The Hollowing (30 page)

Because of the nature of her work, because she would need to talk to men from all across the world where customs and the secret languages were different, she was trained in the language of the Tall Grass. The Tall Grass language had been the first language, spoken in the long-gone by the first adventurers. Over many generations the Tall Grass tongue had become rich and complex and all men the known world over spoke it; a small part of it, however, had become divided and secret; each and every man and woman had a secret language, which they spoke alone, to the moon, or to hidden forces, or to God.

Once Sarin had learned the ancient Tall Grass tongue, she could see deeper into the wisdom of the men of Vision, further into their hearts, further into their humour, further into their fears. She became one of the Comforting Mouths, women whose conversation and understanding was like magic. Her head was full of language, and those languages were like windows onto long-gone worlds. Sometimes, too, there were long-to-come worlds, showing themselves in dreams. This was the nature of the Tall Grass tongue: so simple that it was the key to everything human beings thought in their secret worlds. The women kept this secret closely guarded in their hearts.

One day, Sarin made the mistake—the only mistake she would ever make, until she failed to kill a man called Jason who came to abduct her—the mistake of mentioning her visions of the long-to-come.

One of the Tower Builders, aspiring to the priesthood, was jealous of her dreams. He asked her to reveal the names of God in the worlds of the long-to-come. Sarin refused. He beat her, then dragged her to the stone drop, a hole in the wall through which the blasphemous were sent to their death on the rocks and tents, an hour’s fall below. The Builder held Sarin by the hair and dangled her from the stone drop. From here she could see the sun at every horizon, and she remembered her father’s dying words, and that made her think of her grandfather, and her mother and sisters, now lost in this great structure in the service of the Builders.

She felt at peace despite the pain and hung there, talking to the memory of her father, while the Builder’s arm tired. He demanded to know the names of God in the long-to-come. She asked him why he wished to know. He told her that in names there was great power, and when the tower reached to Heaven itself, those men in possession of the not-yet-known names of God would be as Kings in that great place.

That was when the tower cracked.

Sarin declined to let her secret knowledge be known.

The tower cracked again, and this time she felt the whole world shake, and reached to the Builder just as he released her hair. She clung to his arm, then found a grip upon the lintel of the stone hole. The tower trembled and the Builder was thrown out into the air, to fall for a long time, robes flapping, his scream outliving his body. As the tower began to collapse, Sarin scrambled into its ruined bulk, and scampered down the spiral stairs, dodging the rocks and stones, the cedarwood beams, the jade and golden idols. Eventually she was struck by masonry and lost consciousness, save for a dream in which, with thousands of others, she was falling through the ruins to her death below.

She woke among those ruins. Her mother was bathing her face. Everything was in chaos. The world was full of sound, and the sounds jarred and flowed and screamed, but as Sarin came to full alertness she found that she could understand those sounds. The secret languages of every man, woman, and child were now the
only
languages—the greater part of the Tall Grass tongue had been torn away!—but each was different. She could understand her mother, but her mother could understand none of her daughters, save Sarin.

Sarin was the Tall Grass Lady, and she was depicted on many painted and carved surfaces, vases, and sacred stones. She knew all tongues. When she had denied the Builder his obscene request, she alone had been spared by the fateful and vengeful force that had destroyed the language of the world, the tower, and its blasphemous intent. Sarin dwelt in a temple, and was visited often, to interpret between new peoples, new clans, new tribes. Her visions continued. Her fame spread …

And then—to this Sarin at least—a strange thing happened …

Out of the long-to-come came a ship like no ship she had ever seen, men like no men she had ever seen, carrying swords and spears with terrifying blades, speaking a language that she recognised, but talking of her own life as if she was long-gone, long in the past. They were collectors, and they had come to collect her. They would sell her for a high price to a king whose desire for power could make use of this Witch of Tongues.

They took her, abused her, beat her, and chained her in the cargo hold of the
Argo.

Sarinpushtam. Tall Grass Speaker. A woman with the gift of language. One of Jason’s tradable treasures.

