Maia (130 page)

of a youngster in trouble and under pressure, to do anything but come out with all the banal and embarrassing truth.

"But what's happened
now?"
interrupted Clystis at length. "Are you or aren't you going to tell me why she's-"

"She was in the shed, wasn't she?" muttered Blarda. "Up by the hay. So I says to her, 'Come on, then,' and I went to-to do like we done before, see. But then suddenly she comes over angry. She says 'Go away!' So I says 'No,' 'cos I thought she was only playing around. And I had my hand down inside the front of her clothes and she pulls away and then she says, 'Now look what you done,' she says, and I tried to stop her but she went off quick. Honest, sis, I never done anything 'ceptin' what-well, what-"

To an elder sibling, the emergent sexuality of the younger is often shaky ground; sometimes a matter of sensitivity to the point of anger; a cryptic variant of the discomposure not uncommonly felt by parents. Clystis, like most country folk, spoke and behaved to people according to her own personal opinion of them. Respectful towards Bayub-Otal and Zen-Kurel, she had already sized up Meris accurately enough. She now turned and faced her, hands on hips.

"Perhaps
you
can tell me some more about what the lad's bin saying, can you?"

"Perhaps I can," replied Meris coolly. "What would you like to hear? He's coming on very well, really. He'll be ready to clear out of this place soon, I wouldn't wonder."

"What the devil d'you mean, coming on very well?" shouted Clystis. "Are you sayin'-"

"Yes, I am," answered Meris. "He is coming on very well. He just got a bit over-excited, that's all." She dabbed ostentatiously at the bleeding scratch. "He's much better than your husband already. Well, I dare say you
do
know about
him.
Anyway, I do if you don't."

"What
did you say?" cried Clystis, staring.

"Not my fault," said Meris composedly. "Poor man, I feel sorry for him. I was just obliging him, really."

"You liar!" screamed Clystis, bursting into tears and stamping her foot. "You're lying, lying-"

"Lying?" said Meris, standing up and facing her. "How funny, then, isn't it, that I should know that Kerkol's got a mole at the bottom of his zard, just a bit on the right side? And how funny that I should know he's got a white scar on the other side, just at the top of his left thigh! In

fact I'll tell you some more while I'm about it, if you like. He-"

"No, you won't," interjected Zen-Kurel suddenly. Hitherto none of the three men in the room had spoken, as though each felt that to try to intervene in an unhappy family affair of this kind would avail little and possibly even do more harm than good. Now, however, Zen-Ku-rel's manner was unhesitant and authoritative. He stood up and crossed the room, interposing himself between the two women.

"Go outside, Meris, please," he said.

"Outside? Where?" answered Meris insolently.

"I don't mind where," replied Zen-Kurel in the same quiet, controlled tone, "but don't come back until I send for you."

As Meris hesitated he gently raised his hand, as though if necessary to take her by the arm. Meris tossed her head, flung down the bone needle on the flags and went quickly out the door. After a moment Zirek followed her.

Clystis, sitting at the table with her face sunk on her arms, was weeping unrestrainedly. Maia put a hand on her shoulder.

"Look, dear, you mustn't take on like this. It's not the end of the world. There's lots of worse things-"

"You let me be!" cried Clystis. "You'll have to go now- tomorrow-all of you. You can't stay here after this!"

Maia, concerned only to comfort her, felt at a loss. It had never entered her head that Meris, in indulging her taste for mischief, would make such a cruelly thorough job of it. In effect, thought Maia, she had inflicted a wound which would go on hurting Clystis for years, perhaps for life. She racked her brains for some sort of comfort.

"Listen, she's not worth crying about, Clystis-"

"It's
Kerkol
I'm crying about," sobbed the girl. "Oh, I never did Meris any harm-"

"Meris is a bad, spiteful girl," said Maia, "and that's no more than the truth."

At this moment Zen-Kurel spoke again. "Well, I'm fairly certain-, myself, of something that is the truth. Clystis, will you try to listen to me, please, because I think this is very important?"

His voice had a compelling quality and a quiet confidence which reinforced his request so effectively that Clystis raised her head, looking at him in silence. He, however,

was looking riot at her but at Blarda, standing over by the far wall with a look of utter dismay, as though he had opened a door at random and found he had let out a wolf.

