Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

Maia could make little of this, except that he meant to go away and leave her behind. Her silent incomprehension seemed to recall to him that he was speaking to her in particular. He came back across the room and sat beside her on the floor.

"I'll explain," he said. "King Karnat of Terekenalt has his army in camp about thirty or forty miles south of here, at a place called Melvda-Rain. We--that's to say the Su-bans--are joining him as allies, which means that Lenkrit and I, as Suban leaders, need to get down there at once. We're leaving now--before dark. We're going by water-- all traveling's by water in Suba. We'll get there about mid-day tomorrow. Once we get clear of these eastern marshes it's more or less straight all the way, down the Nordesh. You'll be following as soon as possible--"

"Me, my lord---I mean Anda-Nokomis: why me?"

"Oh--well--" He hesitated. "I won't explain now: but I'll see to it that you're told before you get to Melvda."

"If I've got to go, Anda-Nokomis, can't I go with you?"

"You're not fit to travel tonight, Maia, that's certain. You need more rest and sleep. I've suggested you start tomorrow, in the afternoon. Lenkrit's leaving Tescon, so that you'll be able to travel with someone who's not entirely a stranger; and I've found a sensible, steady girl to go with you."

"No one else? Just those two?"

He was silent, thinking. "Yes, of course there ought to be an older man as well. I don't know who'd--"

Suddenly he looked up, smiling. "Well, of course! U-Nasada's going to Melvda--he can easily wait and go with you! There couldn't be anyone better."

"U-Nasada?"

"The old man you saw this morning--the doctor. You'll be safer with him than you would be with forty soldiers. Everyone in Suba knows and respects Nasada, you see. He goes everywhere--all over the place."

"Is he a priest?" To Maia, as to everyone in the empire, healing was associated with religion, or at least with magic.

"I believe he was once: I remember hearing that he started as a priest, so I suppose strictly speaking he still is. But ever since I can remember, he's been known simply as a doctor. Everyone looks up to him because he gives his skill for nothing; or for very little, anyway. It's not every doctor who understands our illnesses in Suba, you see--the marsh-fevers, the agues and all the rest of it. Very few doctors want to come here. It's not like any other province, and there's nothing to be made out of people who've got no money. Nasada knows more about Suba than anyone else; and no one's going to make trouble for him. They're only too glad to see him coming."

"Does he live here: in this village, I mean?"

"He doesn't really live anywhere: he's nearly always on the move. It was a piece of good luck for us that he happened to be here last night."

She could not find it in herself to respond to his cheerfulness. Her own feelings were not far removed from despair. She might as wen, she thought, have been swept away with Thel in the Valderra. Used though she had always been to making the best of things, what was there now to make the best of? She recalled something Occula had once said: "Wherever else you go, banzi, keep out of Suba. You want the blood running out of your tairth, not your venda." Suba was a by-word for every sickness of the stomach and bowels. This headache and malaise-- might it be the bloody flux that was coming on her now? She had heard tell, too, of the marsh-fever, that could knock down a strong, healthy girl like a blow from a fist and kill her in a few hours. Her body--her beautiful body! She thought of Sencho fondling and grunting with pleasure in the cool, scented, fly-screened cleanliness of the garden-room. "The marsh for frogs," ran the saying, "and Suba for the Subans." Kembri would learn soon enough, after last night, that she had been taken across the Valderra.

She would be written off as dead.

Bayub-Otal stood up with the air of a busy man unable for the moment to spare her more time. "Well, I may see you again, Maia, before I go: but anyhow we won't be apart for long. I'll ask the girl to come and ,see you. Her name's Luma, by the way." Stooping, he touched her hand for a moment and was gone down the ladder.

The girl did not come at once, however, and Maia, dropping off into a half-dream, seemed to herself to be walking round the pain in her shin, which had become a kind of heavy, carved block, like those in the Slave Market at Bekla. Somewhere Nennaunir, cool and inaccessible, was standing at the top of a staircase among sycamore trees.

