"Ah, well, it is not good. His nerves are bad, and he complains of being unable to sleep. He has bouts of headache."
"I am sorry to hear that."
"Well, my dear, direct your prayers to He Who Eats and ask him to be kind to our dear admiral."
Simona bit her lips. It was impossible for her to think so fondly of the admiral, who had cheerfully ordered her hands and feet pounded with mallets by the Red Tops. All she wanted was something that would delay the war. Something that would stop the killing.
She made herself listen patiently to the rest of her father's complaints. She understood that he needed someone to confide in. While he complained about the builders on the hospital project, she listened with one ear, plotting to turn the discussion to something more crucial to her than the hospital.
She knew that Filek was less and less likely to discuss Rukkh. And her dream of marriage to a soldier had in fact faded away. She understood now that she didn't really want the life of a colonist, living on the land that would be taken from the mots. Still, at times she liked to think of that young man, so hard-bodied and burning of eye when he had looked at her.
Unfortunately, none of her own thoughts on this issue had stopped Filek's schemes for marrying her to some old man for political advantage.
Filek had run out of complaints.
"Ah, well, listen to me ranting on. I have too much to do, that's the real problem."
"I'm sure you do, Father."
"Mustn't complain so much. It's hard sometimes, you understand I'm sure."
"Oh, of course, Father dear." Simona, who had nothing to do, dared not mention her own utter boredom.
"Now, let us turn to something else. Have you considered what I spoke to you about the last time I was here?"
Simona shuddered inwardly. He referred to Wurg Gembeth, a corpulent cousin of General Dogvalth.
"What was that, Father?" she said playing for time.
"Well, my dear, you're not getting any younger and now is the time to marry. I think you should consider marriage to Wurg Gembeth."
"He is thirty years older than me, Father. He is older than you."
"Yes, my dear, which is good news. He is also immensely fat. He will not last long. Once he's gone to join He Who Eats, you will be a wealthy widow."
Wurg Gembeth traveled aboard the Anvil and was wed to two other young women. He visited them regularly on the women's deck. Simona had heard too much of Wurg's excited bellows in the rut.
He was fat, he was coarse and repulsive, and he would live long enough to put a stain on Simona's soul that she would never wash out if she gave in to this. But, she could see that her father was increasingly desperate about his chances. If Heuze was taken by the priests, then they would need every ally they could keep. Wurg Gembeth might be that.
"Except that, dear father, what would happen if"—she leaned forward—"Wurg is Dogvalth's cousin, right? If Dogvalth loses the battle, won't Wurg be at risk as well?"
Filek stared at her, blinked a moment.
"Yes, to some extent, but Wurg is enormously wealthy, my dear. He has given Nebbeggebben gifts of gold and gemstones."
She stared back at Filek, sudden horror blossoming in her mind. Filek realized what she was thinking and clasped her hands in his.
"No, dearest, do not think that of me. I advocate this not for the gold alone. Gold is a good thing to have and I wish I had more of it, but gold is beside the point. Wurg has a strong position with Nebbeggebben. If General Dogvalth should fail, then Wurg could still protect you."
And by implication, protect Filek, too.
She stilled her anger. Filek was determined to use her to strengthen his position. It was useless to rail at him over this. He was afraid. And she realized that she should be afraid, too. There were real risks to their lives involved. If Filek lost his position, then Simona might end her days in the ranks of army whores. Simona would never forget the helpless agony she had suffered during a mild "questioning" by the Red Tops. When they slapped your hands with the mallets, it really hurt!
"I will think about it, dear father, but I would much rather be wed to someone my own age."
"Yes, dear, so would I. I wish you were marrying a Prince of the Realm. But circumstances may go against us." Filek leaned forward again.
"We may have to do things to survive that we would rather not do. But if there is another defeat, then we may have no choice."
"Yes, Father."
They embraced, and he kissed his marvelous daughter's forehead before exiting her tiny cabin.
Simona, left alone with these alarming strands of information, sat staring out the porthole. Away in the distance she could just see tiny gleams of light. The lamps burning on the shore, illuminating the new town the men had built. Rukkh was over there somewhere, she thought. And she thought about his hard, young body and the fire that had burned in his eyes when he'd come to look at her in the old days.
She knew she'd be bored by him. He was probably illiterate. But so was Wurg Gembeth—maybe death would be preferable after all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As she had in the old days in Tamf and Dronned, Nuza had sought out the local chapter of the Questioners in Sulmo. This was the group that met every week or every month in most towns and cities of the Land. At these meetings they voiced questions about the nature of society and the way things were. In the northern realms of the Land, they were regarded as slightly daring by the general public, but also important for allowing grievances to be aired.
The Sulmo group met in a room attached to a woodworker's shop inside the old walls. The woodworker, Sulp Emmers, was the group's leader. Nuza pressed Thru to accompany her for the evening session.
"Just because the war destroyed our old lives that doesn't mean we can't still ask questions."
"I have only three more days here. Then I must go back to Glais."
Where his brigade had reformed and was waiting for him. Let's not waste our time listening to questions about polder and land rights, he wanted to say. Let's stay in your room and make love.
