Royal sat down across the cell. “Now, my son. May I ask you—-do you eat pigs at home?”
“Pigs? Are you crazy?”
“A simple yes or no would help us find a cure for you.”
Red trembled in a sweat. “Yeah. Of course we do. What fishgutted difference has that to do with anything?”
“And the other two men? Do they?”
“Of course they—” He paused. “I don’t know. There’s nothing to the pig theory. We thought of that. Plenty of people eat pigs and never get it.”
“Perhaps they eat pigs that are clean? Or maybe they do something to the meat that kills the microorganisms. Or maybe they don’t handle the uncooked meat or live pigs.” Red surged against his chains, flailing and struggling. “How long are you going to keep me like this?”
“We have no wish to. You are a mad dog. You’d hurt somebody.”
The Peshtak glared at Royal and the guardsman. “We’ll let you go home if we find a cure to this Peshtak plague. We think you won’t be so murderous if you aren’t so desperate.”
Red sank down on his bunk, his arms still held up by the chains. The guardsman gave Mm some slack. As they turned to go, he said, “One thing.” They turned. “Tell the others it isn’t them. Tell them.”
“We did.”
Red lay back on the bunk and stared at the rock ceiling of his cell.
15
Brudoer continued his exploration of the tunnels and caves, seeking to gain a thorough knowledge of them so he could move freely and give the oppressed Threerivers people safety if some insurmountable crisis rolled over them.
The caves seemed the most impregnable area, if there were a way out of them. As he searched, he found another box of old manuscripts. Since, he had seen Craydor’s hand, he recognized its distinctive flourish. Brudoer knew the manuscripts to be unpublished material since all children at Threerivers read Craydor extensively. Perusing one, he was increasingly astonished for he found the old sage questioning all her own accomplishments, and even the Pelbar system of woman’s dominance. “While it may seem natural for males, since they tend to be physically stronger, to do the heavier work while the women handle administrative matters, still unfairness develops. Reward does not always come to those who genuinely contribute. Others are promoted because of gender, and from their positions of prominence do mediocre work. The ideal society would appear to be one not oriented by gender. But in our present primitive state, that seems impossible.”
Another essay, in a shaky hand, questioned the concept of Threerivers. Slowly picking his way through the difficult script, Brudoer made out, “There will be a time when Threerivers is no more. That has always been the way with human things. However, I hope deeply that my unlocking system is never activated, but, rather, that the city is taken down stone by stone to use for other things or new building, or else that other structures will have grown up around It and out from it so that when it is time to take down the old, it will not be missed.” What did she mean? What unlocking system did she hope was never activated? Brudoer couldn’t fathom it.
Far down the river, Gamwyn and his two companions paddled deeper and deeper into the flat country of the lower Heart. They passed two empty spaces along the river, where weeds and grasses barely grew. As they journeyed, the river seemed to flatten and slow down, spreading and meandering. Great, moss-draped trees hung over the banks, and the three were surprised one afternoon to see a long, scaled animal with a knurled back and a great long mouth slide off the bank into the water and vanish. Reo shuddered, knotting his forehead.
Flocks of white water birds seemed to be everywhere, rising from the shallows, flying overhead in delicate, translucent brilliance, yellow bills stretched forward, black legs thrust out behind.
The three took their time, fishing and floating. Using his folding knife, Gamwyn made a bow and managed to trim a few straight arrows and even to fletch them, though he had had little practice in that.
Though the river maintained a channel, it was increasingly braided by muddy islands and swamps, seeming to frazzle out into a maze of confusing side passages and dead ends. More than once they had to turn and seek the main river again. Eventually, all solidity seemed lost. They were moving through a labyrinth of water, trees, vines, hummocks, and occasional stretches of grassy swampland. Snakes glided in the water and hung on vines and trees. Mosquitoes whined and stung constantly, and the three grew irritable and frightened. Reo wished he had never left Murkal.
