He said irritably, "For a while, at least." And he dropped the stones.
"They're in our way," said Ashton.
The birds had ranged themselves to the southwest.
"Perhaps they'll scatter," Stark suggested.
He started walking. So did Ashton.
The birds did not scatter. They stood high on their strong legs and opened their curved beaks, clashing them together with a harsh and threatening sound.
Stark halted, and the birds were still.
"We can fight them," he said, "or we can go another way."
Ashton put his hand on his tunic, over the bandages. He said, "Their claws are very sharp, and I see thirty double sets of them. Their beaks are like knives. Let's try another way."
"Perhaps we can circle them."
They tried that. The flock raced to turn them back.
Ashton shook his head. "When the bird attacked me, it was acting according to its normal instincts. These are not acting in any normal way at all."
Stark looked about him at the heath, the twisted thorn and the skeletal trees, the peering flowers that blew as they listed with no regard for the wind.
"Someone knows we're here," he said. "Someone has sent for us."
Ashton weighed his club and sighed. "I don't think I could knock down enough of those brutes, and I'd like to keep my eyes yet a while. Perhaps the someone only wants to talk to us?"
"If that's so," said Stark, "it will be the first time since I came to Skaith."
The bird lifted up its head and sang again. Perhaps, Stark thought, it was the natural voice of the creature. But the feeling that some greater intelligence was speaking through it was inescapable. Do as I ask, it seemed to say, and no harm shall come to you. Stark trusted it not at all. Alone, he might have chosen to gamble on fighting his way through, even though the odds were formidable. As it was, he shrugged and said, "Well, perhaps we'll get fed, anyway."
The birds, thirty careful herd-dogs, drove them on, westerly across the heath. They moved at a good pace. Stark kept one eye and ear cocked at the sky in case Penkawr-Che decided to send the hoppers for a final look around. None appeared. Apparently Penkawr-Che felt that plundering villagers of their valuable drug crop was more to the point than searching for two men who were almost certainly dead, and who, if they were not now, soon would be. In any case, the chance of their being rescued and flown back to Pax was so remote that while Penkawr-Che would have killed them out-of-hand when he had them, it was not likely that he would mount any full-scale search for them. If nothing else, he lacked the time and manpower.
Old Sun sat glaring in the middle of the sky and Simon Ashton was beginning to stumble in his walk, when Stark saw two figures silhouetted on the crest of a rise before them. One was tall, with long hair and flowing robes that blew in the wind. The other was smaller and slighter, and the taller one stood protectively with one hand on its shoulder. They stood quite alone, with something regal in their aloneness and their proud bearing.
The birds made little glad sounds and drove the men onward more quickly.
The tall figure became a woman, neither beautiful nor young. Her face was lean and brown, with an immense strength, the strength of wood seasoned to an iron toughness. The wind pressed coarse brown garments against a body that was like a tree trunk, with meager breasts and thin hips and a powerful straightness as though it had fronted many gales and withstood them. Her eyes were brown and piercing, and her hair was brown with streaks of frost.
The slighter figure was a boy of perhaps eleven years, and he was sheer beauty, bright and fresh and graceful, but with a curious calmness in his gaze that made his eyes seem far too old for his child's face. Stark and Ashton halted below these two, so that they were looking up and the woman and the boy were looking down, a nice positioning psychologically, and the bird sang once more.
The woman answered, in the sweet identical tone, without words. Then she studied the men, with a sword-thrust glance, and said, "You are not sons of Mother Skaith."
Stark said, "No."
She nodded. "This was the strangeness my messengers sensed." She spoke to the boy, and in her manner were both love and deference. "What is your thought, my Cethlin?"
He smiled gently and said, "They are not for us, Mother. Another has set her seal upon them."
"Well, then," said the woman, turning again to Stark and Ashton, "be welcome, for a time." She beckoned to them with the stateliness of a bending tree. "I am Norverann. This is my son Cethlin, my last and youngest, who is called the Bridegroom."
"The Bridegroom?"
