Maia

by Richard Adams

  ions of the couches were all made of the same stout, green growth. Nonetheless, there was ao cause for anyone to feel that Elvair-ka-Virrion was stinting his hospitality. Great quantities of cold meat, together with bread, fruit, nuts, cheeses, peeled eggs, cucumbers, gherkins and the like were already spread across the tables, and as the slaves hurried in and out, smells of roasting drifted into the hall from the adjacent kitchens. Maia had never seen such a display of wine-jars. Also-and this, as always, delighted her-there were flowers everywhere, sprays, garlands and bouquets, filling the place with color and perfume. As a background to the guests' entry, Fordil and his men, already established on a low platform to one side, had struck up a repetitive, plaintive strain which, after a few moments, she recognized through the babble and hum of talk as an old Tonildan air, "The Island of Kisses". She had forgotten it-hadn't heard it for many a long day-not since leaving home, in fact. To encounter it unexpectedly here-found, as it were, in an old drawer of the heart- filled her with pleasure and a sense of propitious luck.

  "Did you really mean it about the Ortelgans?" she asked Elvair-ka-Virrion, looking back at him as she reached across the table for some sprays of jasmine to take the place of the scent she had forgotten. "I didn't know they was soldiers at all: didn't know there was an Ortelgan regiment, even."

  "Well, you're quite right; they're not regulars," he answered, helping her to trim the jasmine and fasten it in her hair. "But you see, their High Baron, Bel-ka-Trazet, wants to feel he can count on our help against the Deelguy if ever they should need it, so he's sent me five hundred Ortelgans under a young man called Ta-Kominion-a baron's son. I gather he had a bit of a job persuading some of his barons to go along with the idea-not all of them love us, you know-but Ta-Kominion himself seems a good lad. He's very young, it's true, but he's a good leader and a regular fire-eater; he can't wait to get to Chalcon."

  He took her arm again as they threaded their way among the benches and couches, where stewards were seating the guests, towards the upper part of the hall.

  "The Ortelgans'll feel enormously flattered to have the Serrelinda seated with them for supper, and that'll be all to the good from my point of view. But Iwas thinking of you, too, Maia-" he smiled, and gave her a quick kiss

  on the shoulder-"I really was. Ta-Kominion's a very impulsive, susceptible sort of lad, and I know his father's rich enough. There's one of their barons here, too, though he's not part of the Chalcon contingent; a man called Ged-la-Dan, who's made a fortune out of eshcarz and ziltate from the Telthearna. His men dive for it, you know. It just crossed my mind that the Ortelgans'll probably be able to bid quite a lot if they want to."

  "It's very good of you, Elvair, to be at all this trouble on my account."

  He laughed. "Feeling nervous?"

  She shook her head. "Never. Oh, no, there's nothing as I-"

  Suddenly she stopped, staring in front of her and as quickly turning her head away in revulsion. Some thirty feet off, beyond a group of young Beklan officers and their girls, was sitting the same hideously disfigured man whom she had last seen in the gardens of the Barb on the night of the High Counselor's murder. This, she now recalled Occula telling her, was Bel-ka-Trazet, the High Baron of Ortelga. She forced herself to look at him again. In this clearer light his face appeared even more ghastly, the left eye askew and pulled horribly down the cheek, half-lost beneath a great, seamed ridge of flesh running from nose to throat. As he spoke to the two men beside him his lips twisted crookedly, and she saw him pause for a moment and collect himself, grimacing as though the very act of utterance were a trial.

  "Oh, Elvair," she said, "that Bel-ka-Trazet-oh, I don't mean to-only it's enough to make anyone take on bad. You surely don't mean that he-that you want me to-"

  "No, don't worry, Maia," answered Elvair-ka-Virrion. "You can take it from me that Bel-ka-Trazet won't be putting himself forward as far as you're concerned. He's very proud, you know-severe and harsh even with him-self. They say he never makes advances to women, because he'd rather not think they might be pitying him. Would it upset you to help a cow to calve?"

  "No, 'course not."

  "Well, it would a lot of girls. But then you're used to it, you see. This is much the same. It won't bother you to be in his company after a little while. I like the man, myself. Grim he may be, but he's always been honest with us; and

  incidentally he's one of the best hunters in the whole empire."

