by Brian Aldiss
Now, as she stood against the moist wall, where grey lichens scrawled their skeletal flowers, she resolved that Loil Bry’s independence should serve as an example to her. She would not be only another woman, whatever else they said of her over her grave.
Every morning at dawn, the women gathered in what was known as the women’s house. It was a kind of factory. By first light, figures would steal forth from ruinous towers, huddled in their furs and often with additional swathings against the cold, and make their way to this place of work.
A saturating mist filled these mornings, divided into blocks by the shadowing towers. Heavy white birds passed through it like clouds. The stones ran moisture, and mud oozed underfoot. The women’s house stood at one end of the main street, near to the big tower. Some way behind it, down a slope, flowed the Voral, with its worn stone embankment. As the women struggled to work, geese – the fowl of Embruddock – came up to be fed, honking and clattering. Every woman had a titbit to throw them.
Inside the house, when its heavy creaking door was closed, the eternal women’s tasks were performed: the grinding of grain for flour, boiling and baking, the stitching of garments and boots, and the tanning of hides. The work of tanning was particularly difficult, and was overseen by a man – Datnil Skar, master of the tawyers and tanners corps. Salt was involved in the tanning process, and the tanners traditionally had charge of it. Also involved was the soaking of the hides in goose scumble, work too degrading for men to undertake. The toil was enlivened by gossip, as mothers and daughters discussed the shortcomings of men and neighbours.
Loilanun was forced to work here with the other women. She had become very thin and her face held a yellowy hue. Her bitterness against Nahkri and Klils ate at her vitals so much that she scarcely spoke even to Laintal Ay, who was now allowed to go his own way. She befriended no one but Shay Tal. Shay Tal had a certain fey quality, and a way of thought far removed from the dumb endurance that was a marked characteristic of the women of Embruddock.
One chill dawn, Shay Tal had just climbed from her bed, when a knocking sounded on the door below. The mists had penetrated the tower, beading everything in the room where she slept with her mother. She was sitting in the pearly darkness pulling on her boots when the knock came a second time. Loilanun pushed open the downstairs door and ascended through the stable and the room above it to Shay Tal’s room. The family pigs shuffled and snorted warmly in the dark as Loilanun felt her way up the creaking steps. Shay Tal met her as she climbed into the room, and clutched her cold hand. She made a gesture of silence towards the darkest corner of the room, where her mother lay sleeping. Her father was away with the other hunters.
In the dung-scented confinement of the room, they were little more than grey outlines, but Shay Tal detected something amiss in Loilanun’s hunched appearance. Her unexpected arrival suggested trouble.
‘Loilanun, are you ill?’ She whispered the words.
‘Weary, just weary. Shay Tal, throughout this night, I spoke with my mother’s gossie.’
‘You spoke with Loil Bry! She’s there already … What did she say?’
‘They’re all there, even now, thousands of them, below our feet, waiting for us … It’s frightening to think of them.’ Loilanun was shivering. Shay Tal put an arm round the older woman and led her over to the bed on the floor, where they sat huddled together. Outside, geese honked. The two women turned their faces to each other, seeking signs of comfort.
‘It’s not the first time I’ve been in pauk since she died,’ Loilanun said. ‘I never found her before – just a blank down there where she should be – scratched emptiness … My grandmother’s fessup was wailing for attention. It’s so lonely down there …’
‘Where’s Laintal Ay?’
‘Oh, he’s out on the hunt,’ she said dismissively, immediately returning to her theme. ‘So many of them, drifting, and I don’t believe they talk to each other. Why should the dead hate each other, Shay Tal? We don’t hate each other – do we?’
‘You’re upset. Come on, we’ll go to work and get something to eat.’
In the grey light filtering in, Loilanun looked quite like her mother. ‘Maybe they have nothing to say to each other. They’re always so desperate to talk to the living. So was my poor mother.’
She began to weep. Shay Tal hugged her, while looking round to see if the sleeper stirred.
