The Almost Complete Short Fiction
Page 157
Again there was silence. But the troubled herder tried once more to settle his feelings toward the son of Zimluff, the herder.
“If it is true,” he said, “that young Hajjah has openly defied the Law with blasphemies—”
“It is true,” Ecker’s friend interrupted. “He has even asked if there might not be another world with more fish to banish our hunger!”
“More fish!” the whittler echoed. “As if King Witfessal would let us need more fish.”
“If it is true that Hajjah has said such things,” the troubled herder repeated, “why have the thunder and lightning not struck him down?”
The other two men glared anger at their questioner. Such a question was almost blasphemy in itself; King Witfessal would strike with lightning when it was deserved.
“It may come,” Ecker’s friend said in a low impressive voice. “It—may—come.”
Hajjah strained to hear what was said after that. For the whittler, laying down the dravoth staff, imparted his words with an air of great confidence.
“I have heard something from Ecker’s own lips that he hasn’t told you, Grannz. Ecker expects lightning and thunder”
“But by what right can he expect it?”
“Remember, my friends, that Ecker is upright and strong and keen. He has bad the praise of many Witfessal Agents. He has talked with Mombal. He breathes the Laws.”
“Has King Witfessal spoken to him in a dream?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it is only Ecker’s insight into right and wrong as it affects Hajjah—and Voileen.”
“The granddaughter of Crassie?”
“Yes. I am told that her goodness is in the balance,” said the whittler. “But Ecker is sure that he can save her from this storm of evil—if the King should visit lightning upon Hajjah.”
XXVI
Hajjah trembled to hear these awful words.
He was an outcast. And so recently had it all happened, he could hardly realize it’.
He was an organizer of a band of blasphemers. Though he hadn’t wished to defy Mombal, there was his promise to Crassie—and Crassie’s promise to him. There was another world—a world of plenty—waiting to be found.
But now the full impact of his trouble came to him through these voices in the rain. While the thunder was roaring. While he was waiting for his friends to come to help him launch the task that Crassie had left for him.
But the thunder died away, and clouds grew lighter.
And when Hajjah’s friends came, gathering with him in the shed out of sight of Ecker’s three guards, they were still fired with the same hope and zeal that Hajjah had given them at their last meeting.
And so there was no thought of backing up. Yet the burden of this awful sin was already more weighty than any digging tools could be.
“Are we all here?” Hajjah asked.
“I’ll count,” said Mooburkie. “Shall I count the fandruff calves, too?”
Voileen was at Hajjah’s side; a sister had come with her. Moo had brought Bolt, his small brother. There were four others, friends who had used to come from across the mountains to attend Teacher Crassie’s school. They, like Hajjah and Moo, were full-grown young men, toughened to hard work.
The party’s enthusiasm was temporarily dampened because of the three stubborn guards who waited in their path. There was no way to enter Crassie’s tunnel except through the house.
“It’s my grandfather’s house, and we have a right to go in,” Voileen asserted angrily.
“Ecker must have known our plans,” said Moo, with an air of gloom. “We’re stuck.”
“What can I tell those men, Haj, so they’ll let us in?” Voileen asked.
“We can’t get past them with kindness,” Hajjah whispered. “There’s no use to try. And there’s no use wasting our strength fighting when we’ll need it for digging. But I have a plan.”
His comrades gathered around. They knew Haj would have a plan.
“If we can trick them into leaving their posts for a moment, we can get into the tunnel without their knowing it. They’ll return to keep watch, and they’ll never hear us working down there.”
Hajjah knew his plan wasn’t free from dangers, but the party was eager to take whatever risk was necessary. They had come through wet weather, and they meant to see something accomplished.
Bolt was small and wiry and swift on foot, so he volunteered to spring the trick.
While the others waited in the fandruff shed, only a few steps from their destination, Bolt slipped around unseen to another shed a little distance down the road. There he was to strike a fire with dry dravoth sticks.
