by Brian Aldiss
His spirit rose, swelling until he had to fling his arms out wide.
“We will live in this sheltered place,” Yuli said. “The four of us will stay united, whatever else happens.” From a snowy fold of hillside, distantly, merging into the evening sky, smoke rose. He pointed ahead. “People live there. We’ll force them to accept us. This shall be our place. We’ll rule them, and teach them our ways. From now on, we live under our own laws, not other people’s.”
Squaring his shoulders, he set off down the slope, among a shallow stand of trees, and the others followed, Iskador first, walking proudly, then the others.
Some of Yuli’s intentions worked out, and some did not.
After numerous challenges, they were accepted in a small settlement sheltering under a protective fold of mountain. The people lived on a squalidly primitive level; because of their superior knowledge and their boldness, Yuli and his friends were able to impose their will on the community, to rule it, and to enforce their own laws.
Yet they never became truly integrated, because their faces looked different, and the Olonets they spoke went with a different lilt from the local variety. And they discovered that this settlement, because of its advantages, always lived in fear of raids from a larger settlement some way off on the banks of a frozen lake. Indeed, these raids were made more than once during the years that followed, with great suffering caused, and loss of life.
Yet Yuli and Usilk became cunning, and maintained their cunning because they were outsiders, and built ferocious defences against the invaders from Dorzin, as the larger settlement was called. And Iskador taught all the young women how to make bows and use them. They came to perform with great skill. The next time the invaders arrived from the south, many died with arrows in their chests, and then there were no more attacks from that direction.
Yet inclement weather beat upon them, and avalanches rolled down from the mountains. There was no end to storms. Only in cave mouths could they grow a few maggoty crops or sustain a few mangey animals to give them milk and meat, so that their numbers never grew, and they were always hungry, or seized by illnesses that could be ascribed only to the malignant gods (of Akha, Yuli allowed no mention).
Yet Yuli took the beautiful Iskador for his woman, and loved her, and looked every day on her broad strong face with comfort. They had a child, a boy they called Si, in memory of Yuli’s old priest in Pannoval, who survived all the pains and dangers of childhood, and grew up wild.
Usilk and Scoraw also married, Usilk to a small brown woman named Isik, curiously like his own name; Isik, despite her stature, could run like a deer and was intelligent and kind. Scoraw took a girl named Fitty, a capricious lady who sang beautifully and led him a hell of a life, and produced a baby girl who died after one year.
Yet Yuli and Usilk could never agree. Although they united in the face of common danger, Usilk at other times displayed hostility to Yuli and his plans, and tricked him when he could. As the old priest had said, some men never forgive.
Yet a deputation came from the larger settlement of Dorzin, which had suffered losses following an outbreak of disease. Having heard of Yuli’s reputation, they begged him to rule them in place of their dead leader. Which Yuli did, to be away from the vexation of Usilk, and he and Iskador and their child lived by the frozen lake, where game was plentifut and administered the laws firmly.
Yet even in Dorzin there were almost no arts to relieve the monotony of their hard life. Though the people danced on feast days, they had no musical instruments beyond clappers and bells. Nor was there any religion, except for a constant fear of evil spirits and a stoic acceptance of the enemy cold, and sickness, and death. So that Yuli became at last a real priest, and tried to instill in the people a feeling for their own spiritual vitality. Most men rejected his words because, although they had welcomed him, he was an outsider, and they were too sullen to learn new things. But he taught them to love the sky in all its moods.
Yet life was strong in him and Iskador, and in Si, and they never let die the hope that better times were emerging. He kept the vision he had been granted in the mountains, that there was possibly a way of life more enjoyable than the one immediately granted, more secure, less subject to the chances and the elements.
Yet he and his beautiful Iskador grew older for all that, and felt the cold more with the passing years.
Yet they loved the lakeside place where they lived and, in memory of another life and another set of expectations, called it by the name of Oldorando.
This is as far as the story of Yuli, son of Alehaw and Onesa can go.
