as it had formed. All that remained to mark the miracle was a pile of bones and curving kaidaw horns. But the memory remained, enlarging through the lenses of reminiscence. And Shay Tal’s doubts remained.

She went down into the square in the afternoon, at an hour when milder weather tempted people to walk out and talk in a way once foreign to them. Women and daughters, men and sons, hunters and corpsmen, young and old, strolled forth to pass the time of day. Almost anyone would put himself or herself at Shay Tal’s beck and call; almost no one wanted to talk to her.

Laintal Ay and Dathka were standing with their friends, laughing. Laintal Ay caught Shay Tal’s glance, and came over to her reluctantly when she beckoned.

“I’m about to conduct an experiment, Laintal Ay. I want you with me as a reliable witness. I won’t get you into further trouble with Aoz Roon.”

“I’m on good terms with him.”

She explained that the experiment was taking place by the Voral; first, she had a mind to explore the old temple. They walked together through the crowd, Laintal Ay saying nothing.

“Are you embarrassed to be with me?”

“I always take pleasure in your company, Shay Tal.”

“You need not be polite. Do you think I am a sorceress?”

“You are an unusual woman. I revere you for that.”

“Do you love me?”

At that, he was embarrassed. Instead of answering directly, he cast his gaze down to the mud, muttering, “You are like a mother to me, since my mother died. Why ask such questions?”

“I wish I were your mother. Then I could be proud. Laintal Ay, you also have an inwardness to your nature. I feel it. That inwardness will distress you, yet it gives you life, it is life. Don’t ignore it, cultivate it. Most of these people jostling us have no inwardness.”

“Is inwardness the same as conflict?”

She gave a sharp laugh, gripping her body with her forearms.

“Listen, we are trapped in this wretched hamlet among meagre personalities. A whole series of greater realities can be happening elsewhere. So much must be done. I may leave Oldorando.”

“Where will you go?”

She shook her head. “Sometimes I feel that the mere crush of dull people will cause us to explode, and we’ll all scatter from here across the world. You note how many babies have been born of recent years.”

He looked round at all the friendly familiar faces in the lane, and suspected that she was talking for effect, though there were more children.

He put his shoulder to the door of the old temple and heaved it open. They entered and stood silent. A bird was trapped inside. It flew round and round, darting close to them as if scrutinizing them, then soared upward and escaped through a hole in the roof.

Light filtered down through the gaps, creating shafts through the twilight in which particles of dust whirled. The pigs had recently been moved to outside sties but their smell still lingered. Shay Tal walked restlessly about, while Laintal Ay stood by the door, looking out into the street remembering how he used to play here as a child.

The walls had been decorated with paintings executed in a stiff manner. Many had been spoiled. She looked up at the tall alcove above where the sacrificial altar stood, its stone dark still with something that could have been blood. Too high for vandals easily to deface hung a representation of Wutra. Shay Tal stood staring up at it, fists on hips.

Wutra was depicted, head and shoulders, in a furry cloak. His eyes glared down from a long animallike face with an expression which could be interpreted as compassion. His face was blue, representing an ideal colour of sky, where he dwelt. Rough white hair, almost manelike, surmounted the head; but the most startling departure from the human norm was a pair of horns thrusting upwards from his skull and terminating in silver bells.

Behind Wutra crowded other figures of a forgotten mythology, mainly horrendous, teeming through the sky. On his left and right shoulder perched his two sentinels. Batalix was depicted as oxlike, bearded, grey and old, with rays of light streaming from his spear. Freyr was larger, a virile green monkey with an hourglass suspended round his neck. His spear was bigger than that of Batalix, and also radiated rays of light.

She turned away, saying briskly, “Now my experiment, if Goija Hin is ready.”

“Did you see what you wanted?” He was puzzled by her abruptness.

“I don’t know. Later, I may know. I plan to go into pauk. I would have liked to ask one of the old priests whether Wutra was supposed to preside over the world below as he does over the earth and sky… So many discontinuities.”

Meanwhile, Goija Hin was bringing Myk out of the stable under the big tower. Goija Hin was the slave master, a man who exhibited all the stigmata of his calling. He was short but immensely solid with bulging arms and legs. His features fitted clumsily on his low-browed face, which was adorned with wisps of whisker, randomly sited. His garments were leather and, waking or sleeping, he was accompanied by a leather knout. Everyone knew Goija Hin, a man impervious to blows or thought.

“Come on, Myk, you brute, time to make yourself useful,” he said, speaking in his customary low snarl.

Myk ambled forth promptly, having grown up in slavery. He was the phagor longest in servitude in Oldorando, and could remember Goija Hin’s predecessor, a man of far more terrible aspect. Black hairs grew in his patchy coat. His face was wrinkled, and the sacks under his eyes were messy with rheum.

He was always docile. On this occasion, Oyre was nearby to soothe him. While Oyre patted his bent shoulders, Goija Hin prodded him with a stick.

Oyre had acted as intermediary for Shay Tal and asked her father for permission to use a phagor in Shay Tal’s experiment. Aoz Roon had carelessly told her to take Myk, since he was old.

The two humans led Myk to a curve of the Voral where the river flowed deep. Shay Tal’s ruined tower stood not far away. Shay Tal and Laintal Ay were already waiting when the trio arrived. Shay Tal stood peering into the depths of the stream as if trying to decipher its secrets, her cheeks hollow, her expression bleak.

“Well, then, Myk,” she said challengingly, as the beast approached. She regarded him calculatingly. Scrawny sacks of flesh hung down from his chest and stomach. Goija Hin had already strapped his hands behind his back. His head rolled apprehensively between his hunched shoulders. When he saw the Voral, he ran his milt anxiously up his nostril slits several times in quick succession, uttering a low cry of fear. Could it be that water would turn him into a statue?

Goija Hin gave Shay Tal a rough salute.

“Tie his legs together,” Shay Tal ordered.

“Don’t hurt him too much,” Oyre said. “I’ve known Myk since I was a small girl and he’s entirely docile. He used to give us rides, didn’t he, Laintal Ay?”

Thus appealed to, Laintal Ay came forward. “Shay Tal won’t hurt him,” he said, smiling at Oyre. She regarded him questioningly.

Attracted by possible excitement, several women and boys came up to see what was going on, and stood in knots on the bank.

