Shattered Stone

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  Tra. Hoppa’s house had just one room to a floor, the ground floor making the kitchen with a sitting place and a table, the next floor the lesson-room, and the third floor, the loft, Tra. Hoppa’s bedroom and study. That a woman should have books and a study was suspect among the other women of Burgdeeth. Perhaps they tolerated it partly because Tra. Hoppa was not a Cloffa but Carriolinian, and those of Carriol had an aura about them that seemed to soften even the staid Cloffi women. Tra. Hoppa had been the only foreigner allowed residence in Burgdeeth—until the Kubalese came. She was the only woman who had ever occupied the position of teacher. But in spite of her sex and her learning, there was a grudging respect for Tra. Hoppa, for she spoke quietly, did not raise her voice in temper, kept her eyes cast down when in public. Only in the loft, where the real books were hidden, did she come truly alive. Then there was nothing docile about her, she was as bright and eager as a child.

  The girls stood in her stone kitchen, out of breath as Tra. Hoppa closed the door behind them. Little and thin and wrinkled she was, her white hair tied in the traditional bun. But she moved with quick eagerness, and her deep blue eyes were not the eyes of an aged woman at all. “Come quickly, then. I’ve such a surprise for you.”

  The furnishings of the loft were simple. Below the window was a long floor cushion covered with Zandourian weaving in bright colors and a low chair for Tra. Hoppa. At the other end of the room, Tra. Hoppa’s bed was tucked between the bookshelves.

  Always in this room Zephy felt freed from Burgdeeth: here she felt she could touch the farthest shores of Ere and touch times long past Sometimes, here, she could nearly comprehend the vague plane on which the gods dwelt, the plane that came closer only in the years the star Waytheer was close. Here she could give rein to the feelings that made life in Burgdeeth tolerable; feelings which, at the same time, drove her into a passion to leave Burgdeeth behind forever.

  The surprise must be a forbidden book; yet that was hard to believe, for it could only have been brought secretly by a trader, and there had been few in the last weeks. Zephy hoped that was it, though: Meatha needed something to take her mind off the vision that had haunted her constantly, turning her pale and silent

  “It is the Book of the Drowning Land,” Tra. Hoppa said, drawing forth a frail, leather-bound volume. “I have it from that trader with oil from Sangur—we have . . . mutual friends in Carriol. It tells all the history and the myths of Ere from the point where the Book of Three Cities leaves off, just as it is told in Carriol; tells of the Drowning of Opensa. . .”

  When Tra. Hoppa had finished reading to them, Zephy sat staring before her, seeing the island of Opensa, honeycombed with caves that made the ancient city; hearing the earth rumble and seeing it shake as the island began to crack. She could see the gods and their consorts leaping into the sky as the mythical sea god, SkokeDirgOg, sank Opensa in a shower of thunder.

  Tra. Hoppa laid the book down and sat quietly studying Meatha. Meatha looked up once, then looked down at her hands again. Zephy started to speak, but the old lady stopped her with a look. “Meatha, you are troubled; will you tell me?”

  Meatha fiddled with the fringe on the floor pad, hesitating for a long time. Then, “Do you remember when I had a vision and was too young to know I shouldn’t tell? And you stopped me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I never told you, Tra. Hoppa, but it happened to me twice after that, when I was old enough to understand. I didn’t want you to have to know. But now it has happened again, and it was so much stronger, not even like the others. It was as if I was there, first here in Burgdeeth and then on the mountain. I could feel the cold wind and smell the mountains, and there was sablevine rusty on the rocks as if it was early winter. I have to tell you, Tra. Hoppa. There’s no one else except Zephy, and I’m so afraid.”

  Tra. Hoppa looked at Meatha for a long moment, then rose to stand staring out the window. When at last she turned back to them, she knelt down on the mat and took Meatha’s hands.

  “Don’t ever be afraid, child. Not for yourself, not for me. Tell me now, you were on the mountain . . .”

  Meatha, fragile and trembling, made Zephy want to hit out at something. How could the will of the Luff’Eresi demand that Meatha die at the death stone for something she could no more help than breathing?

  When Meatha finished her story, Tra. Hoppa looked as drawn and pale as she. Had Meatha’s vision opened some private and uneasy place in Tra. Hoppa’s own thoughts?

