by Maurice Gee
‘That was for Soona. And my wife.’
Limpy shouted, ‘They’re stopping.’ The warboat threw about.
‘They will put men ashore in boats,’ Kenno said. ‘We must go through quickly.’
The rocky walls of the channel were speeding by. Susan went on deck. Cross-bow bolts bristled everywhere. She saw holes in the sails where they had gone through. Kenno and Jimmy threw the hatch-covers overboard. Behind, the warboat closed the end of Deadman‘s Channel like a door. Priests swarmed down rope ladders into boats. But the trimaran raced on, with its outside hulls almost clipping the rocks. The wind rushed down the channel and lifted it through, and they burst into the open, into a widening lake, with cliffs towering round it. On the other side was a shorter channel to the open sea.
‘We go through there,’ Kenno said. ‘But the Gut is outside. We must go round the edge and hope it doesn’t suck us down.’
The boat raced over the lake. Kenno broke out another sail. The greater their speed the better chance they had of passing the whirlpool. But the strange colour of the rocks caught Susan’s eye, and she saw they were thickly overgrown with the yellow weed used as food by the Seafolk. She watched closely and saw movements in the rocks. Then Limpy shouted, and she had no more time. They were at the exit, and a hissing, a hollow booming from outside, told them what they must face now.
They sped under cliffs and saw the Gut. And Susan knew at once they had no chance. The whirlpool was worse than anything she could have imagined. The speed of it, the smoothness, horrified her as much as the size. It was as wide as a football field, and sloped in steeply. Cliffs of water raced down and out of sight. It looked as if it should roar, but it only hissed and boomed. And over beyond a black reef, a kilometre away, a mountainous yellow bubbling in the sea showed where the stolen water burst up again from the sea floor.
Kenno shook his head. She had trusted him. He was square, grizzled, sure. But he seemed to shrink. And Limpy, at the tiller, seemed a dwarf. Even Ben was no more than a toy, and Jimmy a ragged old man who should be somewhere else, digging a garden.
Limpy pointed the boat at the cliffs where a road of water led along the edge of the whirlpool. The hull scraped the rocks, he kept her as far clear of the Gut as he could, and they sped along in a storm of wind. But already a steady tugging had begun, a gravitational pull, and the boat began to lean and curve away from the face of the cliff.
Jimmy came back to Susan. ‘We’re not going to make it.’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry, Susie. It don’t matter so much fer me and Ben. We’re old, we’ve had our fun. But you young ones is startin’ out.’ He gave a laugh. ‘What we need now is Nick and them Birdfolk.’
The boat passed the side of the Gut and reached the place where it must break free and head out into the open sea. The wind roared and tugged, Limpy leaned on the tiller. But nothing helped, the pull was too great, and the boat curved round, crossed the front edge of the funnel, and leaned in towards the yellow rocks at the foot of the opposing cliffs. And Susan stared. The yellow rocks! The movement! She saw it again. The rearing up of an inquisitive head. She had a wild hope.
She ran to the rail of the boat, she grasped it with her hands, and leaned over the green racing sea.
‘Seafolk,’ she screamed. ‘Help us! I am Susan Ferris. Help us again.’
Chapter Eight
Soona
‘Susan’s cry was no stronger than a seabird’s call. Yet the rocks were suddenly alive with seals. They slithered down and slid into the water and a moment later, as the boat sped on, their heads appeared along the waterline, and the rippling iridescence of their bodies made a shining carpet deeper down. They kept pace easily, and one, with head raised higher than the rest, called in a voice at once melodious and painful, ‘It does not matter who you are. We help all those hunted by the priests.’
‘Can you save our boat?’ Kenno cried.
‘No. You must jump when I say. Do not swim, we will swim for you. But the Varg can save himself.’
The boat curved back to its starting point, and Susan glimpsed priests scrambling along the sides of the channel on the other side of the lake. Then the boat was racing on the water road along the side of the whirlpool, but leaning further in, sliding deeper into the funnel. The seals kept pace, on its outer side. They went across the seaward edge and the yellow rocks came in sight, over a lip of water.
‘Now,’ cried the seal. ‘Jump!’
