Dore did not know what to do. The remaining Seduevii had grouped themselves around him, chanting his name mournfully. Those who had not fled continued to fight, wanting to win a place in their vapid paradise.
"Remember how we promised our women," said one man boldly, "how we laughed at our dinner tables and vowed to whip these mongrel savages. Now is the time to make good that oath. Even while we die our daughters and mothers are suffering. Now, only now those black pigs are doing our lambs. And unless we make some sort of fight, who is to say that they are not doing better for our wives?"
Others voiced their proud thoughts, and were unmercifully slain. "Now," said Dore, trying to make their final minutes seem meaningful, "while your weary arms fall to leave you without defense, as your sturdy hearts prepare to shelter cold steel and quit forever their vibrant task, listen to me. Death is for you a kind of glory, though your eyes burn and your heads buzz too much for credulity. I want to thank you, and I want you to know it's been a privilege being here with you today." Soon the last of the Seduevii had been dispatched, and Dore stood alone on the right bank. The Nomitians waved to him as they passed on their way to their spoils.
Dore sat down on a large rock by the side of the water. He looked at the sword in his hand, covered with gore. He spat in disgust and threw the weapon into the stream. Then he rose and turned his back on the mounds of corpses, and headed back upstream. He saw two legs hanging down from the ridge some yards ahead of him, and he wondered if it were a survivor of the Seduevii or a Nomitian deserter. It was neither. It was Glorian.
"An admirable job, Dore. Fine, fine. You acted with honor." Dore just stared angrily.
"Another test? Did you learn something more about me?" he asked at last.
"Why, yes, my friend. You are a bundle of wonders."
"How are you going to thank Porcellus Tarvin for his help?" asked Dore bitterly.
"Don't overreact, Dore. Life and death. Good and bad. Come on, we have to get going. The rain is starting."
There are about fifteen people sitting on the stairs, looking like fans at a ball game. There has not been a sound for several minutes. They realize I have ended the battle, and now they break into applause. I feel triumphant. I have turned a real success, and the Benevolent Party will just have to do without me.
"That was really neat, Seyt," says Jelt, and I smile and thank him. I am tired, and Dore has much thinking to do. He is sick of his journey already, and wondering about the true meaning of his self-investment. What sanctified reasons could Our Mother have had for asking his death? Why did we listen to her then, when we spent so much effort to overlook her inventions before? How could we have accepted Tere's plan so quickly? Dore will leave that hateful little brook and cleanse his thoughts among his beloved trees. He and I will go upstairs to rest and discuss these questions.
PART TWO
His Mind, Ever Quick to Perceive
Chapter Five
In the Hall of the Mountain Thing
He was only a filthy peasant. His rags were crusted with the corruption of years of use, and his hair matted with the foulness of his existence. He lived to be avoided, to be struck down into the mud, to be cursed and vilified. He labored, fevered and flecked with pain, in his tiny field of violet bushes.
His name was Vasmahli Odrucajnek. Through the grace and favor of the Baron Riy he was allowed to pass fifty years of life in perpetual toil. The stony ground allowed him a meager portion of its fruits, and the worthy Baron permitted him to keep a quarter of these. Without resentment, without love, without hope, the skeleton of Odrucajnek pricked the soil.
He had a wife and six children. He despised each of them with the only passion that he knew. The noxious dark-green sky was too low, the arrogant land too hard for him to love; the spiteful members of his family were too demanding for him to do anything other than hate. Three of his children had taken their own wives and husbands, silently snapping the worn, uncherished family ties. The others could starve in their lazy apathy if they so desired.
His back would not bend and his arms shook as he filled the baskets with the bright blue beans. His wife would soak them for days to make the bitter tea that sustained them. Most of the beans, however, would be traded for other foods; the tough brown roots that were gnawed like bones; the hard, pealike vegetables that were boiled; and dark, gritty flour to make bread.
Odrucajnek thought of his family. His baby would be on the floor, crying. The other two brats were probably sitting in a corner, their dull faces holding back their tears of frustration and hunger. And his wife would be entertaining a neighbor, wealthier and still appreciative of her clumsy favors. There was nothing, nothing at all to return to, but Odrucajnek was too tired to die.
