Helliconia Spring

V • DOUBLE SUNSET

Nahkri and Klils were in one of the rooms of the herb tower supposedly sorting deer skins. Instead they were looking out of the window and shaking their heads at what they saw.

“I don’t believe it,” Nahkri said.

“I don’t believe it, either,” Klils said. “I just don’t believe it at all.” He laughed until his brother slapped him on the back.

They watched a tall aged figure running crazily along the banks of the Voral. Nearby towers obscured the figure, then they saw it again, skinny arms and legs flying. It stopped once, scooping up mud to plaster over its head and face, then ran on with its tottering gait.

“She’s gone mad,” Nahkri said, smoothing his whiskers pleasureably.

“Worse than that, if you ask me. Crazy, high in the harneys.”

Behind the running figure went a more sober one, a boy on the verge of manhood. Laintal Ay was following his grandmother to see that no harm came to her. She ran ahead of him, crying aloud. He followed, glum, silent, dutiful.

After shaking their heads, Nahkri and Klils put them together. “I can’t see why Loil Bry’s behaving like that,” Klils said. “You remember what Father told us?”

“No.”

“He told us that Loil Bry only pretended to love Uncle Yuli. He said she didn’t love him at all.”

“Ah, I remember. So why’s she keeping up the pretence now that he’s dead? It doesn’t make sense.”

“She’s got some clever scheme, with all that learning, you see. It’s a trick.”

Nahkri went over to the open trap. Women were working below. He kicked the door shut and turned to face his younger brother.

“Whatever Loil Bry does, that’s not important. Nobody understands what women do. The important thing is that Uncle Yuli’s dead and now you and I are going to rule Embruddock.”

Klils looked frightened. “Loilanun? Laintal Ay—what about him?”

“He’s still a kid.”

“Not for long. He’ll be seven, and a full hunter, in two more quarters.”

“For long enough. It’s our chance. We’re powerful—at least, I am. People will accept us. They don’t want a kid ruling them, and they had a secret contempt for his grandfather, lying about all the while with that madwoman. We must think of something to tell everyone, to promise them. Times are changing.”

“That’s it, Nahkri. Tell them times are changing.”

“We need the support of the masters. I’ll go and speak to them now—you’d better keep away, because I happen to know that the council think you’re a trouble- making fool. Then we win round a few leading hunters like Aoz Roon and the others, and everything will work out.”

“What about Laintal Ay?”

Nahkri hit his brother. “Don’t keep saying that. We’ll get rid of him, if he’s any trouble.”

Nahkri summoned a meeting that evening, when the first sentinel had left the sky and Freyr was moving towards a monochromatic dusk. The hunting party was home, most of the trappers were back. He ordered the gates closed.

As the crowd assembled in the square, Nahkri appeared on the base of the big tower. Over his deerskins he had thrown a stammel, a coarse woollen garment of red and yellow, without sleeves, to lend himself dignity. He was of medium height, with thick legs. His face was plain, his ears large. Characteristically, he jutted his lower jaw forward, giving his features an ominous, top-heavy quality.

He addressed the crowd in a serious way, reminding them of the great qualities of the old triumvirate, of Wall Ein, of his father, Dresyl, and of his uncle, Yuli. They had combined bravery and wisdom. Now the tribe was united; bravery and wisdom were common qualities. He would carry on the tradition, but with new emphasis for a new age. He and his brother would rule with the council, and would always give ear to what any man had to say.

He reminded them all that phagor raids were a continual threat, and that the salt traders from the Quzint had spoken of religious wars in Pannoval. Oldorando must stay united and continue to grow in strength. Fresh efforts were needed. Everyone must work harder. The women must work harder.

A woman’s voice interrupted him.

“Get down off that platform and do some work yourself!”

Nahkri lost his presence of mind. He gaped at the crowd below him, unable to think of a reply.

Lailanun spoke from the crowd. Laintal Ay stood beside her, looking down at the ground. Fear and anger shook her frame.

“You’ve no right to be up there, you and your drunken brother!” she called. “I am Yuli’s issue, I am his daughter. Here stands my son, Laintal Ay, whom you all know, who will be a man in two quarters. I have as much wisdom and knowledge as a man—gleaned from my parents. Maintain the triumvirate, as you were intended to do by your father, Dresyl, whom all respected. I demand to rule with you—women should have a voice—I love our family. Speak up for me, everyone, see that I get my rights. Then when Laintal Ay is of age, he will rule in my stead. I’ll train him properly.”

Feeling his cheeks burn, Laintal Ay looked about under his lowered brow. Oyre was gazing at him sympathetically and made a sign.

Several women and a few men started to shout, but Nahkri had recovered his poise. He outshouted them.

“No one is going to be ruled by a woman while I have anything to do with it. Who ever heard of such a thing? Lailanun, you must be as soft in your head as your mother to think of it. We all know you had bad luck with your man being killed, and everyone’s sorry, but what you say is all nonsense.”

The people all turned and looked at Loilanun’s flushed worn face. She returned the gaze unflinchingly and said, “Times are changing, Nahkri. Brains are needed as well as brawn. To be honest, a lot of us don’t trust you and your blockhead brother.”

Many murmured in Loilanun’s favour, but one of the hunters, Faralin Ferd, said roughly, “She’s not going to rule me—she’s only a woman. I’d rather put up with those two rogues.”

