Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (51 page)

‘You must measure all distances, Shay Tal. Don’t forget. Have a slave count the number of hoxney strides every day, with the direction taken. Write down details every night. Find out how far away the country of Sibornal is. Be as precise as you can.’

Shay Tal was majestic in the midst of the weeping and chattering that filled her chamber. Her hawk face preserved a closed look whenever addressed, as if already her spirit was remote from them. She said little, and that little was uttered in unemotional tones.

Dathka, after staring blankly at the walls, with their elaborate patterning of lichen, looked at Laintal Ay with his head on one side and gestured to the door. When Laintal Ay shook his head, Dathka made a characteristic moue and slipped out. ‘Pity you can’t train women like hoxneys,’ he said, as he disappeared.

‘At least he is consistently revolting,’ Oyre said disdainfully. She and Vry took Laintal Ay into a corner and began whispering to him. It was essential that Shay Tal should not leave on the morrow; he must help persuade her to wait for the following day.

‘That’s absurd. If she wants to go, she must go. We’ve been over all this. First you will not leave, now you don’t want her to leave. There’s a world out beyond the barricades you know nothing about.’

She coolly picked a sliver of straw from his hoxneys. ‘Yes, the world of conquest. I know – I hear enough of it from Father. The point is, there will be an eclipse tomorrow.’

‘That’s general knowledge. It’s a year since the last one.’

‘Tomorrow will be rather different, Laintal Ay,’ Vry said, warningly. ‘We simply wish Shay Tal to postpone her departure. If she leaves here on the day of the eclipse, people will associate the two events. Whereas we know there is no connection.’

Laintal Ay frowned. ‘What of it?’

The two women looked uneasily at each other.

‘We think that if she leaves tomorrow, ill things may follow.’

‘Ha! So you do believe there is a connection … The workings of the female mind! If the connection exists, then there’s no way we can evade it, is there?’

Oyre clutched her face in exaggerated disgust. ‘The male mind … Any excuse not to do anything, eh?’

‘You witches will meddle with what is no concern of ours.’

In disgust, they left him standing in the corner and pressed back into the crowd round Shay Tal.

The old women still chattered away, speaking of the miracle at Fish Lake, speaking obliquely, looking obliquely, to see if their reminiscences registered on the preoccupied Shay Tal. But Shay Tal gave no sign that she heard or saw them.

‘You look proper fed up with life,’ Rol Sakil commented. ‘Maybe when you reach this Sibornal, you’ll marry and settle down happily – if men are made there as they’re made here.’

‘Perhaps they’re made better there,’ another old woman responded, amid laughter. Various suggestions as to improvements were bandied about.

Shay Tal continued to pack, without smiling.

Her belongings were few. When she had finally assembled them in two skin bags, she turned to the crowd in her room and requested them to leave, as she desired to rest before her journey. She thanked them all for coming, blessed them, and said she would never forget them. She kissed Vry on the forehead. Then she summoned Oyre and Laintal Ay to her side.

She clutched one of Laintal Ay’s hands in her two thin ones, looking with unusual tenderness into his eyes. She spoke only when all but Oyre had left her room.

‘Be wary in all you do, for you are not self-seeking enough, you do not take enough care for yourself. You understand, Laintal Ay?
I’m glad you have not struggled for the power that you may feel is your birthright, for it would only bring you sorrow.’

She turned to Oyre, her face lined with seriousness.

‘You are dear to me, for I know how dear you are to Laintal Ay. My council to you as we part is this: become his woman with all speed. Don’t put conditions on your heart, as I did, as your father once did – that leads to inevitable wretchedness, as I understand too late. I was too proud when young.’

Oyre said, ‘You are not wretched. You are still proud.’

‘One may be both wretched and proud. Heed what I say, I who understand your difficulties. Laintal Ay is the nearest thing I shall ever have to a son. He loves you. Love him – not just emotionally, also physically. Bodies are for roasting, not smoking.’

