“Here, Rahm!” Vortcir led him up to a stone rim. “You must make the first cut.” On his spur, Vortcir lifted a great cleaver, long as his thigh. Rahm turned to seize it by a handle carved for a grip wholly different from his own. He planted one foot on the pit-stone. Their wings beating up spirals of sparks, the fire tenders swung the first spit out. Rahm raised the blade—
His eyes caught the red light running up the sharpened metal—and, as he had done so many times that day, Rahm halted. His chest rose; breath stalled in it.
Some of the Winged Ones fell silent.
One of Vortcir’s wings opened to brush and brush at Rahm’s back, to smear the sweat that had, in moments, risen on Rahm’s shoulders, his forehead, his belly. “Friend Rahm, this blade is to cut the meat that we will all eat. Use it!”
Rahm swung the cleaver down. Crusted skin split. Juices rilled and bubbled along the metal. And Rahm grinned. The others chittered and laughed and mewed. Some even came up to compliment him on the dexterity with which he carved: “But then, you have so many little fingers…”
Lashed to a wooden fork, a leather sack dripped wine into a stone tub, from which, at one time or another, everyone went to drink. Three times Rahm found himself at the rim beside a female with granite-dark fur, a quick smile, and a sharp way of putting things in an otherwise genial manner. “So,” she said, when the wine had made Rahm feel better and they met again a ways from the food, “I overheard you talking to that blind old fool about god,” though she spoke the word “fool” with such affection as to make Rahm wonder if it meant the same to her as it did to him. “You know what the real center of our life here is? It isn’t god.”
“What is it, then?” Rahm asked.
Behind her, her wings… breathed, in and out of the indigo, out and into the firelight. “Actually, it’s money.”
“Money?” he asked. “Money…now, what is money?”
Apparently it was more complicated than god. It, too, she explained, was fundamentally an idea, having to do with value—in this case, represented by the hard hulls of certain nuts, treated with certain dyes, with certain symbols carved into them. You gave some of these hulls for everything you received, or got some back for everything you gave—Rahm was not sure which; “everything” included food, sex, and entertainment, labor, shelter, and having certain rituals performed for you by the Handsman or the Queen.
“I’d like to see some,” he said, with polite interest, “of this money.”
She cackled, in a scrit as shrill as that of the beast he’d slain in the cave. “But that’s the whole problem, you understand. Nobody has any, anymore!”
He was confused all over.
“We gave it up,” she explained, “years ago. When I was a girl—maybe eight or nine. We had a meeting of the whole nest site, and the Old Queen decided we’d be better off without it. So we went back to barter. But no one’s really forgotten it—I don’t care what the Old One says. Personally, I think it would be better if we had it back again, don’t you?”
Around him the Winged Ones caroused through the deepening evening. Now and again, Rahm watched five, six, seven or more rise from jagged rocks, gone black against the blue, in what, for the first moments, was a single fluttering mass, to shrink in the distance and flake, finally, apart as single flyers. There, among them, was the young woman who’d just been talking to him about this money—how did he recognize her, in silhouette like that? (Had she taken part in the afternoon’s forbidden game? Of that, he couldn’t be sure.) But he did: definitely it was she, among the others, flying away.
With their mysterious and mystic notions—money and god—these folk had again begun to seem wholly foreign. Rahm raised his hand to finger the chain at his neck, that made him, at least honorarily, some sort of personage among these incomprehensible creatures. What, he wondered, would he tell one of the Winged Ones who wanted to know what ideas were most central to his own, ground-bound nest site?
Behind him, Vortcir whispered, intensely: “Fly with me, friend Rahm!”
Rahm turned and, with an avidity that surprised him, threw his arms around that powerful neck, as Vortcir turned (in turn) to take him. Rahm bent one arm down across the flexing shoulder. “Watch that thou dost not crash the two of us onto the rocks!” Was Vortcir’s head as full of wine as his …?
The feeling, that he had almost grown used to by now, was that the Winged One who carried him took a great breath that finally just lifted his feet from the ground, a breath that didn’t stop—the air itself taking them higher, and higher, and higher.
“This is a fine night to fly!” Vortcir called back.
Fires flickered below them. A file of Winged Ones flew just above the flame. Wing after wing reddened, darkened. Loosed from it all and looking down on it over the Hands-man’s shoulder, Rahm felt the whole nest site and all the flying folk he’d met there, children, adults, and oldsters, to be wondrously and intricately organized—as fine, as rich, and as logical as any folk could be.
“You like the life we lead, don’t you?” came the child-voice.
Rahm nodded, his cheek moving against the Hands-man’s flour-scoop of an ear—which twitched against him.
“They are good men and women,” Rahm said. They arched away from the cliff-side and the water’s rush and the jutting trees, all black below them now. “They have all been kind to me.”
“And you are happy,” Vortcir said. “I can hear it.” Rahm said: “The wine has dulled thy hearing.”
“For a moment—for several moments—” Vortcir shook his head in a kind of shiver, though his wings still pumped them steadily across the night—“you were happy. Will you stay with us, friend Rahm?” The only sound was the air, loud in Rahm’s ears—though surely much louder in Vortcir’s. “I have heard your answer.” Beside them, the mountain rose.
