Текст книги "Hammerfall"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Memnanan came to their tent and brought his pregnant wife and four old women: the wife’s name was Elagan, and the old women were Memnanan’s mother and three widowed sisters.

Those were the additions to their tent, suffering as new riders did, and Elagan six months pregnant. The women wanted to do little but sleep, the old women were already miserable and would wake unable to walk, Marak was sure. He urged them to use liniments and use them abundantly before they slept.

He lay down on his own mat. The warm sand and the cool air and freedom from the city combined made a strange sort of luxury; and having Hati and Norit close by him was better still. For the first time in days he slept like the dead—waked once as the earth gave a little shiver, then wondered whether it was that illusion of movement that exhaustion brought.

It was their first sleep on the road, and so many unaccustomed riders and so many that had worked feverishly to get them under way were equally abandoned in rest. In all the camp there was no sound but the restless grumble of a besha, and one answering far away.

In late afternoon Marak waked, roused up off his mat, and went out. The Haga had stirred forth. Hati and Tofi joined him outside, and the two slaves and a couple of the hired men.

“Pack up,” Marak said. “We’ll move. In this, we order the Ila.”

Tofi gave him an uncertain look, but ordered his men to work, and the beshti began their usual complaint. Soldiers stirred forth from their open-sided shelter, and so did a handful of priests. The Ila had not stirred yet, but before the first tent, their own, billowed down, the Ila had sent an au’it to complain.

“Tell the Ila we are behind, and running late,” Marak said, when the au’it posed the objection. “There’s no leisure to sleep. This is for her own safety.”

The au’it went into the Ila’s tent. In a few moments, back came the au’it. Now their own au’it was on her feet, and the two of them put their heads together and talked in voices so soft as to be inaudible in the flap and shake of the nearby canvas as the slaves rolled it.

The Ila’s au’it went back inside.

In a matter of moments Memnanan came out to report the Ila was not pleased.

“But I have advised her that this move is necessary,” Memnanan reported. “I trust that it is.”

“Necessary now,” Marak said, prepared to be utterly obdurate, “and it will be necessary, every day for the next thirty to fifty days, regular as can be, and after that if we haven’t come to the tower, we may die out here, so there will be no further requests. Tell her she has to learn to sleep in the saddle. We all do. She may rule in Oburan, but she doesn’t rule the Lakht, or the heavens.”

“I certainly don’t want to bring her that advisement,” Memnanan said.

Marak was amused. “Then save it for a better moment. But we have to pack the tent. Good luck to you.”

“Long life to you,” Memnanan said dourly, and went back to bear unwelcome news.

The villages behind would doubtless learn, too, at what hour to be up and moving, or lose their priority in line.

Certain individuals, however, had been moving during the rest: a number of priests had found their way up the line, without tents or guides. They simply lay on their mats, and rested outside the Ila’s tent, exhausted, men afoot, traversing the line at need, mostly the Ila’s needs.

Marak regarded them uneasily. Since their chief priest had fallen dead beside the distribution of the au’it’s books, they had no leader, so far as Marak was aware. The priests had waked, too, and were rolling up their mats, with no water, no food, no provision for the desert. And whether they followed the Ila, now, or had some way of consulting their own god for more obscure and divine messages, and immaterial sustenance, he was unwilling to have them underfoot.

More to the point, he was unwilling to have them taking up rations in the Ila’s camp.

Memnanan had come out again. “She will move,” Memnanan said.

“And the priests,” Marak said. “They should fall back and find some village who wants them. What do they intend to drink? Prayers?”

“Prayers,” Memnanan said. “And the Ila’s charity. Like the au’it, they have their uses.”

“And their water needs.” Marak was far less convinced. “They’ll drink up half their weight in water and endanger the Ila. They have to be under someone’s authority.”

“I’ll speak to them,” Memnanan said.

Before they were under way, and before all was said and done, the priests went under the Ila’s remaining awning for an audience: Marak saw them kneeling and bowing and speaking at some length. He wished them to the vermin of the desert: bad enough the several they already had, now there were twice that number, and he wondered how many more of this white-robed lot were loose among the tents of the caravan.

They were parasites, every one of them, in his estimation.

