“Wouldn’t we all. Shay, what is going on? Why aren’t you helping with the stock?”
“I am watching this Rockpiler. I don’t trust him.”
“Stel is here.”
“He appears to be occupied. Somehow. Unaccountably.”
Elseth laughed again. “It must be Ahroe. His wife. A miracle. He told me about her. She has come all the way from the Heart. You know, she does look a little like me.
Older. And thinner, maybe. And not so beautiful. But it is hard to tell in this rain.” She laughed again, leaning against Boldar. Then she patted him on the shoulder and said, “We have a lot of cattle to gather up. You will have to go home by yourself. Come along, Shay. I don’t think Stel has heard a thing we have said.” They started up the slope, Shay looking back.
“Damn him,” Shay said.
“Who? Stel?”
“Who else? I thought he loved you.”
Elseth laughed again. “He did, I think. I thought you didn’t like that. Look at him. See what he loved? No. He really loved me, too, a little. But I will take the big Rock-piler.”
Shay looked back at Boldar, who still stood there looking at Stel and Ahroe. They paid no attention to him, and finally, holding his eye still, he walked down the hill through the mud. Elseth dragged Shay away from Stel and Ahroe. Her grip on his arm was astonishingly tight.
“We had better put this baby under something,” Stel said. “I know where there is a nice rock outcrop. All my gear is soaked by now.”
“Mine is back there in Cull. I suppose they may give it to me sometime.”
“None of that matters to me. I don’t understand, though. It is a miracle. You are really here. I am dizzy. And our own boy.”
“We will talk about it.” They set off up the hill, slipping in the streaming mud, and as the rain continued to beat down on the deserted wall, a section of it crumbled and rolled into a growing gully, and the dim outlines of the trap system slowly appeared as sunken earth, filled with rain.
19
It rained hard most of the day under a driving wind. Stel and Ahroe eventually moved from their high outcrop to a large overhang down near the river, downstream from Cull. There was wood on the slope, and they could cut into the dry part and start a fire. Stel stripped to his pants and caught a little wood in the river, which had risen from the rain. He also rigged a hook and line for catfish in a side riffle, and, walking in the rain along the river bank and up into the deserted gardens of the Originals, he picked some tomatoes, cucumbers, and a melon.
But they spent most of the day drying, talking, and looking at each other. Stel held Garet much of the time, studying him in fascination. Finally the rain slowed, and, toward evening, ceased altogether.
“Ahroe, I am running like this river. It is all too full and is rising out of me. How many times I have wondered about you and yearned to have you with me. The most amazing thing is that you would do this for me—and that you actually got all the way out here. It is a rare Dahmen who would do that for her husband.”
“What had I left, especially when I knew I was pregnant?”
“I’m sorry I ever put you through all that. I should have gone to Northwall.”
“Look what we would have missed. We have been farther west than Jestak. If they sing songs in Pelbarigan a hundred years from now, they will sing one about us.” Eventually they fell silent, watching the water run from the edge of the rock overhang. After the rain, Stel checked the line and, in spite of the rain, found a medium-size catfish. Setting the line again, he returned, and they baked the fish stretched on a flat stone.
“I will be glad to settle down and have a good meal now and again.”
“Yes. Do you like it out here, Stel?”
He looked at her. “Anywhere you are is all right with me. But if you were at Northwall, that would be excellent.”
“Not home, then? Perhaps we might find a place.”
“What if we started a separate family?”
“Some wouldn’t like that. But I am willing. Before I left, I knew that they really had tried to kill you, Stel. But that was a long time ago, and we aren’t the same people. They will never fit us in again.”
“When I saw you and the Shumai, Ahroe, I came very close to calling to you. How different things would have been.”
“All this has changed me. I don’t know if that would have been better or not.”
“It didn’t happen, anyway. We cannot prefer what didn’t occur.”
“I fully concur. I’ll never demur.”
“Garet’s demure, not very mature.”
“A true connoisseur in miniature.”
“I am unsure how to procure an appropriate answur.” “Well, Stel, what do we do now? About the Originals and the Commuters?”
“We have to get them to talk. Then we’ll take a walk.” “Who can you trust? I think I can trust Boldar—the big man you hit in the eye with your flute.”
“Don’t laugh. It worked.”
“I’m certainly glad it wasn’t a sword. You struck the one blow in the whole war. Boldar has no authority, of course. But I will never agree to talk with that Ilage again.”
“Then it is Boldar—and Howarth for the Commuters. But we will need more. And we will need to teach them some things. Ahroe, I fear we may need to stay here awhile.”
“In a house.”
“In a house. I’ll be your spouse.”
“We’ll have a mouse and dine on grouse. It will not be easy. The Originals are all caught up in a series of ceremonies. And most of them, like Boldar, are unthinking. But he is decent.”
