‘I must go.’
‘A minute more,’ she craved, from a tide that – in this hour when serenity was torn to rags and scattered on the wind from the future – bore her toward Oneness. ‘I have a brother who’s a soldier. And are we not all reservists, all Soldati? If something happens to rouse those bone-deep fears we bear, ancestral memories of Death Time, and we must fight, you know how shaken the troops will be. A proróchina in their midst could make every difference to their morale. Call on me.’
‘Reverend lady!’ He was overwhelmed.
She smiled, for now that she had spoken, calm was rising in her, the calm of absolute resolution. ‘There will be many such volunteers,’ she said. ‘The fight will be for Gaea … and for humankind, lest Gaea be forced to cast us off. I approach you because we are acquainted. Krasnaya cannot field any large army, and it will doubtless be under Yuanese joint command; you can expedite my recruitment; I would like to ride to battle with a friend.’
He gave her a bow of Third Humility; his Tien Dziang only rated Second. She gave him her blessing. He bustled off and barked orders.
Once more at peace, Vanna sought Iern. (Afterward she would withdraw to her home and let Oneness possess her and she possess It.) She wanted to bid him farewell. They would never meet again. He had gusted into her life like a breeze off the sea she had not seen except in pictures and poems; for a tiny bit, she had daydreamed; but of course that was impossible. The marvels he had described, the revelation of his spirit in their few days together, were as much as she could have hoped for, and enough.
He had his love. Maybe she would have the kindness to stand aside while Vanna and Iern said their decorous goodbyes.
5
Mist rolled white across the earth, but heaven was clear and the sun a dazzlement low in the east. Breath was still sharp as it went in the nostrils, visible as it went out, but sweet odors of horse had begun to rise. A hush lay yet over the company, but hoofbeats, creak of leather, jingle of metal, surrounded it with sound. Then from afar, dwindled but unutterably clear, came the ringing of a bell.
It clanged in no cadence of Franceterr, and a drum which must be huge boomed slowly beneath its tones. That call completed Iern’s sense of unreality – or was it he that was the phantom? Kilometers distant, he made out the temple, multiple-roofed, rising to an onion-domed tower, awakening the village beneath to devotions and labor, and every shape was grotesque. The landscape might likewise have been on another planet. Curiously laid-out fields reached from yonder horizon to this road; no fence, hedgerow, wall, or boundary stone identified any plot of ground as anybody’s own; trees stood only where they could serve as windbreaks or give shade to a worker while he rested. The feeling Iern got was that this countryside was tended in total care by the people who belonged to it.
On the right side of the road, a line of poplars went parallel, as they often did on both sides at home. Here they had untrimmed poles woven between them to make a cattle-proof barrier. Beyond reached grass. Near the edge of vision, a herd and a pair of horsemen seemed to float on the mist.
Yesterday he had felt nothing strange, in the excitement of liberation and departure; and then when he and Ronica had slipped out of camp to a haystack they’d marked – (‘Who cares about the wet?’ she laughed. ‘It’ll steam right off, I promise you.’) This morning, his body weary and nerves aquiver from released tension, he knew how lost he was.
In search of assurance, he glanced behind him at the soldiers. They should be solid. But their forms, faces below the crested helmets, dress, banners were foreign; their very style of riding was, the rhythm in which lances swayed and flashed. Their outfitting sloppy and their formation well-nigh nonexistent by his standards, they nonetheless conveyed a sense of coiled-snake readiness. Yawns were giving place to talk, in ordinary human fashion, but when somebody cracked a joke in their high-pitched language, they did not laugh like Uropans.
He brought his attention back to the commander, on whose right he traveled. A compact man, Orluk Boktan bore himself so erect that he appeared taller than he was. A countenance craggy apart from the flat nose held slant gray eyes, gray mustaches and forked beard, a scar puckering the left cheek. He was bareheaded, his shaven pate stubbly, his collar open, and he puffed on an atrocious cigar. His voice was harsh but his manner affable – if Iern read it aright, which was not certain – as he responded to questions.