  “What am I to do?” Meatha asked quietly.

  “Do, child?” Tra. Hoppa put her arm around Meatha. “You are to do as you have always done. You are to say nothing. You are to act in no way different from any other Cloffi girl, no matter how hard that is. And above all, you are not to be afraid. This is no evil that has visited you, it is something wonderful. You have no cause to be ashamed of it. Only you must be wary that no one learns what you have seen.”

  Meatha stared back and bit her lip. “Maybe someone else already knows that I—what I am,” she said softly. “Maybe the Kubalese knows.”

  “He couldn’t!” Zephy breathed.

  “He watches me more than I ever told you, Zephy.”

  “Yes he does,” Tra. Hoppa said. “I have seen him. And he watches the younger children, too. They take his candy, and some of them follow him, but they don’t like him much. And some of them, little Elodia Trayd for one, keep out of his way. Haven’t you noticed that?”

  “Yes,” Zephy said. “And something else about Elodia. Yesterday she gave me such a strange look, so—so knowing.” She shivered. It had bothered her, she had waked in the night thinking about the child’s cool, gray-eyed stare. She had taken Mama’s shoes to be sewn, and Elodia was standing with two other little girls in front of the Cobbler’s, watching the old men play stones. The frail old men, retired from their masterships, had stood in a semicircle casting the stone across the cobbles in the sun, making bets. Half a dozen little boys had watched as they had been told, silent and docile as sheep.

  Except Elodia Trayd. She wasn’t docile, she had stared up at Zephy boldly, her gray eyes kindling; and Zephy had seen something in that little face almost like herself there, something crying out wildly. “It was almost as if she felt my anger that the girl children had to be so docile, that they were so obedient,” Zephy said.

  “There’s another one like that,” Meatha said. “And he stays away from the Kubalese, too. I was watching Kearb-Mattus play with some children, hiding red rags as they do in the Burgdeeth Horse mock hunt in the springtime. He had hidden one rag in a barrel. I could see it, but the children were too short. The little boy, Graged Orden, started for the barrel as if he knew the rag was there, then all at once he went pale. He turned, looked at the Kubalese watching him, and ran away out of the street as if he was terrified. He has avoided the Kubalese since. I’ve seen him slip around corners to get out of his way.”

  “I wish the Kubalese had never come to Burgdeeth,” Tra. Hoppa said. “That trader brought me more than the forbidden book, he brought rumors that are unsettling. It is said in the south that Kubla is arming for war.”

  “Against who?” Zephy said, going cold.

  “It would not be Carriol,” Tra. Hoppa said. “They are too strong.”

  “Cloffi,” Meatha breathed. “Cloffi and Urobb and Farr all lie on the Kubalese border.”

  “And if they attack one,” Zephy said slowly, “they will attack all three.”

  They stared at each other, the thought of war chilling them. “It is only rumors,” Tra. Hoppa said. “But I would wish you two away if such a thing should happen.”

  Then she smiled. “Come, there’s otter-herb tea brewing, and nightberry muffins made with berries from the mountain. Young Thorn of Dunoon brought them down.”

  Thorn of Dunoon?

  But of course, he came to Tra. Hoppa for lessons. In turn, be taught the younger children of Dunoon. And, Zephy wondered suddenly, what kind of lessons did Thorn of Dunoon receive
? Ordinary ones, like the boys of Burgdeeth? Or did Thorn come to the loft and read the secret books as she and Meatha did?

  She had no reason to suspect such a thing. And she would never ask. Yet—perhaps Thorn of Dunoon was the kind of boy Tra. Hoppa would teach with great interest.

  SIX

  Ere’s moons waxed to brightness and waned again before the night that, while Cloffi lay sleeping, the Kubalese army rose up, and the little country of Urobb was destroyed.

  The attack came down on Urobb on the first night of the Festival of Fish Taking, driving the Urobb tribes back from the river where they had gathered for the fish-rituals, and into the waiting platoons of the Kubalese Horse that had slipped like silent whispers in from the borders of Kubal. A long thin country, Urobb now was squeezed to nothing in the meshing of the two companies of Kubalese warriors, caught and trapped between them just as they themselves had planned to net the breeding shummerfins that swam the River Urobb.