The river ran deep in the curve, cutting into the near bank only a few inches below the ground on which they stood. On the opposite side of the river, where it was shallower, a thin shelf of ice remained, preserved from direct sun by an overhang. This wafer jutted out towards deeper water, elaborately marked in glassy whorls, as if the water itself had taken a knife to carve it.

When Goija Hin had bound the legs of the unfortunate Myk, he pushed him to the edge of the river. Myk stuck his long head in the air, curled back his lower lips onto his stubbly chin, and let out a trumpet of fear.

Oyre clutched at his coat, begging Shay Tal not to harm him.

“Stand back,” Shay Tal said. She gave the signal to Goija Hin to push the phagor in.

Goija Hin set his thick shoulders to Myk’s ribs. The phagor tottered then plunged into the river with a splash. Shay Tal raised her arms in imperious gesture.

The watching women gave a shout and rushed forward. Rol Sakil was among them. Shay Tal motioned them back.

She stared down into the water and could see Myk struggling below the surface. Swathes of his coat came roiling upward with the disturbed water, brushing the surface like yellow weed.

The water remained water. The phagor remained alive.

“Pull him up,” she ordered.

Goija Hin had Myk by two straps. He tugged and Laintal Ay helped. The old phagor’s head and shoulders broke the surface and Myk gave a pathetic cry.

“Don’t killydrown poor me!”

They dragged him ashore and he lay panting at Shay Tal’s feet. She chewed her underlip, frowning at the Voral. The magic was not working.

“Throw him in again,” one of the onlookers called.

“No more water or I finish,” Myk said, thickly.

“Push him in again,” Shay Tal ordered.

Myk went in a second time, and a third. But the water remained water. No miracle happened, and Shay Tal had to conceal her disappointment.

“That’s enough,” she said. “Goija Hin, take Myk away and feed him extra.”

Oyre knelt compassionately by Myk’s throat, crying and patting him. Dark water flowed from the phagor’s lips and he began coughing. Laintal Ay knelt and put his arm round Oyre’s shoulder.

Disdainfully, Shay Tal turned away. The experiment showed that phagors plus water did not make ice. The process was not inevitable. So what had happened at Fish Lake? Equally, she had not managed to turn the Voral to ice, as she had wished to do. So the experiment did not prove she was a sorceress. It did not prove she was not a sorceress; it seemed to prove that she had turned the phagors at Fish Lake to ice—unless there were other factors involved she had not considered.

She paused with her hand on the rough stone of the doorway to her tower, feeling the rasp of lichen against her palm. Until she found another explanation, she would have to treat herself as others treated her, as a sorceress. The more she starved, the more she respected herself. Of course, as a sorceress, she was destined to remain a virgin; sexual intercourse would destroy her magical powers. She gathered her furs against her lanky form and climbed the worn stairs.

The women on the bank looked from Myk’s half-drowned body, surrounded by a growing puddle, to Shay Tal’s retreating figure.

“Now what did she want to go and do that for?” old Rol Sakil asked the company. “How come she didn’t drown the stupid thing properly while she was about it?”

The next time the council met, Laintal Ay rose and addressed them. He said that he had heard Shay Tal lecture. All knew of her miracle at Fish Lake, which had saved many lives. Nothing she did was directed to the ill of the community. He proposed that her academy should be recognised and supported.

Aoz Roon looked furious while Laintal Ay spoke. Dathka sat rigid in silence. The old men of the council peered at each other under their eyebrows and muttered uneasily. Eline Tal laughed.

“What do you wish us to do to aid this academy?” Aoz Roon asked.

“The temple is empty. Give it to Shay Tal. Let her hold meetings there every afternoon at promenade time. Use it as a forum, where anyone can speak. The cold has gone, people are freer. Open the temple as an academy for all, for men, women, and children.”

His resounding words died into silence. Then Aoz Roon spoke.

“She cannot use the temple. We don’t want a new lot of priests. We keep pigs in the temple.”

“The temple is empty.”

“From now on, pigs are kept in the temple.”

“It’s a bad day when we put pigs above the community.”

The meeting eventually broke up in some disorder, as Aoz Roon marched out. Laintal Ay turned to Dathka, his cheeks flushed.

“Why didn’t you support me?”

Dathka grinned sheepishly, tugged his narrow beard, stared down at the table. “You could not win if all Oldorando supported you. He has already banned the academy. You waste your breath, my friend.”

As Laintal Ay was leaving the building, feeling disgusted with the world, Datnil Skar, master of the tawyers and tannerscorps, called to him and grasped his sleeve.

“You spoke well, young Laintal Ay, yet Aoz Roon was right in what he said. Or, if not right, not unreasonable. If Shay Tal spoke in the temple, she would become a priestess and be worshipped. We don’t want that—our ancestors got rid of the priests some generations ago.”

Laintal Ay knew Master Datnil for a kindly and modest man. Restraining his anger, he looked down at the worn face and asked, “Why tell me this?”

Master Datnil looked about to see that no one was listening.

“Worship arises from ignorance. Believing in one fixed thing is a mark of ignorance. I respect attempts to drum facts into peoples heads. I wanted to say that I am sorry you were defeated, though I don’t agree with your proposition. I would be willing to address Shay Tal’s academy if she will have me.”

He removed his fur hat and set it on the lichenous sill. He smoothed his sparse grey hair and cleared his dry throat. He looked about him and smiled nervously. Although he had known everyone in the room since he was born, he was unaccustomed to the role of speaker. His stiff clothes creaked as he shifted from one foot to another.

“Don’t be afraid of us, Master Datnil,” Shay Tal said.

He caught the note of impatience in her voice. “It’s only of your intolerance I’m afraid, ma’am,” he replied, and some of the women squatting on the floor hid smiles behind their hands.

“You know what we do in our corps, because some of you work for me,” Datnil Skar said. “Membership in the corps is for men only, of course, for the secrets of our profession are handed down from generation to generation. In particular, a master teaches all he knows to his personal novice or chief boy. When a master dies or retires, then the chief boy becomes master in his turn, as Raynil Layan will soon take over my position…”

“A woman could do that just as well as any man,” said one of the women, Cheme Phar. “I’ve worked for you long enough, Datnil Skar. I know all the secrets of the brine pits. I could pickle myself, if need arose.”

