by David Bell
“Well, pilot, how should we steer?”
“Down sail. Hold rudder larboard. More hands on starboard oars and drive hard. Wind will become very strong but rain will soften sea.”
“Is that all?”
“Say prayers to your Lady. I will call to the stones.”
To be lashed by rain, have the gale shear the foaming crests off the waves and fling them at your freezing back, feel your numb hands losing their grip on the oar, and your arse sliding across the thwart when the ship rolled, hear every timber in the ship groan and grate and the rigging hiss and slap as it strove to fly from the mast and know that the next wave would be the last you ever felt and, for all of this, to go on and on and then without warning, between one breath and the next, just stop, must mean that you were dead, drowned, and floating on an endless black ocean under an endless black sky. So why, thought Sharesh, was there the sound of waves breaking on a shore and how could he know they were breaking somewhere to larboard? And how could there be a light over there beyond the sound of the breaking waves? Potyr would have told him that the Lady Mother of Oceans had brought them into the lee of that long arm of rock and sand that sheltered them from the storm blowing out of the Endless Ocean. Luzar would have told him that the silent power of the ancient standing stones had drawn them to safety. And Kanesh, he knew, would have told him that Naudok had built a strong ship and the crew had done everything that men could do and, by great good luck, it had been enough.
“Hold fast,” said Potyr, “keep her head into the wind and let us see what dawn brings.”
A dull red sun rose, seeming to force its way through banks of blue-grey cloud. The ship lay in choppy water off a long low island, just high enough to form a windbreak. Out in the gulf the waves were heaped up and striped white with foam. The head carpenter came to the ladder leading up top the stern deck.
“Captain, we’ve a strake sprung forward and a some joints opened. We’re taking in water and we need a good look at the mast stepping: it shouldn’t have shifted but it might have. We need to get her tied up or at least anchored steady and then shift cargo to heel her over enough to get that strake set back.”
“Do what you can to plug the holes for now. We will look for an anchorage. Helmsman, take her along the shore, slow as you can. Be ready for that gap before we reach the point: the wind will come sharply through there. Keep a close lookout for a mooring and some quiet water.”
“It is sacred land,” said Luzar as the party waded ashore.
“We will tread softly,” said Kanesh, “but we do need to find game. You have been here? You know this place? You spoke of the stones.”
“I have not been here but I know this place. All my people know this place, and the stones.”
“Where are these stones?” asked Sharesh.
“Everywhere; you will see.”
In the marshes a little way inland they found duck feeding in the shallow pools and soon netted enough to feed the whole crew for one meal at least. They came across a clearing where rabbits scurried about in the sand and the archers struck down a brace before the others fled down their holes. Two of the crew stayed behind to guard the prizes against foxes, while the others moved on.
“There’ll be more dead people lying under heaps of ground,” whispered Namun to Sharesh. “Luzar has that look on his face. This is another land of the dead. You wait and see.”
But when they came out of a thicket of trees and bushes they found they were in a temple, or so it seemed to Sharesh, but a temple of which only the pillars remained, long lines of grey, moss-coated stones, most upright, some leaning, some twice as high as a man, some hardly bigger than a child; stone pillars that reached up towards where a roof might have been; a ruined temple, but of such a size! The lines of stones stretched away on either side as far as he could see, or not quite: at each end was a ring of taller stones and then the trees closed in.
They stood as still as the stones themselves while the wind shook the branches above their heads and swept along the avenues, bending the coarse grass that floored them. Namun felt the same dread he had felt when he passed close to the stone mountains in the Black Land where the great kings lay entombed. Twelve good bowshots long, thought one of the archers while the other reckoned thirteen. Like an army on the march, thought Kanesh, and all turned to stone; or perhaps the king’s own troop, every grey-headed veteran standing to attention while the royal chariot swept past the ranks before the trumpets sounded the order to march. A temple, thought Sharesh, ruined and abandoned; but to what goddess or god?
“Every man his stone; every woman her stone; every stone many names to say. Ancient names: Kazar, Andera, Sumben, Skalar, Lodek…”
“Luzar?”
“Yes, Luzar.”
“There are no people here now, Luzar,” said Sharesh.
“People come when it is time to come to say the names and follow the sun when he passes through and the moon when she passes through. Not as in ancient times when all came, but still some come. I am here.”
“Leave him to himself to say the names,” said Kanesh quietly to the others. They walked along the outside line of stones towards the circle at the end over which the sun would have risen. They found some of the tall pointed stones of the circle had carvings on the flat faces: ring shapes, crossed lines, a dagger, a spiral. Some were moss-covered, others quite clean. “He is right,” said Kanesh. “Sometimes people do come here but we may not wait. It is time to return to the ship.”
They started back towards the place where they had left Luzar. Halfway there Sharesh was sure he heard the sounds of children laughing and squealing at play and, looking back, saw little white-smocked figures dancing and running about in the circle of stones. He told Kanesh who laughed and, without looking back, said, “Well, at least the place still has some use.”
Sharesh looked back again. The excited shouts and calls were just as loud as before but the circle of standing stones was quite empty of any white smocks.
