Kallista

by David Bell

  “The sign we have been waiting for; the sign that no one may deny. Alaron, give the word to master Dorejo. He knows what he must do.”

  Before dusk fell, Dorejo’s men had marched through the town calling out the Governor’s message, that every man, woman and child was urged to be present in the square before the Residence at midday to hear the Governor speak. The youngest and fittest were sent running along the paths and animal tracks to take the word to settlements along the coast, to farmsteads on windy uplands and in remote valleys and huts and shelters on the slopes of the mountain where silent men and boys watched over their sheep and goats. When darkness fell all the beacons made ready against this time on clifftops above the Lagoon and the headland above the strait were set aflame, sending the signal to Balloso and Palaka, Lemaka and farthest-off Mitoia that the people must make all speed on foot or by boat to the Residence to hear the Lord Koreta tell them what they must do.

  Not all came. Not everyone could make the journey, through age or sickness or need to tend the old and dying. There were those who would never heed any order and those who could never understand one. Some had better things to do: a boat to take out because the fish were shoaling in numbers not to be missed, or a ewe in difficulty with a half-born lamb. If they were to be told the pirates were coming back, well, take what was to hand and hide in the high valleys until they went away again: no need to tramp all across the island just to hear the Governor tell you that. And there were always some who would talk of going but manage to stay out of sight until the boats left and then have a free run of the place and time enough to see what could be filched. These were the few. Almost the whole of Kallista seemed to be packed into the square in front of the Residence as midday approached, with a few latecomers hurrying along the dusty streets, anxious not to be left out.

  The crowd fell silent when Koreta came out to stand at the top of the steps in front of the Residence. Many had never seen him before but all knew of him as the great captain and harrier of pirates in his youth and as the one who had saved them from famine in the year of drought and in the bad days after the Return. To one side and a pace behind Koreta stood Kanesh. On his other side was Akusha.

  Koreta stood, tall, spare and erect, his white hair combed down to his shoulders, the black patch covering one eye, the scarf that hid the ravaged lower part of his face drawn down a little to let his voice be better heard. His long white robe, normally worn loose, was now caught in at the waist with a leather belt from which hung a heavy sword in its sheath. About his neck was the golden pendant that was his seal of office as Governor of Kallista. He lifted his hands towards the people and made the gestures of welcome and thanks. When he spoke, the hoarseness had gone from his voice and it was clear and loud enough for all to hear.

  “I tell you what you already know. You have seen the signs. You have heard the warnings. The earth-shaking broke your homes and the walls fell on your children. The waters of the Lagoon churn and boil and foul air burns your throats. It withers the flowers and the new grass. Now the ground trembles again beneath your feet and the flocks are driven to madness. The black island, Korus, shifts and swells and belches grey dust that drifts in the wind, the forerunner of a terrible storm to come. If you ask me why this should be, I will tell you I do not know. Some among you will say the Lady Mother has forsaken you. Some will say the Lord Potheidan is in a rage because of some insult we have caused him. If you have placed your offerings you know they have not been accepted. If you have sent up your prayers you know they have not been heard. So, people of Kallista, we must look to ourselves if we are to escape the danger that threatens us. You know me for a sailor, no different from many of you here. I have no need to see the tempest coming. I feel it and I steer my ship to shelter and there I ride out the storm. The ships are ready in the harbour. There is room for all. Sail with me to a safe haven and let us ride out this storm.”

  Except for some gasps of surprise or fear, at first there was silence. Then came some murmuring and shuffling of feet. People looked into friends’ faces and whispered to one another, glancing towards the Governor and then away. At last, from among the throng came voices.

  “How can we leave our homes? Where can we go? How long must we stay away? What about our flocks and fields? Who says we must go?”

  Koreta held up his hand again and the voices tailed away.

  “When the pirates came, you left your homes if you could and you returned to them when the danger had passed. Some ships will sail to Telchina and some to Keftiu. How long must we stay away? As long as we must if we want to live. The flocks that can be brought here in time will be taken to Pathera where there is water and grass. Who says you must go? Not I. I say you should go. I ask you to go.”

