The Summer Palace

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “That would suit me well,” he said.

  [ 5 ]

  On his ninth day in the camp, the pieces for Sword’s leather pants and vest were bought and cut, but he had not yet sewn them; he had not yet managed to obtain fabric for his shirt, as he was paying for his materials by helping several old women with their work, and they were overcharging him shamelessly.

  The old women seemed to find him entertaining, and treated him almost like a pet. The nature of the work he was given was such that he spent much of his day in their company, and often found them watching him, giggling and chatting amongst themselves in the Uplander language, rather than tending to their own business.

  He knew that much of their amusement came from his ineptitude at the simple tasks they had been doing for years. He needed all day to pluck and scrape a single hide properly; Gnaw Gnaw or Stepmother or almost any of the others could do the same job in less than an hour, and probably do it better.

  He never did learn the names of any of the other old women beyond his original teachers; in fact, most of them refused to speak to him at all, beyond gestures and giggling. Whether they genuinely didn’t speak Barokanese or simply preferred not to admit it, he could not tell. He considered trying to trick a reaction out of them by saying something shocking or funny or insulting, but thought better of it; his situation was not secure enough to risk being rude in such a fashion.

  He had met several of the men in camp, too, though he was not permitted to work with them. In addition to the four whose tent he shared, he had talked with perhaps half a dozen hunters and a handful of men who had retired from that role. Where the old women treated him like a marginally trainable pet, the men seemed to consider him a dangerous curiosity, to be watched intently, but from a respectful distance. They were fascinated with his sword; there were no Uplander swordsmiths, and so far as anyone there knew, the only other swords to be found on all the vast plain were a few ceremonial weapons owned by clan elders of one sort or another, none of them in the Clan of the Golden Spear. Sword’s practice sessions always drew a crowd, and a few of the men were visibly envious of Whistler, once the youth began assisting Sword and learning a little swordsmanship of his own.

  Young women and children watched, as well. The children seemed to consider it an interesting entertainment and nothing more than that; for the most part they did not share their elders’ fascination with Sword’s weapon itself, but cared only about what he could do with it. They paid little attention to him when he was not wielding the blade.

  The women didn’t seem even as interested in the sword as the children were; they watched his arms and shoulders, rather than the blade. Sword was used to that. He did not know whether the legends about the Chosen Swordsman’s magical skills in bed had reached the Uplanders, as they had almost everywhere in Barokan, but he recognized here the same wary but definite interest he was accustomed to seeing back home.

  Most of the adult clan members were paired off, and at the end of each practice session much of the crowd would drift away in couples, men and women with their arms around one another, but there were a few young women who did not seem to have male companions, and some of them seemed to be among those most interested in Sword’s performance.

  He would not have had any objection to acting on that interest, but there were no obvious opportunities. His living quarters, sleeping on the floor of a shared tent, did not provide any privacy at night. By day, he was under the constant supervision of the old women. In the evenings, his practice sessions, attempts at sewing, and meals took up much of his time. Back in Barokan he might have managed something, perhaps arranging a rendezvous and slipping out at night, but here he was not sufficiently sure of the customs to attempt it.

  He did meet the eyes of a lovely young woman during one practice session and smiled at her, but she did not smile back; she blushed and turned away.

  After the session, Whistler mentioned, out of earshot of the others and without preamble, “We do most of our courting in the winter.”

  “Thank you,” Sword said.

  That explained why he had heard no mention of dances or other entertainments. Sword thought it unlikely that those young people who had no partners really waited all through the three seasons atop the cliffs without exploring a few possibilities, but apparently he had been a little too open and obvious.

  He was mulling that over on his ninth night in camp as he tried to thread the ara-bone needle to start sewing his new pants together. He suspected that wearing the same stained and worn black clothing day after day did not make him any more appealing to the Uplander women; he had rinsed the Hostman garments out a couple of times, but hadn’t really gotten them clean, since clan custom did not allow him to go naked anywhere except inside his own tent, and it wasn’t possible to wash them properly with nothing but his hands, a borrowed basin, and a jug of water, especially not in the poor light in the tent.

