by Brian Aldiss
The one feature that marked Vry out was her hair. It was rich and dark. When seen in sunshine, it disclosed itself as dark brown, rather than the bluey black of Oldorandan hair. Her hair was the only indication that Vry was of mixed extraction; her mother had been a slave woman from the south of Borlien, light of hair and complexion, who had died when she entered into captivity.
Too young to feel resentment against her captors, Vry had been fascinated by everything in Oldorando. The stone towers and the hot water pipes had particularly excited her childish admiration. She poured out questions and gave her heart to Shay Tal, who answered them. Shay Tal appreciated the child’s lively mind, and took care of her as she grew up.
Under Shay Tal’s tuition, Vry learned to read and write. She was one of the most ardent members of the academy. Of recent years, more children were born; in her turn, Vry was now teaching some of them the letters of the Olonets alphabet.
Vry and Shay Tal began to give Laintal Ay an account of how they had discovered a system of passageways under the town. With a grid of passages running north-south and east-west, the system connected all the towers, or had once done so; earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters had blocked some passages. Shay Tal had hoped to reach the pyramid that stood half-buried by the sacrifice grounds, since she believed that structure to contain treasures of all kinds, but sludge had buried the necessary passages up to the roof.
“Many things connect of which we have no understanding, Laintal Ay,” she said. “We live on the surface of the earth, yet I have heard that in Pannoval people live comfortably beneath it, and in Ottassol to the south, according to some traders. Perhaps the passages connect with the world below, where live the gossies and fessups. If we could find a way to them, in the flesh and not just in the spirit, then we should possess much buried knowledge. That would please Aoz Roon.”
Overcome by the warmth, Laintal Ay merely nodded in drowsy fashion.
“Knowledge is not just a buried thing like a brassimip,” Vry said. “Knowledge can be generated by observation. I believe there are passages through the air similar to the passages beneath us. When it is night, I watch the stars as they rise and set in progression across the sky. Some go by different passages—”
“They’re too far away to influence us,” said Shay Tal.
“Not so. All are Wutra’s. What he does there will influence us.”
“You were afraid underground,” said Shay Tal.
“And I believe the stars scare you, ma’am,” retorted Vry promptly.
Laintal Ay was amazed to hear this shy young woman, no older than he, drop her usual deferential manner and speak out to Shay Tal in this way; she had changed as much as the weather of late. Shay Tal appeared not to mind.
“Of what use are the underground passages?” he asked. “What do they signify?”
“They’re just a relic of some old forgotten past,” Vry said. “The future lies in the heavens.”
But Shay Tal said firmly, “They demonstrate what Aoz Roon denies, that this farmyard in which we live was once a grand place, filled with arts and sciences, and people that were better than we. There were more people, there must have been—all now transformed to fessups—dressed grandly, as Loil Bry used to dress. And they had many thoughts like brilliant birds in their heads. We are all that remains, us, with mud in our heads.”
Throughout the conversation, Shay Tal referred ever and again to Aoz Roon, gazing intensely into the dark corner of the room as she spoke.
The cold went, and rains came, then cold again, as if the weather at this period was specially designed to plague the people of Embruddock. The women did their work and dreamed of other places.
The plain was striped by folds which ran roughly in an east-west direction. Remains of snowdrifts still lay cupped in the synclines on northern sides of crests—tattered reminders of the snow desert that had once swathed the whole land. Now green stalks poked through the stippled snow, each stalk creating its own miniature rounded valley over which it was sole ruler.
Against the snow lay gigantic puddles, the most remarkable feature of the new landscape. They barred the entire landscape with parallel fish-shaped lakes, each reflecting fragments of the cloudy sky overhead.
This area had once formed rich hunting grounds. The game had gone with the snows, heading for drier grazing in the hills. In their place were flocks of black birds, wading phlegmatically on the margin of the transient lakes.
