Stel laughed harder, but the crowd rose in obvious anger, and the woman vanished into her house. “Well, what now?” Stel asked. He was bewildered and weary, now more frightened. What had he blundered into?
Mutterings of “Nekko da,” and “Slag da infed,” came from the crowd, but quickly the same group of men who had ushered him so strangely into this society came up to him again. The man in the headdress stood in front of him.
“Nu Roti,” he said. “Nu Roti. Vu ashi kisui da faimm. Bu nu klon vu maint.” The men began their chant again, and nudged Stel forward into the other house. It was plain inside and dark. A bed lay on the floor, covered with a dark fur. Another hollowed stone stood on the right side. Immediately some of the men began to fill it with warm water, brought in leather buckets, and the leader gestured Stel to take off his clothing. They meant him to bathe, as he saw it. He didn’t feel like being stripped of everything, but he saw no way out of it, so he decided to obey. None of the men left the house. When the bath was full, the water slightly steaming, Stel was lifted into it. Four of the men set about washing him, plunging him into the water, scrubbing him, especially his hands, with harsh brushes. From the tub Stel saw with dismay that his ragged Pelbar clothing was taken outside. Surely they didn’t expect him to walk around in public like the woman. But he was very relieved v/hen a short leather tunic was brought in, and his thick leather shoes came back cleaned and greased.
Finally they let him out of the bath, then let the water drain out of it through a plug in the bottom. While two men scrubbed the tub with red cloths, he was dressed and brought out of the house. By that time, Stel could see that there were even more people around the pavement, staring, especially coming close to look at his eyes, then running away chattering. He could catch the “may nezumi iro” from the chant. Here were a people, then, who spoke in a way unfamiliar to all the Heart River peoples, and even differently from the other groups that Jestak had met. Stel could make no sense of it at all.
A group gathered in front of the other house, chanting, “Ven maint, ven maint, vu das Diu.” Clearly they wanted her to emerge and evaluate the new, cleaned-up Stel. But she didn’t come. The crowd grew more angry, gesturing at the door. Finally she came to the door, again, to Stel’s relief, in her maroon robe. She looked mildly at him, sniffed to herself, and went back in. The crowd fell silent. They turned to Stel. He simply extended his arms in the Pelbar gesture of puzzlement.
Then, amused with himself, he decided that if they wanted to be commanded, he would command them. “All right now,” he announced, with mock sternness, “if you grass-eaters, you bald heads, don’t mind, get out of here. Go on now, pack yourselves down those stairs. Time to go dig roots, time to count ants. Out with you.” He took some of the nearest and shoved them gently toward the stairway. Somewhat meekly, they went. Stel kept cajoling them until the whole crowd left, except for the young men who had brought him there. They stood around the edges of the pavement. Clearly they had no intentions of going. He didn’t urge them. He went instead to the man with the headdress and indicated with motions that he wanted something to eat. Instantly, two of the other men trotted down the stairs—for food, Stel assumed.
For a moment he glanced at the other house, but a curtain hung across the door, and the woman was nowhere to be seen. He decided to re-enter his own house. Food was brought in, and he sat on the floor, eating with as much dignity and decorum as he could muster, without utensils. Gesturing, he finally got one of the attendants to bring him his backsack, and took from it his small knife, cut the dry cake on his food board with it, ate only very small chunks, with the root vegetable, and some strange meat, taking as much time as possible so that he could look around, judging his situation carefully.
He had already decided he had to get out. Clearly they weren’t accepting him as an ordinary human being. Clearly it had something to do with his eyes. They were all dark-eyed, except for old blue eyes in the next house.
As the day waned, Stel heard a stir outside, and the young men all came in to usher him out. Stepping out, he found the old man again, sitting in a portable chair. Again he went through his examination of Stel, and looking at his hands, murmured this time what was evidently approval. The old man then bowed deeply to Stel and, spreading his hands wide, said in a loud voice, “Nu heer lang fo vu. Maint vu kaag atla. Nu paah, voor paah.”
