“Leave them here,” the bosun promptly said.
To this his captain prompt agreed. “It’s safest. Lightning may not strike so soon again here. There’s food enough and gear enough. Yes … that’s best.”
Even in the short time they had left the woman she had changed. She seemed now to know who her children were but she evidently had no recollection of ever having seen either of the men before. “And it’s about to rain, and who knows how many leagues we are from home,” she said, distractedly. She returned to the house peacefully enough, with never a sign that ever she had seen it before; and they unloaded the onagers. While they were so engaged Stag paused, scowled in his usual manner of deep thought, then shook his head. “What’s amiss?” his man asked. But Stag couldn’t say. A vagrant thought had tickled the corner of his mind, was gone without being identified.
They untied the beasts, hobbled them, put some food in their scrips, said farewell to the woman and her children, and were off. Once again they had an easy trail to follow, and even the rain did not wash it out entirely — a few moments’ downpour from which they sheltered themselves not at all, but pressed on ahead. Such a thing as a centaur who attempted to cover his trail is a wonder which no world has ever seen. The rain stopped abruptly, but it drizzled intermittently throughout the remainder of the afternoon and dimlight; by dimlight, however, they had already paused and taken up shelter in a hole in a hill — one which conveniently slanted slightly up from its entrance before leveling out into a space long enough and wide enough and dry enough for them to stretch out.
During that night they both awoke. Each sensed that the other was no longer sleeping, neither said a word, both moved to the mouth of the cave. Nothing was visible. The sky was completely overcast. Nothing stirred. Now and then a slight breeze shook a leaf or a few leaves, and then the tip tip tip of the delayed raindrops was heard. Yet all did not seem right, and still they stared and strained their eyes and ears. Stag was about to back up and retreat into the burrow and to sleep again when it seemed as though a breeze so high he could not feel it stirred for one swift second a cloud so high he could not see it. And it seemed as though for that fleet shaveling of a second he could perceive a light burning brightly, briefly, in the dull night sky. Then it was gone. The bosun cleared his throat. Then he slid backward. Then he began to snore.
And still Stag stayed there. He had no word to explain how he had felt a few moments before. Things had seemed somehow out of place and order, yet it was nothing like the gathering-up of the day or way…. Wild suggestions, arcane speculations, took hold of his mind. Then another thought took hold of his mind. Spahana. He had hardly known her, really. He had almost forgotten that that was her name until he had heard her tell it to Rary. He smiled, wondering to himself, wondering at himself. It was an odd way to feel about a woman … odd … odd…. Odd how light things were…. He realized that the night had passed and that it was now dawn.
The trail was not so easily followed that first part of the new day, after they had made a quick, small breakfast. The light was dim, and it did not so soon grow much lighter, the weather continuing overcast. The bosun grumbled that things “still felt odd.” But the trail was never lost for long, and when they left the region of rocks and gravel and descended into one of softer earth and low and rolling hillocks, it became much easier. And then Stag saw something which brought him to a dead halt.
“What’s happened, Captain?” Bosun asked, uneasily.
“It’s a folly…. We’ve been two fools, haven’t we, then?”
“How do you — ?”
“Well, just stop and think. We’ve seen only hoof prints, haven’t we? Were they both of them, the augur Castegor, and my lady, riding the Sixies?”
The bosun blinked. He wet his lips, tried to think. “Uhh …” was all that came out.