Dathka and Laintal Ay sprawled on a ridge, watching some moving figures. Both young hunters were soaked to the skin and in a bad humour. Dathka’s long hard face was creased into a scowl which hid his eyes. Where their fingers pressed into the mud, half-moons of water appeared. All about them were the sipping sounds of hydropic earth. Some way behind, six disappointed hunters squatted on their haunches, concealed behind a ridge; as they waited indifferently for a command from their leaders, their eyes followed birds winging overhead, and they blew softly on their damp thumbs.
The figures being observed were walking eastwards in single file along the top of a ridge, heads low before a fine drizzle. Behind the file lay a broad curve of the Voral. Moored against the Voral’s banks were three boats which had brought the hunters to invade traditional Oldorandan hunting grounds.
The invaders wore heavy leather boots and scoop-shaped hats which betrayed their origins.
“They’re from Borlien,” Laintal Ay said. “They’ve driven off what game there was. We’ll have to drive them off.”
“How? They’re too many.” Dathka spoke without taking his gaze from the moving figures in the distance. “This is our land, not theirs. But there are more than four handsful of them…”
“There’s one thing we can do: burn their boats. The fools have left only two men behind to guard them. We can deal with them.”
With no game to hunt, they might as well hunt Borlienians.
From one of the southerners they had recently captured, they knew the state of unrest that prevailed in Borlien. The people there lived in mud buildings, generally two stories high, with the animals below and their owners above. Recent unprecedented rains had washed the huts out of existence; whole populations were homeless.
As Laintal Ay’s party made its way towards the Voral, keeping from view of the boats, the rain increased. It came from the south. This was the beginning of the winter period. The rain fell capriciously in gusts, sprinkling the moving figures, then settling in more sullenly, until it beat a tattoo on their backs and moisture ran down their faces. They blew it from the ends of their blunt noses. Rain was something none of them had experienced until a few years ago; not a man in the party but wished for the crisp days of his childhood, with snow underfoot and deer stretching to the horizon. Now the horizon was hidden by dirty grey curtains, and the ground leaked.
The murk worked in their favour when they reached the riverbank. Here thick succulent grasses had sprang up as high as a man’s knee, despite recent frosts, grasses that bowed and shimmered under the pressure of the downpour. There was nothing to be seen as they ran forward except wavering grass, the overburdened clouds, and muddy water the colour of cloud. A fish plopped heavily in the river, sensing an extension of its universe.
The two Borlienian guards, crouching for shelter in their boats, were killed without a struggle; perhaps they thought it better to die than get any wetter. Their bodies were cast into the water. They floated against the boats, and blood spread from their corpses, while the firemaker of the party tried vainly to make fire; the river was shallow at this point, and the bodies would not go away even when struck at by oars. With air trapped under their skins, they drifted just below the rain- pocked surface of the water.
“All right, all right,” Dathka said impatiently. “Leave the firemaking. Break up the boats instead, men.”
“We can use the boats ourselves,” Laintal Ay suggested. “Let’s row them to Oldorando.”
The others stood and watched impassively as the two youths argued
.
“What will Aoz Roon say when we return home without meat?”
“We’ll have the boats to show him.”
“Even Aoz Roon doesn’t eat boats.” Laughter greeted the remark.
They climbed into the boats and juggled with the oars. The dead men were left behind. They managed to row themselves slowly back to Oldorando, the rain beating continually in their faces.
Aoz Roon’s reception of his subjects was morose. He glared at Laintal Ay and the other hunters with a silence they found more daunting than words, since he offered them nothing to refute. At last, he turned from them and stood staring out of his open window at the rain.
“We can go hungry. We have gone hungry before. But we have other troubles. Faralin Ferd’s party have returned from foraging in the north. They sighted a party of fuggies in the distance, riding kaidaws and heading this way. They say it looks like a war party.”
The hunters looked at each other.
“How many fuggies?” one asked.
Aoz Roon shrugged his shoulders.
“Were they coming from Dorzin Lake?” Laintal Ay asked.