Then he bowed again, gave Stel a glance that seemed to have a leer in it, and went away, attended, slowly walking down the long stairs followed by his chair. Turning, Stel saw the woman in her doorway, smiling slightly, holding her door edges. Again she reached for the cord on her robe, but Stel turned on his heel and re-entered his house.
After nightfall, he heard in the distance some sort of celebration, with the dim chant, “Diu heer es nu may nezumi iro.” He stepped out of his house. One of the young men sat on each side of the doorway. They didn’t turn to look at him. Stel could see the glow of a fire from the pavement area below, and dancers moving around it, an alternation of shaved heads and dark-haired ones. Between him and the glow, the square central stone, with its trough, stood up, its short spear socketed, black against the firelight.
Returning inside, Stel took his short-sword from his backsack, lay on the bed, and began to test the mortar in the stones behind. It picked away easily. Working steadily, he loosened two adjacent stones, giving enough room so he could see he could worm through. Then he cut his bedclothes into strips for a rope. His old clothing had been returned, washed and dried, and he took off the tunic he had been given and put his old clothes on. Making all ready, he stepped briefly outside again. It seemed as if the dancers were coming closer. His guards didn’t move. He returned inside, but hearing a sound behind him, he turned and saw the blue-eyed woman enter, carrying a small lamp. She smiled at him glitteringly, and again loosened her robe, standing in the dim light, be-witchingly beautiful, reaching out to him, and saying, “Vu kowabadda por nu, takai, takai.”
From outside, Stel could hear, in low tones, the crowd mutter, “Vu kowabadda por nu, takai, takai,” taking that up as a chant now. Stel felt his hands tremble. He moved toward her, took her in his arms, and, as she sighed in triumph, stuffed a fragment of bedding in her mouth, whipped her arms behind her, wound another strip around them, then fastened her kicking ankles and completed his gag. As she thrashed on the floor, he picked her up and set her down in the stone tub. From outside the chant, “Vu kowabadda por nu, takai, takai,” continued, growing louder.
Leaning into the tub, Stel tweaked the girl’s cheek, whispered, “Good-bye, old blue eyes,” and kissed her-forehead. Then he moved the stones and slipped out the hole, dragging his backsack after him. He slid down the rope of bedding, and, finding the rocky floor of the gully, paused a moment to hear the chant above him. All seemed undiscovered. There was no moon, but Stel recognized the stars of the bent kite sinking westward, and stumbled off in the darkness. When he had gone about a half-ayas, the dimming chant behind him broke up into shouts and cries. Stel began a trot, tripping and blundering in the darkness.
7
Stel ran, walked, and felt his way through the waning night into dawn, faintly hearing behind him a new chant, “Uhm, zym, nachtanali, nu ga hym,” over and over. How the trackers followed him, he couldn’t tell. Finally, coming to a north-flowing stream, Stel plunged in, allowing the current to spin him downstream, swimming and floating, sometimes through rapids, until the second quadrant of morning. He heard no more chanting, so pulled himself ashore among overhanging willows, moving back from the water to dry his gear. Everything was soaked. His remaining dried meat was swelled and foulsmelling. He buried it, dried his knife and short-sword on the grass, hung his tattered clothing up, and his now ripped sleepsack. Fortunately his flute was intact, though warped. His short bow seemed all right, though the string needed drying. The arrows all curved.
Eventually he heard the approaching chant, “Uhm, zym, nachtanali, nu ga hym,” and stooping in the grass, saw the same young
men, naked to the waist, paddling and poling a long log downstream, sweeping by him in the current, in rhythm, looking mindless or asleep, staring ahead. The leader had his headdress on, but it showed that he had been in the river. Each of the others had a red line painted on his shaved head from front to back across the crown. The paint was running. As they vanished around the next bend, Stel breathed his relief. He would wait until everything had dried. If they discovered their mistake, they would have a lot of river bank to search for him. He had time.