Ronica, on his left, conducted the conversation, translating between Unglish and Angley. Plik and Mikli rode close behind. Terai and Wairoa were at the tail of the column, not to be seen from here. Poor fellows, Iern thought. However, Ronica had explained the necessity of keeping them silent. Whatever cause she served, she herself must not be endangered! How splendidly she rears in her saddle against this enormous sky. Am I falling in love?
‘Yes, Orluk was saying through the woman, ‘I am from Yo-Ming in the West, and know the mountains of the Border well. The Bison Polk has a range at their feet, and there my older wife dwells, and our children and grandchildren. I visit when I can.’
‘How do you come to live this far east?’
Orluk grinned. ‘Thanks to your folk! I had the luck to be in several of our last clashes with them. It got me quick promotion and the notice of my superiors. The Bison Polk has a good many members in the Chai Ka-Go area, who moved that way as the city grew. When their old noyon died, I was invited to take his post. Not easy, shifting from hills to plains, leading troops drawn from ranches and towns instead of hunters, trappers, timbermen – Well, I was needed on that same account, because these parts keep woodlands too, where the Bisons may someday have to fight. A proper Soldat doesn’t refuse duty. But I wanted my youngsters raised in the country of their fathers.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Fifteen years. It’s not bad. I’ve a fine home in Chai Ka-Go, which is a place where you can have fun; a nice little wife there, children by her, grandchildren in a few more years, I hope. I can brag that I’ve done well in my command. Who was dispatched to scour the Krasnayan woods for bombrunners? The Bisons!’
Reminded, Orluk lost his geniality, scowled, and puffed savagely on his cigar. ‘We found nothing, though,’ he said, ‘till your group – When I think about my women, children, grandchildren – Ha, if you want their story squeezed out of those two dogs, ask me. Start by putting pliers to their balls, I would.’
‘That isn’t so Gaean, is it?’ gibed Mikli.
‘I’m not a Gaean,’ Orluk said. ‘I give the Principles and adepts their due respect. They may be right. But meditation and theory aren’t for me, and what honor do they have from lip service? My homage is to the old gods – Oktai, Erlik, Lenin – and the ancestors.’ He brooded. ‘Not that I think a true Gaean would be tenderhearted in this matter. What are they scheduled for, those two?’
‘That’s out of my department,’ Mikli said.
‘Is it?’ Orluk threw him a backward look. ‘I wonder. You know a hellful more than you’ve told.’
‘Indeed I do,’ replied Mikli blandly. ‘For example, the ways by which my team identified what that pair were up to and how Ronica and I tracked them down. Details of that kind would point at too much else my service prefers not to make public. I do not question your trustworthiness, Noyon, but you have no need to know. As a military man, you understand.’
‘Yes, I do. But things weren’t this tangled and strange when I was young –’
Actually, Iern did not hear what the men talked about until later. Ronica had stopped translating when Orluk gave her an irritated glare. She continued to ride alongside the commander and listen to the Unglish. The sense of isolation grew colder within Iern. He dropped behind to join Plik, while Mikli rode forward.
The Angleyman was sober, for lack of supplies, and subdued. He regarded his companion for a while before he said, ‘You’re troubled, my friend. Not worried or frightened, nothing so superficial, but troubled. Aren’t you?’
Iern stared ahead of him. The sight of Ronica
against the Mong landscape stabbed with realization of how alien she, too, was. ‘I suppose you could call it that,’ he mumbled.
‘Do you know why? Presumably you’re bound for safety in the Union, and in charming company.’
That last phrase brought back recollection of Vanna yesterday. She hadn’t seemed to mind when he violated her society’s customs, took both her hands in his, and kissed them. How delicate they were, exquisitely formed. ‘Blessing be upon you, Talence Iern Ferlay,’ she had murmured. ‘May you win happiness, as you well deserve.’ She’s mistaken there, had gone through him, in an arrow flight of his past misdeeds. She chanted a few lines in her language and explained: ‘Those were not a prayer for you. We do not pray to Gaea. They were a wish, with what force is mine behind it, that your share of Her life become whole.’ Her ritual solemnity broke. ‘I, I will remember you, often and often. Fare gladly.’