At sunset, with the wind riding down on him from the distant northern mountains, he walked back to his hovel with his load of beans. The last pink and gray flickers of the feeble sun had barely vanished when a rain began to fall. It rained methodically, the wind dying completely rather than disturb the strictly vertical drop of the water. The rain was cold, and he was thoroughly drenched by the time he reached his hut. No one acknowledged his return, and he ate his poor meal in solitude by the smoking fire.
The task of eating proved too much for his weary body. Odrucajnek threw the wooden plate to the ground and limped to the low bed. The mattress was a torn bag stuffed with straw and crawling with a variety of parasitic vermin. He lay down, not bothering to remove his damp rags, and he began to cough. The fit kept him in agony for a while, as it did every night, but soon he propped up his head and spat. He sighed deeply and fell back down, and was soon asleep.
The nights usually passed quickly, dreamlessly. This night, however, Odrucajnek dreamed uneasily of vague landscapes, and of falling and loud noises. With a start he opened his eyes. The dim light from the fire's expiring flame showed him in shadowed outlines the room he knew and loathed so well. His family was gathered together in the darkness about ten feet from the bed. Soresklya, his wife, crouched in the dirt, her hands covering her mouth as she whimpered in terror. The baby was screaming but neglected. The two older children had gathered stones and were beginning to throw them.
As the clinging webs of sleep blew from his mind he learned why. He was growing. He was twenty, twenty-five, thirty feet tall! With one huge fist he smashed the cabin's wall into splinters. His wondering was broken by a stone hitting his chest. He squinted down into the half-light at his feet. He lashed out, and his already forgotten family was crushed lifeless against the ground, their limbs twisted and their bones powdered. He blasted the remnants of his miserable home with his fingers, grinding all that remained of his past into the derisive earth.
He was fifty feet tall, he was a hundred feet tall! With a scuff of his toe he removed the bluebean fields. He popped the homes of the neighboring serfs apart like so much wet cardboard. In the cloudy blackness he strode toward the mountains. He recognized the fortified palace of his Baron. He got down on his knees and learned that his body didn't pain him any longer. He laughed and laughed and with one grimy thumb ruined Lodejpo Riy's hopes for the ermine and crown of King.
He was a quarter, a half mile high! He thundered the ground as he waded among the hills. He was two, five, eight miles high! The mountains disappeared beneath the waves of gray-green thunderheads. Lightnings hissed out at him, rolling booms of sound followed and he laughed.
He grew. His ponderous weight collapsed the straining layers of rock on which he walked. Once he fell, laughing and shouting, screaming through the wind to the ground out of sight miles below his eyes. Lying there with one arm in the sea, he roared even louder. He grabbed up handfuls of rock and forest and city and flung them about. After a while he quieted, and at last resumed his interrupted night's sleep.
The sun woke him. His eyes opened and were startled by the huge ball of flame hanging in space, seemingly within arm's reach. He himself floated about, swimming in the void. His notion of the universe, his flat world surrounded by tin
y and useless stars, was forgotten with ease lent of madness. He did not doubt that the yellow-green ball turning before his face was his own former home. He flicked the small, hurtling moons away and held his planet in the palm of one dirty hand. A forefinger probed, vainly seeking the fields, the huts, the scenes of his lifelong torment. With a snarl that was more than half sob he clapped the injured world to dust. He continued growing.
He was unaware of time, and space was beginning to mean as little. The great, heaving sun was as big as a basket when he reached for it. He pulled it apart, separating it into tiny pieces as he would a used cooking fire. The fusing gases failed to harm his scabrous hands. He threw the parts of the star away and killed it.
He turned his attention to the farther stars, unwinking, staring in fright, like pinpoints of light slipping through a satin cape of perfect blackness. He reached, but they were yet too distant. He raged and screamed and stretched his naked arms, and in a while he was among them. The wheeling stars, once so proud in their random formations, sailing like some mighty fleet on boundless seas, trembled as he came among them. They were fireflies; they were gnats and mosquitoes, and he swatted them from his neck and wrists, brushing them away and slapping them dead.