She looked down at her own dried flesh, and nodded them farewell.

Batalix was setting, true night descending.

Traders came to Oldorando in increasing numbers, and from all points of the compass. The important salt trade was conducted from the north and south, whence it arrived often by goat train. There was now a regular track from Oldorando westwards across the veldt, trodden by traders from Kace, who brought gaudy things such as jewels, stained glass, toys, silvery musical instruments, as well as sugar cane and rare fruits; they preferred money to barter, but Oldorando had no currency, so they accepted herbs, skin, suede, and grain instead. Sometimes the men from Kace used stungebags as beasts of burden, but the animals became rarer as the weather grew warmer.

Traders and priests still called from Borlien, although they had learned long ago to fear their treacherous northern neighbour. They sold pamphlets and broadsheets that told lurid tales in rhyme, and fine metal pots and pans.

From the east, by divergent ways, came many traders, and sometimes caravans. Dark little men with enslaved populations of Madis or phagors plied regular routes, on which Oldorando was merely one port of call. They brought delicately wrought ornaments and decorations which the women of Oldorando loved. Rumour had it that some of those women fared onwards with the
dark men; certain it was that the easterners traded in young Madi women, who looked wild and lovely, but pined away when shut in a tower. Bad though their reputation was, the traders were tolerated for their wares – not decorations only, but woven rugs, carpets, tapestries, shawls, such as Oldorando had never seen before.

All these travellers needed housing. Their encampments became a nuisance. Oldorando’s slaves toiled to erect a separate township just to the south of the towers, known ironically as the Pauk. Here all trade was conducted; in narrow alleys, peltmongers and all other mongers carried on their business, with stables and eating houses nearby, and for a while the traders were forbidden entry to Oldorando proper. But their numbers grew, and some settled in the town, importing their arts and vices.

Oldorandans were also learning the artifices of trade. New merchants approached Aoz Roon and asked for special concessions, including the right to mint coin. This question vexed their minds far more than any problems with the academy, which they regarded as a waste of time.

A party of these Oldorandan traders numbering six, comfortably mounted on hoxneys, was returning to Oldorando from a successful expedition. At Freyr-dawn, they paused on a hill to the north, close by the brassimip patch, from where they could see the outskirts of the town, chill in the grey light. The air was so still that distant voices carried to them.

‘Look,’ exclaimed one of the younger traders, shading his eyes as he gazed. ‘There’s some kind of a hullabaloo by the gate. We’d best go by another way.’

‘Not fuggies, is it?’

They all stared hard. In the distance, a cluster of persons, men and women, could be observed surging from the town. In a space, some of them halted indecisively, causing the cluster to split in two. The others went forward.

‘It isn’t anything important,’ said the young trader, and spurred his hoxney. He had a woman in Embruddock he very much wanted to see, and a new bauble for her in his pocket. The departure of Shay Tal meant nothing to him.

Soon Batalix was rising, overhauling its companion in the sky.

*

The chill, the etiolated morning in which rain threatened, the sense of adventure, served to make her feel disembodied. She experienced no emotion as she clasped Vry to her in mute farewell. Her servant, Maysa Latra, a willing slave, helped her downstairs with her few things. Beside the tower stood Amin Lim, clutching the bridle of her own hoxney and Shay Tal’s, and saying a sorrowful farewell to her man and her small child; there, thought Shay Tal, is a sacrifice greater than mine. I’m glad to go. Why Amin Lim comes with me, I shall never know. But her heart warmed to her friend, although she also felt a little contempt.

Four women were leaving with her: Maysa Latra, Amin Lim, and two younger disciples, devout pupils of the academy. All were mounted and were accompanied by a male gelded slave, Hamadranabail, who walked, leading two pack hoxneys and a pair of savage hunting dogs with spiked collars.

More people, women and some older men, followed the procession, calling farewells and sometimes advice, serious or jocular as the fancy took them.

