Everran's Bane

by Kelso, Sylvia

  That caused a stir. One Open delegate moved that “help be sent.” The Scribe claimed this was too vague. “What help?” Beryx caught the delegate’s sleeve and whispered, “Three hundred cattle and five gold ingots a year.” The Scribe re-sang Holmyx finances and concluded, “It can’t be done.” Then the Closed delegates rose in arms crying that stock sent must include sheep as well as cattle, the southern Opens grappled them over involving Quarred, the delegate altered his motion to “help on a voluntary basis,” and the Council voted against.

  Our Savel Ruand was also their delegate. He overtook us outside, saying awkwardly, “Our fellows will send the cattle; I’ll throw in another hundred myself.” Beryx gave him a smile I could see would probably double it, then he grinned and said, “Better than I expected.” The Holmyx looked startled. But then he grinned too, and they shook hands on the pact.

  * * * * *

  From Holymlase to Quarred’s capital is further than round Everran. I wanted to ship downriver, then sail along the coast to the Hazghend isthmus, but Beryx said, “No time.” We crossed south Holym’s plains at the limit of horseflesh, riding long into the night, resting in the oven noons, while the trees thinned and the heat-waves jumped on the horizon and the grass turned to sheets of silvered beige that hurt the eyes.

  In four days we reached the Quarred border, whence to Heshruan it is seven days’ ride: first through the Hasselian marshes, cracked black soil, withered reeds, shepherds complaining bitterly of fever from a summer denied them in Everran, and then over Heshruan Slief, wider than Everran itself. We rode parched and wordless across tussocks of blonde taskgjer grass mixed with prickly shrubs, covered with flocks like huge gray earthbound clouds, and dotted with innumerable windmills about the steadings of Quarred lords.

  There are no towns in northern Quarred, but these enormous steadings are towns in themselves, with palace, household, shepherds’ barracks, and all a town’s other trappings. Some even maintain a potter’s shop. We reached the first at sunset, dusty, unshaven, filthy, and a’horseback. Quarred nobility rides in carriages. We followed the long avenue of matched black imported morhas trees to the palace, a low, green-roofed place, set in luscious gardens, with verandas wider than an audience hall, but the housekeeper, a sort of female chamberlain, met us at the outer gate and consigned us to “the men’s quarters,” without a second glance.

  I raised my brows to Beryx. He grinned wickedly. We used the communal bath-house, shaved, and went to eat.

  It was the apprentices’ mess, also used for needy travelers. Shepherds, steading workers, and Ruands like treasurer and smith and carpenters have another mess, and shearers a special one of their own. When we finished the roast mutton, Beryx caught my eye.

  The battle-song’s applause brought in the shepherds’ mess. My marching song produced a roar that drew the steading Ruands and the housekeeper’s palace cohorts, and after Everran’s plaint a flustered underling begged us, “Come up to the big house. There’s been a mistake.”

  We were ushered off to the main audience hall where the sheep lord himself made amends like the prince he was, even producing a ten-years-matured Everran wine. He had Holym holdings and already knew our errand. Moreover, he had lost so much face over sending a king to eat with his apprentices that he passed us on with letters of urgent support to the Clan patriarch in Heshruan, and introductions to Clan steadings along the way. Luckier still, his patriarch was the current Ruand of the Tingrith as well.

  In some way or other most Quarreders spring from eight enormous clans, but they are so intermarried and interbred it is impossible for an outlander to comment on any Quarreder without another taking umbrage for “the Family.” Their government is called the Tingrith: the Eight. A person from each clan, usually an elder, often the patriarch, lives in Heshruan and holds the Tingrith seat until he dies, when a relative replaces him. It is more efficient than Holym, but it produces ferocious clan rivalries and an obsession with birth. In Quarred, if you are not “born” into the upper ranks of one of the Eight, you may as well emigrate at once.

  Heshruan is most splendid, however: a brand-new capital—corsairs burnt the old one—full of elegant buildings, green parks, scented and flowering trees, and innumerable fountains fed from an artificial lake. You see the city for miles ahead, a vast green and white splash on the tawny uplands, appearing and vanishing with the movement of the earth.