Aoz Roon merely shrugged his shoulders again, as if he found the question irrelevant.
He swung round on his audience, fixing them with his heavy gaze. “What do you think is the best strategy in the circumstances?”
When there was no reply, he answered his own question. “We’re not cowards. We go out and attack them before they arrive here and try to burn Oldorando down, or whatever is in their thick harneys to do.”
“They won’t attack in this weather,” an older hunter said. “The fuggies hate water. Only extreme madness can drive them into water. It ruins their coats.”
“The times are extreme,” Aoz Roon said, striding restlessly about. “The world will drown under this rain. When’s the eddring snow coming back?”
He dismissed them, and paddled through the mud to see Shay Tal. Vry and her other close friend, Amin Lim, were sitting with her, copying out a design. He sent them packing.
He and Shay Tal looked warily at each other, she at his wet face and his air of having more to say that he could express, he at the wrinkles under her eyes, the first white hairs glinting in her dark locks.
“When will this rain stop?”
“The weather’s getting worse again. I want to plant rye and oats.”
“You’re suppose to be so wise, you and your women—you tell me what will happen.”
“I don’t know. Winter’s setting in. Perhaps it will get colder.”
“Snow? How I’d love the damned snow back, and the rain gone.” He made an angry gesture, raising his fists, then dropping them again.
“If it gets colder, the rain will turn into snow.”
“Wutra’s scumble, what a female answer! Have you no certainty for me, Shay Tal? No certainty in this damned uncertain world?”
“No more than you have for me.”
He turned on his heel, to pause at her door. “If your women don’t work, they won’t eat. We can’t have people idle—you understand that.”
He left her without a word more. She followed him to the door and stood there, frowning. She was vexed that he had not given her a chance to say no to him again; it would have renewed her sense of purpose. But his mind, she realised, had not really been on her at all, but on more important questions.
She hunched her rough garments about her and went to sit on her bed. When Vry returned, she was still in that attitude, but jumped up guiltily at the sight of her young friend.
“We must always be positive,” she said. “If I were a sorceress, I would bring back the snows, for Aoz Roon’s sake.”
“You are a sorceress,” Vry said loyally.
News of the approaching phagors travelled fast. Those who remembered the last raid on the town spoke of nothing else. They talked of it at night as they tumbled, rathel-rich, into their beds; they talked of it at dawn, grinding grain by goose light.
“We can contribute more than talk,” Shay Tal told them. “You have brave hearts, women, as well as quick tongues. We’ll show Aoz Roon what we can do. I want you to listen to my idea.”
They decided that the academy, which must always justify its existence in the eyes of the men, should propose a plan of attack that would spare Oldorando. Choosing suitable ground, the women would reveal themselves at a safe place where the phagors would see them. When the phagors approached, they would be ambushed by the hunters, waiting concealed on either flank to cut them down. The women screamed and cried for blood as they discussed the idea.
When the plan had been discussed to their satisfaction, they chose one of their prettiest girls to act as emissary to Aoz Roon. The girl was almost of an age with Vry; she was Dol Sakil, daughter of the old midwife, Rol Sakil. Oyre escorted Dol to her father’s tower, where the girl was to present Shay Tal’s compliments and to request him to come to the women’s house: there a defensive proposal would be presented to him.
“He won’t take much notice of me, will he?” Dol said. Oyre smiled and pushed her ahead.
The women waited while the rain poured down outside.
It was midmorning when Oyre returned. She was alone, and looking furious. Finally she burst out with the truth. Her father had rejected the invitation—and kept Dol Sakil. He regarded her as a present from the academy. Dol would live with him from now on.
At this news, a high anger overcame Shay Tal. She fell to the floor. She danced with rage. She screamed and tore her hair. She gestured and swore vengeance on all imbecile men. She prophesied that they would all be eaten alive by phagors, while their supposed leader lay in bed copulating with an imbecile child. Many other terrible things she said. Her companions could not calm her and went in fear of her. Vry and Oyre were driven away.