Soon the blazes of dravoth torches showed through the loosely constructed walls of the distant shed. From all appearances, the shed was burning.
The three guards saw it and bounced into action. As they chased down the road toward it, Hajjah and his party silently slipped into the house.
“No one saw us,” Voileen breathed.
Hajjah removed the dravoth mat from a wall of the inner room, opened the hidden door, and guided his party safely into the black tunnel. They moved on, well out of hearing of the house, before he allowed them to strike dravoth torches or converse above a whisper.
Then Hajjah scurried back to the tunnel doorway and watched through the cracks in the mat to see if Bolt would come.
Moments of waiting grew long.
“Haven’t you seen him yet?” Moo whispered, extinguishing a torch as he returned to the entrance.
“The guards haven’t come back,” said Hajjah. “They must be chasing him.”
“I’d better go find him. He’s only a schoolboy. They might make him tell.”
“Don’t cross them, Moo,” Hajjah warned. “They’re full of Ecker’s ideas. I heard them talking. One of them had a club—”
“If they lay a stroke on Bolt, I’ll—”
“Ssssh. They’re coming. They’re bringing him—in their arms! Ecker’s with them.”
XXVII
From the rear side of the damp-smelling dravoth screen that hid the tunnel doorway, Hajjah and Moo could see through the house to the roadway by which the men were returning.
“What’s the matter?” came the whisper of Voileen, a short distance down the tunnel.
She hurried up to Hajjah. Then, catching sight of the men bearing the limp form of Bolt in their arms, she raced back into the darkness to call the rest of the party.
Hajjah could hear the dull echoes of tools dropping and feet bounding toward him. The whole party joined Hajjah and Moo at the screen. From this vantage point they watched, unseen. But Hajjah bade them hush their whispers.
“Listen to them. They’re disagreeing—”
The first voice they heard was that of Grannz, the herder who had earlier voiced his staunch support of Ecker.
“You shouldn’t have hit him so hard, Jobwot. That club you had was too heavy—”
“Who hit him? Not I,” Jobwot flared with anger. He was the herder who had taken such pains with the trimming of a dravoth staff.
“Then how did he get hurt?”
“I didn’t see it happen,” Jobwot snarled. “Ecker grabbed the staff away from me—”
“Ecker!”
“Just as the boy got loose from you and chased out of the shed, Ecker yelled at him—”
At this point the two men, bearing the boy, Bolt, to the door of the house, were sharply halted. Ecker, a few paces behind them, commanded them. There was flash in his voice that matched the flash of his garment—Mombal’s gift—a red robe.
“Silence! Your talk is out of order. This boy was struck by lightning.”
The two herders almost dropped the prone form they were bearing. They looked at Ecker with wide staring eyes. He was in earnest; in fact, he had the look of being desperately serious.
The shock of those words struck Hajjah with all their frightful impact.
Lightning! Lightning was the tool of King Witfessal!
Hajjah felt the
trembling of Moo and the others who were pressing close against the screen. He heard Voileen catch her breath.
“He’s lying!” Hajjah whispered. “He’s lying, I tell you. There was a club—”
“Lightning!” Moo gasped. “He said lightning!”
“Hssssh!”
The herders were laying Bolt down on a bed of mats, and someone went for water. Ecker went on, speaking in the full, rich, confident tone that he had learned in his acting with traveling players.
“I saw everything, my good men. I was just coming down the road, returning from a conference with Mombal, the High Servant of the King—”
Ecker drew the words out. He paused for effect, and the simple herders were duly impressed.
“I saw this boy go to the shed and light the torches. And I saw the reason. Hajjah and his band of blasphemers at once ran out of hiding and entered this house. They’re here—somewhere—perhaps already in the hidden tunnel we’ve heard so much about.”
“It was a trick!” Grannz exclaimed, and a light of glory came into his face as he caught Ecker’s meaning.
