The Shasht War (36 page)

He must have dozed while standing there, for the next thing he knew the door closed and the tall man entered the room. He removed his hat and cloak, revealing a heavy tunic and loose wool trousers. On his feet were clogs.

"Well, are you a little warmer now?" The man smiled, rubbed his hands and warmed them by the fire. Thru could only manage a nod.

"Welcome to the Tower of Quarantine, friend," said the man. "You have the look of a worn-out fugitive about you. I assume you were being hunted?"

Thru nodded.

"Well, they won't come in here. They're all afraid of this place."

Thru found his voice. "What is this place?"

"A prison cell!" The man threw his hands out around him dramatically. "No, listen to me, I do not jest. For all the luxury of the place, it is a prison and I am its only prisoner. I am kept here in case someday my talents are needed."

"Who keeps you here, the priests?"

The man chuckled. "You must be from a far-off country. The priests would never keep a prisoner like myself for very long. The altar of the temple calls out for too many hearts for that."

The man's forehead suddenly wrinkled as he stared at Thru.

"I say, you are an odd-looking fellow. Very hairy, aren't you? You poor fellow, what was it, an accident of birth?"

Thru didn't know how to respond.

"Well," he began, but the man spoke again quickly.

"Doesn't matter to me, friend. I don't care if your mother or your father was a donkey, you can speak decent Shashti and that's enough for this old patriot." Thru stared at the man, completely uncertain as to how to reply. Unsure if he was understanding what he was hearing. Still, the man didn't seem to need much of a response. He was glad to do all the talking.

"So you are welcome to my prison cell. There's plenty of room here."

"Who keeps you here? If you don't mind me asking."

"Mind? No I don't mind. It was my good friend Aeswiren who put me here. He keeps me safe here, see. In case they ever need me again."

"Aeswiren the Emperor?"

"That's right, friend, and he was my good friend long before he became the Emperor. Known him all my life."

The man straightened up having noticed that Thru was holding his wounded hand.

"That's my misfortune. But hold on, you're hurt. Why didn't you say something? What happened? Did those wretched dogs...?"

Thru nodded and the man turned about at once.

"I've got to get some water and bandages. We need to clean the wound, dog bite can turn nasty if left untreated."

In a few minutes the man reappeared from another room carrying a kettle, which he set on the rack and swung into the fire. He produced a bottle of green lotion.

"This stuff was recommended to me by a field surgeon once. He said he'd learned about it from a hospital in the city. You put this on wounds, and it stops the rot from beginning."

Thru allowed the man to examine his hand, then to clean it with hot water before applying the green liquid, which had a strong smell and stung when it touched the open cuts.

"Do you feel it stinging?" said the man.

"Yes, why does it do that?"

"That shows that it's working. I don't know why it works, but it does."

The man was friendly, welcoming. Thru's understanding of the alien world of Shasht had become considerably more complex during the last few weeks. He knew that the men were not of a single opinion. But a few were willing to risk their own lives to help fugitives such as himself. He gave thanks to the Spirit for guiding his feet to this tower.

"Tell me, my fur-covered friend, what are you called? Do you have a name?"

Thru looked up. "Yes, I am Thru Gillo."

"Thru Gillo, eh? An unusual name for these parts. You're not from around here, though, are you?"

"No, sir. I am from a land that is far away. Across the ocean."

"By the winds of Lady Canilass, that is extraordinary news. And how did you come to reach my lonely crag?"

"I was taken from my home by the army of the Emperor. They sent me to this land with others of my people. We escaped, I became separated from the others. I left the city and traveled on the canal. I ran away from the boat before we reached Shesh."

"Oh-ho, so you're a runaway on top of everything else! That is a saga worthy of the old heroes. I am honored to make your acquaintance my fur-covered friend. Well, what's to do, eh? The priests must be after you, eh?"

"Yes." There seemed to be no point in lying about that.

"Well, they won't get any help from me. I detest them and their horrible God. They preach the false prophecy, the evil that came in with Kadawak, may his name be cursed forever."

