Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

At last, contracting, as it were, in order to enter the finite, visible world, the cloud-dreams crystallized into fig-ments she could apprehend and seem to see--persons, time, even a situation. It seemed that Zenka--her own Zenka, her lover as he had once been--had indeed returned and was standing beside her bed in Melvda-Rain. He was weary and travel-worn, yet full of pride and fulfillment; at which she felt no surprise, for it was once more the night when they had become lovers. Yet now Anda-Nokomis was there also; a strangely two-minded Anda-Nokomis, at one and the same time glad and despite himself sorry to see Zenka back.

Zenka spoke to him. She seemed to hear his very words. "It was well worth the risk. Good men, some of them-- thousand pities if they'd been killed in a pointless scrap."

"Why," she cried gladly, "that's just how I felt, too, that night in Melvda! You understand then, don't you? We understand each other now, Zenka, my darling--"

As she seemed to say this, an enormous relief and happiness filled her, a certainty that now everything would be all right. Yet he appeared not to hear, even though he was looking down at her as Anda-Nokomis laid a hand on his shoulder in congratulation.

"She was very nearly your only casualty," he said. "I've really been afraid for her reason. She's been in a terrible state."

She tried to move, to stretch out her hands, tried to speak again, but it had become one of those dreams in which you couldn't. And now Zenka--it seemed to be his turn to appear two-minded. He frowned, looking down and tapping with one foot on-the ground.

"Then all I can say is, it's been her turn to know what it feels like."

King Karnat's trumpet was sounding for the muster. Zenka went away and she knew she had to go and swim the Valderra again. The soldiers had pulled her out and were bending over her.

She opened her eyes. It was Anda-Nokomis. Slowly, she remembered where they were and what had happened last night. Had she then bees dreaming or awake--or both?

It was broad daylight. She sat up, looking round at the interlaced branches, the drooping, withered trepsis bloom spelling "Serrelinda" and at Anda-Nokomis beside her.

He smiled his restrained, distant smile. "Our friend's back."

,"He's back?"

"He was here just now, while you were still asleep. He got those men to the camp quite successfully and handed them over to Elleroth. I don't think he was gone nine hours altogether." He paused. "Twenty miles and a sleepless night, but more peaceful than some people's, I think, all the same."

Relief surged over her as over an exhausted castaway washed up on a beach. She wanted nothing: the immediate moment was enough. She lay back, content merely to re-main where she was and know that Zenka was alive. So fully did this feeling possess her that for some time she did not even mind that in this woken, real state they were not reconciled and that of course he could not have heard what she had said to him in her dream. No matter. She would still be able to help him to get to Katria; still be able to make her sacrifice.

That was enough, for she had thought herself deprived of it and now she had it back, the bitter solace of her integrity.

97: NYBRIL

They brought her some food, and Tolis sent to enquire whether she still wanted to talk to him. Yes, she said, and when he came thanked him graciously and sincerely for looking after her when she'd lost her head the night before: so that he hardly knew what to reply. Well, he'd acted as he thought best: he hoped she didn't mind: decisions weren't always easy: sometimes these things had to be done. Neither of them mentioned Zen-Kurel.

Maia, little though she knew of soldiering, could not help being impressed by the practiced ease with which the Sarkidians cleaned up and cleared the camp site. Having no axes for a pyre or spades for burial, they could only commit the two dead men to the river. Both were young and not ill-looking, though sadly gaunt and famished. One, so Maia thought, a little resembled Sednil. She felt full of pity for them. At her request (she doubted whether it would have been done otherwise), the tryzatt brought her some grain, salt and wine to fling after them into the river. She picked an armful of flowers, too--thy dis and mar-joram, bartsia and planella--sprinkled them on the current and as they drifted away offered a prayer that the young men might meet with Sphelthon and share his peace.

"You didn't feel in any danger?" she asked Zen-Kurel as they were setting out. She felt able, now, to address him directly, though still avoiding any suggestion of warmth or particularly friendly feeling. He, for his part, seemed to have eome to regard their relationship as one between two people working with mutual respect towards a com-mon end, without seeking or expecting more.

"No one need have felt in any danger," he replied. "It should never have been allowed to come to blows at all." Then, as Tolis came up, he shrugged and broke off with the air of one refraining from criticism of colleagues, however well justified.

It was no more than nine or ten miles to Nybril, which they reached about noon. Unconsciously, Maia had entertained in her mind a picture of a place something like Meerzat--a little, riparian town, with regular trade and boats coming and going as on Lake Serrelind. The reality was disappointingly--indeed, dauntingly--different. Ny-bril Point, the rocky bluff rising above the confluence of the Flere and the Zhairgen, possessed no harbor remotely resembling Meerzat's sheltered, south-facing bay. Almost the sole advantage of the place lay in its virtual impreg-nability, a narrow triangle of which two sides were rivers. Long ago, some baron had built a castle there, but for many years past no baron had wished to live in so unin-viting a spot, whose only mercantile value was as a stopping-off point for wool-and timber-laden rafts coming down the Flere from Yelda. (There was a depot on the upper Flere about ten miles south of Ikat.) In years to come Sarkid was to develop Nybril, constructing a mole and introducing ferries to either shore, but at this period of the empire's history it was still little more than a windy rock where a largely hereditary community of about two thousand souls were content to eke out a living in the knowledge that they were at least secure from pillage. Strangers, apart from the raft-men and occasional pedlars, were rare and not particularly welcome, since their reasons for coming were suspect.

