The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  ‘Where does it come from?’

  ‘It is cunning. A concealed pipe runs down the hill from a cleft far up the mountainside. It rises here, not just for show but so that those in the house may know whether their water line is still intact or not. From the bowl it runs to a cistern below our feet: a good, deep reservoir so that even if foes find and cut the water the house may still stand a siege.’

  Phaedra looked around. It was not, in fact, wholly like the other courts she had known. For one thing, the colonnades ran along only three sides. The fourth was open, like the forecourt. Nothing but a chest-high wall stood between the floor of the court and a sheer drop down to the hillside below. For the second, it was irregular. The open side was the longest, admitting a wide view of the mountains around to Beyah herself. The far colonnade slanted back from a round platform at the end of the court to join the rear cloisters at a broad angle. And a great stone chair rose like a throne beside the fountain. There were steps up to it, and more carvings on it. Ulfin climbed up and seated himself.

  ‘This place was built by people of the Kingdom,’ he said. ‘In the last wave of conquest after Talifer took Tarceny they came here. They slaughtered the leaders of the hillmen and made the villages pay tribute. But they were too few. They needed help from the Kingdom, and the princes were busy with what they already held. Their leader sat here, waiting for months, years, but no help came. Now they are gone. And to my knowledge no man of the Kingdom has trodden here since, until Calyn and I found this place, a dozen years ago.’

  He was silent for a moment, looking out at the great panorama of mountains.

  ‘I shall come here when all is lost,’ he said.

  XVI

  The Place of White Stones

  ere, on this knuckle of the world, they idled through the days. Great birds drifted in their lazy circles, brown-backed when they flew below the level of the walls, and black against the sky above them. Ulfin had given over most of the goats at the village as a peace-offering, but they had kept a half-dozen for milk. There were small fruits from the bushes to eat, and game upon the hillside. The water from the spring was cold as melted snow.

  They put the guards to repairing the roofs that had decayed since Ulfin's last visit, to clearing nests from the gatehouse and stopping the holes of the tenacious mountain-rats where they had burrowed among the walls. Ambrose played with his pebbles in the courtyard, yelling at the silent mountains and covering himself with dust. Phaedra and Ulfin walked along the hillsides in the sun. It was cool up here, in this high air. She imagined that even in the summer it would be possible to walk out at midday. Nevertheless, they did not go far. In that tilted world no path ran level. It was an effort just to scramble a few hundred feet back up to the house of an evening, as the sun dipped towards the peaks and all the mountains fumed.

  On the third afternoon Ulfin led her from the gates and turned half-left, climbing the hillside in a direction they had not taken before. The way was steep and pathless, but clear of thorns. The house dropped away beneath them.

  At the crest Ulfin paused. Phaedra climbed up towards him, breathing heavily in the mountain air. He pointed silently to the range of peaks before them, sweeping up to the great shape of Beyah away to their right.

  ‘You can see why the hillmen say the world is a bowl, or cup,’ he said.

  ‘How did the mountain lose her child?’

  ‘In the village across the valley, it is part of their story about the beginning of the world. In others, they will say it was when the giants came.’

  ‘Giants?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘I can see why you come here, Ulfin.’

  ‘What has the Kingdom to this? Especially in summer, when the mountain air is cool. My brothers and I came here every year for five years, making friends with the hill-men and bringing them gifts as I have done this time. We climbed to this point often. We found what I will show you now.’

  He turned away from the view and faced the hillside. A wall of low scrub rose before them, from which a boulder of white rock stood tilted like a sentry asleep at his post. Taking her hand, Ulfin stepped into the bushes.

  ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘It quickly becomes steep.’

