Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [93]
Dathka walked by Aoz Roon, who was given respectful clearance by the crowd. ‘How could you bear to lop your own slave?’ he asked.
The older man shot him a contemptuous look. ‘There are moments of decision.’
‘But Calary …’ Oyre protested. ‘It was so frightening.’
Aoz Roon brushed his daughter’s objection aside. ‘Girls can’t understand. I filled Calary full of rungebel and rathel before the ceremony. He felt nothing. He probably still thinks he’s in the arms of some Borlienian maid.’ He laughed.
The solemnities were over. Few doubted now that Freyr and Batalix would arise on the morrow. They moved in to celebrate, to drink with extra cheer, for they had a scandal to whisper about, the scandal of the feebleheartedness of their rulers. There was no more delightful subject over mugs of pig’s counsel, before the Great Tale was retold.
But Laintal Ay was whispering to Oyre as he clutched her in the dark. ‘Did you fall in love with me when you saw me ride in on my captured stungebag?’
She put out a tongue at him. ‘Conceited! I thought you looked silly.’
He saw that the celebrations were going to have their more serious side.
VI
‘When I Were All Befuddock …’
All he could see before him was the land rearing up, making a clear bow of horizon close at hand. The tiny springy plants underfoot stretched to that horizon and, away below him, to the valley. Laintal Ay stopped, resting with his hands on one knee, breathing heavily, and looked back. Oldorando was six days’ walk away.
The other side of the valley was bathed in a clear blue light which picked out every detail with lucidity. The sky above was slatey purple with future snowstorms. Where he stood, all was in shadow.
He resumed his upward trudge. More land emerged over the curved near horizon, black, black, unassailable. He had never been there. Farther, the top of a tower rose as the near horizon sank beneath his progress. Stone, ruined, built long ago to an Oldorando mould, with the same inward-sloping walls, and windows placed at each of the four corners on each of the floors. Only four floors stood.
At last Laintal Ay surmounted the slope. Large grey birds cropped outside the tower, which was surrounded by its own debris. Behind, the unassailable hill, enormous, its blackness lit by the slate sky. A line of rajabarals interposed themselves between him and infinity. Chill wind rattled against his teeth, so that he drew his lips together.
What was the tower doing, so far from Oldorando?
Not so far if you were a bird, not so far at all. Not so far if you were a phagor mounted on a kaidaw. No distance if you were a god.
As if to emphasise the point, the birds took off, wings clattering, flying low over the moor. He watched them until they were out of sight and he alone in the great landscape.
Oh, Shay Tal must be right. The world had once been different. When he had talked about her speech to Aoz Roon, Aoz Roon had said that such matters were not important; they could not be changed; what was important was the survival of the tribe, its unity; if Shay Tal had her way, the unity would be lost. Shay Tal said that unity was unimportant beside the truth.
His head occupied by thoughts that moved across his consciousness like cloud shadows over the landscape, he went into the tower and looked up. It was a hollow ruin. The wooden flooring had been pulled out for fuel. He set his pack and spear down in a corner and climbed up the rough stonework, taking advantage of every foothold, until he stood perched on the top of one of the walls. He looked about him. First he looked for phagors – this was phagor country – but only barren and inanimate shapes met his survey.
Shay Tal never left the village. Perhaps she had to invent mysteries. Yet there was a mystery. Looking over the gigantic landforms, he asked himself in awe, Who made them? What for?
High on the great round hill behind him – not even a foothill to the