  The villages were burned and the women raped and put to labor at food gathering and cooking for the Kubalese bivouacs that remained behind. The hooved animals, horses and donkeys, were taken with the army as bounty, and the meager country, which had only its coal to sell and its fish and mountain crops to sustain it, lay fallen only a few hours after the attack began.

  Now that Urobb was taken, Kubal’s land extended to the Urobb River. East of the river lay Carriol—Kubal would not attack her—then the sea. But to the west of Kubal lay Farr and Cloffi. Rivers are coveted, they water crops and herds, and they carry gold in their sands. Kubal had the Urobb. Now she eyed the Owdneet that ran down through the center of Cloffi then through Aybil and Farr to the sea.

  The escaped and terrified miner who brought the message to Cloffi predicted in a breaking voice Farr’s certain demise, and then Aybil’s, his eyes red from lack of sleep and from fear and hunger. “And then,” he said, almost triumphantly, “and then it will be Cloffi. It will be Cloffi they rape and destroy.” His voice was filled with a passion of hatred as he stared up at Thorn—for it was Thorn who found him slipping along in the brush of the river outside Burgdeeth.

  The little Urobb miner had come up along the river instead by the road, hiding in the bushes at night and eating of sablevine roots and of berries and morliespongs. When the distraught man saw Thorn, he stared at him as if he stared at death itself, and turned to run but Thorn grabbed him. Thorn saw the man’s terror and took him to a sheltered place behind a stand of wild vetchpea. He held out his waterskin, though the river was close, and gave the man his ration of bread and goatsmilk cheese, slicing them on the flat surface of a boulder. The miner ate as if he had not seen proper food for days.

  Squally, his name was. When he had told Thorn his story, he wanted to be taken at once up the mountain, before he could be seized and held by the Landmaster. “And I will be, don’t doubt you that. I came secretly up the river to give my news freely to the common men of Burgdeeth, not to the Landmaster—there is a Kubal here, is there not, young goatherd?”

  Thorn nodded and sat studying the small, wiry miner whose eyes squinted as if the light of common day was too bright after a lifetime in the coal mines.

  “It was so in Sibot Hill, a Kubalese has come there. I had to slip away by night lest they imprison me. The Kubalese have made some bargain with the Landmaster of Sibot Hill. The Landmaster stood before his people and swore there would be no attack from Kubal. He would have sent me to sleep in the Sibot Hill cells, had I not escaped. It will be the same in Burgdeeth. There is no place left save Dunoon where a man can be safe, not this side of the Urobb, boy.”

  “We’ll tell the people of Burgdeeth though,” Thorn said shortly. “We’ll get away before the Deacons hear of it.” If we’re quick, he thought. If we’re lucky. But he knew they had to try.

  They made their way through the high stand of whitebarley that separated the river from Burgdeeth and into the back streets and alleys, then to the Inn. But the Kubalese was taking his noon meal there; Thorn could see him through the unshuttered window. He led the Urobb away, to the forgeshop.

  Shanner Eskar lay sprawled across a bench, eating charp fruit. Thorn greeted him, then gave his attention to the Forgemaster, who sat at his work table drinking a bowl of broth. Old Yelig honored Thorn with a rare smile, and Thorn went to him and laid his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “We have uneasy business to speak of, Yelig. Business the Landmaster won’t sanction. Would you rather we went elsewhere?”

  “I’ve not gotten so old and crusty by hiding from the Deacons of Burgdeeth. That is why I am still master of my shop and not playing stones on the street. A bit of serious business isn’t going to harm me, lad. Now what is it that brings you here with a face as long as a river-owl’s?”

  “Urobb has been taken, defeated. This is Squally from Urobb; he brought the news. He feared to bring such to the Landmaster.”

  Shanner was staring at Thorn, his eyes dark. “He is right. The Landmaster won’t let the news be known. He claims there will be no attack, even though we’ve been drilling the whole Burgdeeth Horse every day. He’s as touchy as a trapped weasel. There’s something afoot, and you’d best be out of it, Yelig.”

