With the laughing of bells, the ogre inserted himself into his apartment and lay supine.
“May I talk to the others on your behalf?” Aristide asked.
“Say anything you like. I’m going to sleep. Goodbye.“ The last word bore the unmistakable sound of finality.
Aristide left the ogre’s company and found the leader of another caravan, a blue-skinned woman named Eudoxia. She had rings in her ears and another ring in her septum, a ring so broad that it hung over her lips and touched her chin.
“My name is Aristide,” he said, “by profession a traveler. In another dozen or so turns of the glass I will begin the journey to Gundapur, in the company of Nadeer and his caravan. I wonder if you would be willing to accompany us?”
Eudoxia favored Aristide with a suspicious scowl. “Why would I want to accompany that green-skinned imbecile to Gundapur or anywhere else?”
“Because there is safety in numbers, and because you are losing money every moment you delay here.”
She cocked her head and regarded him. “Is anyone else leaving?”
“You’re the first I’ve approached.”
Eudoxia chewed on her nose-ring a moment. “I’ll talk to Nadeer,” she said.
“He’s settled in for a nap. If you wake him he might crush your head.”
She sneered. “I suppose he’ll insist on being in charge?”
“That seems to be the case.”
Eudoxia cursed and spat, then stomped on the spittle.
“Very well,” she said finally, “but only if the others agree.”
“Perhaps you would like to join me when I speak to them?”
The timekeeper’s gong struck nine, ten, eleven, and twelve while Aristide had similar conversations with the other caravan masters. The swordsman returned eventually to Masoud, who coughed in derision for a long while before, after a good deal of complaint, agreeing to join the others under Nadeer’s leadership.
Thus it was that Aristide was able to wake Nadeer with the news that he had become the leader of nine caravans and their assorted guards.
“Perhaps you should confer with your lieutenants,” Aristide said. “As I know nothing of the business of caravans, I will excuse myself. I have talked a great deal and need refreshment.” He bowed and turned to leave, then hesitated.
“Allow me to give you a word or two of counsel,” he said. “They are yours—be magnanimous. Let them talk to their heart’s content. If they speak sense, you can agree and appear wise. If their counsel is foolish, you may order things as you please.”
“It will take patience to put up with their nattering,” Nadeer said, “but I shall do as you advise.”
Aristide ate one of the free meals offered by the servants of the sultan: olives, cheese, bread, and stewed lamb with dried apricots. The only condiment was a spoonful of salt, carefully measured. He left the caravanserai on his way to the oasis, and saw Captain Grax returning to the encampment with his patrol. He turned toward the troll and hailed him on his approach.
“How was your hunting?” he asked.
Grax gave him a sour look.
“Ants and spiders, as you said.”
“You’ll have better sport in the days to come. The caravans have agreed to march for Gundapur.”
The troll offered a grunt of surprise. “I thought we’d be here till the Last Death.”
“Sharpen your weapons,” said Aristide. “Eat your fill. And make an offering at the pool of life.”
Grax gave him a shrewd look. “You think there will be fighting?”
Aristide shrugged. “That’s up to the bandits.” He thought for a moment. “It might be a good idea if you were to send a patrol out of sight, in the direction of Gundapur. If the bandits have a spy here, perhaps you’ll be able to intercept him.”
Grax ground his yellow teeth. “An interesting idea, stranger.”
Grax sent out three of his Free Companions on the patrol and led the rest to the corral. Aristide resumed his walk to the waters of the oasis. Along the way, Bitsy joined him.
“What news?” he asked.
“The camp is filled with boredom,” said Bitsy, “mixed with thrilling rumors of massacre and human sacrifice.”
“Anything else?”
“The seneschal is making a fortune selling state supplies to the caravans.”
“I thought as much.”
The two walked in silence for a moment. The dim, motionless sun faded behind a cloud. When Aristide looked at the men and women camped along the path, their eyes glowed like those of a cat.
They approached the oasis. It was a goodly sized pond, larger than an athletic field, and surrounded by willows. The air smelled like air, rather than dust. Yellow butterflies flitted in the air; dragonflies hovered purposefully over water. There was an area where beasts could be watered, and opposite this a small lagoon where people could draw water for themselves without having to drink any muck stirred up by the animals.
“I think that fellow ahead is a missionary,” Bitsy said. “There’s something unworldly about him.”
Ahead of them a man squatted on the firm banks of the lagoon, refilling several water bottles. He was a thin man in a faded striped cotton robe, with a hood drawn up over his head.
Aristide waited for the man to fill his bottles and rise.
“Hail, scholar,” Aristide said.
“Hail.” As the man bowed, he made a swift sign with his fingers. Aristide bowed and responded more deliberately with another sign. Relief crossed the man’s homely, bearded face.
“My name is Souza,” the man said.
“Aristide.” Bowing again. “How fares your collecting?”
“I’ve been out for three months—” Souza was distracted by the sight of a black-and-white cat hunting along the bank. “Is the cat yours?” he asked.
“Yes. Her name is Bitsy. Have you had good hunting?”
“I’ve only begun,” Souza said, “but I’ve acquired three children. In the next seven months, I hope to have a dozen more.”