“Well, now that it is dark, and my sleepsack is dry, and Garet is fed, I suggest that we work that out in the morning.” Stel grinned at her.
She smiled back. Their orientations had changed. She would never be a Dahmen again—and Stel never really had been. “I am the guardsman,” she said. “You take the sack. We could never both fit into it.”
“We could try.”
Next morning Stel and Ahroe walked back to the hilltop. Below, the Originals were working on the damage caused by the rain. They were skilled in directing water, but this storm was both untimely and massive, and had dug gullies and toppled walls.
Eventually both Shay and Elseth rode along the ridge top looking for them.
“How are the lovers?” Shay asked.
“Everything is fine. Where is everyone?”
“Now the pools are full, and the wash dams, there is water enough to drive the cattle to the west slope of the mountains where there is grass. So we are mostly going. Well, Stel, I guess you won’t be going to the shining sea.” “I have it here. Two of them. See? But we need to talk to the Originals before you go. Where is your father? And Cano? Aren’t there any of the others? This is the time to form an agreement for regular trade, exchange of labor, access to water, raising of grass, education.”
“Whoa. Now there is no need. There may not be another drought like this in my lifetime.”
“And there may be one next year. The point is that you ought not to allow yourself to get into such a position. There should be regular exchange among neighbors. You should be intermarrying and diversifying your activities. We know how to bring the water up the hill to here. It would take a little work to set it up, but wind and the river will supply the power. Raising water will help you both. And there is no reason a walled corridor could not be built to get your cattle to the river. There need be no more encounters at all, ever.”
Shay and Elseth sat on their horses looking skeptical. Stel added, “I will teach you how to build wagons, too. Then you can move feed. And you ought to build a road to the mountains. Then you could move aspens for paper and set up a paper-making building by the river. You could move the Center of Knowledge there and build a town. You might lift the Originals out of their—”
“Whoa, Stel,” said Elseth. “One thing at a time. Here comes Boldar, whose eye you played upon with your flute. We will see what he has to say. Then perhap
s we will get Father.”
The big man toiled up the still slippery hill. He had a large bandage on his eye. Elseth and Shay dismounted.
“See, Boldar? It didn’t even take a wild turkey. The rain brought down the wall. How is your eye?”
“It is all right, Ahroe. I was sent by the priests to ask if we are going to have peace. Well, what is it?”
“We need to have a conference,” said Ahroe. “There are many things to decide. We will be here at noon. Can you bring your people? Ilage must not be one of them. We will not talk to Ilage.”
“What? Oh. No. Of course. Mati wants to know how the baby is. She was mad as a snake when you stole him.” “Indeed. I thought it was my baby. By the way, when you come back at noon, bring my things. We would prefer that you talk for your side.”
“Me? For all of Cull?” Boldar laughed. “I can see the priests buying that.” Then he turned to Elseth. “You are the person who helped me with my eye. Your name was Elseth?”
“It still is.”
“Well, thank you. I will bring you something when we return at noon.” Without an explanation, he held out his hand to Ahroe, grasping hers. Then he turned and walked back down the hill waving his arms for balance in the mud.
Elseth smiled at her brother. “You see? He likes me.” “Yeah, well, we’d better find Father.”
The noon meeting was very tentative, but Stel and Ahroe were able to reveal enough possibilities and new ideas to interest both sides. It became clear that the priests governed Cull only by default, and a sizable portion of the people thought more secularly. One was Boldar, who slowly emerged as a spokesman for the Originals, much to the distress of a number of the priests.
As a start, it was agreed that Ahroe and Stel would live at Cull and work on setting up a waterwheel for lifting the river water to the fields, then a pair of windwheels to lift it farther. Stel would instruct the Originals in wall-building on the condition that they left a corridor for the cattle. When the Commuters returned in the fall, the Pelbar would help find other access to the river, even if this meant much construction by both sides. They also broached other ideas that spun the heads of both fairly static groups.
One of the more interesting developments of the next few weeks was the emergence of the genuine love between Elseth and Boldar. She was like a dog around a horse with him, her quick mind and tongue leaping ahead of him, he steadily walking behind. Their relationship continued to develop because Ahroe and Stel held the group talking, day after day, for some time until agreements could be reached.
Stel worked through the winter on his first projects. The spring rains had ended before the first waterwheel was completed, lifting water by a system of buckets to a high flume that led it out over the shoulder of the north hill to a pool in the gardens, where a windwheel lifted it higher still. Opposition to the system as unnatural came from the priests, but the people who had raised the water by hand were overjoyed.
Soon after, Elseth and Boldar were married and went to settle in Elseth’s valley. She called her cliff-carving complete, except for an occasional touch on it. They set up a farmstead near the river and kept stock. People from both communities regularly met there, and the Originals gradually lost the notion that they had been in Cull since time began.