*   *   *

“There are two holds,” she said after finishing the last of the sour, lavender wine. It hadn’t done Sarinpushtam any harm, so Richard too had indulged from the golden jug, and now felt light-headed and aggressive towards Jason. “To get to the hold where the living are chained you have to go through the dead treasure hold. It’s stuffed. You can hardly move for fleeces, skulls, statues, and bits of armour.”

“Fleeces? Is there a golden fleece among them?”

“They’re all golden,” Sarin said with a little laugh. “He collects them compulsively. I don’t know why—nobody seems to want them.”

“What about guards?”

“They’re all drunkards. They’ll be vigilant during daylight, but they eat and sleep like lions, and drink like Old Vineface … I don’t know how you remember him in your long-to-come. They’ll soon drift off, but Richard, they’re not fools. If they sleep readily, because of their age, they sleep lightly, they wake fast, they’re stronger than they look, and they’ve lost none of their skills. They’re mean-tempered, ferocious old men.”

“I’ll be careful. At least Hercules didn’t come back.”

“Four of his illegitimate sons are among them, though, and one of the women is his daughter. The sons of the Dioscuri are among them too. And the shade of Aeneus, of whom you should be very wary.”

“The unsung heroes of Jason’s later legend,” Richard mused aloud, and was about to speak again, to ask who the rest of the argonauts were, when he noticed that sweat was pouring from Sarin’s face. She seemed to be in pain, and almost immediately she arched back and began to howl. Richard leapt to his feet and picked her up, astonished at the fact that he could hardly feel her weight. Her breath was bad, but her eyes, now wide, were terrified. “Something’s happening to me…”

The defences! Christ!

“Hang on to me. I have to get you out of the Station.”

She began to weep, biting back the sounds, gnawing at her lip to frustrate the anguish of pain that she was suddenly experiencing. Richard cut straight through the grass, wading through the tall grass, crossing his winding paths. He hardly glanced around him as he passed the gates, and entered the water. If Jason was here, now, then he was in trouble. Sarin’s grip on his neck tightened, then relaxed and he was shocked, dropping her to the ground, slapping her cheeks, pulling her face round to see if life still existed. She was breathing shallowly. Her mouth was slack and wet. He picked her up again and stumbled up the bank, running fast towards the Sanctuary, to get her away from the humming defences, the totems, the talismans, the forces of the earth that could so unpredictably take the life of a mythago.

He fell to the ground, his legs too tired to work any more. He covered Sarin with his body, hugged her, his mouth against her neck not for pleasure, but so that he could feel with his lips for the pulse of life. She groaned, was sick, and he drew away, holding her hand, massaging her thin fingers, waiting for her to come back to full strength.

“What happened?” she whispered after a while. “I felt like my life was being sucked into a great hole. There were running creatures, running men, all being sucked down into a great hollow in the ground…”

The reference was clear. She had experienced Old Stone Hollow itself. So did that mean that it was the camp’s defences that had attacked her suddenly or had something reached to her from the cave? In any case, it would be dangerous for her to return to the Station.

“How do you feel?”

She wiped a hand across her mouth. “Too much wine,” she said. “I feel shaky. I don’t want to be beaten again. I’m going back. From what I’ve heard Jason say to the others, the
Argo
will not be seaworthy for four days, perhaps five. So don’t act hastily. If you really want to help, then we must wait for a good moment.”

She was staring at him. It was an odd look and he couldn’t interpret it. Suddenly she flung her arms around his neck and cried on his shoulder. Helplessly he patted her back, alarmed by the prominent ribs. “I
will
help,” he said. “As best I can. But you mustn’t come back to the compound. It’s too dangerous for you.”

“He’ll drag me back. He needs to control you. He wants your head. Jason believes that the source of all magic is in the jelly that fills our skulls.”

Clever man …

“Richard…?”

“What is it?”

She drew back, peered at him through furrowed brow, licking her lips and grimacing at the taste. “If you can’t help us. If it seems Jason will win…” Her eyes gleamed with passion and desperation. “Richard. I would rather not be alive than with Jason. Do you understand what I’m asking?”

“Yes. I do.”

“The knowledge has only just become important to me. I can’t stand it any longer. I don’t belong with him. I don’t belong here. I dream of long-gone and long-to-come, but the dreams are wrong. It’s as if I am not in the right world. Can you explain that?”