"Here we worship the Trinity—my lady Cold and her lord Darkness, and their daughter Hunger, who come to rule us. My son will go to the Daughter in his eighteenth year, if she does not claim him sooner."
"She will, Mother," said the calm-eyed boy. "The day is close at hand."
He moved away from her, disappearing below the crest. Norverann waited. Stark and Ashton climbed to where she stood.
They looked down into a long hollow set with tents and pavilions. Beyond the hollow, clearly visible, was the edge of the plateau, which had curved round to meet them, so that they had not actually come far out of their way. Beyond the rough and channeled edge was a soaring emptiness of air, and beneath that, distant and misty, a greenness reflecting from a sea of treetops.
The encampment itself formed a rough semi-circle round an open space, where men and women busied themselves and children played. The colors of the pavilions were brown and green and russet, with here and there a gleam of gold or white, or a touch of scarlet, and menders had been at work sewing new seams and setting patches. But each tent was adorned with garlands and sheaves of grain. Baskets of roots and other things were set before them. Tattered pennons fluttered in the wind. "A festival?" asked Stark.
"We celebrate," said Norverann, "the Death of Summer."
Between the points of the semi-circle, beyond the open space and close to the edge of the plateau, was a structure of cut stone. It crouched close to the ground, somehow ominous in its squat windowless strength, covered like an ancient boulder with moss and lichens.
"That is the House of Winter," said Norverann. "It is almost time for us to return to the blessed darkness and the sweet sleep." She bent in her stately fashion to touch the nodding flowers, which swayed toward her. "We share the sacred months of the Goddess with the grasses and the birds and all things dwelling on the heath."
"They are your messengers?"
She nodded. "Long ago we learned the lesson of our kinship. On the heath we are all one, parts of the same body, the same life. When violence was done to the eastern extremity of our body, the message was brought to us here. Burning and destruction, the slaughter of many grasses and flowers and families of thorn. You will tell me about that." She turned her gaze toward Stark and Ashton, and it was as cold and cruel as the sharpest edge of winter. "If you were not already claimed, there would be punishment."
"It was not our doing," Stark said. "Other men were hunting us. We barely escaped with our lives. But who has claimed us, and for what?"
"You must ask Cethlin." She led them down from the ridge to a pavilion of mossy green, and she lifted aside a curtain of dull umber. "Please to enter, and make yourselves fit for the day. Water will be brought to you for washing—"
"Lady," said Stark, "we are hungry."
"You will be fed," she told him, "in good time." She dropped the curtain and was gone. The pavilion was furnished with no more than a few rough pallets stuffed with something dry and crackly, and a store of blankets. There was dust about, but it was clean dust and the air smelled of the same things it had smelled of outside. Small personal articles were arranged neatly by the pallets. The pavilion was apparently a summer dormitory for upward of a score of persons.
Ashton threw himself down on somebody's bed with a sigh of relief.
"The promise of food is at least hopeful. And since it seems we're promised to somebody else, I gather our lives are
safe for the moment. So far, so good." He added, with a twist of his mouth, "Still and all, I don't like this place."
"Neither," said Stark, "do I." Men came presently with ewers and basins and towels. The towels were of coarse cloth, as were the shapeless tunics and leg-wrappings of the men. The ewers and basins were of gold, beautifully shaped and chased with graceful designs worn almost invisible by the handling of centuries. The golden things glowed beautifully in the mossy gloom of the pavilion.
"We are called Nithi, the People of the Heath," said one of the men, in answer to Ashton's question.
The man, like Norverann, had the look of old wood, knotty and enduring, and there was something about his eyes, brown and secret, and his mouth, which was broad-lipped and square, with strong spade teeth, that gave an impression of kinship with unknown elemental things—soil and roots and hidden water, and the dark spaces below.
"Do you have trade with the jungle folk?" Stark asked, and the man smiled slowly.
"Trade," he said, "from which they get little gain."
"Do you eat them?" Stark asked matter-of-factly, and the man shrugged.