At this there was much good-hearted laughter, and Nahkri carried the day. As the crowd cheered, Loilanun pushed her way through it and went somewhere to weep. Laintal Ay followed her reluctantly. He felt sorry for his mother, he admired her, he also thought in his harneys that it was absurd for a woman to expect to rule over Oldorando. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing, as Uncle Nahkri said.

As he paused on the edge of the crowd, a woman called Shay Tal came to him and touched his sleeve. She was a young friend of his mother’s, with a fine complexion and a keen, hawklike look. He knew her as strange and sympathetic, for she occasionally visited his grandmother, bringing bread.

“I’ll come with you to comfort your mother, if you don’t mind,” Shay Tal said. “She embarrassed you, I know—but when people speak from the heart it often embarrasses us. I admire your mother as I admired your wise grandparents.”

“Yes, she’s brave. But still people laughed.”

Shay Tal looked scrutinisingly at him. “Still people laughed, yes. But many of those who laughed admire her nevertheless. They are scared. Most people are always scared. Remember that. We must try to change their minds.”

Laintal Ay went along with her, suddenly elated, smiling into her severe face.

Fortune favoured Nahkri and Klils. That night, a furious wind blew from the south, shrieking continuously among the town like the Hour-Whistler itself. Next day, the fish trappers reported a glut of fish in the river. The women went down with baskets and scooped up the gleaming bodies. This unexpected plenty was taken as a sign. Much of the fish was salted, but enough was left over to provide a feast that night, a feast at which barley wine was drunk to celebrate the new rule of Nahkri and Klils.

But Klils had no sense and Nahkri no wisdom. Worse, neither had much feeling for their fellow men. In the hunt, they performed no better than average. They often quarrelled with each other over what was to be done. And because they were aware in a shadowy fashion of these defects, they drank too much, and so quarrelled the more.

Yet luck remained with them. The weather continued to improve, deer were sometimes more plentiful, and no diseases struck. Phagor raids ceased, though the monsters were sighted occasionally a few miles away.

Fruitful monotony attended the lives in Oldorando.

The rule of the brothers did not please everyone. It did not please some of the hunters; it did not please some of the women; and it did not please Laintal Ay.

Among the hunters was a party of young bloods who formed a company together, and resisted Nahkri’s attempts to break them up. Of these, the leader was Aoz Roon Den, now in the full flower of manhood. He was large of frame, with a frank expression on his face, and could run on his two legs as fast as a hog on four. His figure was distinctive; he wore the skin of a black bear, and the fur enabled him to be picked out at a distance.

That bear was one he had wrestled with and killed. In pride at the feat, he carried the animal back from the hills unaided, and threw it down before his admiring friends in the tower where they lived. After a rathel party, he had summoned in Master Datnil Skar to skin the animal.

And there had been a touch of distinction in the way Aoz Roon had arrived in this tower. He was descended from an uncle of Wall Ein’s who had been Lord of the Brassimips. The brassimips were an area and a vegetable vital to the local economy; from the brassimips came the feed for the sows that yielded milk for rathel. But Aoz Roon found his family tyrannical, revolted against it early in life, and established his niche in a distant tower, along with bright sparks of his own age, the mirthful Eline Tal, the lecherous Faralin Ferd, the steady Tanth Ein. They drank to the stupidity of Nahkri and his brother. Their drinking parties were widely regarded as distinguished.

In other ways also, Aoz Roon was distinguished. He was a man noted for courage in a society where courage was common coin. During the tribal dances, he could turn a cartwheel in the air without touching the ground. And he believed strongly in the unity of the tribe.

Nor did the presence of his natural daughter, Oyre, stop women admiring him. He had caught the eye of Loilanun’s friend, Shay Tal, and responded warmly to her unique beauty; but he gave his heart to no one. He saw that one day Nahkri and Klils would meet with trouble and fall before it. Since he understood—or thought he did—what was good for the tribe, he wished himself to rule, and could not allow any woman to rule his heart.

To this end, Aoz Roon cultivated his comrades with good fellowship and also paid attention to Laintal Ay, encouraging the boy to come by his side on the chase when he officially reached the years of a hunter.

Out on a deer hunt to the southwest of Oldorando, he and Laintal Ay became separated by flooded ground from the rest of the company. They had to detour through difficult country studded with the great cylinders of rajabarals. There they came an a party of ten traders lying round a grass campfire, torpid after drink. Aoz Roon despatched two of the number as they slept, without any of the others rousing. He and Laintal Ay then rushed from cover holding animal skulls before their faces and screaming. The remaining eight traders surrendered in superstitious fear. This story was told in Oldorando as a great joke for many years.

The eight had traded in weapons, grain, furs, and anything else that came to hand. They came from Borlien, where the people were traditionally regarded as cowards, and travelled from the seas of the south to the Quzints in the north. Most of them were known in Oldorando and known as cheats and swindlers. Aoz Roon and Laintal Ay brought them back to serve as slaves, and shared their goods among the people. For his personal slave, Aoz Roon kept a young man called Calary, scarcely older than Laintal Ay.

This episode brought Aoz Roon more prestige. He was soon in a position to challenge Nahkri and Klils. Yet he held back, as was his way, and consorted with his fellow bloods.