Rahm spoke rather to himself than to Vortcir, because he already knew it was not necessary: “I want to go home…”“I have heard,” Vortcir repeated.
They descended the night.
“Where are we?” Rahm moved his feet in soil that held small rocks, leaves, and twigs. Neither moon or stars broke the darkness.
“At the edge of the meadow where you bury your dead.” Wide wings beat, not to fly but to enfold him, shaking on him and about him in a manner both affectionate and distressed. “Do not stumble—” the little voice sounded rough and close, as the wings parted—“on the corpses.”
“Are there many about?”
“They have brought many. No one has buried them, yet. Friend Rahm…?”
“Yes, Vortcir?”
“I must go back up now to my own people. But I will listen for you always.” The high, breathy chuckle. “That’s what we say when we leave a friend.”
Rahm put his arms around Vortcir’s shoulders once more, to grasp the creature to him who, in the dark, was only furred muscle, a high voice, a knee against his, a hot breath against his face and a scent more animal than human. Rahm stepped back. “And I will watch and… listen for thee! Vortcir… ?” Wind struck against him for answer. A little dust blew against his cheeks and got into one eye, making Rahm turn away, rubbing at it with his fore-knuckle, so that the beating was at his back. Then it was above, thundering dully. Somewhere, as the sound stilled, a breeze rose over it with its own thunder of leaves and shushing grasses. (It brought with it an unpleasant smell, like rotting vegetables and clogged waters; but Rahm tried not to name it, or even pay attention to it.) When it stilled, all sound was gone.
Beneath Rahm’s feet, grass gave way to path dust. He walked. Firelight flickered from inside a window. By one shack, he stopped to look in—through a crack between two logs under the sill; a crack, he realized, he’d peeped through many, many nights one winter, years ago, when someone else entirely had lived there.
A woman sat at the table, her head down, her shoulders hunched high. Two grown sisters had lived in this hut for the past half-dozen years. Rahm pulled away sharply when it struck him what it like
ly meant that only one was there tonight.
He turned and hurried across the road and ducked into the darkness between two houses. For a moment he wondered if he was lost, but, at the glow from another hut’s shutter, open perhaps three inches, he realized where he was.
Going up to the dim strip of light, he looked through. On a table a lot more rickety than the one in the last hut, a clay lamp burned with a flame more orange than yellow. Sitting on a bench, back against the wall and staring straight forward, was a man—whose name Rahm didn’t know.
But he knew those shoulders—and the short, spiky hair: and the face. The man, not half a dozen years older than Rahm, worked on one of the quarry crews, sometimes with Abrid and… Kern.
Odd, Rahm thought, that there are people in my town whom I really don’t know—though I’ve seen them, now and again, all my life. I probably know the names and the names of most of the relatives of practically every field worker. But do I know more than a dozen of those who work in the stone pits…?
The surprise, of course, was that the man lived here. But then, Rahm went on thinking, that is what makes this town mine. It still holds for me perfectly simple things to learn, like what the name is or where the house lies of one of its stone workers…
Then the thought interrupted itself: Is he blind… ? The man’s eyes were open. He looked right at the window. Only inches out in the darkness, Rahm could not believe himself unseen. But the man’s expression was the complete blank of one who slept with his eyes wide. Standing in the darkness, concentrating to read that blankness, Rahm was equally still, equally blank—
The man started forward.
Rahm started back—but something held him.
The man was up, moving to the window. He looked out at Rahm, and gave a grunt—the way quarrymen so often did. “I thank thee,” he said, softly, roughly—though Rahm had no idea why—and smiled. “But thou hast better go. The patrol comes soon.” He pulled the window closed.
Rahm stood in the dark, bewildered by the exchange. What, he found himself wondering, would I have seen had I looked into this same window last night before the wailing? Two other quarry workers sharing the hut with him? Perhaps a woman—perhaps two?
Some children? What absences in the house today did the blankness—or the smile—mean?
The return from his wander the previous day had started Rahm pondering all he knew of his village. But his return tonight, after the violence of the night before and the wonders of the day, had started him pondering all he did not know of it.
Rahm crossed the dark path. Nearing the common, he walked by more close-set huts.
Old Hara the Weaver’s cottage had never had a shutter—at least not on its back window. But a hanging had been tacked up across it—although, at one edge, it had fallen away so that a little light came through. Within, he could hear the old woman talking—to herself, Rahm realized, as, with his fingertips on the window ledge, he put his eye to the opening between the window edge and the cloth.
“They shall not have it! They shall not! I said it in the council, and I say it now: they shall not have it!” He could see Hara moving about before the fire, a sharp-shouldered figure. Now she put down an armful of cloth—and, taking up a cooking blade, she began to slash at one piece and another as she lifted them. “Never for them—they shall not!” With a hard, hard motion, she flung one handful and another of rags into the flames.
Rahm pulled back—even though the pieces did not flare.
