“Kho is with us,” Hadon said to Kebiwabes. “We should overtake them. The chief said that they will not turn southward for many, many days’ journeys. There are vast and rugged mountain ranges between the shore and the inland savannas, and to reach the savannas they have to go around the mountains. We will march as swiftly as possible and overtake them before they get to the far end of the mountains.”
“If Kho is willing,” the bard said. “I weary of this wilderness. I would see fair Khokarsa gleaming white in the sun and go into its streets, crowded and noisy though they be. I would drink again in the taverns and in the halls of the noble, and sing songs that the people will love and my colleagues will find it hard to fault. And the women… ah, the women! Slim and fair-skinned and smelling sweetly of perfumes and speaking with soft voices of love.”
“Yes, but if you had not come with us, you would not have the seeds of a great epic germinating in your heart,” Hadon said. “That is, if you can make something out of what has happened. To me it has not been poetry, but vexation, hardship, solving trivial and important problems every hour of the day, sickness, wounds, and worries at night that keep me awake.”
“That is the stuff of great poetry,” Kebiwabes said. “The voice and the lyre change all that into glory and beauty. Men and women will weep with sorrow or exclaim with joy at my words and music, and you, the harassed, bone-tired, mosquito-bitten, worrying man will be transformed into the brave hero whose only cares are great issues and whose lusts become great loves. The song will not mention your dysenteries, your fever, the bags under your eyes from sleeplessness, the fleas you scratch, your uncertainties, nor the way you cursed once when you stumbled on a stone and hurt your big toe. And that skirmish with the savages will become a battle in which thousands participate and the faceless of the ranks are slaughtered by the heroes, and the heroes indulge in long-winded dialogues during the battle before they clash for glory.
“And yet, in a sense, what I sing will be as true as if it actually, happened.”
“Let us hope that you have the genius to work this transmutation,” Hadon said.
“That is what worries me,” the bard said, and he looked sorrowful. But a moment later he was grinning as he sang for the delight of all the bawdy song of Corporal Phallic.
Meanwhile, as they marched, Hinokly, the scribe, was making a map of the country. “Two previous expeditions have gone as far as the sea along approximately the same route we took,” he said to Hadon. “But none have gone east along the coast from the river that empties into the Ringing Sea. We are the first Khokarsans to come this way.”
Two months later, after encountering a few dozen small tribes who either fled inland or took to their boats, they had come to what seemed the end of this range of mountains. Ahead lay flat savannas. They had found no sign of Lalila and the others.
“We could go ahead,” Hadon said during a conference with Tadoku and the scribe. “But I think that it is likely that the three went southward after the mountains ceased. If they did not find Sahhindar, they would decide to try again for Khokarsa. And if they did find the Gray-Eyed God, he would have directed them southward. Or perhaps he himself is guiding them southward.”
Hinokly, who had been looking at the map, said, “I would guess that we are directly north of the city of Miklemres. I may be wrong, of course, but if we go south now, we should come to the Saasares massif. In either event, going west or east on the north side of the Saares, we shall round it and come to Mukha or Qethruth. Or we might hit the pass through the Saasares. Of course, there may be other mountains between us and the Saasares, and if we go around these, we might get lost again.”
“We have the stars and the sun and great Kho to guide us,” Hadon said. “We will march south.”
First he let the troops camp by the seashore for a few days so they could catch fish and swim and sleep. On the day before they were to leave, he went out by himself, climbing around the hills, meditating, fingering his rosary, now and then sitting down to gaze upon the beach and the great rolling sea, the waves of which were higher and heavier than those of his native seas. At midafternoon he sat down on top of a cubical hill of rock, leaned against an oak, and looked down toward the shore. Directly below, the beach ran to the sea. On his right a ridge of hills thrust like a stone finger into the waters. Below it huge boulders were scattered in the sea, which was shallow at that point. They formed a natural breakwater against which the waves flew apart in foam and spray or shot through the spaces between. Hadon watched the sea and the white birds that wheeled above it, dropping now and then to clutch a fish. The sun shone brightly; the breeze was mild and cooling; before he knew it, he was asleep.
