Future Indefinite (33 page)

On the third day of his quest, with rain still sheeting down as hard as ever, Julian Smedley trudged into Losby. He found the church there in disarray—which was hardly surprising, for all Randorvale was in disarray. A third of the hamlet was stricken; a dozen people had died already. Old Kinulusim Spicemerchant wheezed and sweated on his sickbed. His equally aged wife was up and about already, but still weaker than wartime beer, while young Purlopat’r Woodcutter, the baby-faced giant, had fled to the hills with his wife and children. Julian summoned a few of the faithful to Seven Stones and held a brief service to cheer them up. Then he went on his way. Having no mana, he could do no healings.

He had gathered more discouraging news: Rumors were flying that this inexplicable pestilence was the work of the Church of the Undivided. He was not too surprised. People always found scapegoats for disasters—Christians burning Nero’s Rome, Jews causing the Black Death by poisoning wells. Whether or not the orthodox clergy had originated the slander, the Pentatheon would certainly use it to good effect; the Service’s efforts to humanize the religion of the Vales were utterly doomed now. They might have survived the Liberator himself, but in trying to stop him, the Service had brought in the Spanish flu and was going to die of it.

On the fourth day, Julian came to Thurgeothby, a homely little ranching village at the mouth of Soutpass. The rain had ended, leaving behind a bone-chilling wind. Randorwall towered above him in the crisp sunshine, white and almost painfully beautiful against a pale winter sky. He was not looking forward to the long climb and even less to the vale beyond it, for Lappinland was not a happy place. Beyond Lappinvale lay Mapvale, and then he would be into country new to him.

In Thurgeothby he could have dropped in on the local preacher and would certainly have done so had he wanted lodgings for the night, but the day was young yet. Instead, he went to see Urbiloa Baker, who was agent Twenty-nine in the political arm of the Service and should be able to advise him on current affairs in Lappinland. She was a tall, angular widow of middle years, white haired and customarily well dusted with flour. Both residents and transients frequented her shop, and she had a gift for extracting significant information from idle chatter. She greeted him blankly, as if she had never set eyes on him before, so they went through the cloak-and-dagger rigmarole of exchanging passwords. Then she took him through to her kitchen, hot and smelling deliciously of baking bread, sitting him at a table with some hot, soft rolls and a pitcher of buttermilk.

The news she broke to him while he ate was general knowledge that he could have gained from almost anyone in Thurgeothby. The flu was raging there as it was everywhere in Randorvale, with the deaths, as usual, especially high among young adults, the mainstay of the population. The pestilence was at least as lethal here as it had been back Home: healthy one day, bedridden the next, often dead in three. Children and old folk were mostly recovering, although slowly. The Church of the Undivided was being blamed—nonsensically, for its members succumbed like everyone else. Many had fled, some been driven out. Houses had been burned.

As if that were not bad enough, Soutpass was closed. Lappinvale was a Thargian colony, ruled by an iron-fisted military governor, and he had sealed off the pass to keep out the infection. Travelers from the south were being turned back. That was typical Thargian despotism and it wouldn’t work—information traveled the Vales only by word of mouth, so the flu would arrive at the same time as the news. In retaliation, the Randorian government had forbidden entry to anyone coming the other way, but the king had not sent enough soldiers to enforce his decree and the permanent garrison was too incapacitated by flu to do anything. So a few traders were still trickling into Randorvale.

Julian leaned his elbows on the dough-stained table and gazed bitterly at the twinkling grate under the oven while he pondered his alternatives. There did not seem to be any. He knew of no other pass to Lappinvale; if there was one, the Thargians would certainly have blocked it. He could backtrack almost all the way to Olympus and then try the Narshvale road, but there he would be into the highest ranges of the Vales. Even if he could get through to Narshvale in this weather, there were no roads at all from Narshvale to Lappinvale or even Mapvale. Only dragons could cross that country. To reach Jurgvale, he would have to go round by Sussvale and Fionvale, which would take far too long and was probably impossible at this time of year anyway. He was apparently doomed to wait here in Thurgeothby until the Thargian garrison lifted its useless quarantine.