Or so he thought then. In the ensuing days, Stel eluded the trackers repeatedly, only to have them reappear, even as he worked westward up into the mountains. It was a mystery to him how they found him, always revealing their coming with their narcotic chant. Stel found himself internalizing it, even traveling as they did in time with it. When he realized this, he shook it out of his mind forcibly. But it returned, and so did the trackers.
Stel was growing sharply hungry, too, since he felt too harried to do much foraging. This was strange country with many scrubby pines, widely spaced. Few rabbits were present, so he shot small burrowing rodents with his short bow, trying to impale them before they could dive down into their clustered holes. He would clean them while walking, burying all he couldn’t carry, finally building a fire and cooking several at once, when the wind was following him, then stuffing himself. He was tiring, and felt debilitated, but when he stopped to rest, eventually he could hear the chant in the distance, “Uhm, zym, nach-tanali, nu ga hym.”
He thought of resistance. Surely he could shoot one or two from ambush and get away. But they had offered him no violence. All they carried was ropes. He didn’t really know their intentions but felt only bewilderment.
Finally, as he rested high on an outcrop, thinking that he had at last shaken them, he saw them coming along an animal trail below. They missed seeing where he had left the trail, jumping on rocks as he turned up the steep hill. They ran on more than a hundred arms farther, then stopped, puzzled. They were right below him. On an impulse, Stel pried loose a large boulder, with much more difficulty than he had expected, heaved hard, at last balancing it, strained further, and sent it bouncing and rolling down at them, loosening others, soon a rock slide. The men looked up, stood strangely still, until the leader yelled out and they ran across the narrow canyon, rocks following, finally bounding among them.
Stel watched from a cleft in the rocks. One man had been felled. The others stood around him. He could see the leader gesticulating. Then two stayed with the prostrate man while the rest, resuming their chant, trotted slowly up the hill directly toward Stel. He could destroy them all with another rock slide, but his main emotion was revulsion at the man lying far below. He had done that. The trackers stopped chanting as the strain of their climb took their breath, but they continued, slowly but steadily, up the steep incline. Stel turned and ran.
More than an ayas later, Stel, turning, could see them still coming, far back, far below. He was nearing the rim of a sharp ridge, looking forward to gaining distance on the downward side, but as he topped the rise, he stopped, startled. All the landscape to the north was barren, eroded, treeless, plantless, gray. It was one of the great empty areas he had heard of, which the western Shumai said it was death to cross. Far below he could see what appeared to be more ruins of the ancients, straight lines, gutted with gullies, toppled walls among the gray and ditched land. Yet the trackers came behind him.
Turning, Stel ran on along the ridge, losing much of his lead as the trackers turned short. Stel now had two concerns, the men behind and the devastation to the north. Growing tired and short of breath, he was relieved when the rise ended and the land began to slope down. He could see water through the pines, and a strip of cottonwoods and aspens by its banks, far down, and turned toward it. The men behind him again began their chant, but only with hesitation. At least, Stel thought, they are winded, too.
Twisting to glance at them, Stel fell, tumbling down a wooded slope with protruding rocks, thudding and rolling, finally stopping himself. Scraped and shaken up, he had to try twice before he could stand. The chant grew closer. There seemed to be a small flat area ahead, and Stel stumbled toward it. He found a path, bordered with small stones. Not another village of these people, he thought. But there was no time to stop. The trackers drew very close now.
Flinging himself around a turn in the path, Stel almost ran into three thin figures. He stopped. They stood still, one raising hands to face, staring. All three seemed to radiate age, in their ragged gray robes, their complete hairlessness, their shocked faces. Two, Stel could see, were blind with cataracts. The other, with a shrewd and clownish expression, looked at Stel, then advanced, cackling, waving a long staff in arcs at him. Behind, the chanting grew very loud. Stel ducked under the staff and ran up the path, turning as the chanters came around the rock.