One day, seeking the main channel again, they heard a shout. Looking behind, they saw three slim boats, far up another channel. A man waved a paddle. The three dug in and surged out toward a nearby bend, hoping to lose themselves in the swamp beyond. One boat began to follow, gaining rapidly. They could faintly hear someone calling. It sounded like, “Come back. Come back. Don’t go that way.”
They reached the flooded trees and moved their boat through them, twisting and crouching, until they finally felt safe. Gamwyn guided the boat up against a projecting root, panting and sweating. But as he gently set the paddle down, the boat that had been following glided slowly out across his bow. Five men were in it, dark-skinned, with bushes of tightly curled black hair and broad noses. One was standing, holding a fish spear at ease.
He grinned. “Well, children,” he said. “Where you goin’?” He held up his hand as Gamwyn reached for his bow. “No. None of that. You’re in Southocean country. Ours. That don’t matter, really. There’s plenty of it. We just wanted to catch you before you ended up in the dead flats.”
“The dead flats?” Artess asked.
“All poisoned. Nothing there. No good to go there. The river goes through it. At least one part. Where you goin’?”
“To the South Ocean,” Gamwyn said. “To find a shell.”
“What kind of shell?”
Gamwyn described It at length. The men frowned. “I don’t know no kind of shell like that,” one said.
“You’d best go east to Sagol,” another said. “A lot of shells there.”
“Sagol?” another said. “How’d they ever get there?”
“How far is it?” Gamwyn asked.
“About a hundred fifty kiloms, a lot of it open sea. But you could follow the curve of the islands outside the empty bay. You could do it.”
“So long as there ain’t no big storms,” one man said.
“Too early. Won’t be none yet. Too early,” another remarked.
“You got a sail?”
“No,” said Gamwyn. “Just paddles.”
“You’d best come with us,” the standing man said. “My name is Samme.” He held out his hand, and the three clasped it in turn. The slim boat turned, then, and led the way through the maze of passages out into the open again, then north to where they first had encountered the dark men.
They found a settlement with sixteen of the slim boats and forty-two people, all living in families in houses built upon stilts, some using living trees as a part of their support.
The three soon found themselves the center of a conference that seemed more like an amorphous argument than anything else, but out of it came several rapid decisions. Gamwyn would leave the boat with them. He, Reo, Artess, and seven others would traverse the swamps— portaging when necessary—eastward to the open sea in two boats and take them to Sagol in payment for the boat. They would also take a quantity of reed baskets with them for trade.
Though it was afternoon, they set out immediately, through narrow, watery aisles. The Southocean men called themselves Atherers, and Gamwyn gathered that they belonged to a loose alliance of several groups, all mostly selfgoverned. The Atherers seemed to know exactly where they were going in the maze of swamps and channels.
That night they camped on a small knoll, surrounded by swamp. The men built a fire and occasionally spread it over with damp tree moss for smoke to drive away the insects.
“Not long now,” Samme remarked. “We’ll see the ocean by midmoming.”
As they set
tled down, the three slept together in spite of the heat, with Reo in the middle. But Gamwyn felt Artess’s hand come across her brother’s head to touch his shoulder and reassure herself he was there. Somehow they felt safe with the Atherers, but the great strangeness made them uneasy.
Just as Samme had promised, in the morning they emerged into an area of swampy sand islands, an ill-defined shoreline. In spite of what he had heard and imagined, Gamwyn was not prepared for his first sight of the ocean, which stretched to the horizon, bright and greenish blue. It was restless in the calm summer air; so vast, with such a sense of incipient power and indifference, that the great river he had grown up with seemed small and tame by contrast. The ocean seemed an active, understandable, animate presence. Here was an eyeless and careless immensity. It seemed to reach to the rim of nothingness.
But the Atherers didn’t hesitate to launch out onto it, shaking out their gray sails and pointing their small, slender boats directly at the empty horizon to the northeast. Gamwyn looked at Reo and saw the boy was visibly frightened. But Artess seemed comfortable enough.
