Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  She stood there, calling his name recklessly now, uncaring what demon might be drawn to her voice. She stumbled away to the west, shouting. One of her shoes came off and she did not turn to pick it up but hurried on, half-shod, her eyes hurting from poking their look into dark shadows and far-off places. Her head hurt. Exhausted, she stopped a while, his shirt on her lap, and was surprised into sleep. She dreamt she saw him, running through the sky, dressed like Abadon in stars, but he was going away from her and did not heed her call.

  Waking, she went on again, in the deep night, going back toward the camp, calling and calling. Her feet throbbed and her throat was sore and painfully tight. At dawn, finally, she reached her hearth again.

  Empty. The ashes cold, the wood half-burned. She spread out Moloquin’s shirt on the ground. Her hands trembled. With handfuls of straw and clothing and other things from her camp, she filled out the shirt as if there were a man inside it and ran her hands over it, saying prayers, pleading with Heaven to keep him safe. When that was done, she picked herself up and walked heavily across the camp toward Ladon’s platform.

  The men were making ready to go. The litter waited there before the platform, all the men competing for a place nearest it, to be one of those who bore Ladon away. Karelia pushed through them, jabbing them with her elbows, kicking out with her feet, and barged in under the platform.

  There Ladon sat on his bed of furs, eating from a painted pot. She went up before him and stood there, planted on her feet.

  “You took my son from me, Ladon.”

  He raised his head, his face bland as cream, his eyes unfocussed. “What do you mean, Ana-Karelia-el?”

  “I want my son back!”

  “I know nothing of the unwanted one,” said Ladon smoothly.

  She began to weep. Her fingers twitched; she wanted to tear him into pieces, chew him to bits. “I want my son back!”

  “He has many enemies. No one cares about him but you. I did nothing to him.”

  “You killed my son,” she cried, and the tears ran down her face and splashed on the ground at his feet.

  He tried to laugh. His cheeks above the glossy black of his beard were red as the red clay. His eyes slithered from side to side, seeking a way past her. Around the outside of the platform his men pressed close to listen and to watch. He said, “I know nothing of this, old woman. Go.”

  “You killed my son.”

  “Go,” said Ladon, and stood up, throwing out his chest, and putting his hands on his hips.

  She stared at him a while through the image-shattering film of her tears. “Yes,” she said. “I will go. For now. But you, Ladon, you will suffer for this. I swear it to you. You killed my son and you will suffer.”

  She turned and went out of the shade of the platform. Behind her, she heard Ladon try to laugh, but the cracked sound fell into the silence like a stone. Karelia went off by herself, to find her own way home.

  Fergolin had a leather pouch full of small regularly shaped stones, which he used to teach his novices; he sat with them in the dust in the yard of Ladon’s roundhouse and put the stones in circles in the shape of the Turnings-of-the-Year, and the young men crowded around him to see.

  “From each of these stones,” he said, pointing to the western edge of the ring, “we may look forth across one of these other stones—” he pointed to the eastern edge—“and then to the horizon, on Midsummer’s Eve, and there see a certain star rising. A Bear Skull master knows every sighting line and every star, and if new things appear there, he remembers them and adds them to his knowledge.”

  This last Midsummer’s Eve, the old traveler, called Father-of-Time, whose life from one beginning to the next was as long as a man’s life, had risen with the great red star whose hearth was on the Midsummer’s Eve horizon, the fixed star named Seeds-of-Fire. What this portended made Fergolin uneasy. The old traveler was one of his special responsibilities. He had followed its course now since he had entered the society, and seen it wander exactly halfway across the sky. In its strange turnings and loops it encircled many of the most crucial of the fixed stars. When it rose side by side with the hot glare of Seeds-of-Fire it had spoken directly to Fergolin’s heart, and the message made him tremble.

  “My old master,” he said, speaking to the boys, but also to himself, “gave me a priceless gift; he had seen the old traveler find its entire way through Heaven. He told me star by star how it passed. I hope one of you will prove worthy to have such knowledge of me.”

  The faces that watched him were slack and empty of understanding. The newness of their novitiate had faded and now they were faced with the long dull task of memorizing the groundwork of the Bear Skull lore. Fergolin knew none of them would be equal to the task. They had no fire in them, no passion for the stars; their hearts were lumps of earth. Perhaps it was as well. In his own heart the starry speck that fastened him to the sky now throbbed with a warning message. His gaze fell to the tiny circles of stones in the dust before him.

  “There are five travelers,” he said, watching the little stones. “Two are hard to miss in the sky—the white traveler, that stands forever in the pathway of the sun, either before or behind her, never far from her, the Right Eye, the Blessed One, the Starmother, the Womb-of-Heaven, she is one, The other is the great traveler, so bright that when he stands among the stars the eye is taken there as if on wings. He is named the Drum of Heaven, White Rider, and the Boat-of-Souls.”

  He did not look up to see the boredom in their faces. He loved this lore. The names echoed up to him from the bottom of memory, not merely his mere lifetime’s memory, but that of the whole People. When he rehearsed this knowledge, he was one with the first father, and his unborn sons’ sons’ sons’ sons were one with him. He could not bear to see this gift offered to those who cared nothing for it.

