"The flames of God?"
"It's a kind of joke of my husband's. He calls the children 'the flames of God.' But I was speaking of the ceremony. They decorate a great wooden raft with flowers and green branches, and then it floats away down the river, burning. Sometimes there may be three or four rafts together. And the children make clay bears and stick them all full of flowers--trepsis and melikon, you know--and then at the end of the day they put them on flat pieces of wood and float them away downstream."
"Is it some kind of commemoration?"
"Why, yes--it commemorates Lord Shardik and Shara. This year an old and dear friend of ours is making the journey to be here--if all goes well, she'll be arriving in two or three days' time. She taught me, long ago, when I was a child--"
"Not very long ago."
"Thank you. I like compliments, particularly now I have two children of my own. If you've not been well, I'd certainly advise you to stay, for then you can ask her help. She's the greatest healer in all this country. Indeed, that's partly why she's coming--not only for the festival, but to see our sick children--we always have a number by the end of the winter."
Siristrou was about to ask her more when the governor returned to the room. He had changed his rough clothes for a plain black robe, embroidered across the breast alone with the bear and corn sheaves in silver; and this, so severe by contrast with the brilliance of his wife's garment, emphasized his grave, lined features and almost mystic air of composure. Siristrou studied his face as he looked down to pour his wine. This, too, he realized suddenly, was a metaphysician by temperament, even though he might have no fluent speech, no articulate ideas. Curiously, there came into his mind those lines of the Zakalonian poet Mitran which are spoken by the hero Serat to his consort in the time after making love--"I desire nothing, I lack for nothing, I am at the center of the world, where sorrow is joy." In a moment, however, the governor looked up, the cups clattered and rang on the tray and the charm was snapped.
Siristrou made a complimentary remark about the wine. The lady excused herself and left them, and the governor, inviting him to sit, began at once to speak of trade prospects as a betrothed might speak of his approaching marriage. If Siristrou had expected little or nothing from the hickory constable of a frontier town, he now found himself compelled to think again. The governor's questions fell like arrows. How far away was Zakalon? How many permanent camps or staging forts would be needed to service a regular trade route? How could Siristrou be sure that there were no hostile inhabitants of the wilderness? Given that the Telthearna might be used for downstream transport, what about upstream? The language problem--he could, if desired, send forty older children to Zakalon to be educated as guides and interpreters. Children learned more quickly than men; some of his would jump at such a chance. What goods could Zakalon offer? Horses--what exactly were they? He looked puzzled as Siristrou began to explain, and they both became confused over language and ended by laughing as Siristrou tried to draw a horse with his finger in spilled wine. Then he promised the governor that the very next day, on one side of the river or the other, he should see a man ride a horse more than twice as fast as he could run. If that were true, replied the governor, then Zakalon need look no further for wares to offer for some years to come. But what did Siristrou think, quite noncommittally, might be the trade value of these horses--making a fair allowance, of course, for the cost and effort of transporting them from Zakalon? They began trying to estimate the equivalent values of consignments of wine, of iron and of products of fine craftsmanship such as that of the robe which he had just admired.
The governor called for more wine and the deranged girl served them, sensing their excitement and smiling like an old friend to see the governor busy and happy. Siristrou drank to Zeray. The governor drank to Zakalon. They congratulated one another on their propitious meeting and went on to envisage fancifully a future in which men would travel as freely as the birds of the air and goods would pass through Zeray from the ends of the earth. The governor obliged Siristrou with a verse of the song which the children had sung, explaining that the tongue was actually his own--Ortelgan--and that the lines were part of a singing game about a cat that caught a fish.
"But as to your journey to Bekla," said the governor, coming back to reality with something of a bump, "the road between here and Kabin's not finished yet, you know. Twenty miles of it're sound enough, but the other twenty're still only a muddy track."
"We shall manage it, don't worry. But I'd like to stay for your festival first--Shara's Day, I believe you call it? Your wife was speaking of it. She told me about the burning raft--for Lord Shardik, isn't it? Also, I think I should benefit by meeting your friend, the wise woman--I've not been well during the journey, and your wife says she's a great healer."
"The Tuginda?"
"I don't think I heard her--her name. Or is it a title?"
"It's both, in her case."
"Will she come by the half-finished road you were speaking of?"
