The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  Suddenly she laughed. Because Ulfin was across the lake, and treading the soil of Tarceny.

  ‘Bewitched? My dear friend, I am: utterly’

  XV

  The House in the Hills

  mbrose had grown in the weeks at Chatterfall. He had taken his first steps on Phaedra's nineteenth birthday, with Evalia releasing his hands in the olive groves and Eridi beckoning him across the grassy floor. He showed far more interest in their homeward journey than Phaedra remembered him doing on their flight from Tarceny In the boat, he wanted to sit by the rail and reach out to the brown wavetops, running just beyond his fingers' reach below the taffrail. When one splashed up at him, he sat back, startled but not unhappy ‘Ooh! We'h!’

  ‘Yes, darling,’ said Phaedra. ‘Very wet. Please be careful.’ So he spent half the remaining trip at the rail of the boat, with Orani, Eridi and Phaedra all taking turns to keep an arm around him while he leaned over the side in his efforts to catch another wave, or watched the wrinkling lake-surface with solemn eyes that gave no sign of what he was thinking. His child's face hinted more strongly now of the long and delicate features of his father's house, but the way his black hair was beginning to curl at his ears and collar reminded Phaedra suddenly of her own mother. She thought that if Father could see him, perhaps he would not be altogether ashamed of her now.

  Orchard had crossed the lake the day before, to retrieve their horses from the manor to which they had been entrusted. He was waiting with them at Neff's Jetty when the boat landed. He had news too. Ulfin had indeed crossed the lake. But he was not at Tarceny He had set out a day or two before, for Hayley in the northern part of the March. No one had been able to say why.

  ‘Very well,’ Phaedra said. ‘We will go to Hayley’

  The narrow tracks took them through a part of the March that she did not know, where the hills rose more steeply to rugged, bare crests, so that once or twice a day when the path lifted above the tree line she could turn in the saddle and look back to astounding views east and south over the March. She found that Thunder was more easy to manage than she remembered, and realized that this was not because he had changed, but because she had. She no longer expected him to behave like old Collen, but knew him as a horse in his own right, with ways and reactions that she was coming to understand rather than fight. She began to pay attention to her own riding, and to feel an improvement as she did so.

  The true mountains crept nearer, showing white flecks and patches on their high peaks, where the snow lay packed in shady gullies and still had not melted.

  Hayley was a single, square keep within a curtain wall. Pennants flew from its battlements, but Ulfin's standard was not there. Phaedra almost cried aloud with disappointment, and hurried down to the gate to demand admittance and news. The castle warden, astounded by the appearance within a few days first of his lord, whom he had supposed to be fighting deep in the Segne of the Kingdom, and then of his lady, who had disappeared without trace for a full season, could give only the barest of information. Ulfin had been at Hayley Indeed, most of his escort was still there. My lord himself had gone on into the hills, accompanied only by two herders and a small flock of goats. The warden did not know why. It was a thing my lord had done before, although not recently. He would return in a week, maybe a few weeks. The warden would do everything to see that my lady was comfortable until then …

  ‘I am going to follow him,’ she said.

  The mountains rose in line after line of disappearing blue. They were vast enough to hold a dozen armies unseen from one another. They were silent: bare slopes and deep valleys; lonely huts; the crowns of cloud that gathered above each peak, so that a clear sky at dawn changed slowly to a huge mass that billowed along the mountaintops by evening. North and west of Hayley a valley ran between two great forested spurs. The path Ulfin had taken went in that direction. Phaedra demanded trackers from the warden, and four more escorts, whom she had Massey pick from the garrison as though he were a sergeant. She took donkeys and provisions, dogs for hunting and to keep guard. She had them ready at dawn, every strap and bundle as her father would have done; cried the Traveller's Prayer aloud in the court-yard; and led her small cavalcade from Hayley's gate as the tips of the mountains turned gold.