The mast had not shifted, so all was well. The repair work took two days to finish and, with her jars full of fresh water and her baskets full of duck and rabbit, the Davina set sail on the fourth morning after she had found refuge from the storm that was now fully blown out. Sharesh marked three more days of passage on the tablets and tried to remember which day it was when they fished in the bay of a flat-topped island where the sand was striped white, then red, then blue; and when the great fish, every bit as long as the ship, came close alongside and ranged them with his lazy eye before sending up fountains of spray from his head before he dived.
The fourth day was the one neither he nor anyone else aboard the Davina would ever forget. The third day had been spent edging the ship between reefs and islets that festooned the waters off a grey and rocky shore. As dusk was settling on the horizon they found a sheltered cove close to where the coast began to curve away to starboard. Beyond was nothing but dark, empty ocean.
“This must be the end of the world,” said Kerma.
Luzar pointed up to the Sailors’ Star that stood high and out to sea. Everyone on the stern deck followed the line of his arm.
“Steer straight and follow Sailors’ Star. In one day we see my land.”
PHERETHAN
Perhaps it was someone at the door, but who could it be at this time of night? Dareka seemed not to have heard, so Akusha got up in the darkness as quietly as she could, made a little gesture of reverence towards the niche in the wall with its figure of the Lady Mother, and crept along the short corridor to the top of the stone staircase that led down to the living room. The coolness of stone steps under her feet was something she had loved ever since she was a child. The great house of her father in the old Hurrian city in Anadolus had many staircases that she used to climb at night when she could not sleep, in secret; or so she thought. She opened the door. There was no one there. She looked up and down the silent street, half in black shadow, half in bright moonlight. She turned towards a rustling sound in t
he darkness opposite: only a prowling cat, or perhaps the rat it sought. She put her hand on the doorpost and felt a slight quivering, the sort one feels when sitting on a bench and a clumsy servant drops a heavy sack or log nearby. Then it was still and solid feeling again. There were one or two lights in houses along the street and she heard faint voices. Perhaps they had heard the noise too. Whatever it was, it had woken her and not her husband, some people in the street and not others. No doubt when Dareka came back from the harbour in the evening he would tell her of a crate of ingots that had been dropped on the quay when a ship was being unloaded. There was nothing to be done here. It was time to go back to bed. She noticed that the little statuette had fallen on its face in the niche. The hem of her gown must have caught it as she passed in the dim light. She set it upright again and made a gesture of penitence.
Koreta stretched his hand out painfully towards the little silver bell, then drew it back. Let the steward sleep on: he would bring news in the morning about that noise and the brief shaking that followed. Noises and smells: how instantly and vividly they summoned up memories. Shocking him out of the half doze he sardonically called sleep, the noise had been the crash of the stempost ramming the pirate ship amidships at Gaiduros, setting both vessels reeling and shuddering. He had reached for his sword before he realised where he was and lifted his hand towards the silver bell instead. The Residence was quiet. There was no sound of alarmed voices in the street. No dog barked. Yet he knew that this was a sound he must remember. Something big had been shifted, or broken, and not far away; but where, he could not tell, except that it was not in the sea. The thought of the sea set him reflecting on the conversation he had had with Akusha, some days ago when she had returned from Keftiu. Like him, she had no further definite news of the ship, only rumours. It must be eighty days now since the Davina sailed. Koreta told Akusha that he had a sailor’s instinct that Kanesh and Sharesh must be near their goal. She looked at him with hope, if not certainty, in her eyes and whispered something about the Lady Mother. Then she told him other things, things about the Palace that Sekara had got wind of but of which, from the vagueness of his letters, he knew very little. Akusha told Koreta all she had heard. When she had finished, he was silent for a long time. At last he spoke:
“An onshore wind, a cross current and a storm ahead; all a captain can do is trust in his ship and his crew and do his best to make ready.”
Then he explained in great detail what he had in mind.
Potyr decided to sail at sunset. The sky was clear and although the moon was not yet up, she would be big, a few nights off full. The star would be bright and easy to follow and when dawn came the Davina should be in mid ocean with plenty of sea room. If all went well, he would have enough light to close on the shore and, if Luzar’s memory of the reefs and currents was as good as his word, they should make a safe landfall before dark. There was a fresh breeze on the starboard quarter and a long swell off the ocean that would mean some hard work at the oars if he were to keep on course. Eighty days out of Keftiu: would he see the islands he had come so far to find on the eighty-first? If the voyage home lasted as long, the seven stars would be low down in the sky and the season that was perilous for sailing would be near.
“Take her out, helmsman. Full sail when you’re ready. Trim when you get the feel of the wind and set a smart rate.”
Potyr let the bronze ring fall over the stern, lifted his eyes towards the sky and then down towards the dark sea, He had no dove to release as offering to the Lady Mother of the Oceans. His silent prayers would have to suffice. If they met with her favour, dawn would bring sight of the land they sought; if not, the ocean on which they had set out would indeed be endless for them. He looked up again.
“The Sailors’ Star and the ladle into which one night it may fall,” said Kanesh at his side. “Or so my father told me once when he was in a good humour, a rare mood for him.”