The arrival of Tolis and his men, whose approach had of course been observed and reported an hour earlier, was watched by a fair-sized crowd from the walls on either side of the gates. His authority from Elleroth having been duly accepted, he was accorded a reserved welcome by the Elder, who nevertheless unbent slightly upon being told that the soldiers were to leave before nightfall.

A man appointed to act as guide escorted Maia, Zen-Ku-rel and Anda-Nokomis halfway down the steep, western slope of the headland to "TheWhite Roses," one of the two or three inns in the town, which was also a fishing-tackle store and a corn chandler's. It hardly measured up to "The Safe Moorings," and although Maia had never had any great opinion of Frarnli, she was in no doubt that Frarnli would have been able to keep the place a deal cleaner, tackle store or no. She had not sat down for long on the little upstairs balcony before the warmth of her body brought a swarm of ticks out of the woodwork of her chair.

They were eating fish broth with black bread when Tolis came in to tell them, with aloof but self-conscious cor-rectnessrthat he was now leaving. If he had been expecting any sort of protest he was disappointed. Zen-Kurel, having ordered up a bottle of wine to drink to Elleroth's fortunes and a speedy heldro victory (which Tolis could hardly decline) thanked him most courteously for all he had done for them and then insisted on accompanying him to the town gates to bid farewell to tryzatt Miarn and the men.

Anda-Nokomis went too but Maia, who felt angry, stayed behind. Having slept until the cool of the evening, she washed in a pail of tepid river water and then went out onto the balcony, taking with her a stool which she hoped would prove to be without inhabitants.

She had a spacious view of the confluence, and for the best part of an hour, with the slowly-setting sun full in her eyes, sat contemplating the scene below her, the converging rivers and the comings and

goings on land and water. To her left the Here, boundary between Sarkid and Belishba, came flowing down from a blue distance of woods interspersed with cultivated, plain-like country. Far off, she could make out grazing flocks and smoke-crowned villages. A peaceful, fertile country it looked--Sarkid of the Sheaves, the hero Deparioth's land. On her right the upper Zhairgen came swirling round the base of the rocky promontory which cut off her view of the wilder country through which they had just come. She recalled how someone, at a party in Bekla, had once described Nybril to her as being like the stone in a cherry.

Yet it was the water below her--the water and what was on it--which most closely engaged her attention. As we know, Maia was knowledgeable about water, and what principally struck her was its unpleasant choppiness and general look of nasty, unmanageable turbulence. Where the two mainstreams met there was a clearly visible seam and an extensive area of broken water, in which she could see logs, large branches and other flotsam tossing and tumbling. Maia, like everyone else in the empire, was accustomed almost unconsciously to animate impressive places and natural phenomena, just as she had animated the for-est of Pura. Under that water, she felt unreflectingly, dwelt a spirit--demi-god or demon--harshly jealous of his realm, who brooked human beings thereon with an ill grace and hard sufferance.

Nybril, as she could now appreciate, was suitable for a river port only to the extent that from it, during the sum-mer, merchandise could be sent downstream on rough, expendable rafts. The town had not grown up as a port but as a stronghold. The current was too strong for the place to be readily accessible except from upstream. It could never enjoy Meerzat's regular, easy comings and goings of boats. To be sure, there were a few small ones tied up along the little front below, but they did not look at all strongly built or fit for rough water, and she supposed that they were used only for fishing under the lee of the promontory and perhaps for direct crossings into Belishba at seasons, such as this, when the water was low and the current slack enough to permit of it.

The sinking sun turned the whole, receding expanse of the river--the broadest she had ever seen--to a dull crimson, glittering with quick streaks and flashes of gold. By contrast, the great cracks in the dried mud exposed along the banks showed pitch-black--deep, jagged crevices as broad as a man's hand.

Even up here, high above the meeting-point of the two rivers, there seemed to be no breeze. The big, palmate leaves on the trees below her hung still as though waxen and nothing stirred the white dust that covered the steep zig-zag of the lane descending to the quay. I ought to feel at peace, she thought: there's no danger and there's a bed for the night. And yet I feel-well, I dunno: it's not right, somehow; it's not what t expected. I'll be glad when we've been able to get fixed up to go.

Hearing a movement behind her, she turned to see Anda-Nokomis standing in the entrance to the balcony. She smiled and gestured to him to join her, but though he came forward to sit beside her he did not smile in reply.

"Soldiers gone?" she asked.

"Oh, yes; some time ago now."

"I ought to have gone to thank them myself. Wish I had, now."

"You can't be blamed," he answered. "That young Tolis fellow should never have taken them away. He did it out of pure ill-humor. They very nearly mutinied: they'd been looking forward to a night on the town--such as it is."

"You mean he resented what Zenka did last night?"

"I do."

"I wish I was still--well, what I used to be," she said. "I'd 'a seen as he heard some more about it 'fore I'd done."

"But if you were, it would never have happened, would it?"

She laughed, but once again he did not.

"You never laugh, Anda-Nokomis. I could make a beg-gar laugh easier 'n what I can you."