Stone spring

66

Dolphin and Kirike felt welcome here on the World River. They were allowed to walk where they liked, stepping from raft to raft, and people smiled as they passed, and children ran after them. They were even offered bits of food. The Etxelur Giving was still a time of generosity and friendship. Meanwhile the contests were continuing, as spears were thrown and hapless target animals run through, and races were fought out on land and in the river.

The rafts were too many to count, tethered to each other and to the western bank of the river. Far bigger than mere boats, or the petty platforms Etxelur folk built in the marshes to go eel-hunting, the rafts were stout structures of planks strapped to huge stripped tree trunks. Some of them were very old, as you could see by the weathering of the planks and the support beams. And people lived here, in houses of wooden frames and brush and skin set up on the back of the rafts. Fires burned, built on stone hearths, fires burning on the river.

The river itself was so wide here that you couldn’t see its eastern bank – it was a river with a horizon, like an ocean. Further downstream the river spread out into a tremendous delta, its water running between huge marshy islands where even more crowds of people lived.

This was why this place was such a valuable resource for Ana and Novu, why they had come here. All these people, all these communities stretching inland as far as anybody had travelled, all connected to each other by the river – and all available as a source of labour to be mined like Etxelur’s own flint lode.

And yet even here there were signs of the long, slow battle being waged between sea and land. The river folk spoke of islands far out in the delta once occupied by their grandparents and now abandoned, drowned by the rising ocean. And in patches along the forest-clad bank, even after sixteen years, you could still see heaps of the pale salty sea-bottom mud that had been hurled far inland by the mindless energies of the Great Sea – the Gods’ Shout.

They arrived at a raft where cages of wicker, weighted with stones, were suspended over the raft’s side, just below the surface of the water. Inside each cage was a body. Bone showed through fish-chewed flesh, pale in the sunlight that dappled through the water. Even when they died, the people of the river were dominated by its tremendous presence; whereas in Etxelur you were laid out to be cleansed by sky, here it was left to the sharp teeth of the waters to strip your bones.

‘I’ll tell you what I heard today,’ Kirike said. ‘There are people here who spend their whole lives on the rafts – they never set foot on the dry land, not once in their lives.’

‘I heard that too,’ came a voice.

It was the dark man they had glimpsed watching them during Ana’s meeting. He walked confidently across a gangway, carrying a bulky pack. Dolphin saw that Qili, Heni’s grandson, was following him, looking faintly embarrassed. The stranger was smiling. Dolphin didn’t smile back.

The man kept talking as he approached, in a fluent, lightly accented Etxelur tongue. ‘In fact, to be a priest you have to be one of the water-dwellers, you can never be sullied by contact with the ground, for they believe that all their gods live in the river and that the land is dead. There have been a few scandals in the past when some roguish priest was found to be slipping ashore for his own purposes – you know what those fellows are like! And they had a crisis after the Great Sea when all their rafts got smashed, and those who survived had to clamber out on the shore.’

Kirike was interested. ‘Ah. And that’s why their priest back there is only fourteen or so.’

‘Yes. The very first boy born safely on the rafts after the Great Sea, and he immediately got that tower of skulls stuck on his unfortunate head. This is a place where a single footprint in the mud can stop you being as a priest! But I suppose we all must look strange, from the outside.’

‘And you look like a Pretani,’ Dolphin said. ‘Yet you speak the Etxelur tongue like a native.’

He just laughed. Tall, solid, heavy, the muscles prominent on his bare arms and legs, his face all but concealed by a thick black beard and two prominent kill scars, he looked out of place among the paler, more delicate river folk. ‘Well, not quite a native, though you’re kind to say so. But which of us is native anyhow? I know about you, Dolphin Gift, whose every drop of blood, like your mother’s, comes from across the western ocean. I’ve travelled all over Albia and Northland and even into Gaira, and I never heard of anybody like that. What an extraordinary thing.’ He turned to Kirike with interest. ‘And you, Kirike. Black hair, solid build. Look at us, we’re like brothers! I’m told you’re half Pretani, and it shows.’