“Ah, but we have to have order and continuity, Cheme Phar,” said the Master mildly.

“I could give the orders all right,” said Cheme Phar, and everyone laughed, then looked at Shay Tal.

“Tell us about the continuity,” the latter said. “We know, as Loilanun taught us, that some of us are descended from Yuli the Priest, who came from the north, from Pannoval and lake Dorzin. That’s one continuity. What about continuity within the corps, Master Datnil?”

“All members of our corps were born and bred in Embruddock, even before it was Oldorando. To many generations.”

“How many generations?”

“Ah, a good many …”

“Tell us how you know this.”

He wiped his hands on his trousers.

“We have a record. Each master keeps a record.”

“In writing?”

“That’s correct. Writing in a book. The art is passed on. But the records are not to be disclosed to others.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“They don’t want the women taking over their jobs and doing it better,” someone called, and again there was laughter. Datnil Skar smiled with embarrassment, and said no more.

“I believe that secrecy served a protective purpose at one time,” Shay Tal said. “Certain arts, like metal forging and tannery, had to be kept alive in bad times, despite starvation or phagor raids. Probably there were very bad times in the past, and some arts were lost. We cannot make paper any longer. Perhaps there was once a paper-makers corps. Glass. We cannot make glass. Yet there are pieces of glass about—you all know what glass is. How is it that we are more stupid than our ancestors? Are we living, working, under some disadvantage we don’t fully understand? That’s one of the big questions we must keep in mind.”

She paused. No one said anything, which always vexed her. She longed for any comment that would push the argument forward.

Datnil Skar said, “Mother Shay, you speak true, to the best of my belief. You understand that as master I am under oath to disclose secrets of my art to nobody; it’s an oath I take to Wutra and to Embruddock. But I know that there were once bad times, of which I am not supposed to speak…”

When he fell silent, she helped him with a smile. “Do you believe that Oldorando was once bigger than it is now?”

He looked at her with his head on one side. “I know you call this town a farmyard. But it survives… It’s the centre of the cosmos. Well that’s not answering your question. My friends, you found rye and oats growing north of here, so let’s speak of them. To the best of my belief, that place was once carefully tended fields, enclosed against wild beasts. The fields belonged to Embruddock. Many other cereals grew there and were cultivated. Now you cultivate them again, which is wise.

“You know we need bark for our tanning. We have a job to get hold of it. I do believe—well, I know …” He fell silent, then he said quietly, “Great forests of tall trees, which yield bark and wood, grew to the west and north. The region was called Kace. It was hot then, and there was no cold.”

Someone said, “The time of heat—that’s a legend left over from the priesthood. The sort of tale we’re supposed to get out of our minds in the academy. We do know that it was once colder than it is now. Ask my grandma.”

“What I’m saying is that, to the best of my belief, it was hot before it was cold,” Datnil Skar said, slowly scratching the back of his grey head. “You should try to understand these things. Many lives go by, many years. There’s a lot of history vanished. I know you women think that men are against you learning, and it may be so; but I speak sincerely when I say that you should support Shay Tal, despite various difficulties. As a master, I know how precious knowledge is. It seems to run out of the bottom of a community like water out of a sock.”

They stood and clapped him politely when he left.

At Freyr-set, two days later, Shay Tal was pacing restlessly in her room in the isolated tower. A shout came from below. Immediately she thought of Aoz Roon, though the voice was not his.

She wondered who would venture beyond the barricades when light was growing dim. Putting her head out of the window, she saw Datnil Skar, his figure insubstantial in the dusk.

“Oh, come up, my friend,” she cried. She went down to meet him. He appeared clutching a box, smiling nervously. They sat down facing each other on her stone floor, and she poured him a measure of rathel.

After some idle conversation, he said, “I think you know that I am due to retire soon as master of the tawyers and tanners corps? My chief boy will take my place. I’m getting old and he long ago knew all I have to teach.”

“You come here because of that?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I come here, Mother Shay, because I—I experience an old man’s admiration for you, for your person and your worth… No, let me say it. I have always served and loved this community, and I believe you do the same, though you have the opposition of many men. So I wanted to do you a good turn while I was able to.”

“You’re a good man, Datnil Skar. Oldorando knows it. The community needs good people.”

Sighing, he nodded. “I have served Embruddock—or Oldorando as we should call it—every day of my life, and have never left it. Yet scarcely a day’s gone by …” He broke off in his shy way, smiled, and said, “I believe I am speaking to a kindred spirit when I say that scarcely a day has gone by since I was a lad when I haven’t wondered … wondered what was happening in other places, far away from here.”

He paused, cleared his throat, then said more briskly, “I’ll tell you a tale. It’s only brief. I remember one terrible winter when I was a lad when the phagors attacked, and disease and famine followed. Many people died. And the phagors were dying too, although we didn’t know it at the time. It was so dark, I swear days are brighter now… Anyhow, the phagors left behind a human boy during the slaughter. His name was—I’m ashamed to, say I’ve forgotten it, but to the best of my belief it was something like Krindlesheddy. A long name. Once I knew it clearly. The years have made me forget.

“Krindlesheddy had come from a country a long way to the north, Sibornal. He said that Sibornal was a land of perpetual glaciers. I was selected to be chief boy in my corps, and in Sibornal he was to be a priest, so we were both dedicated to our calling. He—Krindlesheddy or whatever his name was—thought our life was easy. The geysers kept Oldorando warm.

“As a young member of the priesthood, my friend had belonged with some colonists who moved south to escape the cold. They came to a better land by a river. There they had to fight with the local inhabitants of a realm called—well, the name has gone after these many years. A great battle raged, in which Krindlesheddy—if that was his name—was injured. The survivors fled, only to be caught by raiding phagors. It was mere fortune that he escaped them here. Or perhaps they left him because he was wounded.

“We did what we could to help the lad, but he died after a month. I cried for him. I was only young. Yet even then I envied him because he’d seen something of the world. He told me that in Sibornal the ice came in many colours and was beautiful.”

As Master Datnil finished his story, sitting meekly beside Shay Tal, Vry entered the room, on her way to the floor above.

He smiled kindly at her, saying to Shay Tal, “Don’t send Vry away. I know she’s your chief boy and you trust her, as I wish I could trust my chief boy. Let her hear what I have to say.” He laid his wooden box on the floor in front of him. “I have brought the Master Book of our corps for you to see.”