"They worship Old Sun. We rededicate them, to the Goddess."
"You must have a way down to the jungle, then."
"That is so," said the man. "Sleep now."
He went away with the others, taking the golden vessels. The sides of the pavilion flapped in the wind.
The voices of the folk outside seemed faraway and unfamiliar.
Ashton shook his head. "Old Mother Skaith is still full of surprises, and few of them pleasant. That boy, the Bridegroom, who goes to the Daughter in his eighteenth year—unless she claims him sooner—sounds like ritual sacrifice."
"The boy seems to be looking forward to it," said Stark. "You'd better sleep, if you're not too hungry."
Ashton pulled a ragged blanket over him and lay quiet.
Stark watched the slack cloth of the roof billow under the wind, and he thought about Gerrith. He hoped she was well away from Irnan. He hoped she would be safe.
He thought about a lot of things, and felt the anger rising in him so strongly that it became a fever and a throbbing, and the mossy gloom turned reddish in his eyes. Because the anger was useless, he forced it away. Because sleep was necessary, he slept.
He woke with a snarl and a lunge; and there was a man's neck between his hands, ready for the breaking.
8
Ashton's voice said quietly, "Eric, he's unarmed."
The man's face stared at Stark, already darkening, its mouth and eyes stretched with the beginnings of fear. His body was rigid, trying to accommodate the throttling grip it had not yet considered resisting. The Nithi had a reaction time more suited to trees than to fighting animals.
Stark grunted and let go. "You were crouching over me," he said.
The man sucked air and hugged his throat. "I was curious," he whispered, "to see a man from another world. Besides, you are on my bed." He looked at Ashton. "Is he, too, from another world?"
"Yes."
"But you are not alike."
"Are all men of Skaith alike?"
He thought about that, rubbing his throat.
Stark was aware now of the sound of music from outside, sweet and melancholy, and a murmur of voices gathered and purposeful rather than scattered at random. There was also a smell of cooking.
"No," said the man, "of course they're not, but that has nothing to do with foreigners." He was young and supple, with the secret brown eyes Stark was beginning to dislike intensely. "I am Ceidrin, brother to the Bridegroom. I am to bring you to the feast."
He led the way out of the pavilion, his shoulders stiff. He did not look back to see whether he was followed.
Old Sun was going down in his customary senile fury of molten brass and varying shades of copper and red. Some two hundred men and women, and half as many children, were gathered in the open space between the pavilions and the glooming House of Winter. They faced Old Sun. Atop a pillar of eroded rock a fire burned. Cethlin stood beside it. Behind him stood Norverann, holding one of the golden ewers. The music had ceased. After a moment of intense silence it began again, small flat drums and pipes and two instruments with many strings; and this time it was neither sweet nor melancholy. It was strident, hard, clashing.
It sank into the background, and the people began to chant.
"Old Sun goes down in darkness, may he never return. Old Sun dies, may he never live again. May the hand of the Goddess strike him, may the breath of the Goddess shrivel him. May the peace of the Goddess be upon Skaith, may it be upon us all . . ."
Cethlin took the golden ewer from his mother's hands.
At the exact moment when the disk of the ginger star vanished below the horizon, he drowned the fire on the pillar top.
"Old Sun is dead," the people chanted. "He will not rise again. The Goddess will give us peace this night. There will not be a morning . . ."
Water and steaming ash ran down the sides of the pillar.
When the chanting was finished, Stark asked Ceidrin, "Do you do this every night?"
"Every night aboveground."
"Most people pray Old Sun up in the morning, glad of another day."
"The Goddess will punish them."
Stark shivered. He had felt the breath of the Goddess, what time Hargoth the Corn-King and his sorcerer-priests had sent it upon the wagons of Amnir, the trader out of Komrey, and Amnir with all his men and beasts had been received into the peace of the Goddess with the cold rime glittering on their faces. But even Hargoth had sacrificed to Old Sun, lest the Dark Trinity conquer the land too soon. The Nithi, apparently, were possessed of a full-blown death wish.