Kirike frowned. ‘How do you know so much about us?’

He shrugged. ‘Here we are at the mouth of the World River, yet everything revolves around faraway Etxelur. Everybody knows you, the names of Ana and her closest people. But you don’t know my name – I apologise. I am Hollow.’ He held out his two hands in the Pretani way of greeting.

Dolphin folded her arms and turned to Qili. ‘Who is this character?’

Qili was clearly embarrassed. ‘He came to the estuary and found me,’ he said in his halting Etxelur tongue. ‘That’s all I know. He knew I went to Etxelur last year, and he asked questions about you-’

‘I only asked Qili to introduce us,’ Hollow said. ‘No harm done, surely.’

‘You were watching us,’ Dolphin said accusingly. ‘You followed us here.’

Kirike protested, ‘Dolphin-’

‘Everybody knows that whenever Pretani are around there’s trouble.’

‘That may have been true in the past. But must the bad feeling last for ever?’ He glanced at Kirike. ‘I’m not here for trouble. I’m here to trade. Pretani folk always came to Etxelur Givings, in the old days, and Etxelur folk came on our wildwood hunts.’

‘Those days are gone,’ Dolphin snapped.

Kirike, more circumspect, asked, ‘So what do you have to trade?’

‘Ah. I thought you would never ask.’ Hollow slipped off his pack, crouched down and unfolded a parcel of skin to expose a straight-edged block of stone: yellow-brown, carefully worked. Hollow stroked its surface. ‘Good Pretani sandstone. See how finely grained it is? Easily worked.’ He rapped it with his knuckle. ‘Yet heavy and hard-wearing. Look, you don’t have to know anything about stone to see its quality. If you have the best flints in the world in Etxelur, we Pretani surely have the best stone. If we can make a trade the bulk of it will be brought to Etxelur by boat, down the rivers and along the coast-’

Dolphin shook her head. ‘Why would we want stone?’

‘For your walls. Your dykes, your channels cut in the ground. Ask your genius from the east – Novu. Ask him about Jericho, where they face their great walls with stone, not bricks or mud. When he sees this stone he will hunger for it, believe me.’

‘So why are you showing us?’

He stood up. ‘Because it’s as you said. There is bad blood between Etxelur folk and Pretani. Those who make the decisions in Etxelur, especially Ana herself, won’t have anything to do with Pretani.’

‘So that’s it,’ Dolphin said. ‘Well, I won’t help you get to Ana. As far as I’m concerned you can shove this stupid stone up your hairy Pretani arse.’

He was unperturbed. ‘That’s disappointing.’ He looked at Kirike again. ‘I did know your father. It would be good to speak of him.’

Kirike blushed. To Dolphin’s disgust, she saw that this blatant appeal to blood ties, from a man who looked so much like him, was swaying Kirike, who had grown up knowing neither of his parents. Kirike said to Dolphin, ‘He’s right about Novu. He often talks about stone buildings in Jericho. And the bad blood between Etxelur and Pretani can’t last for ever. I can’t see what harm it would do, Dolphin. Just to get Ana and Novu to look.’

Dolphin glared at him. ‘Are you mad? Pretani aren’t traders. They are killers who take what they want. You – Hollow – you’ve come here, you’ve learned our language, you’ve found out our names – all for a few boatloads of stone? What is it you really want?’

His vaguely good-humoured expression didn’t falter, though she thought there was a greater lividity to the kill scars on his forehead. He murmured, too softly for the others to hear, ‘Even if there was some grand scheme, I wouldn’t tell you about it, would I? Remember, girl – you’re an outsider. Foreign blood, like your mother.’ He bent to pick up his stone block. ‘Kirike – maybe we could talk about when I could meet Ana?’

Dolphin stormed away, crossing the rafts, making for the dry land. She didn’t bother to check if Kirike was following her.

Qili hurried after her. ‘I’m sorry. He seemed harmless enough – and anyhow I couldn’t get rid of him. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble…’

But Dolphin was in no mood to listen.