by Brian Aldiss
‘I wish I were your mother. Then I could be proud. Laintal Ay, you also have an inwardness to your nature. I feel it. That inwardness will distress you, yet it gives you life, it is life. Don’t ignore it, cultivate it. Most of these people jostling us have no inwardness.’
‘Is inwardness the same as conflict?’
She gave a sharp laugh, gripping her body with her forearms.
‘Listen, we are trapped in this wretched hamlet among meagre personalities. A whole series of greater realities can be happening elsewhere. So much must be done. I may leave Oldorando.’
‘Where will you go?’
She shook her head. ‘Sometimes I feel that the mere crush of dull people will cause us to explode, and we’ll all scatter from here across the world. You note how many babies have been born of recent years.’
He looked round at all the friendly familiar faces in the lane, and suspected that she was talking for effect, though there were more children.
He put his shoulder to the door of the old temple and heaved it open. They entered and stood silent. A bird was trapped inside. It flew round and round, darting close to them as if scrutinising them, then soared upward and escaped through a hole in the roof.
Light filtered down through the gaps, creating shafts through the twilight in which particles of dust whirled. The pigs had recently been moved to outside sties, but their smell still lingered. Shay Tal walked restlessly about, while Laintal Ay stood by the door, looking out into the street remembering how he used to play here as a child.
The walls had been decorated with paintings executed in a stiff manner. Many had been spoiled. She looked up at the tall alcove above where the sacrificial altar stood, its stone dark still with something that could have been blood. Too high for vandals easily to deface hung a representation of Wutra. Shay Tal stood staring up at it, fists on hips.
Wutra was depicted, head and shoulders, in a furry cloak. His eyes glared down from a long animallike face with an expression which could be interpreted as compassion. His face was blue, representing an ideal colour of sky, where he dwelt. Rough white hair, almost manelike, surmounted the head; but the most startling departure from the human norm was a pair of horns thrusting upwards from his skull and terminating in silver bells.
Behind Wutra crowded other figures of a forgotten mythology, mainly horrendous, teeming through the sky. On his left and right shoulder perched his two sentinels. Batalix was depicted as oxlike, bearded, grey and old, with rays of light streaming from his spear. Freyr was larger, a virile green monkey with an hourglass suspended round his neck. His spear was bigger than that of Batalix, and also radiated rays of light.
She turned away, saying briskly, ‘Now my experiment, if Goija Hin is ready.’
‘Did you see what you wanted?’ He was puzzled by her abruptness.
‘I don’t know. Later, I may know. I plan to go into pauk. I would have liked to ask one of the old priests whether Wutra was supposed to preside over the world below as he does over the earth and sky … So many discontinuities.’
Meanwhile, Goija Hin was bringing Myk out of the stable under the big tower. Goija Hin was the slave master, a man who exhibited all the stigmata of his calling. He was short but immensely solid, with bulging arms and legs. His features fitted clumsily on his low-browed face, which was adorned with wisps of whisker, randomly sited. His garments were leather and, waking or sleeping, he was accompanied by a leather knout. Everyone knew Goija Hin, a man impervious to blows or thought.
‘Come on, Myk, you brute, time to make yourself useful,’ he said, speaking in his customary low snarl.
Myk ambled forth promptly, having grown up in slavery. He was the phagor longest in servitude in Oldorando, and could remember Goija Hin’s predecessor, a man of far more terrible aspect. Black hairs grew in his patchy coat. His face was wrinkled, and the sacks under his eyes were messy with rheum.
He was always docile. On this occasion, Oyre was nearby to soothe him. While Oyre patted his bent shoulders, Goija Hin prodded him with a stick.
Oyre had acted as intermediary for Shay Tal and asked her father for permission to use a phagor in Shay Tal’s experiment. Aoz Roon had carelessly told her to take Myk, since he was old.
The two humans led Myk to a curve of the Voral where the river flowed deep. Shay Tal’s ruined tower stood not far away. Shay Tal and Laintal Ay were already waiting when the trio arrived. Shay Tal stood peering into the depths of the stream as if trying to decipher its secrets, her cheeks hollow, her expression bleak.
