Maia (151 page)

you must excuse this intrusion. Believe me, it may very well save your life and that's my only excuse.'

"Well, you remember Shenda, doan' you? It'd be very difficult for anyone, even Fornis, to get angry with Shenda. He always had a sort of a way with him, didn't he?

" 'You'd better tell me, then,' she said.

" 'It's the chief priest who's sent me, esta-saiyett,' says he.

" 'The chief priest?' answers Fornis. 'Well, you go back and tell the chief priest that if he's got anythin' to say to me he can come up here and say it for himself.'

" 'Well, that's just it, esta-saiyett,' said Shenda. 'He can't.'

" 'What d'you mean, he can't?' she asked.

" 'Well, esta-saiyett, it so happened I was down at the temple this evenin', havin' treatment for this wounded foot of mine from one of the priests. And while I was there, all of a sudden we heard this commotion outside. So the doctor and me, we went out to see what was up, and there was the chief priest and a lot of others; and down in the Tamarrik Court below there was this crowd-all sorts; women, too-and the chief priest was tryin' to calm them down; only he couldn' make himself heard. They just kept on shoutin' "Serrelinda! Serrelinda!" and "Murder! Murder!" and "Jejjereth!" and things like that.'

" 'Well, I'll cut it short, esta-saiyett,' goes on Shenda. 'What it comes to is that the chief priest's sent me to tell you that the whole lower city's in a state close on disorder and riot. He sent me because he thought that as a wounded officer I'd be able to get through the streets without bein' set upon. There's no priest dares put his face outside the temple, you see. What the people are sayin'-and I beg you to bear in mind, esta-saiyett, that I'm only reportin' what the chief priest told me to tell you-is that you've murdered Maia Serrelinda. To be perfectly blunt, esta-saiyett, they're demandin' your life. The chief priest thinks you should leave Bekla at once, and keep out of the way for some time. He hopes you'll send him word where you are, and he'll let you know as soon as things are better.'

"And then, while Fornis was still chewin' on that, Shend-Lador added, "The chief priest particularly asked me to say, esta-saiyett, that if he can' assure the people that you've left the city, he woan' be answerable for anythin' that may happen.'

"Well, the next few hours were like a bastin' madhouse, banzi: you can' imagine it. Fornis insistin' she'd go down to the lower city herself and give them a piece of her mind, and Han-Glat preventin' her more or less by force: and then there were two more frantic messages from the chief priest, one brought by a pedlar and the other by a shearna called Nyllista (and I wonder what
she
was doin' in the temple, doan' you?). No one else could get through the mob, you see. You never heard such a shine in your life.

"Well, at last, in the middle of the night, above five or six hours after Shend-Lador had first come, Han-Glat told Fornis in so many words that she'd have to get out. And he flatly refused to come with her. He'd got Bekia and he meant to hang on to it. She raged and stormed and cursed, but he wouldn' budge an inch. And at last it began to dawn on Miss Fornis that if she refused he might even go the length of killin' her himself-that or else hand her over to the mob. The riotin' had been goin' on all night and we were half-expectin' them to come over the Peacock Wall any moment. The Pal-teshis were there to stop them, of course, but even they were pretty badly shaken by this time.

"Fornis's plan, when at last she'd been forced to accept the idea of leavin', was to rejoin her army-the army she'd left on the plain after she'd murdered Durakkon. She couldn' make out why they hadn' turned up: she'd been expectin' them every hour. And then, in the middle of that very night, while we were packin' up and gettin' ready to go, a couple of Palteshi soldiers arrived with news that must have shaken even her.

"Sendekar-good old Sendekar, out on the Valderra-
he'd
heard the rumor that Fornis had murdered you. Well, of course, banzi, if ever you had a friend in the whole empire it was Sendekar. And since he'd found out that Karnat had gone off to western Terekenalt and any sort of attack across the Valderra was unlikely for the time bein', he'd turned half his lads round and gone east. He'd joined up with Kerith-a-Thrain and between them they'd attacked the Palteshis a second time and made quite a mess of them. Just how bad a mess we couldn' make out, but the two soldiers were quite clear that there was no longer any chance of the Palteshis reachin' Bekla. And by the same token Fornis couldn' hope to get to them.