  For a moment she did not understand him. Then she saw him step downwards, felt his hand pulling, and realized that the scrub concealed not a rising hillside but a sudden drop. A space was opening before her as she followed him down among the thorn-roots. She was at the rim of a natural amphitheatre, some fifty yards across, facing up the valley towards the mass of Beyah, wreathed in cloud. The slopes were bare, and fell steeply from grey-coloured rock to brown. Ulfin had released her hand and was making his way carefully downwards. A perfectly circular pool of water lapped the cliff edges sixty feet below.

  ‘Place your feet with care,’ Ulfin said.

  Phaedra looked around her. You could see nothing beyond the rim of the bowl except the sky above and, opposite, where the cliff above the pool was much lower, the peak of Beyah. The rim was crowned with white and grey-white boulders, like the one they had passed – some straight, some shapeless, some leaning drunkenly Chance had not brought them there, scattering them at such even intervals along the bowl. Some vast workforce had laboured to bring them across these impossible hillsides – or down, perhaps, from the peak above – to stand like watchers around the rim.

  Even as she completed her careful descent she could feel the spell of it. There was barely a ripple on the face of the water, blue-grey under the sky. The brown cliffs climbed above her to their crown of white rocks. Something moved in her – as if long ago, in a dream of another life she had been in this place before. It fitted. Ulfin was crouching on a narrow shelf by the water, looking up at her. Perhaps he was expecting her to say something. Right at his knee there was a notch in the rock, a foot or more across. He saw her eyes fall on it, and smiled.

  ‘It is where the Cup was carved from,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘At least three hundred years ago. But it may be older still.’

  She did not feel surprised. The surface of the pool was smooth as a mirror in which the blue sky swam deep below. ‘Can you bathe?’ she asked.

  He shrugged, as though she had still not asked the right question, but might yet do so. ‘Of course – with care. There are a few yards of shallows, and then the bottom drops into nothing. I do not know how deep it is. It goes right to the heart of the mountain.’

  Phaedra looked at the opaque surface. Her skin crept a little at the thought of those sudden depths a few feet from her, unseen. It was warm by the edge of the pool, and her dress (rough, short-sleeved for the summer and short-skirted for the hills) was prickling with sweat. So she removed her sandals and felt her way outwards with her toes. The water was cold – even here in the shallows with the sun warming the rocks around it. It had a thick, filmy quality, and as she looked down at her feet she saw them as through a veil: blanched shapes upon the dark stone beneath her soles.

  She could feel Ulfin watching her.

  Abruptly she stooped and, gathering a double handful of water, flung it to her face. It splashed and cascaded and trickled down the inside of her dress in a shock of cold. She did it again, more gently. And again. After a while she felt her way outwards further, until the rock dipped beneath her feet and she could no longer see the bottom. She splashed herself again, and looked at the depths, and thought of flinging herself outwards and the deep cold enveloping her body. Her dress was soaked, and clung to her skin. There were bright droplets on her arm, winking in the sun. She looked round at Ulfin, and saw that he was watching her. He was half sitting, half kneeling by the edge of the pool, in his black doublet and hose, resting on one arm in a way that made her think of the lean muscles tensed beneath the cloth. He smiled, and she felt her blood move. She knew what he must be thinking.

  Slowly she turned, and began to pick her way back through the shallows. She drew herself from the edge of the pool, with the water clinging heavi
ly to her lower dress and pouring from its hem to the rocks. She retrieved her sandals, but did not put them on. Ulfin was waiting for her, not looking her way, stirring the surface of the pool with his hand. She began to step carefully around towards him.

  He had brought her to this place. It was a sanctuary for him; and therefore for her. Her skin had begun to tingle with the thought of his embrace. She looked down on him and smiled.

  He was not looking at her. He was watching the water, as if things were moving in it that she could not see. And when she thought he had finished, he stirred it again with his hand and muttered.

  ‘Ulfin,’ she said.

  He did not seem to hear.

  ‘Ulfin.’

  Again she thought he had not heard. Then he picked himself to his feet, straightened his doublet, looked at her and looked away again across the water.

  ‘Back to the house, I think,’ he said.

