Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [568]
For Sharagatt was little past the tropical zone. To the north, further up the mountain, the climate rapidly grew more severe. Many hundreds of miles lay between Sharagatt and Kharnabhar. More than determination was needed to make that journey.
Luterin Shokerandit, Toress Lahl, and Harbin Fashnalgid slept in the Sharagatt Star Hotel. More precisely, they slept on a verandah under the broad eaves of the Sharagatt Star Hotel. For even Shokerandit’s careful booking of all details in Rivenjk had not prevented a muddle at the hotel, which was fully occupied. A creaky three-decker bunk bed had been carried onto the verandah for their comfort.
Fashnalgid lay in the top bunk, with Shokerandit next and the woman at the bottom. Fashnalgid had not been pleased with the arrangement, but Shokerandit had bought them each a pipe full of occhara, the weed grown from a mountain plant, and they were full of peace. A light wagon had brought them and other privileged passengers this far. Tomorrow they would take to a sledge. Tonight was for rest. When the mists cleared over the mountain, the night sky blazed with familiar constellations, the Queen’s Scar, the Fountain, the Old Pursuer.
‘Toress Lahl, you see the stars? Can you name them?’ Shokerandit asked in a dreamy voice.
‘I name them all – stars …’ She gave a faint laugh.
‘Then I shall climb down into your bunk and teach you.’
‘There are so many.’
‘It will take me a long time …’
But he fell asleep before he could move, and even animal cries from further down the mountainside did not awaken him.
Shokerandit was up early next morning, feeling stale and tired. He pulled his chilly top clothes on before rousing Toress Lahl.
‘We sleep in all our clothes from now until the end of the journey,’ he said. Without waiting for her to follow he was off to the stores to see to the equipment that would be needed for the month ahead. NORTH TRAVEL stores it announced over the door, with a painting of the Great Wheel.
He was anxious. Fashnalgid, a true Uskuti, thought of Shivenink as a mountainous backwater. Luterin Shokerandit knew better. Remote though it was from the capital, Shivenink was well provided with police and informers. After Fashnalgid’s killing of a soldier, both police and military would be on their track. He grieved to think of the trouble he had left with Eedap Mun Odim and Hernisarath.
Using an assumed name, he bought various necessary items at the store, and then went to inspect the team, already booked, which would transport them to Kharnabhar and the safety of his father’s esates.
Fashnalgid took the processes of the morning more slowly. Directly Shokerandit was gone from the verandah, he ceased to feign sleep and climbed down into the lower bunk with Toress Lahl. Now that he had broken her spirit, she offered no resistance. The occhara had left her listless.
‘Luterin will kill you when he discovers what you are doing,’ she said.
‘Shut up and enjoy it, you hussy. I’ll take care of him when the time comes.’ He seized her in a bear’s embrace, and with his ankles wrapped about hers, parted her thighs, and thrust into her. His thrusting set the rickety bunk banging against the rail of the verandah.
Sharagatt was divided into two parts. There was Sharagatt and North Sharagatt. The two parts were close. Little more than a hundred yards and a clifflike corner of rock separated them. Sharagatt was protected by wedges of mountainside above it. On North Sharagatt cold katabatic winds poured, lowering the temperature by several degrees. The teams that made the northward journey were stabled only in North Sharagatt. Sharagatt itself would have made them soft.
It took Shokerandit two hours to see that all was arranged for the journey. He knew the folk he had to deal with. They were mountain people who called themselves Ondod, which meant – according to who was translating from their complex language – either ‘Spirit