Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  Those men who did not have work to do now sat around the place, telling stories, eating, and drinking beer. Many of them said the beer gave them dreams, visions, and insights into the will of Heaven, but Fergolin did not like the sour taste. He remembered now what Twig had been saying, and he looked at the gateways and shook his head.

  “I don’t understand you. The lines of sight are clear. The building is in the middle, the lines of sight are along the edge.”

  “Master.” Twig came closer, as if they had a secret between them he feared to let the others know. Tall and scrawny as his name suggested, his hair shaggy and black as his father’s, and his eyes like his father’s intense and black, he was like a wandering river, into which all knowledge poured, while Moloquin was the blasting of the wind, that strove ever to break down whatever stood before it.

  “Master,” said Twig now, and laid his hand on Fergolin’s shoulder. “Remember? We are going to see what we might see, if we look from that stone to that one, next midwinter.”

  He pointed out the diagonal between the North and the South Watchers. Fergolin shrugged. Unless they did something soon the northern stone would fall before the next Midwinter’s Day came.

  He said, “My boy, you said that, not I. For I have looked across them, and on the horizon there is nothing that might serve as another sighting point. Therefore it is not intended to be used so.”

  “But you said that I could try.”

  “We shall try.” Fergolin nodded, absently. He turned toward the gateways, frowning: would they indeed interfere with any sighting lines?

  On the platform, Ruak, his grey hair bound back in a twist of rope, was climbing across the beam, measuring it with rope, measuring it with himself. They had it nearly up to the top now; perhaps tomorrow, or the day after, they would put it in place.

  Then what? Would Moloquin be satisfied? Fergolin looked around him, remembering the place as it had been before. It was so different he had to struggle to recall it, the falling stones, the emptiness.

  He did not think Moloquin would end here. He knew Moloquin now; he doubted Moloquin would stop wanting more until the day came when he lay here on his back, with the crows pecking out his eyes.

  He turned to Twig again. “We shall stand on top of the stone, if we have to. If we have to, we shall get your father to build a platform that we can stand on.”

  Twig laughed at that, as Fergolin had meant him to, but his eyes were dreamy. He loved this lore. Fergolin put out his arm and drew the boy close to him.

  Ruak was calling, “Now! Up—up—” his voice rang out, a thin high call in the middle of the general jumble of talk. Fergolin started in that direction, to see what he might do to help. Twig left him, going back to the sighting stones. Then suddenly there was a rending crack of wood, and the snap of a log breaking.

  The men let up a loud moan, recognizing the sound of failure and more work, and all stood up to see. The crossbeam was sagging down at the end. The platform had broken under it. Ruak scrambled around on the top of it, roaring curses, and beating at the stones with his fists.

  “Here! Quickly—bring more wood—here!”

  The men got to their feet, casual, and some of them went to the heap of wood; some others drifted closer to the platform, where the crew who had been at work on it were climbing down and circling around to inspect the damage. Still Ruak perched on top of the stone, shouting at them to move faster. Fergolin went wide around the bottom of the stone, to see what had happened.

  Before he could make anything out of the tangle of crushed wood, there was another explosive crack, and the whole platform leaned over.

  Fergolin shouted, “Ruak!” He rushed forward, his arms out. On top of the stone, Ruak bounded sideways, trying to get out of the way of the falling beam, and for an instant, poised above the collapsing platform, the sliding, tumbling beam, it seemed he would leap free. His foot caught, on a rope, on the wood, on the stone itself. The platform caved in. The beam rolled sideways, gathering speed as it fell, and slid off the end of the platform and smashed to the ground, bringing Ruak down with it.

  A great gasp went up from the men. They rushed forward, packing together so tight none of them could reach Ruak. Fergolin fought his way through them. Just as he came to the front of the crowd, there was a scream from the few between him and the stone, and the whole mob surged backward. Ruak was dead.