Of course the Liberator’s crusade might eventually come to him, but if Exeter did make it this far, it would mean he had survived Zath’s efforts to murder him. Then Alice would need no rescuing by Julian Smedley. His situation tasted nastily like failure.

He sighed and accepted it. Only fools struggled against the inevitable. Within the next couple of days, the Thargians would certainly learn that the pestilence had outflanked their swords.

He looked up at Urbiloa, meaning to ask her if he might lodge with her until then. The calculated suspicion in her shrewd eyes stopped the words in his throat. Urbiloa wore no earring. Political ran its own stable of agents, separate from the church. They all had their own agendas, their own motives for spying, although most were rewarded with gold as well, so they could be blackmailed if necessary. Some of them were not even aware that the Service and the church were related. For all Julian knew, the Thurgeothby baker was a devoted follower of Eltiana, mother goddess of Randorvale.

He reached for his purse. “Well done, Twenty-nine. Good report. I must be on my way.”

She did not try to stop him leaving. She sent no pursuit after him.

He headed east, along the mountain front, and found shelter at the lonely home of Tidapo Rancher. Tidapo was a hearty, brawny man, full of joviality and self-reliance, always glad to offer hospitality to a visiting apostle. His wife was the Undivided supporter, but he tolerated her whims, probably from a total lack of interest in anything as impractical as theology. He greeted Saint Kaptaan cheerfully and made him welcome. At dinner he apologized for the way the children were coughing, but no one in the household seemed to have heard of the plague sweeping the vale, or at least no one took it seriously.

Two mornings later, Julian had had his fill of both the rancher’s trivial chatter about livestock and his wife’s religious fervor. The children and the hired men were all abed with flu by then. The sun was still shining and it was time to try the pass again. Julian thanked his hosts, blessed their house, and retraced his steps to Thurgeothby.

As he had hoped, southbound travelers reported that the blockade had been lifted. They said that half of Lappinvale was down with the sickness already, which was certainly an exaggeration but bad news anyway. The Liberator had left Niolvale, last reported at Roaring Cave, on Lospass, several days ago.

That night Julian camped with a band of traders, who charged him extortionately for the privilege of bedding down at their fire. They were very worried by the damage that the sickness would do to business. Like him, they were bound for Jurgvale, so their knowledge of the Liberator came only from hearsay. They did not think he would do business any good, either.

Julian descended into Lappinvale the next day. There he began to have trouble with the language and was repeatedly forced to exercise his limping Joalian. Even that was of less use than he had hoped, because the Thargian overlords discouraged its use—Thargian itself being a throat-burning screech that he could not even attempt. He found the natives sullen but with good reason, for Thargians were hard taskmasters, and they had ruled the land for more than a century.

Two more hard, cold days brought him to Mapvale. Smallest of all the vales, it was famous only for its blossoms, which were not in evidence at the start of winter. Historically, Map-land had always been too trivial to interest the great powers, so it had rarely endured conquest—invading armies just walked across it and up the other side. Of course, on the way through they conscripted boys as soldiers and girls as harlots, but everyone expected that. Those were predictable perils in a primitive land.

The natives wrung a subsistence economy from the export of fruits and nuts. Although very poor, they seemed happier than the Lappinians—smiling, chanting greetings in an incomprehensible dialect that must be close to Niolian, for it had a singsong lilt to it. They struggled to understand his Joalian and to reply in kind. He did not think this friendly reception was all due to his stranger’s charisma; they were a genuinely friendly people. He asked what they knew about the Liberator but could not follow their answers. Much pointing to the north and sign-talk of walking suggested that Exeter’s crusade was still in progress.

Julian supposed that was good news.

Hamlets were few. There were no decent roads at all. He spent the day trudging along lanes that wound like snakes through trees and across fields of leafless shrubs. The ruts were frozen hard under his feet, so that he was in constant danger of twisting an ankle. Hour by hour the snowy ranges marched with him on either hand. When he met anyone or saw a man at work—usually gathering firewood—he would ask for Thamberpass and always the finger pointed east. Onward he would go again. The air smelled of snow. The weather was turning colder.