‘We ought to go, Loilanun. We’ll be late.’
‘Mother was so different when she appeared … so different, poor shade. All that lovely dignity she had in life was gone. She has started to … curl up. Oh, Shay Tal, I dread to think what it will be like to be down there permanently …’
This last remark was forced from her in a loud voice. Shay Tal’s mother rolled over and grunted. The pigs below grunted.
The Hour-Whistler blew. It was time to be at work. Arm in arm, they shuffled downstairs. Shay Tal called the pigs softly by name to quiet them. The air was frosty as they leaned on the door to close it, feeling the rime on its panels powder under their fingers. In the greys and sludges of early morning, other figures made for the women’s house, armless as they clutched blankets about their shoulders.
As they moved among the anonymous shapes, Loilanun said to her companion, ‘Loil Bry’s gossie told me of her long love for my father. She said many things about men and women and their relationships I don’t understand. She said cruel things about my man, now dead.’
‘You never spoke to him?’
Loilanun evaded the question. ‘Mother would scarcely let me get in a word. How can the dead be so emotional? Isn’t it terrible? She hates me. Everything gone but emotion, like a disease. She said a man and a woman together made one whole person – I don’t understand. I told her I didn’t understand. I had to stop her talking.’
‘You told your mother’s gossie to stop talking?’
‘Don’t look so shocked. My man used to beat me. I was scared of him …’
She was panting and lost her voice. They crowded thankfully into the warmth of the house. The soak pit of the tannery steamed. In niches, thick candles made from goose fat burned with a sound like hair being ripped from hide. Twenty-odd women were gathered there, yawning and scratching themselves.
Shay Tal and Loilanun ate lumps of bread together, and took their ration of rathel, or pig’s counsel, before moving over to one of the pestles. The older woman, now her face could be seen more clearly, looked ghastly, with hollows under her eyes and her hair matted.
‘Did the gossie tell you anything useful? Anything to help? Did she say anything about Laintal Ay?’
‘She said we must collect knowledge. Respect knowledge. She scorned me.’ Talking through her face full of bread, she added, ‘She said knowledge was more important than food. Well, she said it was food. Probably she was confused – not being used to it down there. It’s hard to understand all they say …’
As the supervisor appeared, they moved over to the grain.
Shay Tal looked sideways at her friend, the hollows of whose face were now filled with an ashen light from the eastern window. ‘Knowledge can’t be food. However much we knew, we’d still have to grind the corn for the village.’
‘When Mother was alive, she showed me a drawing of a machine powered by the wind. It ground the grain and women didn’t lift a finger, she said. The wind did the women’s work.’
‘The men wouldn’t care for that,’ Shay Tal said, with a laugh.
*
Despite her caution, Shay Tal’s resolution hardened; she became the most extreme of the women in defying what was unthinkingly accepted.
Her special work was in the boilery. Here, the flour was kneaded with animal fat and salt, and steamed over troughs of rapid-flowing water from the hot underground springs. When the dark brown loaves were ready, they were cooled, and a lean girl named Vry distributed them to everyone in Oldorando. Shay Tal was the expert of this process; her loaves had the reputation of tasting better than those of any other coo
k.
Now she saw mysterious perspectives beyond the loaves of bread. Routine no longer contented her, and her manner became more remote. When Loilanun fell ill of a wasting disease, Shay Tal took her and Laintal Ay into her house, despite her father’s protests, and patiently tended the older woman. They talked together for hours. Sometimes Laintal Ay listened; more often, he grew bored and went off on his own.
Shay Tal began to pass ideas to the other women in the boilery. She talked in particular to Vry, who was at a malleable age. She talked about the human preference for truth over lies as resembling the need for light above dark. The women listened, muttering uneasily.