  “Two more of the travelers are easy to find—the red one—hot and angry, the Left Eye, the Wicked One, the Breaker of Peace, the Tears-of-Mothers, and the old traveler, Father-of-Time. The fifth is rarely seen. It is a gift of the Overworld to their favorites—a gift and a charge, a sign of benevolence and a call to great duty. This is the swift one, Foot-of-the-Sun, who lives in her house, and never leaves, save to stand at the door and look out, and tell her all he sees.”

  He stopped. The bored inattention of his pupils had become an active distraction; they were all looking around behind him, craning their necks to see. He turned.

  Karelia was coming into the roundhouse yard.

  Fergolin straightened, peering closely at her, as she crossed the roundhouse yard, set down her mat of reeds and her backrest of withies and cloth, and took her place right beside the door into the roundhouse, as if she meant to be there a long while. She faced him. Her seamed, pouchy little squirrel’s face was unreadable.

  Fergolin gawked at her; the boys all gawked at her; everyone else who was there stood silently watching her. When she knew that she had them all waiting, she said, “I am here to tell a story.”

  Fergolin stood up, alarmed. “Ana-Karelia-el, do—”

  Her voice rose up over his, her words loud and clear and strong with rage. “I am here to tell a story of a man who in his overreaching pride struck at the center of the order of things, destroyed his sister, and killed her son, his own heir.”

  Fergolin lost his breath. This was going to be bad. Already the novices were inching away from him over toward Karelia, and from the other parts of the yard more men were coming, curious, drawn, to sit down at her feet. Fergolin shuddered. In his heart the little speck of the star stabbed him with its pulsing warning pain. He went into the roundhouse to tell Ladon what was happening.

  Karelia sat in the heat of the sun, her voice cracked and dry from long use, and the story spun itself steadily forth, coming from the deeps, unwilled, driven up by the fury and cold grief in her heart. She had always been able to grip her listeners with her words, with the p
ower of her voice and the grace of her gestures, and now as she sat in the midst of them and told one story after another, swaying a little as she spoke, her hands shaping and reshaping the air before her, the whole village gathered to hear, and no one moved, not even to turn his head away.

  She was telling every story she knew that related to this crime of Ladon’s. She told stories of the murder of sons, of brothers, and of nephews, stories of the enmity between uncle and nephew, between sister and brother, between man and woman. She told about the structure of the world, the relationships between the parts of it, women’s duties and men’s privileges, women’s rule and men’s envy, women’s power and men’s prestige. Some stories she told she had forgotten she knew, and others she had never told before, but they all came forth now, each word rising as she needed it.

  Ladon’s son and his new wife sat before her and listened and the young man wept. When his wife saw that, she turned away, her face twisted with disgust, but she was a stranger here, and had nowhere else to go, and so she sat there beside her husband, and her face was turned away, and his tears fell like poison between them.

  Brant came and sat before her and listened, and raised up his face toward Heaven, and she saw there his anguish, his despair, that he had lost one who might have carried on the lore of the Pillar of the Sky.

  Every mother with a son sat before her and as she spoke they lost their sons also, and mourned with her. And every man before her knew himself a son, who was lost, and whose mother mourned, and whose father had betrayed him and cut the link that bound him to the world.

  Ladon did not come. Ladon never came.

  When the night fell she stopped speaking, but she did not move, she was too exhausted to move. The People went away into their longhouses and the roundhouse and left her alone there, and she leaned back against her rest and watched the night close over her and waited for the light to come and loosen her tongue.

  Then in the darkness from all around her came soft padding feet, and dishes of food for her, which they left at the edge of her mat, and bent down and touched their lips to her mat, and left. Then she knew that what she did was sacred.

  There was no comfort in it for her, because Moloquin was no more. She ate only a little before her belly closed up against the food that she could not share with him. She drank only enough to moisten her lips before her throat refused to drink what he could not drink. When she slept, it was to dream of him.

  In the morning she began again, and the People filled up the roundhouse yard to hear her. She told stories of Abadon, how he defied the order of things, and was invariably punished. Three times in a row she told the story of the breaking of the Mill of Heaven, whereby Abadon in his folly caused the whole world to fall into error and change.

  Still Ladon did not come. She did not call for him by name. She merely told stories. Once, in the space between the stories, she began to chant the mill song.

  Sam-po, sam-po

  La li la la li li la

  The Mill turns, the Mill grinds

  Nothing escapes the Mill of Heaven

  La li la la li li la

  Sam-po, sam-po

  The women all around the crowd lifted their voices and sang it with her, and their voices were harsh and cracked like the crows who ate the flesh of the dead, and all eyes turned toward the roundhouse. Yet Ladon remained invisible.

  Karelia was tired. Her throat hurt, and her chest hurt. She went on with her stories and the People listened to her, and when darkness fell Karelia remained where she was, and they brought her food to sustain her. All night long, under the stars, she waited, and knew that inside the roundhouse, Ladon also waited, for the coming of the light, for the assault to begin again.