"I know nothing of these things. But I thank you. Will you tell me your name?"

"Ah, no, that I cannot do. Ask anything else of me, but not that. I have no name. By order of the Emperor himself, I can only be called the Eccentric."

"The Eccentric?"

"Yes, I am the Eccentric in the Tower of Quarantine."

The tower was huge, and drafty, but as far as Thru was concerned it was warm and comfortable. He slept for the rest of that day and the night and then woke to eat a huge breakfast. As he was to learn from the man, who called himself "the Eccentric," the food was plentiful, but plain. It consisted of army biscuit, dried beans, and sea vegetable. This was flavored with hot pepper sauce and sour salt. To Thru, half-starved, it was simply wonderful and he ate it three times a day with no complaint.

The bad hand healed quickly. The stinging green juice had had a good effect. No rot set in. The Eccentric examined it every morning and treated it with more of the stinging fluid. The man asked many questions at these times, and they would talk for an hour or more. The rest of the day Thru was left alone, for the Eccentric disappeared into a room several floors above, where he remained at his desk, writing an endless screed of which he would say only that "it provides some of the answers for the troubles of the world."

On the afternoon of the first day, Thru explored the tower from top to bottom. Indeed, the Eccentric had encouraged him to do so. "Oh, yes, that'll get your blood going again. Eight floors to the top, my friend, eight floors. And two floors down below the ground, too. And who knows what might be living in the bottom cellar; no one's been down there in years, heh heh." The man's laugh was desolate. Still, Thru was eager to explore.

For more than an hour Thru wandered through rooms of former grandeur on the lower floors. Dust and cobwebs hung from the tapestries in the empty salons. Grand tables had broken legs in the dust among ruined chairs. The windows had been boarded up and shuttered, but a few beams of light came through anyway to illuminate the faded glories. A few walls were covered in great murals, executed with a fine hand, though the colors were muted by age.

He discovered that the place was a warren. There were narrow passageways as well as the grand halls, small hidden rooms as well as the salons. Besides the main staircase, there were at least two smaller ones, and Thru even discovered a vertical shaft running between the three lower floors, where the largest rooms were situated. Inside the shaft were hooks and pulleys so Thru deduced that some kind of weight had been lowered up and down. Above the three grand floors there were floors of smaller rooms, some of which might have been offices once. Some had desks and chairs, while some had nothing. Some contained rotted bedding and forgotten supplies, such as large clay pots and rolls of old cloth.

At the top was a single round room with eight narrow windows. The roof had been leaking in one corner for quite some time. From the narrow windows it was possible to see in all directions for many miles. Hills, ridges, and more hills mainly, though to the west beyond the hills there was a reek of smokes.

"Shesh town," said the Eccentric when asked about this. "Due west of here about six miles."

To the northeast, just over the nearest hills, the circular lake was visible. Indeed, it formed a shimmering disk in the late afternoon sun.

"Lake of the Woods. It borders one of the Gsekk Zobbi up there."

When he heard those words, Thru felt his eyebrows shoot up on their own accord. He tried not to let his excitement enter his voice. Simona was of that family.

"What are the Gsekk Zobbi?"

The Eccentric gave him another questioning look.

"You really aren't from around these parts, that's for sure. These are the zobbi hills of Shesh. Around here there are lots of country zobbi, you understand? Zobbi are country houses for the better sort of people. They come up here in the hot summer months. Zobbi, yes?"

"Yes, I've heard that word."

"Yes, well some of the zobbi here are famous. There are zobbi big enough to be counties of their own, but most are much smaller than that. They contain a forest and some riding trails, some fields, maybe a couple of farms. The Gsekk are a big family with many branches, they have been spending their summers in Shesh since the time of Shalmaagen the First. They have many zobbi over there."

"The Shesh Zob lies up there by that lake?"

"On the northern side there is a Gsekk Zob, a big one. It runs all the way up into the purple hill country. There are zobbi up that way for the Fauniku, the Saup and the Honn clans. All the best noble families have zobbi around Shesh, but the best of all are up here in the hills."