“A trick, indeed,” said Ecker. “While Hajjah and his friends slipped through your fingers, this boy was lying to you, telling you his fires were an innocent prank. Could King Witfessal stand for such a falsehood? No. And so—the lightning struck him down”
“The lightning struck him down,” Grannz echoed in a bewitched voice.
Ecker turned to Jobwot. “You saw it strike him, didn’t you?”
“Yes—yes. I saw it.”
“So did I,” Grannz said hastily. “I saw it strike. I didn’t realize, at first—but I saw it.”
Ecker turned to the third herder, the one who, not many moments earlier, had tried to persuade his two fellows that no violence would be needed, that Hajjah was the respectable son of a respectable father.
“And you, Zaywoodie—you saw?”
Zaywoodie didn’t reply. He was bending over the boy, Bolt, washing the blood-stained face with water. The boy’s eyes remained closed.
“Zaywoodie!” Ecker shouted it with rage. But he remembered to invest his fury with moral authority. “My friend Mombal will want to know.”
The skeptical old herder rose slowly to face Ecker, and his eyes glinted anger and fear from his whitened face.
“To know what, Ecker?”
The young actor spread his arms dramatically. “To know whether you were privileged to see this deed done by the hand of King Witfessal.”
“I—saw—the—deed.” Zaywoodie’s measured words were harder than stone. “This—boy—is—dead!”
XXVIII
Mooburkle smashed through the dravoth screen. He bounded into the outer room and fell down beside his brother, wailing and shouting.
Hajjah strode after him. If blasphemous thought could have brought down deadly lightning, Hajjah would have been struck down on the spot, No supreme master of lightning and thunder would have held off for more adequate proof. Hajjah was a storm. He was all of the storms. He was thunder and lightning and sudden death. All of these and more.
He rushed straight at Ecker. The pent-up hatreds of seasons past were fires in his blood, his muscles, his heart. He leaped from toe to fist, and the blow caught Ecker squarely.
Ecker staggered, and his handsome face bulged with shocked eyes and a gaping mouth. His hands flew up in futile gesture. Under the hailstorm of Hajjah’s fists he shrank into a corner and slipped toward the floor.
Instantly, two of the herders leaped to Ecker’s defense. They tried to grab Hajjah’s arms. Twice Grannz was jerked off his feet before he and Jobwot were successful.
Hajjah, almost blind with rage, found himself powerless. A staff, thrust through the crook of his arms, pressed against the small of his back. Cords whipped around his wrists and ankles.
“You’re mad, Hajjah. You’re utterly mad. The Law will deal with you.”
This came from Ecker. His damaged face lifted with a righteous smirk that was incongruous, considering his apparent helplessness.
Zaywoodie was the only one who offered a retort to Ecker.
“Lucky for you that you have friends.”
“Lucky?” Ecker smoothed his hair. “Don’t be absurd. I didn’t try to fight this wild, crazy creature. I know too much of the law. I would have taken his blows—and waited.”
“For what?”
“For King Witfessal to act. Why should I fight? The Laws need no defense. As for this man of evil, there will be lightning enough to deal with him.”
“Lightning!” Hajjah roared. “You can’t hide behind that. You killed Bolt! You did it. You struck him—”
“Quiet! In the name of the King—”
Ecker’s voice was a thing of power, not wild and full of hatred like Hajjah’s. The herders obeyed Ecker as they would have obeyed an Agent. Hands slapped over Hajjah’s mouth.
All he could do was to wait and watch what the heartbreaking moments would bring forth.
“If it was lightning—” Moo began. But he was cut short by Ecker.
“I warn you, Mooburkle. Don’t try the patience of the King by doubting his acts. Don’t fall victim to the follies of your friend.”
Mooburkle was silent.
Hajjah looked to the rest of the party—the four young men who had come over the mountains to carry on for Teacher Crassie.
One of them said, “We’ll go home now.”
The four of them walked out.