Stag said, “Have we been following the right trail?” He pointed. The prints of human feet were in front of them in the wet soil, not very clear, but unmistakable. They followed them a short distance, followed the opposite way that the feet had been going, saw that they had come down out of the higher land and into the main path. “We have … We have … Following the wrong trail. Following the obvious one. It’s all come right, it seems, but if it hadn’t? — I suppose, though, it had to. The Fourlimbs weren’t with the sixies at all. The sixies must have known that the track they took — the track we hadn’t noticed — would come out here eventually. The sixies weren’t exactly following them … but yet they were. That means that the sixies hadn’t captured them at all. That — ”
A wrathful notion swept the confusion from the bosun’s face and mind. “You don’t mean that they ran off together?” Almost immediately he said, “No … the arrow …”
“Exactly, the arrow. And now I’ve remembered that idea which flitted through my mind like a bat yesterday whilst we were unloading the onagers. Recollect how you told me that line was fastened to them, when the old silverhair sixy stole them back for us? You said there were no knots at all in the line — only loops, you said. Why? Still don’t see it? Forgotten what the augur told us, what he reminded us of that we’d seen but hadn’t thought of? Their hands, man! Their hands! A little finger on each side of each hand, but no thumbs, man! A sixy can’t tie a knot! A sixy can’t cast a spear! And so it follows as one Flux follows another, A sixy can’t draw a bow nor shoot an arrow! Sixies didn’t attack Stonehouse and sixies didn’t rape away those that were in it. Men did. Men….”
His hand pointed to the footprints before they were obliterated by the mass of hoofprints. Here and there was the slender mark of a woman’s foot. But mostly there were the heavier prints of men. Of how many men? Of what men? “Who — ”
Stag’s face was fixed in a wild grimace. He dug his hand into his scrip, clenched, dug, pulled it out. “Look. Look. Ah — Here it is.” His breath came hard and fast. His palm held several small stones.
“Beads…. Beads…. So — ”
“Beads? All beads? Ah, no. This is a bead and this is a bead, and this — But not this: it’s too big. It’s got no hole through it. It isn’t a bead. It’s a talley-pebble. Isn’t it? And who uses talley-pebbles? Answer! I’ve asked no riddle.”
The bosun half-groaned. He nodded. He knew who, and only who, used talley-pebbles. “Merchants,” he said.
“Yes….” Stag swung round and all but ran. Over his shoulder came one word.
“Merchant!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
For the most part it had been dry enough at the base of the tree where crouched the hapless homophage, but the water had collected in a depression on the old harpy’s nest far above, and presently the pool burst through. It spilled onto the limbs and leaves below and ran onto one huge branch which acted as a sort of open funnel. The spillage came roaring down and cascaded at last onto the ground not far from where the mad and miserable creature lay huddled, and woke him with its splatterings. There had been lines and marks scratched into the earth nearby, but the brief inundation washed them quite away. Hence, awakened by the short storm, the homophage began automatically to crawl and grope around the confined area within which the soothsayer’s magic circumscription had confined him. And in another moment found that he was free. He howled once. He lurched forward.
He sniffed the air. He put his face to the earth and sniffled and snuffled. He moved on. He moved ahead. There was a familiar scent. Familiar, hated. There was hunger in it and there was trickery and treachery and there was wrath. Nothing like a detailed remembrance persisted in the warped and twisted wreckage of the homophage’s mind. He trotted forward in the darkness. He lost the scent. He dropped to all fours and passed his nose and mouth back and forth across the ground. He passed to the right. He passed to the left. He moved ahead at an angle. The memory of the scent and its hate did not leave him. Then he picked it up. With a grunt and a howl he leaped up and ran on.
The hate-scent. The scent-hate. It drew him on through the blackness and the damp. It had a
name … dimly, dimly, he knew it had a name. Sounds growled in his throat and clicked in his mouth and rattled between his teeth and his tongue. Ug. Ugh-urr. Gar. Grr. Rish. Rrr. Tick. Ksh. Kss. Hrr. He shook his troubled head as though to punish or to clear it. He hawked up phlegms and spat them out. Then he opened his mouth and bayed at the cold and the hunger and the dampness and the dark. He lunged, hating and hungering, through the blackness. “Gore …!” he cried. “Take …!” he cried. He cried, “Crush …! ” He cried, “Crash …!”
But these long-forgotten syllables did not seem to be the right ones. Once more he howled and he beat shaggy head with his hands. And suddenly it came to him. The name. The name of the hate-he-could-smell. “G’or’t’ec’as!” It felt right. It felt … almost … right. Once more —
“Gortecas!”