"Excuse me for asking, but how do you know all this, if you are a prisoner here on this hill?"

"Oh, I knew the great zobbi before I was made a prisoner. I was often invited up to one of the Saup Zobbi. It belonged to Palian Saup, may the Gods take care of his soul, who was such a benefactor to me once upon a time. Beautiful countryside up here, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, I would."

"And now, even though I'm confined here, I'm not completely ignored by people. There are some who write to tell me what's going on in the city and even in the zobbi in the summer."

Thru filed all this information carefully away for further consideration. He didn't know how long he'd be able to stay in the tower. If he had to move on, at least he now knew where the Shesh Zob of Simona Gsekk must lie. He'd seen the houses around that lake, just off to the west of the hills. He could find it again, he had no doubt of that.

Thru turned to another subject, something that had troubled him since he'd discovered it during his explorations of the tower.

"In the first cellar you have a lot of roofing materials cached away."

"Yes."

"But the roof of the tower is leaking."

"Yes. A beam has rotted out, too."

"I do not understand." Thru was from a village where no one left the roof leaking for very long.

"They sent the thatch and the new beam, but they never sent anyone to do the work. It's been sitting down there for more than a month. And the winter rains and snow are coming soon."

"Well, would you object if I did the work?"

The Eccentric stared at him for a long moment. "My fur-covered friend, would I object? By the sweet dust of Canilass, I would not. I would welcome it. It is difficult, even dangerous work."

"I have often worked with my father to repair roofs in our village."

"Ah, well, from all you've said I understand that you come from a place much industriousness. What you told me about the manufacture of thread and yarn in your home made me yearn for the return of our old crafts. The people of Shasht have no skills anymore. Quality craftsmanship has disappeared, everything is purely brummagem."

"I am sorry to hear that. It must be difficult to be useless," said Thru innocently.

The Eccentric eyed him a moment.

"Aye, but sadder still are the awful conditions in which they live. So many are poor and hungry."

Thru nodded. "I have seen much poverty in your land. I came here on the canal, from the city. I see houses everywhere. There is nothing left to the wild, barely a tree grows."

" 'Tis true, unfortunately."

"We believe that you must leave the land as wild as possible. That way it will always support you. When you grow so large upon the world like this, you drain its soul."

"Ah, you are a naturist of some kind! You think the world has a soul? That it is conscious? That is very different from the beliefs in Shasht. We believe souls must be earned in this life. Only men are conscious, therefore only men can earn a soul."

Thru had heard this concept before, from Simona. To him it was another aspect of the harshness of life in Shasht behind the magnificent marble facades. Life, soul, freedom, these were all things denied in varying degrees to the Shashti. The root cause was always the same, overpopulation.

"We think everything in the world has a degree of soul to it. It is more realized, more discernible, perhaps, in the higher animals than in the tree, but it is no greater for that."

"Hah! You think a tree is important?"

"Yes!" Thru's eyebrows jumped and his eyes flashed. "Without the trees the land dies. The water fails, the soil withers. Without good land your people go hungry."

"Ah, but you speak only of the poor." The man grunted bitterly. "They are but shadows. Rather than have a multitude of men live small lives, we give huge lives to a few men and then watch them from afar."

"And the rest live brutal, boring lives." Thru recalled the dreary canal cities of the plain.

"They do, but they also attend the ceremonies so they can glimpse some of the glory."

"I have seen them. They seem filled with hate. To escape their misery they drink the burning water. They gamble and fight."

"Ah, yes, the human tragedy. Much of our literature, our opera, and our art concerns itself with the tragic aspects of the lives of men."

Thru blinked, not sure he had heard this right. "But surely the problem is that there are just too many people."

"You have an unerring eye for the tragic truth, my fur-covered friend. Once, it is true, all men lived in something like equality. There was enough to go around. But the superior blood soon showed itself. Some men became the rulers, others the ruled. Over time we have separated to a degree. Only the rulers will ever be remembered. We concentrate on them and ignore the rest."