  A few days after the return from the Gathering, the sickness began. It struck without pity, children, adults, old people, and carried them off in a few days, scorched with fever and crying from pain and delirium. It raged through the whole camp, taking away one or two from each hearth, and sometimes all those at a hearth, so that in the longhouses some places were cold and empty, and some tenanted only by the sick and dying.

  There were some who said this was another gift of Harus Kum, that the trader had set a curse on them. The women especially spoke of the evil potency of the blue beads that Harus Kum had given to Ladon. But Ladon himself did not fall sick, and there were those who thought that meant he was proof against anything, even Karelia’s attacks.

  They crowded together to hear her, and many of the sick and dying were carried close to her to hear her. Then she too was sick. Her voice wavered, the wonderful resonant power that formed pictures in the minds of her listeners, that wiped away the world and made it new again, and as she fell silent, they all saw that she was only an old, old woman now, light and frail as a dead leaf. All her power was gone.

  So she died, there in front of them all, but before her life was gone, just at the same moment, she found her voice again. She put off the stories as, soon, her soul would put off her flesh, and she spoke to them directly. Poised there on the boundary between life and death, with the little cramped unhappy world of life behind her, and the infinite shining glory of the Overworld before, she turned her head to look back and she warned them that if a son of Ladon’s ever reached the high seat, their whole world would go to ruin.

  Then she was dead, and her body lay cast off on the mat in the yard of the roundhouse.

  The women mourned her the most. They took her up, many hands to lift her, who would have been light enough in the arms of a single woman, and carried her away to the Pillar of the Sky. Already many of the People lay there, feeding the crows, so many that it was hard to find space for her within the circle of stones. There they put her down to rest.

  She was the last to die of the sickness. There were those who said she had brought it all on them, that the Overworld protected Ladon from her, and that his power was greater than hers, and that he had beaten her.

  There were others who said, however, that the struggle was not yet over.

  Two

  THE FORGE

  Harus Kum thought he had been cheated: Ladon had promised him two strong men and instead he got two boys, one no good at all. He wore his whip out on their backs, more from anger at Ladon than for any good it did—the boys could not draw as well as the men, and when he whipped them, the one cried, and the other stopped drawing altogether and railed at Harus Kum until he knocked the brat down, which made things worse, since they had to wait until the boy got his mind back.

  After that, he put both boys on one sledge, the ropes laid over their shoulders and tied around their waists, and told them if they could not keep up with the rest they would draw all night to reach camp and get nothing to eat. Then the boys hauled together, and pulled the sledge with its baskets of beans and meal over the rough hillsides, and Harus Kum and his train went on back home.

  At the end of the first day, he thought he would have to leave the little boy behind, he was so weak and worn, but the other boy seemed hale enough, even to thriving on the work. Harus Kum fed them both and let them sleep from dusk until dawn, and hitched them up again, and again they went off, following the river into the west.

  They followed the trail they had taken to reach the land of the People of the Stones, and which was slowly wearing down under use into a path easier than the tangled ground on either side. The sledges skidded and bounced and banged over the rocky slopes. When the hillsides ran steeply down, Harus Kum put a man on the back of each sledge, while one pulled at the front, and let the sledge down carefully between them. On the second day of their travel the need for doing this often gave the boys a sound rest, and that evening the little boy seemed better, although he still fell asleep in his porridge, his nose in his cup.

  The other boy sat there by the fire, looking around him. He was tall and thin, his skin dark as a cured hide, and his hair a wild black mass. Harus Kum went by h
im and nudged him with his foot, and the boy’s head shot up, his dark eyes snapping with temper.

  Harus Kum laughed. He liked breaking wild things.

  “Don’t you like that?” he asked, and kicked the boy harder, to inspire his temper.

  To his surprise, the black-haired boy did not jump up at him, or shout, but merely sat there and glowered at him. Harus Kum wondered what would bring him on, and he kicked him again, and again the boy took the blow without either yielding or responding, but only stared at him.

  “What is your name?” Harus Kum asked.

  Now the boy did not answer for a while, and Harus Kum thought of taking his whip to him; an illogical rage kindled in him, that he could not stir the boy to any deed. But then the boy said, “My name is Moloquin.”

  “Oh, yes.” He had heard that before, when the boys were taken. It was an odd name, meaning “the useless one,” or something like that. “Well, we’ll get some use out of you, won’t we, will you or not.” He laughed again. The boy merely stared at him. Harus Kum drew his foot back again, and the boy’s lip curled. He turned his face away, as if he were bored with this, and Harus Kum began to feel like a fool. He did not want to look like a fool before his own slaves, and so he went away nearer the fire, feeling uneasy.

  In the middle of the night, the rain began. The next day the rain fell continually, sometimes harder than other times, and the going was very bad. The trail led down over the hills, through a forest of pine trees, and the rain ran down over the path like a stream in its own bed; sometimes they were ankle deep in running water. Harus Kum himself put his shoulder to a sledge now and then, to hold it steady; when they came to a long slope, they wrapped their ropes around tree trunks and let the sledges down one by one over the slippery grass and the rocks.