His mood was turning blacker. Regardless of what the Mapians were trying to tell him, if Exeter was still alive and his crusade still proceeding, Julian should have run into it by now, for he was much closer to Shuujooby than he was to Olympus. Admittedly, the Liberator’s pace would be dictated by the slowest of his followers, but Julian had lost two days to the Thargians’ quarantine. The absence of any indication that the prophet was approaching was a very bad sign. It strongly implied that he had died at the hand of either Jumbo or Alice, whichever was the poisoned pawn.

Julian supposed that was bad news.

The familiar tremor of virtuality awoke him from his gloomy reverie. He stopped and peered around at the darkening trees, trunks and branches iron black in twilight. He realized that his legs and feet ached and his belly was growling. It was past time to find shelter.

A node might contain a temple or monastery, either of which would likely offer some minimal hospitality to wayfarers. If the price was an obeisance to some idol or other, he would not be unwilling to pay it at a pinch. A resident numen, if any, would probably detect Julian as a stranger, but then Julian might do quite well out of the encounter. Being a god was a lonely business, all visitors welcome. While natives were fair game for anything, strangers were protected by the club rules.

He could not be certain which way the center of the node lay, but a faint scent of wood smoke hung in the air. Turning to windward, he set off through the trees, ducking under branches, pushing aside twigs. The virtuality grew stronger. A few minutes later he emerged in a wide clearing and abandoned hopes of a temple. There was nothing there but a desolate patch of moorland in the winter dusk: a few acres of withered weeds and an ice-bound pond. Then he noted animal dung and a tiny hovel at the forest’s edge, which must be the source of the smoke. He headed straight for it, confident that his charisma would be irresistible on a node.

His approach was challenged by a flock of white, shrieking things. They looked and sounded much like geese, although they had teeth and fur. He shooed them away with his umbrella.

By then a woman stood in the door of the hut, watching him. She was small and stooped, dressed in rags. Her sparse white hair hung limp and her eyes did not meet his. Old, certainly harmless…and yet she made him think of the nursery tales of his youth: Hansel and Gretel, the gingerbread house. The sinister implications were not reduced by the acrid clouds pouring out around her, for this witch’s cottage had no chimney, only a smoke hole.

He tried his Joalian. “Greetings. I am Julian Teacher. I seek shelter. I will gladly pay.”

She stepped aside. He took one last deep breath of fresh air and stooped through into the shed.

She shared the one-room hovel with a boy and her livestock—the goose things and a rack-boned ungulate. The floor was filth. A fireplace of stones, a shelf with a few bundles of edibles, a heap of twigs for fuel, a water skin and a couple of gourds, bedding made of two piles of frondy leaves plus scraps of uncured hide…nothing more.

The billowing smoke stung Julian’s throat and eyes, although the tiny fire barely gave light, let alone heat. Nonetheless, he sank gratefully to the ground, leaned back against his bedroll, and crossed his aching legs. Soon he was coughing his lungs out, but he was off his feet and that was all that mattered.

The woman tipped water into a small gourd and handed it to him; he drank it, assuming it was a symbol of hospitality. It tasted bad but went down well, soothing his throat. Her hands were gnarled. Indeed, her whole body was twisted. He wondered if she was eighty, as she looked, or just a badly used forty.

She knew no Joalian and he no Mapian. He established by signs that her name was something like Onkenvier
Orliel
, although he had no idea what an orliel did. When he pointed inquiringly at the boy, she said, “Thok,” and thereafter no one spoke at all. The boy’s age was a mystery too. He would have matched an English twelve-year-old in size, but if that was fuzz and not dirt on his lip, he was both older and seriously malnourished. He did not speak. Perhaps he could not. What sort of a name was
Thok
anyway? A nickname? It was neuter. In Joalian, a
thaki
was a cub.

The silence dragged on, broken only by stray crackles from the fire. The woman sat and stared at it with rheumy eyes. Thok sat and stared at nothing. Julian sat and shivered. He considered unrolling his blanket and wrapping up in it, but the effort seemed too enormous to attempt. The smoke had already given him a headache. Was there a husband somewhere or more children? No, because there were only two beds. How could such a life even be worth living? Earth had poverty to match this, he supposed, but he had never met it. Exeter might have done so, in his African days. The Liberator could do nothing about the plight of these people. They could have no interest in religious reformation. One of Zath’s reapers might seem like a welcome release to them.