Sometime later he jerked awake, his heart hammering. How foolish he had been! He was alone in dangerous country, and though he had seen no savages for a week, that did not mean that there were none. Also, there were antelope and gazelles in this area, and where they were, leopards were. He vaguely remembered a dream that had come as he struggled up from sleep, something to do with Awineth. Had she not spoken to him, warned him of something? Of what?
He shook his head, scanned the countryside around, but could see nothing but birds and a small foxlike creature with huge pointed ears slinking from one bush to another. And then he heard, faintly and far off, a barking that was not quite like a dog’s. He rose and looked to his right, and presently he saw the round black heads of those flippered creatures which the Khokarsans had called sea dogs* when they first saw them on the shore of the Ringing Sea. These were putting out to sea to dive for fish, and they had come from behind the wall of boulders below the hills to his right.
*Seals.
He decided to go down to the boulder breakwater and spy upon these beasts. The natives at the village near the mouth of the river said that they were the companions and the guardians of their sea goddess. If a man could catch one and keep her from slipping out of her oily coat, he could learn the secrets of the sea and be forever free of hunger.
Once, they said, in the far past a hero of their village had seized one, and she had left her skin behind, but he had swum after her and caught her, and she had turned into a beautiful sea woman. She had taken him down with her to her home at the bottom of the sea, where he lived forever, eating and making love. She was the daughter of the goddess, and she loved the mortal, and if a man could emulate that hero, he, too, could become immortal. But he must never again go on the beach, or he would suddenly become very old and very sad, because he would have lost all.
Hadon had no desire to live deep in the cold waters forever. He did hope that the sea dogs might shed their skins if they thought no man was around. He would then see the daughters of the goddess in their naked beauty. Or would he be so enchanted by the glory that he would forget Awineth and the throne, which after all were only temporal delights, and try to lay his hands upon one of them?
His own people had a story of the hero who saw Lahhindar, the Gray-Eyed Archer Goddess, as she bathed! He had been torn apart by her hyenas for the blasphemy. It was dangerous to spy upon goddesses.
Nevertheless, Hadon went down the hill and across the beach and presently was wading through the sea. He crouched low, bracing himself against the waves, and peered around the side of a boulder that was twice his height. At first he saw only the surging waters inside the ring of boulders and a sea dog sitting on top of a boulder near the center of the circle. Then he heard voices, and his blood seemed to run backward, and he grew faint. Was he indeed about to witness the dangerous beauty of goddesses unclothed?
He hesitated, but his curiosity was far too great for him to walk off as any discreet and wise man would.
He inched around the side of the boulder, keeping his chest close to it. Finally he had a clear view of the arena of water. To his right, on a narrow beach, was a little bearded man with a big head, and beside him was a naked child of about three. Her hair was yellow, and her skin was the whitest he had ever seen.
He knew then that he
had found those so long sought. Or, at least, two of them. The Goddess had directed him to them; it must have been her voice, not Awineth’s, he had heard in the dream.
But where was Lalila, the White Witch from the Sea, the Risen-from-the-Sea?
Suddenly the waters roiled before him, only a few feet away, and a woman burst from the green. She stood up, smiling, and her wet hair was long and yellow, her oval face was beautiful, more beautiful than that of any woman he had ever seen, and her eyes were large and of a strange color, like those of the violets that grew on the mountains above Opar.
Hadon gasped with more than the shock of recognition. Then he was trying to assure her that she was in no danger, because she was screaming, and those eyes were full of fear.