  Attempts to borrow clothing, so he could go wash his in the stream, had been met with first confusion, then disgust; apparently Uplanders did not share clothing under any circumstances.

  Therefore, he needed to make himself a new outfit. It wasn’t just a matter of making himself more comfortable, or fitting in better; a change of clothing was a necessity. His present garb would not last forever. He didn’t think it would even last until winter.

  Cutting the pieces hadn’t been too difficult, but assembling them was a challenge. He had learned to use a needle and thread as a boy, so as to repair his own clothing when necessary, but he had never made an entire garment from scratch before, let alone with a bone needle rather than steel.

  A shadow fell across his fingers, and he looked up to find Whistler crouching beside him, with Fist and Dancer standing by, blocking the lanternlight.

  “We were wondering,” Whistler said, “whether you might want a break from Stepmother and her friends.”

  Puzzled, Sword looked around, but didn’t see the old women.

  “Tomorrow, I mean,” Whistler said.

  “Oh,” Sword said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Come hunting with us,” Fist replied.

  “You won’t be allowed to actually kill anything,” Dancer warned. “But we could use a hand.”

  “Bent Ear hurt his foot,” Fist explained.

  “We want you to help carry things,” Whistler added with a wry smile.

  “Dead birds are heavy,” Dancer agreed.

  “We’ll give you a share of the feathers,” Fist said, grinning.

  Whistler cast him a disgusted look. “Feathers aren’t worth much of anything here,” he said. “That’s why we’ve always considered you Lowlanders to be fools, because you’ll pay so much for them. We’ll give you a share of the meat and bone—say, a leg.”

  “Not all of one!” Dancer protested. “Just for carrying?”

  “Come on, Whistler, don’t make him any gifts!” Fist agreed. “We’ll give him a fair share, but not an entire leg.”

  Sword looked up at them, then glanced down at his unfinished trousers.

  He needed new garments—but learning how to hunt ara might well be necessary to his survival, as well, and this was clearly a social step upward, an opportunity not to be missed.

  Especially since he would get a share of the catch. He had been paying for scraps to eat by working for the old women; supplying his own meat for a day or two, and having a few bones to trade, would put him in a much better position.

  He looked up. “A thigh, then?” he suggested.

  The three Uplanders exchanged glances. “All right,” Dancer said. “The smallest thigh, if there’s a difference. Meat and bone and feathers, not hide.”

  Sword glanced at the hides he had already purchased with his efforts. “Fair enough.”

  “In the morning, then,” Fist said.

  Sword nodded. Then, as the others turned away, he leaned over and murmured to Whistler, “Thank you.”

  Whistler nodded in return, but said nothing as he
rose and turned to go.

  That night, when Sword slipped into the tent, he noticed Bent Ear lying in bed, looking foul-tempered; a thick bandage was wrapped around his left foot. Sword considered saying something sympathetic, then thought better of it—Bent Ear looked in no mood to appreciate sympathy, even if his Barokanese were good enough to recognize it.

  In the morning Sword was shaken awake; he unrolled from his carpet to find Fist standing over him. The sky outside the tent’s open flap was the dirty gray of pre-dawn.

  “Come on,” Fist said.

  Sword came, tugging his clothes into place and slinging his sword on his back—he did not dare leave it unattended in camp. The Clan of the Golden Spear had strong proscriptions against theft, but Sword saw no reason to provide needless temptation.

  “You carry,” Dancer told him as he emerged from the tent. The hunter was holding out a leather-wrapped bundle with three spears thrust through it, protruding from either end.

  Sword accepted the bundle silently and hoisted it onto one shoulder, giving it only a quick glance.

  The spearshafts were polished bone, he noticed, with good steel heads—barbed steel heads, razor-sharp and broad. These weren’t intended for crowd control, like the spears the Wizard Lord’s guards carried; these were designed to kill.