  Fergolin stood where he was. The men backed away and left him alone there, alone with Ruak, who lay on the ground between the stone and the platform. His head was crushed. He had pitched forward onto the stone as he fell; in the side of his head was a deep dent, from which blood and brain was oozing.

  From the men behind Fergolin, now, a cry went up that seemed to come from deeper than their lungs. They whirled, and they ran away, out of the place of the dead, out past the embankment, out across the open plain.

  Fergolin alone did not move, although he trembled in the presence of death. He stood looking down at the dead man, and even now in his ears he thought he heard Ruak’s voice calling orders, calling for help. It was impossible that a power as strong as Ruak’s life had been swept away so quickly.

  Yet it was. Kneeling cautiously by the body, Fergolin touched Ruak’s hand, and felt the cold, flaccid texture of the flesh. The spirit was gone utterly. Perhaps, here at the foot of the way to Heaven, it had vanished into the Overworld at the instant that its body failed.

  Fergolin shrank back. In a sudden intense passage of thought, he saw that this had been inevitable. The Pillar of the Sky had been waiting here, all its power disarranged, all its formidable might trampled over by little men, until at last they had tripped, and the place had closed around them, crushing Ruak in the very instant he had thought himself the master here. It was a warning, and a message. Only a fool would deny that message. Fergolin turned and ran away, ran as fast as he could, down through the gap in the embankment, away through the high grass, away after the other men, already small figures in the distance.

  Later, much later, Fergolin came back.

  He left Twig behind. The boy begged and argued and finally shouted at him in fury, wanting to come, but Fergolin in his terror would not expose the youth he loved to any danger, and with an uncharacteristic harshness he commanded Twig to stay where he was. Alone, Fergolin walked up the long gradual slope to the Pillar of the Sky.

  He brought his mask. He knew in his soul that the mask would not protect him against the crushing power of the Pillar of the Sky but he needed courage, and the mask with its ways of access to his ancestors gave him courage. When he came to the edge of the embankment, he stopped and put it on.

  Trembling, he invaded the sacred precinct.

  Nothing had changed. There at the center the gateways stood, massive, enormous, rising above the detritus of their building like some supernatural being bursting from its shell. He stood a long moment looking up at them. Even in his fear, he raised his eyes to the stones against the sky and was proud.

  He thought, even as he was proud, that it was the builders’ pride that had brought on them the blows of Heaven. When the first Gateway appeared, had he, Fergolin, not then imagined that men were free forever, to do whatever they pleased? The Pillar of the Sky had struck them down for their impudence.

  He moved wide around the gateways. It was not the enormous gateways that drew him here. It was the leaning pointer stone that had called him back into this place of death.

  Facing this one stone, his back to the pile at the center, he could control his mind. He knelt down before the stone and in a quiet voice explained that he meant to help it—in time he hoped to set it erect again. He took off his mask and laid it down before the stone, and he went back to the litter around the gateways to find wood to support the falling weight.

  As soon as he faced the gateways again his fear returned, his sense of imminent disaster. He had to force his legs to move. A
s he trudged closer, a great mass of flapping black crows suddenly hurtled up into the air with a raucous cawing and croaking that sent him to his hands and knees and turned his skin to a cold rough shell.

  Ruak. He got up and went closer, trembling.

  The master of the stones still lay where he had fallen, one arm splayed across the beam that had killed him. The crows had been at him. Much of his flesh was gone, the bones exposed. When Fergolin saw him, their common work, their days together, the words spoken each to the other all flooded back into his mind; he forgot about the malevolent power standing all around him, and went forward to Ruak and wept over him. He gathered up whatever green things he could find, mostly grass, and spread it over Ruak’s body.

  When he had done what he could, he became suddenly aware of another presence behind him. He shivered and twisted to see over his shoulder.

  It was Moloquin who stood there, watching him.

  “Ho.” Fergolin stood up, his stomach queasy. He had not heard of the chief’s return from the Forest Village. He made a gesture of respect and bowed his head.