The very repetition of its name seemed to bring it more strongly to him. He knew it now. He would not forget it. He would not lose it. He would find it. He followed on in the darkness and the damp.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Dellatindílla scowled at his winecup. Atom mimicked him and, drawing back into a shadow, thrust out his tongue. “And my best jewels gone, too,” muttered Dellatindílla. “His jewels,” muttered the mite. “Had that scoundrel Lo to do with that, as well? It wouldn’t surprise me …” (“It wouldn’t surprise him …”)
The comprador clenched his teeth. The dwarf clenched his. His large eyes rolled around the room. Then he shook his tiny fist. “To recapitulate,” said the eunuch, smacking his thin lips after a sip of wine. Atom looked into his own winecup. It was empty. He held it up. Dellatindílla lifted the jug, refilled his own cup, set the jug back in its place. After a moment the mite withdrew his hand. “To recapitulate. Plainly, this Captain Stag raided Allitu with Lo’s backing. Plainly, they must have gotten great store of treasure. But was this plainly their only motive? Was there not this babble about the Cap of Grace? Hints it was, or at least had been, on Allitu? Was it found? Was anything at any rate learned about it? This I must know. I must know this. Why did Stag leave first? Did Lo not depart for some secret rendezvous with him? And for what purpose? Do they trust one another? Can they trust one another? Can I trust that augur whom I engaged to follow and to spy? Certainly not. But I can trust the mite dwarf I sent with him….” He gurgled at the cup again. Atom threw him an ugly look. “Eventually he must return with information. And if he does not? Ay well, I have another dwarf….” The other dwarf approached the eunuch’s ankle and bared his teeth. The foot moved, the dwarf scuttled off into the shadows. “… another dwarf,” the voice above repeated. “And to speak of the which, where is it? Come forth, there…. Come forth….” The voice died away into a mutter and another gurgle.
The eunuch’s thin lips went pendulous, began to quiver. “And what of earthflux, too,” he beggingly inquired. “Will grace save us therefrom? Or wealth? power? wisdom? Will,” his voice going high and cricket-shrill, “will anything? Can anything? If the weight of sin and grief and guilt becomes too much for the world to bear, and it topples off into chaos and flux, of what use then will be all my acquisitions and desires, either selfish or unselfish — what? what?”
Eyes rolled, eyes gleamed, a smaller voice murmured, “What.”
The eunuch’s lips pursed, curved, set into a frightful lear. “Long ago I heard it read, ‘Thus say the geographers: Justice and equity are the sole sure foundations of the world.’ Do you hear? Do you hear? Is it true? Then the world has no sure foundations — !”
(“No sure foundations …”)
“This being so, what prevents it from falling constantly into flux and from remaining in constant flux? Only grace, grace, grace …”
(“Only grace?”)
“… only grace …”
Atom tiptoed under the table and thence to the far corner of the wall. He lifted the bottom of the hanging, and was gone. A few minutes later he emerged on the rooftop, and drew a deep breath. “I don’t like it,” he said. “He shouldn’t have sent my brother. My brother shouldn’t have gone. I don’t believe it was the same augur. I believe it was a different augur. I don’t like it here anymore. All he does is drink, drink, drink, and he never gives me hardly any. I’m tired of being cooped up. Nothing is any fun anymore. And — ”
He stopped. He had been vaguely aware of something droning not far off. Now he became less vaguely aware that its evident source was an oddly shaped figure standing in front of and apparently addressing one of the chimney-pots. He moved closer, cautiously, to assess this curiosity.
“Speak up, speak up,” the oddity said, addressing the chimneypot. “Tom Korp, that’s for whom I’m in search of, has a brother name of Mope Korp, little boy, what’s the matter that you can’t reply to a civil harpy, ‘Eat something,’ I keep telling him, ‘There’s some nice carrion in the corner, or have a piece fruit on the other hand,’ does he say yes, does he say no, he reiterates he wants his brother by the name of Tom or Tum or Thumb, who can pronounce these names, ‘Well,’ I said to him, because it’s a funny thing about me, that’s the way I am, ‘if Aunty Ghreck can’t get your brother for you after the way your mommyharp just walked off and bereft you, or flew, as the case might be, then who else will do it, answer me that, just kindly answer the question,’ ” and she fell into a fit of coughing. The mite, who had gradually slipped up behind her, slapped her on the back.