  She dropped her gaze. ‘I'm sorry,’ she said.

  She was surprised and hurt. And Ulfin was already moving, not back up the way they had come but on around the pool, clinging to the steep slope and clambering along the rocks. She sat and put on her sandals, watching him go. As ever, his progress was easy and precise, and yet, knowing him as she did, she sensed some unease or uncertainty about him, as if half his mind was on what he was doing and the other on some thought that was troubling him. After a moment she began to follow.

  The way around the pool was awkward, but no worse. Time had stripped rocks from the sheer cliffs, so that a thin apron of brown rubble lay at their feet and at the edge of the water. The far side was much lower than the cliff down which they had come, and sloped more easily. No doubt it was the way that Ulfin would normally have approached the pool, had he not wanted to show her the place from its most startling aspect. He was waiting at the top, either for her to catch up, or because he was turning some thought in his mind. He was standing by, and kicking lightly with his boot, a great grey-white monolith four or five times the size of the others, which had clearly fallen outward from its place and lay full length down the outer slope.

  ‘A good stroke,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  He looked up. ‘I am in the wrong place. There is nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He sighed. Then he shrugged. ‘It does not matter. Let us go and see if they are ready to start supper.’

  He turned left along the slope without waiting for an answer, although he must have known that it was an hour too early. Orani would only just have lit the fires.

  There was a path here of sorts, looping around the outer face of the rock shoulder on which the house stood. Like almost all the paths in these hills it was barely wide enough for a single foot, let alone for two people to walk abreast. It faded away in places, demanding all the walker's attention to keep from an ugly fall down the hillside, and ended in a rough scramble up a steep slope that brought them to a point below the back of the house, from which they could climb to the gate. When they reached the outer court Ulfin walked on, saying nothing, and disappeared on into the colonnades around the fountain court. Phaedra looked around for Ambrose, whom she had left playing in the dust, but he was not there. So she took herself over to the wall to sulk at the great view. She could hear voices in the house around her – calling this, saying that, laughing. She wanted to shut them out. She wanted to rail at the mountains that were failing her.

  After a while she stirred, and looked around. The first thing she saw was one of Ambrose's pebbles, wedged at the foot of the wall. There was another not far away. He must have lost or forgotten them. She began to pick them up absently.

  ‘Umbriel writes what has been given,’ she was saying to herself. ‘And why, and what else was given with it—’

  ‘Nooaw!’

  Ambrose had emerged from the shadow of the inner arch. He was standing unsteadily on his feet in the middle of the courtyard, watching her. She stopped, wondering what the matter was. He started to cry. Something was wrong.

  ‘Hush, my darling, I'm coming …’

  His wails became worse as she walked over to him – much worse. For a nightmarish moment it was as if her very approach was making him afraid, and yet she had no choice but to continue to walk over to him, to find out what the matter was. He held up his arm, not to be picked up, but for something else.

  ‘It's all right, my darling. I'm here. Have you lost Eridi? What is it, my darling …? No, I'm just picking them up so you don't lose them. Amba! Don't snatch! No, I'm picking them up, I said. Dear Angels, what is the matter?’

  He was prising at her fingers, crying ‘ No! No! No!’ at her. She had never seen him like this before. For a moment the world flipped over in her mind, like a coin spinning, so that suddenly she was the child looking at a world that was a red face and shouting, and something that was forbidden.

  He knew something. He understood something. What was it?

  ‘Amba! Let go! I said, let go!’

  Still he clung, and pulled, and cried to her. Now he had hooked his fingers into her palm to touch the white stone that she gripped there.

  All right, my darling. Please don't cry like that. Is this what you want? ‘There …’

  He took both of them, prising at her fingers to get the second one. Then he set out on his hands and knees for the wall. Phaedra watched him replace both stones more or less exactly where she had picked them up. Then he squatted down and began to play with the dirt by the wall as if nothing had happened. She realized her heart was working just a little harder than it had a right to. He had reacted so strongly and yet with so little cause …

  Something had been wrong, and he had had to replace the stones to make it right. What child's game had he been playing, that had been so real to him? He had not been just angry, or upset that his pattern had been spoilt. He had been afraid.