“Very good.”
“There are so many of the best that I miss,” Souza said. “I go to the towns and villages, I do my tests, I identify the bright ones and try to convince the parents to let them go. Sometimes I buy them. But I can’t visit all the villages, and not all the parents let their kids be tested, or let them go if they pass. They know that most of the children who go to the College never return.” He shook his head. “I might be missing thousands. Who can tell?”
“It would be good if more had a choice. But—” Aristide shrugged. “Their parents chose it for them.”
Anger flickered across Souza’s face. “Their parents had such a choice. Their children did not.”
“True.”
“Now,” Souza said wearily, “I have to worry if the children are going to be captured and sacrificed to evil gods.”
“I wouldn’t take that seriously,” Aristide said.
The scholar peered at him. “You have information?”
“No. Merely confidence. I think the force present here can handle any mob of evil cultists, especially if we act under a single leader—and apparently Nadeer is that leader.”
“The ogre?” Souza wrinkled his face. “Talk about choice…”
“Each to his own,” said Aristide. “But in any case you should prepare the children to move on in the next few dozen turns of the glass.”
“I’m secretly relieved, to tell the truth,” Souza said. “Young children separated from their families for the first time, and stuck for months at a desert oasis with nothing to do.” He grimaced. “You can imagine the scenes we’ve had.”
“I’m sure.”
Souza narrowed his eyes. “You’re not a missionary yourself, I take it?”
“No. I’m a scholar of the implied spaces.”
Souza was puzzled. “I—” he began, then fell silent as a group of Free Companions approached.
“We’ll speak later, on the journey,” Aristide said.<
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“Yes.” Souza bowed. “It’s good to have someone to talk to.”
Souza returned to the camp. Aristide squatted and refilled his water bottle while he listened to the convoy guards. Their speech was loud but without interest. After the guards left, Aristide drank, then filled his water bottle again as he watched a tall blue heron glide among the reeds on the far side of the water.
He heard a step and the soft rustle of robes, and turned to see a young woman crouching by the lagoon, lowering a large leather sack into the water by its strap. Water gurgled into its open mouth.
The hair peeking from beneath the young woman’s headdress was light brown. Her eyes were blue. A slight sunburn touched her nose and cheeks.
“I am reminded of the verse,” said Aristide.
“Butterflies make music over water
The green boughs dance in company.
The brown-haired woman bends over the water
Graceful as a willow branch.”
A blush touched her cheeks, darkened the sunburn. Water gurgled into the sack.
“I haven’t seen you before,” she said. Her voice was barely heard over the rustle of leaves and the sigh of wind.
“I am Aristide, a traveler. I arrived a few turns of the glass ago.” Softly, he sang.
“This sack of water, a heavy burden.
The maiden staggers beneath the weight.
What thoughtless man has given her this charge?”
The woman looked quickly down at the water and her water bag.
“The water is my own. I travel alone.”
“You must allow me to carry the weight for you.”
She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. Bitsy appeared from the trees and rubbed against the woman’s leg. The woman scratched it behind an ear.
“Is the cat yours?’
“Her name is Bitsy.”
“Bitsy,” she repeated, idly scratching. The cat looked up at her and purred.
“You neglected to tell me your name,” Aristide reminded.
A soft smile fluttered at the corners of her lips.
“My name is Ashtra,” she said.
“And you travel alone?”
She glanced down at the water. “My husband is in Gundapur. He’s sent for me.”
Aristide looked at her closely. “At the mention of your husband I detect a strain of melancholy.”
“I haven’t seen him for seven years. He’s been on a long trading journey with an uncle.” She gazed sadly across the placid water as she scratched the purring cat. “He’s very rich now, or so his letter said.”
“And he sent for you without providing an escort? That bespeaks a level of carelessness.”
“He sent two swordsmen,” Ashtra said. “But they heard of a war in Coël, and went to join the army instead of taking me to Gundapur.”
“I think somewhat better of your husband, then, but not as much as if he’d come himself. Or at least sent money.”
“Perhaps he did, but if so the swordsmen took it.” Her blue eyes turned to him. “I don’t even remember what he looks like. I was twelve when my family had me marry. He was only a few years older. “
Despite the efforts of the sultan and other rulers to set up timekeepers with sandglasses regulated by the Ministry of Standards, days and years were necessarily approximate in a land where the sun did not move.
Aristide took her hand and kissed it. “You will delight him,” he said, “have no doubt.”
She blushed, bowed her head. “Only if I survive the bandits.”
He kissed her hand again. “Do not fear the bandits, Ashtra of the Sapphire Eyes. The caravan guards make a formidable force, and—come to that—I am rather formidable myself.”
She looked away. He could see the pulse throb in her throat. “But the stories—what the bandits are supposed to do to captives—The stories are chilling.”
“Stories. Nothing more.” He stroked her hand. “You will pass through the gates of Gundapur, and live in halls of cool marble, where servants will rush to bring you sherbets and white raisins, and music and laughter will ring from the arches. But for now—” He reached for the strap of her water bag, and raised it dripping from the spring. “Allow me to bear this for you. For I believe there is a bank of green grasses yonder, shaded by the graceful willow, where we may recline and watch the dance of the butterfly and the stately glide of the heron, and enjoy the sweetness of wildflowers. There the wind will sing its languorous melody, and we may partake of such other pleasures as the time may offer.”