The story of their descendants, and what befell them, is a far greater tale. All unknown to them, Freyr drew nearer to the chilly world: for there was truth buried in the obscure scriptures Yuli rejected, and the sky of ice would in due process of time become a sky of fire. Only fifty Helliconian years after the birth of their son, true spring would visit the inclement world that Yuli and his beautiful Iskador knew.
A new world was already poised to be born.
Embruddock
And Shay Tal said:
You think we live at the centre of the universe. I say we live in the centre of a farmyard. Our position is so obscure that you cannot realise how obscure.
This I tell you all. Some disaster happened in the past, the long past. So complete was it that no one now can tell you what it was or how it came about. We know only that it brought darkness and cold of long duration.
You try to live as best you can. Good, good, live well, love one another, be kind. But don’t pretend that the disaster is nothing to do with you. It may have happened long ago, yet it infects every day of our lives. It ages us, it wears us out, it devours us, it tears our children from us. It makes us not only ignorant but in love with ignorance. We’re infested with ignorance.
I’m going to propose a treasure hunt—a quest, if you like. A quest in which every one of us can join. I want you to be aware of our fallen state, and to maintain constant alertness for evidence as to its nature. We have to piece together what has happened to reduce us to this chilly farmyard; then we can improve our lot, and see to it that the disaster does not befall us and our children again.
That’s the treasure I offer you. Knowledge. Truth. You fear it, yes. But you must seek it. You must grow to love it.
I • DEATH OF A GRANDFATHER
The sky was black, and men bearing torches came from the south gate. They were thickly wrapped in skins, and trod with a high step to get through the snow lying in the lanes. The holy man was coming! The holy man was coming!
Young Laintal Ay hid in the porch of the ruined temple, his face shining with excitement. He watched the procession trudge by between the old stone towers, each one encrusted on its east face with the snow that had arrived earlier in the day. He noticed how colour existed only at the spluttering ends of the torches, on the end of the holy father’s nose, and in the tongues of the six-dog team that pulled him. In each case, the colour was red. The heavy-laden sky—in which the sentinel Batalix was buried—had leached all other colours away.
Father Bondorlonganon from distant Borlien was fat, and made fatter by the enormous furs he wore, furs of a kind not used in Oldorando. He had come alone to Oldorando—the men who accompanied him were local hunters, each one already known to Laintal Ay. It was on the father’s face that the boy focussed all his attention, for strangers came seldom; he had been smaller, less tough, on the occasion of the father’s Last visit.
The holy man’s face was oval, and massively creased by horizontal lines, into which such features as his eyes fitted as best they could. The lines seemed to compress his mouth into a long cruel shape. He sat his sledge and stared about him suspiciously. Nothing in his attitude suggested he liked being back in Oldorando. His gaze took in the ruined temple; this visit was necessary because Oldorando had killed its priesthood some generations ago, as he knew. His uncomfortable stare rested a moment on the boy standing between two square pillars.
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br /> Laintal Ay stared back. It seemed to him that the priest’s look was cruel and calculating; but he could hardly expect to think well of a man who was coming to perform last rites over his dying grandfather.
He smelt the dogs as they went by, and the tarry scent of burning torches. The procession turned and was heading up the main street, away from the temple. Laintal Ay was in two minds about following. He stood on the steps and hugged himself, watching as the sledge’s arrival attracted people from their towers, despite the cold.
In the murk at the far end of the lane, under the big tower where Laintal Ay and his family lived, the procession halted. Slaves appeared to deal with the dogs—they would be housed in the stable under the tower—while the holy father climbed stiffly from his perch and bundled into shelter.
At the same time a hunter approached the temple from the south gate. It was a black bearded man called Aoz Roon, whom the boy greatly admired for his swaggering air. Behind him, shackles clamped round horny ankles, trudged an ancient phagor slave, Myk.
“Well, Laintal, I see the father has arrived from Borlien. Aren’t you going to welcome him?”