  Again there was silence and then the murmuring started, but less of it this time. Akusha stepped forward.

  “There is no temple where we might seek the presence of the Lady Mother. There is no Priestess to speak and listen for us. But every woman here knows in her heart what would be said: find safety for your children.”

  It was the women’s turn to murmur and for many of them to prod and push their men and tell them outright to listen to the Lady Akusha. A man’s voice sounded above the rising chatter.

  “How do we know what we’re being told is true? What if we won’t go?”

  Kanesh stepped forwrd. Sharesh had been surprised to see him in the stained and ragged clothes he had worn while working with the prisoners and labourers clearing rubble or carrying timber and stone for the rebuilding, but he realised the reason after hearing Kanesh’s first few words.

  “You know me. All of you know me. You there, Akaron, Big Ears your mates call you, you know me: together we lifted that beam to prop your roof up. And you know me, Karopar. You remember when we dug out that little girl and you couldn’t look because you thought she was yours and I said she wasn’t because yours always had a ribbon in her hair? Just like she has now, there, holding her mother’s hand.” Kanesh swept his arm, finger pointing, across the whole crowd and kept moving it from side to side. “You all know me. I was the stranger washed ashore on your island and saved by its good people. I was one of those – you see others here – who fought to give your land back to you. You know me well enough to believe what I say to you. I was on the ship that sailed into the Endless Ocean and brought back the metal from Pherethan. Listen. I will tell you what I saw and heard on that voyage. One night I heard a great noise, greater than any thunderclap, as great as the voice of a god that burst the ears of men. I saw fire leap from the sea and light up the night sky. I saw a mountain burn, sending out smoke that choked the land. I saw another mountain, formed like the sacred horns, that poured out great clouds of stone and dust over the people who were too slow to flee its storm.” The hand continued its slow sweep across the mass of the people who followed it with their eyes. “Go now. Make ready to take to the ships when the signal comes. It will not be long in coming. Go, I say.”

  Torn from the cup-bearer’s hand before the Lady Tuwea could take it, the alabaster goblet stabbed its shattered fragments into the painted wall, raining shards and flakes of plaster down on the inert bodies of the lady and her servant where they had been flung together on the floor below. The noise followed instantly, but their ears were already burst and they heard nothing.

  A shepherd searching for scattered ewes to drive down to the harbour was thrown backwards into a clump of bushes. Although he survived what was to come and lived out the rest of his life on Keftiu tending his master’s flock, he never again heard the bleat of a newborn lamb.

  The Captain of Archers was inspecting equipment in the Palace guardhouse. He cocked his head on one side.

  “D’ye hear that?” he snapped.

  “Yes, sir,” said the archer. “Sounded like that noise we heard the night after we rounded that cape what’s-its-name.”

  Dissias was reaching for the flask of cendana oil when the sound came.

  “Why have you stopped, Diss
ias?” murmured Pasipha. “What was that noise?”

  “The bronze gong they strike to honour the Lord Potheidan, my lady,” said the bull-leaper.

  “Don’t be silly, Dissias. That’s a tale they tell children. And don’t stop. I said don’t stop.

  “What is the matter with you?”

  “I don’t, I beg your pardon, my lady, but there is a strange cloud out to sea, on the horizon.”

  “The oil, Dissias. Tell me about the cloud later.”

  In the Black Land the ancient deaf star measurer who had once been a priest dimly watched the boy’s fingers tell him everyone in the Deshret village was talking about a strange noise. It was not distant thunder, but just as loud, and everybody said that Sutekh, god of storms had spoken in a way they could not understand. When the boy had gone, eating the date he had been given, the star measurer marked the number of the day after Akhet, the flooding of the Iteru, and the time, judged from the level of water in the bowl that dripped, on a clay tablet, now that he had no more wadij. He sat thinking for a very long time. His memory was not what it once was but had he not seen the same marks for a great distant noise on one of the very oldest tablets, a stone one, when he was honoured recorder in the temple?