  He led her across to the Ortelgans, and as he began speaking to Bel-ka-Trazet she glanced aside to see the other two men staring at her in the way to which she had become accustomed. The High Baron bowed, taking her hands in his own, and she forced herself to look directly at him and smile as naturally as she could.

  "I'm honored to meet you, saiyett," he said, speaking with a peculiar, grating ring in his voice, so that she guessed that his throat, too, must have been injured. "There's no one in Ortelga who hasn't heard of what you did for the empire in Suba. Perhaps, a little later, if you haven't grown tired of telling the story, my friends and I might be privileged to hear it."

  There were murmurs of agreement from his two companions. The older man, Ged-la-Dan, struck her unfavorably; a typical Ortelgan, unsmiling, dark and thick-set, looking less like a nobleman, she thought, than a butcher or a drover; however, there was nothing servile about his manner and he was dressed as richly as anyone in the room, with an elaborately-pleated, purple veltron and four or five strings of polished ziltate and penapa encircling his bull neck. By contrast, Ta-Kominion seemed a mere boy- barely eighteen, she guessed-fair-haired and very tall, with an eager, restless look, a ready smile and something compelling and persuasive in his manner which conveyed the impression that he placed unbounded confidence both in himself and in whomever he was speaking to. It was as though his eyes were saying, "I know I can rely on you: I know you're my friend, and I'm heartily glad of it." She felt a kind of generous warmth in him which made the prospect of supper with the Ortelgans more agreeable than it had seemed a few minutes before. Within her, the invisible Zen-Kurel instantly approved, assuring her that had things been different he and this man might have become good friends and comrades-in-arms. I can see why they've sent him to go with Elvair, she thought. Reckon I'd follow him all right if I was a soldier. #

  She now saw that there was a girl with them; but whether wife, mistress or shearna it was hard to tell. She, too, was dark; slightly built and quick-moving; pretty enough, with an intense, wide-eyed look-nervous, perhaps, thought Maia, of so many strangers and of the unusual surround-

  ings. (It did not occur to her that she might also be nervous of the Serrelinda.) She smiled, but in response the girl merely gazed at her for a moment before dropping her eyes.

  As Elvair-ka-Virrion, after speaking a few more words to Bel-ka-Trazet and the others, left her with the Ortel-gans, she turned enquiringly towards Ta-Kominion. "Your friend?"

  "Yes, this is Berialtis," he answered, putting the girl's hand into Maia's. "She's a very wise girl. She can tell you all about the Ledges, if you like."

  "I don't want to talk about the Ledges," said the girl quickly.

  "The Ledges?" Maia was mystified.

  "Berialtis grew up on Quiso," said Ta-Kominion, "but she didn't fancy becoming a priestess-sensible lass-so she went back to Ortelga. She's come along to look after me while we help Elvair to tidy up in Chalcon."

  "You'll be a bit of a traveler time you're done, then; same as me," said Maia to the girl.

  Herself feeling amiable enough, she was nevertheless aware that for some reason the girl did not like her. Could this be merely resentment-envy-she wondered; or did Berialtis perhaps suppose that she might have designs on Ta-Kominion? Somehow, she felt intuitively, neither of these explanations quite fitted. There was something else about the girl-a kind of general detachment and preoccupation, hard to define exactly, but as though she were not, for some reason or other, heart-and-soul in the occasion. Yet she was evidently a free woman and no slave. Sh
e was expensively, if rather quietly, dressed, in a plain blue robe and matching sandals which must have cost a good deal, and she had just spoken to Ta-Kominion as no slave-girl would. But if she was a shearna, why this inappropriate aloofness and lack of warmth, the very reverse of Nennaunir or of any competent professional? Perhaps this was the best Ortelga could put up in the way of a shearna? Probably it wasn't so very different there from Suba. This girl was just a variant of Luma, only she happened to be pretty. (But I'm a Suban, she thought yet again: O Shakkarn, I'm a Suban!)