Unrest was growing among the makers corps. In particular, a young man by the name of Dathka was attempting to break away from the metal-makers corps, refusing to service his long term as apprentice. He was taken before the brothers. They could get no submission from him. Dathka disappeared from everyone’s ken for two days. One of the women reported that he was lying bound in an infrequently used cell, with bruises on his face.

At this, Aoz Roon went before Nahkri and asked that Dathka might be allowed to join the hunters. He said, “Hunting is no easy life. There is still plenty of game, but the grazing grounds have altered with this freak weather the last few years have sent us. We’re hard pressed, as you know. So let Dathka join us if he wishes. Why not? If he’s no good, then we’ll kick him out and think again. He’s about Laintal Ay’s age, and can team up with him.”

The light was dim where Nahkri stood, supervising slaves who were milking the rathel sows. Dust filled the air. The ceiling was low, so that Nahkri stooped slightly. He appeared to cringe before the challenge of Aoz Roon.

“Dathka should obey the laws,” said Nahkri, offended by Aoz Roon’s unnecessary reference to Laintal Ay.

“Permit him to hunt and he’ll obey the laws. We’ll have him earning his keep before those welts you set on his face can heal.”

Nahkri spat. “He’s not trained as a hunter. He’s a maker. You have to be trained to these things.” Nahkri feared that various secrets belonging to the metal makers might be given away; the crafts of the corps were closely guarded and reinforced the rulers’ power to rule.

“If he won’t work, then let’s subject him to our hard life and see how he survives,” Aoz Roon argued.

“He’s a silent, surly fellow.”

“Silence is an aid on the open plains.”

Finally Nahkri released Dathka. Dathka teamed up with Laintal Ay as Aoz Roon said. He developed into a good hunter, delighting in the chase.

Silent though he was, Dathka was accepted by Laintal Ay as a brother. There was not an inch to choose between them in height and less than a year in age. Whereas Laintal Ay’s face was broad and humorous, Dathka’s was long, and his glance perpetually cast downward. Their expertise as a team became legendary during the chase.

Because they were so much together, old women said of them that they would one day meet the same fate, as had been predicted in an earlier age of Dresyl and Little Yuli. As then, so now: their fates were to differ greatly. In these young days, they merely seemed alike, and Dathka excelled to such an extent that the vain Nahkri grew proud of him, patronising him, and sometimes making reference to his own far-sightedness in releasing the youth from his bondage with the corps. Dathka kept silent and stared at the ground when Nahkri went by, never forgetting who had beaten him. Some men never forgive.

Loil Bry was not the same after the death of her man. Whereas she had formerly clung to her scented chamber, now, old and vulnerable, she chose to wander in the wilderness of green springing up about Oldorando, talking or singing to herself. Many feared for her, but none dared approach, except Laintal Ay and Shay Tal.

One day, she was attacked by a bear driven down from the hills by fresh avalanches. Dragging herself along, wounded, she was set on by wild dogs, who killed and half ate her. When her mangled body was found, women gathered it up and carried it home weeping.

Then was the extravagant Loil Bry buried in traditional fashion. Many women wailed their grief: they had respected the remoteness of this person, born in the time of snows, who had managed to remain in the midst of them and yet live a life completely apart. There was a kind of inspiration in such remoteness: it was as if they could not sustain it for themselves, and so lived it through her.

Everyone recognised the learning of Loil Bry. Nahkri and Klils came to pay their respects to their ancient auntie, though they did not bother to order Father Bondorlonganon over to supervise her burial. They stood about on the edge of the mourning crowd, whispering together. Shay Tal went with Laintal Ay to support Loilanun, who neither wept nor spoke as her mother was lowered into the sodden ground.

As they left the place afterwards, Shay Tal heard Klils snigger and say to his brother, “Still, brother, she was only another woman …”

Shay Tal flushed, stumbled, and would have fallen if Laintal Ay had not grasped her round the waist. She went straight to the draughty room where she lived with her aged mother, and stood with her forehead to the wall.

She was of good build, though she had not what was termed a child-bearing figure. Her outward merits lay in her rich black hair, her fine features, and the way she carried herself. That proud carriage attracted some men, but repelled many more. Shay Tal had rejected an advance by her genial kinsman, Eline Tal. That had been long enough ago for her to notice that no other suitors approached—except Aoz Roon. Even with him, she could not subdue her spirit.

Now, as she stood against the moist wall, where grey lichens scrawled their skeletal flowers, she resolved that Loil Bry’s independence should serve as an example to her. She would not be only another woman, whatever else they said of her over her grave.

Every morning at dawn, the women gathered in what was known as the women’s house. It was a kind of factory. By first light, figures would steal forth from ruinous towers, huddled in their furs and often with additional swathings against the cold, and make their way to this place of work.

A saturating mist filled these mornings, divided into blocks by the shadowing towers. Heavy white birds passed through it like clouds. The stones ran moisture, and mud oozed underfoot. The women’s house stood at one end of the main street, near to the big tower. Some way behind it, down a slope, flowed the Voral, with its worn stone embankment. As the women straggled to work, geese—the fowl of Embruddock—came up to be fed, honking and clattering. Every woman had a titbit to throw them.