Laintal Ay and Oyre waited at the gate to catch a last glimpse of Shay Tal; they stayed close but avoided looking at each other.

Beyond the gate was Aoz Roon himself, standing there in his black furs, arms folded, chin sunk on chest. Behind him was Grey, in the care of Eline Tal, who for once looked no more cheerful than his lord. Several men stood in a huddle behind their silent ruler, faces sober, hands under armpits.

When Shay Tal appeared, Aoz Roon swung himself into his saddle and began to ride slowly, not towards her but rather almost parallel with her path, so that, continuing on undeflected courses, they would collide some way ahead, where trees began.

Before he reached that point, Aoz Roon struck off the track, picking a course parallel with it among the trees. The women’s party, with Amin Lim leading, weeping silently, continued sedately along the path. Neither Aoz Roon nor Shay Tal made any attempt to communicate, or even look at each other.

Freyr was hidden as yet in early cloud, so that the world remained without colour.

The ground rose, the track narrowed, the trees grew closer. They came to a fold in the ground where the trees stopped and the ground was marshy. Frogs splashed to safety as the party approached. The hoxneys picked their way slowly through the wet, flexing their paws in distaste, raising yellow mud that curdled under the water surface.

Trees on the far side of the marsh forced the riders more closely together. As if noticing Aoz Roon for the first time, Shay Tal called in her clear voice, ‘You do not need to follow.’

‘I am leading, ma’am, not following. I will see you safely away from Oldorando. It’s an honour properly owed you.’

No more was said. They proceeded farther, coming at last to rising ground studded with bushes. At the crest, they could pick up a clear traders’ path leading northeast, to Chalce and distant Sibornal – how distant, no one knew. Trees began again on the downward slope. Aoz Roon reached the crest first, and positioned himself there, bleak of visage, pointing Grey along the lie of the ridge as the women went by.

Shay Tal turned Loyalty’s head and approached him, the lines of her face clear and composed.

‘It’s good of you to come this far.’

‘Enjoy a safe journey,’ he said formally, holding himself upright, pulling in his belly. ‘You observe that no attempt is made to stop you leaving us.’

Her voice softened. ‘We shall never see each other again; from this date on, we are extinct to each other. Have we ruined each other’s lives, Aoz Roon?’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

‘Yes, you do. Since we were children we have been up against each other. Give me a word, friend, as I go away. Don’t be proud, as I’ve always been proud – not now.’

He firmed up his mouth and regarded her without saying anything.

‘Please, Aoz Roon, a true word on parting. I am well aware I said No to you once too often.’

At that he nodded. ‘There’s your true word.’

She looked about anxiously, then kicked Loyalty one pace nearer, so that the two hoxneys touched each other.

‘Now that I’m leaving for ever, just tell me – that in your heart you still feel for me as once you did, when we were younger.’

He gave a snorting laugh. ‘You’re mad. You never understood reality. You were too wrapped up in yourself. I feel nothing for you now – or you for me, if you but knew it.’

She reached out to clutch him, but he backed away, showing his teeth like a dog. ‘Lies, Aoz Roon, all lies! Give me then a gesture as I go – give me a parting kiss, damn you, I who have suffered so much from you. Gestures are better than words.’

‘Many think not. What’s said always remains.’

Tears burst from her eyes and were gone, falling aslant her lean cheeks.

‘May the fessups feed on you!’

She wrenched round the head of her mare and galloped away, plunging into the trees to catch up with her small procession.

He sat for a moment where he was, drawn up rigid in the saddle, staring ahead with his knuckles white about the reins. Gently, he turned Grey’s head and coaxed her among the trees, going away from Oldorando at a tangent, ignoring Eline Tal, who discreetly waited some distance behind.

Grey picked up speed as she moved downhill, encouraged by her master. Soon they were going at full gallop, the ground flying beneath them, and all human beings lost to view. Aoz Roon raised his clenched right fist high in the air.