Helliconia Spring

XI • WHEN SHAY TAL WENT

In sun and rain, Oldorando expanded. Before its industrious inbabitants realised what had happened, it had crossed the river Voral, had leaped the marshy tributaries to the north, had stretched out to the veldt and the brassimip patches in the low hills.

More bridges were built. None was heroic like the first one. The corps had relearnt the art of sawing planks, carpenters came forth—among both the free and the slaves—for whom arches and joints and abutments presented few problems.

Beyond the bridges, fields were planted and fenced, sties were built for pigs and pens for geese. Food production had to be dramatically increased, to feed the increasing numbers of domesticated hoxneys, and to feed the slaves needed to tend the extra fields. Beyond or between the fields, new towers were built along the old Embruddock lines, to home the slaves and their keepers. The towers were built according to a demonstration given by the academy, using mud blocks instead of stone, and rising only to two stories instead of five. The rains, heavy on occasion, washed away the walls. The Oldorandans cared little for that since only slaves lived in the new blocks. But the slaves themselves cared—and demonstrated how straw harvested from the cereal fields could be used as overhanging thatch, to preserve the mud buildings and keep them intact even in heavy rainstorms.

Beyond the fields and new towers were bridle paths, patrolled by Aoz Roon’s cavalry. Oldorando was not merely a town but an armed camp as well. Nobody left or entered without permission, except in the traders’ quartets—nicknamed the Pauk—developing to the south side.

For every proud warrior mounted on a steed, six backs must bend in the field. But the harvest was good. The ground gave forth abundantly, following its long rest. Prast’s Tower had been used in cold times to store first salt, than rathel; now it stored grain. Outside, where the ground had been beaten flat, women and slaves worked to winnow an immense pile of grain. The men turned over the grain with wooden paddles, the women flapped skins tied to square frames, fanning away the chaff. It was hot work. Modesty went by the board. The women, at least the young ones, threw off their smart jackets and worked with naked breasts.

Fine particles of dust rose. The dust stuck to the moist skins of the women, powdering their faces, lending their flesh a furry appearance. It rose in the air, creating a pyramid above the scene, gold in the sunlight, before dispersing to fall elsewhere, deadening footfalls on stairs, staining vegetation.

Tanth Ein and Faralin Ferd rode up, closely followed by Aoz Roon and Eline Tal, with Dathka and younger hunters riding behind. They had returned from a hunt and had brought in several deer.

For a minute, they were content to sit in their saddles, watching the women at work. Among the women were the wives of the three lieutenants; they paid no attention to the jocular remarks of their lords. The frames fanned the grain, the men leaned indulgently forward in their saddles, the chaff and dust flew high, flecking the sunshine.

Dol appeared, walking slowly, heavy with child, and Myk the aged phagor walked by her, driving her geese. With her came Shay Tal, her skinniness emphasised by the plumpness of Dol. When they saw the Lord of Embruddock and his men, both women paused, glancing at each other.

“Say nothing to Aoz Roon,” Shay Tal cautioned.

“He’s amenable just now,” Dol said. “He hopes for a boy.”

She strode forward and stood by the side of Grey. Aoz Roon looked at her but said nothing.

She slapped his knee. “Once there were priests to bless the harvest in Wutra’s name. Priests used to bless newborn babes. Priests cared for all, men and women, high and low. We need them. Can’t you capture some priests for us?”

“Wutra!” Aoz Roon exclaimed. He spat into the dust.

“That’s no answer.”

His dark eyebrows and eyelashes were dusted with the golden pepper in the air as he switched his heavy glance beyond Dol to where Shay Tal stood, her dark narrow face as blank as an alleyway.

“She’s been talking to you, Dol, hasn’t she? What do you know or care about Wutra? Great Yuli threw him out, and our forefathers threw out the priests. They’re only lazy mouths to feed. Why are we strong while Borlien is weak? Because we have no priests. Forget this nonsense, don’t bother me with it.”

Dol said, pouting, “Shay Tal says the gossies are angry because we have no priests. Isn’t that right, Shay Tal?” She looked appealingly over her shoulder at the older woman, who still made no move.

“Gossies are always angry,” Aoz Roon said, turning away.

“They’re twitching down there like a bed of fleas,” Eline Tal agreed, pointing at the earth and laughing. He was a big, red-cheeked man, and his cheeks wobbled when he laughed. More and more, he had become Aoz Roon’s closest companion, with the other two lieutenants playing rather subsidiary roles.

Stepping one pace forward, Shay Tal said, “Aoz Roon, despite our prosperity, we Oldorandans remain divided. Great Yuli would not have wished that. Priests might help us become a more united community.”

He looked down at her, and then climbed slowly from his hoxney, to stand confronting her. Dol was pushed to one side.

“If I silence you, I silence Dol. No one wants the priests back. You only want them back because they’ll help fortify your craving for learning. Learning’s a luxury. It creates idle mouths. You know that but you’re so damned stubborn you won’t give up. Starve yourself if you will, but the rest of Oldorando is growing fat—see for yourself. We grow fat without priests, without your learning.”

Shay Tal’s face crumpled. She said in a small voice, “I do not wish to fight you, Aoz Roon. I’m sick of it. But what you say is not true. We prosper in part because of applied knowledge. The bridges, the houses—those were ideas the academy contributed to the community.”

“Don’t anger me, woman.”

Looking down at the ground, she said, “I know you hate me. I know that’s why Master Datnil was killed.”

“What I hate is division, constant division,” Aoz Roon roared. “We survive by collective effort, and always have done.”

“But we can only grow through individuality,” Shay Tal said. Her face grew paler as the blood mounted in his cheeks.

