Limbo Lodge (19 page)

On their right, thick forest rose almost vertically to form what must have been the flank of Mount Fura before the southern tip of the island of Aratu split off in some prehistoric upheaval. Here the rock showed through the trees in strange columns, arches, and folds, created over centuries by falling water from the hillside above. Sometimes there were cave entrances, half hidden by trailing creepers.

Poor Herodsfoot was sunk in a silence of misery. Dido felt truly sorry for him. She could follow his thoughts tolerably well: if Talisman fell from the cliff and was killed, he had lost her for ever; if she managed to climb it, he had lost her just as finally, for that would make plainer still the huge mysterious gulf that divided them.

To distract her own mind, and, she hoped, Herodsfoot’s too, she talked to Tylo. “Tylo, don’t the Forest People want those pearls at
all
?”

“Kw’ul? No, Shaki-Dido. What use? Can’t eat. No good for medicine. If Outros people want, let them have.”

“But the Forest People can sell them for money.”

“Who want money?”

Thinking it over, Dido could see that there was really nothing that the Forest People could do with money. They had all they needed – food, clothes, medicine, shelter; for entertainment, the long creation-songs that the men, the Hamahi, sang each day; for news, the drum messages, echoing softly through the forest; for company, each other.

“You could travel to other lands . . .”

“Who want that? When forest so kaetik?”

Kaetik, Dido knew, meant both beautiful and satisfactory. There seemed no answer to that.

“But sometimes people must be lonely in the forest?”

“No, why? Forest is enough.”

And if, Tylo explained, a Forest Person wished for the company of another Forest Person, there was always likely to be one, within a couple of miles – “one culoh-flower’s walk”. A culoh flower, Dido knew, lasted exactly an hour from blooming to dropping; they were quite useful, in the rare event that some process needed to be timed.

And, when they met each other, what a pleasure! They gossiped, they laughed, they had jokes. Forest People, Dido had already noticed, from observing Tylo and Yorka, simply adored jokes, and could generally find something to chuckle over, even in the direst situation.

“Do you think the Angrians will ever go away and leave Aratu for good?”

It did seem a shame, Dido thought, that this glum race had ever come to inhabit the happy island. No doubt they had been made yet gloomier by the curse of homesickness and dissatisfaction that the Forest People had laid on them – that was unfortunate – but you’d think that would make them even more anxious to leave. But then, where could they go? It was hundreds of years since their forefathers came here from Angria – and who else in the world would welcome such a dismal tribe? They would probably not be welcome even in Angria. She said something of this to Tylo. He was more optimistic. “They maybe not so sad in other land.”

“But other lands already have their own people living there. No room for a new lot. Specially such dismal ones.”

“Maybe they all drown in sea. Maybe ship get wreck,” Tylo said hopefully.

Dido did not feel this was a practical solution.

Tylo’s other idea seemed likelier, though no more cheerful.

“Maybe all Outros people kill each, other.”

She asked him about the dispute between the Angrians. It was simply, he said, that Manoel wanted to take over from his brother as ruler of the island. “He always jealous of old Sovran John.”

Long ago Manoel too, Dido learned, had loved Erato, the woman John King had brought up and then married. “He angry about that. Deep angry.”

“I see. So when Erato died, he threw her kid off the cliff. Thinking he’d inherit from his brother by and by. But that time was long in coming. And when he found the kid was still alive, he fixed to bring her back. But why do that? Seems crazy.”

No, not crazy, Tylo said, because either he could get rid of her, once and for all, or, if she turned out to be useful, being half a Forest Person, he could use her on his side.

“Only it didn’t work out like that. So now what’s happening?”

The Angrians were divided, Tylo said. The ones in Regina town were for Manoel, because they knew him, and he promised to reduce taxes and make it legal for anybody to grow djeela trees (which at present were King’s monopoly) and he had plans to cut down more and more of the forest and increase the pearl fisheries and grow more spice plantations.

“So who don’t want that among the Angrians? What do the others want?”

