Maia (152 page)

"Cran almighty!" said Maia. "Of course I remember her! Yes, of course, she
was
Urtan, wasn't she?"

"She clutched my wrist. 'Occula!' she said. 'I saw when you came this evenin'. It's her, isn' it? It
is
her?'

" 'Yes,' I said. 'It's her all right.'

" 'I knew it,' she said. 'I knew I couldn' be wrong. I've told them, Occula.'

" 'Told who?' I said.

" 'Them. Tomorrow you go that way, look.' She pointed across the plain in the dark, and it was exactly where the fear was comin' from. 'It's only a mile or so,' she said. 'Not far at all.'

" 'But how did you know I was goin' to come out here?' I asked.

" 'I knew,' she said. 'I was waitin' for you.'

" 'I'm half mad with fear now,' I said. 'Where are we goin', Chia? What is it I have to do?'

"And do you know what happened then, banzi? She stood up and put her arms round me and she whispered, 'I'm afraid darlin' Shockula's in for a bit of an ock! But I'll pray for you, my dear.'

"And then she was gone. But suddenly I didn' feel afraid any more. Oh, yes, the fear was still there. It was like a great, deep lake, stretchin' all round me, and I was still in it. But before, I hadn' been able to swim, and now I could. That's the only way I can put it.

"I went back to the hut and slept till mornin'.

"We were up about an hour after dawn and I felt as though I'd said good-bye to everythin' and everyone I'd ever known. The men cleared up and packed their kit. Ashaktis paid the Elder and Fornis told me to go and ask our best way. I went off and pretended to ask some of the village people, and then I came back.

" 'They say that's best, Folda,' I said, pointin' where Chia had. You could see now, by daylight, the ground slopin' up out of the village for about a mile; up to the top of a kind of ridge-quite easy goin'. She'd nothin' to say against it and we set out.

"I knew then that all I had to do was listen to the goddess and commit myself completely to obeyin' her, even to the point of layin' down my life. Lay down my life? Oh, that seemed easy, compared with the fear she'd taken away."

Occula paused for a few moments, as though listening. Then she got up, went quietly over to the door and suddenly flung it open. There was no one outside. She shut it, came back, sat down beside Maia and continued in a lower voice.

"We were in Urtah, now, of course. I doan' know how much you know about Urtah, banzi, but it's all grazin' country up there, green and well-watered-the valley of the Olmen. We'd crossed the Beklan plain and now we were comin' into the Urtan cattle country. When we got up to the top of that ridge we could see it all spread out below. The change, after the plain-well, I suppose it struck me all the harder because I hadn' been expectin' it. It was so green: in spite of the time of year it was scarcely dried up at all. It was like a sort of huge cattle-meadow goin' on for miles; an enormous saucer with low hills all round the edge. They've looked after it for generations, of course, and Cran only knows how much cattle-dung and stuff must have gone into it. We could see a good many villages, and I thought I could make out the Olmen-oh, must have been eight or nine miles away; but it was all mixed up with horizon haze, and smoke, too, from the villages on the skyline. And there were these great flocks-sheep as well as cattle-all over the grasslands, with dogs and little boys and girls herdin' them. I s'pose you've done it yourself, haven' you?"

"Well, sort of," answered Maia. "But 'course we never had all that many beasts, you see."

"It certainly was a sight-talk about prosperous! That's what the soldiers thought, too, and Ashaktis and even Zuno. Only he was limpin' already. He'd already told me he didn' know how he was goin' to last out the day. I remember one of the soldiers shadin' his eyes and saying, 'Shakkarn! There's a few thousand meld walkin' about down there!' And Fornis said, 'Well, Taburn, when we get back I'll give you a farm, if you think you can live with the Urtans.' And he said, 'Ah, that's just it, esta-saiyett, isn' it? The bulls'd be all right, but what about the men?' 'Kill them off,' said Fornis. 'Slaughter the men and keep the bulls.' So they went on jokin' like that as we began comin' down off the ridge.

"I'd been doin' my best all along to keep up my act as the Sacred Queen's favorite, but now I could hardly manage it any more. The goddess had risen up erect in my

heart, like a snake that's goin' to strike; and me-I was like a hinnari string-ready tuned, oh yes; but so taut I could have screamed.

" 'You're very quiet this mornin', Occula,' says Fornis. 'Somethin' on your mind?'