Inside the house, when its heavy creaking door was closed, the eternal women’s tasks were performed: the grinding of grain for flour, boiling and baking, the stitching of garments and boots, and the tanning of hides. The work of tanning was particularly difficult, and was overseen by a man—Datnil Skar, master of the tawyers and tanners corps. Salt was involved in the tanning process, and the tanners traditionally had charge of it. Also involved was the soaking of the hides in goose scumble, work too degrading for men to undertake. The toil was enlivened by gossip, as mothers and daughters discussed the shortcomings of men and neighbours.

Loilanun was forced to work here with the other women. She had become very thin and her face held a yellowy hue. Her bitterness against Nahkri and Klils ate at her vitals so much that she scarcely spoke even to Laintal Ay, who was now allowed to go his own way. She befriended no one but Shay Tal. Shay Tal had a certain fey quality, and a way of thought far removed from the dumb endurance that was a marked characteristic of the women of Embruddock.

One chill dawn, Shay Tal had just climbed from her bed, when a knocking sounded on the door below. The mists had penetrated the tower, beading everything in the room where she slept with her mother. She was sitting in the pearly darkness pulling on her boots when the knock came a second time. Loilanun pushed open the downstairs door and ascended through the stable and the room above it to Shay Tal’s room. The family pigs shuffled and snorted warmly in the dark as Loilanun felt her way up the creaking steps. Shay Tal met her as she climbed into the room, and clutched her cold hand. She made a gesture of silence towards the darkest corner of the room, where her mother lay sleeping. Her father was away with the other hunters.

In the dung-scented confinement of the room, they were little more than grey outlines, but Shay Tal detected something amiss in Loilanun’s hunched appearance. Her unexpected arrival suggested trouble.

“Loilanun, are you ill?” She whispered the words.

“Weary, just weary. Shay Tal, throughout this night, I spoke with my mother’s gossie.”

“You spoke with Loil Bry! She’s there already… What did she say?”

“They’re all there, even now, thousands of them, below our feet, waiting for us… It’s frightening to think of them.” Loilanun was shivering. Shay Tal put an arm round the older woman and led her over to the bed on the floor, where they sat huddled together. Outside, geese honked. The two women turned their faces to each other, seeking signs of comfort.

“It’s not the first time I’ve been in pauk since she died,” Loilanun said. “I never found her before—just a blank down there where she should be—scratched emptiness… My grandmother’s fessup was wailing for attention. It’s so lonely down there.”

“Where’s Laintal Ay?”

“Oh, he’s out on the hunt,” she said dismissively, immediately returning to her theme. “So many of them, drifting, and I don’t believe they talk to each other. Why should the dead hate each other, Shay Tal? We don’t hate each other—do we?”

“You’re upset. Come on, we’ll go to work and get something to eat.”

In the grey light filtering in, Loilanun looked quite like her mother. “Maybe they have nothing to say to each other. They’re always so desperate to talk to the living. So was my poor mother.”

She began to weep. Shay Tal hugged her, while looking round to see if the sleeper stirred.

“We ought to go, Loilanun. We’ll be late.”

“Mother was so different when she appeared … so different, poor shade. All that lovely dignity she had in life was gone. She has started to … curl up. Oh, Shay Tal, I dread to think what it will be like to be down there permanently…”

This last remark was forced from her in a loud voice. Shay Tal’s mother rolled over and grunted. The pigs below grunted.

The Hour-Whistler blew. It was time to be at work. Arm in arm, they shuffled downstairs. Shay Tal called the pigs softly by name to quiet them. The air was frosty as they leaned on the door to close it, feeling the rime on its panels powder under their fingers. In the greys and sludges of early morning, other figures made for the women’s house, armless as they clutched blankets about their shoulders.

As they moved among the anonymous shapes, Loilanun said to her companion, “Loil Bry’s gossie told me of her long love for my father. She said many things about men and women and their relationships I don’t understand. She said cruel things about my man, now dead.”

“You never spoke to him?”

Loilanun evaded the question. “Mother would scarcely let me get in a word. How can the dead be so emotional? Isn’t it terrible? She hates me. Everything gone but emotion, like a disease. She said a man and a woman together made one whole person—I don’t understand. I told her I didn’t understand. I had to stop her talking.”

“You told your mother’s gossie to stop talking?”

“Don’t look so shocked. My man used to beat me. I was scared of him…”

She was panting and lost her voice. They crowded thankfully into the warmth of the house. The soak pit of the tannery steamed. In niches, thick candles made from goose fat burned with a sound like hair being ripped from hide. Twenty-odd women were gathered there, yawning and scratching themselves.

Shay Tal and Loilanun ate lumps of bread together, and took their ration of rathel, or pig’s counsel, before moving over to one of the pestles. The older woman, now her face could be seen more clearly, looked ghastly, with hollows under her eyes and her hair matted.

“Did the gossie tell you anything useful? Anything to help? Did she say anything about Laintal Ay?”

“She said we must collect knowledge. Respect knowledge. She scorned me.” Talking through her face full of bread, she added, “She said knowledge was more important than food. Well, she said it was food. Probably she was confused—not being used to it down there. It’s hard to understand all they say…”

As the supervisor appeared, they moved over to the grain.

Shay Tal looked sideways at her friend, the hollows of whose face were now filled with an ashen light from the eastern window. “Knowledge can’t be food. However much we knew, we’d still have to grind the corn for the village.”