“No.”
“Why not? You remember him, don’t you?”
“If he didn’t come, my grandfather wouldn’t be dying.”
Aoz Roon clapped him on the shoulder.
“You’re a good lad, you’ll survive. One day, you will rule Embruddock yourself.” He used the old name for Oldorando, the name in fashion before Yuli’s people came, two generations before the present Yuli, who now lay awaiting the priest’s rites.
“I’d rather have Grandfather alive than be a ruler.”
Aoz Roon shook his head. “Don’t say that. Anyone would rule, given the opportunity. I would.”
“You’d make a good ruler, Aoz Roon. When I grow up, I’m going to be like you, and know everything and kill everything.”
Aoz Roon laughed. Laintal Ay thought what a fine figure he cut, as his teeth flashed between bearded lips. He saw ferocity, but not the priest’s slyness. Aoz Roon was in many ways heroic. He had a natural daughter called Oyre, almost Laintal Ay’s age. And he wore a suit of black skins unlike anyone else’s, cut from a giant mountain bear he had slain single-handed.
Carelessly, Aoz Roon said, “Come on, your mother will want you at this time. Climb on Myk and he’ll give you a ride.”
The great white phagor put out his horned hands and allowed the boy to scramble up his arms onto his bowed shoulders. Myk had been in servitude in Embruddock a long while; his kind lived longer than humans. He said, in his thick, choking voice, “Come on, boy.”
Laintal Ay reached up and clasped the horns of the ancipital for security. As a sign of his enslavement the sharp double edges of Myk’s horns had been filed smooth.
The three figures trudged up the time-worn street, heading towards warmth as the dark closed in on another of the countless nights of winter—a winter that had ruled over this tropical continent for centuries. Wind shifted powdery snow from ledges; it drifted down on them.
As soon as holy father and dogs had entered the big tower, the onlookers disappeared, scurrying back to their billets. Myk set down Laintal Ay in the trampled snow. The boy gave Aoz Roon a cheery wave as he dashed himself against the double doors set in the base of the building.
A stench of fish greeted him in the murk. The dog team had been fed on gout hooked from the frozen Voral. They jumped up as the boy entered, barking savagely on their leashes, showing their sharp teeth. A human slave who had accompanied the father shouted ineffectually to them to keep quiet. Laintal Ay growled back, keeping his fingers wrapped under his arms, and climbed the wooden stairs.
Light filtered from above. Six floors were piled above the stable. He slept in a corner on the next floor. His mother and grandparents were on the top floor. Between lived various hunters in his grandfather’s service; as the boy passed by, they turned their broad backs to him, being already busy packing. Laintal Ay saw, as he climbed to his floor, that Father Bondorlonganon’s few belongings had been deposited here. The man had installed himself, and would sleep nearby. No doubt he would snore; grown-ups generally did. He stood looking down at the priest’s blanket, marvelling at the strangeness of its texture, before going upstairs to where his grandfather lay.
Laintal Ay paused with his head through the hatch, staring into the room, viewing everything from the perspective of the floor. This was really his grandmother’s room, the room of Loil Bry since girlhood, since the time of her father, Wall Ein Den, who had been lord of the Den tribe, Lord of Embruddock. It was filled now with Loil Bry’s shadow. She stood with her back to a fire burning in an iron brazier close by the opening through which her grandson peered. The shadow loomed upon walls and low-beamed ceiling, threateningly. Of the elaborate tapestried gown that his grandmother always wore, nothing transferred to the walls but an uncertain outline, with sleeves converted to wings.
Three other people in the room appeared dominated by Loil Bry and her shadow. On a couch in one corner lay Little Yuli, his chin jutting above the furs that covered him. He was twenty-nine years old, and worn out. The old man was muttering. Loilanun, Laintal Ay’s mother, sat next to him, clutching her elbows with her hands, a woebegone look on her sallow face. She had not yet noticed her son. The man from Borlien, Father Bondorlonganon, sat nearest Laintal Ay, his eyes closed, praying aloud.