‘Well, then, Myk,’ she said challengingly, as the beast approached. She regarded him calculatingly. Scrawny sacks of flesh hung down from his chest and stomach. Goija Hin had already strapped his hands behind his back. His head rolled apprehensively between his hunched shoulders. When he saw the Voral, he ran his milt anxiously up his nostril slits several times in quick succession, uttering a low cry of fear. Could it be that water would turn him into a statue?
Goija Hin gave Shay Tal a rough salute.
‘Tie his legs together,’ Shay Tal ordered.
‘Don’t hurt him too much,’ Oyre said. ‘I’ve known Myk since I was a small girl and he’s entirely docile. He used to give us rides, didn’t he, Laintal Ay?’
Thus appealed to, Laintal Ay came forward. ‘Shay Tal won’t hurt him,’ he said, smiling at Oyre. She regarded him questioningly.
Attracted by possible excitement, several women and boys came up to see what was going on, and stood in knots on the bank.
The river ran deep in the curve, cutting into the near bank only a few inches below the ground on which they stood. On the opposite side of the river, where it was shallower, a thin shelf of ice remained, preserved from direct sun by an overhang. This wafer jutted out towards deeper water, elaborately marked in glassy whorls, as if the water itself had taken a knife to carve it.
When Goija Hin had bound the legs of the unfortunate Myk, he pushed him to the edge of the river. Myk stuck his long head in the air, curled back his lower lips onto his stubbly chin, and let out a trumpet of fear.
Oyre clutched at his coat, begging Shay Tal not to harm him.
‘Stand back,’ Shay Tal said. She gave the signal to Goija Hin to push the phagor in.
Goija Hin set his thick shoulders to Myk’s ribs. The phagor tottered then plunged into the river with a splash. Shay Tal raised her arms in imperious gesture.
The watching women gave a shout and rushed forward. Rol Sakil was among them. Shay Tal motioned them back.
She stared down into the water and could see Myk struggling below the surface. Swathes of his coat came roiling upward with the disturbed water, brushing the surface like yellow weed.
The water remained water. The phagor remained alive.
‘Pull him up,’ she ordered.
Goija Hin had Myk by two straps. He tugged and Laintal Ay helped. The old phagor’s head and shoulders broke the surface and Myk gave a pathetic cry.
‘Don’t killydrown poor me!’
They dragged him ashore and he lay panting at Shay Tal’s feet. She chewed her underlip, frowning at the Voral. The magic was not working.
‘Throw him in again,’ one of the onlookers called.
‘No more water or I finish,’ Myk said, thickly.
‘Push him in again,’ Shay Tal ordered.
Myk went in a second time, and a third. But the water remained water. No miracle happened, and Shay Tal had to conceal her disappointment.
‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘Goija Hin, take Myk away and feed him extra.’
Oyre knelt compassionately by Myk’s throat, crying and patting him. Dark water flowed from the phagor’s lips and he began coughing. Laintal Ay knelt and put his arm round Oyre’s shoulder.
Disdainfully, Shay Tal turned away. The experiment showed that phagors plus water did not make ice. The process was not inevitable. So what had happened at Fish Lake? Equally, she had not managed to turn the Voral to ice, as she had wished to do. So the experiment
did not prove she was a sorceress. It did not prove she was not a sorceress; it seemed to prove that she had turned the phagors at Fish Lake to ice – unless there were other factors involved she had not considered.
She paused with her hand on the rough stone of the doorway to her tower, feeling the rasp of lichen against her palm. Until she found another explanation, she would have to treat herself as others treated her, as a sorceress. The more she starved, the more she respected herself. Of course, as a sorceress, she was destined to remain a virgin; sexual intercourse would destroy her magical powers. She gathered her furs against her lanky form and climbed the worn stairs.
The women on the bank looked from Myk’s half-drowned body, surrounded by a growing puddle, to Shay Tal’s retreating figure.
‘Now what did she want to go and do that for?’ old Rol Sakil asked the company. ‘How come she didn’t drown the stupid thing properly while she was about it?’