And not only the women. In her dark furs, Shay Tal had a majesty felt by the men, too – Laintal Ay, among others. With her proud bearing went proud talk. Both the looks and the talk attracted Aoz Roon. He would listen and argue. He released a vein of flirtatiousness in Shay Tal, who responded to his air of authority. She approved of his support of Dathka against Nahkri; but she allowed him no liberties. Her own liberty depended on allowing him none.
The weeks passed, and great storms roared over the towers of Embruddock. Loilanun’s voice grew weaker, and one afternoon she passed away. In her illness, she had transmitted some of Loil Bry’s knowledge to Shay Tal and to other women who came to see her. She made the past real to them, and all that she said was filtered through Shay Tal’s dark imagination.
Loilanun, as she faded, helped Shay Tal to found what they called the academy. The academy was intended for women; there they would seek together to be something other than drudges. Many of the drudges stood wailing by her deathbed until Shay Tal, in a fit of impatience, threw them out.
‘We can observe the stars,’ Vry said, raising her waiflike face. ‘Have you ever studied how they move on regular paths? I would like to understand the stars better.’
‘Everything valuable is buried in the past,’ Shay Tal said, looking down at the countenance of her dead friend. ‘This place cheated Loilanun, and cheats us. The gossies wait for us. Our lives are so circumscribed! We need to make better people just as we need to bake better loaves.’
She jumped up and flung open the worn window shutter.
Her shrewd intellect saw immediately that the academy would be mistrusted by the men of Embruddock, and by Nahkri and Klils above all. Only the callow Laintal Ay would support her, though she hoped to win over Aoz Roon and Eline Tal. She saw that whatever opposition the academy met with, she would have to fight – and that fight was necessary to give new spirit to all. She would defy the general lethargy; time had come for progress.
Inspiration moved Shay Tal. As her poor friend was buried and she stood with a hand on Laintal Ay’s shoulder, she caught the eye of Aoz Roon. She burst into speech. Her words carried wild and loud among the geysers.
‘This woman was forced to be independent. What she knew helped her. Some of us are not to be owned like slaves. We have a vision of better things. Hear what I say. Things will be different.’ They gaped at her, pleased at the novelty of her outburst.
‘You think we live at the centre of the universe. I say we live in the centre of a farmyard. Our position is so obscure that you cannot realise how obscure.
‘This I tell you all. Some disaster happened in the past, in the long past. So complete was it that no one now can explain to you what it was or how it came about. We know only that it brought darkness and cold.
‘You try to live the best you can. Good, good, live well, love one another, be kind. But don’t pretend that the disaster has nothing to do with you. It may have happened long ago, yet it infects every day of our lives. It ages us, it wears us out, it devours us, it tears our children from us, as it has torn Loilanun. It makes us not only ignorant but in love with ignorance. We’re infested with ignorance.
‘I’m going to propose a treasure hunt – a quest, if you like. A quest in which every one of us can join. I want you to be aware of our fallen state, and to maintain constant vigilance for evidence as to its nature. We have to piece together what has happened to reduce us to this chilly farmyard; then we can improve our lot, and see to it that the disaster does not befall us and our children again.
‘That’s the treasure I offer you. Knowledge. Truth. You fear it, yes. But you must seek it. You must grow to love it.
‘Seek the light!’
As children, Oyre and Laintal Ay had often explored beyond the barricades. Dotted about the wilderness were stone pillars, the insignia of old tracks, which served as perches for the large birds doing sentry duty over their domain. Together, they scrambled across forlorn ruins, skull-like remains of habitations, backbones of ancient walls, where rime scoured gate towers and age underate everything. Little the kids had cared. Their laughter echoed against these stranded anatomies.
Now the laughter was subdued, the expeditions more strained. Laintal Ay had reached puberty; he underwent the blood-drinking ceremony, and was initiated into the chase. Oyre had developed a mischievous will, and walked with a more springy tread. Their play became tentative; old charades were abandoned as carelessly as the structures they haunted, never to be reenacted.
The truce of innocence between them was ended finally when Oyre insisted that her father’s slave, Calary, come on one of their excursions. This development marked their last expedition together, though neither realised it at the time; they pretended to hunt for treasure as before.