  Moloquin stepped forward. Obviously he had just returned from his journey; probably in the village they had babbled out the news to him, and he had come straight here, to his real home. Over his shoulders he wore a bearskin coat and he carried his bronze axe in his belt. He reached the poor thinly veiled corpse and knelt down, brushed the grass away, and touched the crow-eaten face of Ruak with his hand.

  “Old man,” he murmured, “old man, you should have waited for me.” With his fingers he restored the covering of grass to the ruined flesh.

  Fergolin said, “What is to be done now, Opa-Moloquin?”

  Moloquin stood up, raising his head, and looked calmly all around him. He never answered Fergolin’s question. He said, “What are you doing here, Opa-Fergolin? Are you not as frightened as the rest? They tell me they will never come here again.”

  “I would not, Opa-Moloquin-on, because I am very frightened, but the stone there—” he pointed to the leaning stone on the edge of the precinct. “It must be set right again.”

  As he said that, he realized suddenly that the collapse of the North Watcher had been a warning, a sign they should all have read, that the swirling forces at the center of this place were gathering to strike. He put his hands to his face, overwhelmed.

  Moloquin said, “Come show me.”

  Fergolin stumbled after him across the trampled grass. “Perhaps we ought not to touch it. Perhaps we ought never to come near this place again. Opa-Moloquin, I feel we are at the edge of something men ought never to go near. The Mill is turning—”

  “The Mill is always turning,” Moloquin said. He reached the tilting stone and pushed on it, as if he might heave it back upright by himself. “Come, let us dig out the hole a little more, and let it come down entirely; then we can set it up again.”

  Fergolin licked his lips. “I—you and I alone?”

  “We have some help,” Moloquin said, and shouted, “Twig!”

  At the shout, the boy came bounding up over the earthworks and down into the Pillar of the Sky, his limbs as smooth and supple as the stones were unyielding. Fergolin wheeled toward Moloquin.

  “Why did you bring him? He ought not to be here!”

  Moloquin smiled at him; there was something cold and ugly in the smile. “Is he not my son, Fergolin?” He knelt down before the toppling stone, digging away at its foot. “His heart is here. He belongs here.”

  Fergolin could not move for a moment; his mind seethed with cross-flowing feelings. He loved Twig; and Moloquin had never seemed to notice him. Now as lightly as the passing moment Moloquin had claimed him away from the one who cherished him. And Twig accepted it. Flinging himself down beside his father, digging with much energy at the ground, he poured his excited talk into Moloquin’s ear even as before he would have given his mind to Fergolin.

  The Bear Skull master said, unnecessarily loudly, “I will get some wood.” On legs like slabs of wood, he walked back into the center of the place, to pick up logs, to rest the stone upon.

  All that day, Moloquin and Fergolin and the boy Twig worked at the Watcher, digging out the earth around its foot until they reached the chalk below. No one came from the village to help them. The workmen who lived in the roundhouse just beyond the embankment had returned, but only long enough to pack up their belongings. They were going home, to Shateel’s Village.

  With an antler pick, Moloquin broke away the chalk at the foot of the North Watcher and the stone tipped even more. They threw rope around it, pried at it with sticks, and eventually managed to push the stone over completely onto its side.

  Fergolin sat down beside it, his hands on it. He kept his back ever to the gateways at the center of the place. Moloquin watched him closely. Fergolin was at the root of his plans; if Fergolin’s heart had dried up, then there was no hope of ever finishing the work at the Pillar of the Sky. But it seemed to Moloquin that Fergolin’s passion still flowed; only his fear turned it away from the real work, away to this other stone, to this Watcher.

  Now Fergolin said, “It is rough, this stone. I will make it smoother.” He rose, and with his head bowed a little, so that he did not have to see the upthrusting gateways, he went in among the piles of stone and wood and tools to find a maul.

  Twig got up from the ground where he had been inspecting the hole, and stood beside Moloquin. “Will he let me help him?”

