“Generous of him,” Teodorq said sotto vocee.
He is afraid of the Emrikii, Méarana thought.
They built a campfire and spent a somber night in its flickering glare. It was nearing the time when Captain Barnes expected to return with Blankets and Beads. It would be good to return to the world of baths and books. Paulie and Teddy got into an argument over who had done the most work unloading the canoes and nearly came to blows, save that Donovan separated them. Sofwari, his equipment smashed in the Roaring Gorge, his notes reduced to what he had already loaded in his pocket brain, had fallen into a morose lassitude and hardly bothered swabbing cheeks anymore. Some gang of savages would destroy them, he told her, before they could be analyzed. There were no more honeyed words, no more clever insights. Billy said little, and watched everything with a glum fatalism.
Méarana sang a little, but she was tired and pleaded sleep. She went off to the side and sat just at the edge of the firelight, where she took her medallion out. She had had to make a new thong for it after it had been ripped from her neck by the Harps in the Roaring Gorge. They are up there, she thought. The people that made this medallion. She thought of how many hands it must have passed through to reach Lafeev’s men in the city of Riverbridge on the banks of the broad Aríidnux.
Tomorrow, she thought, gazing up at the sky-rimmed mountain edge.
The raft arrived at midday and the yaams were loaded up for the climb to the City on the Hill. Crow-feeder took his leave. “May the Weird grant that you find your mother.” Then he went to Skins-rabbit and said, “I grant you your freedom, Skins-rabbit, and bid you give them my kiss of friendship.” And he took her in his arms and placed his lips on hers.
Then all was quiet once more. The wind soughed through the pine needles. The paddles of the departing canoes dipped and splashed. The Longfoot crashed and rumbled. High overhead, an eagle screeched. Suddenly Méarana felt as isolated as she had ever felt in her life. She shivered in the mountain breeze, and adjusted the any cloth in her jacket to pad up a bit against the chill.
She and Donovan went to Skins-rabbit, who stood on the riverbank looking after the departing Harps. When the last canoe had turned the bend and vanished behind a stand of hop-willow, she spat into the river.
Méarana had not expected that she had loved her captors. It was a hard world, but each man had his strengths and his flaws. There were none, as her mother had once told her, entitled to throw the first stone.
But that did not mean, she had always added, that there were none who deserved to be struck by it.
“Come with us, Skins-rabbit,” said the harper. The girl would understand nothing but her name, which Méarana had learned to pronounce in the tanga cru’tye.
But the girl tossed her head and the twin black braids flew like whips. She said something in a vehement tone and reached to rip off the thigh-length flaxen shift she wore. Méarana stayed her hand and she and the girl locked eyes for a time. Then Skins-rabbits made a grim line of her mouth and dropped her hand.
“I think we get the message,” Méarana said. “What is it, Donovan?”
“I think I know what she said. When you called her Skins-rabbits, I think she said, ‘My name is Chain Gostiyya-Uaid.’”
“My earwig was silent.”
“It wasn’t my earwig. It was the Pedant. It was a language I learned…I don’t know when.”
“You never talk about your youth.”
“If I ever learn I had one, you’ll be the next to know.” He said something to Chain in a tongue alternately liquid and guttural. Chain frowned, listened intently, and opened her mouth to reply. But then she shook her head and shrugged.
They walked back to the rest of the group, who had donned their backpacks and were waiting with the yaams. “It will come to me,” Donovan said, though he did not sound certain. “Perhaps I once learned a language that was cousin to hers.”
__________
Chain led them to a trail that switchbacked up the massif. It was a pitiless trail, at times reduced to hand and toeholds carved into the face of the rock, and at other times to ledges that wound narrowly along the precipice. It was not a trail to be walked lightly. At one point, Billy slipped and would have fallen but that Donovan seized his arm and pulled him back up.