They came on a pile of masonry from which all trace of timber had been filched. Leaves of brassimips thrust up among the remains of a monument where old skilled work sank to loam crust. Once, as children, they made this their castle: here they had been a host defying charge on charge of phagors, and had imitated the cheerful imaginary sounds of battle.
Laintal Ay was preoccupied with a more troubling panorama which unfolded in his mind. In that panorama – slightly resembling a cloud, but also seeming to be a declaration by Shay Tal, or perhaps some ancient proclamation carved on rock – he and Oyre and their reluctant slave, and Oldorando, and even the phagors and unknown creatures inhabiting the wilderness, were whirled about in a great process … but there the light of his intellect went out, to leave him wondering on the edge of a precipice at once dangerous and glamorous. He knew not what he did not know.
He stood on an eminence of the ruin, looking down at Oyre below him. She was doubled up, investigating something far removed from his concern.
‘Is it possible there was once a great city here? Could anyone rebuild it in times to come? People like us, with wealth?’
Getting no answer, he squatted on the wall, staring down at her back, and added more questions. ‘What did all the people eat? Do you think Shay Tal knows about such things? Is her treasure here?’
She, sewn into her furs, stooping, looked from above more like an animal than a girl. She was prying into an alcove among the stones, not really attending to him.
‘The priest who comes from Borlien says that Borlien was once a huge country that ruled all Oldorando farther than hawk can fly.’
He set his keen gaze across the countryside, which a thick cloud layer made tenebrous. ‘That’s nonsense.’
He knew as perhaps Oyre did not that the territory of hawks was circumscribed even more severely than that of men. Shay Tal’s address had brought to his notice other circumscriptions in life, which he now chewed over fruitlessly while scowling down at the figure below. He was vexed with Oyre, he could not say why, longing to probe her in some way, to find tongue for what lay beyond silence.
‘Come and see what I’ve found, Laintal Ay!’ Her bright dark face looked up at him. Her features had recently fined towards womanhood. He forgot his vexation and slithered down the declivitous wall to land beside her.
She had fetched from the alcove a small naked living thing, its pink rat face distorted with alarm as it wriggled in her grasp.
His hair brushed hers as he looked down at this new arrival in the world. He cupped his rougher hands round hers till their fingers were int
erlocked round the struggling centre.
She raised her gaze to regard him direct, her lips apart, smiling slightly. He smelt her scent. He grasped her about her waist.
But beside them stood the slave, his face showing sullen comprehension of the flame of new intuition which flew between them. Oyre moved a pace away, then pushed the baby mammal carelessly back into its nook. She scowled down at the ground.
‘Your precious Shay Tal doesn’t know everything. Father told me in confidence that he thinks she is definitely strange. Let’s go home now.’
Laintal Ay lived with Shay Tal for a while. With his parents and grandparents dead, he was severed from his childhood; but he and Dathka were now fully fledged hunters. Disinherited by his uncles, he determined to prove himself their equal. He thrived and matured early, growing up with a genial expression on his countenance. His jaw was firm, his features clear-cut. His strength and speed soon became generally noticed. Many girls cast a smiling glance on him, but he had eyes only for Aoz Roon’s daughter.
Although he was popular, something about him made people keep their distance. He had taken to heart Shay Tal’s brave words. Some said he was too conscious of his descent from the Great Yuli. He remained apart, even in company. His one close friend was Dathka Den, corpsman turned hunter, and Dathka rarely spoke, even to Laintal Ay. As someone said, Dathka was the next best thing to no-one.
Laintal Ay eventually took up residence with some of the other hunters in the big tower, above Nahkri’s and Klils’ chamber. There he heard the old tales re-told, and learned to sing ancient hunters’ songs. But what he preferred was to take supplies and snow shoes, and rove the countryside newly emerging into green. He no longer sought Oyre’s company on such expeditions.