"Blarda," said Zen-Kurel, "can you come over here, please? There's nothing at all to be afraid of. I'm not going to hurt you; I just want to ask you a question, that's all."

Rather nervously, Blarda complied.

"Well," said Zen-Kurel, smiling and taking his hand, "so you and Meris have been amusing yourselves in the barn; and I'm sure no one's going to blame you for that. A handy young fellow like you-why on earth wouldn't you? As far as I'm concerned you can go with all the girls between her and Bekla-probably will, I dare say."

This produced from Blarda the ghost of a smile.

"Now look," went on Zen-Kurel, "answer me this like a good lad and don't be ashamed, because I'll tell you now, I've done the same kind of thing myself, and that's no more than the truth. When you've been with Meris- you know, afterwards, when you were talking and so on- did you ever tell her what Kerkol looks like with no clothes on? You know what I mean, don't you?"

"Yes," whispered Blarda. "Yes, sir, I did."

Zen-Kurel nodded. "But that was only because she asked you, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think Kerkol could ever have done the same with Meris as you did?"

Blarda shook his head. "I'm quite sure he couldn't, sir."

"Why?"

" 'Cos he don't like her. He's said so to me-oh, three four times."

"Thank you," said Zen-Kurel. "I'm very glad, Blarda, that you had the guts and honesty to tell me that. Now would you please go and ask Meris to come back in here?"

Meris returned almost at once, shut the door, put her back against it and stood waiting with a look of sulky disdain.

"Meris," said Zen-Kurel, "we're leaving here tomorrow. I'm afraid you'll have to stay behind, but I thought you'd probably want to know all the same."

"Stay behind?" said Meris, visibly startled.

Zen-Kurel said nothing.

"Stay behind?" cried Meris. "What the basting hell do you mean? Why?"

"Because Lord Anda-Nokomis and I have decided that that would be best," replied Zen-Kurel. "Besides, since you have this attachment to Kerkol-"

"Kerkol?" said Meris. "I've no more had anything to do with Kerkol than Maia there!"

"How very strange!" said Zen-Kurel. "Well, then, it must all be a mistake, but Clystis very unfortunately got the idea from somewhere that you had. I'm afraid you may quite accidentally have upset her. So I'm sure you'll want to reassure her and beg her pardon."

"Sorry!" snapped Meris, as though she were spitting in the gutter. i

"Oh, in proper words and a proper voice," said Zen-Kurel a shade more sharply. "But if you prefer, you can leave it over until the rest of us have gone tomorrow."

There was a pause. Zen-Kurel picked up the bone needle from the floor and began idly examining it in the candlelight.

Suddenly Meris, pushing herself forward with a thrust of her shoulders against the door, went quickly over to Clystis.

"The truth is I've never had anything at all to do with Kerkol," she said. "I'm very sorry and I beg your pardon."

"Why did you try to make me think you had, then?" asked Clystis.

"I don't know. Like I say, I'm sorry."

"And you found out those things by asking Blarda?"

"Yes."

"He didn't tell you first: you asked him?"

"Yes."

"But
whyl"

"I don't know."

"She-er-she
did
kill Sencho," murmured Bayub-Otal. He had not spoken since Meris's first entry, and Blarda and the three girls all looked round at him.

"Yes, she
did
kill Sencho," replied Zen-Kurel, not taking his eyes off Meris, "and that shows how courageous and useful she can be when she likes. Well, do you want to come with us tomorrow, Meris, or not?"

"Yes, please," said Meris, like a child. Suddenly she snatched up Clystis's two hands and kissed them. "I'm sorry! I'm really sorry! Oh, if only-"

The door from the yard opened again and Kerkol came in, followed by Zirek.

"Sorry I'm late in, lass," he said to Clystis. "Had a bit of trouble with two goats got out down the bottom. I was on gettin' 'em back and then I had to mend the gap they'd bin through, see?"

He stopped to rinse his head and shoulders in the tub.

"I'm afraid we've got to leave you tomorrow, Kerkol," said Zen-Kurel. "It's a pity, but there it is. I'm fit enough now, you see, and we've got important business elsewhere. We're going to miss you all, and that's a fact."