The people were finding places on the ground now, around large squares of heavy cloth spread there. Yellow birds wandered among them unconcernedly. Cauldrons steamed over thorn-wood fires.
Ashton sniffed. "I wonder what's in those pots."
"Whatever it is," Stark warned, "eat it." Ceidrin motioned them to sit between Cethlin and Norverann. The food was served in vessels of stone which were ground fine and thin, and in baskets of woven reeds which must have been brought up from the jungles below. Coarse unleavened bread was served, with bits of Mother Skaith still in it to grate the teeth, as well as a stew made of grain and vegetables and a minute amount of meat, which was white and stringy and came on small brittle bones. Stark glanced from the portion he held to the companionable birds. "We ask their pardon," said Norverann, "as we ask pardon of the grain when we reap it, and the growing things when we tear them from the ground. They understand. They know that they will feed on us one day." She made a circling motion with her hand. "We are all the same, each in his season."
"And your son," asked Ashton. "When his time comes, will you strike the knife into his heart yourself?"
"Of course," said Norverann, and Cethlin looked at him in mild-eyed amazement.
"Who else," he asked, "should have that honor?" Stark ate, and the yellow birds pecked around him, eyeing him sidelong, aware of his alienage. The musicians finished their meal and picked up their instruments again. A woman rose and began to sing, her voice carrying like a flute above the gabble of voices.
"Now," said Norverann, "I wish to know what forces threaten our eastern body."
Stark explained to her as well as he could. "I think they will do no more damage, except for the landing of the other two ships when they come. Soon after that, they will be gone."
"Gone from the heath. But from Skaith?"
"Yes. The Wandsmen have driven all the ships away. There will be no more."
"That is well," said Norverann. "Mother Skaith must look to her own children now."
"You have some foreknowledge?"
"Not I. But my son has heard the Goddess speaking in the night wind. She has bidden him make ready for the wedding. This winter, or the next . . . I think we have not long to wait."
Torches had been lighted. The remains of the feast were being cleared away. The mu
sic had taken on a different sound. People were rising, moving onto the open ground between the torches, arranging themselves in the pattern of a dance.
Norverann rose and spoke graciously. "You are fed? You are rested? Good. Then it is time for you to go."
Stark said, "Lady, it would be better if we could wait until the morning."
"You will have a guide," she answered, "and the Three Ladies will light your way. Ceidrin . . ."
The young man said sulkily, "I shall miss the dancing."
"The one who waits for these two must not be kept waiting. Nor must she be cheated, Ceidrin, remember that."
Stark caught the young Bridegroom by the shoulder as he moved away toward the dancers.
"Cethlin," he said, "your mother said I must ask you. Who has claimed us, and why?"
"If I told you, you might try to evade the claimant. Is that not so?" Cethlin brushed his hand away and smiled. "Go with my brother."
Ceidrin fetched a torch and called two other men. He marched off with them toward the House of Winter. Since there was no choice, Stark and Ashton gave Norverann thanks for her hospitality and followed.
They passed by the dancing place. Cethlin had reached out and taken the hand of a girl with dazed eyes and garlands in her long hair. Langorous beguiling pipes and muttering strings lured them on. Cethlin stepped out with his partner, treading the intricate pattern of a maze dance that was both graceful and sinister. The drums beat, soft and insistent, like tiny hearts.
"How will it end?" Ashton asked Ceidrin.
"The girl with the garlands—she is Summer, you understand—the girl will be led deeper and deeper into the maze until she falls exhausted."
"Will she die?"
"Not for several nights yet," Ceidrin said. "At least I shall not miss that. It is not so easy to kill the wicked season."
"Why," asked Stark, "are you all so eager for the peace of the Goddess?"
Ceidrin gave him a glance of pure scorn. "Her rule is inevitable. We seek only to hasten the day. I hope it comes in my time. But I hope that before the Goddess takes me, I may look down from this high place and see the green jungle black and shriveled, and the worshipers of Old Sun struck dead."
The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith Page 5