He made a violent gesture. “Look about you, for Yuli’s sake! Remember what this place was like when you were a child. Try to understand how we have built it to what it is now by united effort. Don’t stand in front of me and try to argue differently. Look at my lieutenants’ women—tits swinging, working in with everyone else. Why are you never with them? Always on the fringe, mouthing discontent, whining.”

“No tit to swing, I’d say,” Eline Tal said, chuckling.

His remark had been intended for the delectation of his friends, Tanth Ein and Faralin Ferd. But it also reached the alert ears of the young hunters, who burst into jeering laughter—all except Dathka, who sat silent, hunched in his saddle, alertly surveying the participants in the momentary drama.

Shay Tal also caught Eline Tal’s comment. Since he was distant kin to her, the remark stung the more. Her eyes glittered with tears and wrath.

“Enough, then! I’ll stand no more abuse from you and your cronies. I’ll worry you no more, Aoz Roon, I’ll argue never again. You’ve seen the last of me, you thickheaded, disappointing, treacherous bully—you and your little pregnant cow of a bedmate! At Freyr-dawn tomorrow, I leave Oldorando for good. I shall depart alone, on my mare, Loyalty, and no one will ever see me more.”

Aoz Roon flung out his arm. “No one leaves Oldorando without my permission. You’re not going from here until you grovel at my feet, begging to leave.”

“We’ll see about that in the morning,” Shay Tal snapped. She turned on her heel, clutched her loose dark furs about her body, and made off towards the north gate.

Dol was red in the face. “Let her go, Aoz Roon, drive her out. Good riddance. Pregnant cow, indeed, the juiceless creature!”

“You keep out of this. I’ll settle this my way.”

“I suppose you’re going to have her killed, like the others.”

He struck her across the face, lightly and with contempt, still looking after the retreating figure of Shay Tal.

It was the night period when everyone slept, though Batalix still burned low in the sky. Although slaves twitched in the dreams of dimday-sleep, some of the free were still about on this occasion. In the room at the top of the big tower, full council was met, consisting of the masters of the seven old corps, plus two new masters, younger men from newly constituted corps, the harness and lorimers, and the outfitters. Also present were Aoz Roon’s three lieutenants and one of his Lords of the Western Veldt, Dathka. The Lord of Embruddock presided over the meeting, and serving wenches kept their wooden cups filled with beethel or small beer.

After much argument, Aoz Roon said, “Ingsan Atray, give us your voice on this question.”

He was addressing the senior master, a greybeard who ruled over the metal- makers corps, and who had as yet said nothing. The years had curved Ingsan Atray’s spine and turned his scanty hair white, so that the great width of his skull was emphasized; for this reason, he was regarded as wise. He had a mannerism of smiling a great deal, though his eyes, barricaded behind wrinkled lids, always looked wary. He smiled now, squatting on the skins piled on the floor for his comfort, and said, “My Lord, Embruddock’s corps have traditionally protected the women. Women, after all, are our source of labour when the hunters are in the field, and so on. Of course, times are changing, I grant you that. It was different in the times of Lord Wall Ein. But women also serve as channels of much learning. We have no books, but women memorise and pass on the legends of the tribe, as is seen whenever we tell the Great Tale on feast days—”

“Your point, please, Ingsan Atray …”

“Ah, I was coming to it, I was coming to it. Shay Tal may be difficult and so on, but she is a sorceress and learned woman, widely known. She does no harm. If she leaves, she will take other women with her, and so on, and that will be a loss. We masters would venture to say that you were correct in forbidding her to leave.”

“Oldorando’s not a prison,” Faralin Ferd shouted.

Aoz Roon nodded curtly, and looked about. “The meeting was called because my lieutenants disagreed with me. Who agrees with my lieutenants?”

He caught the eye of Raynil Layan, nervously stroking his forked beard.

“Master of the tanners corps, you always like to air your voice—what have you to say?”

“As to that—” Raynil Layan gestured dismissively. “There is always the difficulty of preventing Shay Tal leaving. She can easily slip away, if so disposed. And there is the general principle … Other women will think … Well, we don’t want discontented women. But there’s Vry, for instance, another thinking woman, yet attractive, and she gives no trouble. If you could rethink your order, many would be grateful to you…”

“Speak out and don’t mince your words so,” Aoz Roon said. “You’re a master now, as you wished, and don’t have to cringe.”

Nobody else spoke. Aoz Roon glared at them. All avoided his gaze, burying their faces in their cups.

Eline Tal said, “Why are we worrying? What’s the odds? Let her go.”

“Dathka!” the lord snapped. “Are you going to grant us a single word tonight, since your friend Laintal Ay has not put in an appearance?”

Dathka set down his beaker and looked directly at Aoz Roon.

“All this debate, this talk of principle … it’s rubbish. We all know you and Shay Tal long wage great personal war. So you decide what to do, not us. Kick her out now you have your chance. Why bring us into it?”

“Because it concerns you all, that’s why!” Aoz Roon pounded his fist on the floor. “By the boulder, why does that woman always have such a grudge against me, against everyone? I don’t understand. What rotten maggot chews at her harneys? She keeps on the academy, doesn’t she? She sees herself in a long line of female troublemakers—Loilanun, Loil Bry, who became Little Yuli’s woman… But where would she go? What would happen to her?”

His sentences seemed wild and disconnected.

No one answered. Dathka had spoken for all of them; all were secretly aghast when he said what he did. Aoz Roon himself had nothing more to say. The meeting broke up.

As Dathka was slipping away, Raynil Layan grasped Dathka’s arm and said softly, “A cunning speech you made. With Shay Tal out of the way, the one you fancy will head the academy, won’t she? Then she’ll need your support…”

“I leave the cunning to you, Raynil Layan,” Dathka said, pulling away. “Just keep out of my path.”