  The bundle was lighter than he had expected, and he wondered what else was in it, but he didn’t ask; instead he followed the other three as they set out eastward, toward the approaching dawn, at a trot.

  They were well clear of the camp when Dancer turned and smiled at him. “I’ll wager you’re glad to be free of Stepmother for the day.”

  “I appreciate a little variety,” Sword said.

  Fist gave a snort of laughter at that. “Variety!”

  “ ‘Freedom’ might be a better word,” Dancer said.

  Sword just smiled in reply; he wasn’t sure just how disrespectful he could be without giving offense.

  The others seemed disappointed by that response, though, so he asked, “Why is she called Stepmother, anyway?”

  “Because that’s what she is,” Fist answered.

  “She’s been married four times and widowed four times,” Dancer explained. “Each time she married a widowed father, but she never bore any children herself. Sometimes it seems like half the clan is her stepchildren or her stepchildren’s children, even though none of us are her blood kin.”

  “She always married men much older than she was,” Fist added.

  “Which she can’t do anymore,” Dancer said. “There aren’t any!”

  Fist laughed at that, while Whistler and Sword smiled.

  “Some people say she just wanted to inherit her husbands’ belongings,” Whistler said quietly. “But I never believed it. I don’t think she wanted any of them to die.”

  “No, she wanted to raise her place in the clan,” Dancer said. “Each husband was closer to the Patriarch than the one before. And for that, a live husband is better than a dead one.”

  “She likes bossing people around,” Fist said.

  Sword nodded. “I had noticed that,” he said.

  Dancer laughed.

  The conversation waned after that, but still, Sword felt as if he had now been accepted by his tent-mates in a way he hadn’t before. He ambled on beside them, enjoying their company.

  The sun was just above the horizon when they neared the flock of ara, and when they were perhaps thirty paces away Dancer held up a hand to signal a stop. All four men stopped in their tracks.

  “Spears,” Fist said quietly, staring at the birds.

  Sword quickly slipped the bundle from his shoulder and untied the leather cords; the wrapper fell open, and the spears tumbled out, along with a tangle of rope and a few pouches. Each of the three Uplanders snatched up a spear, and Dancer grabbed the rope.

  Then the three of them stopped and looked at Sword.

  “Have you ever hunted ara before?” Fist asked.

  “Have you ever seen anyone hunt ara?” Dancer asked before Sword could reply.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Do you know how it’s done?”

  “No.”

  The three exchanged glances.

  “He’s with me, then,” Fist said.

  The others nodded an acknowledgment.

  “There are actually several ways to hunt them,” Whistler said. “This is ours.” He snagged a loose end of the rope Dancer held; Dancer paid out a few yards. Fist hefted his spear, checking the edge on the head with his thumb.

  “Are there any prayers we need to say?” Sword asked.

  The three Uplanders all turned to stare at him.

  “Prayers?” Fist said.

  “To the birds’ ler,” Sword explained, feeling foolish. “Asking their forgiveness and asking them to let us kill them.”

  “Lowlander magic,” Dancer said in disgust.

  “We don’t talk to ler,” Fist said.

  “They couldn’t hear us if we did,” Whistler said. “They’re ara. They’re immune to magic.”

  Whistler’s logic was irrefutable. “Of course,” Sword said.

  “Whistler and I are going to circle around the flock,” Dancer explained. “We’ll wait over there with the rope strung between us.” He pointed. “Then you and Fist chase a few birds to us, and we pull up the rope to block them, and we spear them while they’re tangled in the rope.”

  “Any that get away, we let go, unless they’re wounded,” Fist said. “Ara are too fast to run down. If we don’t get four the first time, we do it again.”

  “Four?”

  “Yes, four,” Fist said, baffled at Sword’s question.

  “We each carry one back with us,” Dancer explained. “That’s why you’re here. If you weren’t, we’d only be able to take three, and it takes four to feed the whole clan a decent meal.”