  As they seated themselves and the slaves began serving food and drink, Maia entered upon her task of making herself agreeable to Bel-ka-Trazet. She soon perceived

  what Elvair-ka-Virrion had meant. This must once have been a warm-spirited, accomplished young nobleman, full of ardor and enjoyment of his own ability and of the promise before him. He felt his disfigurement bitterly-however could it have happened? she wondered. Elvair-ka-Virrion had spoken of his skill as a hunter: a wild beast, then, perhaps?-but he'd be damned if anyone was going to be given the slightest cause either to pity or reject him because of it. Authority, self-possession, restraint, formidability, irreproachable correctness; these were the weapons with which he compelled the respect of his own people-no doubt a rough, superstitious lot who, unless he could make them fear, trust and admire him, would probably regard him as a man accursed. These were his harsh comforters, the tutelary demons who companioned him and gave meaning and purpose to his ravaged, deprived life. He lived with eyes in the back of his head. "Look at Trazet trying to exploit his affliction." "Look at Trazet making up to that shearna. Wonder how she's feeling, poor girl?" No one was going to be given any least opportunity even to think things like this, let alone to utter them. What was it that Elvair-ka-Virrion had said-he was turning his island into a fortress? He's turned himself into a fortress an' all, she thought.

  The High Baron's face was incapable of adopting the normal expressions which commonly complement speech, yet soon she began to find his conversation full of interest and his company absorbing. Her beauty-which, she knew, constrained so many men because of their self-conscious sense of their own desire for her-plainly caused him no more of a tremor than Fordil's hinnari would bring to a man tone-deaf. Yet he was neither detached nor incurious; and this was flattering. He quickly set about establishing to his own satisfaction that peasant or no, she was no fool. And this discovery once made, he showed his respect for her by talking more freely and making his conversation more demanding. They spoke of Terekenalt and Katria, of King Karnat (with whom, he told her, he had hunted leopards) and the water-ways of Suba. He asked her for opinions, and seemed to weigh them as seriously as he might those of his own barons. She found herself talking to him of Meerzat and Serrelind, and then even of her life in Sencho's house; for here, she felt, was a man without contempt for another's misfortune; one who, on the con-

  trary, actually admired suffering and loss which had not been allowed to defeat the sufferer. To him, as to no one else she had met-unless indeed it was Nasada-all human beings, men or women, slave or free, evidently came alike. That was to say, he had slight regard for their rank or station, but treated them in accordance with his own estimation of their capacities. Unlike Nasada, however, he had little use for compassion. She recalled that he was widely renowned as a hunter. Perhaps, she thought, he saw men and women as he might see a quarry. The courageous, resourceful and adroit-these he respected and felt to be worth contending with. The timorous or slow were merely tedious and a waste of time.

  Now and then Ged-la-Dan, by contrast uncouth and insensitive, put in a few words, sometimes complimenting her on something which did not deserve a compliment or again, asking her some question which unconsciously revealed a half-envious and half-contemptuous notion of her life in Bekla as a kind of stream of luxurious and extravagant frivolity, and of herself as a girl available to anyone who could pay. Her response to this was a blend of Occula and Nennaunir-part worldly-wise banter, part simulated warmth. Yet Ta-Kominion, she sensed, could perceive very well that she was thus employing the courtesan's skills to humor a boor. He, for his part-a young man in the company of his elders-said little, but his eyes seldom left her, so that she found herself feeling an altogether un-shearna-like sympathy for Berialtis. True, she herself had come with a motive, and to this end she spared no pains to arouse the two Ortelgans. Yet she wished that, in accordance with the usual way of things, there could have been a third girl in the company. Perhaps Bel-ka-Trazet disdained such concessions to convention: no one need bother themselves to provide a girl for him. Or perhaps Elvair-ka-Virrion had been over-zealous to leave her a free hand. Still, it was becoming clear that conventions were going to matter less and less as the barrarz got under way. Several of the guests were fairly drunk already, and she had seen Nenoaunir and another girl whose name she did not know openly walking here and there among the tables, graceful, pausing and predatory as herons in a stream.