To Plik, Iern blurted, ‘I’m flying blind, that’s why, blind and the instruments gone dead.’
‘It is indeed disturbing to find oneself in a foreign myth.’
‘What? No, listen, I admit our stay in Dulua has made me doubt a great many things I took for granted. I wasn’t so narrow-minded I didn’t believe Gaeans can be good people individually. I knew some in Uropa who were – are. But they did seem to be on the side of the enemy –in a fundamental way, against everything the Domain lives by – and wrong, wrong! Now Vanna – those patient explanations of hers, and her own self –’ Iern looked near the sun through eyes almost shut. His lashes made rainbow colors. She had made him aware of countless small miracles like that, and gotten him to think about them and feel them.
‘Yes, she has the ultimate Gaean personality, doesn’t she?’ Plik mused. ‘Or an aspect of it… as St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of the Cross have two aspects of the ultimate Christian personality.… Why do I use that mincing word “personality”? I mean “soul.” “Emotional” is another cowardly word. I will say “spiritual.” The real meaning of a faith is spiritual, beyond comprehension except by the spirit. She explained hers to you, in part, by being what she is.’
‘Could she possibly be right?’
‘Is a poem right or wrong? Hers is a powerful myth, yes.’
Silence fell between them. Mist thinned off the ground, revealing lands on the left harvested or under preparation for winter wheat, silvery-green prairie on the right. Blue-clad slugai were emerging from their row houses of rammed earth. Birds passed overhead. The air had warmed further and carried odors of soil and vegetation as well as horse and man. The manifold noises of the cavalry troop had settled into a steadiness of syncopated beats.
‘And these Yuanese,’ broke from Iern. ‘Can they be fundamentally different from the Krasnayans? Oh, I admit how little I’ve seen of either. But less and less can I believe they’d conspire with Jovain, away off in Uropa, and arm him for his coup, as we’ve heard they probably did.’
‘Why have you changed your mind?’ Plik asked.
‘Well, naturally, a Gaean regime in the Domain would please them, and some of their officials may have given him a little secret encouragement and help. Otherwise … they act far more interested in the Northwest Union. And well they might. Same continent. They don’t give me any impression of being imperialists, directly or indirectly. Gaeanity at its heart is not militant. I’ve learned that much. Its nature is to persuade, not compel.’
‘You have learned,’ Plik said. ‘Not that you have logical proof. Our species is gifted where it comes to interpreting doctrine so as to justify whatever one wants to do. You’re here because some Gaeans are adventurous and warlike, aren’t you? And what’s happening in the world goes beyond logic, beyond all rational explanation.’
Iern gave him a sharp look. ‘Are you getting weird again?’
‘The universe is weird. I’m not sure whether “reality” is a word that can have a meaningful definition.’
Plik leaned close. ‘Hear me,’ he said, and never had Iern seen him more grave. ‘I am an alcoholic wastrel, but I’m also a minor poet, and therefore from time to time I deal in things that cannot be spoken straight out.
‘What I feel upon us is a gigantic conflict of … mystiques – a conflict so deep-going that human beings and whole civilizations are turning themselves willy-nilly into archetypes and reenacting immemorially ancient myths – for only myth and music can even hint at such truths.… The Apollonian Domain and Arthurian Maurai are up against Orphic Gaeanity and the Faustian Northwest. Or if you’d rather, the Norrmen are demons readying to overthrow the gods of sky, sea, and earth – though chthonic gods have always had their own dark side – and the war that is coming will bring an end to the world.’
Ronica – ‘No!’ Iern shouted. ‘You’re crazy!’
He wanted to gallop his horse till wind, speed, exertion drove the horror out of him. Why horror? Those were only words, that Plik likes to play with. He’s only eccentric, not a madman, not a prophet. Orluk would scarcely allow him to leave the troop. He trotted ahead, drew next to Ronica, and poured talk at her, any talk that came to his tongue.
She answered merrily. His nightmare faded. It left him altogether when she brought her mouth close to his ear and proposed, in a straightforward sentence, what they should do while the company took its midday rest.