"You had to admit she had courage, the bitch. She heard the messengers out without a tremor; and then she said to

Han-Glat, as cool as you like, 'Very well,' she said, 'since you're so anxious to see the back of me, you cowardly bastard, I'll go to Quiso, and Cran help you when I get back. I shan' need anythin' from you, except half a dozen soldiers. Here are the names of the particular men I want: go and get them yourself, now.' And do you know, banzi, Han-Glat just took the list out of her hand and went off to fetch them? 'And you, Shakti,' she said, 'get my clothes and stuff together, and hurry up about it. I'm takin' you and Zuno and Occula, that's all.'

"So about an hour later, banzi, we were let down a rope over the eastern wall of the upper city, hardly a quarter of a mile from your house. There was no other way out, you see: we couldn' go into the lower city, and as for the Red Gate, Eud-Ecachlon had the citadel and that was that.

"You'd have thought Fornis was off to a festival. Do you know, if I'd been some stranger who didn' know what a cruel, wicked woman she was, I believe I'd have found myself admirin' her that mornin'? You could see how she'd kept herself in power all those years. The Palteshis we had with us would have done anythin' for her, and she-well, she treated them exactly as if she was their officer-checkin' their weapons, givin' them nicknames and encouragin' them and makin' jokes and-well, all the rest of it. I got the notion that above all else she wanted to distract their minds from any idea that she was runnin' away. She spoke several times about 'When we get back' and how they could all look forward to Melekril in Bekla, and a lot more stuff like that. She acted as if she was in the very best of spirits.

" 'Are you reckonin' on walkin' the whole way to Quiso, Folda?' I asked her as we were startin' out.

" 'How else?' she answered. 'It'll do you all good-blow the cobwebs away. It's only a hundred miles: I could be there and back in ten days. Why? Doan' you fancy it?'

" 'But the mountains, esta-saiyett?' asked Zuno. (He wasn' lookin' a bit happy: not his idea of fun at all, of course.)

" 'Never been there?' said she. 'Very beautiful, Zuno: you'll like them, though of course we shall have to hurry through rather, if we're to get to Quiso before the Rains. Step out, my lad! I've got a hundred meld on you to be the first man into Gelt!' They all laughed at that-except Zuno. I believe she really
was
enjoyin' herself. She felt

quite certain-she had for years-that nothin' could really get the better of her in the long run.

"At firs' we went straight up the Gelt high road. But durin' that mornin' I began to have a very strange feelin'. At the time I thought it mus' be the heat. It was swelterin' hot-you've no idea. Some of the soldiers were close to droppin', and she was carryin' his pack for one of them, if you please. She was carryin' as much weight as any of the other nine of us, and more than some.

"The feelin' was that I had to get Forms to leave the highway. And then I realized it was Kantza-Merada speakin' in my heart. She was tellin' me what to do. Pnly I wasn' to learn everythin', because if I had, I'd have got so frightened that I'd probably have made Fornis suspicious by actin' unnaturally. For that matter, you know, the gods have carried out their purposes through idiots and children before now. Their agents doan' have to understand what they're doin'-not for the purposes of the gods they doan'.

"About noon we spotted a village off to the west, in a patch of trees on the plain. It's very bare country, you know, north of Bekla, before you get up into Urtah. Just the plain one side and the Tonildan Waste the other and the road goin' on for mile after mile, up one slope and down the next. Any trees you see have usually been planted, to make a bit of shade and shelter-near a well, as a rule, for there aren' any rivers-not one.

" 'How about a rest and a bite over there in the shade, Folda?' I said. 'You can' expect everybody to have your kind of stayin' power.'

"Well, at first she said no, but after a bit I managed to persuade her that there was no point in wearin' them all out on the first day; so we went about a mile off the road, down a track to the village, and had some sour wine and a meal in a dirty little tavern. She kept the hood of her cloak up and anyway there was hardly anyone there but us.

"From then on, banzi, I was puttin' everythin' I had into workin' on her the same as I worked on Sencho. I knew what I had to do. Oh, but it was far, far harder than with Sencho, and that was hard enough! And that knife business with the Urtan fellow at the party that night-that was child's play compared to this. A strong, cunnin', powerful woman, still in her prime! You see, I had nothin' to go on at all except what Kantza-Merada was tellin' me. I didn' know myself what my purpose was supposed to be. All

she'd vouchsafed to me was that I
must
keep Fornis off the high road-away from other travelers-as we went on across the plain.