During the climb, Donovan mulled over the tantalizing half-familiarity of Chain’s language. The Treasure Fleet had set out from Terra well before the Cleansing, and her people would have spoken the Tantamiž lingua franca of that age. Yet, there had also been the Vraddies, the Zhõgwó, the Murkans, and the Yurpans with their Roomie underclass…
In the Age of Audio, languages changed more languidly than in the Age of Print. But while recordings preserved the classical pronunciation for longer periods, nonetheless consonants softened, vowels shifted, declensions dissolved. Among the descendants of the Cleansing, they had changed one way; among those of the Treasure Fleet, in other ways. In the Old Planets, different languages had been thrown together with the deliberate intention of hindering communication among the refugees, so the tongues of the Periphery were more thoroughly blended than those of the Wild. That was why he could understand occasional words, but not quite the whole sense.
The Sleuth was working on it.
Sometimes he missed the voices in his head. There had been a community in the cacophony, despite all their quarrels. Now and then, he heard a whisper of the Pedant’s pompous ruminations, of the Sleuth’s snide deductions, of the Inner Child’s high-pitched worries. But now he had the sense that he was ruminating and deducing and worrying—that it was the same “I” even when done in parallel by separate portions of his mind. He even missed that sly old reprobate, the Fudir.
“Told you you would miss me when I was gone,” his lips said.
And Donovan smiled as he climbed.
Then they were over the lip of the mountain and moving down through an alpine forest. High-crested light-blue birds cocked their heads at the parade and scolded them in shrill cries. Does with fawns bounded away through the dark beneath the canopy. The path was well-worn, but they saw no sign of the people who had worn it.
Then the forest opened out onto a broad, high meadow, and Donovan saw a checkerboard of regular, well-kept fields and small homesteads bordered by stone walls and rail fences. The houses crouched under low-slung turf roofs; and the smoke that curled from the chimneys drifted toward the ground. Men and women halted their plows with sharp commands to their himmers and stood to watch the passing strangers. Each had a long gun to hand, and some cradled theirs.
“They have firearms!” Méarana said. “Not even the Nuxrjes’rii have firearms.”
Donovan called out to a farmer and waved. The man, after some hesitation, waved back. Because he had recognized the word? Or only because he recognized a greeting?
They came to a small bridge across a rushing mountain stream, one of the tributaries that would become first the Multawee, then the mighty Aríidnux. On the other side, on an island formed by a fork in the stream, houses stood cheek by jowl. But instead of crossing the bridge, Chain went to her knees on the stream’s bank and splashed the water on herself, letting it run down her arms and dashing it on her face. “O Xhodzhã! O Xhodzhã!”
Sofwari had gone downstream a little way and now crouched there. “Strange,” he said. “They have dug two tunnels under the stream. Why?” Slightly downstream was a statue of a goddess holding a lantern.
The people on the island studiously paid the newcomers no attention. The yaam Donovan held honked and yanked against his reins. Then he spit on Donovan. The scarred man made a pungent comment on the beast’s ancestry in the Terran patois.
And one of the men across the bridge repeated the phrase, adding a gesture with his finger.
Some words, it seemed, changed very little over the centuries. In terms of communication, it was little enough, but it was a start. Donovan exchanged grins with the other man. Yeah, life’s a bitch.
An elderly couple elbowed their way
to the stream-bank. “Chain!” they cried. “Chain, gyuh xub pex dyushdu evda yodãí!” And then, although the stream was easily waded, Chain ran to the bridge and slapped across it on bare horny feet into their arms. The other Emrikii clasped their hands and cried, “Aw!” as a crow calls, but deeper and throatier.
Almost, Donovan could make out what they were saying. But the words eluded him like a tavern wench. He beckoned to the Harp translator, Watershanks.
“Lord Donovan,” he said before the scarred man could speak, “these people don’t like Harps. Much bad blood. Tell them I be riverman from Rajiloor. I am a riverman, really, for many years since I left Harp country.”
Paulie’s lip curled. “Seems the Harps breed for cowards as well as bugnuts.”