But Nuza wore him down, and so he found himself sitting beside her on a wooden bench that evening listening to the questions posed by the mots and brilbies drawn to the meeting.
Thru had learned that the Questioners were both discouraged more in Sulmo and yet at the same time more popular than in the North. In Sulmo certain kinds of questions were officially discouraged. Sulmo had too many memories of the city's brief time of glory, and at Questioners' meetings folk would harp on them.
That evening there were perhaps thirty folk in the room, the usual collection of the dour and the excitable that one found at Questioner's meetings all over the Land.
Sulp Emmers was a solidly constructed mot, his grey fur whitened by sixty years and his huge hands scarred by a lifetime of working with heavy tools. He introduced the questions and selected those who were to answer. A well-fed mot in the front row, name of Maskop, wearing the maroon shirt and hat of the royal service was the one usually chosen to reply.
Maskop's replies tended to accentuate conservative, unchallenging views of the various controversies that surfaced at the Questioners.
A young mor with fiery orange ribbons woven into the fur on the back of her head was the first to speak, and brought up a matter that was a perennial sore point in Sulmo. That being its downfall had been caused by the Assenzi.
"I am only a young mor, but I have read the Book and listened here to many questions. I want to know why we feel we must obey the Assenzi? Why do we allow so many of them to come and go from our city? When you remember what they did to us in the old days it seems wrong. Rumors say that they advise the King and speak to him of his dreams."
Her outburst caused a stir along the benches, because dream speaking was an ancient tradition in Sulmo and it was disturbing to imagine the King speaking of his dreams to the Assenzi.
The royal shirt arose. Sulp waved a hand.
"I think Maskop here is prepared to an
swer."
Maskop bowed. Thru observed that he was a singularly fat mot, something rather unusual in the Land.
"First of all I must say unequivocally that the King does not dream speak with the Assenzi. Our King is well aware of the feelings of the folk of Sulmo. He shares the beliefs of his people and knows that great wrong was done to our city. But he also knows that in this current emergency, we must set aside our differences and work together to win the war. Remember who our enemy is! Knowing that, you know that we must cooperate with the Assenzi. They can teach us much."
"Can they be trusted?" the mor with the fiery ribbons responded.
"Why should they not be trusted?" Maskop spread his hands out to either side. "Their lives are forfeit, too, if Man defeats us."
The mor sat down while a gentle murmur broke out along the benches.
Another hand was raised by a young brilba in an expensive black velvet robe. Receiving the nod from Sulp, she rose to put a very different kind of question.
"I have come to a few meetings here before, but I did not speak. Now I am troubled by a question, so I will put it before you.
"I have heard it said that what we read in the Book is not always true. There are those who believe that it was chooks who were created first by the Hand of Man. Man made the chooks and then later Man made the brilbies and finally he made the mots. I find this idea troubling, and I wonder if there is any evidence for it."
There was a stir on the benches again. This was an unusual question, far removed from the more common gripes about shortage of polder land.
Sulp chose to answer it himself.
"I have always been interested in the tale of our origins, too. I have studied the story of our birth. Assenzi writings and even some of the ancient records of that time still exist. Few know about them because they are kept under lock and key in Highnoth, the lair of the Assenzi."
Thru blinked at hearing Highnoth described as a "lair."
Sulp continued in his calm, measured voice. Thru could see that Sulp was an excellent host for a meeting of Questioners. He radiated a sense of calm as a lamp radiates light.
"That means it is impossible to have independent access to them. But the Assenzi themselves have written about them, and their works are available. I have read Cutshamakim on this subject. He quotes many diverse sources.
"In the last days of Man, when Highnoth was still a city of power and light, there were great men who were skilled in the highest arts of magic. They were men like Hargeevi and Belnek. This was the time of the High Men. Men who were skilled in the great arts and magic of the former world. They were as different from the men of Shasht as we are from the pyluk."
Thru was listening with full attention now. Thru had spent more than two years living at Highnoth, learning at the feet of the great Assenzi. But even there he had not learned everything about the Origin.
Sulp went on as if reciting a well-learned screed.
"These men took the germ material of certain animals and subjected it to arcane arts that have long since been forgotten. They married the material they had made of animals to the germ of Man himself, and thus they brought forth the peoples of the Land."
This much was widely known.
"It has been asked who was the mother of the folk? Was it wo-man?"
Into Thru's head popped a memory of Simona. Wo-man was like a mor, but perhaps a little heavier and taller. Both were blessed with wide hips for mothering the young and breasts for feeding them mother's milk.
"But the High Men did not use wo-man to be mother to the new folk. By their magic they were able to bring forth the folk from bowls of the purest glass. They brought us up, but they used no mother's womb, just as the Book says."
There were appreciative murmurs along the benches. It was good to know that the words in the Book were true, for it was the central pillar of most people's beliefs.
From bowls of purest glass...
"First they brought forth the brilby and the brilba. And they are called the longest lived of the folk."
With teeth of shining steel.
Some heads turned to look at the brilba Questioner.