He helped her rise, and kissed her gravely on the lips. Her eyes widened. Aristide drew her by the hand into the shade of the trees, and there they bode together on the carpet of grass, for the space of a few hours on that long, endless afternoon of the world.
02
Aristide slept a few hours, the tail of his headdress drawn across his eyes. When he woke, he found Ashtra seated near him, contemplating the silver ripples of the water through the trailing leaves of the willows. He paused for a moment to regard the woman sitting next to him on the bank—Ashtra, raised in a preliterate world blind even to its own possibilities, brought up in a society founded by swashbucklers, warriors, and gamesters all for their own glorious benefit, but who condemned their descendants to an existence bereft of choice. Married at twelve to a youth who was a relative stranger, now traveling at nineteen to meet a husband who was even more a stranger than that youth. To live in what Gundapur considered luxury, and bear her husband, and bear him children, as many as possible until childbirth broke her health.
“Come with me, Ashtra,” he said.
For a moment he didn’t know whether she had heard. Then she said, “Where would you take me?”
“Wherever you desire. Eventually to the Womb of the World.”
“You belong to the College?” She turned to look at him in alarm, and shifted slightly away from him.
People often feared the magic of the College and its missionaries.
“I’m not of the College,” Aristide said, and watched as she relaxed slightly. “Still, one does not have to be of the College to travel to the Womb.”
“There are said to be sorcerers of great power at the Womb of the World. And monsters.”
“There are monsters here.”
She turned away, and for a long moment regarded the lake.
“I have a family,” she said finally.
“What do you owe to this husband who you barely know?”
“It’s what my family owes him. If they had to refund my bride-price, they would be destitute.”
“I could pay the price myself.”
Ashtra turned to him, amusement in her blue eyes. “You do not travel as a prince travels. Are you a prince in disguise?”
“I travel simply because simplicity appeals to me. And though I am not a prince, I have resources.”
Again she turned to face the waters. “I have a husband. And what you offer me are fantasies.”
For a moment the swordsman contemplated the many ironies of this last statement, and then he sat up and crossed his legs.
He was not without experience. He knew when he had been dismissed.
Some people remember virtue and a spouse rather late, when it no longer really matters.
“It’s extremely unlikely there will be a child,” he said, “but if there is, I desire you to send it to the College. Give them my name.”
Again she turned, again alarm widened her eyes. “I thought you said—”
“I’m not of the College,” he said, “but I have done them service, and they know me. You may request this in my name.” His tone took on a degree of urgency. “Particularly if it is a girl.”
“I hope there is not a child.” Ashtra rose. “I want to remember this as a beautiful fantasy, not as a burden I will bear for the rest of my life.” She picked up the strap of her water bag and shouldered it.
“I’d prefer not to be the subject of gossip by those in my caravan,” she said.
“If you would wait half a glass before following, I would thank you.”
“As you like, my lady,” said Aristide. “Though I would gladly carry your burden.”
Ashtra made no reply. Swaying beneath the weight of the water bag, she made her way from the glade.
Aristide stretched again on the grass and watched the willow branches moving against the dim sky. Gusting wind brought him the scent of flowers. There was a rustle in the grass, and he turned to see the black-and-white cat moving toward him.
“Your attempt at chivalry is duly noted,” Bitsy said.
“Sentimentality more than chivalry,” said the swordsman. “I liked her.” He rubbed his unshaven chin. “You know, she’s braver than she thinks she is.”
“Brave or not, did you really mean to take that bewildered child to the Womb?”
“If she desired it. Why not?” He sat up. The cat hopped onto his lap. Her upright tail drew itself across his chin.
“I hope you appreciate my help in getting you laid,” Bitsy said.
He sighed. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He stroked Bitsy for a few idle moments, then tipped her out of his lap and rose.
“Perhaps I’ll ensure my next incarnation,” he said.
Bitsy gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Is there so much on this journey,” she asked, “that you wish to remember?”
Aristide shrugged. “Ants and spiders. And a pleasant interlude on a grassy bank.”
As the swordsman passed through the camp, he saw the people had been stirred, like those selfsame ants with a stick. People were stowing tents and rugs, mending harness, sharpening weapons. Towering over everyone, Nadeer walked about giving orders. Voice booming, bells tinkling.
Inside the caravanserai, the pool of life had a crowd of visitors. Some chanted, some prayed, others meditated. Some, men and women both, waded naked into the pool, their lips murmuring devotions. Aristide removed his clothes, handed the clothing and Tecmessa to an attendant, and walked into the pool.
He followed broad steps downward until the silver liquid rose to his chest. His skin tingled at its touch. There were bodies at the bottom of the pool, and he felt for these with his feet to avoid treading on them. He waded between the devotees and touched the black menhir with one hand. The smooth surface felt prickly, as if a thousand tiny needles had pierced his fingertips.
Implied Spaces Page 2