He had no trouble in finding Laintal Ay. Despite the lateness of the hour, Dathka knew where to go. In Shay Tal’s ruined tower, Shay Tal was packing, and many friends had come to bid her farewell. Amin Lim was there with her child, and Vry, and Laintal Ay with Oyre, and several other women beside.

“What was the verdict?” Laintal Ay asked Dathka immediately, coming to his side.

“Open.”

“He won’t stop her leaving if she’s bent on it?”

“Depends how much he drinks during the night, he and Eline Tal and that crew—and that wretched hanger-on, Raynil Layan.”

“She’s getting old, Dathka; should we allow her to go?”

He shrugged, using one of his favourite gestures, and looked at Vry and Oyre, who were standing close and listening. “Let’s leave with Shay Tal before Aoz Roon has us killed—I’m game if these two ladies will come too. We’ll head for Sibornal, the group of us.”

Oyre said, “My father would never kill you and Laintal Ay. That’s wild talk, whatever happened in the past.”

Another shrug from Dathka. “Are you prepared to vouch for his behaviour when Shay Tal’s gone? Can we trust him?”

“That’s all over long ago,” Oyre said. “Father’s settled happily with Dol now, and they don’t quarrel as much as they used, now a baby’s coming.”

Laintal Ay said, “’Oyre, the world’s wide. Let’s leave with Shay Tal, as Dathka suggests, and make a new start. Vry, we’ll take you with us—you’ll be in danger here without Shay Tal’s support.”

Vry had not spoken. In her usual unobtrusive way, she merely formed part of the group; but she said now, firmly, “I can’t leave here. Dathka, I am complimented by your kind suggestion, but I must stay, whatever Shay Tal does. My work is yielding results at last, as I hope soon to announce.”

“You still can’t bear my presence, can you?” he said, looking grim.

“Oh, I almost forgot something,” she said sweetly.

She turned, evading Dathka’s brooding gaze, and pushed through the women to Shay Tal’s side.

“You must measure all distances, Shay Tal. Don’t forget. Have a slave count the number of hoxney strides every day; with the direction taken. Write down details every night. Find out how far away the country of Sibornal is. Be as precise as you can.”

Shay Tal was majestic in the midst of the weeping and chattering that filled her chamber. Her hawk face preserved a closed look whenever addressed, as if already her spirit was remote from them. She said little, and that little was uttered in unemotional tones.

Dathka, after staring blankly at the walls, with their elaborate patterning of lichen, looked at Laintal Ay with his head on one side and gestured to the door. When Laintal Ay shook his head, Dathka made a characteristic moue and slipped out. “Pity you can’t train women like hoxneys,” he said, as he disappeared.

“At least he is consistently revolting,” Oyre said disdainfully. She and Vry took Laintal Ay into a corner and began whispering to him. It was essential that Shay Tal should not leave on the morrow;, he must help persuade her to wait for the following day.

“That’s absurd. If she wants to go, she must go. We’ve been over all this. First you will not leave, now you don’t want her to leave. There’s a world out beyond the barricades you know nothing about.”

She coolly picked a sliver of straw from his hoxneys. “Yes, the world of conquest. I know—I hear enough of it from Father. The point is, there will be an eclipse tomorrow.”

“That’s general knowledge. It’s a year since the last one.”

“Tomorrow will be rather different, Laintal Ay,” Vry said, warningly. “We simply wish Shay Tal to postpone her departure. If she leaves here on the day of the eclipse, people will associate the two events. Whereas we know there is no connection.”

Laintal Ay frowned. “What of it?”

The two women looked uneasily at each other.

“We think that if she leaves tomorrow, ill things may follow.”

“Ha! So you do believe there is a connection… The workings of the female mind! If the connection exists, then there’s no way we can evade it, is there?”

Oyre clutched her face in exaggerated disgust. “The male mind … Any excuse not to do anything, eh?”

“You witches will meddle with what is no concern of ours.”

In disgust, they left him standing in the corner and pressed back into the crowd round Shay Tal.

The old women still chattered away, speaking of the miracle at Fish Lake, speaking obliquely, looking obliquely, to see if their reminiscences registered on the preoccupied Shay Tal. But Shay Tal gave no sign that she heard or saw them.

“You look proper fed up with life,” Rol Sakil commented. “Maybe when you reach this Sibornal, you’ll marry and settle down happily—if men are made there as they’re made here.”

“Perhaps they’re made better there,” another old woman responded, amid laughter. Various suggestions as to improvements were bandied about.

Shay Tal continued to pack, without smiling.

Her belongings were few. When she had finally assembled them in two skin bags, she turned to the crowd in her room and requested them to leave, as she desired to rest before her journey. She thanked them all for coming, blessed them, and said she would never forget them. She kissed Vry on the forehead. Then she summoned Oyre and Laintal Ay to her side.

She clutched one of Laintal Ay’s hands in her two thin ones, looking with unusual tenderness into his eyes. She spoke only when all but Oyre had left her room.

“Be wary in all you do, for you are not self-seeking enough, you do not take enough care for yourself. You understand, Laintal Ay? I’m glad you have not struggled for the power that you may feel is your birthright, for it would only bring you sorrow.”

She turned to Oyre, her face lined with seriousness.

“You are dear to me, for I know how dear you are to Laintal Ay. My council to you as we part in this: become his woman with all speed. Don’t put conditions on your heart, as I did, as your father once did—that leads to inevitable wretchedness, as I understand too late. I was too proud when young.”

Oyre said, “You are not wretched. You are still proud.”

“One may be both wretched and proud. Heed what I say, I who understand your difficulties. Laintal Ay is the nearest thing I shall ever have to a son. He loves you. Love him—not just emotionally, also physically. Bodies are for roasting, not smoking.”

She looked down at her own dried flesh, and nodded them farewell.

Batalix was setting, true night descending.