It was the prayer as much as anything which halted Laintal Ay. Normally he loved to be in this room, full of his grandmother’s mysteries. Loil Bry knew so many fascinating things, and to some extent took the place of Laintal Ay’s father, who had been killed while on a stungebag hunt.
Stungebags contributed to the foetid honey smell in the room. One of the monsters had been caught recently, and brought home bit by bit. Broken shards of plating, chopped from its back, helped fuel the fire and keep the cold at bay. The pseudo-wood burned with a yellow flame, sizzling as it burned.
Laintal Ay looked at the west wall. There was his grandmother’s porcelain window. Faint light from outside transfused it with a sullen orange glow, scarcely competition for the firelight.
“It looks funny in here,” he said at last.
He came up one more step, and the bright eyes of the brazier gleamed at him.
The father unhurriedly finished his prayer to Wutra and opened his eyes. Netted among the compressed horizontal lines of his face, they were unable to open far, but he fixed them gently on the boy and said, without preliminary greeting, “You’d better come here, my lad. I’ve brought something from Borlien for you.”
“What’s that?” He held his hand’s behind his back.
“Come and see,”
“Is it a dagger?”
“Come and see.” He sat perfectly still. Loil Bry sobbed, the dying man groaned, the fire spat.
Laintal Ay approached the father warily. He could not grasp how people could live in places other than Oldorando: it was the centre of the universe—elsewhere there was only wilderness, the wilderness of ice that stretched for ever and occasionally erupted in phagor invasions.
Father Bondorlonganon produced a little hound and placed it in the boy’s palm. It was scarcely longer than the palm. It was carved, as he recognised, out of kaidaw horn, with a wealth of detail which delighted him. Thick coat curled over the hound’s back, and the minute paws had pads. He examined it for a while before discovering that the tail moved. When it was wagged up and down, the dog’s lower jaw opened and closed.
There had never been a toy like it. Laintal Ay ran round the room in excitement, barking, and his mother jumped up to shush him, catching him in her arms.
“One day, this lad will be Lord of Oldorando,” Loilanun said to the father, as if by way of explanation. “He will inherit.”
“Better he should love knowledge and study to know more,” said Loil Bry, almost as an aside. “Such was my Yuli’s preference.” She wept afresh into her hands.
Father Bondorlonganon squeezed his eyes a
little more and enquired Laintal Ay’s age.
“Six and a quarter years.” Only foreigners had to ask such questions.
“Well, you’re almost at manhood. In another year, you’ll become a hunter, so you’d better soon decide. Which do you want more, power or knowledge?”
He stared at the floor.
“Both, sir … or whichever comes easier.”
The priest laughed, and dismissed the boy with a gesture, waddling over to see his charge. He had ingratiated himself: now, business. His ear, attuned by experience to the visitation of death, had caught the sound of a change in the rate of Little Yuli’s breathing. The old man was about to leave this world for a perilous journey down along his land-octave to the obsidian world of the gossies. Getting the women to aid him, Bondorlonganon stretched the leader out with his head to the west, lying on his side.
Pleased to be released from inquisition, the boy rolled on the floor, fighting with his horn dog, barking softly back at it as it furiously exercised its jaw. His grandfather passed away while one of the most savage dogfights in the history of the world was taking place.
Next day, Laintal Ay wished to stay close to the priest from Borlien, in case he had more toys hidden in his garments. But the priest was busy visiting the sick, and in any case Loilanun kept firm hold of her son.
Laintal Ay’s natural rebelliousness was curbed by the quarrels that broke out between his mother and his grandmother. He was the more surprised because the women had been loving to each other when his grandfather lived. The body of Yuli, he who was named after the man who came with Iskador from the mountains, was carted off, stiff as a frozen pelt, as if his last act of will was to hold himself rigidly away from his woman’s caresses. His absence left a black corner in the room, where Loil Bry squatted, turning only to snap at her daughter.