by Maurice Gee
Xantee read aloud. Her voice was breathless.
Duro, it’s the red star and the white. The kings are the stars.
Go on, don’t stop.
There were only a few more lines. She read: He assembled the best fighting men of the village and took the strongest boat and sailed north to the red king’s city. Barni and his men slipped through the defences in the night and slew the king in his bed with his concubine. Then they sailed inland, up a wide river and across a lake and down another river and came to the white king’s city. There they –
The parchment finished at that point.
‘Oh,’ Xantee cried aloud. She wanted the end of the story. She wanted to know.
Duro hunted for more books. He brought out the last of them. None went on with the story of the Fish People.
It doesn’t matter, we know what happens. They kill the white king, who’s the white star. The gool dies. And then, after hundreds of years, the truth turns into legend. I wish I’d known Barni.
The red star and the white were men, Xantee said.
Danatok let his light die. He sat down, exhausted.
Just as they are today, he said.
Yes, she breathed.
Duro nodded.
In the darkening shed, Xantee kneeling, Danatok sitting, Duro on his feet, they stared at each other.
Keech and the Clerk were the two stars. Keech and the Clerk had brought the gool into the world. The gool was their spawn.
TWELVE
In the morning, before the sun was up, they gathered the pieces of the Fish People book and piled them in a corner of the shed. Xantee and Duro swept up salt with their hands, the grains almost black with age and dirt, and scattered them over the parchment in an effort to preserve it. It was the best they could do. No one would read the book again. They felt they were preserving its bones.
They ate quickly, rolled their mats, and left Ottmar’s warehouse. The railway track ran out of the yard and turned towards the west. They followed it in the red dawn. It fell away on a long incline to the city wall and through a gate and down to Port. Danatok turned northwards, where the buildings of Ceebeedee squatted like swamp frogs. The marble, pink in the sun, should be beautiful, the city opening like a flower, but the buildings gave the impression of having swallowed something and of waiting greedily for more.
Xantee knew where Danatok was leading them. In the darkness of the warehouse, on their sleeping mats, they had talked and planned before dropping off to sleep. They were going to find the Clerk. They were going to kill the Clerk. They had argued into the night, but there was no other way. Xantee had wanted to talk with him, plead with him if she had to. He was a human, like them – or, at least, like Duro and her – and he would not want his world devoured by a creature from – where? From the other side of nature was the only explanation she could give. If he understood what he and Keech had done, calling the gool from wherever it lurked, giving it entry to the world, then surely he would renounce it and that might be enough to make it die.
Please, she had pleaded, let me talk to him.
Xantee, Duro said, you can’t talk with people like the Clerk. He’s Keech in another shape. You’ve seen Keech. Do you think you could talk him into doing anything?
No, she whispered, but . . .
In the dark, she fingered her knife and knew she could never plunge it into another person, no matter how evil he was.
If we can take control of him, she began, but Duro interrupted: Barni didn’t try to talk with the red and white kings, or control them or capture them. Barni killed the buggers, that’s what he did.
Danatok? Xantee pleaded.
There’s no other way, the Dweller said.
She heard his pain. Dwellers took life only for food. Killing humans was as bad for him as killing his own kind. It would place him outside his tribe forever.
They had no idea how to kill the Clerk. Or kill Keech after him. And, Xantee thought, no idea if the gool would die when they were dead. And where was the gool anyway?
She followed Danatok into Ceebeedee. Each time they entered a new street the great buildings in the centre had edged closer. Beyond them, across an unseen suburb, rose the hill where the mansions of the Company Families had stood. Paths zigzagged up the side as though drawn with rulers and black ink. There were scrubby trees at the top, although here and there the skeleton of a larger one stood against the sky. The mansions were gone, except for a half-hidden shape that might be House Ottmar, standing alone.
Xantee, Duro hissed.
She was walking without caution, thinking in a sick way of the Clerk, and remembering Pearl and Hari, sixteen years before, taking on a task far more difficult than hers.
What? she said.
He pulled her into a doorway where Danatok was already concealed. Men went by at the end of the street.
What do you think you’re doing? Duro said.
Getting ready, she answered.
For what?
She did not know. All she knew was that it would not be killing.
Quiet, Danatok said. He was searching the minds of the men with his lightest touch.
They’re going back to their homes, he said. The Clerk is sending them home.
Why?
He’s kept his guards with him. Keech wants a meeting.
When?
Tomorrow. The Clerk has sent a messenger saying yes, because . . . Danatok paused, then gave a silent groan. Because he’s got Tarl. He’s captured him. He wants to show him off to Keech.
Xantee turned to the wall. She put her face in her hands and felt tears seeping through her fingers. ‘Tarl,’ she whispered. She had not liked him. She had not felt they were of the same blood – yet now she was overwhelmed with love that started there, in her blood, in the beating of her heart.
They’ll kill him, Duro said.