Shay Tal looked as if she would faint. She knew that if this borrowing was discovered, the makers corps would kill the master without hesitation… She could guess at the inner struggle the old man had gone through before bringing it. She wrapped her thin arms about him and kissed him on his wrinkled forehead.

Vry came and knelt down by him, excitement on her face.

“Let’s have a look!” she exclaimed, reaching out a hand, forgetting her diffidence.

He put his hand over hers, detainingly.

“Notice first the wood of which the box is made. It’s not from a rajabaral; the grain is too beautiful. Notice how it’s carved. Notice the delicate metal chasing that binds the corners. Could our metal-makers corps do such fine work today?”

When they had examined the details, he opened the box. He brought out a large tome bound in heavy leather, tooled with an elaborate design.

“This I did myself, Mother. I rebound the book. It’s the inside that’s old.”

The pages inside were carefully, often elaborately, written by a number of different hands. Datnil Skar turned the pages rapidly, even now reluctant to reveal too much. But the women clearly saw dates, names, lists, and various entries and figures.

He looked up into their faces, smiling a grave smile. “In its way, this volume gives a history of Embruddock over the years. And each surviving corps has a similar volume, of that I am certain.”

“The past is gone. We’re trying now to look outward to the future,” said Vry. “We don’t want to be stuck in the past. We want to go out …”

Indecisively, she let the sentence die, regretting that in her excitement she had brought herself to their attention. Looking at the faces of the other two, she saw they were older and would never agree with her. Although their aims were in general agreement, a difference existed that could never be bridged.

“The clue to the future lies in the past,” Shay Tal said, comfortingly but dismissively, for she had made such remarks to Vry before. Turning to the old man, she said, “Master Datnil, we greatly appreciate your brave gesture in letting us look at the secret book. Perhaps some day we may examine it more thoroughly. Would you tell us how many masters there have been in your corps since records commenced?”

He closed the book and began packing it in its box. Saliva trickled from his old mouth, and his hands shook badly.

“The rats know the secrets of Oldorando … I’m in danger, bringing this book here. Just an old fool … Listen, my dears, there was a great king who ruled over all Campannlat in the old days, called King Denniss. He foresaw that the world—this world which the ancipitals call Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk—would lose its warmth, as a bucket slops water when you carry it down a lane. So he set about founding our corps, with iron rules to be enforced. All the makers corps were to preserve wisdom through dark times, until warmth returned.”

He spoke chantingly, as from memory.

“Our corps has survived since the good king’s time, though in some periods it had no wherewithal to tan leather. According to the record here, its numbers once sank to a master and an apprentice, who lived below ground a distance away… Dreadful times. But we survived.”

As he was wiping his mouth, Shay Tal asked what period of time they were discussing.

Datnil Skar gazed at the darkening rectangle of window as if contemplating flight from the question.

“I don’t understand all the notations in our book. You know our confusions with the calendar. As we can understand from our own day, new calendars represent considerable dislocations… Embruddock—forgive me, I fear telling you too much—it didn’t always belong to … our sort of people.”

He shook his head, darting his gaze nervously round the rooth. The women waited, motionless as phagors in the old dull room. He spoke again.

“Many people have died. There was a great plague, the Fat Death. Invasions … the Seven Blindnesses … tales of woe. We hope our present Lord—” again a glance round the room—“will prove as wise as King Denniss. The good king founded our corps in a year called 249 Before Nadir. We do not know who Nadir was. What we do know is that I—allowing for a break in the record—am the sixty- eighth master of the tanners and tawyers corps. The sixty-eighth …” He peered shortsightedly at Shay Tal.

“Sixty-eight …” Trying to hide her dismayed astonishment, she gathered her furs about her with a characteristic gesture. “That’s many generations, stretching back to antiquity.”

“Yes, yes, stretching right back.” Master Datnil nodded complacently, as if personally acquainted with vast stretches of time. “It’s nearly seven centuries since our corps was founded. Seven centuries, and still it freezes of nights.”

Embruddock in its surrounding wilderness was a beached ship. It still gave the crew shelter, though it would never sail again.

So greatly had time dismantled a once proud city that its inhabitants did not realise that what they regarded as a town was nothing more than the remains of a palace, which had stood in the middle of a civilisation obliterated by climate, madness, and the ages.

As the weather improved, the hunters were forced to go in increasingly long expeditions in search of game. The slaves planted fields and dreamed of impossible liberty. The women stayed at home and grew neurotic.

While Shay Tal fasted and became more solitary, Vry became full of a repressed energy and developed her friendship with Oyre. With Oyre, she talked over all that Master Datnil had said, and found a sympathetic listener. They agreed that there were puzzling riddles in history, yet Oyre was lightly sceptical.

“Datnil Skar is old and a bit gaga—Father always says so,” she said, and limped round the room in parody of the Master’s gait exclaiming in a piping voice, “ ‘Our corps is so exclusive we didn’t even let King Denniss join…’ ”

When Vry laughed, Oyre said, more seriously, “Master Datnil could be executed for showing his corps Master Book about—that’s proof he’s gaga.”

“And even then he wouldn’t let us look at it properly.” Vry was silent, and then burst out, “If only we could put all the facts together. Shay Tal just collects them, writes them down. There must be a way of making a—a structure from them. So much has been lost—Master Datnil is right there. The cold was so bitter, once on a time, that almost everything inflammable was burnt—wood, paper, all records. You realise we don’t even know what year it is?—Though the stars might tell us. Loil Bry’s calendar is stupid, calendars should be based on years, not people. People are so fallible … and so am I. Oh, I’ll go mad, I swear!”

Oyre burst out laughing and hugged Vry.

“You’re the sanest person I know, you idiot.” They fell to discussing the stars again, sitting on the bare floor close together. Oyre had been with Laintal Ay to look at the fresco in the old temple. “The sentinels are clearly depicted, with Batalix above Freyr as usual, but almost touching, above Wutra’s head.”

“Every year, the two suns get closer,” Vry said, decisively. “Last month, they virtually touched as Batalix overtook Freyr, and no one paid any notice. Next year, they will collide. What then? … Or maybe one passes behind the other.”