“Thanks very much for the kindness,” she said, and, “Who are you, other little boy?”
“I’m Atom,” he said, “and I’m not a little boy, I’m a dwarf.”
The harpy gave a squawk of excitement, flew up in a flutter of feathers, seized hold of him, fell off the roof, coasted, in another moment was aloft, her wings beating steadily upon the soft night air. “Fleet, fleet,” she muttered. “Later we’ll walk.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
In theory, the two great bullroarers were supposed to be kept at a prescribed distance from a fire of a prescribed size and turned regularly, and regularly “fed” with bread and milk and wine. In fact, the fire had gone out long ago and no one had known how to relight it nor had anyone done anything to implement the intermittent plan of capturing a Fourlimbs to make and tend the fire. Neither bread nor milk had been available for ages. Nevertheless the two objects were sounded regularly — to announce the beginning of courting and mating at the High Far Glades — and irregularly — to herald the start of a raid, to inspire the raiders, and to terrorize the raided.
Each one had a name, or had had a name, but these had been forgotten; it was remembered only that one was male and one was female, and no one who heard them was likely to forget which was which. They had, for a wonder, been given a little wine after the last raid which yielded wine, but it had been given grudgingly, and it was felt that damp had effected their tones. As to who had made them or when they were made or where or why — there were not only no histories, there were not even myths: here was He and here was She, it was for gladsome things that they were sounded, for exciting things that they were sounded, and the sounds themselves were in themselves exciting.
The male roarer was supposed to be that bit more prestigious to justify fighting for the chance to sound it. Trebondóndos reached it first, but Chevantirósos decided to take up the other rather than dispute; and, since it was somewhat lighter and since Trebondóndos stood, halting and scowling defiance, it was the female which was first swung round on its halter, up and around and around, the long slit wood whirling faster and faster and faster, until at first there came a thin squeak and then a treble squeal and then a trembling shrill sound which went on and on and on and by this time Trebandóndos had the male roarer going and there came forth a small hum and then a loud drone and then an increasing bellow and finally the full volume of the sound which gave the devices their name of bullroarer. Loud and earsplitting and terrible, and terribly, terribly exciting, the shrill and the deep, male and female, the noise roused the Sixlimbs from their slumbers and diverted them from their play. Stalli
on and yearlion and colt and crone and cob, matron-mare and maiden-mare …
And one among the latter, trotting back and forth, unable to make her own voice heard above the two-fold clamor of the chanter and the drone, held out her two hands, two fingers up, two fingers down, one finger held in: the ancient sign which all well knew: Fourlimbs. Fourlimbs! Fourlimbs! Usurpers of the True Folk’s land, stealers of the Sixlimbs’ fields and forests, thicketlurkers, ambushslayers, the stinking, the malformed, the cunning, cruel, corrupt, coupling (shameless) face to face … Fourlimbs, filthy …
It was easy to rouse the centaurs, easy, once the shree-shreeing and the broo-brooing had died away, save for its interminable echoes; easy to rouse them to agree to gather and attack in force and destroy the invaders. All of them howled and beat upon their bosoms and dashed backwards and forwards. Quite a number of them actually started down in the general direction hinted by the maiden-mare Ananarusa. Interest slackened when it was realized that neither Trebandóndos nor Chevantirósos intended to leave her side for an instant, and quite a number of the fiercest dropped out of the troop. Other reasons, as, for instant, hunger or thirst, the chance for a good and an immediate fight, resulted in the loss of others. And a good few put their heads together and muttered of certain matters and stealthily slid away in order to return and see what could be done about commencing a movement of both sexes to the High Far Glades….
The Island Under the Earth Page 15
