by K. J. Parker
Chapter Four
‘What do you suppose that’s in aid of?’ someone asked.
Nobody seemed disposed to reply. The red gash was flickering in and out of sight, sporadically masked by plump white clouds – steam, presumably.
‘How long has it been doing that?’ Poldarn asked the man standing next to him, a long-barn hand called Rook.
‘Well, since the noises,’ Rook replied, as if stating the obvious.
‘What noises?’
Rook shifted his gaze from the mountain and gave Poldarn a curious stare. ‘The three loud bangs,’ he said. ‘You didn’t hear them, then?’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘I was in the forge.’
‘Three loud bangs,’ Rook said, ‘and when we stopped for a look, there was all that black stuff coming out the top.’ He frowned. This was clearly something outside his experience, and it occurred to Poldarn that these people – his people – probably didn’t come across something new and unknown more than once or twice in a lifetime. ‘You were abroad all those years,’ Rook said. ‘You got any idea what it is?’
Poldarn nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a—’ He paused. No word in their language, his language, for volcano. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it that I can remember,’ he said carefully. ‘But yes, I think I know what it is. Where’s Halder?’
Rook indicated with a sideways nod of his head. ‘So what is it, then?’
‘It’s a mountain with its head on fire,’ Poldarn replied. ‘What does it look like?’
He pushed his way through the crowd until he was standing next to Grandfather. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you make of that?’
Grandfather shrugged. ‘Beats me,’ he said.
‘I think there’s a word for it in one of the languages I know. Basically, it’s a mountain that gets stuffed up with fire, like a boil or an abscess under a tooth; and when it gets full, it bursts.’
‘Oh.’ Grandfather was frowning. ‘Is it bad?’
‘Usually,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Unfortunately, you now know as much about volcanoes – that’s the foreign word for them – as I do.’
‘Volcanoes.’ Grandfather repeated the word a couple of times, as if trying out a new tool for balance and fit. ‘How is it bad?’
Poldarn shrugged. ‘I don’t honestly know,’ he admitted. ‘But if that red stuff is fire and the white cloud is steam, chances are it’s melting a lot of the pack snow, at the very least. Has the river ever flooded, do you know?’
Halder rubbed his chin. ‘Once,’ he said, ‘when I was a boy. But that was just months of heavy rain, and everything got so waterlogged there was nowhere for it to go.’
‘Fine,’ Poldarn replied. ‘All I’m thinking is, if there’s a whole lot of melt water coming off the mountain all at once, it’s got to go somewhere.’
‘Not here,’ Halder said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Come summer thaw, the melt always runs off down the other fork of the valley, out to Lyatsbridge and Colscegsford.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Colsceg’s pretty high up, but I wouldn’t want to be in Lyat’s house if you’re right about a spate coming down.’
Rook, who’d been listening in on the conversation, said, ‘Maybe I’d better get over there, in case they haven’t figured it for themselves.’
‘The black mare’s saddled,’ Halder replied. ‘I was going to ride back with Colsceg when he went on.’
Rook hurried off; and Poldarn noticed out of the corner of his eye that the stablehands had the horse outside and waiting for him some time before he reached the stable door. ‘What happens next?’ Halder asked.
‘No idea,’ Poldarn said. ‘You sure it’s never done anything like this before?’
‘Could well have done, before we were here to see it. But not since we’ve been here.’
They stood and watched for a while, but nothing else seemed to be happening. Gradually, people started drifting away, back to work. They seemed uneasy, though, as if they’d suddenly woken up after an hour’s unscheduled and unexplained sleep. ‘Bloody thing,’ Halder muttered resentfully. ‘Always something.’
Indeed, Poldarn said to himself; how thoughtless of the mountain to catch on fire, just when everything was going so smoothly. ‘Is Lyatsbridge a big place?’ he asked, by way of making conversation.
‘What? Oh, no, nothing much; not so big as here, or Colscegsford. Lyat was one of Colsceg’s father’s men, struck out on his own thirty years back. He took the ford because nobody wanted it, on account of the flooding.’