Some old-fashioned Angrians, living in the forest, like the Ereiras, said Tylo, had not come down yet on one side or the other; and John King’s own bodyguard, living up at Limbo Lodge, were devoted to King, despite his deafness and short temper, and wanted no changes.

“How many of those?”

Tylo spread out his two hands ten times.

“About a hundred. And how many in Regina town?”

Maybe five times that number, Tylo guessed.

“Doesn’t look like King stands much of a chance, then.”

But Tylo was hopeful. Everybody knew, he said, that Aratu was the centre of the universe. “Ritari-ga’ar!” – the central axis on which the whole globe and the skies revolved. Some day, everybody in the world would die, and then they would all go to the great forest: in the Underworld, where everything grew upside-down and revolved in the other direction; but that time would not come until the last three of the great stones up on the hilltop had fallen and crumbled away. Much would happen before then. And he personally thought, and so did many of the Forest People, that, since matters were so satisfactory – on the whole – now, in Aratu, so kaetik, the gods would not allow any great change to take place.

“I do hope that’s so,” said Dido thoughtfully. “But I guess the Outros folk don’t think everything’s so kaetik—”

“So maybe all kill each other,” Tylo cheerfully repeated.

They went on climbing.

“Bless us and save us,” sighed Dido after what seemed like several hours. “Is this mountain ever going to end? My knees feel as if they’d been used for swabbing the deck . . .”

Tylo peered ahead. “Mist come again. Better leave horses in cave. If Guard up top, may need to dodge and hide—”

“Yus. I’m right with you there,” said Dido. “Horses would be nothing but a nuisance. Are we near the top, do you think?”

Not far, Tylo guessed. So, as they were passing a capacious cave, with twisted stalactites round its entrance, making it easy to recognise, they left the horses inside, with an armful of keedo-grass and sprinkle of kandu nuts to protect them from snakes. Tylo also laced a tendril of opoë vine across the cave mouth.

“What’s that for?”

“Smell bad. Stop horse from stray, stop wild beast get in.”

Herodsfoot had remained silent all this time, wound up totally in his own woe.

As they climbed on, the mist became ever thicker. Presently Tylo sniffed, and said, “I smell meat, bread, cook on hilltop. Better we stop here, hide in cave till mist lift. Guard up yonder.”

The lip of the gorge, Dido gathered, where the bridge to Limbo Lodge (if it was still there) spanned the ravine, was quite a dangerous spot. There was a sheer drop to the rapids of the Kai river, hundreds of feet below. Easy enough, in a thick fog, to step over the brink into eternity.

“I wonder folk took the trouble to go over the bridge to the Cliff of Death.”

Well, but that was a holy place, Tylo explained. People went there if the gods commanded them to.

“
Do
the gods ever command it?”

Oh yes, Tylo said. Every now and then, if the Forest People grew too many for the island to support them in a kaetik manner, the gods would recommend that a hundred or so should go and throw themselves off the Cliff of Death.

“And folk don’t mind doing that?”

Of course not, if it was for the good of all, said Tylo patiently. It was an honour. There were always enough volunteers. They knew they would only be moving on to the next great forest in the other world. They took with them their favourite songs, their favourite games, a pocket full of bark bread or djeela fruit and the best jokes they had heard lately to tell the ancestors, the dwellers in the upside-down groves that awaited them there.

“Hush, now! I hear voices!” Tylo’s acute hearing, like his sense of smell, was way ahead of Herodsfoot’s or Dido’s. “Go in cave here, wait!” he breathed, touched Dido’s hand, and beckoned her sideways off the track. She, likewise, caught Herodsfoot’s hand, pulling him after her.

The cave Tylo had entered was dripping with stalactites and lined with glow-worms which made it possible to see that it was a long, narrow crevice leading backwards into the hillside. Dido could not help wondering what unfriendly creatures might inhabit this dark passage, as well as the glow-worms; however, they saw nothing by the faint glimmering light, but heard a great many bats, faintly squeaking and flittering overhead. Dido thought of snakes and crocodiles and sting-monkeys and devoutly hoped they were all elsewhere. Crocodiles, she told herself firmly, would never climb as high up the mountain as this, and sting-monkeys lived in trees, not caves.