13
Hadon thought of trying to grab her so that he could tell her that he was no enemy. Instead, he let her go. He waded after her as she swam swiftly toward the manling and the child. The two were standing up now and shouting, and the manling was brandishing a long-handled iron ax that looked top heavy for him even to lift. Hadon held his hands out to show that he was peaceful. The woman, halfway toward her companions, stopped swimming and stood up, the sea just below the superb breasts. She was not smiling, but neither did she look fearful now. And when Hadon and she got onto the beach, she spoke to him in a heavily accented Khokarsan. The manling, though no longer shouting, held the ax ready if Hadon should make a threatening move.
“You frightened me,” she said in a lovely voice. “But then I realized that you had to be a man from the inland sea, because of your leather helmet and armor and the great sword that you carry in the scabbard on your back. But how…?”
“It is a long story,” Hadon said. “Let us sit down here, and I will tell you as much as I can before we go to my camp.”
Lalila and Paga dressed themselves first. The manling put on a long kilt of gray fur, and the woman put on a short kilt and a poncho of the same material. Then she combed her dripping hair with a notched mussel shell. Hadon observed them closely during this dressing. How beautiful she was, how white-skinned! And she was tall, perhaps five feet six inches. She did indeed look like a goddess.
The manling was as Hinokly had described. His legs, though thick and powerful, were no longer than those of an eight-year-old child’s. His torso was, however, that of an average-sized man. His shoulders and long arms were heavy with muscle, and his chest was deep and broad. His hair was brown, flecked with gray, a tumbled mass on top of a huge head. The right eye was filmed over, the result, according to Hinokly, of its striking a stone when his mother had thrown him into the bushes shortly after his birth. His nose was flat, his mouth full and broad, his face scarred. Despite its ugliness, it had a strange attractiveness. When he smiled, he became almost beautiful.
According to Hinokly, he had been born far to the north, in a land beyond the Ringing Sea, a land largely covered by moving rivers of ice. When his father, returning from a sea-dog hunt, had found out that he had been thrown away and left to die, he had gone looking for his bones. Weeks had passed since his mother had cast him away, yet the father found him alive and healthy except for the shattered eye and the scarred face. A wolf bitch had found him and suckled him. It was said that Paga sometimes went into the forest and talked to the wolves. It was also said that he sometimes became a wolf at night and ran with his mother and her pups. Hadon hoped that this was not true. Wereleopards, were-eagles, and werehyenas were burned alive in Khokarsa. Hadon had never seen a wolf, of course, but Hinokly had mentioned one as described to him by Lalila, and Hadon supposed that the fur these two wore was that of the wolf.
The two, now dressed, sat down. The child, reassured by her mother, paddled around in the sea close to them. Hadon told them his story as briefly as possible, stopping now and then to define a sentence unit they did not know. When he had finished, he said, “We would probably have missed you, but Kho Herself sent me to you. And Sahhindar? Have you seen him?”
“We have been looking for him,” Lalila said. “When we left him to go with the men from the south, he said that he was making a pilgrimage far to the southwest, to the sea that runs on the extreme edge of the world beyond the mountains southwest of the city of Mikawuru. He was visiting again the place where he would be born in the far future. I did not understand his words, and he did not explain. He did say that he was not a god, that he could die, and that he had traveled backward in time but now had to travel forward, as all mortals do.”
“I do not understand that,” Hadon said. “But is it true that it was he who brought in plants which until then had not grown around the two seas and gave them to the Khoklem, and showed them—my ancestors—how to cultivate them, how to domesticate animals, and how to make bronze?”
“Yes, he did,” Paga said in a voice as deep as Kwasin’s. “It was also he who once came to Lalila’s ancestors and showed them how to domesticate goats and sheep and how to weave and dye.”
“But it was all in vain,” Lalila said. “The man whom you call Sahhindar told me that he knew it would be in vain. My people are dead now, and their knowledge is lost and will not be regained for many thousands of years.”
Lalila paused, looked strangely at Hadon, as if she might not say what was in her heart, and then said, “Just as his gifts to your ancestors were in vain.”