  The old man’s streaked hair was a bristly thatch across his ears. He stared at Shanner for a long minute, then sat back and motioned the miner to make himself comfortable.

  As the story was told, Yelig’s expression grew more grim, as did Shanner’s, and when it was finished, Squally, exhausted with his own emotion, they sat silent. Then at last Shanner glanced up though the window. “The Kubalese will be back after his meal. We’d best spread the word.” He looked at Thorn, motioned to the Urobb, and the three of them went out.

  *

  Zephy was scrubbing cookpots when she heard shouting in the street. She ran out, leaving the greasy water in the basin, her hands dripping—men had gathered in the street, it looked like all of Burgdeeth.

  “Don’t let anyone tell you . . .”

  “The Landmaster said they . . .”

  “But it’s war.”

  “—over the borders of Urobb like hunters taking the stag, the Urobb miner said so!”

  “Well he got out, didn’t he? How do we know—”

  “He was the only one. And they were headed for Farr. After that . . .”

  She stepped back into the doorway as four red-robed Deacons converged on the group. The crowd drew back at once and stood silent and uneasy before them. The Senior Deacon, Feill Wellick, stood with his staff raised in anger.

  Zephy saw Shanner in the crowd. Then she caught her breath, for Thorn of Dunoon was with him, his red hair bright against the stone wall of the Glassmaker’s shop. And she thought, He should wear a cap if he wants to go unseen.

  What had made her think that? But yes, Thorn and Shanner were slipping away quickly behind the crowd accompanied by a third man: she felt a sick fear for no reason.

  There was an ugly sound from the crowd, and when Zephy turned to see, there was Kearb-Mattus standing with the Deacons as self-confident as if he were one of them. No Cloffi man would stand so, head up and eyes brazen, beside Deacons. The Kubalese was going to speak to the crowd! Speak in place of the Deacons? Zephy stood staring.

  The Kubalese’s voice was deep with confidence. The muttering of the crowd stopped at once. The man’s charm and assurance held them. “There will be no war, men of Burgdeeth. Listen to your Deacons. Kubal will not attack Cloffi; the Kubalese and the Landmasters of Cloffi have made a pact of friendship.”

  “But what of Urobb?” someone shouted.

  “Urobb is another matter and not of concern to you.”

  There was cheering—but some muttering, too. Zephy felt an unease begin to grow in the crowd, and fear crept along her spine. But often another fear touched that one as two of the Deacons stared toward an alley: they started forward suddenly so the crowd drew back; they lunged, caught someone, were struggling to hold him captive, someone who fought them . . .

  His red hair flashe
d as he was pummelled between the Deacons. His arms were pulled behind him, and he was prodded in the direction of the Set between four Deacons. Behind him came the little wizened man, led on a rope like a donkey.

  “Might have suspected, a Dunoon goatherd . . .”

  “It’s the Urobb behind him . . .”

  “Why do they take the miner prisoner? Would the Landmaster keep the truth from us?”

  “Hush . . .”

  “Shanner Eskar was with them, where is Shanner Eskar?”

  “It’s his mother got him free, I heard the Kubal say . . .”

  Zephy stared, stricken, as Thorn of Dunoon was led away. When she could no longer see him, or see the cluster of red robes, she looked stupidly at the crowd, then fled to the sculler.

  Shaken and trembling, she stood in the herb-scented sculler awash with emotions she could not name. Urobb had been defeated by Kubal. Cloffi might be next. But the spinning terror in the pit of her stomach had nothing to do with war. All she could see was Thorn of Dunoon’s face, and the fury in his eyes as he was forced away toward the Set.

  When Shanner came home at last, late in the night, she sat up in the darkness of the loft. She would be all right now that Shanner was here. No one had told her anything, no one would speak of what had happened, of Urobb, of war—she had dared not ask about Thorn.

  But Shanner was surly to her questions, as unwilling to talk as everyone else. He sat on his cot staring at his feet until she almost screamed with frustration. “What has happened? Tell me something! And why did they let you go and not Thorn?”

  “They just let me go,” he said dully. “What do you mean, ‘and not Thorn’?” She could see he was tired. It took him a minute to realize what she had said. It took her only a second to wish she hadn’t said it. He stared at her, surprised. Then he grinned.