  She turned slowly, looking about her as if seeing the place where she was for the first time. She saw other white stones by the wall. There were more by the buildings, and in both gateways. They were all around the courtyard, in a ring.

  A ring. A ring that, a moment ago, she had broken.

  Now she was afraid too.

  She dreamed that she stood by a white stone, one of Ambrose's stones grown to the height of a sleeping sentry. She moved around it, and found that the rocky ground dipped into a pool in a bowl among the rugged hillsides. Opposite her a woman the size of a mountain sat and wept for a son lost at the beginning of the world. Phaedra began to climb down. Around her the shapes of stones rose like teeth against the sky, and one shaped like the white king of the chessboard lay fallen on the outer slope. She was close to the waterside, pausing over the surface and the impossible depth beneath it. Shadows moved on the far side of the pool. There was a smell that she knew, but had not noticed here before.

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’ she said to Ulfin. There was no answer.

  She was awake, and the bed beside her was empty.

  Her heart laboured. It was still night. She had no idea what time it was. She hauled herself to the rough stool by the side of the bed and sat there, waiting for the dull-brown fogs of sleep to clear from her mind. Ulfin was not in the room. He had gone out somewhere, at this time.

  Ulfin was gone. He had slept fitfully much of the night, muttering and turning, sitting up and staring at the darkness. When, sleepily, she had asked him what the matter was, he had muttered again and lain back down. Now he had disappeared. Something in the air of the dark room told her that the door was ajar.

  She crossed to it, and emerged barefoot in the colonnades of the fountain court. Orani lay, snorting lightly, on her pallet by the door. In the dimness Phaedra could see the black hulk of the throne rising with its back to her.

  For Ulfin it would have been a natural thing, if he had been bothered and could not sleep, to go out and brood there while the stars turned. Perhaps he had done so for a while. But she knew, as she picked her way round to the front
of it, that the chair would be as empty as it had been for centuries before he came.

  There was no moon. A quality in the night, perhaps the very blackness of the mountain shapes against the pale sky, told her dawn must be near.

  And now she was truly afraid. For if Ulfin could have gone nowhere far in the mountains at night, the presence of dawn opened numberless possibilities. I am in the wrong place. Where did he think the right place might be? Was he trying, even now, to get there? Twice before in their marriage he had risen like this and gone away to the war. Never before had he left without warning. And why so suddenly, if not to ensure that he could not be followed?

  For a moment she stood there, with her knees quivering in the air of the night and the stones of the court gritty beneath her bare feet. She thought of leaving Ulfin to disappear, to come back (if he would) that evening, or the next day, or – when? They had food, guards – surely he had not taken the guards. They could keep themselves here. And if need be they could return to Hayley unless for some reason the mountain folk were suddenly grown hostile.

  No. He was slipping beyond her reach. She did not know when he would return, and whenever it was might be too late. She must be quick.

  She hurried back to her door, pausing to give Orani a shake as she passed. In the room she found her clothes and shoes by feel, and threw them on. Orani was sitting bolt upright among her blankets when she emerged again.

  ‘Lady?’

  ‘Orani, my lord has gone out. I do not know where or for how long. It may be nothing. But I am going to follow him.’

  ‘Now, lady?’

  ‘It's nearly dawn. You are to stay here. If we return today, well and good. If not …’ She paused, thinking. ‘If not, you must go, at dawn tomorrow. This place is dangerous in ways I do not understand. You must make the men take you back to Hayley Massey will do it, if you tell him I asked it.’

  Orani was staring at her. Phaedra wondered how much she had understood. She did not have time to repeat herself. She spoke again more slowly.