Traders came to Oldorando in increasing numbers, and from all points of the compass. The important salt trade was conducted from the north and south, whence it arrived often by goat train. There was now a regular track from Oldorando westwards across the veldt, trodden by traders from Kace, who brought gaudy things such as jewels, stained glass, toys, silvery musical instruments, as well as sugar cane and rare fruits; they preferred money to barter, but Oldorando had no currency, so they accepted herbs, skin, suede, and grain instead. Sometimes the men from Kace used stungebags as beasts of burden, but the animals became rarer as the weather grew warmer.

Traders and priests still called from Borlien, although they had learned long ago to fear their treacherous northern neighbour. They sold pamphlets and broadsheets that told lurid tales in rhyme, and fine metal pots and pans.

From the east, by divergent ways, came many traders, and sometimes caravans. Dark little men with enslaved populations of Madis or phagors plied regular routes, on which Oldorando was merely one port of call. They brought delicately wrought ornaments and decorations which the women of Oldorando loved. Rumour had it that some of those women fared onwards with the dark men; certain it was that the easterners traded in young Madi women, who looked wild and lovely, but pined away when shut in a tower. Bad though their reputation was, the traders were tolerated for their wares—not decorations only, but woven rugs, carpets, tapestries, shawls, such as Oldorando had never seen before.

All these travellers needed housing. Their encampments became a nuisance. Oldorando’s slaves toiled to erect a separate township just to the south of the towers, known ironically as the Pauk. Here all trade was conducted; in narrow alleys, peltmongers and all other mongers carried on their business, with stables and eating houses nearby, and for a while the traders were forbidden entry to Oldorando proper. But their numbers grew, and some settled in the town, importing their arts and vices.

Oldorandans were also learning the artifices of trade. New merchants approached Aoz Roon and asked for special concessions, including the right to mint coin. This question vexed their minds far more than any problems with the academy, which they regarded as a waste of time.

A party of these Oldorandan traders numbering six, comfortably mounted on hoxneys, was returning to Oldorando from a successful expedition. At Freyr-dawn, they paused on a hill to the north, close by the brassimip patch, from where they could see the outskirts of the town, chill in the grey light. The air was so still that distant voices carried to them.

“Look,” exclaimed one of the younger traders, shading his eyes as he gazed. “There’s some kind of a hullabaloo by the gate. We’d best go by another way.”

“Not fuggies, is it?”

They all stared hard. In the distance, a cluster of persons, men and women, could be observed surging from the town. In a space, some of them halted indecisively, causing the cluster to split in two. The others went forward.

“It isn’t anything important,” said the young trader, and spurred his hoxney. He had a woman in Embruddock he very much wanted two see, and a new bauble for her in his pocket. The departure of Shay Tal meant nothing to him.

Soon Batalix was rising, overhauling its companion in the sky.

The chill, the etiolated morning in which rain threatened, the sense of adventure, served to make her feel disembodied. She experienced no emotion as she clasped Vry to her in mute farewell. Her servant, Maysa Latra, a willing slave, helped her downstairs with her few things. Beside the tower stood Amin Lim, clutching the bridle of her own hoxney and Shay Tal’s, and saying a sorrowful farewell to her man and her small child; there, thought Shay Tal, is a sacrifice greater than mine. I’m glad to go. Why Amin Lim comes with me, I shall never know. But her heart warmed to her friend, although she also felt a little contempt.

Four women were leaving with her: Maysa Latra, Amin Lim, and two younger disciples, devout pupils of the academy. All were mounted and were accompanied by a male gelded slave, Hamadranabail, who walked, leading two pack hoxneys and a pair of savage hunting dogs with spiked collars.

More people, women and some older men, followed the procession, calling farewells and sometimes advice, serious or jocular as the fancy took them.

Laintal Ay and Oyre waited at the gate to catch a last glimpse of Shay Tal; they stayed close but avoided looking at each other.

Beyond the gate was Aoz Roon himself, standing there in his black furs, arms folded, chin sunk on chest. Behind him was Grey, in the care of Eline Tal, who for once looked no more cheerful than his lord. Several men stood in a huddle behind their silent ruler, faces sober, hands under armpits.

When Shay Tal appeared, Aoz Roon swung himself into his saddle and began to ride slowly, not towards her but rather almost parallel with her path, so that, continuing on undeflected courses, they would collide some way ahead, where trees began.

Before he reached that point, Aoz Roon struck off the track, picking a course parallel with it among the trees. The women’s party, with Amin Lim leading, weeping silently, continued sedately along the path. Neither Aoz Roon nor Shay Tal made any attempt to communicate, or even look at each other.

Freyr was hidden as yet in early cloud, so that the world remained without colour.

The ground rose, the track narrowed, the trees grew closer. They came to a fold in the ground where the trees stopped and the ground was marshy. Frogs splashed to safety as the party approached. The hoxneys picked their way slowly through the wet, flexing their paws in distaste, raising yellow mud that curdled under the water surface.

Trees on the far side of the marsh forced the riders more closely together. As if noticing Aoz Roon for the first time, Shay Tal called in her clear voice, “You do not need to follow.”

“I am leading, ma’am, not following. I will see you safely away from Oldorando. It’s an honour properly owed you.”

No more was said. They proceeded farther, coming at last to rising ground studded with bushes. At the crest, they could pick up a clear traders’ path leading northeast, to Chalce and distant Sibornal—how distant, no one knew. Trees began again on the downward slope. Aoz Roon reached the crest first and positioned himself there, bleak of visage, pointing Grey along the lie of the ridge as the women went by.

Shay Tal turned Loyalty’s head and approached him, the lines of her face clear and composed.

“It’s good of you to come this far.”

“Enjoy a safe journey,” he said formally, holding himself upright, pulling in his belly. “You observe that no attempt is made to stop you leaving us.”

