The Worthing Saga (29 page)

Hoom shrugged. “That means we walk.”

“It's a long way,” Stipock said.

“Then let's hope it rains,” said Hoom.

It didn't rain. The winds shifted to the west, but didn't move northwest; there was no water from the sea, but now the sand and dust became much worse than ever before. The dust seeped into every crack. It was millimeters deep on their beds and bodies when they woke in the morning. Children choked on it and cried out. After two days of it, one of Serret and Rebo's younger twins died.

They buried him in the sand during one of the brief lulls in the wind.

The next morning the dessicated body was in the open, the skin flayed away. The wind, in one of those cruel tricks of nature, carried the baby up against the front door of his family's house. Serret had to shove to get the front door open in the morning; his screaming once he saw what had jammed it closed brought everyone out of their houses. They took the body from him, tried to burn it, but the wind kept putting the fire out, and finally they carried it out into the desert to the lee of their settlement and let it lie there for the wind to carry it away.

That night they did the same with two more children, and then carried Wevin's body to the same place after her baby tried to come four months early.

Billin went from house to house in the morning, his face muffled against the wind, and said, “I'm going today. I know the way. In three hours we'll be among the ironwood trees. By nightfall we'll be in a place with water. I'll wait there for three days, and then whoever is with me, I'll take them through the pass. Next year we'll come back to dig for iron. But this year we'll leave while our children are alive.”

An hour later they huddled together in the lee of Billin and Tria's house, carrying their precious skin-covered jars of water, carrying or leading children. Stipock did not argue with them or try to make them stay. Nor did he listen to them when they whispered, “Come with us. We don't want to follow Billin, we want to follow you. You can keep us together, come with us.”

But he knew that in a land where life was easy, no one could keep them together except with magic or religion, and he wasn't much with either—he wasn't cynic enough for the trickery of the first, or believer enough for the latter. “Go,” he said. “I wish you well.” They moved off into the desert at mid-morning, the wind whipping across their path, erasing their footprints almost before they were made, the sand whipping out from under their feet with every step. “Live,” Stipock said.

For three more days, Stipock, Wix, Hoom, Dilna, and the children survived by living in the mine, sealing it off as best they could by tearing apart an empty house and rebuilding the walls at the mine entrance. At the back of the mine, in the darkness, they could breathe more easily. On the third day, they awoke to the sound of rain.

They ran to the entrance, tore away the wall, and caught their first glimpse of hell. It was as if the whole sea had fallen on them. The ground was all mud, and the houses themselves were sliding along the gentle slope as the mud flowed slowly toward the river. Yesterday the river had been dry. Now it was a torrent, well over its banks.

“Rain,” said Wix. “Should we stay?”

It was a bitter joke. Wix and Hoom plunged out into the rain, which soaked them by the second step, and they went from house to house, gathering up what they could salvage before the houses were swept into the river. As it was, they barely made two trips each before the river lapped out to carry the huts away. Then they watched from the mine entrance, glad that it sloped upward so they were in no risk of drowning. They drank and drank, filling and refilling the same jars. Well back from the mine entrance they poured water over the children, washed them and let them play naked on the blankets. They had never been so clean, it seemed, and the sound of their laughter made the rain joyful.

Until the storm ended. The sun came out within minutes, and before nightfall the ground was baked and cracked. A few sticks remained of one house, all the rest were gone. The river continued to flow well into the night, but by morning it was back down to a mere trickle, a few stagnant ponds.

The heap of iron ore was gone. It had been too close to the river.

There was no need for discussion. They had little food and only the water in their jars and water bags. It was madness to go anywhere but south; So they went east, following Stipocks memory of the maps that Jason showed him. Cammar walked, and Hoom and Wix each carried a child. Dilna and Stipock carried their pitiful belongings. A few blankets, an axe, a few knives, crumbly bread, clothing. “We need clothing and blankets,” Stipock warned them, “because it's going to be cold a few times on the way home.”