That seemed to cover that. ‘Do you want to stay close to the house, in case something happens?’ he asked.
Halder shook his head. ‘Don’t suppose there’s anything to worry about,’ he replied, in a voice that suggested he was making it so by saying it out loud. ‘We might as well take that walk down as far as your wood, now you’re here.’
And sure enough, Colsceg and his offspring were suddenly there, right behind him. Stands to reason they’re invited too, Poldarn thought, since Elja’s going to be living there one day. He looked up at the mountain again, just in case it had stopped performing while his back was turned; but it hadn’t. ‘Maybe Polden fell asleep,’ he suggested, ‘and his chimney caught alight.’
Halder didn’t bother to reply to that.
Needless to say, nobody spoke, all the way from the house to the bottom meadow. When they reached the river, the whole party stopped; Poldarn wondered why, then realised that this was the last point from which they’d be able to see the mountain, without the reverse slope of the combe being in the way.
‘Still at it, then,’ Colsceg said.
He was right; the mountain was still pouring black smoke into the sky, like a leaking wineskin. They stood and scowled at it for a short while, then moved on.
More than once as they walked, Poldarn had looked sideways at Elja; but each time, she was looking straight ahead, absolutely no trace of an expression on her face. Egil, he noticed, stayed the other side of her, as far away from Poldarn as he could get, and he just looked bored and slightly constipated. Well, Poldarn thought, who wants chatty in-laws and a wife who talks all the time?
His first sight of the wood came as they rounded a slight bend in the river, where the western slope of the combe fell sharply down to the bank. Over its shoulder he could make out the tops of pine trees. The sight was extremely familiar – which didn’t make any sense at all, he realised, since the last time he’d been here, the trees would have been too short to show above the hillside. He dismissed it as his imagination coining false memories for him.
The wood was smaller than he’d thought it would be; about six dozen tall, thin trees on a very gentle slope, next to a flat, bare platform standing on a pronounced mound; a highly suitable place to build a house, though the view wouldn’t be up to much. As they approached, a mob of crows got up out of the treetops and flapped slowly, angrily away, like resentful tenants being evicted; not that far off the mark, Poldarn reckoned, since they’d lose their roost when the trees were taken down. Their problem, he told himself. As he watched them toiling laboriously into the air, he felt something on his face and the top of his head; a lighter touch than rain, more like snow. He ran his hand across his forehead and noticed a few specks of black ash. It reminded him of the awkward-to-walk-on black rocks on the mountain, between the snow and the grazing. If the others noticed it, they weren’t curious enough to investigate, or else retrieving bits of debris off yourself in public was bad manners.
‘Good lumber,’ Barn said suddenly. It was the first thing Poldarn had heard him say.
‘Scrawny,’ Halder replied. ‘Should’ve thinned them out fifteen years back. Didn’t seem any point back then, though. Still,’ he added, with a sigh, ‘it’ll have to do.’
It was just a clump of trees, a stand of timber – and then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, Poldarn caught his breath, because it wasn’t just that. As he stared at the trees, he began remembering them, only he wasn’t seeing them as they had
been or even as they were now, but how they would be, one day, one day soon. Just to the right of the middle of the stand grew the roof-tree, the backbone of the house; surrounding it were the girts, joists, floorboards and rafters; below them, slightly asplay on the gentle gradient, stood the braces, sills and plates, with the cross-beams standing out above them. He could see them as trees, still cluttered with branches and clothed in bark. He could also see them as sawn, planed timber, a skeleton of a house (like the skeletons of dead animals and men that litter the ground on a battlefield that nobody’s dared go near for twenty years, on account of ghosts and ill fortune); he could see them in place, slotted together, tenon mated into mortice, joints lapped, dowels clouted home, waiting to be cladded in green-sawn planking, or else the outer skin had rotted or burnt away, leaving only the naked frame.
Poldarn passed his hand through his hair. It was thick with black ash.