But the Ila called him, next, having dismissed the priests. Her tent remained uncollapsed. Its veils were down. But while the Haga were well toward finishing their packing, the Ila sat on her chair, the only chair in the desert, unless some villagers were equally fool enough to pack furniture instead of food… and sipped tea under the only tent still standing.

Marak went under it and sat down. His au’it went with him and sat, and her au’it sat cross-legged at her feet, with her open book and her pen in hand.

“The captain has told you we should be moving,” Marak said before the Ila said a thing. He made up his mind then and there not to pay abject courtesies or to play the courtier to the Ila’s whims. It would not serve her, him, or the people in their threatened thousands. He measured his retreat, if he had to, and he knew that not all the Ila’s men could or would prevent him and Hati and Norit riding up among the tribes at the lead, ignoring the Ila, and ruling from there. Their lives, and hers, were too precarious.

He did not intend it should come to that. But he did not intend to have the Ila delaying them in daily argument, either. Or to have other appurtenances taking up their supplies.

“The priests,” he said, “are a waste of water. They can pack canvas.”

“The priests will go back to the villages with my word,” the Ila said, likewise in the serenity of absolute power, and joined her gloved hands primly before her lips. “And keep me apprised of matters behind us.—How is your mother?”

“Well enough.”

“I hear you’ve sheltered Memnanan’s wife.”

“A matter of gratitude.” He was cautious. Lives ended, on the Ila’s whim. He might be secure, but others were not.

“And a matter of personal favor,” the Ila said, behind joined fingertips. “Are you corrupting him?”

“He pays youthe favor,” Marak said. “The captain is devoted to you. For me, it’s a personal debt, and I’m paying what I owe him.”

“For what?”

“For not being jealous of me. He might have been, seeing you gave me command of this caravan. But he’s an honest man.”

“I know he is. A hundred have fallen, and Memnanan stands.—Do you still hear your voices?”

“Sometimes.”

“And the fever?”

He was not sure he had ever told her about the fever. Instinct waked instantly and warned him. He was on his guard, in a heartbeat retracing everything he had said, and asked himself again whether the Ila would be fool enough to threaten his life or that of someone near him.

“The fever from the wound?” he asked. “Gone. I’m quite well.”

The Ila regarded him curiously and in silence for a moment. She had protected her white, white skin, even beneath the clouded sky. It was as white as ever. If anyone in the camp washed with water instead of sand, it would be the Ila. The smell of the Beykaskh went about her still, perfume, or incense. Even in the oily, sun-warmed musk of the air under the tent, he smelled it, like a taint of holiness.

“And the wound itself?”

He pushed up his sleeve. The wound was entirely gone, leaving no scar. He had no idea what she thought, having seen that, but she seemed not entirely pleased with the sight. She lifted her hand.

“You may go,” she said, having asked nothing about their destination, their schedule, or their pace.

He gathered himself up and left, with his au’it, who never said a word.

Andhaving escaped the tent and the interview, and saying no word to Memnanan, he gathered up Hati and Norit.

Tofi came over. Beyond them, the Haga were starting their beasts to their feet, ready to move, in the breakup of that last conference.

“I think you can pack the tent now,” Marak said. “Speak to the captain.”

“What did she ask?” Norit asked him, when Tofi went off to do that.

“I asked her about the priests, and she asked me about Memnanan’s wife.”

“Nothing else?”

“The voices, the wound, the fever.”

Norit said nothing, but frowned at the last.

“Why?” he asked her, as they three stood in the dissolution of their camp, the au’it at some distance, writing.

Norit was a moment answering. He had all but given up on her answering at all, no infrequent thing that Norit remained completely absorbed in her musings. But she said, faintly, “The makers.”

“What about the makers?”

“That was her question to you,” Norit said. “About the wound.”

He and Hati looked at her in dismay, silent. It was clearly not Norit speaking to them. It was not Norit who had asked that question, as he had the strong suspicion it had not been Norit for days. “She wished to know about the makers, that was the intent of her question. Whether the strange makers still work in your blood. That’s why she asked you about the fever.”

“She asked whether I’m cured of the madness.”

“Exactly that?”

“Whether I still hear the voices,” he amended it.

“Yes.”

“Did she think not?” he asked. “As if, when we reached Oburan, the madness would just let us go?”

“Perhaps she poisoned you,” Norit said, “with her knife.”