  Koreta felt a massive weight press on him as the air was sucked from his lungs, leaving him helpless to draw in more breath and wondering if the long-awaited, long-desired time of his death had finally arrived. Half conscious, he could hear a strange crackling sound as if dry thorn bushes were burning. He felt strong arms lift him to his feet as the air at last sighed and scraped into his tortured chest. Alaron held him upright and gasping until Apigoron brought water and a cloth to wipe his brow.

  “That noise,” he whispered. “Where is the fire?”

  “No fire, my Lord. The sky is raining sand and stones. You hear them striking the roof,” said the steward.

  “I must see,” stammered Koreta. His heart beat steadier now. “No, I think I can reach the window by myself.” Alaron kept by his side the whole way.

  The crackling noise abruptly stopped. Outside, a yellow mist obscured the houses and the harbour but he could make out the blurred shapes of some vessels. Were they still all there? Had the ship that took the sheep and goats to Pathera returned? He rubbed his eyes with bandaged knuckles and peered into the haze again: no clearer. He heard voices below and the sound of footsteps running, slipping and people falling on the paving. He turned to ask Alaron if the townsfolk had started to leave their houses and make for the ships but a huge, shattering noise like a giant whiplash cracking twice blew his words back down his throat and made him press his bandaged hands to his ears and hold them there until, the shrilly singing echoes died down to a low hiss. Moments later the crackling sound began again.

  The streets of the town were in turmoil. While many cowered in their houses after the terrible noise, clutching one another and covering their children’s heads with blankets, others, fearing another earth-shaking, rushed outside, only to find themselves in a yellow eye-smarting fog through which showers of small stones were falling, striking them painfully on head and shoulder and gradually piling up in thin layers mixed with sand and coating roofs and street alike.

  The man who had shouted from the crowd in front of the Governor’s Residence listened to the constant dull thudding of the stones falling on the turf and timber roof of his house. He hadn’t meant any harm, saying what he did. It was a big risk, to go away and leave your house empty, for how long nobody could say. There had to be good reasons for that. Well, he had his reasons now, what with that frightening noise and the stones battering his roof. His wife stared up at him pleadingly, holding a whimpering infant close to her breast. He pulled her to her feet, thrust a sack of their belongings into her arms and slung a much bigger one over his shoulder. He took the hand of his little girl and led them all out into the street. Stumbling through the yellow mist they had just reached the square in front of Anchor House when the earth started shuddering and shaking and they were all thrown to the ground. He heard the splintering crash of a roof falling in and saw walls bulge and crack apart. He crawled on top of his wife and screaming children to shield them as much as he could.

  Dark figures loomed up out of the dusty gloom. A huge black hand hauled him to his feet and a voice shouted at him. He saw another figure bending over his wife. He tried to speak. The big man with the beard stood up and thrust his face close.

  “Keep going down to the harbour. The shaking has stopped. Walk in the middle of the street. Go now.”

  He felt someone push him firmly in the back. He picked up his sacks and the little girl and set off, hustling his wife and the baby ahead of him. As he went he heard the men shouting into doorways for everyone to get down to the harbour and not wait for their houses to fall down on them. Before he reached the harbour there came another great noise, not as loud as the first two but still loud enough to send his wife staggering, and another rattling down of stones that sent them scurrying into the porch of the Crocus House for shelter.

  When he finally reached the harbour gate he was almost exhausted. His mouth was dry with dust and his shoulders ached with carrying the sacks and the sleeping little girl under one arm. He sat down on the grit-covered stones to rest with his wife leaning against his side. A man he recognised as one of the warehouse chiefs came up and told him to get to the quayside as fast as he could because there was just enough room for them on a ship which was about to cast off. He made his wife take some gulps of water from the beaker that Dareka held out to them and then swallowed the rest himself. The ship had begun to turn her bow away from the jetty when they reached it. The young black man who was the skipper held her long enough for him to pass his children to the hands held out to take them, and he and his wife fell on board as the ship pulled away and headed for the harbour mouth.