‘I remember this lot,’ he said aloud. ‘We came here when I was just a kid, and you pointed out all the trees, told me what they’d be used for. We even cut tallies on them, in case we forgot.’ He lifted his head, then pointed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s one, you can still just about see it.’
Halder nodded. ‘Thought it might ring a few bells,’ he said. ‘You used to come here all the time, about twenty-five years back.’
‘Did I?’ Poldarn frowned. ‘That I don’t remember.’
Halder laughed. ‘You came up here flighting crows,’ he said. ‘You’d sit just inside the wood, just as it was starting to get dark; and when they dropped in and pitched to roost, you’d try and knock them down with a slingshot or a stone. Got quite good at it, too. Always struck me as a bit of a waste of time, but you always said it was too hard to get ’em out in the fields, you’d do better catching them where they lived. Some sense in that, I guess.’ Halder shook his head. ‘Always seemed to me you took it personal, them trespassing in your wood. Hated the buggers, you did.’
‘Really.’ Poldarn wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about it. ‘Well.’ He took a few steps forward and rested the palm of his hand against the trunk of the tree that would one day be the middle cross-beam. He could feel it flexing ever so slightly, as the wind mussed up its branches. Then it occurred to him to wonder what they were doing there, at that particular moment. As he understood it, a man only built his house when his father (or grandfather) died, because then the old house would be pulled down and split up. It was as if, by bringing him here, Grandfather was serving a formal notice of his own impending death. Just the suggestion filled Poldarn with unanticipated panic; he looked round, just to make sure the old man was still there.
Halder was looking into the cupped palm of his right hand, which was grimy with ash. ‘Bloody stuff,’ he said.
‘I think it’s from the volcano,’ Poldarn replied. Colsceg and his tribe seemed to recognise the word, although the only people he’d mentioned it to were Halder and the long-barn hand, Rook. ‘I think it’s what the big black cloud’s made out of. The hot air from the fire shoots it way up in the air, and now it’s starting to come down.’
‘Figures,’ Colsceg said, after a long pause. ‘It’s coming down everywhere, look. Like snow.’
Like black snow, at any rate. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse than that,’ Poldarn said. ‘A few cinders I can handle.’ He dusted his hands off, but black smudges still clung to them. Like soot from Asburn’s forge, he thought.
‘Filthy mess,’ Halder muttered, and Poldarn realised he was actually afraid of it – well, fair enough, fear of the unknown; he’d got over that quite some time ago, since he’d woken up beside a muddy river and found that nearly everything had suddenly become the unknown. In that respect at least, he was rather better off than all the rest of them.
‘Maybe we should be getting back to the house,’ he said.
Colsceg turned his head and looked at him suspiciously. ‘What’s the hurry?’ he said. ‘We only just got here.’
I don’t know,’ Poldarn admitted. ‘It’s just a feeling I’ve got; like, we shouldn’t be too far from home, just in case something bad happens. How long will it take Rook to ride to the Lyat place?’
Halder scratched the back of his head. ‘Couple of hours, maybe. It isn’t far, good track all the way. Why?’
‘I just wondered, that’s all,’ Poldarn said. ‘Maybe it’ll stop soon. After all, there can’t be too much of the stuff in there, surely.’
‘We might as well go back now,’ Colsceg said.
As soon as they cleared the bend in the river, they all looked back at the mountain. It was still pumping out smoke, but far less than before, and the red glow had faded into a smudge. So that’s all right, then, Poldarn thought. But he quickened his pace all the same. The cinders crunched as he walked on them, and he thought how uncomfortable it’d been, making his way over the black rocks on the way to the hot springs.
For some reason, Elja was walking fast too; in fact, she fell into step beside him, leaving her father and the rest of them behind. She didn’t say anything, though.
‘Well,’ Poldarn said brightly, as he felt obliged to do, ‘so what do you think of it?’
She looked at him as if he’d farted during a religious ceremony. ‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘What do I think of what?’
‘The site. Where the house is going to be.’
‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘Very nice.’