‘Off you go, Susie,’ Jimmy said. He and Kenno took her arms and legs and flung her far out over the side. As she turned in the air she saw Ben diving, and Limpy rushing from his tiller. Then she struck the water and it jerked her like a hand, tumbling her along in a flurry of spray. But she felt something under her, lifting, checking her rush, and she grabbed at it and felt her hands sliding on the slick skin of a seal. She felt others, two, three, buoying her up, running her across the pull of the whirlpool. She was on a raft of seals angling out towards the yellow rocks. She could not see Jimmy or Kenno or Limpy, but Ben surfaced ahead, and swam powerfully, and she knew he would not be saving himself unless Jimmy was safe.
The force of the water fell away and soon they were in the rocks. The seals slid out from under her, letting her scramble up by herself. Ben went ahead, and Limpy was at her side. She heard Kenno grunting and Jimmy cursing, and knew they were safe.
‘Further up. Hide in the rocks. Priests are coming,’ a seal voice said. They scrambled up out of the sodden weed and crouched out of sight among dry boulders. The seals hid themselves, they slid into crevices, became as still as the rocks. From her hiding place Susan looked across the Gut. The boat was deep in it. Only the top half of the sails showed, flapping wildly, making it seem the wings were struggling to fly. One more turn and it was gone. She saw priests appear at the exit from the lake. They stood high on rocks, hauled themselves up the cliff, for a better view down the slope of the whirlpool. A crunching, a snapping of timber, came from deep in the Gut. The priests made no sign.
‘Wait,’ whispered a seal close to Susan. She saw he was looking at the mound of water beyond the reef and she watched too. A long time passed. Then pieces of timber, fractured planks, reared up in the mound and bubbled there. She heard a faint shout from the priests and saw them rattling their Ferris bones. Then they turned and ran back towards the lake.
‘They think we’re dead,’ Limpy whispered.
‘We should be dead,’ Kenno said. ‘I’ll never try the Gut again.’
‘It’s like goin’ down a plughole,’ Jimmy said. ‘You got some pretty handy mates, young Susie.’
Susan turned to the seal. ‘Island Lover saved me a hundred turns ago. Now you have saved me and my friends.’
‘Are you really Susan Ferris?’
‘Yes. I’ve come to end the Temple.’
‘If you can do that you will have our thanks. The priests hunt us. The clothes they wear are made from our skins. There are not many of us left now, Susan.’
Susan felt she could not bear the gaze of those sad brown eyes. ‘And they call themselves my priests,’ she said.
‘How will you destroy them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It must be done. Soon there will be no Seafolk. No Woodlanders. Only the Temple. Only the High Priest and his humans. And most of them will be slaves.’
Kenno stepped forward. ‘We will not be slaves. The time of the Temple is ending. Everywhere people know the teaching is a lie.’
‘Yet the priests are strong. You will not overthrow them easily.’ The seal looked at them sadly, letting his eyes go from each to each. ‘We cannot help you. But if you return to the sea, call on us.’
They filed along through the rocks and left the booming of the Gut behind. The Seafolk came with them round the headland and showed them the way to go. Ahead, the cliffs flattened out and a wide sea-marsh ran back towards the wall of Sheercliff. A pale mist lay on it, a salty exhalation that seemed to stir thinly in a breeze from th
e sea.
‘You must go into the swamp,’ the seal said. ‘We do not know what lies beyond.’
‘The Temple,’ Kenno said. ‘We will go there.’
They left the Seafolk in the rocks and walked along a beach that slowly changed from sand to mud. Kenno believed Sheercliff was only a day’s travelling away. They would have to spend a night in the swamp, but the next morning would bring them to the Temple. The swamp would be dangerous, he said. There were bogs and poisonous insects. But at least they would not be hunted by priests.
‘Ole Ben will get us round the bogs,’ Jimmy said. ‘Bears ’ave got a nose for that sort of thing.’