I can’t see what the Clerk means to do. Maybe trade him with Keech for something he wants, Danatok said.
Then Keech will kill him. Did they capture the dogs?
I don’t know.
It doesn’t change anything. We kill the Clerk. We save Tarl. It’s simple, Duro said.
No, Danatok said. We wait till tomorrow. Then we can get Keech and the Clerk together.
All right, Duro said. But we’ve seen Keech. I want to have a look at the Clerk and find out how strong he is. How well he can speak. Xantee, are you all right?
While we’re waiting Hari might die, she thought.
We’ll talk with Blossom and Hubert, Danatok said, picking up the thought. But Xantee, you’d have felt it, Hari dying. So he’s alive.
Yes, she said. But each day . . .
We’ll get Keech and the Clerk tomorrow, Duro said. Then the gool will die.
She turned and looked at him sadly. Duro was always straightforward, always sudden. He had not believed in Barni’s story, now he followed it as if Barni had stepped out of the parchment roll and spoken in his fisherman’s voice: Kill the red king and the white. Duro would try. But if the Clerk was anything like Keech Duro would fail. Then he would die and his death would hurt her even more than Hari’s.
Xantee saw what she must do. She closed her mind so Duro and Danatok would hear no whisper of it.
More men passed the end of the street. Then Danatok led them to a doorway close to the intersection. He chose an old man, scaly and bent and slower than the others, and sent out a half-command: You’re tired. Sit and rest. The man obeyed: sat on a step, and finding himself there, took a plug of weed from his pocket, bit off a chunk, and chewed. A young man, short-bearded, cruel-eyed, stopped and said, ‘Buggered, are you, Gran’dad? Give us a bite of your weed.’
The older man handed it over and the young man bit, then spat.
‘Where’d you get this muck? Call it plug? It tastes like them dogs have pissed on it.’
‘Give it back, then,’ the old man said.
The other dropped it and kicked it into the gutter. ‘You can fight the dogs for it if you find them.
’ He went on. The old man chewed placidly and wiped his yellow chin.
So they haven’t caught the dogs, Duro said.
Danatok searched out the old man’s name.
Glubby, he said, rest a while yet. Where are you going?
‘Home,’ the old man said, and gave a start at the sound of his voice.
Where have you come from?
‘Headquarters.’
Why did the Clerk call you in?
‘To see the dogman in his cage.’
What will he do with the dogman?
‘Show him to Keech. Then have some fun with him.’
Glubby, where’s the gool?
‘Don’t know no gool.’
‘Talking to yourself, old man? Time for the bone yard,’ said a younger man, passing.
Danatok waited.
Glubby, where’s headquarters?
‘Trade House. Old Trade House. Underneath the bell. I used to be night watchman at Trade House. Who’s asking?’ He spat brown juice.
Danatok made his hold deeper.
Is the Clerk there?
‘He’s there.’
With how many men?
‘Twelve. His guard.’
And the dogman in a cage?
‘Yes, the dogman. The Clerk makes him howl.’
Where does he meet Keech tomorrow?
‘On the hill. Usual place. Between Ottmar and the Hand.’
All right, Glubby. Go home now. No one’s spoken to you. Remember nothing.
The old man stood up, shook himself, retrieved his plug of weed from the gutter, and walked away.
So, Danatok said, we’ve got till tomorrow.
Let’s find Old Trade House. I want to see this Clerk, Duro said.
They started off. Xantee said nothing. She followed.
The streets were empty again, but Danatok led them carefully. The Trade House was in the centre of Ceebeedee. Like the other buildings of that quarter it was built in marble that years of neglect had mottled grey and yellow and brown. Wide shallow steps, like a fan, led between columns to timber doors as tall as those in Ottmar’s salt warehouse. A smaller door, man-sized, opened in the bottom. A guard lounged in front of it, smoking a pipe.
Danatok drew back and led them along the side of the building. He stopped suddenly.
Dogs, he said.
Xantee felt them too, hiding behind a jumble of metal storage boxes thrown into an alley. She had imagined that Him and Her had run from the city, run for their forest, when Tarl was captured. She should have known better. The dogs were Tarl’s children; they were tied to him the way she was tied to Hari and Pearl.
Dogs, she ordered, taking command, lie still.
She advanced, with Duro and Danatok beside her. The dogs growled softly, uncertainly, but fell quiet when she said, We’re your friends. You know us. Their yellow eyes watched her. They trembled with suppressed energy.
Dogs, she said, we’re going to find Tarl. Come with us.
The bitch, Her, seemed to nod. The dog, Him, advanced and after a moment touched his nose to her hand.
All right, she said. There’s a guard on the door. We’ll go past him and he won’t remember. Follow us and make no sound.
She let Danatok lead again, although now she doubted that his mind was any quicker and stronger than hers. Since she had decided what to do she had been calmer. It made a stillness round her like the pause between a breath drawn in and released. When all this was over she would hear in the way he heard, and speak with a voice as far-reaching as his.