  They passed the March-stone before evening that day. ‘For what it is worth,’ Massey said. The Kingdom had no real border here. Some years all the villages for a week's journey beyond the stone might pay tribute. And now? Massey shrugged. With the garrison at Hayley stripped for the war, it was doubtful that my lord's law ran any further than the warden could spit from its walls.

  Where are you, Ulfin? What madness has lured you from the battle for a kingdom, from the hunt for your wife and child, and brought you alone to these places? Are you seeking something, or fleeing it? I am groping among your footsteps, looking for signs in this empty land. I have only my feet, my eyes and my will. By day I look for goat droppings and the far sun-flash of metal, by night the spark of a distant fire. Let the Angels lead me to you, if only they fly in this land.

  The going was slow. The paths were not paths but bare places where men and beasts might go with care. A day's journey would take them into, along and across a single valley. They saw no one, nor any beast but the big-winged carrion birds that turned lazily above the hillsides. The mountains were vast.

  They were vast, but the ways among them were few. And slow though horses and donkeys might be, a goat flock travelled more slowly still. They did come across droppings, signs of grazing and, once, an old campfire. Even so, Phaedra was not prepared for the moment when, following a tiny path, they crossed over a shoulder between two peaks and came upon a score of goats stripping bark off young trees, watched by a pair of boys just sprouting their first beards, and beyond them a man in mail, sitting on a rock. He looked up as she approached.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if it was you.’

  ‘You knew we were following?’

  ‘Since yesterday. This morning we saw you carried the pennants of Hayley so I waited for you to come up.’

  ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘I am on a journey which, I hope, will put both your troubles and mine behind us. Do you want to come along?’

  She slid from her saddle and flung her arms around his waist.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  And now this sloping, stony ground under her back that pressed her spine and discouraged sleep. The dark awning rippling over her in the breeze that had followed them up the valley all day; from the open end, above her feet, in meaningless distance the black mass of the mountain opposite and a few low stars above; Ulfin stirring and muttering at her side. She could feel his warmth through the folds of blankets between them. Beyond the awning, the sounds of Eridi hushing Ambrose's sleepy protests from their shelter nearby. The donkeys stirred at their tethers below the little camp. The goats were silent. The watchmen had let the fire die to embers.

  ‘Did Caw show you what he found on the step?’

  ‘No. He described it to me, but he had buried it. He did the right thing. So did you, I think. At least it will have confused them. It confused me, certainly, and others. It was a risk, nonetheless. If one of Septimus's followers—’

  ‘I know. Friends hid me—’

  ‘Don't tell me where.’

  ‘I was so afraid, for Ambrose above all.’

  ‘Those things could not come at him. All the same, it is right to be watchful.’

  They lay in silence together. His hand began to stroke softly down her ribs and thigh.

  ‘Who is the priest, Ulfin?’

  The hand stopped. ‘What? The fellow you hired into my house?’

  ‘No, not him. And I did not hire him, Ulfin. We agreed he should come.’

  ‘Jent is not a friend, remember.’

  She remembered that Martin must be somewhere in these hills too. She wondered how he was faring. He might be as close as the next valley, and yet as good as a thousand miles away, for
they would pass by him and never know that he was there. Their party seemed utterly alone in these vast places.

  ‘Who is? I believe that not all of the March is safe, either.’

  ‘You'll have to tell me about that.’

  Aun's scornful face rose before her eyes. She wondered if there was anything she could say that would bring the two men out of danger from each other.

  ‘Tomorrow, Ulfin.’ He had not answered her question about the priest, either. With Ulfin beside her, that too could wait until tomorrow. But if his presence made some fears remote, it brought others closer.

  ‘I've heard the war is tipping against us now.’

  He sighed. ‘It always has been. At the beginning, I had the – the tools you know of – to bring success despite that. If I deny myself those, then yes, it is hard to see how … This hot weather should bring a respite for a few weeks at least. I have ordered another muster at Tarceny for my return. We must raise money. I fear we must begin to sell things we would rather not part with, such as jewels, and even your writing desk.’

  ‘I had thought of it already’

  After a moment his hand began to move against her skin once more.