“When Mother was alive, she showed me a drawing of a machine powered by the wind. It ground the grain and women didn’t lift a finger, she said. The wind did the women’s work.”

“The men wouldn’t care for that,” Shay Tal said, with a laugh.

Despite her caution, Shay Tal’s resolution hardened; she became the most extreme of the women in defying what was unthinkingly accepted.

Her special work was in the boilery. Here, the flour was kneaded with animal fat and salt, and steamed over troughs of rapid-flowing water from the hot underground springs. When the dark brown loaves were ready, they were cooled, and a lean girl named Vry distributed them to everyone in Oldorando. Shay Tal was the expert of this process; her loaves had the reputation of tasting better than those of any other cook.

Now she saw mysterious perspectives beyond the loaves of bread. Routine no longer contented her, and her manner became more remote. When Loilanun fell ill of a wasting disease, Shay Tal took her and Laintal Ay into her house, despite her father’s protests, and patiently tended the older woman. They talked together for hours. Sometimes Laintal Ay listened; more often, he grew bored and went off on his own.

Shay Tal began to pass ideas to the other women in the boilery. She talked in particular to Vry, who was at a malleable age. She talked about the human preference for truth over lies as resembling the need for light above dark. The women listened, muttering uneasily.

And not only the women. In her dark furs, Shay Tal had a majesty felt by the men, too—Laintal Ay, among others. With her proud bearing went proud talk. Both the looks and the talk attracted Aoz Roon. He would listen and argue. He released a vein of flirtatiousness in Shay Tal, who responded to his air of authority. She approved of his support of Dathka against Nahkri; but she allowed him no liberties. Her own liberty depended on allowing him none.

The weeks passed, and great storms roared over the towers of Embruddock. Loilanun’s voice grew weaker, and one afternoon she passed away. In her illness, she had transmitted some of Loil Brys knowledge to Shay Tal and to other women who came to see her. She made the past real to them, and all that she said was filtered through Shay Tal’s dark imagination.

Loilanun, as she faded, helped Shay Tal to found what they called the academy. The academy was intended for women; there they would seek together to be something other than drudges. Many of the drudges stood wailing by her deathbed until Shay Tal, in a fit of impatience, threw them out.

“We can observe the stars,” Vry said, raising her waiflike face. “Have you ever studied how they move on regular paths? I would like to understand the stars better.”

“Everything valuable is buried in the past,” Shay Tal said, looking down at the countenance of her dead friend. “This place cheated Loilanun, and cheats us. The gossies wait for us. Our lives are so circumscribed! We need to make better people just as we need to bake better loaves.”

She jumped up and flung open the worn window shutter.

Her shrewd intellect saw immediately that the academy would be mistrusted by the men of Embruddock, and by Nahkri and Klils above all. Only the callow Laintal Ay would support her, though she hoped to win over Aoz Roon and Eline Tal. She saw that whatever opposition the academy met with, she would have to fight—and that fight was necessary to give new spirit to all. She would defy the general lethargy; time had come for progress.

Inspiration moved Shay Tal. As her poor friend was buried and she stood with a hand on Laintal Ay’s shoulder, she caught the eye of Aoz Roon. She burst into speech. Her words carried wild and loud among the geysers.

“This woman was forced to be independent. What she knew helped her. Some of us are not to be owned like slaves. We have a vision of better things. Hear what I say. Things will be different.” They gaped at her, pleased at the novelty of her outburst.

“You think we live at the centre of the universe. I say we live in the centre of a farmyard. Our position is so obscure that you cannot realise how obscure.

“This I tell you all. Some disaster happened in the past, in the long past. So complete was it that no one now can explain to you what it was or how it came about. We know only that it brought darkness and cold.

“You try to live the best you can. Good, good, live well, love one another, be kind. But don’t pretend that the disaster has nothing to do with you. It may have happened long ago, yet it infects every day of our lives. It ages us, it wears us out, it devours us, it tears our children from us, as it has torn Loilanun. It makes us not only ignorant but in love with ignorance. We’re infested with ignorance.

“I’m going to propose a treasure hunt—a quest, if you like. A quest in which every one of us can join. I want you to be aware of our fallen state, and to maintain constant vigilance for evidence as to its nature. We have to piece together what has happened to reduce us to this chilly farmyard; then we can improve our lot, and see to it that the disaster does not befall us and our children again.

“That’s the treasure I offer you. Knowledge. Truth. You fear it, yes. But you must seek it. You must grow to love it.

“Seek the light!”

As children, Oyre and Laintal Ay had often explored beyond the barricades. Dotted about the wilderness were stone pillars, the insignia of old tracks, which served as perches for the large birds doing sentry duty over their domain. Together, they scrambled across forlorn ruins, skull-like remains of habitations, backbones of ancient walls, where rime scoured gate towers and age under-ate everything. Little the kids had cared. Their laughter echoed against these stranded anatomies.

Now the laughter was subdued, the expeditions more strained. Laintal Ay had reached puberty; he underwent the blood-drinking ceremony, and was initiated into the chase. Oyre had developed a mischievous will, and walked with a more springy tread. Their play became tentative; old charades were abandoned as carelessly as the structures they haunted, never to be reenacted.