Now, on the journey through the desert, it was harder for Wix and Dilna to pretend they did not love each other. Sometimes, in their weariness, they would lean on each other as they walked on. Stipock watched Hoom at such moments, but he only held Bessa or Dallat and walked on, perhaps singing or telling a story to the child. Hoom is not blind, Stipock decided. He sees but chooses not to see.

Before night the dust began to rise again, and Stipock led them south into the shelter of the ironwood forest. The next day they moved eastward among the trees, and the next day did the same, until they came to a broad riverbed heading northeast. It flowed, not strongly, but with water they could drink. So they followed its course for five days through desert and occasional grassland to the sea.

One of the days along the river, Stipock crested a hill and stood beside Hoom and saw what he was watching: Wix and Dilna embracing. It was just for a moment; they must have thought they were far enough ahead not to be seen; or perhaps they didn't care anymore. It was not passionate but weary, their embrace, like a husband and wife long married and returning to each other for familiar comfort. It occurred to Stipock that this might well be more galling to Hoom than if they had looked furtive and eager.

Hoom stepped down from the rise, and the lovers were suddenly out of sight behind a low ridge of dirt. “I thought,” said Hoom with a self-deprecating laugh, “I thought that of the two of us, she felt
that
way toward
me
.”

Stipock set his hand on Hoom's shoulder. Little Bessa breathed hotly on his hand. “They both love you,” he said. It was inane to think that such words would comfort Hoom.

To Stipock's surprise, however, Hoom smiled as though he needed no comfort at all. “I've known since we lived in Stipock's city. It began not long after we were married. Before Cammar was conceived.”

“I thought—that it began here.”

“I think it was something they couldn't help. It was here that they stopped trying to hide it. How could they?” Hoom held Bessa tightly to him. “I don't much care whose seed it was that grew. I'm the one who hoed, and I will harvest. These children are mine.”

“You're a kinder man than I am.”

Hoom shook his head. “When Jason was with us, before he brought us here, and I was trying to take the blame for my father's death, he said to me, You are forgiven as you forgive Wix and Dilna. I do, you know. It's not a lie. I had already forgiven them before Jason said that. And because I knew that I had no blame or hate for them, I believed Jason when he said there was no blame or hate to hold against me, either. Will you tell them that? If I should die sometime before the journey's through, will you tell them that I forgive them— that it's all right?”

“You won't die, Hoom, you're the strongest of us.”

“But
if
—”

“I'll tell them.”

“Tell them that it's true. That I meant it. Tell them to ask Jason if they doubt it.”

“Yes.”

Then they crested the low ridge, and Wix and Dilna were there resting, playing with Cammar, trying to pretend that they were only friends weary from the journey.

From the mouth of the river eastward until they finally reached the isthmus leading north, it was the worst desert they had yet crossed. Stipock warned them, and they filled their water jars and water bags and drank from the river for two days until they could hardly bear to drink. “Keep this up and we can all piss and float home,” Wix said, and they laughed. It was the last time they laughed for a while. The desert was longer to cross than Stipock had thought. The smooth and sandy beach gave way to cliffs and crags. There was as much vertical and horizontal travel, and each day Stipock insisted that they drink less and less. They ran out of water anyway, except for the little bit they had saved for the children. “It's not that far,” Stipock told them. “There are streams on the isthmus, and it isn't far.” Indeed, from the tops of hills they could look across the sea and catch a glimpse of land going northward, a coastline leading toward the land of pure water.

It was too far, though. They buried Bessa under a pile of rocks before dawn one day, and walked on more slowly, even though their burden was lighter by her scant weight. That night they reached an oasis of sorts, and drank the foul-tasting water, and filled their water bags and jars again. They thought they had made it. An hour later all were vomiting, and Dallat died of it. They buried him by the poisoned pool, and weakly walked on, emptying their jars and bags along the way through the sand. They did not weep. They hadn't the water in them to make tears.

The next day they reached a clear spring in the side of a hill, and the water was good, and they drank and didn't get sick. They stayed at the spring for several days, building back their strength. But now their food was getting low, and with full jars and bags they set out again.