Her voice softened. “We shall never see each other again; from this date on, we are extinct to each other. Have we ruined each other’s lives, Aoz Roon?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Since we were children we have been up against each other. Give me a word, friend, as I go away. Don’t be proud, as I’ve always been proud—not now.”

He firmed up his mouth and regarded her without saying anything.

“Please, Aoz Roon, a true word on parting. I am well aware I said No to you once too often.”

At that he nodded. “There’s your true word.”

She looked about anxiously, then kicked Loyalty one pace nearer, so that the two hoxneys touched each other.

“Now that I’m leaving for ever, just tell me—that in your heart you still feel for me as once you did, when we were younger.”

He gave a snorting laugh. “You’re mad. You never understood reality. You were too wrapped up in yourself. I feel nothing for you now—or you for me, if you but knew it.”

She reached out to clutch him, but he backed away, showing his teeth like a dog. “Lies, Aoz Roon, all lies! Give me then a gesture as I go—give me a parting kiss, damn you, I who have suffered so much from you. Gestures are better than words.”

“Many think not. What’s said always remains.”

Tears burst from her eyes and were gone, falling aslant her lean cheeks.

“May the fessups feed on you!”

She wrenched round the head of her mare and galloped away, plunging into the trees to catch up with her small procession.

He sat for a moment where he was, drawn up rigid in the saddle, staring ahead with his knuckles white about the reins. Gently, he turned Grey’s head and coaxed her among the trees, going away from Oldorando at a tangent, ignoring Eline Tal, who discreetly waited some distance behind.

Grey picked up speed as she moved downhill, encouraged by her master. Soon they were going at full gallop, the ground flying beneath them, and all human beings lost to view. Aoz Roon raised his clenched right fist high in the air.

“Good riddance to the hag-bitch,” he cried. Savage laughter was torn from his throat as he rode.

Earth Observation Station Avernus saw everything as it passed overhead. All change was monitored and all data transmitted back to Earth. In the Avernus, members of the eight learned families were at work, synthesising the new knowledge.

They charted not only the movement of human populations but also those of the phagorian populations, both white and black. Every advance or retreat was transformed into an impulse which would eventually make its way across the light- years to the globe and computers back in the Helliconian Centronics Institute on Earth.

From the window of the station, the team could observe the planet below, and the progress of the eclipse, as it spread a grey necrosis over the oceans and the tropical continent.

On one bank of monitor screens, another progress was under survey—the progress of the kzahhn’s crusade towards Oldorando. By its own peculiar travelling time, the crusade was now precisely one year away from its anticipated target, the destruction of the old town.

In codified form, these signals were relayed back to Earth. There, many centuries later, Helliconia-watchers assembled to see the final agonies of the drama.

The bleak regions of Mordriat, its echoing canyons, its shattered walls of rock, its moors with their unexpected air of privacy, its drab high valleys through which cloud forever smouldered, as if fire rather than ice had moulded the unyielding contours of its desolation, lay behind.

The straggling crusade, broken into many separate groups, was wending its way over lower country, empty save for Madis with their flocks, and dense flights of birds. Indifferent to their surroundings, the phagors continued towards the southeast.

The kzahhn of Hrastyprt, Hrr-Brahl Yprt, led them onwards. Vengeance was still strong in their harneys, as they made their way through the floods of the east Oldorandan plain; yet many of them had died. Sickness and attacks from merciless Sons of Freyr had cut down their numbers.

Nor had they been well received by small components of phagors through whose land they travelled. Those components without kaidaws pursued a settled way of living, often with large gangs of human or Madi slaves, and fiercely resisted any invasion of their territory.

Hrr-Brahl Yrpt had come victorious through everything. Only sickness was beyond his power to command. As news of his columns preceded him, so living things in his path moved away, causing the ripples of his progress to spread across half a continent.

Now the leaders stood with Hrr-Brahl Yprt before a wide-flowing river. The waters of the river were icy; they plunged down, though the phagor host knew it not, from the same Nktryhk uplands from which the crusade against the Sons of Freyr had started, a thousand miles away.

“Here by these torrents we will stay while Batalix makes her way twice across the sky,” Hrr-Brahl Yprt said to his commanders. “Leader scouts will diverge to either side and find us a dry crossing; the air-octaves will guide them.”

He whistled down his cowbird, who began to search his pelage for ticks. It was done abstractedly, for the kzahhn had other matters on his harneys; but the minute creatures were suddenly irritating. Perhaps it was the warmth of the valley surrounding them. Green cliffs rose on all sides, trapping the unwelcome heat as cupped hands hold water. The third blindness would soon be upon them. Later, a retreat to colder quarters must commence.

But first came vengeance.

He gestured the graceful Zzhrrk away, and strode off to obtain an understanding of the overall situation, his bird remaining above him with an occasional downthrust of its wings.

They could wait while the rest of the force, which straggled back over several dozen miles, caught up. Banners were hoisted, the kaidaws were released to forage. Minions erected tents for the leadership. Meals and rituals were set in train.

As Batalix and the treacherous Freyr sailed above the encampment, the kzahhn of Hrastyprt strode into his tent, unbuckling his face crown. His long head was thrust forward between burly shoulders, and the barrel of his body—trimmed by the ordeals of travel—also leaned forward in his eagerness.

The sweeping lashes of his eyes came down, slitting his cerise stare, as he glared along the curve of his nose to his four fillocks. They stood within the tent, scratching or jostling each other as they awaited his arrival.

Zzhrrk swooped through the opening of the tent, but Hrr-Brahl Yprt brushed it away. It fluttered, caught off balance, and landed awkwardly, to waddle out of the tent. Hrr-Brahl Yprt pulled down the rug behind him, closing the entrance. He began to divest himself of his armour, his sleeveless jacket, his belt and sporran, all the while looking at his four brides, the imperious gaze switching from one to the other. He snuffed at them, smelling their scents.