  The Clan Ruand first invited us to stay at the Ruler’s palace, and then to the horse-races that afternoon. Beryx refused the first in favor of the Clan palace, and accepted the second. Quarreders love horses, which, unlike the Holmyx, they keep for sport and war. They are bred on the huge southern cape of Culphan Skos: I made a song of how we saw them as we sailed to Hazghend, great skeins of bronze and chestnut and mahogany running loose on the green southern uplands, above gray-blue cliffs and bright southern waves.

  They looked quite as beautiful on the race-track. Beryx’s eye brightened. I was more taken by the crowd: the men in dark clothes and huge white turbans—the higher the rank, the bigger the head—the women in filmy summer dresses with equally immense flowered hats. I thought it a pretty conceit, before I found the flowers were of cloth. Garlands should either be precious, or real. I saw Sellithar in her gold terrian coronal, and lost interest in the formalities, which were as numerous as the crowd.

  Heshruan is extremely formal: greetings, clothes, precedence, all is significant and rigidly observed. There is also a massive load of ceremony. The Ruand drags a fifty-man entourage, the Lords’ days are celebrated with processions, bands, strings of prancing cavalry, carriage loads of Clansmen, officials, and bedizened generals. When I asked where the soldiers were, Beryx grinned, “Ask Ragnor. Or wait till we head for Estar.”

  There are also daily banquets, horse-races, and afternoon entertainments, but never a harper plays. The populace are government scribes or Clan potentates, and soon I would have traded them all for one rowdy Holmyx in high-heeled boots and harpoon spurs, or a single shepherd cook with greenhide to uphold his trousers and salt under his tongue. In Heshruan everybody is climbing, up or down, and the ladder they use is words.

  The Clans did receive us well, for if you cannot be “born” in Quarred the next best thing is to be visiting royalty. Especially Everran’s, since the Eight drink our wine. But there were questions about Beryx’s arm, a thing unheard of in Holym, and many open stares, especially from the unmarried girls. Being “unborn,” I did not count, but Beryx collected a court wherever he went, one of whom confided to me that his scar was “so romantic,” whatever she meant by that.

  Recalling Astarien, I doubted our definitions would agree. But a few mornings later I woke from a dream of Sellithar, and going along the cavernous upstairs corridor in search of fresh air, met Beryx farewelling the nymph in question at his bedroom door.

  She gave me a brazen smile, and blew a kiss back up the marble stairs. He looked positively sheepish. Then with a sudden, gleeful, small-boy’s chuckle remarked, “You can do some things one-handed, after all.”

  I opened my mouth to invoke conjugal faith and a scale of other such pomposities. Recalled who I had last shared a bed with, and thought again. Essaying levity, I began, “If you end in a Clan paternity suit...”

  His face shut like a door. He answered bleakly, “No chance of that.”

  But he had chosen the Clan palace for more than amorous intrigues. “If you want to plant in the Tingrith,” he said, “you have to plough plenty of dirt.” Three weeks we kicked our heels awaiting an audience, and in those three weeks he juggled the Clans more cunningly than ever I did the truth and Hawge. I could not follow half the scandal levers, the power and blood knots, and was reduced to seeking a notable weapon, which in Heshruan is as witty as hunting a sea in Hethria. The city is not even walled.

  On audience morning, Beryx appeared on crimson cloak and coronal, saying, “Bring your robe.” We walked silently to the Tingrith meeting house, past the resplendent guards and up the ma
rble steps.

  The Eight sat round a circular table in a rank of tremendous white turbans and shrewd leathery faces. None were below middle-age, and the Ruand’s beard was white as the mushroom on his head, but all bore the mark of sheep lords, who work for their wealth with their own hands, and know it from the ground to the mighty pair of ram-horns behind them on the wall. Everyone bowed solemnly. We were ushered to chairs, and Beryx gave me a nod.

  Quarreders understand fighting, especially with fire: dry storms scourge them every year. Their eyes flashed at the battle-song. I knew they felt for the warriors of Saeverran, and would honor Astarien’s fellow conquerors. I could not resist an extempore coda for Inyx in the Raskelf, for it was their sheep he saved, and I felt they would favor a fighter more than one who merely begged.

  Beryx told them the rest, this time including my interview, which won my first glances of respect, and adding Hawge’s words, along with the weapon search. “We do not ask help forever,” he concluded. “What we are buying is time. For the Confederacy as well as ourselves.”