“Perhaps that’s what Master Datnil meant by a Blindness? It would suddenly be dimday, wouldn’t it, if one sentinel disappeared? Perhaps there will be Seven Blindnesses, as once before.” She looked frightened, and moved nearer her friend. “It will be the end of the world. Wutra will appear, looking furious, of course.”

Vry laughed and jumped to her feet. “The world didn’t end last time and won’t do so this time. No, perhaps it will mark a new beginning.” Her face became radiant. “That’s why the seasons are growing warmer. Once Shay Tal has done her ghastly pauk, we will tackle the question anew. I shall work at my mathematics. Let the Blindnesses come—I embrace them!”

They danced round the room, laughing wildly.

“How I long for some great experience!” Vry cried.

Shay Tal, meanwhile, showed more clearly than before the little bird bones below her flesh, and her dark skins hung more loosely about her body. Food was brought her by the women, but she would not eat.

“Fasting suits my ravenous soul,” she said, pacing about her chilly room, when Vry and Oyre remonstrated with her, and Amin Lim stood meekly by. “Tomorrow I will go into pauk. You three and Rol Sakil can be with me. I will dredge up ancient knowledge from the well of the past. Through the fessups I will reach to that generation which built our towers and corridors. I will descend centuries if necessary, and confront King Denniss himself.”

“How wonderful!” Amin Lim exclaimed.

Birds came to perch on her crumbling window sill and be fed the bread Shay Tal would not touch.

“Don’t sink into the past, ma’am,” Vry counselled her. “That’s the way of old men. Look ahead, look outward. There’s no profit in interrogating the dead.”

So unused to argument had Shay Tal grown that she had difficulty in refraining from scolding her chief disciple. She looked and saw, almost with startlement, that the diffident young thing was now a woman. Her face was pallid, with shadows under her eyes, and Oyre’s the same.

“Why are you two so pale? Are you ill?”

Vry shook her head.

“Tonight there’s an hour of darkness before dimday. I’ll show you then what Oyre and I are doing. While the rest of the world was sleeping, we have been working.”

The evening was clear at Freyr-set. Warmth departed from the world as the younger women escorted Shay Tal up to the roof of the ruinous tower. A lens of ghost light stretched upwards from the horizon where Freyr had set, reaching halfway to zenith. There was little cloud to conceal the heavens; as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, the stars overhead flashed out in brilliance. In some quarters of the sky, the stars were relatively sparse, in others they hung in clusters. Overhead, trailing from one horizon to the other, was a broad, irregular band of light, where the stars were as thick as mist and there occasional brilliances burned.

“It’s the most magnificent sight in the world,” Oyre said. “Don’t you think so, ma’am?”

Shay Tal said, “In the world below hang fessups like stars. They are the souls of the dead. Here you see the souls of the unborn. As above, so below.”

“I think we have to look to an entirely different principle to explain the sky,” Vry said firmly. “All motions here are regular. The stars advance about that bright star there, which we call the polar star.” She pointed to a star high above their heads. “In the twenty-five hours of the day, the stars rotate once rising in the east and setting in the west like the two sentinels. Doesn’t that prove they are similar to the two sentinels, only much farther from us?”

The young women showed Shay Tal the star map they were making, with the relative positions of stars marked on a vellum sheet. She evinced little interest, and said, “The stars cannot affect us as the gossies do. How does this hobby of yours advance knowledge? You’d better to sleep at night.”

Vry sighed. “The sky is alive. It’s not a tomb, like the world below. Oyre and I have stood here and seen comets flaring, landing on the earth. And there are four bright stars that move differently from all the others, the wanderers, of which the old songs sing. Those wanderers sometimes double back in their passage across the sky. And one comes over very fast. We’ll see it presently. We think it’s close to us, and we call it Kaidaw, because of its speed.”

Shay Tal rubbed her hands together, looking apprehensively about.

“Well, it’s cold up here.”

“It’s colder still down below, where the gossies lie,” Oyre retorted.

“You keep a watch on your tongue, young woman. You’re no friend of the academy if you distract Vry from her proper work.”

Her face became cold and hawklike; she turned away quickly, as if to shield Oyre and Vry from its sight, and climbed back downstairs without further words.

“Oh, I shall pay for this,” Vry said. “I shall have to be extra humble to make up for this.”

“You’re too humble, Vry, and she’s too haughty. Scumb her academy. She’s scared of the sky, like most people. That’s her trouble, sorceress or no sorceress. She puts up with stupid people like Amin Lim because they pander to her haughtiness.”

She clutched Vry with a sort of angry passion and began to list the stupidities of everyone she knew.

“What upsets me is that we did not get the chance to make her look through our telescope,” Vry said.

It was the telescope that had made the greatest difference to Vry’s astronomical interest. When Aoz Roon had become lord, and had gone to live in the big tower, Oyre had been free to grub through all kinds of decaying possessions stored there in trunks. The telescope had come to light tucked among moth-riddled clothes which fell to pieces at the touch. It was simply made—perhaps by the long-defunct glass-makers corps—being no more than a leather tube which held two lenses in place; but when turned upon the wandering stars, the telescope had the power to change Vry’s perceptions. For the wanderers showed distinct discs. In that, they resembled the sentinels, though they did not emit light.

From this discovery, Vry and Oyre had concluded that the wanderers were near to the earth, and the stars far away—some very far. From trappers who worked by starlight they had the names of the wanderers: Ipocrene, Aganip, and Copaise. And there was the fast one they had named themselves, Kaidaw. Now they sought to prove that these were worlds like their own, possibly even with people in them.

Gazing at her friend, Vry saw only the general outlines of that beautiful face and powerful head, and recognised how much Oyre resembled Aoz Roon. Both Oyre and her father seemed so full of spirit—and Oyre had been born outside agreements. Vry wondered if by chance—by any remote chance—Oyre had been with a man, in the dark of a brassimip or elsewhere. Then she shut the naughty thought away and turned her gaze to the sky.

They stayed rather soberly on the top of their tower until Hour-Whistler sounded again. A few minutes later Kaidaw rose and sailed up to the zenith.

Earth Observation Station Avernus—Vry’s Kaidaw—hung high over Helliconia, while the continent of Campannlat turned beneath it. The station’s crew devoted most of their attention to the world below, but the other three planets of the binary system were also under constant surveillance by automatic instrumentation.

On all four planets, temperatures were rising. Improvement overall was steady, only on the ground did anomalies register on tender flesh.