The truce of innocence between them was ended finally when Oyre insisted that her father’s slave, Calary, come on one of their excursions. This development marked their last expedition together, though neither realised it at the time; they pretended to hunt for treasure as before.

They came on a pile of masonry from which all trace of timber had been filched. Leaves of brassimips thrust up among the remains of a monument where old skilled work sank to loam crust. Once, as children, they made this their castle: here they had been a host defying charge on charge of phagors, and hid imitated the cheerful imaginary sounds of battle.

Laintal Ay was preoccupied with a more troubling panorama which unfolded in his mind. In that panorima—slightly resembling a cloud, but also seeming to be a declaration by Shay Tal, or perhaps some ancient proclamation carved on rock—he and Oyre and their reluctant slave, and Oldorando, and even the phagors and unknown creatures inhabiting the wilderness, were whirled about in a great process … but there the light of his intellect went out, to leave him wondering on the edge of a precipice at once dangerous and glamorous. He knew not what he did not know.

He stood on an eminence of the ruin, looking down at Oyre below him. She was doubled up, investigating something far removed from his concern.

“Is it possible there was once a great city here? Could anyone rebuild it in times to come? People like us, with wealth?”

Getting no answer, he squatted on the wall, staring down at her back, and added more questions. “What did all the people eat? Do you think Shay Tal knows about such things? Is her treasure here?”

She, sewn into her furs, stooping, looked from above more like an animal than a girl. She was prying into an alcove among the stones, not really attending to him.

“The priest who comes from Borlien says that Borlien was once a huge country that ruled all Oldorando farther than hawk can fly.”

He set his keen gaze across the countryside, which a thick cloud layer made tenebrous. “That’s nonsense.”

He knew as perhaps Oyre did not that the territory of hawks was circumscribed even more severely than that of men. Shay Tal’s address had brought to his notice other circumscriptions in life, which he now chewed over fruitlessly while scowling down at the figure below. He was vexed with Oyre, he could not say why, longing to probe her in some way, to find tongue for what lay beyond silence.

“Come and see what I’ve found, Laintal Ay!” Her bright dark face looked up at him. Her features had recently fined towards womanhood. He forgot his vexation and slithered down the declivitous wall to land beside her.

She had fetched from the alcove a small naked living thing, its pink rat face distorted with alarm as it wriggled in her grasp.

His hair brushed hers as he looked down at this new arrival in the world. He cupped his rougher hands round hers till their fingers were interlocked round the struggling centre.

She raised her gaze to regard him direct, her lips apart, smiling slightly. He smelt her scent. He grasped her about her waist.

But beside them stood the slave, his face showing sullen comprehension of the flame of new intuition which flew between them. Oyre moved a pace away, then pushed the baby mammal carelessly back into its nook. She scowled down at the ground.

“Your precious Shay Tal doesn’t know everything. Father told me in confidence that he thinks she is definitely strange. Let’s go home now.

Laintal Ay lived with Shay Tal for a while. With his parents and grandparents dead, he was severed from his childhood; but he and Dathka were now fully fledged hunters. Disinherited by his uncles, he determined to prove himself their equal. He thrived and matured early, growing up with a genial expression on his countenance. His jaw was firm, his features clear-cut. His strength and speed soon became generally noticed. Many girls cast a smiling glance on him, but he had eyes only for Aoz Roon’s daughter.

Although he was popular, something about him made people keep their distance. He had taken to heart Shay Tal’s brave words. Some said he was too conscious of his descent from the Great Yuli. He remained apart, even in company. His one close friend was Dathka Den, corpsman turned hunter, and Dathka rarely spoke, even to Laintal Ay. As someone said, Dathka was the next best thing to no- one.

Laintal Ay eventually took up residence with some of the other hunters in the big tower, above Nahkri’s and Klils’ chamber. There he heard the old tales re-told, and learned to sing ancient hunters’ songs. But what he preferred was to take supplies and snow shoes, and rove the countryside newly emerging into green. He no longer sought Oyre’s company on such expeditions.

At this period, nobody else ventured out alone. The hunters hunted together, the swineherds and gozzards had their fixed paths near the settlement, those who tended the brassimips worked in groups. Danger and death so often accompanied solitude. Laintal Ay acquired a reputation for eccentricity, although his good- standing was not damaged, because he added considerably to the number of animal skulls which adorned the stockades of Oldorando.

The storm winds howled. He travelled far, untroubled by the inhospitality of nature. He found his way to unfrequented valleys, and to broken old remains of towns from which the inhabitants had long since fled, leaving their homes to wolves and weather.

At the time of the festival of Double Sunset, Laintal Ay made his name in the tribe with a feat that rivalled his and Aoz Roon’s achievement of capturing the Borlienian traders. He was travelling alone in high country to the northeast of Oldorando, over deep snow, when a hole opened under his feet, and he fell in. At the bottom of the drift sat a stungebag, waiting for its next meal.

Stungebags resemble nothing so much as collapsed wooden huts, covered by makeshift thatch. They grew to great lengths, having few enemies but man, feeding rarely, being inordinately slow. All that Laintal Ay saw of this one, curled at the bottom of its trap, was its asymmetrical horned head and gaping mouth, in which the teeth appeared to be made of wooden pegs. As the jaws closed on his leg, he kicked out and rolled to one side.