The stonecutting took longer, but Stel vindicated Ahroe by demonstrating to the Originals how to construct a true arch, then a vault, tight and strong. Ilage could not believe it. Ahroe still had not talked to him. In fact, she never did while they lived at Cull. After a while she didn’t much care, but she saw that it kept him off balance, because he knew he had shamed her grossly, and when the priests elevated him to the chief priest’s chair, it helped to control him.
By the time Ahroe and Stel left for home, the following spring, Garet was running and chattering—nearly two and a half years old. They tried to prepare him for the sights of their long trip.
“Ahroe,” he said. “Big trees?”
“As high as that rock.”
“As that rock? That high? Why?”
“You spend too much time with Stel.”
“Why?”
“Sigh. Just wait. You will see the big trees.”
Howarth and Debba went with the Pelbar as far as the shattered city in the mountains. With no sister to watch, Shay came, too. From their talk, Howarth and Stel decided that might be the place the ancestors of the Commuters were when the catastrophe of the time of fire occurred. The Pelbar left the Commuters with full instructions on the route eastward to the Heart, should they ever want to come. After staying in the house of Scule, Ahroe and Stel ascended the high pass, which was still deep in snow, in its earliest spring thaw. Then they picked their way down the eastern side, with Garet still staring at the tall trees. They followed a rushing stream down into the basin, and headed across and up the next range to drop down and pick up Hagen at Ozar.
Ozar was deserted. Two graves showed them that Finkelstein and Taglio were dead. Stel crossed the fields to the room of records and found a note inside. Hagen had taken Fitzhugh back to Shumai country.
Rather than risk the Roti, the three walked all the way around the two great empty places and crossed Emeri country, using the north end, where the scattered farmsteads lay. They were quiet and careful, and no one saw them. They felt much relieved to come down out of the last hills onto the vast grasslands of Shumai country. By this time it was nearing midsummer. Rather than walking all the way east, they made a long raft and poled it down a lazy, broad river as Stel worked on a narrow boat. When it was ready, covered and pitched, they paddled much faster.
At last they passed into the great river of the west, the Issou, and down it to Black Bull Island, where they were told that Hagen had already been with a small, dark woman. They had gone on to Pelbarigan. Clearly the two were looking for Ahroe. As the river turned south, they abandoned the boat and walked east through the high grass. The sumac already blushed red. The dry grass stood so high that Garet rode on either Stel or Ahroe so he could see.
“Find black cow,” he would call.
“You are scaring them all away with your big voice.”
“No, no. Find cow.”
“Shut your eyes. There, that is as black a cow as you’ll ever see.”
“No, no, Stel. Eyes.”
At last they topped a rise and saw the mass of trees that filled the bottomland of the Heart River. As they reached the bank, Ahroe said, “I know this place. We are not twenty ayas north of home.” They camped a little ways downstream, fished, and swam in the brown water. Silent and massive, the great river steadily drew all the waters of the midcontinent down to the southern sea, impassively, appearing still until you could see the current rolling and burling around the head of an island.
Garet looked at it, his stomach out. “Big?” he said.
“Yes, Garet. It is big. This is your river. We are almost home.”
“My river?”
“Yours. And mine and Stel’s. Stel, it is as if .we’ve drawn a circle with a compass. It swung out away, and before it was all drawn, it had two ends. Now it has all but closed and has none.”
The next evening, as the mist steamed off the river into the cooling air, Hagen stood on Rive Tower at Pelbarigan, looking west. Fitzhugh was with him.
“It is a long walk. Give them time. I never dreamed I would walk so far.”
“I think I may go back and look for them.”
“I couldn’t walk that far, Hagen.”
“No. I wouldn’t be long. I’d come back. Who is that?”
Sagan and Rutch came up the steps. The first fall gulls were arriving, settling on the river in the deepening dusk. They heard a distant sound from out on the river and upstream.
“What is that?”
“It sounds like a flute.”
“A flute?”
“Look, out on the water. What is that in the mist?”
“I don’t see anything.”
Erasse was the guard on the tower. “It is thre
e people on a log, two adults and a small child.” He sounded the guardhorn in three long blasts, which echoed down the bluffs, magnified as it bounced back from the fifth promontory. Then there was a renewal of silence. From far out, thin as an insect song, came three return notes on a flute.
“Well,” said Sagan, turning, “that is Stel. That is no one on earth but Stel. Rutch, you are a grandfather surely. Well, don’t just stand there. Come down to the river and meet them.”
“And Ahroe? And Ahroe?” said Hagen.
“Of course. Ahroe has retrieved him,” said Erasse, and he sounded the five clear, ascending notes of the guardsman’s salute, which Gagen Tower took up, the echoes mingling as the two calls reverberated from the rows of bluffs and out across the dark stream.
Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 02] Page 22