The fillocks fretted, scratching at ticks, or adjusting their long white coats so that their plump dugs smacked about in his sight. The eagle feathers in their head hair nodded towards him. They snorted and shot their pale milts neatly into their nostril slits.

“You!’ he said, pointing to the one female fully in heat. While her companions banged away and squatted at the rear of the tent, the chosen one turned her back on the young kzahhn and stooped forward. He approached, prodding his three fingers deep into her proffered flesh, then wiping them on the black fur of his muzzle. Without further ado, he hoisted himself upon her, his weight bowing her until she was on all fours. Slowly she sank further as he thrust, until her wide forehead rested on the rug.

When the incursion was over, and the other fillocks trotted forward to nuzzle their sister, Hrr-Brahl Yprt pulled on his armour and strode from the tent. It would be three weeks before his sexual interest reawoke.

His crusade commander, Yohl-Gharr Wyrrijk, was stolidly awaiting him. The two stood foresquare, looking into each other’s eyes. Yohl-Gharr Wyrrijk gestured up at the sky.

“The day comes,” he said. “The octaves tighten.”

His kzahhn swivelled his head, waving a fist to clear the sky overhead of cowbirds. He stared up at the usurper Freyr, perceiving how it dragged itself every day, like a spider across its web, closer to Batalix. Soon, soon, Freyr would hide itself in the belly of its enemy. The hosts would then be at their destination. They would strike then, and kill all the progeny of Freyr who lived where Hrr-Brahl Ypres noble grandstallun had died; and then they would burn down the town and erase it from memory. Only then could he and his followers attain honourable tether. Those thoughts crawled through his harneys like the slow drip of icicles, which splash as they melt and lose shape and make the ground heavy with their drenchment.

“The two seminals draw together,” he growled.

Later, he had a human slave sound the stungebag horn, and the keratinous figures of his father and great-grandstallun were presented before him. The young kzahhn noted how both figures had been damaged by the long journey, despite the care that had been taken of them.

Humbly, and with hosts of the component assembled by the black river, Hrr- Brahl Yprt went into his trance. Everyone became absolutely immobile, according to his nature, as if they were frozen in a sea of air.

No larger than a snow rabbit, the image of the great-grandstallun appeared, running on all fours as once it had been with the phagors in the time long gone, when Batalix had yet to be caught in the web woven by Freyr.

“Hold horns high,” said the snow rabbit. “Remember enmities, resent the coming of the green, sprinkle it with the red liquids of the Sons of Freyr, who brought the green and banished the white as it was.”

The keratinous father also appeared, scarcely larger, bowing to his son, conjuring a sequence of pictures in his pale harneys.

The world was there before the closed eyes, its three divisions pumping. From the steam of its being blew the yellow strands of the air-octaves, writhing like long ribbons about the clenched fists, and about the clenched fists of other worlds nearby, embracing too beloved Batalix and the spiderous shape of Freyr. Things like lice ran along the ribbons, keening with a shrill note.

Hrr-Brahl Yprt thanked his father for the pictures flickering in his harneys. He had seen them many times before. All present were familiar with them. They must be repeated. They were the lodestones of the crusade. Without repetition, the lights were extinguished, leaving the harney-packed skull like some remote cave, piled with the bodies of dead serpents.

With repetition, it was clearly understood that the needs of one phagor were the needs of the whole world, which those departed for the next world had called Hrl- Ichor Yhar, and the needs of Hrl-Ichor Yhar were the needs of a single phagor. There were pictures now of the Sons of Freyr: when the colours of the air-octaves brightened, the Sons were falling ill on the ground, falling or dying or being transformed into smaller sizes. That time had come before. That time would come soon. Past and future were present. The falling would come also when Freyr hid completely in Batalix. And then would be the time to strike—to strike against all, and especially against those whose forebears had slain the Great Kzahhn Hrr-Tryhk Hrast.

Remember. Be valiant, be implacable. Do not deviate an inch from the programme, transmitted through many ancestors.

There was a scent of ancient days, something far, fusty, and true. An angellike array of predecessors was glimpsed, devouring the primal ice-fields. The air turns marched in millions, never mute.

Remember. Prepare for the next stage. Hold horns high.

The young kzahhn emerged slowly from his trance. His white cowbird had settled on his left shoulder. It slid its curved beak reassuringly among the hairs and folds of his shoulders, and began to feed on the ticks that clustered there. The horn was sounded again, its mournful note carrying across the ice-cold river.

That melancholy note could be heard some distance away, where a group of phagors had become separated from their main component. They were eight in number, six being gillots and two stalluns. They had with them one old red kaidaw, past riding, on whose back weapons and supplies were lashed. A few days previously, when Batalix prevailed auspiciously in the sky, they had captured six Madi men and women, who, with their animals, were trailing behind a migratory caravan heading for the isthmus of Chalce. The animals had been immediately cooked and eaten, their throats bitten out in the approved way.

The unfortunate Madis were tied together and made to follow on. But the difficulty of making them follow, as well as the delay for the feast, had led to the group’s separation from the body of the crusade. They got themselves on the wrong side of a brook which swelled to a torrent. Rainstorms broke over the higher ground, the brook flooded, they were cut off.

That Batalix-night, the phagors made camp in a sombre clearing beneath tall rajabarals; they secured the Madis to a slender tree, where the protognostics were allowed to sleep as best they could, huddled together. The phagors flung themselves down close by, lying flat on their backs; their cowbirds came down and settled on their breasts, with heads and beaks tucked into the warmth of the phagors’ necks. The phagors went immediately into their dreamless and motionless sleep, as if preparing for tether.