"Then they brought forth the kobs and kobi. And it is said by some that there is too much spirit of the antelope in the kob and kobi, but they remain among us, the fewest of our folk, but much loved by all the others."
Once again heads turned to a single kob in the audience, and the big, brown-furred fellow blinked bashfully at the attention.
"Finally they made the mots and mors, and they went forth to populate the Land."
The mots nodded vigorously, for they were the humble farmers of the polder and the center piece of the society of the Land.
"But you have said nothing about the chooks," said the brilba.
"Correct, for little is known now about when chooks were first made. Some Assenzi claim that chooks existed before the Assenzi themselves were given life. One Assenzi, Histegrud, says that the magic that made the chooks was very very old and that chooks had been in existence for a long time before the great Hargeevi began his work. His magic took what had been done with chooks and extended it."
"Then it is true. The Book is wrong."
"It may be so. The Book was written by unknown authors. Their understanding of the ancient times may have been limited. Cutshamakim writes that he does not know whether chooks were truly the first, or the last. Chooks may have existed when the Assenzi first awoke, but the Assenzi are vague about that time. They worked in isolation upon the chores given them by the High Men; they knew little about the outside world."
Another Questioner had a hand raised, a mot in the third row.
"Whether chooks came first or not, if we can believe the Book and your evidence, then we were made by the Hand of Man. My question is why do we not worship Man instead of the Spirit?"
That produced another stir. Here was a truly heretical thought. Thru felt the fur stand up on his shoulders as he considered it.
Sulp was still ready to answer, though Maskop had risen to his feet, too.
"For that we can look to the Book. For the true face of ancient Man was not that of the High Men of Highnoth. It was Man the Cruel. And when we see the face of the men of Shasht, what do we see?"
"Man the Cruel" rose up in a whisper from the crowd.
"Yes, Man the Cruel with the whip and the knife and the tongs to castrate us. So although we were raised up by Man, we do not worship Man. We acknowledge the role of the High Men, but we know the truth of Man."
Now Maskop spoke. "In addition, we must remember that the Spirit was here before Man, before anything. The Spirit transcends all of the material world. In a sense, we might say that the Spirit is the world, for it informs it all with its ultimate purpose, which is hidden from us who labor within it."
Thru nodded at that. This was the wisdom of the Assenzi. Beneath the surface of the world and its creatures, there beat a hidden pulse of spiritual energy. It could only be sensed during the meditative state, and even then it was difficult to understand. Indeed it was only by giving up on understanding and accepting the chaos of the void that true understanding could come.
"So, although our Origin came from the Hand of the High Men, we must see that as an aberration in the general rule of Man. The High Men were not governed by the laws of Man the Cruel; they came at the end of Man's time. Much of what Man had wrought had already come to pass, for as it says in the Book:
"For poison in the waters had become poison in their seed..."
"The High Men were keepers of a dying flame and sought only to preserve that flame, the light of civilization here upon Arna. And so they made us."
Like everyone else Thru felt a sense of relief at hearing these words. Differentiating between Man the Cruel and the High Men was vital for them all in an age when Man the Cruel threatened once again.
Later, after the meeting, Thru and Nuza walked arm in arm along the avenue in the outer city. Thru had to admit that his imagination had been fired by the
strange talk in the Questioners. Nuza had been aroused, too. An old concern of hers had reawoken.
"I think of this sometimes, and I can't quite believe it all happened. That there was a time when we did not exist. When only Man the Cruel lived and everything else suffered. I thought once that we could not think of it, because it was a shadow time, before our own memory. But now I know that it is just that I find it very uncomfortable to think like that."
"I know that feeling. It frightens me. But the Assenzi taught me that the world is older than Man. The reign of Man the Cruel was but a single night compared to the many years the world has existed."
"Did the Spirit exist then, before Man?"
"Yes, the Spirit has existed since the beginning of the universe. The Spirit is the universe, in a sense." Thru felt this with such conviction he had no doubts this was the truth.
"I do not understand that, either, exactly. How can the Spirit be both something of itself and at the same time part of everything else?"
"It is not easy to understand, it is something that you come to know when you follow the path of the Assenzi and learn their teachings."
"Then, I have more to learn." Nuza hugged his arm.
Rain began to spatter down while they were standing on the bridge over the Sulo with the spires of the palace looming to the west. The surface of the river reflected a million rain drops in a few moments.
"Uh-oh, this is going to be hard rain," said Nuza.
They ran for shelter.
On the south side of the bridge, they found a cookshop open selling pies and hammelbem cakes to a hungry throng.
They took seats at a table by the window. The rain was hammering down now, drumming on the tiled roofs. The gutters on the front of the cookshop were spilling into the street. There were no glass windows on this simple establishment, and the shutters were open so the wet smell of the rain in the street came in.
They ordered toasted hammelbem cakes and bushpod pies. With the cakes came a bowl of hot melted butter and a pot of tea. The pies were sweet and scented with cinnamon.
They ate quietly, listening to the violent rainfall, enjoying each other's company.
The Shasht War Page 12