Very nice. And said with such zest, too. ‘It should be fairly well sheltered from the weather,’ he said. ‘And well above the river-line, in case of flooding. That’s important, too.’
‘I suppose so,’ Elja replied. ‘Did you really spend all your time killing crows when you were a boy?’
Poldarn cringed a little. ‘So they tell me,’ he replied. ‘I can’t remember anything about it myself.’
‘Oh. I don’t like crows. I think that horrid slow way they fly is creepy.’
‘Well, yes,’ Poldarn said awkwardly. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really notice them. I mean, everywhere you look, there one of them is.’
‘Maybe. I think that just makes it worse.’
Well, at least they were talking about something. ‘When I woke up,’ Poldarn said, ‘after I lost my memory, I mean, the only thing I could remember was a bit of a song. That was about crows.’
‘Really.’
Poldarn nodded, passionately wishing he hadn’t brought the subject up in the first place. ‘It went, “Old crow sitting in a tall, thin tree—”’
‘Oh, that one.’ Elja nodded. ‘That’s an old one, everyone knows that. You know, you’re a very strange person to talk to.’
I’m a very strange person to talk to. ‘Really? In what way?’
‘Well—’ She made a vague gesture. ‘I can’t see what you’re thinking. It makes things so difficult, I’ve got to say everything I mean. Don’t you find it’s a real nuisance?’
‘No,’ Poldarn admitted, ‘not really. Look, maybe you can tell me about this, nobody else seems to want to. When you’re talking to them – I mean, your family, other people – can you really see what they’re thinking?’
‘Sure,’ she replied, faintly surprised. ‘And they can see me back. And you can’t, then.’
‘No. In fact, I can’t even imagine what it’d be like. Pretty strange, I should imagine.’
‘Oh. I’d have said it was the other way round. Like being blind or something – you can’t see what things are like, you can only hear. How can anybody manage to live like that?’
‘People seem to cope, where I come from. I mean, where I’ve been. For a start, you listen to what people say, and then you know what they’re thinking. If they want to tell you, that is. And if not, you’ve got to try and figure it out, from what they’re doing, stuff like that.’
‘Oh. But I always thought that over there –’ she made a small gesture with her left hand ‘– they don’t always tell things like they really are. I mean, they say things that aren’t true.’
‘Tha
t’s right,’ Poldarn said. ‘Quite a lot of the time, in fact. You get used to it.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s quite easy. Most people, when they’re lying, they start acting funny. They won’t look you in the eye, or their voices change slightly. It’s because they’re afraid of being found out.’
Elja thought about that for a moment. ‘Yes, but that’s only the ones you know about,’ she said. ‘What about the ones who’re really good at it and don’t know all that stuff? It could be that most people are saying untrue things most of the time, but you don’t know how many of them are doing it because the only ones you find out are the ones who aren’t good at it and give themselves away, like you said.’
It took Poldarn a moment to untangle that lot. ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s very hard to tell lies without getting caught out sooner or later. Besides, most of the time there wouldn’t be any point. Like, suppose I’d fallen in a river and I couldn’t swim, and someone shouted out, “Are you all right?” and I shouted back, “Yes, I’m fine”. Then I’d drown.’
‘Yes,’ Elja replied thoughtfully, ‘but that sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, surely. Most of the time, you’d just be talking about ordinary stuff, where nobody can check up easily and really, you could say what you liked and nobody’d know, if you didn’t make the silly mistakes.’
‘True,’ Poldarn replied, ‘but why bother?’
Elja sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But you see what I mean, about it being hard for me to talk to you. I can’t even tell if you like me or not.’
‘I—’ Poldarn shrugged. ‘If I told you I do, you might say I’m lying.’
‘Exactly,’ Elja said gloomily. ‘It’s so difficult, isn’t it? Father says it’s just because you’ve been away, and you’ll get back to being normal sooner or later. Do you think you ever will?’
‘No idea.’
‘Oh.’ Elja seemed to shrug the whole subject out of her mind. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s funny you saying about that old song. What with the mountain and everything.’