  The Ruand’s eye sharpened. He said formally, “Quarred hears you.” Then the debate began.

  Quarred’s finances. Confederate claims and worths. Hawge’s faith or probable lack of it. Within five speeches I knew there was a power-struggle in progress, for which we were just the rope in a tug-of-war. The northern Clans favored us, since they use the Raskelf, unlike the Southerners, who stretch down into the grain and fruit and horselands of Culphan Skos. But they were fighting for mastery of the Tingrith, not for our cause.

  Beryx sat quiet, barely moving his eyes. The Ruand, also impassive, watched the battle sway to and fro.

  Presently it resolved into a struggle for the two Heshruan lords, who have a foot in both camps. The Northerners quoted Hawge’s taste for horses, Quarred’s proximity to its lair, the Raskelf’s importance, the threat to the wine trade, Hawge’s invulnerability to all but this frail chance. All Beryx’s arguments. The Southerners were against extortion, risk, and getting involved. The debate grew warm. Veiled thrusts about “biggest export,” “biggest spenders,” “unfair representation,” “tax evaders,” were exchanged, cryptic comments about the Army—northern soldiers, southern generals—and less cryptic comments about “favor from the Chair.”

  At last a Heshruan lord crumbled before the threat of Hawge near his march-line, and a long-faced Northerner with a beaky nose and bright blue eyes veiled in folds of leathery skin sat back and demanded, “Vote.”

  The Ruand straightened. “Those in favor,” he asked slowly, “of sending Everran ten ingots a month?” Four hands went up. “Against?” Three. “As Vethyr clansman, I have one vote. I cast it against.” The Northerner’s blue eyes flashed. “As Ruand, I have the casting vote. I cast that... also against.”

  Into the silence he spoke in his slow, deliberate voice. “I will move that Quarred send three ingots a month for the present year. We have lost the Raskelf for this summer. It will be a future risk. A debit of a hundred and twenty gold ingots for an unknown number of years is too great a risk. Those in favor?”

  I did not see the Northerner’s look, but Beryx gave a tiny nod. Seven hands went up. “Carried,” said the Ruand. “Three ingots a month.”

  “Three!” I burst out in the street. “When they sell their wool to Estar weight for weight in gold! And he’s a Northener! He uses the Raskelf! The old—old—”

  “And he’s a Quarreder,” Beryx said composedly. “He remembers my Raskelf note. They like their dignity. And he knows quite well that if Everran’s ruined, Quarred will lead the Confederacy. They’ve hankered after that for years.”

  “If Hawge crosses the range, he won’t be leading anything!”

  There was irony in his smile. “He’ll knows I’ll talk my tongue out now to move Estar. And I just might succeed. I do the work, Estar bears the cost. Quarred’s no worse off with Hawge, and ahead in the Confederacy.” He glanced down the clean, handsome street, and grimaced. “Let’s saddle up and go.”

  * * * * *

  The quickest way from Heshruan to Estar is straight east to the bridge where Khallien and Mellennor join. We approached it in ceremonial garb instead of our usual farmers’ shirts and Holmyx boots, which I understood when we passed border guards on both sides, Quarred’s with wearisome formality and Estar’s with blunt demands for “identification” from the gray-clad soldiery. Beryx touched his coronal, gestured at my robe, and said with unbelievable hauteur, “Everran. And suite. Have your communications broken down?”

  We sat an hour in the guard hut while it was proved they had not. Then with “cordial apologies” an unsmiling commander ushered us into Estar and a rabble fell on us waving wax tablets and shouting at the top of their lungs.

  Estar is infatuated with “news.” They use mirror-signals on clear days, smoke on dull ones, fires at night, town-crier is the land’s most coveted post, and lords grow rich solely by maintaining news-takers in every Resh. These had left the nearest town after eavesdropping on the border signals, and meant to extract value for their sweat.

  As the swarm landed, Beryx swept both hands before him in the scout’s signal for “Halt. No road,” and yelled, “Harran! This is yours!”

  Later, when I read the signals and heard the criers, I could hardly credit it. Harpers have good memories, naturally. These could write as well, yet they put Saphar in Stiriand with Beryx challenging the dragon to single combat at its gates, had me leading the phalanx while Inyx ran away, gave Hawge four wings and horns, claimed it had incinerated the Saeverran fire-fighters, that it demanded maidens for food, and was now poised to descend on Estar. But when I exploded, Beryx said, “Don’t disturb yourself. All that matters is ‘poised to descend.’”