  Moloquin nodded once.

  “How will we raise it again, if the other men will not come back?”

  Moloquin said, “I don’t know, little one.”

  “I’m not little anymore,” Twig said.

  Moloquin had been watching Fergolin, but now he turned toward the boy beside him. “Will you run away, too,” he said, “when the place shows its true nature once again?”

  “I won’t,” said Twig, and stood up straight. “I promise.”

  Moloquin smiled at him; he could hear, beyond the embankment, the men of Shateel’s Village leaving for their homes. He touched the boy’s shoulder.

  “Help Fergolin,” he said, and stayed there long enough to see the two of them at work on the stone, pounding and pounding at the surface to smooth it. Then Moloquin went down to the New Village.

  Moloquin had thought that Ladon was long since left behind, but now he heard that voice in his ear again, that laughter in his ear.

  You are my son. See how you have failed, just as I did? You are my son, my woefully begotten, cast-off, unwanted son!

  In the New Village, where the men sat in little groups talking, holding their masks before them, he went from one to the next, listening to them more than he himself spoke. They poured their fears out, they spoke of seeing Ruak fall, even those who could not have seen anything now believed that they had seen Ruak fall, that the Pillar of the Sky had quaked beneath him and brought him down. They said there had been a giant voice, like thunder, from the sky, speaking in words they had not understood. They said they would never go back again.

  Moloquin squatted before them, listening, his eyes on their masks. They held the masks before them as they spoke, as if their voices could be made larger in the mouth of the mask, and when they had done talking to him they set the masks down and gave them a little food to eat. By this he knew how frightened they were.

  That night, he sat in the center of the roundhouse and heard them murmuring in the darkness, heard the rustle of their movements in the darkness, and his mind was downcast and bitter, and the voice of Ladon spoke ever in his ear.

  Wahela came to him. She sat behind him and preened him, combing his hair, and stroking his shoulders and his ears.

  She said, “Will we go to the Gathering, now?”

  “The Gathering,” he said. He had given no thought at all to anything except the Pillar of the Sky; the Gathering seemed of no importance at all.

 
“You should go to the Gathering,” she said. She touched his cheek with her hand, drawing his hair back, twining her fingers in the curls. He loved to be touched, and she knew it; as she caressed him her voice fell to a soft and tender murmur.

  “You should go to the Gathering. All those people have mocked you, now you must go and make them submit. Now that—”

  She stopped, wise enough now, after many encounters, not to tell him he had failed at the Pillar of the Sky. He leaned his head back against her shoulder, listening to her, and in this new quiet of his mind something unlooked-for stirred.

  “The northern villages have never given you the respect you deserve,” she said. “Go to the Gathering, show yourself, make them kneel down to you, Moloquin. If you are the chief, be chief of all the People.”

  He said nothing, but in the stirring of his mind an idea formed.

  Her hands brushed the sides of his face. “I hate those northern people. You should hear how they talk about us—they laugh at us. It’s time they learned to respect us. You have to make them respect us, Moloquin.”

  He turned his head toward her, his face against her breast. She had borne him another son in the spring, but the baby had died after only a few days; since then she had seemed hungry, unsatisfied, her sexual passion more a longing than a lusting. He pressed his face against her breast and shut his eyes.

  “Moloquin,” she murmured. Her hands moved down over his body. He turned to her, his arms out, and gathered her in.

  In the morning he went out to the yard of the roundhouse where the men were sitting, and he went from one group to the next.

  He said, “We must finish the Gateway where Ruak died. We cannot leave it open like that—the hole in the place will let through evil enough to sweep us all away.”

  “If we go near it again, it will devour us,” they said.

  He said, patiently, “If we fix it, make it whole and one, the power there will protect us.”

  “We are afraid. We will stay here. Find someone else.”

  He used the old argument that had worked before: “When you were starving, I fed you. I did not ask then for any help. I carried you all on my back. Now I need your help.”