Kerkol nodded stolidly, dried his face and sat down at the table.

"Ah, well, that's it, then." He paused. "Place won't seem the same, will it, lass?" Then, to Bayub-Otal, "Reckon we'd best have a bit of a drink on it, sir, while she's gett'n' us some supper. Fetch a drop of djebbah up, Blarda lad, so's we c'ri drink good luck to 'em all."

Later Bayub-Otal asked Maia, Meris and Zirek to accompany him down to the stream. The night was clear and star-lit, with a faint breeze from the east and a scent of planella from Clystis's little patch of garden. Of the comet there was no longer the least trace. Maia, who ever since her childhood had been alive to the progress of the seasons with an apprehension almost as unconscious as that of birds, felt sure that it could not now be much longer until the rains.

Bayub-Otal sat down on the ground, looking from one to another as he spoke.

"What we have to get clear now, I think, is where we're making for: I mean, where each of us wants to go. As you know, Zen-Kurel wants to get back to Terekenalt and I mean to return to Suba. What about you, Zirek? You're a Tonildan, aren't you?"

"Well, I don't know as that really comes into it, sir," he answered. "Specially just at present, when no one knows what's going to come out of all the fighting. I'll take my chance with you; as far as Lapan anyway. Then if Lord Santil's still in business, I'll go and join him-that's if you agree. Only I've got a notion he might be quite pleased to see them as killed Sencho; he's got a reputation, you

know, for not being mean to people who've done him a good turn."

"Yes, he has," said Bayub-Otal, "and after all you've risked and suffered, both you and Meris are fully entitled to whatever he'll give you. Well, that's clear, then."

With a certain air of embarrassment he continued, "And have
you
thought, Maia, about where you're going?"

She had indeed. She wanted and intended to go wherever Zen-Kurel went; and if she could not, she did not care what became of her.

"It's all one to me, Anda-Nokomis," she said. "Perhaps I may think of something later." '

"But do you want to try to reach the Zhairgen with us?" He was just perceptibly impatient.

"That'll do as well as anything else. Will you excuse me if I go to bed now? I'm very tired." And she turned away without waiting for a reply.

When they came to set out the following morning, it was clear that Zen-Kurel must have been giving thought to the importance of maintaining at least a civil working relationship with the two girls. He greeted both of them courteously if rather distantly, and went on to say that he thought they could hope to reach the Zhairgen that evening.

"Of course it won't be like twelve miles in open country," he said. "It'll be rough going in the forest, I dare say, but we can make sure of keeping our direction by following the Daulis downstream. Even if we do have to spend a night in the forest, we shall be able to manage all right. A fire's the great thing. I was once three nights in the Blue Forest in Katria, and that was quite bearable."

They had become his soldiers, thought Maia, with secret, fond amusement. He felt it his responsibility to look after them, to show no favorites, to set an example and raise everyone's confidence. In some respects she felt so much older than he. Probably it was as well that for now things should remain as they were; impersonal and matter-of-fact. Anyway, he should have all the loyalty and help he would permit her to give him. She would act her part of the dutiful follower, even though she suspected that in his courage and ardor he might very well be leading them all into grave danger. Reckon I've caught love like I was ill, she thought. I couldn't stop loving him whatever hap-

pened, whatever he did. I've got to suffer it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to show it.

Bayub-Otal was his usual chilly, composed self. His great virtue, thought Maia-one more likely to appeal to men than women-was his consistency. He could always be relied upon to be much the same, whether in good fortune or bad, in danger or out of it. She could well imagine that he must have been a tower of strength to his friends in the prison at Dari-Paltesh.

Meris seemed subdued-even anxious to please. That was the pathetic thing about Meris, thought Maia. It was as though she really couldn't help the things she did. So then someone hit her or humiliated her and she became quite a nice girl-for a while. She wondered how deeply Zirek felt about her. Despite all they had undergone, she was still very beautiful; and obviously, as Zen-Kurel had conceded, indisputably possessed of courage and endurance.

Zirek himself struck Maia as being in a mood of well-masked apprehension, when Zen-Kurel's back was turned he winked at her and mimed the action of tossing a coin, catching it in his palm and turning it over on the back of the other hand. Then, pretending to uncover and look at it, he stared up at her with an expression of comical dismay.