The next time the council met, Laintal Ay rose and addressed them. He said that he had heard Shay Tal lecture. All knew of her miracle at Fish Lake, which had saved many lives. Nothing she did was directed to the ill of the community. He proposed that her academy should be recognised and supported.
Aoz Roon looked furious while Laintal Ay spoke. Dathka sat rigid in silence. The old men of the council peered at each other under their eyebrows and muttered uneasily. Eline Tal laughed.
‘What do you wish us to do to aid this academy?’ Aoz Roon asked.
‘The temple is empty. Give it to Shay Tal. Let her hold meetings there every afternoon at promenade time. Use it as a forum, where anyone can speak. The cold has gone, people are freer. Open the temple as an academy for all, for men, women, and children.’
His resounding words died into silence. Then Aoz Roon spoke.
‘She cannot use the temple. We don’t want a new lot of priests. We keep pigs in the temple.’
‘The temple is empty.’
‘From now on, pigs are kept in the temple.’
‘It’s a bad day when we put pigs above the community.’
The meeting eventually broke up in some disorder, as Aoz Roon marched out. Laintal Ay turned to Dathka, his cheeks flushed.
‘Why didn’t you support me?’
Dathka grinned sheepishly, tugged his narrow beard, stared down at the table. ‘You could not win if all Oldorando supported you. He has already banned the academy. You waste your breath, my friend.’
As Laintal Ay was leaving the building, feeling disgusted with the world, Datnil Skar, master of the tawyers and tanners corps, called to him and grasped his sleeve.
‘You spoke well, young Laintal Ay, yet Aoz Roon was right in what he said. Or, if not right, not unreasonable. If Shay Tal spoke in the temple, she would become a priestess and be worshipped. We don’t want that – our ancestors got rid of the priests some generations ago.’
Laintal Ay knew Master Datnil for a kindly and modest man. Restraining his anger, he looked .down at the worn face and asked, ‘Why tell me this?’
Master Datnil looked about to see that no one was listening.
‘Worship arises from ignorance. Believing in one fixed thing is a mark of ignorance. I respect attempts to drum facts into people’s heads. I wanted to say that I am sorry you were defeated, though I don’t agree with your proposition. I would be willing to address Shay Tal’s academy if she will have me.’
He removed his fur hat and set it on the lichenous sill. He smoothed his sparse grey hair and cleared his dry throat. He looked about him and smiled nervously. Although he had known everyone in the room since he was born, he was unaccustomed to the role of speaker. His stiff clothes creaked as he shifted from one foot to another.
‘Don’t be afraid of us, Master Datnil,’ Shay Tal said.
He caught the note of impatience in her voice. ‘It’s only of your intolerance I’m afraid, ma’am,’ he replied, and some of the women squatting on the floor hid smiles behind their hands.
‘You know what we do in our corps, because some of you work for me,’ Datnil Skar said. ‘Membership in the corps is for men only, of course, for the secrets of our profession are handed down from generation to generation. In particular, a master teaches all he knows to his personal novice or chief boy. When a master dies or retires, then the chief boy becomes master in his turn, as Raynil Layan will soon take over my position …’
‘A woman could do that just as well as any man,’ said one of the women, Cheme Phar. ‘I’ve worked for you long enough, Datnil Skar. I know all the secrets of the brine pits. I could pickle myself, if need arose.’
‘Ah, but we have to have order and continuity, Cheme Phar,’ said the Master mildly.
‘I could give the orders all right,’ said Cheme Phar, and everyone laughed, then looked at Shay Tal.
‘Tell us about the continuity,’ the latter said. ‘We know, as Loilanun taught us, that some of us are descended from Yuli the Priest, who came from the north, from Pannoval and Lake Dorzin. That’s one continuity. What about continuity within the corps, Master Datnil?’
‘All members of our corps were born and bred in Embruddock, even before it was Oldorando. To many generations.’
‘How many generations?’
‘Ah, a good many …’
‘Tell us how you know this.’
He wiped his hands on his trousers.