“Follow the handle’s curve, my father told me, and you come upon first the red guardian star, and then the white star worshipped in the Black Land. There they are, the white star low on the horizon. With them I have my marks.”
“They worship many stars in the Black Land. There I have seen a temple set for sighting the rise of that other red star, low down, there, to the side of the white star, when night and day are of like length after the summer has passed. On the temple wall was carved the name Selket, scorpion goddess.”
“Farmers also have their stars,” said Potyr.
“Sailors, farmers, all serious men who search the sky for their stars and find them where they have always been and so feel safe.”
“I know that tone of voice. I hear it when you have doubts.”
“I have some cause for that. While on patrol long ago I came across a ravaged and empty village in the Deshret of the Black Land. Entering a ruined hovel I was just in time to stop a trooper from cutting the throat of an ancient man because he had no water, nothing of value to offer for the little that was left of his life. I recognised the mark on his forehead, the mark of star measurer and priest, and the flatness of his fingertips, the signs of one who had fingered and written documents all his life.”
“How had a man of such standing come to such a place?”
“Banished, for what he had dared to say to the custodians of the temple where he served. His last wish, before he died, was to reveal his findings to some other man.”
“And that man was you.”
“I had that good fortune. This was a man who had read all, I repeat all, the measurements of the stars set down by his forerunners as priest and stargazer since the reign of the first great king of the Black Land. At first he hardly dared believe what he saw in the measurements in case the goddess read his thoughts and struck him blind and dumb. At last he could hold his finding to himself no longer and sought audience with the high priest, chief servant of the goddess. To him he spoke the sacrilegious truth: the stars move. Not the movements seen as the night passes, or the seasons change: all that is known, but by slowly shifting position in secret, hidden ways as many years pass and many kings come and go, and gods and goddesses too, perhaps; so slowly that a lifetime is too short to see it happen. Only by scrutinising all the measurements can this be seen.”
“If the stars move…”
“Anything, any thing can change! Obviously the man had to be banished and his sacrilege hidden away with him. Findings like his are too dangerous to allow them to become widely known. The people would lose faith in their gods, or should I say, in what they are told about their gods by the priests.”
“You said your father was rarely in a good humour. What life did he lead?
“Horseman, soldier, outcast, wanderer, as I have been and am.”
“I too followed my father: to the sea, as he did his father and he his. For all of them and for me the Sailors’ Star has kept to its place in the night sky.”
“So it may seem. But if the stargazer’s reading of the measurements was sound there may come a time when my father’s joke about the ladle and the Sailors’ Star will prove no joke at all.”
Sharesh at lookout on the bow, was the first to see it, a small streak on the horizon darker than the rest of the line.
“Land, there, fine on the larboard bow!”
Spirits lifted at the call and tired muscles found new strength. The Davina’s bow wave whitened with the added thrust of the oars. What they saw was no imposing peak hardening into view, but a flat-topped headland with white waves breaking at the foot of its dark cliffs.
“Pherethan,” said Luzar.
For the first time Sharesh saw tears in Luzar’s strange eyes. “Pherethan?” he asked, “what is Pherethan?”
“Pherethan,” said Luzar again, pointing, “Pherethan, my land.”
Both wind and swell slackened as the morning wore on and the Davina drew nearer to the dark headland. Luzar never moved from the bow, staring all the time at the approaching coast as intently as a cat stares at the mouse it stalks
.
“He is trying to see how the currents are flowing,” said Potyr, “and where the reefs are.”
“I’d be happier if he wasn’t bringing us so close to that headland,” said Typhis.
Sharesh came hastening back from the bow and called up to Potyr from the foot of the ladder.
“Luzar says the sea is high now and we must steer hard a larboard to catch the current when he signals.”
“Don’t tell me,” grunted Typhis, “do as he says’.”
Luzar thrust out his left arm and Typhis immediately leaned on full larboard rudder. The Davina heeled over hard and dipped her bow in like a seabird darting after fish. The current took hold and she ran hard past the headland and soon entered the waters of a broad bay shaped like a half moon where the sea was much easier than it had been off the headland. Overhead the sun was beginning his descent, splashing silver patches on the dark blue waves. The shoreline had sandy beaches, little coves and rocky points of land stretching out to sea like wrinkled fingers. Inland, the country as far as Sharesh could see was greener than anywhere he had ever been. Luzar signalled for a course change that kept the ship out in the bay, running more or less in line with the shore. Sharesh was sent aft again to ask for the rate to be kept up because the current was slowing and before long would turn about. They must make harbour before the stream ran hard against them and put them in danger of grounding or even being swept away from the shore and out to sea. By late afternoon that hazard was past and they were closing on an island that rose steep and pointed, like the sacred Jaduktas when seen from the sea. And as they drew closer they could see that it was not quite an island, being linked to the shore by a narrow strip of sand and scattered rocks, still wet and shining from the sea that was drawing back from them. Grey and black rock formed the shoreline of the island and the upper slopes were covered in trees and shrubs in full green leaf. On the peak was what seemed to be a small stone tower, perhaps a lookout post or beacon.