She reached over and touched her brother’s hand. “It’s better than hoeing cotton and beans,” she said. That afternoon the party saw two low islands to the south, and as evening neared, another, much longer than the others, appeared. They steered for it, beaching the boats near sunset, drawing them far up the sandy beach. As the group sat at ease, cooking and eating, Samme questioned Gamwyn, Artess, and Reo about their background, and Gamwyn filled him in on everything he could. He felt an openness and honesty in the Atherers that he hadn’t since leaving home. The Atherers laughed a great deal, and they sang beautifully. They seemed family-oriented. But Gamwyn couldn’t understand how they functioned so well without apparent authority. No one was obviously in charge.
After sunset the Atherers knelt and sang a hymn to the Lone One. Later, Gamwyn asked them if that was the name they gave to God.
“No,” one said. “God is God. We know that name and share it with others. The Lost One is God and he ain’t. He brought God to the ancients. That is, the sense of God.
Somehow, everything known about him vanished in the turmoil of the terrible time after the great burning. We’ve never learned nothing about him since. You. What do you know about him. Anything?”
Gamwyn sighed and said no. He told them about Pelbar religion, and one man shook his head. “Another religion created after the burning,” he said. “By somebody who didn’t like men.”
“Not that bad,” another said. “You can see the outlines of the Lost One in it.”
“You ought to come to Pelbarigan and talk about it,” Gamwyn said. “They’re gathering people there from all over—as far west as beyond the great mountains. Somebody might remember something. Even the Tusco had some scraps of paper from the ancient times.” Gamwyn recited it to them. They looked at him silently, and had him repeat it until they all knew it by heart. A hush fell over them.
“It’s the faint voice of the Lost One again,” Samme said. “It is. It surely is.” He sighed. “With knowing that, 1 don’t see how the ancients managed to bum everything. But they did.”
The whole group fell silent, watching the fire die. Then they unrolled their light cotton bed bags and slid in for the night. Gamwyn lay awake for much of the night listening to the light curl of surf slapping soothingly on the beach. Then he shut his eyes a moment and woke in daylight, with the gray-backed gulls crying overhead, wheeling and touching at the air with their wingtips. The Atherers had cooked more fish and were nearly ready to go. They laughed at his sleepiness, but they looked at him differently since he had recited the Tusco scripture.
Samme put an arm around him and said, “Are these the uttermost parts of the sea? Maybe to somebody from the uttermost parts of the river. But they’re home, you know.” Toward evening of the third day, they saw the coast at Sagol ahead, and soon were hailed from the beach near a small stream entering the sea. A crowd gathered, and the three travelers were surrounded and engulfed, the whole group surging toward a large, low building back from the beach. Beyond it, Gamwyn could see a number of open, conical houses, thatched with leaves and fronds, arranged in arcs.
Sagol was an Atherer summer town, he was told. In winter, they moved back from the shore a bit to a place called Adant, where they prepared a spring crop before returning. That night a communal supper was held to celebrate the coming of the strangers, and afterward, Gamwyn was asked again to tell Ms story. While the vernacular of the Atherers tended toward what seemed to Gamwyn a slightly blurred drawl, it was closer to Pelbar speech then was that of Artess and Reo, and they understood Mm clearly enough. He gathered that they had a written language, and that proved to be the case. Their library, he was told, was at Adant, but books were around the summer town, some traded from the eastern cities. Gamwyn was disappointed to learn that none came from ancient times. He also learned that children were schooled four days of every ten the year round.
Gamwyn was told that the Southocean people were united in what they called a federation all of whose members lived along the north sea rim.of the South Ocean, in peace with each other, meeting annually for a long governmental conference. “Most are - dark-skinned, like us,” one old man told him., “but some are lighter, and a few even light-haired, like you and your friend.” He pointed to Artess, who smiled faintly.
“Tomorrow,” the old man added, “is a school day. You. will begin school with the others under the canopy.”
“But my shell,” Gamwyn said. “I’ve got to find my shell and get back.”
