Stone Spring (49 page)

Somebody grabbed his arm. It was Loyal, the girl he had been courting when the Pretani had come, the girl he had saved from being torn apart by the strips of hide - the girl who now warmed his bed, though whether it was for love or because she thought it gave her the best chance of staying alive he could no longer say. Now she had gashed her head, her hair was matted with blood, and pale brown dust coated her hair, her skin, her clothes.

She said, ‘Help her.’ He could barely hear her over the screams.

Something in him came back to life. ‘Loyal—’

‘I was half-awake. I heard the rocks - I rolled out of the way. If not, it would have been me under there - oh, True, you’ve got to help her!’

‘Who?’ But he already knew the answer: she meant Honest, her little sister, the only other member of her family who had survived the months under the Pretani.

She pointed to the boulder at his feet. ‘True - please!’

Gently he pushed her away, and studied the rock at his feet. He saw where he could get his hands under it, where to plant his feet. He braced, bent his legs to keep his back straight, and locked his hands at the narrower end of the boulder. Then he heaved, pressing with his legs. Loyal joined him, hauling with her own callused hands. The muscles in his back tightened, and the blood rose to his face until he felt his head would burst. Yet the rock lifted, just a little, and with a final heave they pushed it aside.

As it rolled away he looked down at what he had revealed. Loyal pushed forward, but he grabbed her and held her away.

Honest had been lying on her back. Her body, loosely covered by a hide wrap, looked at peace, her legs bent slightly and resting to her left side, just as if she was sleeping; her right arm was draped over her body, covering a bone amulet. But the falling rock had caught her on the head and left shoulder, bursting her skull like a heel stamping on an overripe fruit.

‘She couldn’t have felt anything,’ he said to Loyal. His own voice sounded strange to him, and he wondered from what deep pit he was dragging up these words of comfort. ‘She must have stayed asleep, never even waking.’ But he remembered the single scream that had first woken him. ‘And her spirit . . .’ He didn’t know what to say about Honest’s spirit. Their priest had died soon after the move to this place of rock and labour.

Others were coming down the ropes now, bearing torches that lit up the dust-laden air. Hollow was among them. He started to snap out orders, and the people, Pretani and Eel folk alike, began to get organised. Some of them were already hauling aside the rubble.

True pushed Loyal towards a rope. ‘You go up. Try to find Resin.’ The Pretani priest was a poppy-addled fool, but he had a good heart, and had been known to offer comfort to Eel folk in distress.

‘Get me her amulet.’

‘Loyal, just go—’

‘Please.’

He braced himself, then reached past the rock with one hand and grabbed the girl’s amulet. He tugged its thread hard, and to his relief it broke easily. He studied the little amulet as it lay in his hand. It was pale white, just a bit of broken deer antler, with a carving of the Great Eel wrapped around a central rod. Now it was splashed with blood, and greyish, slimy stuff. He wiped it off on his tunic and handed it to Loyal. ‘Now go.’

She took the rope and began to climb.

Hollow stood beside him. ‘Bad business,’ he growled. ‘The Etxelur folk arrive soon. Not a good way to present the quarry, all this, is it? And we’ll lose whole days’ work cleaning up this mess. At least we can make a start; it’s not yet dawn.’ But there was a fresh scream, unmistakably a child. Hollow visibly flinched. He glanced at True, a kind of regret in his face, and placed his big Pretani hand on True’s shoulder. ‘Let’s get to work.’

73

It was the sky burial platform that Arga noticed first, the morning she and Novu arrived at the Pretani quarry.

Hollow, the smooth, smiling Pretani who always accompanied the stone deliveries to Etxelur, walked with them. He wore a necklace made of flint flakes - good Etxelur flint.

And one of the worker types followed them. A slim man, wearing worn, dusty skins, he looked uncomfortable, his face oddly grey, slack, as if he wasn’t quite alive. He was young, however, younger than Arga herself, she guessed.

The quarry was extraordinary. It was a patch of high open moorland that had been flayed of its turf and soil and peat, stripped down to the rocky bone. You could see where whole chunks of sandstone had been prised out of the ground. And all across this strange dug-up landscape, and even in deep pits cut into the ground, people worked, a few men, more women, many children. Coated in dust the same yellow-brown colour as the rock, some splashed with vivid blood from small wounds, they all looked the same: skinny and silent. But none of them were the dark, heavy-set Pretani; you could see that at a glance.

And on the sky-burial platforms that lined the bank of the nearby river, bodies had been heaped up. Most of them were children. Beyond the platforms the endless green of the oak forest rolled away.

The whole place made Arga deeply uncomfortable. Novu, short, stocky, his dark eyes gleaming, seemed fascinated.

It had been cruel of Ana, but typical of her, to send Novu away from Etxelur on this expedition to Pretani so soon after she had forced him to give up his lover Jurgi. It was one of her habits to distract possible enemies, just by getting them out of the way for a while. Arga was no enemy to Ana; she imagined she had been sent with Novu simply because Ana needed someone else from her inner circle to go with him.

But if it had been up to Arga they wouldn’t be involved with the Pretani at all, no matter how good their stone was. And they certainly wouldn’t be considering getting tied even more closely to them, as Hollow said he had brought them here to suggest.