"No, by water. We're lucky in this town to have the river as a highway from the north. Much of the province is still half-wild, though not as wild as it was. We're making new settlements here and there, although we never risk children in the remoter parts. But there's a child village on the road to Kabin: you'll pass through it on your way to Bekla. It's not very big yet--ten old soldiers and their wives are looking after about a hundred children--but we mean to make it bigger as soon as the land's in any state to support more. It's in a safe place, you see."
"I'm puzzled by the children," said Siristrou, "what little I've seen of them. Your town seems full of children--I saw them working at the landing stage and on your new warehouses. Two-thirds of the inhabitants seem to be children."
"Two-thirds--that's about right."
"They're not all the children of people here, then?"
"Oh, no one's told you about the children?" said the governor. "No, of course, there's hardly been time. They come from many different places--Bekla, Ikat, Thettit, Dari, Ortelga--there are even a few from Terekenalt. They're all children who've lost parents or families for one reason or another. A lot of them have simply been deserted, I'm afraid. They're not compelled to come here, although for many it's better than destitution, I suppose. It's still a hard life, but at least they can feel that we need them and value them. That in itself helps them a great deal."
"Who sends them?"
"Well, I'm in touch with all manner cf people--people who worked for me and used to send me news and so on, in the days when I--er--lived in Bekla; and the Ban of Sarkid has helped us a great deal."
Siristrou could not help feeling a certain distaste. Apparently this young governor, in his enthusiasm for trade, was developing his province and building up Zeray as a port through the labor of destitute children.
"How long are they compelled to remain?" he asked.
"They're not compelled. They're free to go if they want to, but most of them have nowhere to go."
"Then you wouldn't say they were slaves?"
"They're slaves when they come here--slaves of neglect, of desertion, sometimes of actual cruelty. We try to free them, but often it's anything but easy."
Siristrou began to see a connection between this and certain things which the young woman had said to him in their earlier conversation.
"Has it something to do with Lord Shardik?"
"What have you heard, then, about Lord Shardik?" asked the governor with an air of surprise.'
"Your wife spoke of him, and about the festival too. Besides, the ferrymen on the raft this morning had a chant--"Shardik gave his life for the children.' I should be interested to hear a little more, if you would care to tell me, about the cult of Shardik. I have an interest in such matters and in my own country I have been a--well, a teacher, I think you might say."
The governor, who was gazing into his silver cup and swirling the wine in it, looked up and grinned.
"That's more than I am, or ever shall be. I'm not p
articularly handy with words, though fortunately I don't need them to serve Lord Shardik. The teaching, as you call it, is simply that there isn't to be a deserted or unhappy child in the world. In the end, that's the world's only security: children are the future, you see. If there were no unhappy children, then the future would be secure."
He spoke with a kind of unassuming assurance, as a mountain guide might speak to travelers of passes and peaks which, for all their lonely wildness, he knows well. Siristrou had not understood all that he said and, finding it difficult to formulate questions in the other's language, fell back on the repetition of words which he had heard him speak.
"You said slaves of neglect and desertion? What does that mean?"
The governor rose, paced slowly across to the window and stood looking out toward the harbor. His next words came hesitantly, and Siristrou realized with some surprise that apparently he had seldom or never had occasion to try to express himself on this subject before.
"Children--they're born of mutual pleasure and joy--or they ought to be. And God means them to grow up--well, watertight, like a sound canoe; fit to work and play, buy and sell, laugh and cry. Slavery--real slavery's being robbed of any chance of becoming complete. The unwanted, the deprived and deserted--they're slaves all right--even if they don't know it themselves."
Siristrou felt no wish to become too much involved. To show a polite interest in foreign beliefs and customs was one thing; to become a target for the fervor of an uncultivated man was another.
"Well, well--perhaps there are some deserted children who don't mind too much."
"Which one of them told you that?" asked the governor, with so droll a simulation of genuine interest that Siristrou could not help laughing. However, he was wondering, now, how best to bring this part of their conversation to an end. He had himself begun it by asking for information, and it would not be civil simply to change the subject. The better way would be first to move on to some other aspect of the matter and thence slide to less tricky ground. Diplomacy was largely a matter of not upsetting people.
"Shardik--he was a bear, you say?"
"Lord Shardik was a bear."
"And he was--er--coming from God? I'm afraid I don't know the word."
"Divine?"
"Ah, yes. Thank you."
"He was the Power of God, but he was an actual bear."
"This was long ago?"