He was appalled, and asked himself had Norit been there to see the attack. She had not. “To test whether Luz’s makers cure poison, too?”

“They can,” Norit’s lips said, while Norit gazed blindly at the horizon. “She knows that.”

“Would she take such a stupid risk?” Hati demanded angrily. “Would she poison the only ones who know the way?”

“It depends on the poison,” Norit said in that same distracted tone.

“What do you mean it depends on the poison?”

“She set hermakers into you. But you still hear the tower’s voice. You still hear me. You still see your visions. She asked about the fever, and you reported it fallen. So she knows her makers were defeated and ceased fighting the makers from the tower. She knows she’s failed.”

“What, to have hermakers give me voices in my head?”

“I frankly doubt she has that ability. The First Descended had the skill, but not the resources here. We, on the other hand, do. Yes, she tried a small contest against you, and now she knows she’s beaten. Now we can prove to the ondatthat we can defeat her, and we can show them how. It also proves there’s no need for the star-fall, but they won’t stop: they wouldn’t even hear our protestations that we could prevent the need for it. They’re reshaping the world because they have the power, and frankly, too, it’s simply politics. Their people have to see their enemy utterly defeated, ever to feel safe. But she’s beaten, face-to-face and at her best.”

“Because your makers fought a war in me. And they won.”

“With the fever, they won, yes. It’s a very good thing she tried. She’s proven our surmise, that we canovercome her. We’ve also proven it to her, and she’s not happy about it.”

“You mean—” It was probably useless to look at Norit, but he did it instinctively, in outrage. “You mean you invite her into your refuge knowing she has these makersin her, and she’s going to try some other way to get them into all of us.”

“She may try several times. But she’ll lose—again. Oh, make no mistake. This will be a series of battles. She sent you out to us in the first place with makers that didn’t survive… as everyone in the world has her makers in them. She just now tried it again, with a direct effort, with the best she can create, and she’s lost again and her makers lost.”

He found there was a limit to what he wanted to know about this war in which his soul and his body were the battleground.

“You mean she’ll go on doing this, and you’ll try, and she will.”

“I’ve no doubt that she has something yet to try, and will. We’re equally determined it won’t work.”

“An attack on us. In us. Again.”

“I fear so.”

Anger welled up in him, a distracting, overwhelming anger. “You listen to me. Your voices can damned well let me alone when I have something to do. There’s no need to be chattering at me the way you do. You’re sitting in the tower. You can tell your damned voices that while you’re at it. And you can let Norit go! Let her be! She’s not yours!”

“She’s an excellent viewpoint. You’re far too inclined to turn and twist things into what you want to say. And you grow distracted and don’t listen. I need to know where you are.”

“You know damned well where we are! Let her alone! Give her her nights free of you, at least!”

“It’s too important,” Luz said. “I won’t lose all of you just for her comfort.”

“Then talk to mea while!” Hati said.

“You won’t do, any more than he will.”

“Give her some rest!” All this talk of makers fighting makers had disturbed him. He saw nothing to do about that, but Norit’s plight, at least, seemed within their reach, a point on which they could reason with Luz. “You’ll make her sick if you go on at her like this.”

“I’ll let her rest,” Luz said quietly.

Immediately Norit blinked several times and seemed herself again, a little distressed, a little lost, a little confused. Marak put his arms about her, and Hati did, and Norit shivered, and shed tears, then simply sat down on the sand and sobbed.

“Everybody,” Norit kept saying. “Everybody,” but they made no sense of it.

“What can we do?” Hati asked him in dismay.

“I don’t know,” he said. He had no idea now whether it was worse for Norit to be awake and to know what she might know, or whether during those times of Luz’s possession Norit simply took refuge somewhere Luz failed to bother her, and Norit only realized the nature of what had flowed through her once she waked… but whatever Norit saw that they failed to, it seemed terrible. He squatted down and wiped Norit’s tears, and all the while Norit’s tears kept flowing, tears for what she saw in Luz’s visions, tears for what had happened to her, tears simply of exhaustion: he had no idea what caused them.

“Find Lelie,” she said once.

He remembered Norit had shouted that name once, in her greatest distress.

“Please find Lelie for me.”

“Where shall I look?” he asked, but of course it was Tarsa he should search. In those days before their march to the tower, Tarsa was all Norit had ever known.