  Beyond the awning Eridi was singing softly, lulling Ambrose to sleep with the tones of the Great Lament. The notes spoke of loneliness and loss, and the endless emptiness of the hills. Each one sounded as if it had been born for the first time in this great and dark corner of the world. Phaedra turned her head to listen.

  ‘What is it saying?’

  Ulfin's hand moved upon the flesh of her thigh beneath her nightdress. He said: ‘It talks of the time when the world shrugged, and turned to stone, and the giants came. Beyah, the Mother of the World, turned her back on her people to weep for her lost child, and only the world-worm Capuu dared approach her. It may include memories of when we invaded and drove them into the hills; but there are other things, myths or happenings from an older time. Or nonsense.’ He paused. His fingers pushed slowly across the slackness of her belly to her ribs, and crept on towards her breast.

  There was a cry – a man's voice. It came from somewhere above them, as they picked their way along a scrubby slope that fell to the valley floor a thousand feet below. Phaedra checked Thunder and looked about her. There was nothing to be seen among the green thorns. Her view forward was obscured by Eridi, riding on her ass with Ambrose. She could not see Ulfin or the soldiers at the head of the party. She could not see whether they were getting ready to fight or not. The world had shrunk to the few square yards of hillside immediately above her and the vast view out across the valley to her right. Listening, trying to still Thunder (who was less use than a donkey on this ground), she felt a sort of humming in the air, as if of music played somewhere just beyond the reach of hearing.

  Then the cry came again.

  It was uphill, and somewhere ahead of her. It was too far away, she thought, to have been directed at them or uttered by anyone aware of their presence. There were men up there, and what they might do when they saw the party she did not know.

  Eridi was moving on. Beyond, Phaedra could now see Ulfin waving them forward impatiently She kicked Thunder into motion, on up, making him pick his way among the scattered boulders and thorns while the flies of the hillside wove around his ears.

  They came suddenly up to a spur of rock that rose above the main hillside and jutted out and down towards the edge of the valley. Along its back a broad path ran, six feet wide or more, downhill across their route. She could hear the music now. There were hill pipes and drums and voices intoning low notes somewhere just beyond sight. Ulfin was shooing the soldiers to keep to the track-side as the leading hillmen came into view.

  Her first impression was how small they were. None of them seemed to be more than two-thirds the height of Ulfin, standing tall at her stirrup. Even Orani and Eridi, whom she thought of as having hill-blood, were half a head above any of them. There were twenty, thirty, in a crowd, pacing down the track towards her. They bore no weapons, and seemed to be dressed in rags. Phaedra wondered for a moment whether they had seen Ulfin's party from far off and had come to meet them. Ulfin did not seem to expect them to stop. He stood to one side of their path as they came on to the steady beat of their drums.

  Then the cry came again, a long and trailing sound from the lips of the leader, with his eyes half closed and his head flung back towards the sky. The pipes flowed in behind, filling the space with a simple, steady melody that Phaedra had never heard before. The procession was passing Ulfin and his soldiers with barely a second look. She watched them stalk by. They wore brown blankets and went barefoot. She saw the weathered, bird-like faces, the dark and greying hair, the skin deeply lined. They walked on down the hillside from, she guessed, some settlement above to some shrine below. Some were carrying figures on poles – gods or spirits, she supposed.

  The pipes and the voices had stopped. The hillmen passed to the steady beat of the drums, sad faces, solemn faces, some that looked curiously up at her and others that stared fixedly ahead as they marched. Further uphill, a hill-man in what must have been a chief's dress had stopped to speak with Ulfin. Beside her one of the herders was explaining something to Eridi and Orani, pointing out across the valley to where the hillside opposite ended in a huge shoulder of rock and a new valley opened. Far beyond, a huge peak rose, white-capped and purple-sided with the shadows of the clouds.

  ‘That's her,’ the boy was saying. His hill accent was so thick that Phaedra had to strain for the meaning. ‘Beyah. She don't answer, of course.’