  Merida refused to leave. He could only carry so much and that would mean leaving too many of his most valuable possessions for any passing thief to plunder. For a moment he thought Kanesh would drag him from the house himself or have that great black stonecutter sling him over his shoulder like a sack of grain and cart him away to the ships. Yet having asked him once, Kanesh just shook his head and left. The ships. The Davina. Potyr would take her out: he knew that. Potyr would do what the Governor ordered. But she was his ship. He, Merida, ought to say when and where she would sail. He got up and made for the door. The ear-splitting noise came again and the house shook. He scrambled under the table where the chest of silver was buried under the floor slabs. Anchor House was strong. The other earth-shakings had not harmed it. He would be safe here. The noise and shaking and dust would go away, as it had done before. When it was over he would go up and look at the new painting. His wife had not seen it yet: that made him think of the mansion, Lagoon House. Well, that was strongly built, like this one. Big noises and a few stones rattling down wouldn’t do it much harm and anyway he had plenty of silver to pay for any damage.

  Without warning, fear can run through a crowd in an instant and turn it into a mob. Koreta had seen it happen on a burning ship when the crew forgot the enemy and fought one another to reach the rail first and jump overboard away from the flames. Kanesh had seen it when a front rank that had not flinched from clouds of arrows broke when they saw the chariots coming and turned away to slash through the lines behind in frantic efforts to escape. To avoid such a danger the plan was to have Kerma with his axe and Alaron with his harpoon together with the two sons of Kakelus the smith and the strongest of the Men of the Watch stationed at the harbour gate, with orders to allow through only as many as would fill one ship at a time and then to close the gate until that ship had pulled away from the jetty. To begin with there was shouting and threatening and a great deal of pushing and jostling in the crowd that was growing at the gate but, when it was seen that the guards would stand firm and that the ships were getting away with their burden, the people became calmer and waited their turn, anxious and exhausted but no longer desperate. />
  With the last passenger on board and the Davina standing by to cast off, Kanesh led a small party back into the town in a final search for stragglers and wanderers. Whether dusk had fallen or the darkness came from air still thick with dust no one could tell. The men stumbled through the rubble-strewn empty streets banging on doors when they could find them and shouting for anyone left to come out now before the last ship left. Abandoned dogs snarled from doorways or padded after them hopefully until a stray cat or rat crossed their path and set off a yelping hunt. Apart from these sounds, the place was eerily quiet after the thunderous noise and clamour of earlier in the day. The searchers found four people. One was dead: the young shepherd who had once won the boys’ race in the Festival games and now lay with his legs crushed under a splintered beam. Three were alive, a child whom Luzar picked up from the dust outside a house, where she was singing to herself and playing with some of the fallen stones, an old woman who was too weak to walk, and Merida whom they pulled out from under his table. Kanesh had all four taken back to the ship.

  To guard against further stone falls injuring passengers and crew and perhaps overloading the ships the captains had decided to assemble at a point some distance along the coast, and stand out to sea until dawn came when they hoped for a sight of their agreed destination: the towering cliffs where the Mountain rose from the sea to face the morning sun. There was shelter from the wind there at that time of year and the sea would be calm, something that should relieve the passengers. It was there that captains would decide where to sail, to Telchina or to Keftiu, with passengers changing ships if they wanted to do so.

  ROW FOR YOUR LIVES

  The sea was calm and the land was quiet, but only the very young and the extremely old slept that night. The promise of safety, such as it was, could not make up for so much loss: home, friends, family, land, and yes, even the protection of the Lady Mother. Even the most robust and determined wondered what the next day would bring. For the others, it seemed the night would never end as they huddled together sleepless, their only slight comfort their common misery.