They found an entrance at the back of the Trade House building. Danatok held the guard still as they went through, then made him forget when it was done. Across a wide room at the end of a passage double doors, one slightly ajar, led on to the floor where the trading had been done in Company days. They felt men inside, a dozen or more – simple men, soldiers, active and cruel – and with them another, twisted away from his followers, with a darkness in his mind where there should be light, and nothing of the brutal fellowship Keech had demonstrated. This was the Clerk. Straining at him, Xantee felt his pain. The man was always in pain.
The dogs smelled Tarl and leaned at the doors but Danatok held them back. He led the way up service stairs at the side of the room, feeling for guards. They reached a sloping gallery at the back of the trading floor, which stretched away as long and wide as a holding paddock for cattle. The hundreds of desks and cabinets that had filled it in Company’s time were jammed against the walls. A canopy of purple cloth was raised on poles in the centre, as lonely as a hut on a plain, and there, on a bed fat with quilts and swollen with pillows, a man slept, with a blanket tucked under his chin. He was like a baby. And like a baby he had his nurse – a gaunt woman sitting on a wooden chair at the bed-head, ready with a cloth to wipe his brow, or to wet his lips with water.
After Keech, striding on his bandy legs, darting his beetle eye, this man, the Clerk, seemed too soft, too inert, to be his rival. One hand, gripping the blanket edge, tightened with each breath, his cheeks swelled like a frog’s, his lips parted as he exhaled, making a popping sound. He was in a drugged sleep (the cup stood on a table beside the bed) that cut the threads tying him to the world, yet Xantee sensed his self lying at the centre, as hard as stone, and knew he would wake in an instant if there was need. She wished he was awake now. She wanted to see him properly, and hear him, and work out how he could be approached.
Halfway between the gallery and the bed, Tarl sprawled in his cage. He too slept, but not as heavily as the Clerk. He was like a dog. A sound or movement would bring him to his feet. He still had the strip of blanket tied about his loins, but his knife sheath sloped empty across his hip. Xantee looked for the knife, and found it on the table by the Clerk’s bed, beside his cup. Tarl’s hand felt for it as he slept, the fingers opening and closing.
Sleep easy, Tarl, Xantee whispered, but the dogman’s fingers would not lie still.
There was nothing in Tarl’s cage – no food, no water. A man stood guard, holding a crossbow with its cord cranked tight. The cage – perhaps the cage Tarl had held Ottmar and Kyle-Ott in sixteen years before – was locked with a heavy padlock, and the key lay on the table with the knife. Eleven men – Xantee counted: the remainder of the Clerk’s guard – knelt or stood quietly between the bed and the main doors. Like Keech’s men, they played dice, one man throwing, the others placing bets with lead coins on a mat spread in the ring.
The Clerk slept, his lips popping, his hand twitching, his mind iron hard in its quilting of drugs – and Tarl slept with his fingers feeling for his knife.
Danatok, Duro and Xantee crept out of the gallery and down the stairs.
Up here, Danatok said, leading them into another staircase, this one winding as it climbed. They went high above the roof of the Trade House building, and stopped underneath a bell sheltered by a domed roof. A frayed rope hung down, out of reach. Tilly had told them how the bell was rung each morning to signal the start of trading on the floor beneath. Pearl had heard it too, from her mansion on the hill. The bell-house was the highest point in Ceebeedee.
Xantee freed her mind, letting it join with Duro’s and Danatok’s. She pictured their combined thought flying like a spear out of the bell tower, over the city and plains and mountains and jungles, across the Inland Sea, to Blossom and Hubert in the farmhouse by the beach. She felt it thud into the ground and stand trembling there, and felt the twins put their hands on it and tug it free, then the image faded, their voices, clear, thin, childish, spoke in her head: Xantee, Duro, we’ve been waiting. Danatok, what’s going on? Hari’s worse. Hari’s dying.
They could not keep distress out of their voices.
Tell us, Danatok began, but Xantee pushed him aside, took control of their triple-tongued voice, and spoke without her own distress breaking through: The thing, the gool, is it growing stronger?
Xantee, it’s strangling him. Hari can’t breathe. He draws air in as thin as a cotton thread. We breathe in his mouth. P
earl breathes. And the thing grows stronger. We loosen it, we dig our thoughts underneath, but it tires us out and we fall asleep. Xantee, it’s growing a cord inside itself, twisting tighter, and it mews with hunger, pulling out Hari’s life. Unless you can . . . Xantee, unless you can . . .
How long? How long before Hari dies?
One day. Two. The healer says two. Tealeaf says two. They can open his throat and force in a tube for him to breathe – they’ll do that in the morning – but the thing cuts off his blood as well as his breath.
Blossom, Hubert, listen. We’ve found where the gool feeds. We’ve found the red star and the white, and they . . .