  ‘Beyaah!’ cried the voice at the head of the column. And the pipes began again. The hillmen were passing, droning in their low voices below the breath of the pipes. The leading gods of the procession were followed by bizarre and colourful figures of other gods and spirits, including a long, red worm with a crest and great eyes which needed three poles to support the length of its body. ‘Capuu, world-worm,’ the herder was saying. ‘Catches her teardrop in his teeth for the people. An' tho' she bash him one in the mouth, so he spits teeth when he come to the ground, still he don't drop the tear but lays it in front of the people an' tells them what it is. Mica-mica, uh … star-spider spin-the-night; Apta and Axapta, the twins; and Prince-Under-Sky’

  A doll-sized figure of a man, hooded and in pale robes.

  Prince Under Sky. Evalia, and a memory of one of that mass of futile letters from the manors of the March, when she had been searching for the priest. It might have come from somewhere near Hayley

  ‘Ulfin …’

  He was still talking to the hill chief, and had not looked her way.

  They spent the night in the huts of the hillmen. Ulfin spoke with the chiefs and translated, commenting on the hill sayings and customs, and giving advice on how to eat the food. Phaedra said little. And later, when he slept peacefully beside her, she lay awake for a long while and stared at the open door and the pale night beyond. Be careful, said a voice in her mind. Be careful. And it was not the voice of Ulfin, but of Evalia diManey.

  Opposite the village, perched on a shoulder of the far hillside where the two valleys joined, was a long, low shape of stone. It was more regular than any rock outcrop, and broke the skyline in silhouettes that spoke of roofs and even, possibly, of chimneys. Ulfin pointed it out in the morning as the sun fingered along the rim of the valley and picked it from the shade below. It was a house, and the end of their journey.

  It took them most of that day to clamber down into the valley and up the far side. They finished with a long, nervous stretch on a path as wide as a rabbit track that ran for a mile along a steep hillside among the thorns and scrub. The sun was westering, but lingered on the path and warmed the air, drawing sweat and the hum of insects in little clouds about the eyes and ears. Then the path rose, the crest of the hill dropped to meet it, and they were on a finger of rock above the world.

  The mountains, wrapped in their evening cloud, reared in a wide circle around her. They rose beyond the green hill
side where they had spent the night in the village, and ranged before them in blues and sunset-pink snow-fields around and up to the great massif of Beyah far to her right. Immediately ahead the path dropped along the spur to a small gatehouse, with slit windows and battlements like any wealthy house of the Kingdom. Nothing moved upon its walls. Beyond it were glimpses of other buildings, marching off in a row to the end of the spur. Phaedra laughed when she saw it. To find something so familiar in all that strange landscape was the strangest thing of all.

  ‘Does anyone live here?’ she called to Ulfin.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘When I am here.’ He walked forward to the gate. There was no moat or drawbridge. The path ended in the wood of the door, with the squat turrets lurking on either hand. Something flew from the gatehouse roof in a flutter of wings as he dragged the door open. There was a short, dark tunnel. Phaedra kicked Thunder forward. The gateway smelled of stone and emptiness. The hooves clattered loudly in her ears. Ulfin was waiting beyond, in a small courtyard with buildings on three sides and a low wall open to the great view of the mountains on her left hand.

  ‘Welcome to my house.’

  ‘Has it a name?’

  ‘I think so. But I have not found it yet.’

  ‘More importantly, has it water?’

  ‘Come and see.’

  He helped her down. Taking her hand, he led her through a low colonnade opposite the gate and into another courtyard beyond.

  ‘Oh!’ she said.

  It was a small fountain court, like Tuscolo, like Trant, like Tarceny The same colonnades, with low buildings behind them. The same fountain dribbling in the centre of it. Phaedra walked forward. She saw the same wide basin and the faded beast-carvings. Here, as in Tarceny, the body of a great snake or dragon coiled around the rim of the bowl. The water did not come in spurts, as in those other places. No pump was worked in all this deserted place to lift the water in its steady trickle, barely clearing the lips of the rearing beast before running down its front to the wet circle of the stone.