Helliconia’s drama of generations in travail was set upon a stage sparsely structured by a few overriding circumstances. The planet’s year about Batalix—Star B to the scholars of the Avemus—took 480 days (the “small” year). But Helliconia also had a Great Year, of which the people of Embruddock knew nothing in their present state. The Great Year was the time Star B, and its planets with it, took to make an orbit round Freyr, the Star A of the scholars.

That Great Year took 1825 Helliconian “small” years. Since one Helliconian small year was the equndent of 1.42 terrestrial years, this meant a Great Year of 2592 terrestrial years—a period during which many generations flourished and departed from the scene.

The Great Year represented an enormous elliptical journey. Helliconia was slightly lager than Earth, with a mass 1.28 times Earth’s; in many respects, it was Earth’s sister planet. Yet on that elliptical journey across thousands of years, it became almost two planets—a frozen one at apastron, when farthest from Freyr, an overheated one at periastron, when nearest Frayr.

Every small year, Helliconia drew nearer to Freyr. Spring was about to signify its arrival in spectacular fashion.

Midway between the high stars in their courses and the fessups sinking slowly towards the original boulder, two women squatted one on either side of a bracken bed. The light in the shuttered room was dim enough to render them anonymous, giving them the aspect of two mourning figures set on either side of the prostrate figure on the couch. It could be determined only that one was plump and no longer youthful, and the other gripped by the desiccating processes of age.

Rol Sakil Den shook her grizzled head and looked down with lugubrious compassion on the figure before her.

“Poor dear thing, she used to be so nice as a girl, she’s no right to torture herself as she does.”

“She should have kept to her loaves, I say,” said the other woman, to make herself agreeable.

“Feel how thin she is. Feel her loins. No wonder she’s gone weird.”

Rol Sakil was herself as thin as a mummy, her frame eroded by arthritis. She had been midwife to the community before growing too old for such exertions. She still tended those in pauk. Now that Dol was off her hands, she hung on the fringes of the academy, always ready to criticise, rarely prepared to think.

“She’s got so narrow she couldn’t bring forth a stick from that womb of hers, never mind a baby. Wombs have to be tended—they are the central part of a woman.”

“She has much to look to beside babies,” said Amin Lim.

“Oh, I’ve as much respect for knowledge as the next person, but when knowledge gets in the way of the natural facilities of copulation, then knowledge should move over.”

“As for that,” Amin Lim said with some asperity, from the other side of the bed, “her natural facilities were set aback when your Dol settled herself in Aoz Roon’s bed. She feels deeply for him, as who doesn’t? A presentable man, Aoz Roon, besides being Lord of Embruddock.”

Rol Sakil sniffed. “That’s no reason why she should go off intercourse entirely. She could always fill in time elsewhere, to keep herself in training. Besides, he won’t come round knocking at her door again, you mark my words. He’s got his hands full with our Dol.”

The old woman beckoned Amin Lim nearer to bestow a confidence and they put their heads together over the supine body of Shay Tal. “Dol always keeps him at it—both by inclination and policy. A course I’d recommend to any woman, you included, Amin Lim. I hazard you enjoy a length now and again—it ain’t human not to, at your age. You ask your man.”

“Oh, I daresay there isn’t a woman as hasn’t fancied Aoz Roon, for all his tempers.”

Shay Tal sighed in her pauk. Rol Sakil took her hand in her own withered one and said, still using a confidential mode, “My Dol tells me as he mutters terribly in his sleep. I tell her that’s the sign of a guilty conscience.”

“What’s he got to be guilty about, then?” Amin Lim asked.

“Now, then—there I could tell you a tale… That morning, after all the drinking and carrying on, I was about early, as of old. And as I went out, well wrapped against the cold of morning, I come on a body in the dark and I says to myself, ‘Why here’s some fool drunk out of his wits, lying asleep on the ground.’ There he was, at the base of the big tower.”

She paused to observe the effect of her story on Amin Lim, who, having nothing else to do, was listening intently. Rol Sakil’s little eyes became almost hidden in wrinkles as she continued.

“I’d never have thought a mite more of it—I likes a drop of pig’s counsel myself. But round the other side of the tower, what do I find but another body lying there. ‘That’s two fools drunk out of their wits, lying asleep on the ground,’ says I to myself. And I’d never have thought a mite more of it, but when it’s given out that young Klils and his brother Nahkri were found dead together, lying at the bottom of their tower, why, that’s another matter…” She sniffed.

“Everyone said that’s where they were found.”

“Ah, but I found them first, and they weren’t together. So they didn’t fight together, did they? That’s fishy, Amin Lim, isn’t it? So I says to myself, ‘Someone went and pushed them two brothers off the top of the tower.’ Who might it be, who stood most to gain by their deaths? Well, girl, that’s something I leave to others to judge. All I says is, I says to our Dol, ‘You cultivate your fear of heights, Dol. Don’t you go near no edges of towers while you’re with Aoz Roon,’ I says. ‘Don’t you go near no edges of towers and you’ll be all right…’ That’s what I says.”

Amin Lim shook her head. “Shay Tal wouldn’t love Aoz Roon if he did that kind of thing. And she’d know. She’s wise, she’d know for sure.”

Rol Sakil rose and hobbled nervously about the stone room, shaking her head in doubt. “Where men’s concerned, Shay Tal is the same as the rest of us. She doesn’t always think with her harneys—sometimes she uses the thing between her legs instead.”

“Oh, hush with you.” Amin Lim looked sorrowfully down at her friend and mentor. Privately, she wished that Shay Tal’s life were ruled more in the way Rol Sakil indicated: she might then be happier.

Shay Tal lay stretched out stiffly on her left side, in the pauk attitude. Her eyes seemed barely closed. Her breathing was scarcely audible, punctuated by long- drawn-out sighs. Looking at the austere contours of that loved face, Amin Lim thought she was watching someone facing death with composure. Only the mouth, growing tighter occasionally, indicated the terror it was impossible to suppress in the presence of the denizens of the world below.

Although Amin Lim had once gone into pauk herself, under guidance, the fright of seeing her father again had been enough for her. The extra dimension was now closed; she would never again visit that world until her final call came.

“Poor thing, poor little thing,” she said as she stroked her friend’s head, lovingly regarding its grey hairs, hoping to ease her passage through the black realm lying below life.