  As the feasting began to draw to an end and she got up to fetch the Ortelgans a tray-full of sweet things from the central table already filled by the slaves, there suddenly

  broke out a roar of acclaim and elation, and some ten or twelve young officers wearing the wolf cognizance of Be-lishba sprang up and made their way purposefully to the center of the hall, not far from where she was standing. By no means sure what they might be up to, she made haste to get out of their way.

  Having pushed the central table to one side and rather blusteringly persuaded several people near-by to move their benches and couches to make an open space, the young men formed up in a line. Then, Unking arms and taking their time from the tallest of their number, whose bare chest was tattooed with two fighting leopards in red and blue (he could have done with some soap, thought Maia, wrinkling her nose as she made her way back to the Or-telgans), they began to sway and intone all together, gesturing as they did so with uniform, rhythmic motions.

  Happening to meet Nennaunir-who had thrown off her cloak to display her transparent robe and silver ornaments to full advantage-she smiled and raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

  "Oh, it's an old Belishban custom, dear," said the sheama. "A kind of wild warriors' dance: they call it a straka. In the old days they always used to do it before a battle: I thought somehow we wouldn't get off without one."

  The leader had begun a series of what seemed to be chanted adjurations to his followers, though these were in no language even remotely known to Maia.

  "Kee-a, kee-a, kee-a! U-ay kee-a, u-ay kee-a!"

  "Ah, hi hal" responded his comrades, side-stepping as one.

  "Bana, bana, bana! Hi-po lana, hi-po lana!"

  "Bah, way mal"

  They sniffed at the air like hounds, baring their teeth and tossing their heads as they stamped and turned, grimacing fiercely, clapping their hands and brandishing imaginary spears.

  Gradually the ferocity and pace of the dance increased. Their wide-stretched eyes glittered, they stooped their shoulders and bent their heads towards the floor, growling and snarling as they uttered the responses. They turned about with upstretched arms, then paired off and made believe to stab and savage one another. At times the leader's utterances would cease and then, after a moment's silence, they would burst all together into a kind of de-

  monic chorus, as inarticulate yet plain in meaning as the baying of wolves.

  The unhesitating unanimity with which they pounded the floor, clapped, suddenly paused to thrust out their tongues or slap their buttocks before resuming their ritual clamor, was hypnotic and infectious, stirring the onlookers until the hall was filled with battle-cries, yells of approbation and the hammering of knives and goblets on the tables. The Belishbans, leaving the center of the room, began to prance and stamp their way in a line among the tables, making believe to stab the men and drag the girls away as they maintained their chanting. At length, nearing the door that led out onto the terrace, the leader, suddenly introducing a quicker, pattering chant-"Willa-wa, wi
lla-wa, willa-wa"-snatched the beautiful Otavis-who happened to be the girl nearest to hand-almost out of the arms of Shend-Lador and tossed her bodily to his followers. As two of them caught and held her, the others closed about her in a group, whereupon the whole crowd, setting up a kind of quivering motion with their shoulders, formed a rotating circle about her as she was carried out of the room in their midst.

  Maia, who had watched the whole extraordinary act with the breathless absorption always aroused in her by any dance-she would have liked to join in, or at least to have had the chance to learn it-turned to her companions to see Ta-Kominion grinning with excitement and obviously as much affected as herself.

  "Oh, that was just about something! I've never seen the like of that before," she said. "Have you?"

  "Only once, and that was at Herl, when I was no more than about nine."

  "Can you do it?"

  He shook his head. "Oh, no; it's not half as easy as it looks. You have to be a Belishban to be able to do it properly. It's the desert blood in them, they say. They used to do it out in the Harridan desert, where the sound carries for miles, to let the enemy know they were coming."

  "What enemy?"

  "Oh, any old enemy," answered Ta-Kominion, fondling her shoulders. "I'm glad we're going to have them with us: I don't think Erketlis is going to care for them at all,

  do you? What do you think of them, my lord?" he asked, turning to Bel-ka-Trazet. "Fierce enough for you?"

  The High Baron paused, laying aside his unfinished apricots in sweet wine with an air of having made a sufficient concession to the practice of eating such rubbish.

  "Why don't you tell that young Elvair to take along a herd of bulls to drive at the enemy?"

  "Oh, you do them an injustice, my lord, I'm sure. There's a lot more to them than that."