Hadon felt a slight shock, and he said, “What does that mean?”
“I do not know,” Lalila said. “But once he spoke idly of Khokarsa as if it had long been dead, buried, and forgotten. Except for the city of Opar. He said that it had been built long before he was born and that it was still standing when he was born. But it had been rebuilt many times.
“And he said also that he would teach the savages no more new things, that they must proceed at their own pace. Time would defeat him, no matter how many people he raised from savagery.”
“Perhaps he may visit Khokarsa again, and then we will learn more,” Hadon said. “In the meantime, we must proceed on our own. Let us walk back to the camp, which is several miles from here, and you can tell me your story.”
Lalila called the child Abeth in, and she put on her a cloak of antelope skin that, Lalila said, Sahhindar had made for her. They walked along the beach silently for a while, the woman and Hadon matching their pace to the short legs of the child and the manling. Paga spoke first. He was, he said, born in a very small tribe of people so isolated that they thought they were the only people in the world. They lived by hunting and fishing, their chief prey being the sea dogs and an occasional stranded whale, a creature like a monster fish, but warm-blooded. Paga, cast out a second time, had been rescued by a man named Wi and had voluntarily become his slave. The tribe was dominated by a cruel giant who had slain Wi’s daughter, and so Wi had challenged him for the chieftainship. Paga it was who had found a stone fallen from the sky, a stone made of iron and some other metal that was even harder than iron. He had crudely fashioned it into an ax for Wi, and Wi had slain the giant with it and become the chief.
“And then Wi’s problems, instead of being solved, were greatly increased,” Paga said. “Once he had been the slave of the chief. Then he became the slave of the people. And he had much trouble with his wife, who loved him but could not endure me, as most women cannot. And she was jealous because Wi loved me and would not drive me out into the wilderness again. She could not understand that Wi was both wise and good-hearted and that he loved me, not as a man loves a woman but as one who needed his protection and who, in turn, could counsel him wisely. He did not believe the people when they said that I was a worker of evil and that I took a wolf’s shape at night.
“And then, one day, a dugout floated onto the shore, and Wi found in it a woman near death. This woman, Lalila. And the troubles he had had before he found her became trivial.”
“True,” Lalila said. “Though I am not a troublemaker in my heart, my presence seems to cause trouble. To make a long story short, Wi nursed me back to life and protected me. We fell in love
, though for a long time Wi would not marry me because of a law he had originated, which restricted one wife to one man. And he did not have the heart—”
“The guts,” Paga said.
“The heart to cast out his wife. In the end, the great river of ice whose front loomed over the village moved and wiped out most of the tribe. Some of us—Wi, Wi’s son, Wi’s wife, his brother, his brother’s wife, Paga, and I—were left alive but afloat on a mountain of ice. It began to melt, and we had to get off it in our boat, which was only a small hollowed-out log. Wi, seeing that if he got in, his weight would sink the boat, shoved it out with the rest of us in it. The fog blew in then, and we could barely see Wi. But Paga dived into the cold sea and swam to the remnant of the ice mountain. If he had to die, he wanted to die with Wi. Besides, he could not see leaving Wi to die all alone. To die with your loved ones around you is bad, but to die alone is terrible.
“I did not know what to do. I loved Wi and wished to die with him. Life was not worth living without him. Or so, at least, I thought at the moment. But Wi’s son was with me, and he needed a protector. Then I considered that he had his mother and Wi’s brother and sister-in-law. And with one fewer, their chances of survival would be greater. So I swam to the ice mountain too.
“There we waited for the cold or the sea to take us, but presently the fog cleared. The others were not in sight, and we never saw them again. But there was land a mile or two away, and then we saw several uprooted trees drifting by. We swam to one, and Wi chopped off the branches on top and rolled it over and chopped off those on the other side. Using some branches as paddles, we got the log to the shore. We almost died doing it, because our legs were in the icy waters. But we did not die.”
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