“Who is Lelie?” he asked, but Norit failed to answer him.

In a moment he got up and exchanged a glance with Hati. “I’m going to try,” he said.

“If this goes on,” Hati said, “she willgo crazy, crazier than we ever were. I think it’s a sister she’s lost. Maybe someone she knows from her village can reason with her.”

When Tofi and his men had packed down the Ila’s tent and when Memnanan and his men had seen the Ila and the au’it mounted and ready, they got up on their own beasts. Norit seemed calmer by then, though whether it was the calm Luz imposed in her reign he had no idea. The Keran had already begun to move, and opened an interval on them.

There must be gaps all along the line of march now, similar disparities in readiness. Some afoot might even turn back after their first or second camp on the road, losing courage for the hardship. He decided he had no wish to know the personal stories of those behind him in the line. He wanted no faces for those that were bound to die, no situations to haunt his sleep and his waking.

But he went to Memnanan and asked the service of one of his men.

“I need someone to ride back and find Tarsa in the line,” he said, “and find someone named Lelie.”

“Why?” Memnanan asked.

“One of Norit’s kin, I think. I don’t know. But I want this Lelie found. It’s a favor.”

He left that statement to lie unadorned between them. There were favors passed, indeed there had been favors passed between them. Without comment, Memnanan called a man over and put him under that instruction.

“Find out who Lelie is, and if there is a Lelie with Tarsa’s company, bring her with you and protect her from all unpleasantness. A member of this lord’s party wants her.”

The man reined aside from the column and rode back alongside it. There was no telling where in the line of march Tarsa might fall: it might be a journey of one or two days.

By morning the man Memnanan had sent had still not come back. By then Marak began to know it was no small favor he had asked, and by afternoon, after their rest, that most likely time for the man to catch up to them, he began to worry about the man, and about the favor he had asked of Memnanan.

He found nothing comfortable to say about the situation, only to shrug apologetically when he met Memnanan and to wish the man safety and a safe return.

“The line is very long,” Memnanan said. “It may take a while.”

But none of them, not even those experienced at reckoning the number of a group by looking at them, knew how long the marching line would be. All methods of measuring failed against the scale of the undertaking, to move everyone in the world to shelter. Marak found himself in Memnanan’s debt, and in debt to the messenger, who had surely had no idea, either, the size of the task when he left.

Morning, too, brought a stiff head wind that kicked up the dust in their faces and made the pitching of tents at noon a far more difficult operation.

Rumor filtered up the line during the rest, one group talking to another next in sequence. A old man had fallen off and broken his leg. A woman of the villages had given birth, and men had carried her on a litter while she did so.

Life in the column went on, no matter its difficulty.

But the messenger had not come back by then, either, and no rumor reported the messenger on his way.

Chapter Eighteen

« ^ »

If a good well turns to bitter water, the village dies: there is no remedy.

–The Priest, in his Book.

The wind that had made pitching the tents so difficult at least blew the clouds away. Tofi laughed when they waked after noon rest and saw a bright blue sky. “I thought we might never see the sun again,” he said. His voice attempted levity, but it was relief everyone must feel.

Norit seemed calmer, and had done with crying. She seemed to have forgotten having named Lelie, and they failed to mention the messenger. Norit rode with them, and measured the fringed edge of her aifad, over and over and over, lost in her own thoughts, or in Luz’s: there was no telling. The voices were quiet.

But that night as they rode, the stars fell again in all their terrible glory. No few were the fiery sort, that stitched their way in silver and gold across the night before they plunged below the horizon.

Memnanan rode with them a time. The messenger had not yet returned.

“I regret asking the favor,” Marak said. “Something may have happened.”

“It may,” Memnanan said. “But it may not. I’m not yet worried. It may simply take that long.”

“I hope for his safety,” Marak said. Norit was near them, but he had never yet told her about the search.

“Has the fall been this thick before?” Memnanan asked, with a look aloft. This was a man who had spent days before this in the heart of the city, where lights blotted out the sky.

“It’s become ordinary these days,” Hati said. “I suppose it will be ordinary for a long time.”

“No,” Norit said suddenly. “It’s not ordinary. That’s why we have to hurry. The hammer of heaven will fall.”

“The hammer of heaven,” Memnanan said.