Fighting against the encompassing snow, he brought up his spear and wedged it far back in the hinges of the stungebag’s mouth. The animal’s rhythmic struggles were slow but powerful. It knocked Laintal Ay down again, but was unable to close its mouth. Jumping away from the probing horns, he flung himself on the back of the beast, clinging to stiff tufts of hair which burst from between octagonal armour plates. He pulled his knife from his belt. Clutching the hair with one hand, he hacked away at the fibrous tendons that held one of the plates in place.

The stungebag screamed with rage. It too was impeded by the snow and could not roll over sufficiently to crush Laintal Ay. He managed to sever the plate from its back. The plate was splintery, and in texture woodlike. He jammed it down the beast’s throat, and then commenced to cut the clumsy head off.

It fell. No blood ran, only a slight whitish ichor. This stungebag had four eyes—there was a lesser breed with two. One pair stared forward in the skull; the other looked backward and was set in hornlike protrusions at the back of the skull. Both pairs rolled over into the snow, still blinking in disbelief.

The decapitated body began to burrow backwards through the snow at its fastest rate. Laintal Ay followed, struggling through chunks of falling snow until it and he emerged into daylight.

Stungebags were proverbially difficult to kill. This one would keep travelling for a long while before falling to pieces.

Laintal Ay let out a whoop of exhilaration. Bringing out his flints, he jumped up on the neck of the creature and set light to the coarse fur, which burnt with a furious sizzling noise. Evil-smelling smoke billowed into the sky. By burning one side or the other, he was able to do a rough job of steering. The creature shunted backwards towards Oldorando.

Horns sounded from high towers. He saw the spray of geysers. The stockade loomed, decorated with skulls painted in bright colours. Women and hunters ran out to greet him.

He waved his fur cap in return. Seated at the hot end of a blazing wooden caterpillar, he rode it backwards in triumph through the lanes of Embruddock.

Everyone laughed. But it was several days before the stink died from rooms along his triumphal route.

The unburnt remains of Laintal Ay’s stungebag were used up during the festival of Double Sunset. Even slaves were involved with this event—one of them was offered as a sacrifice to Wutra.

Double Sunset coincided in Oldorando with New Year’s Day. It was to be Year 21 by the new calendar, and celebrations were in order. Despite everything that nature could do, life was good and had to be secured by sacrifice.

For weeks, Batalix had been overtaking its slower fellow sentry in the sky. In midwinter, they came close, and days and nights were of equal length, with no dimday intervening.

“Why should they move as they do?” Vry asked Shay Tal.

“That’s how they have always moved,” Shay Tal said.

“You don’t answer my question, ma’am,” said Vry.

The prospect of a sacrifice first, with a feast succeeding, lent excitement to the ceremony of the sunsets. Before the ceremonies began, there was dancing round a mighty fire in the square; the music was of tabor and pipe and fluggel—which latter instrument some claimed was invented by Great Yuli himself. Rathel was provided for the dancers after which all, in a glow of sweat beneath their hides, moved beyond the stockades.

A sacrificial stone lay to the east of the old pyramid. The citizens gathered about it, standing at a respectful distance, as one of the masters commanded.

Lots had been drawn among the slaves. The honour of being victim fell to Calary, the young Borlienian slave belonging to Aoz Roon. He was led forth, hands lashed behind his back, and the crowd followed expectantly. A cold stillness filled the air. Overhead was barred grey cloud. To the west, the two sentinels sank towards the horizon.

Everyone carried torches fashioned from stungebag hide. Laintal Ay led his silent friend Dathka to walk along with Aoz Roon, because Aoz Roon’s beautiful daughter was there.

“You must feel sorry to lose Calary, Aoz Roon,” Laintal Ay said to the older man, making eyes at Oyre.

Aoz Roon clapped him over the shoulder. “My principle in life is never to feel regret. Regret’s death to a hunter, as it was to Dresyl. Next year, we will capture plenty more slaves. Never mind Calary.” There were times when Laintal Ay mistrusted his friend’s heartiness. Aoz Roon looked at Eline Tal, and both laughed together, emitting rathel fumes.

Everyone was jostling along and laughing, except for Calary. Taking advantage of the crowd, Laintal Ay seized Oyre’s hand and squeezed it. She gave him an answering pressure and smiled, not daring to look at him directly. He swelled with exhilaration. Life was truly wonderful.

He could not stop grinning as the ceremony proceeded more seriously. Batalix and Freyr would disappear simultaneously from Wutra’s realm and sink into the earth like gossies. Tomorrow, if the sacrifice proved acceptable, they would rise together, and for a while their parades across the sky would coincide. Both would shine by day, and night be left to darkness. By spring, they would be out of step again, and Batalix commencing dimday.

Everyone said the weather was milder. Signs of improvement abounded. Geese were fatter. Nevertheless, a solemn silence fell over the crowd as they faced towards the west and their shadows lengthened. Both sentinels were leaving the realm of light. Illness and ill things were presaged. A life must be offered lest the sentinels depart forever.

As the double shadows extended, the crowd grew still, though it shuffled its feet like a great beast. Its cheerful mood evaporated. It became faceless in the smoke from the raised torches. The shadows spread. A greyness which was not to be dispersed by the torches blanketted the scene. People were submerged in evening and the massed psyche of the crowd.