  Not content with songs, they rushed us afterwards, all yelling at once. “What happened to your face, sir?” “Will your government fall because of the dragon?” “Is Everran bankrupt?” “What did you think of Quarred’s help?” “How do you feel about the dragon in Everran, sir?”

  Beryx had been forging steadily ahead, uttering inanities: at that last question, he spun on the fresh-faced youth, who recoiled. “How would you feel,” he said harshly, “if it were in Estar?” And strode away.

  We slept in Cushoth, a city bigger than Holymlase and still not the Resh-capital, lodging under siege from news-takers in the governor’s house. I now saw fresh reason for Beryx’s beginning in Holym. All Cushoth knew of us and wanted to see for themselves.

  So we climbed on the dais in the town square, and I sang to immense crowds who stared, pointed, chattered, laughed, squabbled, and ate nuts throughout. Then the news-takers attacked again, this time catching me as well. “Why do you wear that robe?” “Who wrote the songs?” “Are you married?” “Is the royal marriage withstanding the dragon?” “Is that your own harp?” Beryx mouthed, “Steady,” just before I burst, so since he judged them important, I strove to stay in earshot of courtesy.

  This farce went on clear to Rustarra, amid town-criers competing for sensational catch-lines. “Confederacy crumbles.” “Everran King appeals to Estar.” “Everran bankrupt: Estar next?” “Harper says, Dragon is a hypnotist.” “Death by sting and claw.” “Nervous collapse of Everran queen.” By the time we reached Rustarra, I would have paid Hawge to eat the lot.

  Estar itself is stupefying: mostly dead-flat plains, every inch of them cultivated, mined, covered in towns or factories, which suck in the Confederacy’s sheep, cattle, wool, meat, hides, fish, coal, iron, tin, copper, gold, oil, silk, linen, timber, and spew out artifacts. Grain it grows itself. Resh-size fields stretch from one to the other horizon, with tillers thick as ants. And everywhere else are innumerable people, all in a frenzy of activity for the Four know what.

  Rustarra, the essence of Estar, spreads for miles round the Tarrilien estuary, which has been dredged, extended with moles, and lined with endless quays. Behind them lies the town center: grimy, ornately carved official buildings, then fortified tower-like lords’ h
ouses, then the city wall, in good repair and thick with military machinery. Outside are mile upon mile of dirty little houses, factory chimneys in place of trees, army barracks, City-Resh council houses, depots, stores, granaries, stables, slaughterhouses, reservoirs, and slums full of outcasts, all sunk in a dirty brown sludge that blots the sky, and making a noise to burden the earth.

  At first I thought government was the two annually elected shophets who lead the Resh Assembly’s six-monthly sessions: finding the shophets only execute its commands, I supposed rule was the assembly’s. Then, seeing swarms of the loudest folk in Estar deafening assemblymen over causes from higher jugglers’ wages to government-issued yeldtar juice for slaughterhouse fowls, I thought this to be the government, until I realized these wind-horns never mentioned anything like trade or wages. And then I found there are men who never stand for election, never enter the assembly, never become shophet, but quietly command all those who do.

  The most obvious are the lords of trade, carriage, news, and manufacture, who live wealthily but vulgarly in mansions within Rustarra’s walls and point Estar where their money wishes. Less obvious are the guilds. Estar’s number millions, for every trade from doctor to horse-boy permits only dues-paying guildsmen to follow their work, and when they strike for higher wages or cold water on tap for street-sweepers, the lords, shophets, and assembly are obliged to bow. Yet it is not these millions who actually hold the power.

  Guild leaders mostly live in the poorest house available, dress meanly, keep no horses, and strive to resemble their poorest subjects. But since I never saw one without white hands, frog’s jowls, and a globular belly, I conclude that telling others to strike is a richer trade than doing it yourself.

  All these people were agog to see us in the flesh. We housed with the shophets, banqueted with the lords, addressed the assembly, lectured the guilds, and were beset by news-takers, the whole of it only adding to Rustarra’s noise. “This is Estar,” said Beryx. “Think later, talk first.”