“Now wait here,” whispered Tylo, “while I go-see.”

Dido found a ledge of rock for herself and another for Herodsfoot to sit on. While they waited, she thought of Talisman. How long would it take to climb that lofty cliff? An hour? Two hours? Three hours? It would not be long now, till the end of the day. If Talisman had not reached the top before dark fell, she would be done for – had she thought of that, when she began her climb? And the mist, too, would make the climb infinitely more difficult and dangerous, because she would not be able to see far enough ahead to plan her route.

Oh, Doc Tally, thought Dido fervently, I sure do hope you’ve made it to the top by this time.

She heard a faint groan come from Herodsfoot; his thoughts must run parallel to hers.

And then suddenly Tylo was back with them, pressing his fingers against their lips in urgent caution.

“What’s up?” Dido was beginning to whisper, when she heard the cause of his alarm – voices and footsteps of men inside the cave.

Dido’s first impulse was to slip farther back along the narrow passage. But Tylo’s hand now warned her to keep still, and she could see this made sense; Herodsfoot would not be able to move quietly enough to retreat without discovery. The men – there seemed to be three of them – had not come into the cave hunting for them, but apparently to have a private conversation. They stood just inside the entrance and talked in low voices.

“You have guards posted at each end of the bridge?”

“Certainly, Gerente.”

Ha, so the bridge is still there, thought Dido, and poked Tylo in the ribs. She could feel his nod in reply.

Is one of those men Manoel? Dido wondered. Is he the only Gerente, or are there others? She could not be sure if the voice was his. But when he spoke again, she decided that it was Manoel.

“You have brought me one of the fire-trimmers?”

“Yes, Gerente, I have brought Zmora. He nine-treetime Halmahi, know much about forest fire.”

Dido heard Tylo beside her suck in his breath – with horror, with grief, with astonishment? His grip on her hand tightened.

“Good,” said Manoel’s voice – Dido felt more and more certain that it
was
Manoel – his voice had a nasal arrogant twang about it which she had taken a strong dislike to when having breakfast at his house. “Now then, you, Zmora, it seems you are the man we want.”

“For what can you want me, I wonder, Shaki-sir?” inquired a polite, elderly voice.

“You know much about the forest. And you know about fires, how they start and how they can be stopped again.”

“One branch-length I know about such things. A whole tree-length, not so.”

“What does the fellow mean?” said Manoel impatiently. “Does he know or does he not?”

“What you wish to find out, Gerente?”

“Listen, you, Zmora. You fellows have the knack of setting fire to the forest, isn’t that so, when you choose to do so. With that glowing fungus of yours? And then, you can put the fire out again when you choose, can’t you?”

“
Small
fire, Shaki, golly-likely. Big fire, not so.” Here Zmora went into a complicated explanation, partly in the Dilendi language, from which Dido gathered that putting forest fires out depended mainly on the weather.

“If I want to light a fire now, a big fire, burn half the forest on the island, could you put it out?”

Zmora burst out laughing. Quite plainly this suggestion, this crazy notion, was the best joke he had heard in months. “Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! Shaki-sir! You make great fun with old Zmora! No one,
no one
, but the greatest fool in the world would, at this time, burn half the forest on the island! And if you so much as burn half, you could
never
put fire out again. You would burn whole island. Aratu would be dead, finish. Like Pati island, Shaki-sir!”

“So you won’t, or can’t, make a fire for us, eh?”

Zmora’s reply was in the Dilendi language, and Dido could not follow it all, but she gathered that he was saying a very firm no.

Manoel gave some order, in an undertone, to the third man, who said,

“Shall it be done now, Gerente?”

“Yes, certainly now! We do not want him going back and talking about this to any of his mates. Over the cliff with him—”

There followed a brief scuffle, and a low cry from Zmora, as he was hustled out of the cave by the two other men; another cry, part grunt, part gasp, and then Manoel came back into the cave, remarking, “That will prevent him from telling tales, at all events! But it is a cursed nuisance that he could not be any use to us. Tiresome old fool! Find me Capitan Ereira, will you, and bring him here. I must think.”