His musty beard floated light-years from his cankered nose. Dusty callused feet trailed behind him at an unimaginable distance. He smiled when he saw the double spiral of a galaxy. His lined and leathery cheeks puffed out, and he blew, wanting to make the pinwheel spin. Instead, the millions of burning suns whished away, soundlessly, like smoke. He was sorry he had ruined the pin-wheel and he put out his hands and grabbed the galaxy, squeezing the worlds and suns together like a lump of clay. Hundreds of exploding stars spilled from his hands: sand running through the fingers of a playful child.
The slowly turning galaxies were all about him now. They moved proudly, slowly, hanging in the dark and huddling into themselves against the cold of space. He came among them. He laughed at them, but they paid no heed. He questioned them, he threatened them. He plucked them from their places and dashed them together, or put them on himself, decorating his hair and beard.
He came to the wall. It was huge, extending up and down and away in all directions further than he could see. He stared at it quietly for a short time, feeling again his relative smallness. The wall was made of dark-stained planks of wood, laid in rows with gray, flathead nails; he hit the boards with his fists until his hands were scraped and bloody. He cried. He had stopped growing.
A monster of night descended, eclipsing great swaths of stars and space as it drew nearer. The gigantic black arm reached down and scooped him up. A gleaming copper band was on its wrist, brighter than all the swirling, faltering stars. Odrucajnek kicked at the ebony pillar fingers and he tore at the glistening black palm.
Another immense arm appeared, as terribly white as the other was perfect black. The white fingers bore heavy silver rings; they probed at Odrucajnek's cringing form. The two hands held him trapped, and they closed about him so that he was left in absolute darkness.
He was lifted out of space and deposited on a sheet, blindingly white and clean, which seemed to extend beyond the limits of his vision. Once more, sobbing and cursing, he fell asleep.
When he awoke it was as if he had been reborn. He could remember neither his name nor his pathetic former life. He could not recall the world upon which he passed so many fruitless years or his starlit cosmic adventure. He made no attempt to remember these things.
At the foot of the bed had been placed a suit of clothes. He put on the deep-blue silk shirt and kneebreeches, and they touched his new body with all the gentleness of womankind. On his feet he wound the clean linen cross-gartered stockings, and laced the sandals to his knees. Finally, he slipped on a sleeveless robe of white and gold.
A mirror was set into one of the walls of the chamber, and he studied his unfamiliar reflection closely. His neatly cut black hair, handsome features, and smartly trimmed beard gave him an image of dignified authority. His clothing and his young, powerful body magnified the impression of quiet strength. He gave a brief nod of satisfaction and went out in search of breakfast.
Or so he said. To tell the truth, the story seems a little unlikely. I wouldn't be inclined to believe it without proof.
He stood at the mouth of the cave, yawning into the morning mists. From halfway up his hill he could look out over the green ocean of the forest. The sun had climbed over all but the tallest trees, and burned a pale disc behind the clouds.
The goats stirred uncomfortably in the damp air, anxious to be led out to the sweet grass of the hillside. A few came to stand beside him, nudging him familiarly; these were the first of the herd to shake off the night's drowsiness. They were also the first to hear Dore, as he crashed through the underbrush at the very foot of the hill.
Dore's face was ripped by the low branches, and his arms stung from forcing a path through the climbing briars. The forest had grown wilder as it grew denser, until now it bore little resemblance to the brighter woods that he had known nearer our house. He lost his sense of responsibility to the younger trees and delicate growths of the forest floor. "Well, enough of this!" he said in a surge of frustration, kicking a clear way through a stand of sapling losperns.
It's certainly easy to sympathize. After traveling as long as he had, and going through what he had experienced, I surely wouldn't be too concerned about the bad karma from trampling a few lousy little plants. It has always seemed to us that Dore could hear the minute cries of even the smallest damaged branches and wounded stems; but after a while your empathic powers must get overloaded. No one of us would have met such exquisite tortures as our sacred brother.