Donovan was not certain whether the cold-blooded fighters of World were in any way preferable to the wild emotions of the Enjrunii. “Stick close by,” he told Watershanks. “The more you talk the loora nuxrjes’r and the less you talk the tanga cru’tye, the more you may set their minds at ease. Sofwari, hold onto my yaam. Méarana, when you’re ready.”
Donovan, Méarana, and Watershanks moved to the foot of the bridge. The Emrikii stirred uneasily, counting numbers, but clearly counting Teodorq and Paulie more than once. They had recognized Teodorq’s nine as a weapon, and possibly the dazers that Donovan and Billy wore. The people of this high valley did not have high tech, unless one counted gunpowder and waterwheels, but they clearly knew it when they saw it.
“Give them a friendly greeting,” Donovan told his translator.
Watershanks said something to Chain in the tanga, and the Emrikii murmured at the sounds and rhythms of their enemies.
It was in Chain’s hands to bring it all down on them, and Donovan could see the knowledge of that power in her eyes. All she need do is tell her people whatever vengeance she wished. But she must know that the strangers, although they had seemed on good terms with her captors, were clearly not of them. Their strange clothing and accouterments indicated great power. What could they wreak if offended? Finally, she said something in the tanga; and, after she had spoken the words, she knelt by the riverside and cupped water in her mouth and spat it out.
Donovan said to Watershanks, “If you want to ease their minds, every time you say something in the tanga, rinse your mouth out and spit.” The riverman stubborned up for a moment. He did not want to be identified with his people, not here and now; but that did not mean he wished to repudiate them. Yet, prudence won, and he did as Donovan advised.
“We have come,” Donovan announced, “seeking the men who wrought this.” And Méarana lifted the medallion from around her neck and held it up for all to see. “For we would know where the place is where this fire comes down from the sky.”
Not many could have made out the design on the medallion, but excitement bubbled through the growing crowd. Donovan heard them say, over and over, “El bhweka ezgoyfrõ!” And “El zagwibhoyshiz!” And they broke into cheers that were quite different from the ululations of the Great Valley, and opened a path from the bridge into the village of Dacitti.
There was a great deal of handslapping and general cheer as they made their way up a broad path to the village green, and Donovan could see that his companions were heartened by the welcome. But a vague unease stirred within him.
__________
Dacitti sat on a long, narrow island between the Xhodzhã and the Rjoyezdy. Save for the farmers scattered about the valley, nearly all the Emrikii lived on this island. In consequence, the huts were crowded close and, in some cases were stacked three high atop one another, with access by ladders. There were well-trod paths between the huts and many of them had been laid with corduroy planks or paving stones. The paths were rectilinear, save at the lower end, where the two streams came together, where they were more tangled. Donovan supposed that this arrangement had originally been for defense—the two streams were not especially formidable, but did provide a moat of sorts to protect the village from attack.
Whatever threat had once motivated its construction, the valley of the Emrikii was now peaceful and secure. The other valley tribes had long ago joined their confederacy. The Oorah used to raid into Emrika to capture women, but now seldom tried. Harp bravos sometimes led war parties into the Kobberjobbles, but the path was too arduous, the sentries too vigilant, and the Emrikii warriors too disciplined. Now the Harps were leaving the Longfoot Valley—blaming a poor harvest rather than an Emrikii punitive expedition.
A large rectangular green occupied the center of Dacitti. It included a sheep meadow and a pond where fish were cultivated. Much of this cornucopia was laid out for the visitors that afternoon in a great feast. Damáire, who was village headman, bid them official welcome and when the platitudes and formalities had been completed, Méarana finally got an answer to her question.
“The sky-fire comes down up there,” Watershanks told them as Damáire pointed to a flat peak at the far end of the valley.
“Every night,” said Billy Chins, “to cook their food.”
Damáire laughed at the humor of the starmen. “You are a funny man,” he told the Confederate courier. “That is only a legend of superstitious Valley folk. No, it is the sperm of the sky. When the god grows horny, he comes to our world to impregnate her. The sky-fire is his thrust into her.