They reached the military base toward evening. The outlines of a blockhouse, hulking athwart heaven, recalled centuries of history that Uropa had not shared; but lesser buildings were reassuringly prosaic, functional. Familiar as well were a little airfield, a few planes parked on it, and a whiff of synfuel scent.
One craft was Northwestern, a large version of the one that lay on the lake bottom with its deadly cargo. Iern made out an insigne painted on the tail, a running wolf from whose neck hung a broken chain. As the column approached, half a dozen men stepped forth to meet its leader. Among them were two unmistakable countrymen of Ronica’s; others waited by the plane.
A Yuanese officer saluted, said some words, and handed a sheet of paper to Orluk. The noyon read it, frowned, and sat pondering. Mikli spoke to him, got a curt response, and rode over to where Iern, Ronica, and Plik were waiting.
‘Orders flown in from Chai Ka-Go today,’ he informed them. To judge by his manner, this was not unexpected. ‘He’s to let us go home immediately, taking Terai and Wairoa along.’
The Clansman’s pulse bounced. On a night flight, he wouldn’t see as much as he had hoped. But she’ll be beside me, and when we arrive –
‘Our esteemed commander doesn’t approve of such haste,’ Plik observed shrewdly. ‘He suspects a hustle, and wonders if his superiors were wise in endorsing it.’
Mikli leered. ‘They weren’t,’ he said in Francey. ‘The imperative for our side has been that at all costs, we must not let anybody else interrogate the Maurai. No doubt our spokesmen’s argument was plausible – that, being those who got on the trail of the conspirators, we know most and are best able to interrogate in depth, and no time should be wasted. But doubtless it was certain additional considerations that made certain key Yuanese individuals agree the argument was indisputable. Come, let’s pay our devoirs and be gone.’
Courtesies went to and fro. Armed Norrmen took charge of the prisoners. Hand in hand, Iern and Ronica were the last to embark. They paused at the cabin door and looked back. Sunset light scattered unreal gold across a land that again, itself, seemed unreal. Still on his horse, Orluk loomed out of a long shadow, peering after the departing foreigners.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
His first month in the Northwest Union became for Iern more than an idyll. It turned into a voyage of discovery.
The inaugural surprise was his reception, or rather the lack of any. There were no passport requirements, no customs, no money changers, no officials. The plane landed on an airstrip near a village simply because agents of the Maurai Inspectorate might be present at a city port. Terai, Wairoa, and a couple of their guards stayed aboard simply because the sight of men under detenti
on would have caused gossip. Everybody else made straight for a nearby hostel.
When Iern expressed amazement, Ronica snorted. ‘What’d any country in its right mind want with that kind of garbage?’ she said. ‘We hold that busybody types should also earn an honest living.’
After a few hours’ sleep, the party met for a gargantuan breakfast, served by a staff that presented no reckoning. This place belongs to the Wolf Lodge, and we’re on Lodge business,’ Ronica explained. ‘Otherwise we’d pay. If we were nonmembers, we’d pay double.’
‘You and I shall have to call on the local Lodgemaster before we go on,’ Mikli told the Clansman. ‘Be discreet.’
That was in a home down the street. Iern had seen occasional photographs and read occasional travelers’ descriptions from the Union; not many were available in Uropa. He was somewhat prepared for architectural styles which were, moreover, less exotic than the Mong’s. The office within the house was plainly furnished except for pictures, relics of local history, and a carven plaque above the desk – the wolf with the broken chain and the motto Run Free. The Lodgemaster, who in the present case was a robust middle-aged woman, heard out Mikli’s brief account, asked some eager questions through him, but soon, at his urging, shook the newcomer’s hand, wished him a pleasant stay, and bade him goodbye.
Iern had expected that here he would receive formal asylum, or else be referred to someone who had the power to grant it. ‘But this was just a courtesy call!’ he exclaimed when back outside.
‘Why, of course,’ Mikli said. ‘It pays to observe the proprieties when they don’t cost too much effort. At that, Dorda was rather miffed when I told her this was a concern of the Mother Lodge, acting for the whole, and we could only give her a short time and some noncommittal chitchat. Provincial chapters complain chronically about how snotty the leadership is.’
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