Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [226]
Laintal Ay dismounted and stood fondling the muzzle of his yelk. Aoz Roon remained despondently in the saddle.
The eclipse was beginning. Once more, exactly as Vry had predicted, Batalix was taking a phagor bite from the brilliant outline of Freyr. The process was slow and inexorable, and would result in Freyr’s being lost entirely for five and a half hours. Not so many miles away, the kzahhn had his needed sign.
The suns were devouring their own light. A terrible fear took hold of Laintal Ay, freezing his eddre. For a moment stars blazed in the day sky. Then he closed his eyes and clung to the yelk, burying his face in its rusty pelage. The Twenty Blindnesses were upon him, and he cried in his heart to Wutra to win the war in his heavens.
But Aoz Roon looked up to the sky with awe blunting his thin features, and exclaimed, ‘Now Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk will die!’
Time seemed to cease. Slowly, the brighter light faded behind the duller. The day took on the greyness of a corpse.
Laintal Ay pulled himself from his dread and took Aoz Roon by his skeletal shoulders, searching that familiar but transformed countenance. ‘What did you say to me then?’
Aoz Roon said dazedly, ‘I’ll be all right, I’ll be myself again.’
‘I asked you what you said.’
‘Yes … You know how the stench of them, that milky smell, clings to everything. Their language is the same. It makes everything different. I was with Yhamm-Whrrmar a half air-turn, talking with him. Many things. Things of which my Olonets-speaking intelligence can make no sense.’
‘Never mind that. What did you say about Embruddock?’
‘It is something that Yhamm-Whrrmar knew would happen as certainly as if it were past, not future. That phagors would destroy Embruddock—’
‘I must go on. Follow if you wish. I must return and warn everyone. Oyre – Dathka—’
Aoz Roon grasped his arms with sudden force.
‘Wait, Laintal Ay. A moment and I’ll be myself. I had the bone fever. I knocked myself out. Cold nailed my heart.’
‘You never made excuses for others. Now you make excuses for yourself.’
Something of the older man’s qualities returned to his face as he stared at Laintal Ay. ‘You are one of the good men, you bear my mark, I have been your lord. Listen. All I say is what I never thought of till I was on that island half an air-turn. The generations are born and fly their course, then they drop to the world below. There’s no escape from it. Only to have a good word said after all’s over.’
‘I’ll speak well of you, but you’re not dead yet, man.’
‘The ancipital race knows that their time is done. Better times come for men and women. Sun, flowers, soft things. After we’re forgotten. Till all Hrl-Ichor Yhar’s frame is empty.’
Laintal Ay pushed him away, cursing, not understanding what was said.
‘Never mind tomorrow and all that. The world hangs on now. I’m riding to Embruddock.’
He climbed again into the saddle of the yelk and kicked it into action. With the lethargic movements of a man rousing from a dream, Aoz Roon followed suit.
The greyness was settling in thicker, like fermentation. In another hour, Freyr was half-devoured, and the hush became more intense. The two men passed groups petrified by dusk.
Later in their progress, they sighted a man approaching on foot. He was running slowly but steadily, arms and legs pumping. He stopped on top of a ridge and stared at them, tensed to run away. Laintal Ay rested his right hand on his sword handle.
Even through the twilight, there was no mistaking that portly figure, the leonine head with its forked beard dramatically flecked with grey. Laintal Ay called his name and moved his mount forward.
It took Raynil Layan some while to be convinced of Laintal Ay’s identity, still more for him to recognise the skeletal Aoz Roon with no sparkle in his eyes. He came cautiously round the antlers of the yelk to grasp Laintal Ay’s wrist with a damp hand.
‘I shall be one with our forefathers if I take another step. You’ve both endured the bone