The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [180]
The city gates lay directly across a wide road from the temple. As they went in, Taliaesyn’s first impression was that they were walking into a forest. Everywhere he looked he saw trees, lining the wide, straight streets and covering them with a shady canopy of interlaced branches, or planted thick around every house and building. Although he recognized a palm tree here and there, most were varieties he’d never seen before: a shrubby kind with tiny red flowers in clumps; a tall, thick-trunked tree with narrow, dustcolored leaves and a spicy scent; yet another with purple flowers as long as a man’s fìnger. Vines twined around the trees and threatened to take over the various wooden and marble statues he saw scattered in the small public squares or at the intersections of streets. Among the greenery stood the rectangular longhouses with their nautical roofs, some guarded by tall statues of the inhabitants’ ancestors; others, by pairs of what seemed to be wooden oars, but made large enough for a giant, standing crossed on end.
Sauntering down the streets or crossing from house to house was a constant flow of people, all dressed in tunics and sandals, men and women alike. The men, however, had brightly colored designs painted on one cheek, while the women wore broochlike oddments tucked into their elaborately curled and piled hair. He vaguely remembered that both ornament and paint identified the wearer’s “house” or clan.
What surprised Taliaesyn the most, however, were the children, running loose in packs down the streets, playing elaborate games in the public spaces and private gardens alike without anyone saying a cross word to them. They were also mostly naked, boys and girls alike wearing only bright-colored pieces of cloth wrapped around their hips. Watching them made him think that yes, he must be a foreigner here, because back in Deverry children would have been dressed just like their parents and working at their sides in the family craft shop or farm.
As they went along, the houses grew larger and stood farther apart. Some were isolated by high stucco walls, painted with pictures of animals and trees; others, by flowering hedges and vines. All at once they came between two blue walls and out into an open public square, as large as three Deverry tourney grounds. Shallow steps led down to a cobbled plaza, nearly deserted in the shimmering heat. An old man drowsed on a marble bench; three children chased each other around a marble fountain, where dolphins intertwined under splashing water.
“What is this?” Taliaesyn said. “A marketplace?”
“No,” Gwin said. “It’s the place of assembly, where the citizens come to vote.”
“Vote? I don’t know this word.”
“Vote—choose a leader. On the election day, they put urns around the fountain, one for each candidate. Every free man and woman puts a pebble in the urn that belongs to their choice. The man who gets the most pebbles is archon for three years.”
Gwin might have said more, but Briddyn turned and snarled at him to hold his tongue and hurry.
“Over there, little one,” Gwin said to Taliaesyn in a soft whisper. “You’ll soon be rid of him.”
The “there” in question turned out to be a narrow, treeless alley that twisted between back garden walls. As they walked along, the walls grew lower until they disappeared altogether, and the houses, smaller and poorer until they degenerated into a maze of huts and kitchen gardens. Here and there Taliaesyn saw and smelled pigsties, each holding one or two small, gray-haired pigs. Once, as they passed a ramshackle hut, a vastly pregnant woman came out to slop her hogs. When her gaze fell on the prisoner, her