The old man shook his head. “We all talked about it. There ain’t no shell like that here, though the hermit may have one. He has a good many.” He called to a boy and had him run up to a conical house nearby. Soon the boy returned with a blue-gray, ridgy shell, which he held out.
“Thank you, Welle,” the old man said, smoothing the sand off it. “This is the nearest thing we have to it. But it ain’t separated inside, and yours had no ridges. These are common enough.”
Gamwyn took the shell and examined it. It was thin and fragile, a beautiful spiral, much like Bival’s, but it lacked the exquisite flaring shape. Suddenly he felt a wave of despair, set the shell down, and sobbed, hiding his face in his hands. Artess’s hand came to him, went around Mm, but seemed not to help. He didn’t understand. Everybody had said the shell came from the South Ocean.
He cleared Ms eyes, finally, and saw the old man patiently regarding him. “You’d better go see the hermit. No school for you just now. But you two—you go to school.” Artess made a face, and the old man laughed, showing an expanse of toothless gum.
The next morning, Gamwyn set out for the hermit’s with the old man, who was thin and stooped, but surprisingly wiry. They walked eastward along the beach for about two ayas, then turned inland, mounting a slight rise. On the way, the old man, whose name was Aylor, scarcely said anything, except to explain that the hermit lived alone at the edge of a ruined area, collecting things from the ancients, cleaning them up, and explaining them, “He ain’t an Atherer,” Aylor explained. “He came from Innanigan when I was young, and he’s been here ever since, building his junk pile.” Aylor chuckled, fell silent, then chuckled again. Then he added, “You’ll like him. He’s alone so much, you’d think he’d lose the power of speech, but he’s just sharpened it.” Then the old man chuckled again.
Soon they mounted another rise, toward a grove of scraggly trees, in which Gamwyn could see a ramshackle building. Soon they could hear someone humming and found the hermit seated at an old plank table scrubbing at a chunk of old iron with a piece of sandstone. He looked up at them, at first vaguely, his eyes swimming, “You. Aylor,” he said. “I’d better get a dog. He who sneaks like a snake must be minded like one.”
“Nobody’s sneakin’, you old gator face. I brought somebody to see you. Gamwyn, this is Darew the hermit. Darew, this is Gamwyn, come all the way down the Heart River and here to find a shell. We tell him there ain’t no
ne like it here. Thought you might have one.”
“A man who envies the possessions of others ignores the great goodness he has, boy. Gamwyn, huh. From the Heart, huh. He who has a heart already has more than he who has a shell. You would trade the better for the worse. Would you trade your skin for cotton pants? You have the essence and you expend it on trifles.”
“Stuff it, Darew, and listen to him. He’s come well over a thousand kiloms.”
Darew looked at Mm. “A thousand kiloms. Never escaped yourself in all that distance, did you.”
Aylor sighed. “Gamwyn, you tell Mm.”
Gamwyn sat down across from the hermit on a section of old log and described the shell, stressing why he needed it so badly. Darew pulled at the thin gray hair on his crown as the boy talked. Then he stood abruptly, saying, “I have one of those. Found it in the ruin. You may find one there, too. I will keep mine. He who keeps what he has will never need to seek what he has not.”
Beckoning, Darew walked back into the grove, where Gamwyn saw, arranged in neat rows, stacks of curious and baffling rusty objects, then rows of other objects—stones, pine cones, types of wood, mostly broken ceramics, and finally shells. Darew picked one up, tossed it up in the air, caught it, and handed it to Gamwyn. It was the shell, the very type Ravell had brought to Bival. The boy found his hands trembling.
“You—you have no other one?” he asked.
“No. Only one. They don’t come like that around here. The ancients brought it from someplace. See the hole they drilled in it?”
“Can I earn it from you?”
“No. Spoil the collection. It’s the best one. That’s how I knew it right off. He who sells the ham must be content with snout meat and pig’s feet.”
Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 04] Page 19