He turned from the hut’s sagging wall, to start away, when, from around the corner—
—lights, horses, hooves!
“There, Çironian! What are you doing out?”
Rahm whirled, hands up over his eyes against the light.
“You know the ordinance, Çironian. No windows or doors are to be open after dark! No man, woman, or child is to be on the street! You’re under arrest! Come with us.”
“With you—?” Rahm began, squinting between his fingers as he pulled them from his eyes.
“Anyone the patrol catches out past sundown is under arrest, Çironian. Do not make further trouble for yourself.”
A rope dropped over his shoulders to be yanked tight. Another soldier was down off his horse to grasp Rahm’s hands and pull them behind him. “We’ll take him with us on the rest of the patrol around the common, before we deliver him to the holding cell.” Another rope went round his wrists.
As the horse in front started away, Rahm was tugged forward, so that he stumbled, nearly falling.
He kept his feet though. The feeling was a kind of numbness. (The other Myetran soldier was back on his horse now. Horses clopped on the street at both sides of him.) But within the numbness there was something else: it was a feeling hard for Rahm to describe. It was as if the thing that had, the night before, grown to fill him, that had almost become him, had now, at the horse’s first tug, torn loose from him. It was as if his flesh had parted and the thing that had filled him had remained standing, unmoving on the street—so that only the rind of him was dragged away, a limp thing collapsing through the light-lashed dark.
Not that the thing left behind stayed still.
It followed. It came steadily, easily after them, even as Rahm stumbled on. It moved firmly, watched impassively. (For moments Rahm was convinced that if he glanced back, he would see it, coming after them, lowering in the dark.) It observed them, impartial, now like something circling them,’ now like something walking with them. That impartiality, that impassivity, that sheer chill, was more unsettling than the indifference of the soldiers in front of him and beside him, taking him through the streets about the common—because Rahm’s stumbling was, anyway—most of it—feigned. When his wrists had yanked from the soldier’s hands, the knot hadn’t been pulled tight yet: it would have been nothing to bunch his fingers and, though the hemp might burn, wrench a hand free. The rope around his arms and chest was only, he was sure, one great shrug away from coming loose. These Myetrans, Rahm thought, were used to dealing with terrified men and women.
But, Rahm realized, as he stumbled and blinked in their passing lights, trying to look terrified and cringing, the thing that went with them—the thing that was really he—was not frightened. (Did they, Rahm wondered, find the sight of a frightened man or woman somehow beautiful? But they did not even look at him. Were they, perhaps, like the Winged Ones, listening? He did not think so.) It was not frightened at all.
CHAPTER V
FROM the corner of Hara’s hut, Naä watched the soldiers ride off with Rahm. She had seen him at the first house, followed him to the second—recognizing him only in the light from the open shutter, before it closed (till now, she’d assumed him killed in the first night’s massacre)—and come behind him quietly at the third. She’d followed him, through the breezy night, excitement growing, anticipating what he might say to her, his surprise at seeing her, his pleasure at knowing she was alive and free as he was, when finally she would overtake him with a word—
Really, she’d been about to speak—when the patrol had come up, and, in a moment’s cowardice she cursed herself for, she’d ducked back out of the light and stood, still and stiff as she could stand, one fist tight against her belly, her back against the shack wall’s shaggy bark.
The whole capture quivered before her, leaving her with the anger, the frustration, the outrage you might have at a child or lover snatched from your arms. She watched them ride off with Rahm—and, by starts, hesitations, and sprints, at a safe distance, one street away from the common, she followed them.
Since she had first left Calvicon, Naä had pretty much done as she wanted—within the constraints necessity placed about a wandering singer’s song. She was a woman of strong feeling and quiet demeanor. Last night, she’d watched what had happened in the Çironian village, but from the ends of alleys, crouching behind fences, up through the chink in a grain-cellar door, while soldiers and villagers had rattled the boards above her, till one arm broke through, to flail, bloody, ab
out her in the dark, hitting her on the ear and shoulders, while she knelt in the three-foot space below, trying not to make a sound while others screamed above her.
Before sun-up, Naä had climbed quietly out, stumbled over the bodies, and—like Rahm—started from the town. She had not, however, gone as far.
She walked an hour in the dark, till the salmon-streaked promise of sunrise hemmed the night. She stopped beneath a maple grove, looked down among dark roots squirming at her feet, put her hands to the sides of her head and, breathing deeply, stood awhile, now with eyes opened, now with them closed. A few times, she gave an audible gasp.
Once she shook her head.
Then she took her hands down slowly, to let them fall, finally, against her thighs.
A minute later, she whispered, “No…!”
Then she turned and began to walk briskly back. At the edge of the burial meadow, she crouched in a clump of brush, while one and another wagon pulled up to the field all through the morning, each accompanied by three or four soldiers, to dump its corpses.
To the sound of creaking cart-beds and thumping bodies, she fell asleep—and woke, hours later, in the hot sun,with a nauseous smell in her nose and a bad taste in her mouth. Looking carefully through the brush, she saw that no attempt had been made to cover the bodies on the grass.
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