Hajjah saw the horrified look in the eyes of Voileen, She knew what their departure meant. That was the end of friendship. Or else—
Or else this was the end of a cause. As the herders bore Moo’s brother away, Ecker turned for a final thrust. He shot the cold words at Voileen, who stood beside Hajjah.
“Now you can see,” Ecker said, “why I’ve tried to keep you away from bad company. Your father will hear of this. When you decide to return to him, I’ll see you. And if I can bring you back into the good graces of the King—”
“Goodbye,” said Voileen through angry tears. “You’ve said enough.” They were gone. Only Voileen and Hajjah were left. She loosened the bonds to free him,
“Ecker lied.” Hajjah said it over and over. “His whole life is a lie. But I’ll show him.”
“My grandfather Crassie told me,” said the girl in a soothing voice, “that there would be times like these.”
XXIX
Hajjah was the guilty one.
That was what everyone said. Hajjah had schemed to get all of his friends in trouble, and poor Bolt was the victim of it all.
“But I didn’t kill him,” Hajjah would protest in vain.
A whirl of fever chased through his body whenever these rumors came to him. He had never killed anyone. He had never wanted to harm anyone—no one except the persons who harmed him first.
“It was Ecker who did it! I know it was!”
But no one would listen to this kind of talk. Ecker was the fine young actor that was rising in favor with the servants of King Witfessal. The day would come when Ecker himself would be the High Servant of the King, people were saying.
“It was King Witfessal who sent the deadly lightning,” people would say. “Bolt made a fatal mistake. But wait. This is not the end. The true leader of the evil is Hajjah. His time will come unless he mends his ways.”
Torture grew within Hajjah’s breast. He no longer went to the public gatherings at the roadcrossings. He sought the loneliness of herding fandruffs in the mountains.
And even when he was far away from the roads he could feel that people at distant schools or markets might be looking across the concave landscape at him, or gazing down on him from some unseen point many dunes overhead, pointing him out as Hajjah, the blasphemer.
Moo came to him and sat down to talk.
The old friendship was still there, under the surface, though both Hajjah and Moo found their conversation hard going at first. This was the first time since the burial of Moo’s brother that they had met.
/> “I came,” said Moo, “because Voileen wanted me to bring you a message.”
“She’s been forbidden to see me,” said Hajjah. “Her father is caring for her.”
“Yes—and trying to convert her to the friendship of Ecker. But this does not sway her feelings for you.”
“Did she say that,” Hajjah asked, “or is that your idea?”
“She wants to meet you,” said Moo. “Against her father’s orders she expects to return to Crassie’s house.”
“Is it guarded?”
“No. The Agents are sure it won’t be necessary to guard it any more. In fact, the timid herders take a road far around it, they are so afraid the
King might mistake them for blasphemers.”
Hajjah laughed bitterly. How Crassie would have scorned such superstitious fears.
“The Agents have agreed with Ecker, too, that the tunnel should be filled up,” said Moo.
“Why should he care?” Hajjah said with sharp disgust. “Isn’t there any other way he can slap me?”
“Every slap he gives you is a step toward greater power,” said Moo wisely. Moo recalled the early jealousies and hatreds that had taken root in Ecker’s childhood. These had furnished the nourishment for Ecker’s growth. And now, the arrogant actor’s whole formula was to climb the ladder of fame by condemning others.
“That’s his secret,” said Moo. “If he didn’t have you to kick, he couldn’t think of becoming the High Servant. But you’ve given him something sensational to rant about. And so he cries, ‘Evil! Blasphemy!’ That’s all he needs. The more the people become alarmed, the more he basks in glory.”
“How did you arrive at all of this?” Hajjah asked, studying his old friend curiously.
“I got it from Voileen,” Moo admitted with a grin. “And I suspect her wits were sharpened to such things because she’s a granddaughter of Teacher Crassie. Anyhow, it rings true.”
Hajjah drew a deep breath. “Moo, I want to ask you something.”
“I’ll quote you an answer if I haven’t forgotten my Law.”