Richard could have spent an hour explaining it, of course, but he shook his head. Suddenly Sarin was on her feet. She slipped off her colourful wrap and merged with night shadows, a pathetically slim shape, slipping down the bank to the gully, moving like the softest breeze back to her prison in the
Argo.

*   *   *

“
Riiich
—aaaard! Good morrr-ning. Brek-faaast,
Riiich
—ard. Braaaaak—fust!”

The sound of Jason’s call, his shouted invitation to come to the river, woke Richard from a deep and dizzying sleep. He was in the longhouse, wet and cold with sweat. Jason’s voice, the accent pronounced, the laughter a clear indicator that he was amused by the strange words (no doubt taught to him by Sarin), was nightmarish.

“Riiich—aaaard!”

He dressed and ran in his crouch through the wind-stirred grass, finally peering through the gate at the crouched, cloaked shape on the far bank. Sarin was there too, but not in chains. On a skewer, Jason held two crisply black fish, plump of body. Fish for breakfast. Why not? The pain in Richard’s head was a sufficient warning not to accept any alcohol, however.

He thought of turning up the generator, but the memory of the previous night, and the possibility that Sarin would not survive the destructive field, decided him against such a move. Jason as ever was unarmed, but Richard nocked an arrow and skulked forward, finally standing in the open gates.

“Why the bow?” Jason asked through the woman.

“Because I relish the idea of living to be as old as you.”

Jason laughed and nodded. “But that’s too much caution, Richard. Men like you are too fearful of their backs. I’m old because I don’t care. I just trust to Hera. She bargained with me years ago. A long life, said I. Then pleasure me, said she. How do I do that, I asked. I like to see you
find
things, she said. The world is full of hidden treasures. And like a man finding the secret places of a woman for the first time, so to the gods there is a satisfaction in seeing men discover the secret places of the earth. Hera is my love, my life, and some might say my tormentor. But what torment? I have the fullest of lives, and I am unquenchable. I have the vigour of a youth, and the experience of age. I can drink like Old Vineface, and plan a strategy for the ache in the head the next day; and at the whisper of my voice I can summon a hero to sail with me, or a king to charge me with a task. I
like
being old. Memory—experience—these are the truest sources of
power.
Make your own pact, Richard, and that way you need never look behind your back again. But for the moment, it’s breakfast and conversation that I want, and a bargain, not a fight, so do put down that bow.”

They ate fish, and Richard noticed that Sarin was given an equal share. Jason was treating her with much greater respect today. His old man’s temper had got the better of him yesterday, but in the harsh light of retrospect he had clearly decided that a way to get Richard’s confidence was to show consideration for the woman. Sarin’s smile, as she ate and watched her friend, was cynical, a signal that she knew the situation.

“What’s the order of business for today?” Richard asked eventually, and as if understanding him Jason laughed, slapped the woman on the back, and indicated that she should talk.

“Firstly, I’m yours to do with as you want for the duration of the repair to the
Argo.
”

“I accept. I could do with some intelligent conversation.”

Sarin shook her head grimly. “That’s not what Jason means…”

“So what?” said Richard with a smile. “What does it matter what Jason means? It’s not what I mean. I’d like to have your company. I accept the deal. I’ll find a way to get you deeper into the wood, away from him. I need company, chat, and a sense of humour, and you fit the bill. Yes please, I will have your company for the duration. If
you
agree, that is…”

“I agree! But don’t think about smuggling me away. If I betray him, he’ll kill his best friend, who happens to be mine too. I’m sorry, but this man knows his business, and there are other friends below the deck…”

Richard glanced at the smirking man. Did Jason follow the drift of the conversation in English? It was hard to tell.

Sarin said, “The main business today is that you are invited to inspect the
Argo,
to see its goods and treasures, the creatures that he carries, the magic that he has stolen from the earth. He wants to convince you that to join him on the
Argo
would be in your favour. Of course, the whole point is to take you and subdue you. He has already gathered that your strength only shows in this magic place, this
hollow.
He’s afraid of your magic, certainly, but he has guessed correctly that your skills are limited. He still wants to use them. So if you go to the
Argo,
don’t expect to come back. That’s my advice, anyway.”