"Our sacred brother?" I hear you ask. Yes, let me speak to that for a moment. It was about this time, by my own made-up chronology, that our sister Ateichál began a series of sermons on our obligation to Dore, and the impossibility of ever fulfilling it. At first they were only the postscript to the monthly devotional services; we had always made our obeisance to the River on the Eve of No Moons, and ritually included a prayer for the well-being of Our Father. Lately, of course, we also prayed for and to the spirit of Our Mother. But it was Ateichál's bright idea to include a few short words for Dore's sake. Now we have the prospect of a religious war on our hands, with the attendant proliferation of "heresies" and two separate but equal inquisitions.
We tread on unsure ground, theologically. The doctrines are still in the malleable state; what eventually evolves from them will owe its existence not to pre-eminent merit, but to the shrewdness of the compromises made by the factions. But at least we have an idea of who's on which side; a certain spryness is required in answering all but the most innocent questions, but we know in which direction to exercise that agility. Pity poor Dore, if you haven't before now. (Could I have failed to arouse that much sympathy? Have I failed my assignment already? Then what is keeping your interest? If you want a better picture of Melithiel, you lose, I'm afraid.) He is totally at sea; he is wandering in a wilderness of ethical entanglements, and he has only his irony-tinged faith to guide him past the fanatics intent only on his destruction.
He did not see the giant until the latter looed to him. Dore was battling his way through the thinning trees at the edge of the giant's clearing when a thunderous deep voice splintered the early peacefulness.
"Loo," it went.
"All right," said Dore, gazing up startled at the giant on the mountain. "Okay, I'm coming."
"Loooo!" roared the giant.
Dore stood on the verge of a forest, staring at the man with the goats at the mouth of a cave. The man was dressed in rags; his hair and bushy beard indicated that he had been living close to the earth for a very long time. He was a giant in stature, and a giant in aroma, even upwind. He stood about fifteen feet tall, and his mighty frame was awesome to behold. He wore tarnished metal bands around his biceps, and a huge club hung from his girdle.
Lalichë is reading this as I write; she suggests
that I am subconsciously introducing an overtly phallic symbol here. I don't think so. For me to have Dore meet and overcome a symbol of his masculinity would be to metaphorically castrate our sacred brother. We wouldn't want Ateichál to read that; she always dug Dore's body. (Now Lalichë implies that the symbol is of my putative virility, not Dore's. A lot she knows, five years old.)
Our Father was a giant in his day as well, so it may be that I am drawing on his description here. Of course, that may be a worse departure from orthodox thought. But who is to say? ("Tere, for one," says my little sister, giggling.) What sort of quest would it be if Dore were to meet only puny threats that stood in his way armed with beanbags? To be of any worth Dore must contend with honest dangers. A giant's as good as any. At least I think so. Giants have lots of historic precedent in quest tales.
Our Father was a giant in his day as a result of his wide assortment of menial jobs. Because of Our Parents' financial naïveté, Our Father was forced to take on any number of laborious tasks, none as heroic as those of Hercules but every bit as tiresome. We are told of his employment as a loader of trucks, piling by hand huge cartons of Baton's Corrasable Bond into vans for delivery. Various sorts of mechanical devices could have done the job in shorter time, but the courts of law that sentenced Our Father and found him this employment felt that the physical labor might be of rehabilitative effect.
Rehabilitated from and for what? Our Father was unfairly judged, of course, but never did he complain. The august body that decreed his guilt commanded his allegiance, and in his innocent patriotism he could not see the logical fallacy upon which the system was based. He did his work efficiently, and his overseers were envious. The stripes he earned from his boss's cat were more to slow him down than anything else. Our Father still worked, however; see him: sweating through the long, hot days, singing his mournful work chants as he loaded the typing paper onto the trucks. That is my image of manhood; not, as Lalichë would have me admit, some mythical grotesquerie or the gross symbol hanging from the monster's belt. (Now she tells me not to be ashamed of my inner urgings. Get out of here; you must flee, my sister, before another of those urgings forces from you the last gasp of mortal life.)
What Entropy Means to Me Page 8