“A very large star,” Marak said; that was the way he interpreted it. “Where will it fall, Norit? On the Lakht?”

Sometimes Norit seemed to intervene in Luz’s answers, or failed to understand them. She turned and pointed, back, behind them. “Not on the Lakht. Out in the bitter water.”

“Then not on us,” Memnanan said with relief.

“But wherever we are, still, the wind will reach us, and when that wind blows, the sun will stop shining and the stars will vanish. The earth will ring like an anvil. When it comes, we have to be off the Lakht. If nothing else, we have to be off the Lakht, and down below it. The wind up here will be terrible.”

“Is this the truth?” Memnanan asked.

“That we have to be off the Lakht before this great star comes down?” Marak said. “I don’t know about the sun and the stars. But she’s saved our lives before.” Under the streaks of the star-fall, the desert showed cold, and the wind bit as it came. The sand blew along the surface, a light film of fine dust, and in Norit’s doom-saying, it struck him with peculiar force just then that in all this riding since starting out from Oburan, he had seen no birds, no vermin, and no trace of them. It was more than strange, and what was strange lately became ominous.

“Can we reach the edge by then?” Memnanan asked.

“If the weather holds,” Norit said. “If it turns against us, we don’t know. I can’t prevent the storms.”

Memnanan laughed at the strangeness of that I can’t prevent, as if he thought it a grim and impertinent sort of joke, but Marak was less sure, Luz would want to prevent the storms. If anyone could, Luz might be able; but she told them it was beyond her power.

Their own contingent, third in line, moved at the pace of a very large caravan, which was to say, very slowly, still, despite Norit’s warning. It was his intention to anchor the line, not to let the Keran and the Haga and the tribes with their travel-hardened beasts run a race to the detriment of all those village contingents behind. The villages, unaccustomed and containing many weak, could surely go no faster, and those afoot above all else could not match the tribes’ pace.

But now he wondered if that kindness to the hindmost was not risking all of them. “We could go some bit faster,” he said to Norit, when Memnanan had gone his way, “but that would mean those afoot will likely die. What should we do?”

Norit looked for a moment apt to burst into tears and shook her head distractedly as they rode.

And for the first time he added up the fact that all the mad had heard the same voices, their own, and seen the same visions, at the same time, and so had Norit, on the way. But now he became keenly aware of what they had begun to believe beneath the surface and never saying it: that Norit had special warnings, and special visions, and that Luz’s constant possession of her was different than what afflicted them.

In a way he had known it for days; he had known it when Norit had warned them of a storm he had had no idea was coming. He had known it when Norit ran mad, alone, under the sky.

It was not that he was hardheaded and failed to listen; it was not that he and Hati were too resistant to the voices—but that Norit’s voice was a special one, and that it had begun to be a special voice in the tower, where he and Hati and Norit had spent an amount of time they had never added up.

Now he believed Luz had done something special to Norit. She had done something special, and cruel, and Norit was not the same as she had been. Norit heard things constantly, and that flow of images that had once united the mad did not reach them… only Norit, who suffered.

There was nothing they could do for her but find this lost person named Lelie. Norit had asked for that. But whether Norit would even continue to care for this Lelie, there was no promise. Every time he made an effort to get her back from Luz, Luz’s possession of her was fiercer and harder when it set in.

He looked at Hati, riding near them, and found no better answer. He no longer knew what to do: but he knew that he had no wish to end that possession entirely—their lives depended on it. Even Norit’s life depended on Luz’s voice continuing.

And all night long the star-fall continued, obscured at times by threads of cloud, dark strips in the heavens. By morning those strips glowed pink, then faint purple, then white.

Even by this morning, there was no word from the young man they had sent down the line. Marak tried to imagine how far that was, and whether in fact it did extend all the way back to the holy city.

But now he had to reckon that perhaps the young man had come to grief… nothing to do with vermin or bandits. The Ila’s men were not loved in the villages.

By midmorning two of the younger priests worked their way up the line, afoot, breathless, to ask the Ila questions, it seemed. They were from among a small set of priests taken in by Kasha village, among the first behind the tribes, so they said, they had not paid attention to the small traffic along the line, and after a brief sojourn near the Ila, but never directly with her.

“Have you seen a young man of the Ila’s guard?” Marak asked them afterward.