Their farewells were brief but sincere. Kerkol and Blarda wished them luck and Clystis gave them what food she could spare. Maia gave her an extra hundred meld, embraced her and wished her the perpetual favor of the gods. Then they set off across the pasture in the direction of the river.

They reached it about two hours later, just as the day was growing hot. The bank, though rough and lonely, was fairly open. The river was about twenty yards wide and certainly deep. Despite the time of year, there was no bottom to be seen. There was indeed a good, steady current, but nothing so swift as Zen-Kurd's account had led Maia to expect.

"No crossing that, you see, Anda-Nokomis," said Zen-Kurel in a conclusive tone.

"And no point, either,' replied Bayub-Otal, "if we can reach the Zhairgen without."

They turned downstream, picking their way through gradually thickening scrub and now seeing ahead of them tiie outskirts of the forest, dark against the growing glare

of the southern sky. "It'll be cooler once we get in there," said Zen-Kurel, slashing at the flies with a broken-off branch.

The approach to the forest consisted of fairly close brush and, beside the river, wide patches of dried-up reeds and cracked mud, which at any other time of year would have been impassable. These they pressed through, putting up great clouds of gnats which tormented them, following them about in front, as Zirek put it, and settling on their necks and arms. Once Meris startled a bright-green snake, which whipped between her and Maia and was gone before either of them had time to feel afraid-of that particular one. ›

Emerging at length from the further side of this marshland, they found themselves at the foot of a long, gradual slope, so thickly overgrown that they could not really see how high it might be. To the right of this the river wound away among tangles of undergrowth until it was lost to sight.

"We mustn't lose touch with the river, Anda-Nokomis, if we can help it," said Zen-Kurel, "but the best thing will be to get up this ridge and then go down and pick up the bank again. We'll be able to see more of the lie of the land from the top."

They began to climb. Maia, who had started a menstrual period the previous morning and now had a headache, was beginning to feel thoroughly out of patience. Damn these fools who couldn't swim! There-just there-was the river- safe, smooth, cool and free from flies. She could easily have been three or four miles down it in an hour.

"Are you all right, Maia?" asked Bayub-Otal, turning back to give her his hand over a fallen tree-trunk. She nodded curtly, smacked a gnat on her arm and pushed on uphill.

An hour later, having at last topped the ridge, they found themselves gazing down on the forest proper. The prospect was formidable and worse. Maia, surveying it with something close to terror, could only suppose that either Clystis must have thought that Zen-Kurel possessed magic powers or else that she had been too nervous of him to speak out more strongly.

Ahead of and below them lay a vast, shallow dip, something like two or three miles across. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, it was compact with trees, unbroken and even as a roof in the still heat. So uniform, so

featureless was this prospect that they might have been looking out across a smoothly undulant, green lake. No tree seemed taller than another and none, one would suppose, could have moved even in a wind, so close together were they crowded. Looking at that forest, no one could tell in what millennium he might be living. The god of that place, thought Maia, was not hostile to mankind; no, he was simply indifferent, distinguishing not at all between men, beasts and the insects darting among the leaves. Once in there, their lives would have no more value than those of ants; and they themselves would be as helpless.

On the farther side of this great bowl the horizon was closed by a line of the same trees; and one could imagine the forest continuing unchanged beyond. Away to their right, below the ridge on which they were standing, they could catch, here and there, glimpses of the river.

"Jumping Cran!" muttered Zirek, staring. "It can't be done, sir!"

"Nobody has to do it who doesn't want to," replied Zen-Kurel with (so it seemed to Maia) a somewhat forced air of confidence. "Personally, I'm going to Terekenalt and that's the way. But let's have a rest and eat now, shall we?"

"I was just thinking about the eating,' said Bayub-Otal. "I think it may take us quite a long time to reach the Zhairgen through that; certainly two days. We ought to be rather sparing, I think, of what food we've got."

"We might be able to kill something," said Zen-Kurel. "I'd like a chance to try these arrows."