Seeing them, the old one screamed out, flung down the staff, and stripped off her robe, facing them with an ancient and wrinkled body, the skin hanging and flapping in loops like wilted leather pouches. The trackers stopped short.
“Agon, agon,” the leader gasped. “Nu fleah fo yah nekko suur jambey.”
Wheeling, the trackers ran back up the hill, never turning around. Stel advanced to the rock and watched them running and clambering. He felt the old one near him, but suddenly, with the retreat of the trackers, a wave of fatigue went over him so that he almost fell. Everything seemed dreamlike.
“Well, well, a traveler,” the old one said. “Got caught up with the Roti, huh? You did very well to get this far. They will never come here. They think that this is the place of death and that you have entered it. You will have to stay with us. That is very good, good indeed. We have much work to do, and, as you see, we are much too old to do it.”
“The Roti?”
“Them. The Roti. They sacrifice the blue-eyed, because they think they come from the sky.” The old one laughed, then asked, “And who are you? We’ve never seen anyone who cut his hair like a round rock half in the earth.”
“I am Stel, a Pelbar, of Pelbarigan on the Heart River.”
“Never heard of it. Ah, well. You don’t have to tell us. Not yet, anyway. Come along with us now. There are beans to hoe.”
“Who are you?”
“I? Oh, yes. I am McCarty, and this is Gomez and Johnson. We are the children of Ozar. Or rather some of them. Come now. . .
“Ozar?”
Yes, Ozar. Our mother. We came indeed from the sky, down with the great fire centuries ago. We have lived here ever since—up until now. We will soon all be gone. And especially if no one hoes the beans. Now, come.”
McCarty turned and led the way up the path. She was a wreck of age and desiccation, but seemed sturdy enough. She had flung her robe over her shoulder, uncaring. The others followed, not noticing, tapping on the side rocks with their staves. Stel came behind, weary now almost to dropping, glad at least that they moved so slowly.
Ahead, the narrow flat opened out to a wide plateau on the slope above the tumbling stream. Stel could see a neat field, with many rows of beans. Other figures, all bald, all in the same tattered, nondescript robes, knelt in the field weeding, with infinite slowness. Some were blind and felt along the rows. Stel could see that some had pulled bean plants.
McCarty stopped. “There. You see? See why you must hoe for us? We cannot do it anymore. It was fine, for all those hundreds of seasons, until Kannaday convinced us that it was all right to cross the barren land when our stream dried up. Now look at us.”
“Where are the young people? Where are the children?”
“None. No children. We have not seen a child in . . . in, well, many seasons. In fact, you are the first young man I remember for a long time.” Here she laughed in a high thin quaver, and made as if to embrace him. Stel stepped back.
McCarty’s face fell slack. “Ah. Once they were willing enough to take me in their arms. But nothing came of it. Nothing. Well, come now. We will take you to Fitzhugh. She st
ill has hair. Like you. But it is all white.”
Stel could see ahead a large building, made of stone and heavy timber, sagging, with a broad roof that sloped nearly to the ground, covered with neat tiles. Beyond it and against the slope was another building, very oddshaped, like a crooked T with one arm canted back and down.
McCarty saw him looking. “You may not go there. That is Ozar, our mother, or rather, her house. She is only for us, the children of her children, all brought here in the great fire.”
“We are all the same. Jestak says so, and he has been to the eastern coast and the islands beyond. Look. Can we not understand each other?”
“You do sound as if you were eating. What eastern coast?”
“Thousands of ayas to the east.”
“Ayas? What is an aya?”
“An ayas? You don’t know? It is two thousand arms. All the Heart River peoples know that.”
“See? You are different. We use kiloms. A kilom is . • . well, we never travel.”
“That is a minor matter. Look how easy it is for us to understand each other. You could talk to the Shumai, the Sentani, the Emeri, the—”
Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 02] Page 6