Elders of the council, all grey and bent, came forth in line, and called out a prayer in shaky singsong. Four slaves brought Calary forward. He staggered between them with his head hanging, saliva flecking his jaw. A flight of birds wheeled overhead, the sound of its wings like rainfall, and was gone towards the western gold.

Upon a sacrificial stone, lozenge-shaped, the sacrificial victim was laid, his head set in a depression carved in its leprous upper surface, directed to the west. His feet were secured in a wooden brace, pointing to the direction—now slatey with oncoming night—where the sentinels would next appear if they completed their perilous journey. Thus, in his body, with its vents and passages, the victim represented the mystic union between the two immense mysteries of human and cosmic life: as above, so, with an effort of massed will, below.

The victim had already shed its individuality. Although its eyes rolled, it made no sound, stilled as if awed by the presence of Wutra.

As the four slaves stepped back, Nahkri and Klils appeared. Over their furs they had assumed cloaks of stammel, dyed red. Their women accompanied them to the edge of the crowd, then left them to proceed alone. Their straggling rat beards for once lent solemnity to their visages; indeed their pallor matched that of the victim on whom Nahkri bent his regard as he picked up the axe. He hefted this formidable instrument. A gong was struck.

Nahkri stood there, balancing the axe in both hands, the slighter figure of his brother just behind him. As the pause lengthened, a murmur came from the crowd. There was a time for the sundering stroke: miss that time, and who knew what might befall the sentinels. The murmur expressed an almost unspoken mistrust of the two ruling brothers.

“Strike!” cried a voice from the massed ranks. The Hour-Whistler sounded.

“I can’t do it,” Nahkri said, lowering the axe. “I won’t do it. A fuggie, yes. Not a human, not even a Borlienian. I can’t.”

His younger brother lurched forward and grasped the instrument. “You coward—making us look fools before everyone. I’ll do it myself and shame you. I’ll show you who’s the better man, you queme!”

With teeth bared, he swung the axe up on his shoulder. He glared down into the stark face of the victim, which stared up from its depression as from a grave.

Klils’ muscles twitched, appearing to disobey him. The blade of the instrument signalled back the rays of sunset. Then it was lowered, and rested against the stone, while Klils leaned over the shaft, groaning.

“I should have drunk more rathel…”

An answering groan came from the crowd. The sentinels now had their discs entangled with the unkempt horizon.

Individual voices made themselves heard.

“They’re a couple of clowns…”

“They listened too much to Loil Bry, I say.”

“It was their father stuffing them full of head learning—the muscles are weakened.”

“Have you been on the nest too much, Klils?” That coarse shouted question drew laughter, and the sullen mood was broken. The mob closed in as Klils let the axe slip into the trampled mud.

Aoz Roon ran forward, breaking away from his fellows, and seized up the instrument. He growled like a hound, and the two brothers fell away from him, protesting feebly. They stumbled back farther, arms raised protectively, as Aoz Roon swung the axe above his head.

The suns were going down, half sunk with glory in a sea of dark. Their light was spilled like yolk from two goose eggs, drab gold, as if phagor and human blood were mingled over the stagnant waste. Bats flittered. The hunters raised their fists and cheered Aoz Roon.

Sun rays converged on the pyramid, and were split into bars of shadow by its peak. The divided lights ran precisely along the flanks of the worn stone on which the victim lay, defining its shape. The victim himself was in shadow.

The blade of the instrument of execution swung in sunlight, bit in shade.

After the clean clop of the stroke came a united sound from the crowd, a kind of echoing stroke from lungs exhaling in unison, as though all present also gave up the ghost.

The victim’s head fell severed to one side, as if kissing the confining stone. It began to drown in blood, which gushed up from the wound and spread, trickling down into the earth. It was running still as the last segment of the sentinels drowned below the horizon.

Ceremonial blood was the thing, the magic fluid that fought non-life, precious human blood. It would continue to drip throughout the night, lighting the two sentinels among the vents and passages of the original boulder, seeing them safe to another morning.

The crowd was satisfied. Bearing their torches aloft, they made their way back through the stockade to the ancient towers, which were now smoulderingly black against the cloudscape, or mottled with phantom light as the torches grew nearer.

Dathka walked by Aoz Roon, who was given respectful clearance by the crowd. “How could you bear to lop your own slave?” he asked.

The older man shot him a contemptuous look. “There are moments of decision.”

“But Calary …” Oyre protested. “It was so frightening.”

Aoz Roon brushed his daughter’s objection aside. “Girls can’t understand. I filled Calary full of rungebel and rathel before the ceremony. He felt nothing. He probably still thinks he’s in the arms of some Borlienian maid.” He laughed.

The solemnities were over. Few doubted now that Freyr and Batalix would arise on the morrow. They moved in to celebrate, to drink with extra cheer, for they had a scandal to whisper about, the scandal of the feebleheartedness of their rulers. There was no more delightful subject over mugs of pig’s counsel, before the Great Tale was retold.

But Laintal Ay was whispering to Oyre as he clutched her in the dark. “Did you fall in love with me when you saw me ride in on my captured stungebag?”

She put out a tongue at him. “Conceited! I thought you looked silly.”

He saw that the celebrations were going to have their more serious side.