Two days later they reached the top of a rocky rise, and stopped at the edge of a cliff that plunged nearly a kilometer, almost straight down. To the west they saw the sea, and to the east another sea, the water winking blue in the sunlight of early morning. At the bottom of the cliff the land funneled into a narrow isthmus between the seas. The isthmus was green with grass.

“Do you see the green down there, Cammar?” asked Hoom. The boy nodded gravely. “That's grass, and it means we'll find water, and perhaps something more to eat.”

Cammar looked annoyed. “If we were going where there was food, why didn't you bring Bessa and Dallat? I know they were hungry.”

No one knew how to answer, until Hoom finally said, “I'm sorry, Cammar.”

Cammar was a forgiving child. “That's all right, Papa. Can I have a drink?”

They found a way down the cliff before noon; it was not sheer, but broken with many possible paths. They slept on the grass that night, and in the morning, for the first time in years, they awoke to a world that was wet with dew. Only then, with Cammar throwing wet grass at them, only then did they cry for the ones who died.

Lared shook himself, looked around. The horses were stopped facing a thicker. Behind him Father was moaning softly. It was afternoon. Lared could not remember any of the journey until now. Where was he? He looked behind him at the trail left by the sledge. It wound well enough among the trees. Had he guided the horses? Or had he slept? All he could remember was the desert, and Hoom and Wix and Dilna, and the children dying, and how at last it looked like life. But Father was moaning on the sledge behind him. Lared dismounted and walked stiffly back to see him.

“My arm,” Father whispered, when he saw Lared. “What happened to my arm?”

“A branch broke clear through it, Father. You told me to cut it off.”

“Ah, God,” cried Father, “I'd rather die.”

Lared had to know where they were. He walked back into an open area, found the rise of the mountains to the south. He was still headed in the right direction. But he couldn't picture this place in the summer. It looked all new to him. And if it was new, it meant he must have drifted far to the south, so far that he was in forest that he didn't wander in. Or perhaps he had passed Plat Harbor entirely.

Then, suddenly, he felt something shift in his mind and he recognized where he was. The clearing he was standing on was a pond, that's why it was so unfamiliar. He was on thick snow over the ice of the pond. There was the low mound of the beaver house. Somehow, in his sleep, in his dreams, he had followed the right course. Only the thicket stopped the horses, and it was a simple matter to turn them and follow the course of the frozen stream for a while, leading the horses to bring some life back into his own legs.

“Lared,” Father called out. “Lared, I'm dying.”

Lared did not answer. There was no answer to that. It was probably true, but it didn't stop him from pushing on. The trees opened into meadow, and he mounted again. And again the snow and the sound and the movement dazed him, and Justice brought him onward with a dream.

Stipock was tired. They had been climbing every day for a week, rising into the highest mountains in the world. Nowhere near the peaks, of course, but still fighting through incredible country. These were fairly old mountains, with many rolling hills—but the rolls were steep and high, and many times what looked from a distance to be an easy stroll turned out to be hands-and-knees climbing up the face of what lacked only two or three degrees to be a cliff.

Now they crested another grassy hill, with higher, craggier mountains on either side; but this time, instead of another, higher hill beyond, there were only lower hills, and clearly visible beyond them was an endless sea of deep green.

The others had reached the top before him. Cammar was running around in erratic circles—the child had energy left to spare while the others contemplated the scene ahead.

“I feel like I'm falling,” Dilna said. “It's been so long since anything ahead of us was down. Are we almost there?”

“More than halfway, now, and the worst behind us. No more desert. We should reach a large river soon, and we follow that for a long, long way. We might build a raft, and float down until it meets with a river nearly as large from the south. Then we go north, straight north, and cross low and gentle mountains, and soon we'll strike the Star River and follow it on home.”

“No,” Wix said.“Tell me that we only have to go down this slope and Heaven City will be there. The world should not be any larger than this.”