“Yes, omi,” they said. “But only going. Not coming.”

What had they asked the Ila, or what had they to report? Marak wondered, but dared not ask.

They offered Norit their courtesies, wished the God’s blessing on her, and by implication, he supposed, they asked for enlightenment. “Have you seen other visions?” the seniormost asked.

“The hammer will fall,” she said. “We have to hurry.” After that she waved them away, disinterested in their prayers, having no more cheerful prophecy to give them, and no counsel.

“Omi,” the priests said to Marak, and the same to Hati, seeing that they were a group. They paid their parting respects to him and Hati as much for being associated with Norit, as for leading this company, so he suspected; but he felt better for their gesture. They rejoined their companions by the simple expedient of going outside the line and sitting still for as long as they had walked double the pace, and were gone.

The au’it recorded their visit, afterward, but that was all the information they had from it: Norit had posed them no questions, the Ila offered no answers, and being distrustful of priests, he had made no detailed inquiry, either.

The sun grew fever-warm. The air seemed to give less sustenance than usual. At noon he lay beneath the tent, numbed his mind, and sweated: he rested with his arm pillowed on his head, secure in Hati’s presence beside him, and the au’it and Norit sleeping at his back.

For two more days it was like this, with the stars falling at night and the sun burning by day. Once more the priests came. He asked them the questions he had reserved, what they had seen, whether the people were keeping the line together: they were, the priests said. But the Ila’s messenger did not come back, and the priests had no news.

“I fear I’ve brought that man to grief,” Marak said to Memnanan when they discussed the matter. “I don’t know where or how an experienced man fell into difficulty, but I’m very sorry for it.”

“The desert has its dangers,” Memnanan said with a shrug, and that was the end of it: Memnanan showed no enthusiasm to send another man, and he would not ask it. So there was no answer about Lelie. There was no way to trace the man without risking another, and of the rumors that found their way up and down the line—of births, of deaths and calamities: vermin invading a village’s food store during rest, but they had not lost it all—for two more days there was no word, and they gave up hope. Luz was quiet, the au’it recorded little but the arduous routine of camp and cooking, and one tremor in the earth that lasted longer than any before. It did no damage, beyond the collapse of the soldiers’ tent and the disturbance of the beshti, who complained from camp to camp.

Escorted by two villagers, at the next morning, on a day of high wind and dusty haze, priests came into camp to seek the Ila, and failing her civil reception of them at this hour—wind had put out the small stove that heated the Ila’s tea, and she was indisposed—they came to Norit.

“Pesha village has lost two tents,” they said, speaking for two dour and mistrustful village men. “What shall we do?”

“Has Pesha lost its water and its food?” Norit asked, consulting no one, though Marak stood by and listened to this audience.

No, the man from Pesha insisted, and tried to present more of a case for being given tents from some other village. “We have elderly,” he said. “Our lord is an old man. We need the tents.”

Norit lifted a hand, as autocratic as the Ila herself. “If they lost two, give them no more to lose. Let them all go to other tents, and settle in the village behind them in line.”

Marak was astonished, and the Pesha villagers wildly outraged. It was a desert judgment from a softhearted village woman. And on that thought, Marak knew Norit had not made that choice.

“This isn’t just!” the men cried.

“The desert isn’t just. Those who lost two tents should have better leaders.”

“They have a book,” the priest said, over the protests of the villagers. “Shall they keep it? Or shall it also go to their hosts?”

“It should go to their hosts,” Luz said through Norit, but Marak thought it was Norit who added: “and the village lord should beg the pardon of Pesha village for losing the tents. He may be a wise man in his own village affairs, and he can command again after we reach the tower, where we’re safe, but he should leave pitching camp to those that kept all their tents, and thank them for keeping his safe.”

The priests and the chagrined villagers bowed and went away with their message.

Well judged, and well said, Marak thought to himself in their departure. Even Luz could learn the exigencies of the desert; and even Norit could moderate Luz’s harsh judgments.

But that disaster was not the worst. Tofi reported grimmer news relayed to him up from the tribes, a concern that small vermin had moved in near the caravan track back among the villages, and showed increasingly disturbing courage over the last two days. The tribes nearest the villages had warned them to be more careful with their waste, and the priests, in evidence of very bad judgment, had not reported it when they reported the lost tents.