Squawks of cowbirds and cries of Madis woke them. The Madis in terror had broken loose from their tree and fallen upon their captors—not in anger but hopes of protection, relying on their enemies to defend them against a greater menace.

One of the rajabarals was splitting. The air was brittle with the noise of its destruction.

Seams showed vertically, and thick brown sap like pus spurted from the cracks. Steam from the tree shrouded the writhing thing that was emerging from it.

“Wutra worm! Wutra worm!” cried the protognostics, as the phagors scrambled to their feet. The leading phagor crossed to the hobbled kaidaw, handing out spears in a businesslike manner.

The great drum of the active rajabaral was thirty feet high. Suddenly, its top blew, pieces falling like shattered pottery, and out from the top reared a Wutra’s worm. Through the clearing poured the characteristic worm stench, in which scumble, festering fish, and decaying cheese mingled.

The creature’s head rose like a snake’s, glistening in the sun, poised on the flexing column of its neck. It swung about, and the rajabaral cracked open, revealing more slimy coils unwinding, and the discarded skin of a moult. Boring underground, the creature had entered the rajabaral through its roots, to use the tree as a refuge. Increasing warmth encouraged it to moult and metamorphose. Now it required nourishment as its next stage of development forced it through the imperatives of its life cycle.

By now, the phagors were armed. Their leader, a thick-set gillot with black hairs showing in her pelt, gave the order. Her two best marksmen flung their spears at the Wutra’s worm.

The beast twisted, the spears flew harmlessly by. It sighted the figures below it, and immediately snaked its head down in attack. Those on the ground were suddenly aware of its true size, as it confronted them—four banked eyes glaring at them above thick fleshy feelers spreading from its mouth. The feelers waved like fingers as the worm poised itself to strike. The mouth, filled with backward- pointing teeth, was curiously baggy, pursing itself in the middle as well as at the sides.

The head was held sideways, sweeping towards them like a wagging asokin’s tail. One moment it loomed above the treetops—the next, it was bearing down on the line of phagors. They flung their spears. The cowbirds scattered.

That oddly working mouth, jawless, seemed infinitely capacious. It snatched up one of the phagors in its fangs and half-lifted her. The gillot was too heavy for the musculature of the supple neck to carry. She was dragged croaking across the swampy ground, one arm striking at the scent pits of the monster.

“Kill it!” cried the gillot leader, dashing forward with her knife raised.

But in the dim slimes of the worm’s harneys, a decision had been reached. It bit savagely through the flesh in its mouth and dropped the rest. The head jerked upward, out of harm’s way, yellow blood pouring off its whiskers. What remained of the gillot beat its fist on the ground and then lay unmoving.

Even as the worm gobbled its morsel, it began to change, its coils crashing down into the young trees round about. Though not given to fright, the seven surviving phagors fell down in terror. The worm was splitting in twain.

It dragged its bloodied head over the grass, some way distant from them. Membranes tore with protracted noise. Something like a mask peeled from the head, which became, grotesquely, two heads. While these heads lay one on top of each other, they still resembled the old one; then the new upper head lifted and the resemblance was gone.

The jaws of the new heads sprouted fleshy feelers, rapidly growing outstretched and stiff to form a circle of spikes, behind which came a mouth, the cartilage fixed wide without the ability to close. The rest of the head followed this unseemly opening, with two eyes set horizontally in it. A layer of slime, revealed by the torn membranes, dried, causing a slight colour change to take place. One head became verdigris-hued green, the other a mottled blue.

The heads rose, rearing away from each other in antagonism, emitting a low roar.

This action caused more membranes to split all along the old body, which was revealed as two bodies, one green, one blue, both very slender and winged. A convulsive struggle, similar to a death paroxysm, shook the old body. The two new javelin bodies came streaming forth from it, spreading papery wings as they rose. The heads ascended above the shattered rajabaral, papery wings thrashed. Eight cowbirds flew round about them, screeching with open beaks.

The two opposed creatures became more stable. In another moment, their long- whiskered tails had left the ground. They were airborne, and the light of Freyr glittered on scales and sutured wings. One monster, the green one, was male, with a double series of tentacle appendages dangling from its middle regions, the other, the blue, female, its scales less bright.

Now their wings had acquired a steady beat, lifting them above the treetops. The leading aperture, the mouth, gulped in air, expelling it through rear vents. The creatures circled the clearing in opposite directions, watched helplessly by the phagor band. Then they were off on their maiden flight.

The fliers headed away like flying snakes, one towards the distant north, one towards the far south, obeying mysteriously musical air-octaves of their own, and suddenly beautiful in their power. Their long thin bodies undulated through the atmosphere. They gained height, lifting themselves above the bowl of the valley. Then they were gone, each to seek mates in the remoteness of the opposed poles.

The imagos had forgotten their previous existences, imprisoned for centuries in the hibernal earth.

Grunting, the phagors turned to more immediate things. Their stares swept about the clearing. Their hobbled kaidaw remained, placidly cropping grass. The Madis had gone. Seizing their opportunity, the protognostics had beaten it into the forest.

Madis generally mated for life, and it was rare for a widow or widower to remarry; indeed, a kind of deep melancholia generally carried off the survivor of the bond-pair. The fugitives comprised three men and their mates. The senior pair by a few years was called Cathkaarnit, that being their merged name since marriage; they were distinguished as Cathkaarnit-he and Cathkaarnit-she.

All six of them were slender and of small stature. All were dark. The transhuman protognostics, of which the Madis formed one tribe, differed little in appearance from true humans. Their pursed lips, caused by the formation of the bones of the skull and the lie of their teeth, gave them a wistful look. They possessed eight fingers on each hand, with four opposed to four, giving them an amazingly strong grip; and their feet also exhibited four toes forward and four aft, behind the heel.