Though the soul had no eyes, yet it could see in a medium where terror replaced vision.

It looked down, as it began to fall, into a space more enormous than the night sky. Into that space, Wutra could never come. This was a region of which Wutra the Undying had no cognisance. With his blue face, his undaunted gaze, his slender horns, he belonged to the great frosty battle taking place elsewhere. This region was hell because he was not. Every star that gleamed was a death.

There was no smell except terror. Every death had its immutable position. No comets flared down here; this was the realm of entropy absolute, without change, the event death of the universe, to which life could respond only with terror.

As the soul did now.

The land-octaves wound over real territory. They could be likened to paths, except that they more resembled winding walls, endlessly dividing the world, only their tops showing above the surfaces. Their real substance went down deep into the seamless ground, penetrating to the original boulder on which the disc of the world rested.

In the original boulder, at the bottom of their appropriate land-octaves, the gossies and fessups were stacked, like thousands of ill-preserved flies.

The gaunt soul of Shay Tal sank down on its predestined land-octave, negotiating a course between the fessups. They resembled mummies; their stomachs and eye sockets were hollow, their boney feet dangled; their skins were coarse as old sacking, yet transparent, allowing a glimpse of luminescent organs beneath. Their mouths were open like fish, as if they still recalled the days when they breathed air. Less ancient gossies had their mouths stuffed with things like fireflies which issued forth in smokey dust. All these old put-away things were without motion, yet the wandering soul could sense their fury—a fury more intense than any of them could have experienced before obsidian claimed them.

As the soul settled between their ranks, it saw them suspended in irregular rows which stretched to places she could not travel, to Borlien, to the seas, to Pannoval, to far Sibornal, and even to the icy wildernesses of the east. All were relegated here to being units of one great collection, filed under their appropriate land-octaves.

To living senses, there were no directions. Yet there was a direction. The soul had its own sail. It had to be alert. A fessup had little more volition than dust, yet fury pent in its eddre gave it strength. A fessup could swallow any soul sailing too close, thus freeing itself to walk upon the earth again, causing terror and disease wherever it went.

Well aware of danger, the soul sank through the obsidian world, through what Lailanun had called scratched emptiness. It arrived finally before the gossie of Shay Tal’s mother. The drab thing appeared made of wires and twigs, which formed patterns like dried halters of breasts and thrusting hipbones. It glared at its daughter-soul. It showed its old brown teeth in its slack lower jaw. It was itself a brown stain. Yet all its details could be viewed, as a pattern of lichen on a wall can perfectly depict a man or a necropolis.

The gossie emitted a noise of unceasing complaint. Gossies are negatives of human lives and believe nothing good of life in consequence. No gossie considers that its life on earth was long enough, or that its tenure there achieved the happiness it deserved. Nor can it believe that it has earned such oblivion. It craves living souls. Only living souls can give ear to its endless grievances.

“Mother, I come dutifully before you again and will listen to your complaints.”

“You faithless child, when did you last come, how long, and reluctant, oh, always reluctant, evermore reluctant, as in those thankless days—I should have known, I should have known—when I bore you not wishing another offspring squeezed from my poor sore loins—”

“I will listen to your complaints—”

“Pah, yes, reluctantly, just as your father cared nothing, nothing for my pain, knew nothing, did nothing, just like all men but who’s to say children are any better sucking your life from you—oh, I should have known—I tell you I despised that clod of a man always demanding, demanding everything, more than I had to give, never never satisfied, the nights of grief, the days, caught in that trap, that’s what it was, and you come here, a trap designed to swindle me out of my youth, pretty, yes, yes, I was pretty, that damned disease—I see you laughing at me now, little you care—”

“I care, I care, Mother, it’s agony to behold you!”

“Yes, but you and he you cheated me out of it, out of all I had and all I hoped for, he with his lust, the filthy pig, if men only knew the hatreds they stir when they overpower us, override us in the dim unendurable dark, and you with that piddling feebleness, that ever sucking mouth forever with that mouth like his prod demanding too much, too much by far in patience and your scumble ever needing wiping, witless, wailing, wanting something all the while, the days, the years, those years, draining my strength, ah my strength, my sweet strength and I once so lovely, all stolen, no pleasure left for life, I should have known, no life my mother promised me at her breast and then she too no better than the rest dying damn her dying curse the stinking milkless bitch that bore me dying when I needed her…”

The little thing’s voice scratched against the pane of obsidian, trying to get at the soul.

“I do sorrow for you, Mother. I am now going to ask you a question to help take your mind off your sorrows. I will ask you to pass that question on to your mother, and to her mother and her mother’s mother, and so down to remote depths. You must find me an answer to the question, and then I shall be so proud of you. I wish to discover if Wutra really exists. Does Wutra exist, and who or what is he? You must send the question back and back until some far fessup returns an answer. The answer must be full. I wish to understand how the world works. The answer must come back to me. Do you understand?”

A reply was screamed at her before she had finished speaking.

“Why should I do anything for you after the way you spoilt my life and why and why and why and what care I down here for any of your stupid problems you mean little piddling fool, it lasts for ever being down here, you hear, for ever and my sorrow too—”

The soul broke into the monologue.

“You have heard my demand, Mother. If you do not carry it out to the letter, I shall never visit you again in the world below. No one will address you ever again.”

The gossie made a quick gulp at the soul. The soul remained just out of harm’s reach, watching dusty sparks issue from the unbreathing mouth.

Without another word, the gossie began to pass on Shay Tal’s question, and the fessups below snapped in fury at it.

All hung suspended in obsidian.

The soul was aware of other fessups nearby, hanging like shabby jackets on pegs in a midnight hall. Loilanun was there, and Lail Bry, and Little Yuli. Even Great Yuli was hanging here somewhere, reduced to a furious shade. The soul’s father’s gossie was nearby, more feared even than its mother’s gossie, its wrath surging at her like a tide.

And the voice of the father’s gossie was like the scratching of the nails of a hand on a windowpane.