"And it was just at that very moment, banzi, as she said that, that I saw-oh, how can I make you understand? Were you ever plagued by wasps in summer, until you went out to find the nest and destroy it? You know-you walk along the edges of the fields, and the banks and patches of trees, and then perhaps you see one or two wasps comin' and goin', and then more, and you get closer until at last you come on a hole or perhaps just a crack in a ditch, and then all of a sudden you realize there they are, crawlin' in and out in hundreds: the place your trouble's been comin' from. This was like that, only a million times worse.

"It wasn' far away-about half a mile below us. There were three very strange-looking rifts-sort of chasms-side by side on the open grassland. They were narrow, and the same distance between each; and they were all the same length, as if someone might actually have made them, a long time ago; only it would have to have been a god or a giant, because they were big-oh, I suppose three or four hundred yards long, each of them. You couldn' see how deep they were, because they were full of trees, and the branches stretched right across like a sort of carpet- they were as narrow as that. The grass and weeds were growin' tall all round them-you could see no flocks ever went there: and there were no paths leadin' to them; nothin'. And this was where the fear was comin' from-tens of thousands of ills and terrors and evils, creepin' out and flyin' off into the air. They were about their own business, and it wasn' men's business; and oh, banzi, I was the only one of us who could feel them or know they were there! I'm a dead girl, I thought: no human bein' can know that and go on livin'. Yet still I wasn' afraid, because it was
my
death. It was my own death, for Zai and for Kantza-Merada, and I was entirely ready for it.

" 'Oh, no, Folda,' I said-and I felt as though I was in a play, speakin' words through a mask-'No, I was just lookin' at those funny clefts down there and wonderin' what they could be: only I've never seen anythin' quite like them before, have you?'

" 'Where?' she said, and then she caught sight of them for herself. 'Why, no, I haven',' she said. 'You're right; they
are
funny. Come on, we'll go down and have a look at them; it'll beabit of sport. Iwonder how deep they are.'

"So she led the way down in the sunshine; and I was walkin' beside her while she talked away. And then all of a sudden she stopped and said, 'Ah, here's someone comin' to meet us. He'll tell us, I expect.'

"It was an old man who was comin'; a man who looked a bit like a priest, very grave and dignified, but roughly dressed and shabby-lookin' compared with the priests in Bekla. Although it was so hot, he was wrapped in a cloak and he was walkin' with a long staff; it had symbols cut on it and some sort of letters, too. There were two or three younger men with Mm-just ordinary herdsmen, they looked like. I didn' notice anythin' particular about them.

"The old man bowed to Fornis and greeted her very courteously and then he asked her whether we were strangers travelin' through.

" 'Yes, that's right, my good man,' she said, 'but you needn' think you're goin' to get any sort of toll out of us, though I doan' mind givin' your men the price of a drink. But since you're here,' she went on, before he'd had time to answer, 'perhaps you can tell me somethin' about those queer-lookin' ravines. I want to go and have a closer look at them.'

" 'Can you tell me their name?' he asked her.

" 'Oh,' says she, 'I thought
you
were goin' to tell
me
that. You live here, doan' you?'

" 'I do, saiyett,' he said; and now I could see-only she couldn'-that in some way I can' explain he'd taken charge of her, like a priest when an animal's taken to the temple. 'I and my men will walk down there and show them to you, since you wish it.'

"So then Queen Fornis stepped out in front with the old man, and Ashaktis and Zuno and me, we came behind with the herdsmen. But never a word we said to each other-not once. The men said nothin', you see, and it wasn' Ashaktis's way to waste words on people she despised. Zuno was frightened, because he was sure now he wouldn' be able to finish another day and he knew what Fornis had done to the soldier who'd foundered on her march to Bekla after she'd killed Durakkon. As for me, I felt as though I was walkin' to my own execution. I kept

lookin' round at the sun and thinkin', 'I'm seein' that for the last time.' But even now I wasn' afraid. It was all a dream-a trance in the sun, with the grasshoppers zippin' and now and then one of those hollow, flat sheep-bells clopperin' from somewhere along the slope. There were a lot of ant-hills, I remember, and a smell of chamomile and tansy in the air.

"I could hear Fornis laughin' and talkin' to the old man, but he didn' laugh back. He jus' kept up with her, leanin' on his staff and every now and then noddin' as she spoke. I felt-well, I felt we'd become a kind of procession. There was somethin' grave and ceremonial about it, for all Fornis was so glib and so much taken up with the prospect of sport.