She woke slowly, and lay sweating as the dream gradually dispersed. The flies buzzed in the dusky room and a gleam of red sunlight, slanting through a crack, dazzled a moment in her eyes. After a time she became aware of a curious, droning sound, something like the wind against the edge of a shutter, but varying in tone, rather as though some large flying insect were in the room. Raising herself and looking round her, she saw a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor near the ladder-entrance. Her back was half-turned towards Maia and she was gazing idly downward. The droning--a kind of humming murmur--came from her. It was repetitive, a succession of five or six sustained notes, predictable as the song of a bird. There was no clear beginning or end to the cadence and the singer, indeed, appeared ho more conscious of making it than she might be of breathing or blinking. With one forefinger she was slowly tracing an invisible pattern on the boards, but this movement, too, seemed recurrent, a kind of counterpart of her drone. On the one wrist which Maia could see was a notched, rather ugly wooden bracelet, stained unevenly in blue and green. Her dirty feet were bare and her hair was gathered in a plait tied with a ragged strip of leather.

This, surely, must be the girl of whom Bayub-Otal had spoken. Watching her, Maia began thinking how best to go about making use of her for her own comfort and relief in this dismal place. Yes, and for her instruction, too, for there must be plenty she would need to learn. It was a pity she had nothing to give her, for it was important that the girl should not think her stuck-up or feel impatient with her for not knowing Suban ways.

The thought of pestilence came scuttling and creeping back into her mind: her very life might well depend on the girl. There must be ways of protecting oneself--things to do and things to avoid. If only she could contrive to avoid getting ill, then one day, somehow or other, the opportunity might arise to escape: though how--and here her despair returned, so that she shivered in the stuffy room-- she could form no least idea. Better to think no more about that, but get on with what was immediately to hand.

She tried to impart a friendly tone to her voice. "Are you Luma?"

She had expected the girl to start or jump up, but on the contrary she gave no immediate sign of having heard her. Then, rather as though reluctantly turning aside from something else which had been absorbing her attention, she lifted her finger from the floor, raised her head, blinked, smiled and nodded. She had dark, heavy-lidded eyes, a broad nose and full lips; and might, thought Maia, have been quite a pretty girl--something after the style of the Deelguy--if it had not been for her sallow, mottled skin and a weeping sore at one corner of her mouth, which she licked nervously before replying.

"Luma." She nodded and smiled again. Maia guessed her to be about seventeen.

"I hope you're going to be able to teach me how you do things here," she said "Only I've never been in Suba in my life, see, and where I've come from it's all different."

The girl spread her hands, smiled again and said something that sounded like "Shagreh."

"Anda-Nokomis said you're going to come with me to Melvda-Rain," said Maia. "Do you know it? Have you been there before?"

The girl nodded. This was better than Maia had hoped for.

"You have? What's it like?"

"Shagreh," said the girl, smiling. Then, as Maia paused, puzzled, she said, in a thick Suban accent, "You'd like some food?"

"What? Oh--no; no, thank you," answered Maia. "I had something not long ago."

The girl, however, appeared to take this for an assent, for she got up and was plainly about to go down the ladder. Maia called her back.

"What I really want," she said, standing up and smil

ing, "is to wash." The girl looked at her nervously, scratching at one armpit and apparently wondering what she had done wrong. "I want to wash," repeated Maia. Still getting no response, she began to mime the act of stooping and splashing water over her neck and face.

At all events there was nothing wrong with her mimicry. The girl's face tit up with comprehension.

"Oh, wash!" she said, laughing with pleasure at having grasped Maia's meaning. She paused, still smiling.

At length she added, "You want-- now?"

"Yes, please," said Maia. "You wash out of doors here, don't you?" She pointed through the door opening. "Will you show me where it is?"

Luma nodded, raised her palm to her forehead and stood aside for Maia to go first down the ladder.