‘We have a record. Each master keeps a record.’
‘In writing?’
‘That’s correct. Writing in a book. The art is passed on. But the records are not to be disclosed to others.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
‘They don’t want the women taking over their jobs and doing it better,’ someone called, and again there was laughter. Datnil Skar smiled with embarrassment, and said no more.
‘I believe that secrecy served a protective purpose at one time,’ Shay Tal said. ‘Certain arts, like metal forging and tannery, had to be kept alive in bad times, despite starvation or phagor raids. Probably there were very bad times in the past, and some arts were lost. We cannot make paper any longer. Perhaps there was once a paper-makers corps. Glass. We cannot make glass. Yet there are pieces of glass about – you all know what glass is. How is it that we are more stupid than our ancestors? Are we living, working, under some disadvantage we don’t fully understand? That’s one of the big questions we must keep in mind.’
She paused. No one said anything, which always vexed her. She longed for any comment that would push the argument forward.
Datnil Skar said, ‘Mother Shay, you speak true, to the best of my belief. You understand that as master I am under oath to disclose secrets of my art to nobody; it’s an oath I take to Wutra and to Embruddock. But I know that there were once bad times, of which I am not supposed to speak …’
When he fell silent, she helped him with a smile. ‘Do you believe that Oldorando was once bigger than it is now?’
He looked at her with his head on one side. ‘I know you call this town a farmyard. But it survives … It’s the centre of the cosmos. Well, that’s not answering your question. My friends, you found rye and oats growing north of here, so let’s speak of them. To the best of my belief, that place was once carefully tended fields, enclosed against wild beasts. The fields belonged to Embruddock. Many other cereals grew there and were cultivated. Now you cultivate them again, which is wise.
‘You know we need bark for our tanning. We have a job to get hold of it. I do believe – well, I know …’ He fell silent, then he said quietly, ‘Great forests of tall trees, which yield bark and wood, grew to the west and north. The region was called Kace. It was hot then, and there was no cold.’
Someone said, ‘The time of heat – that’s a legend left over from the priesthood. The sort of tale we’re supposed to get out of our minds in the academy. We do know that it was once colder than it is now. Ask my grandma.’
‘What I’m saying is that, to the best of my belief, it was hot before it was cold,’ Datnil Skar said, sl
owly scratching the back of his grey head. ‘You should try to understand these things. Many lives go by, many years. There’s a lot of history vanished. I know you women think that men are against you learning, and it may be so; but I speak sincerely when I say that you should support Shay Tal, despite various difficulties. As a master, I know how precious knowledge is. It seems to run out of the bottom of a community like water out of a sock.’
They stood and clapped him politely when he left.
*
At Freyr-set, two days later, Shay Tal was pacing restlessly in her room in the isolated tower. A shout came from below. Immediately she thought of Aoz Roon, though the voice was not his.
She wondered who would venture beyond the barricades when light was growing dim. Putting her head out of the window, she saw Datnil Skar, his figure insubstantial in the dusk.
‘Oh, come up, my friend,’ she cried. She went down to meet him. He appeared clutching a box, smiling nervously. They sat down facing each other on her stone floor, and she poured him a measure of rathel.
After some idle conversation, he said, ‘I think you know that I am due to retire soon as master of the tawyers and tanners corps? My chief boy will take my place. I’m getting old and he long ago knew all I have to teach.’
‘You come here because of that?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘I come here, Mother Shay, because I – I experience an old man’s admiration for you, for your person and your worth … No, let me say it. I have always served and loved this community, and I believe you do the same, though you have the opposition of many men. So I wanted to do you a good turn while I was able to.’
‘You’re a good man, Datnil Skar. Oldorando knows it. The community needs good people.’
Sighing, he nodded. ‘I have served Embruddock – or Oldorando as we should call it – every day of my life, and have never left it. Yet scarcely a day’s gone by …’ He broke off in his shy way, smiled, and said, ‘I believe I am speaking to a kindred spirit when I say that scarcely a day has gone by since I was a lad when I haven’t wondered … wondered what was happening in other places, far away from here.’