Having eaten, they descended the ridge, making once more for the river, and now entered in earnest the forest depth. Within half an hour Maia was almost as frightened as though Fornis herself, innumerably multiplied, were lying in wait behind every tree. There was no true light; only a murky, green gloom filtering down from far above, so dim that neither they themselves nor the trees cast shadows. They could not see more than twenty or thirty yards ahead, partly for the gloom and partly for the undergrowth all around. The humidity was like damp felt clinging to skin and clothes; a thick, resistant film which they seemed to thrust apart with their bodies in pushing on. There were weird, disturbing noises-sudden cries and chatterings, and sometimes the squawking of alarmed birds in the confined stillness-but the creatures making them remained unseen.

She felt diminished, shrunken as though by an evil spell, a minute creature walking between the legs of a giant. And the giant was vigilant. He, she now knew, was the god: a god unknown to man; nameless-what were names?-infinitely remote and old. He was watching them as he watched everything in the forest, yet their fate was nothing to him. Nor would propitiation be of the least avail. He was lord of a world in which prayer had no meaning and death itself very little; a world in which the frog sat impassively as the snake approached closer to devour it.

After a time they had lost all sense of direction. There was, of course, no telling where the sun might be. Zen-Kurel, using Maia's knife-the only one they had-tried to maintain a line by marking successive tree-trunks, but the undergrowth, in many places so impenetrable as to force them to turn this way and that, rendered the scheme futile. After a long time they came upon a tree already marked and realized that they must have returned to it. Of the river there was neither sight nor sound.

Zen-Kurel, however, remained outwardly calm. The river, he insisted, could not be far away, but when Zirek asked him how he could be sure that they were not going away from it, he could only reply that he expected before long to come on some tributary brook which they would be able to follow. As the afternoon wore on, Maia began to entertain first the possibility, then the likelihood and finally the conviction that they might very well wander until they died. When, like a specter, the idea first glimmered in her mind, she dismissed it as a morbid fancy. But with growing thirst and fatigue adding to the discomfort of her menstruation, it was all she could do-and, as we have seen, Maia did not lack courage-not to give way openly to her fear. If ever they
did
find the basting river, she thought, she would plunge in and be damned to the lot of them, so she would. Meanwhile, Meris was showing no alarm whatever. Meris, as well she knew, had seen unspeakable things, and survived them. She, Maia, was not going to be put to shame by Meris. Well, not yet, anyway.

At last they happened to come out into a clearing-an acre or two of relatively open ground which none of them could remember seeing from the ridge. Here there must have been, or so it seemed, some local disease of the trees, for a great many were dead; several leaning against those still living, others lying their huge length along the open

ground. There was a little pool of water, too, in a rock-hollow, from which they drank. Although this was apparently fed by a spring, it flowed nowhere, the overflow merely seeping away into the surrounding, parched ground.

Now at last they could see the sun. It was low, reddening to evening, and lay on their right. Looking back, they could catch sight, far off above the trees, of the ridge which they had descended.

"Well, at least we've been going more or less in the right direction, Anda-Nokomis," said Zen-Kurel, "though I'm afraid we must have gone something like two miles for every one that's been any good to us. And, now we know where the river must be, too."

"I don't think we'd better try to reach it tonight," said Bayub-Otal. "Everyone's tired out. Wherever we are, we're going to need a fire, and there's plenty of dead wood here. I suggest we camp."

"How much further d'you reckon it is to the Zhairgen, then, sir?" asked Zirek. "We've got very little food, and the girls can't be expected to stand up to much more of this."

"We must just hope for the best, mustn't we?" replied Bayub-Otal expressionlessly. He turned away and began gathering sticks with his one hand.

"We shall get there tomorrow," said Zen-Kurel. "Why not, once we reach the river bank?"

A few hours later, as night fell with only the briefest of twilight, Maia realized that in the forest, darkness called forth another world. Here, human order was reversed. Daylight was the time appointed by the god for concealment, inaction and sleep. In daylight he was sole, a presence absorbing his creatures into himself, sheltering them from the intrusion of that upstart, the sun. At nightfall he became manifold, breathing into them his fell, rapacious spirit, so that they became as he, indifferent to fear, suffering and death, intent only upon obeying his will. They must kill and eat, for with the renewal of day it was decreed that they should return once more into the single essence of their master. Kill-be killed: eat-be eaten: which, mattered little. This was their pursuit and calling, and they were impelled to it without power of decision.