"We came to the tall grass surroundin' the ravines, and she led the way straight in, tramplin' it down as she went. We followed her in single file, now, because it was up to your waist and there were a lot of nettles and thistles too: but she didn' mind them; she was so eager to get there.

"So we came up to the lip of the middle ravine. It was very abrupt, like the edge of a cliff, but all overgrown, and the long grass actually tangled up with the leaves of the trees. The trees were growin' out of the sides of the ravine, you see, and their leaves and branches stretched almost right across, as I told you. But now that we were on the very edge, lookin' down, the leaves weren' an unbroken coverin', as they'd seemed when we were up on the ridge. You could see, now, down among the branches and through them. And below them, banzi, below the leaves, there was nothin'-nothin' at all: just bare, stony ground, almost sheer, slopin' down into darkness. Do you remember that day at Sencho's, when we put the two big silver mirrors opposite each other and took it in turns to look in; and you were so frightened? This was far worse. That place went down for ever. It was as though you were lookin' into the night sky from the other side. I tried to imagine it, goin' on and on, down and down, nothin' but stones and rock; not a beetle, not a fly, not a sound since the world began.

"I came back four or five steps from the edge. I felt faint; Zuno actually had to hold me up for a few moments. I knew now what the goddess required of me and why she hadn' told me before: it would have driven me mad and I'd never have got there. I'd thought she only required my

death; but she was requirin' more than that. I remember once in Thettit seein' a condemned man brought out, and he was puttin' on one hell of a good act; until he actually saw the scaffold.

"Fornis had come back a few yards, too. 'Well,' she said-and she actually clapped the old man on the shoulder, as though they'd been in a tavern together-'this'll be a lark, woan' it? How deep is it, do you know?'

" 'I can't tell you that, saiyett,' he answered.

" 'Well, then,' she said, 'we shall just have to find out, shan't we? Shakti, you'll come, woan' you? Remember the herons in Suba?' i

"Ashaktis had looked in and she was white to the lips. 'I'm sorry, saiyett,' she said. 'I'm afraid I'm a little too old for it now. I beg you to excuse me.'

" 'Oh, Cran's teeth!' said Fornis. "The whole damn' place seems to be full of cowards and weaklin's today, what with you and Zuno. I shall have to think what I'm goin' to do about it later, shan't I? Come on then, Occula! Apparently it's just you and me.'

" 'Yes, Folda,' I said. 'Just you and me.'

"So then she went off into the bushes by herself. I suppose the truth was that it had loosened even
her
bowels, but it hadn' loosened mine. While she was gone I stood and prayed aloud. I didn' care who heard me-to tell you the truth, by this time I was hardly thinkin' about anyone else bein' there at all. I went through the litany of Kantza-Merada for the last time.

"At the word of the dark judges, that word which

tortures the spirit, Kantza-Merada, even the goddess, was turned to a

dead body,

Defiled, polluted, a corpse hangin' from a stake. 'Most strangely, Kantza-Merada, are the laws of the

dark world effected. O Kantza-Merada, do not question the laws of the

nether world.'

The goddess from the great above descended to the

great below.

To the nether world of darkness she descended. The goddess abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, Abandoned dominion, abandoned ladyship, To the nether world of darkness she descended."

Occula was sobbing. After a few moments she dug her nails into her palm, drew a deep breath and went on.

"I was just finishin' when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I stopped and looked round: it was the old priest. I knew now that he was a priest. He was a herdsman, but he was the priest of that place, too: whenever there was anythin' needed to be done, as you might say.

"He stared into my eyes for what seemed a long time. At last he said, 'Those whom I serve have spoken in my heart and told me that you are the one appointed to carry this out. Am I right?'

"'Yes,'I said.

" 'But you have no weapon.'

" 'I'm the weapon,' I answered.

"He stared into my eyes again and then he said, 'Even here there is the frissoor. You have it. Do as you judge best. I will pray for you.'

"And then Form's came back, all stripped and ready. She patted Zuno on the cheek. 'Cheer up, little chap,' she said. 'If I doan' forget, I'll stick a knife in you this afternoon, and then you'll have nothin' more to worry about, will you? Now come on, Occula, if you're ready.'