Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [225]
The tree above Laintal Ay burst with furious noise. He watched the seeds expelled. Some flew upwards, most were shot out on all sides. The force of the ejaculation threw the black projectiles as much as a half mile away. Steam rolled everywhere.
When silence fell, eleven of the trees had exploded. As their blackened casings peeled back from the top, a more slender crown thrust up inside, whitish, topped by green growth.
That green growth was destined to spread until the grove, which had consisted merely of polished columns, became roofed over in brilliant green foliage, shielding the roots from the more savage suns that were to come, in the days when Helliconia moved close to Freyr – too close to be comfortable for man, beast, or vegetation. Whoever lived or died under their shade, the rajabarals had their own form of life to protect.
These rajabarals formed part of the vegetation of the new world, the world that came into existence after Freyr swam into the clouded skies of Helliconia. Together with the new animals, they were set in ceaseless ecological competition with the orders of the old world, when Batalix ruled in isolation. The binary system had created a binary biology.
The seeds, a mottled black in colour, designed to resemble stones, were each as big as a human head. Over the course of the next six hundred thousand days, some would survive to become adult trees.
Laintal Ay kicked one carelessly away, and went over to see to the scout. The latter had been wounded, pierced by a sharp-edged phagor blade. Skitosherill and Laintal Ay helped him back to where Aoz Roon and the maidservant stood. He was in a bad way, bleeding freely. They squatted helplessly by his side as the life drained from his eddre.
Skitosherill began to go into an elaborate religious ritual, whereon Laintal Ay jumped up angrily.
‘We must get to Embruddock as soon as possible, don’t you understand? Leave the body here. Leave the woman with your wife. Press on with me and Aoz Roon. Time’s running out.’
Skitosherill gestured to the body. ‘I owe him this. It will take a while but it must be done according to the faith.’
‘The fuggies may return. They don’t get scared easily, and we can hardly hope for another turn of fortune like the last. I am going to press on with Aoz Roon.’
‘You’ve done well, barbarian. Go forward, and perhaps we will meet again.’
As Laintal Ay turned to go, he paused and looked back. ‘I’m sorry about your wife.’
Aoz Roon had had the sense to keep hold of two of the yelk when the rajabarals exploded. The other animals had galloped away in fright.
‘Are you fit to ride?’
‘Yes, I’m fit. Help me, Laintal Ay. I’ll recover. To learn the language of the phagor kind is to see the world differently. I’ll recover.’
‘Mount and let’s be off. I’m afraid that we may be too late to warn Embruddock.’
They rode off rapidly, one behind the other, leaving the shade of the grove where the grey Sibornalan knelt in prayer.
The two yelk proceeded steadily, heads held low, eyes staring vacantly forward. When they dropped their scumble, beetles emerged from the ground and rolled the treasure to underground stores, inadvertently planting the seeds of future forests.
Seeing was bad, because of the way the plain rippled with ridge after ridge. More stone monuments dotted the landscapes, ages old, their circular signs eroded by weather or ripicolous lichens. Laintal Ay pressed ahead, alert for trouble, ever turning back to urge Aoz Roon to keep up.
The plain contained its travelling groups, moving in all directions, but he gave them as wide a berth as possible. They passed fleshless corpses to some of which garments still clung; fat birds sat by these memorials to life, and once they sighted a slinking sabre-tongue.
A cold front rose like a shawl behind their shoulders to the north and east. Where the sky remained clear, Freyr and Batalix clung together, their discs inseparable. The yelk had passed the site of Fish Lake, where a cairn had been erected to mark Shay Tal’s miracle in the vanished waters, many