They ran at a steady jog trot from the clearing where the phagors were, a pace they could maintain for hours if necessary. They ran through groves and through bogs, moving in double file, the Cathkaarnits leading, then the next oldest pair, then the next. Several wild animals, chiefly deer, went crashing away from their path. Once they flushed a boar. They hastened on without pause.

Their flight led them mainly westwards; the memory of their eight weeks of captivity lent them strength. Skirting the floods, they climbed out of the great saucer of land in which they had made their escape. The heat grew less. At the same time, the inclination upwards of the land, slight but continuous, wore down their energies. The jog trot relapsed into a fast-walking pace. Their skins burned. They pressed on, heads down, breathing painfully through nose and mouth, occasionally stumbling over the rough ground.

At last the rear pair gave a gasp and fell, to lie panting, clutching their stomachs. Their four companions, looking up, saw that they had almost gained the lip of the rise, after which the land could be relied on to level out. They continued, leaning forward, to drop as soon as they climbed from the slope to the flat. Their lungs laboured.

From here they could look back through the preternaturally clear air. Below them were their two exhausted friends, sprawling at the top of an enormous bowl of land. The sides of the bowl were pitted by gulleys down which water poured. The brooks ran down into two immense coils of a river newly enough formed for half- drowned trees still to be standing in it. Dams were forming where branches and other debris had collected. This flood was lost from view where it curved behind a fold of hillside.

Water noises filled the air. They could see where the massive concave rajabarals stood. Somewhere among those rajabarals was the party of phagors from which they had escaped. Behind the rajabarals, thick young forests grew, covering slopes that formed the opposite side of the great bowl. The trees of the forest were generally of a sombre green, rank after rank, punctuated by a tree bearing brilliant gold foliage, known to the Madis as caspiarn; its bitter buds could be eaten in times of famine.

But the landscape did not end with the forests. Beyond them could be seen cliffs which had collapsed here and there to permit a hazardous downward path for animals or men. The cliffs were part of a mountain which spread its rounded contours from one side of the view to the other. Its soft underlying rocks had split, causing ravines from which vegetation sprouted. Where the vegetation was at its most dense, and the collapsed configuration of the mountain most spectacular, a tributary river glinted, foaming as it burst among its gorges towards the valley.

Beyond and above the spongey mountain, yet other mountains stood, harsher, comprising durable basalts, their flanks excoriated by recent centuries of winter. No green mantle covered them. They remained uncompromised, although here and there they were spread with the yellow and orange and white of tiny upland flowers, their colours pure even when viewed from miles away.

Above the domes of those basalt mountains, other ranges, blue, bleak, dreadful, showed. And as if to demonstrate to every living thing that the world had no end, those ranges too permitted a glimpse of objects beyond—land at great distance and great altitude, showing its teeth in a procession of peaks. These were bastions of matter, standing where the blistering colds of the tropopause commenced.

The keen eyes of the Madis took in this prospect, picking out small touches of white among the nearer trees, between the caspiarns, along the cliffs, between the higher defiles of the mountains, even as far as the flashing tributary in its gorges. Those touches of white the Madis correctly identified as cowbirds. Where the cowbirds were were phagors. For almost as many miles as they could see, the stealthy advance of Hrr-Brahl Yprt’s host could be marked by cowbirds. Not one phagor could be viewed; yet the mighty landscape probably concealed ten thousand of them.

As the Madis rested and watched, first one and then the other started to scratch at himself or herself. The scratching began like a tickle, but grew more savage as they cooled down. Soon they were rolling about, scratching and swearing, their bodies stung by sweat which cut into the rash of bites mottling their skin. They curled themselves into balls, scratching with feet as well as hands. This frantic itch had assailed them at intervals, ever since their capture by the phagors.

While raking in their crotches, or groping frantically at their armpits, or dragging their nails through the mops of their hair, they gave no thought to cause and effect, never ascribing their rashes to a tick caught from the matted coats of their captors.

That tick was generally harmless, or at least passed on to humans and protognostics nothing worse than a fever or rash which rarely lasted more than a few days. But heat balances were changing as Helliconia moved nearer to Freyr. Ixodidae multiplied: the female tick paid her tribute to Great Freyr in millions of eggs.

Soon that insignificant tick, so much a part of life as to pass unnoticed, would become the vector of a virus inducing the so-called bone fever, and the world would change because of her.

This virus moved into an active stage of development in the spring of Helliconia’s great year, at the time of the eclipses. Every spring, the human population was afflicted with bone fever; only something like half the population could expect to survive. The disaster was so comprehensive, its effects so thoroughgoing, that it could be said to wipe itself from such meagre records as were kept.

As the Madis rolled scratching in the leaves, they paid no heed to the untravelled ground behind them.

There, out of the heat of the valley, lush grasses grew, interspersed with thickets of a rank, warted grass known as shoatapraxi, which had a hollow stem and grew hard in old age. Lightly robed men in high turn-down boots emerged from the shelter of the shoatapraxi clumps, ropes in hand. They pounced on the Madis.

The pair of Madis down the slope took their chance and ran away, though it meant going back towards the phagor columns. Their four friends were made captive, still twitching. Their brief, exhausting spell of liberty was over. This time they were the possessions of human beings, to form an insignificant part of another cyclic event, the southward invasion from Sibornal.

They had involuntarily joined the colonising army of the warrior priest Festibariyatid. Little the Cathkaarnits and their two companions cared about that, bowed down as they were by supplies piled on their backs. Their new masters drove them forward. They staggered southwards, still scratching despite their more novel miseries.

As they made their way, skirting the lip of the great bowl to their left, Freyr rose into the sky. Everything grew a second shadow, which shortened as the sun attained its zenith.

The landscape shimmered. The noonday temperature increased. The unregarded ticks swarmed in a myriad unregarded crannies.