And Limpy told them grub-weed rubbed on their skins would stop insects biting. The only problem was food. So they went back to the rocks and collected shellfish and a supply of weed. Then they struck out east into the swamp, crossing flats where the rising water bubbled in crab holes and washed into the roots of salty rushes. But soon they got ahead of the water and padded along on dry ground that sank and rose elastically, as though hollow worlds lay underneath. This gave way in mid-afternoon to real swamp – boggy holes, rush pools, stretches of marsh-weed swimming in peaty water. They moved in a small circular world where the boundaries faded away in mist. Limpy had found grub-weed and its juice kept insects off. Ben, leading carefully, testing the ground, twice killed snakes with a blow of his paw. At dusk he found higher ground, an island rising from the swamp, and they made camp there. Limpy made a small fire in a hollow and they baked shellfish and ate them with raw weed.
‘What about Ben?’
‘He can live orf ’is fat,’ Jimmy said. ‘He’ll be havin’ priests for dinner tomorrer night.’
They slept uncomfortably in the humid night, disturbed by shrieks of creatures in the swamp, and started in the dawn, eager to reach the forest at the foot of Sheercliff. But it took them the whole of that day to come out of the swamp. They came up on dry ground as the sun went down and saw Sheercliff ahead, climbing into the sky, with its stone face glowing yellow. Another half day’s travel in thick bush lay ahead. And there, Limpy said, they were likely to meet patrols.
‘Where’s the Temple?’
‘South. There’s Deven’s Leap. You can see the Temple on the cliff beyond.’
It gleamed as pink as candy in the evening sun, a magic colour. But the building itself was brutal, Susan thought; a marble block, a giant slab, set down on the cliff-top, over-jutting it. Here and there a tower rose, a window glittered. A wall ran from its base along to the swollen dome of Deven’s Leap. She stared at that giant outcrop. A year ago – a hundred years – she had launched herself from its brow on her glider and sailed over bush and swamp and sea, south-west to the island. Now she was creeping up on it, slithering up, like a thing from the swamp. She wished she could go boldly to the Temple, bang on the door, and demand to talk to the High Priest. The time was close when something of that sort had to be done.
That night they risked no fire but ate fruit from the bush. They huddled close together and spoke in low voices.
‘We can’t take ’em all on, that’s fer sure,’ Jimmy said. ‘What we got on our side is surprise. We gotter get close to the big wheel – this High Priest geezer – and grab ’im when we see our chance. Then we got bargainin’ power, see? Susie can say ’er piece. If that don’t work we’ll knock some ’eads together.’
‘We’ve got to save Soona,’ Limpy said.
‘Where will they keep her?’ Kenno said. ‘And how do we get into the Temple?’
‘If Nick comes with them Birdfolk they can lift us in. We’re meetin’ them in Wildwood, north of Deven’s Leap, so we better get up there toot sweet. There’s places we can climb the cliff. I know one not much more’n a day’s walk north.’
‘They can lift us in at night,’ Limpy said. ‘We can land on a tower.’
‘They can’t lift Ben.’
‘He can come in through the main gate. Once he starts chargin’ they’ll never stop ’im. Eh, old feller?’
The bear nodded. He seemed very old to Susan. She did not doubt his strength and ferocity, but even he could not overcome an army of priests. She could not get away from the feeling that he would have some other importance, and Jimmy too, and Kenno and Limpy. If it came to a fight, they had no chance.
‘The priests will shoot the Birdfolk down with their crossbows.’
‘Not at the Temple,’ Kenno said. ‘The High Priest is afraid of assassination. More than one has been murdered. Only his bodyguard carry weapons. And they are spears and swords. The priest army stays down on the plains.’
‘How big is the bodyguard?’
‘More than a hundred men.’
‘Chicken feed,’ Jimmy said.
But his boasting worried Susan. She wondered if his long sleep had damaged him in some way. He did not seem to bother with thinking any more. He seemed too ready to fight and die. She did not want to die. She wanted to destroy the religion of Ferris, and save Soona, and go back to Earth. Jimmy’s sleep had been a kind of death and it seemed he did not mind going back to it.
She lay awake long after the others were asleep. It might be that Jimmy’s plan was best – if it was a plan – but it did not seem to need her. It relied on force and threat. She had always thought there was a better way. She would stand alone in front of the High Priest. She would tell him who she was and tell him his religion was a lie. Someone had to say it. She did not believe the Temple would crumble away after that. But something would happen – the words would be out, and she saw them flying like birds, over Wildwood, all through O, carrying the truth and giving it the strength to defeat the Lie. It was her way. Fighting and killing were not. Jimmy and Kenno would do that, if it had to be done. But before they started she would face the High Priest, she would trust Soona’s dream. As for Soona, there was a simple way to save her.