“It is a vexation,” said Rol Sakil, “but it will be nice for Dol.”
Then Shay Tal gathered her clothes about her body and stormed down into the lane, to stand before the big tower where Aoz Roon lived. The rain poured on her face as she cried aloud the scandal of his conduct, daring him to show himself.
Her noise was so great that men of the makers corps and some hunters ran out to listen. They stood against the ruinous buildings for shelter, grinning, with folded arms, while the downpour beat the steam from the geysers close to the ground, and mud bubbled between their boots.
Aoz Roon came to the window of his tower. He looked down and shouted to Shay Tal to go away. She shook her fist at him. She screamed that he was abominable, and his behaviour such that all Embruddock would meet with disaster.
At this juncture, Laintal Ay arrived and took Shay Tal by the arm. He spoke lovingly. She stopped screaming a moment to listen. He said that she must not despair. The hunters knew how to handle phagors. Aoz Roon knew. They would go out and fight when the weather improved.
“When! If! Who are you to make conditions, Laintal Ay? You men are so weak!” She raised her fists to the clouds. “You will follow my plan or else disaster will strike you down—and you, Aoz Roon, you hear? I see it all clearly with an inner eye.”
“Yes, yes.” Laintal Ay tried to hush her.
“Don’t touch me! Just follow the plan. The plan or death! And if that fool leader, so called, hopes to remain leader, he must give up Dol Sakil from his couch. Raper of children! Doom! Doom!”
These prophecies were uttered with wild assurance. Shay Tal continued her harangue with variations, damning all ignorant and brutal men. Everyone was impressed. The downpour increased. The towers dripped. The hunters grinned mirthlessly at each other. More onlookers arrived in the lane, eager for drama.
Laintal Ay called up to Aoz Roon that he was convinced of the truth of what Shay Tal said. He advised Aoz Roon to fall in with the prophecies. The women’s plan sounded a good one.
Again Aoz Roon appeared at his window. His face was as black as his furs. Despite his anger, he was subdued. He agreed to follow the women’s plan when the weather improved. Not before. Certainly not bef
ore. Also, he was going to keep Dol Sakil. She was in love with him and needed his protection.
“Barbarian! Ignorant barbarian! You’re all barbarians, fit only for this stinking farmyard. Wickedness and ignorance have brought us low!”
Shay Tal marched up and down the lane in the mud, screaming. The prize barbarian was the uncouth rapist whose name she refused to speak. They lived only in a farmyard, a pool of mud, and they had forgotten the grandeur that once was Embruddock. All the ruins lying outside their miserable barricades had once been fine towers, clad in gold, all that was now mud and filth had once been paved with fine marble. The town had been four times its present size, and everything had been beautiful—clean and beautiful. The sanctity of women had been respected. She clutched her wet furs to herself and sobbed.
She would no longer live in such a filthy place. She was going to live at a distance, beyond the barricades. If the phagors came by night, or the wily Borlienians, and caught her, why should she care? What had she to live for? They were disaster’s children, all of them.
“Peace, peace, woman,” said Laintal Ay, splashing along beside her.
She rejected him contemptuously. She was only an ageing woman whom nobody loved. She alone saw truth. They would regret it when she was gone.
Thereupon, Shay Tal suited deeds to words, and commenced moving her few goods to one of the ruinous towers standing among the rajabarals, outside the fortifications to the northeast. Vry and others assisted her, splashing back and forth through the rain with her poor possessions.
The rain stopped next day. Two remarkable events occurred. A flock of small birds of a kind unknown flew over Oldorando and wheeled about its towers. The air was full of their twittering. The flock would not settle in the village proper. It alighted on the isolated towers beyond, especially on the ruin to which Shay Tal had exiled herself. Here the birds set up a remarkable noise. They had small beaks and red heads, with feathers of red and white on their wings, and a darting flight. Some hunters ran forth with nets and tried to catch the birds, without success.