“‘Fire from sky meets womb in ground.
Thrusting deep within…’”
“Well,” said Billy wooden-faced. “We wouldn’t want to believe a superstitious legend.”
“Sperm,” said Donovan. He could not get out of his mind what Méarana had told him on the Starwalk at Siggy O’Hara. “Then why ‘fire’ from the sky?”
“Because the god has what we call ‘the hots.’ God loves the world, so he comes back, again and again. And it is a beautiful world, though I know no others.”
Donovan could see between the three-stacked huts the newly plowed fields of Emrika valley rolling off toward forests and the mountains that rimmed them in. He could not tell Damáire he was wrong. He asked the headman how long it took the god to grow horny.
“Hard to say,” was the answer. “Gods are not like us, but it must be exhausting, making a whole world pregnant. I will ask the efrezde-who-watches-the-sky. Her tallyboard may tell us when the world is to be screwed.”
The efrezde-who-watches-the-sky spent several hours of prayer that night, using a sextant and jacobstaff to mark the positions of key sky-objects. But, as this was her station in life, she kept these observations updated daily, and it did not take long thereafter to complete her prophesy. “In one tenday and half a tenday,” she announced at morning prayer, “will the fire come down and enter the Well at the End of the World.” At breakfast later, she added, “So your arrival is timely. The other golden-skinned woman, who came in a sky-borne chariot, arrived last year. But it was not the proper time. So after a time among the Oorah she ascended into heaven.”
The harper’s knees nearly betrayed her. Donovan seized her by the arm and Sofwari took her by the other and between them they bore her up.
“Mother,” she said, almost in a whisper.
Perhaps that was another word that the centuries barely touched, for Chain Gostiyya-Uaid turned to her and something like understanding was in her eyes.
XV AND BEHOLD, A PILLAR OF FIRE
They set off the next day from Dacitti in a shower of red maiden and edelweiss and with wreaths of dragon’s blood around their necks. Fifes and drums played them up the Broad Path to the ditch that connected the Xhodzhã with the Rjo-yeszdy at the north end of the island. The Emrikii lined the Path and cheered and threw confetti as they passed. A company of musketeers in powder-blue jacks and cross-belts marched with them as an honor guard. At the Xhorlm Ditch, the we
ll-wishers remained behind and Méarana and her group continued along the Xhodzhã High Road that ran the length of the valley.
Méarana paused to thank Damáire, but he only waved his hands and said, “V’gedda-boddi,” which the translators told her was how the Emrikii said, “you’re welcome.”
With them went a “long hunter” named Bavyo Zãzhaice, who knew the way to the top of the Oorah butte, and Chain, who spoke a bit of the Oorah language. Bavyo had the broad stride and confident mien of one returning to his natural home.
“He is a man-who-likes-aloneness,” Chain explained through Water-shanks. “He lives in the forests and in the Big Mountains, so he gets little practice in talking to other people.”
Indeed, their guide frequently went off by himself when they stopped for night camp, to a lonely crag or an oak grove, where he sat in silent contemplation. Méarana joined him one evening on a great stone outcropping. There was a gap in the forest through which a distant mountain pass could be seen and the flat line of the plains beyond. The sky had deepened to indigo save where the sun had lately gone down, and there the clouds glowed a bright red. Bavyo said nothing the whole time she watched the sunset.
The next day, as they crossed the lower slope and entered the Borigan Forest, Chain fell into step with her. “Bavyo say,” she stammered in halting loor nuxrjes’r, “yes, he set beautiful.” Then she scurried ahead to walk beside him. He seemed to take no notice, and Chain looked everywhere but at their guide. Méarana smiled to herself.
Sofwari came to walk beside her. “What did she tell you?”
“Nothing. How goes your research?”
The science-wallah’s face clouded over and he touched a pocket in his coveralls. “I have only the data from Rajiloor and Nuxrjes’r, but your intuition seems to have been correct, and this is the origin of the anomalous cluster on Harpaloon.”
Up Jim River Page 38