Susan slept a while and woke before the others in the dawn. They were curled up in the cold. She smiled at them, Jimmy and Ben, Limpy and Kenno, and said a silent goodbye. But when she rose to her feet the old bear opened his eyes and looked at her. She raised her hand to keep him silent and crept to him and looked into his eyes. She made a series of pictures of what she meant to do. It seemed less easy now, and parts of it made her shiver, but the bear did not object. She asked him to tell Jimmy and make Jimmy carry on with his own plan. She touched his head and he seemed to smile, and closed his eyes and slept again.
Susan went out of the camp and down through the bush to the edge of the swamp. She travelled fast in case the others woke and tried to catch her. At the place where a creek emptied into the swamp she found a patch of grub-weed. She dug several tubers with a stick and broke them and rubbed juice on her skin. Then she travelled south, keeping in the bush at the edge of the swamp. The priest patrols would be further in towards Sheercliff. She ate whenever she found fruit and berries.
By midday she was opposite Deven’s Leap. It thrust out from the cliff-top like a giant cumulus cloud, brown and grey. She climbed through the bush towards the base of the cliff, shivering a little at her memories of the place: of standing on the edge strapped in her glider; and of Odo Cling falling, with a seabird shriek, and his legs working like insect legs. She did not want to go too near the place where he had struck. And how many hundreds had fallen since, thrown in the name of Susan off the Leap?
She heard the rumble of a cart and crouched low in the underbrush until it died away. Then she crept on again and came to a road surfaced with gravel. It wound along a valley to the cliff below Deven’s Leap, and she saw men working there, and priests and dogs patrolling. The ground was levelled out and strewn with marble chips. Men were raking it smooth, while others shovelled chips from laden carts. On either side, workmen were building stands and draping them with cloths decorated with the wing emblem. It was almost like the preparations for a show. But people would gather here, and sit in these stands, to watch a girl tumble from the sky and strike the ground.
Another cart roll
ed by, escorted by a priest. His dogs stopped and raised their noses, sniffed the air. The priest waited. Susan felt his pale eyes looking through her. She heard the clicking of his Ferris bones as he turned and looked down the road. He spoke sharply to his dogs and they trotted after the cart. She let her breath out slowly. Carefully she crept back through the bush. Then she made her way towards the swamp, putting a hill between herself and the arena. She found the road again and ran across. From the top of another hill she saw the Temple, blinding white in the midday sun, with black marble wings set in its face. It towered over the cliff almost to a third of its height again. The weight of it crushed her into the ground. But she wondered at its name – the Temple. There seemed to be nothing religious about it. It was like a prison, or a block of offices where the work of some tyrannical government was done. She found the likeness oddly comforting. And she wondered if Nick had been right – the priests were political as much as religious, the High Priest a dictator taking his power from a superstition.
She crept through tangled bush and heaped-up boulders until she came to the foot of the cliff. There she found a corner and tried to sleep. She wasn’t going to get any sleep in the night. She tried not to think of the cliff, and the Temple stretching to the sky. But whenever she opened her eyes there it was – the cliff globed and swelling, and the geometrical line of the Temple’s underside. In spite of it, she slept; and woke in the dusk, and ate some berries she had kept for her evening meal. The cliff was pink in the sunset, and darkening by the moment. She studied it, trying to choose her line, but no way seemed better than any other, and she decided the best thing was simply to go straight up.
When it was dark she drew the stone silk gloves out of her pocket. She smoothed them on the ground and pulled them over her hands and feet. Again she felt the comfort of their enclosing movement. They seemed to be alive, and seemed to become part of her. She climbed over the boulders, and put her hands carefully on the living rock of Sheercliff, and tried the gloves several times, releasing her hands, fixing them; and when she was satisfied she started to climb. She did not look up or down, remembering the lesson Seeker and Finder had taught her in the Throat: ‘You are where you are, no other place exists, while you are here you cannot be there, you cannot fall.’ She told herself it did not matter if she was one metre or a thousand off the ground. Time did not matter either. She had all night.