  The Clan of the Golden Spear was composed of roughly two hundred people, by Sword’s estimate. Four birds didn’t seem very many to fill so many mouths—but then, Sword wasn’t sure just how big a full-grown ara really was. He hadn’t been permitted a close look when hunters brought in their catch. He glanced over at the ara.

  They were grazing peacefully, seemingly untroubled by the presence of the hunters; there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them in this one huge flock. In fact, Sword could not see the far side of the flock, and the ground beneath them was thick with shed feathers.

  Sword had never been this close to live ara before, had never had such a good look at them. Each bird stood roughly the height of a man—no, more, Sword realized, with long thick legs and long tapering necks. Each sleek body was covered in gleaming black feathers; the wings, usually tucked up close to the body, were almost entirely white, but with black along the leading edge, and a tuft of pink at the tip. The long, graceful tails had a black triangle at the base, and the rest was bright white, with a few pure-white three-foot plumes reaching almost to the ground.

  A white ring circled each slanting neck, and each face was patterned in black and white, with white rings around the eyes, and that amazing, intensely pink crest rising a foot or more from the top of the head. The beaks were perhaps half a foot long, slightly curved, and looked as if they could tear a man’s arm off.

  “They can’t fly over the rope?” he asked.

  “They can’t fly,” Dancer replied. “They can’t even jump. I know they look as if they ought to be able to, but they can’t.”

  “But they can run,” Fist said. “I mean, really run.”

  “Much faster than a man,” Dancer agreed.

  “That’s why we use a rope,” Fist explained. “Understand?”

  Sword nodded. It was easy to believe, looking at them, that they could move swiftly; those long necks and bodies were gracefully streamlined, and the strong legs looked powerful indeed.

  “Then go on, you two,” Fist said, waving at Dancer and Whistler. Whistler nodded, and he and Dancer turned and trotted away to the south, looping around the immense flock.<
br />
  “Wouldn’t it be easier that way?” Sword said, pointing to the northeast.

  Fist shook his head. “Ara almost always run south when startled,” he said. “No one really knows why.”

  “Into the sun, maybe, to blind their pursuers?” Sword suggested.

  “At this time of day?” Fist said, gesturing at the rising sun, which was clearly in the east, rather than the south.

  “Hm.” Sword acknowledged this disproof of his theory.

  “They spend the winters somewhere far to the south,” Fist said. “We think maybe that has something to do with it. Whistler thinks they came from the south thousands of years ago, and still instinctively run for home when they’re scared.”

  “That makes as much sense as anything,” Sword said.

  Fist shrugged, and peered toward their companions, who were still trotting, the rope strung between them. “They’re birds,” he said. “Who knows why they do anything?”

  Sword blinked.

  In Barokan, the priests often knew exactly why birds and beasts did as they did—the ler told them. Here in the Uplands, though, there were no priests, and the natural world must be a mystery.

  If the Wizard Lord had his way, and magic were stamped out in Barokan, would that mean eliminating the priests, as well? Would people lose touch with the world around them? How would they know where to find game, or when the crops were exactly right for harvest?

  The Uplanders seemed to manage, but Sword did not find the idea appealing. Putting an end to wizards and Wizard Lords was one thing, but destroying all magic, including priestly magic, seemed like a bad idea. . . .

  Or did it? The priests of Bone Garden were monsters who treated their people as mere things, subject to the whims of bloodthirsty ler. There were other towns, perhaps half a dozen, where ler sometimes required human sacrifices. And even in towns where no one was ever asked to give up his life, or even just a little blood, there might be demands. The High Priestess of Greenwater, for example, the very first priestess Sword had ever met outside his native town, was required to spend much of her time swimming naked in the lake, and was forbidden to take a husband and raise a family in the normal fashion. The ler of Mad Oak did not make any such unreasonable demands, but Sword had realized long ago that they were unusually benign.