"When she was ready to go, I suggested that if we were to stay on the open plain there'd be more chance of a bit of sport with her bow. She was always a great one for that, you know. Well, so we went on by cattle-tracks to the next village and the one beyond that, arrows on strings all the time. She shot a couple of kites, both of them busy with carrion, and one of those wild dogs. We came on a pack that apparently didn' know enough to keep out of bowshot- not out of her bowshot, anyway.,

"When we stopped for the night she was still in good heart. She'd been sayin' we were goin' to camp, but as things turned out we lodged in a little sort of hamlet-a very poor, pinched place, where they were only too glad to see the color of our money. She made me sleep with her. She'd told the soldiers she kept me as a sort of personal bodyguard, and she sent Ashaktis off to sleep somewhere else. She enjoyed vexin' Ashaktis from time to time, you know: it was all part of the queer relationship they had with each other.

"Well, I needn' go into all the details, banzi, but by the next night I suppose we must have been thirty or thirty-five miles from Bekla, with about twenty miles to go to the Gelt foothills. And that was when the goddess began speakin' again, and when I began gettin' really frightened.

"I can' explain this, even to you: I couldn' explain it to anyone who didn' know it for themselves. I remember once, back in Silver Tedzhek, when I was no more than about eight, I heard Zai talkin' to an old priestess. An' I understood what they were talkin' about all right, even though I couldn' have explained it. She said 'Great suf-ferin', unendin' longin' and continual prayer: when these trench and water the heart, the goddess will spring up in it at last.'

"Well, she was springin' up now all right, and I hadn' been so frightened since I crossed the Govig-no, not even on the night when we killed Sencho-because what she told me-
all
she told me-was that we were gettin' closer and closer to a place of terrible dread and power. The dread was like a sort of invisible mist, thickenin' all the time we went on, because we were gettin' nearer and nearer to this place, whatever it might be. And I was the only

person who could feel it, banzi; the only person out of all the ten of us. The soldiers were all cheerful enough, and Ashaktis seemed in better spirits, than when we started. The only person who noticed the state I was in was Zuno: he couldn' imagine the reason, but at least he showed me a bit of consideration; and I was glad of it, I can tell you. I felt as though an invisible thunderstorm was comin' up, darker and closer all round me. Only this wasn' thunder; it was fear; fear in the very air I was breathin', in my lungs and my heart. And all the time Kantza-Merada was sayin' to me, 'This furnace is bein' heated for you: it's
your
place that is comin', and
your
hour.' Closer and closer and worse and worse, until I could hardly go on. Once, for about half an hour, I couldn' even breathe properly. My lungs sort of closed up and the air itself seemed thick as blankets: it was like drownin' on dry land. Forms thought I was puttin' it on because I wanted to stop for a rest, and she began teasin' me. I let her go on thinkin' that. The breathless fit passed off after a time, but I was still afraid.

"That second night I couldn' sleep. Fornis had had me do what she wanted and she was sleepin' sound as a child, while I lay sweatin'. At last I slipped out of bed and went outside. It was a bright, clear night full of stars, but that didn' make me feel any better. I had a horrible fancy that the stars were like those studs they fix inside a guard hound's collar, so that you can control it by twistin'. I was the hound, and the goddess had me by the collar, pressin' the studs of the stars against my throat. I remember beggin' her for relief, but all she said in my heart was 'Remember your father. That is why you have been brought here.'

"I wandered down between the huts until I came to the far end of the village. I felt drenched in fear-you could have squeezed it out of me. I scarcely knew what I was doin'. I believe I was goin' to run away-anywhere, just as long as it was away. And then, suddenly, someone near me said, 'Occula!'

"It was a girl's voice and I knew I'd heard it somewhere before. That was all-I was in such a state that I thought it must be a ghost. I looked all round in the starlight and again the voice said, 'Occula' very quietly, sort of quick and low.

"And then I saw her, crouched down in the bushes. I went across to her. She was real all right. D'you know who it was? It was Chia, the girl you hit over the head

with the fryin'-pan at Lalloc's: the girl you bought and sent home, remember?"