“… and another thing, ungrateful girl, why weren’t you a boy, you wretched failure you knew I needed a boy wanted a boy a good son to carry on the miserable suffering of our line, so I’m regarded as a laughingstock by all my friends not that I thought aught of that gang of miserable cowards, ran from danger they did, ran when the wolves howled and I ran with them not knowing if I could have my time again—my time again oh yes my damned time again—and the wind blowing fresh in the lungs and every joint on the move down the trail where the deer flickered free with their white scuts bobbing—oh, the time again—and no involvements with that sexless breastless hag you call your mother here in the clutches of this unbreathing stone I hate her hate her hate you too you prattling scumble you’ll be here one day soon yourself yes here for ever in the tomb you’ll see…”

And there were other messages from other dried mouths, tail ends of grunts, sticking into her fabric like old animal bones protruding from soil, verdigrised over with earth, age, eddre, envy, and poisonous to the touch.

The soul of Shay Tal waited amid the venoms, sail aquiver, waited for her answer. And eventually a message travelled up from dry insensate mouth to dry insensate mouth through the obsidian, passing something like a response to the question through the crystallized centuries.

“… all our festering secrets why should you share them you prying slut with slime for harneys why should you presume to share that little that we have here in our destitution far from sun? What once was knowledge is lost, leaked from the bottom of the bucket despite all that was promised, and what remains you would not understand you would not understand whore nothing you’ll ever understand except the final throes of heart giving in for all your pretensions and Wutra what of him he did not aid our distant fessups when they lived. In the days of the old iron cold came the white phagors out of the murk and took the town by storm making the humans their slaves who worshipped their new masters by the name Wutra because the gods of ice winds ruled…”

“Stop, stop, I wish to hear no more—” cried the soul, overwhelmed.

But the malicious gale blew over her. “You asked you asked you could not stand the truth you mortal soul, you’ll see when you get here. To find your wish of useless wisdom you should journey far to far Sibornal there to seek the great wheel where all is done and known and all things understood as pertains to existence on your side of the bitter bitter grave, yet good none good will it do you you prying dry-quemed failure of the dead’s daughter for what is real or true or tested or a testament to time even Wutra himself except this prison where we find ourselves all undeserving …”

The soul, quailing, hoisted sail and floated upwards through the bleak mansions, through rank after rank of screaming mouths.

The word, the poisonous word, had come from the far fessups. Sibornal had to be her goal, and a great wheel. Fessups were deceivers, their endless rages led them to limitless malice, but their powers in that respect were limited. It seemed true that Wutra had deserted not merely the living but the dead as well.

The soul fled upward in anguish, scenting far above it a bed on which lay a pallid body without movement.

Above ground, processes of change, endless periods of upheaval, expressed themselves through such biological beings as animals, men, and phagors.

From the northern continent, Sibornalans still moved southwards across the treacherous isthmus of Chalce, propelled by a sporadically improving climate to seek more hospitable lands. The inhabitants of Pannoval expanded northwards across the great plains. Elsewhere, too, from a thousand favoured habitats, people began to emerge. On the south of the continent of Campannlat, in such coastal fortresses as Ottassol, numbers multiplied, growing fat on the abundance of the seas.

In that haven of life, the sea, many things moved. Faceless beings shaped like men climbed to the shore, or were washed by storms far inland.

And the phagors, too. Lovers of cold, they also were propelled by change, seeking new habitats along benign air-octaves. Over all the three measureless continents of Helliconia, their components stirred and reproduced and fought the war against the Sons of Freyr.

The crusade of the young kzahhn of Hrastyprt, Hrr-Brahl Yprt, came slowly down from the high shoulders of Nktryhk, proceeding through the mountains, always obeying the air-octaves. The kzahhn and his advisers knew that Freyr was slowly gaining the ascendancy over Batalix, and so moving against them; but that knowledge could not speed the pace of their advance. Often they stopped to make raids, on the protognostic peoples humbly traversing the snowfields barefoot, or on components of their own kind towards whom they smelled hostility. No sense of urgency burned in their pale harneys, only a sense of destination.

Hrr-Brahl Yprt rode Rukk-Ggrl, and his cowbird rode mainly on his shoulder. Sometimes it took off with a clatter of wings, climbing to soar above the company, whence it could watch with its beady eyes the long procession of stalluns and gillots, most of them on foot, tailing all the way back to the defiles of higher ground. Zzhrrk would ride the updraught so that he maintained a position directly above his master for hours at a time, wings outstretched, only his head moving from side to side, alert for other cowbirds gliding nearby.

There were little knots of the protognostic peoples, generally Madis trying to lead their goats to the next thorn or ice bush, who sighted the white birds from afar. They would cry to each other and point. All knew what the distant cowbirds signified. And they would escape while they had the chance, from death or captivity. Thus the insignificant louse that lived on phagors, burrowing in their coats, a titbit for cowbirds, became an unknowing instrument in saving the lives of many a protognostic.

The Madis themselves were infested with parasites. They feared water, and the yearly application of goat dripping to their lean carcasses increased rather than hampered infestations, but their insects played no accountable role in history.

Proud Hrr-Brahl Yprt, his long skull adorned with face crown, looked up at his mascot soaring high above, before glaring ahead again, alert for possible danger. He saw the three fists of the world in the harneys of his head, and the place at which they would eventually arrive, where lived the Sons of Freyr who had killed his grandfather, Great Kzahhn Hrr-Tryhk Hrast, who had dedicated his life to despatching the enemy in uncounted numbers. The Great Kzahhn had been killed by the Sons in Embruddock, and so had lost his chance of sinking into tether, thus was he destroyed for ever. The young kzahhn admitted to himself that his nations had been less active in killing Sons than they should have been, indulgently seeking instead the majestic ice storms of High Nktryhk, for which their yellow blood was brewed.

Now amends were being made. Before Freyr grew too strong, the Sons of Freyr in Embruddock would be eliminated. Then he would himself fade into the eternal peace of tether with no stain on his conscience.

As soon as she was strong enough, Shay Tal leaned on Vry’s shoulder and took herself down the lane to the old temple.

The doors of the temple had been removed and a fence substituted. In the dim interior, pigs squealed and rooted. Aoz Roon had been true to his word.

The women picked their way among the animals and stood in the middle of the muddied space, while Shay Tal stared up at the great ikon of Wutra, with his white hair, animal face, and long horns.

“Then it’s true,” she said in a low voice. “The fessups spoke true, Vry. Wutra is a phagor. Humanity has been worshipping a phagor. Our darkness is much greater than we guessed.”

But Vry was looking up hopefully at the painted stars.