Hollow, as they walked, was showing Novu the tools the slaves used to dig out their rock. ‘Picks and shovels of antler, as you see. Red deer, and only the strongest, healthiest young males. This itself is brought to us by a web of trade . . .’ His Etxelur tongue was smooth and fluent. He noticed Arga looking at the burial platform. ‘People die here, as they do everywhere,’ he said gently. ‘Especially the children. At least these slaves die knowing they have achieved something with their lives - contributing to the building of Etxelur.’

Novu said, ‘So tell me how you organise these people.’

Hollow gestured. ‘You can see the basics. We split them half and half, roughly. The less useful half works to feed the more useful half that labours in the quarry. We use a mix of adults and children in the pits, more men than women, actually, for we need the brute strength of the bucks. And the cubs are useful for getting into the narrow spaces when we’re first opening up the seams.’ He made a wriggling gesture with his hands. ‘In they squirm, like your Great Eel herself, True!’ The man did not react. ‘We change them over every so often to let minor wounds heal, that kind of thing.

‘We let them sleep down in the caves because that way you need less houses on the surface. But that does have its disadvantages. We had a collapse the other night, that’s why there are so many bodies on the slaves’ platforms. They built them themselves. You understand we Pretani hang our dead in the trees . . .’

Slaves. Before coming on this trip Arga had only seen the stone arrive with its Pretani handlers on the boats off the shore of Etxelur. She had never thought about where it came from, who must be digging it up. She looked at the silent man walking with them. ‘Who are these people?’

‘They call themselves the People of the Great Eel. But there are no eels here,’ Hollow said with a grin. ‘Step back now, True.’ He said it softly, but it was enough to make True drop back hastily and lower his head.

Novu said, ‘There are some slaves in Jericho, more elsewhere. It all makes sense, Arga.’ He gestured at the quarry. ‘Look how much gets done!’

‘And that,’ Hollow said easily, ‘is what I want to talk to you about.’ He led them on, walking slowly around the site. ‘I visit Etxelur often - you know that. I admire your great works, the dykes, the reservoirs. But the work goes so slowly! I know how difficult that is for you, Novu, for so much of it is your vision. And I know how anxious Ana is becoming, as her years slip away like grains of sand.’

‘It’s true, it’s true.’

Arga was disturbed how much this man knew about them. He wasn’t like most Pretani, who were so obsessed with their own blood-drenched honour rituals they barely noticed other people at all. Hollow knew their hungers and their fears, as a hunter knew the habits of a stalked deer.

‘And,’ Hollow said, ‘I think, Novu, you are starting to see the solution. Just look around.’

‘Yes,’ Novu said, intent. ‘Not the quarry - you mean the people.’

‘Exactly. Imagine if you owned people as we own these Eel folk. Imagine how quickly the work would progress. No more arguments about who does what and when. No more relying on neighbours, their loyalty secured by the flimsy bonds of an annual Giving. With workers like this you could do what you liked, as fast as you liked - or as fast as your workers were capable of, and that would be for you to determine, not them. It’s not just stone I’m offering you now, Novu - it’s people. And through people all your other problems will be solved.’

‘What people?’ Arga snapped. ‘These? If we take away your Eel folk, who will dig the stone for you?’

‘Oh, we wouldn’t give you this lot. We’ve trained them up for this work, and half of them are worn out anyhow. No, we’d round up fresh meat. Our world-forest is full of it. We’d hand them over broken in spirit but healthy in body.’

Novu frowned. ‘We’d have to discuss terms.’

‘Of course.’

‘But you’ll do the deal, won’t you?’ Arga said. Since he had lost Jurgi, Novu had become even more obsessive about pursuing his great projects - as perhaps Ana, cunning, had intended all along. She hissed, ‘But we don’t know what the Pretani really want. How much flint can they need?’

But Novu did not respond, and Hollow led him away, around one of the pits. Hollow was gesturing, describing more aspects of the work. None of the toiling Eel folk looked up.

74

The Seventeenth Year After the Great Sea: Summer Solstice.

‘I’m pregnant,’ Ana said.

Her voice was so soft that Arga wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. She leaned forward.

They were sitting in a circle around the hearth in Ana’s house, their faces lit by the fire’s dull glow, Jurgi, Novu, Arga, Ice Dreamer, and two outsiders, Knuckle of the snailheads and Qili of the World River people. As was her wont, Ana sat above the rest on a heap of skins. Beside the fire, a treat for the visitors, shellfish had been set out on the ground, covered by a kindling of sticks and dry marram grass. The kindling was burning and the shellfish were cooking; as the shells opened, spilling their juices, there were crackling sounds and delicious scents.

Ana smiled when she saw Arga’s expression. ‘You heard right. I’m pregnant.’ She reached out and touched the hand of the priest who sat beside her. Jurgi looked faintly embarrassed. ‘I’m going to announce it to everyone at the Giving in a few days’ time. But you are as close to me as anybody, and I wanted you to know first.’

The Giver had never looked more human, Arga thought. Her hair was as severely cropped as ever, and she wore her tunic tight around her body and pinned at the neck. Ana would always be a serious, closed-in woman, like a house with its door flap sewn shut. But tonight she looked slightly flushed, and she smiled, her lips parted. The priest, too, though he was as grave as ever, cradled her hand as if it was as fragile as a fledgling bird.

A baby was still a baby no matter what you intended to do with it, a lover still a lover no matter for what reasons you took him into your arms. Just as a little girl who was a slave was still a little girl. Life had a funny way of breaking through, just like the weeds and wild flowers that bravely grew in cracks in Etxelur’s dykes and reservoirs, and had to be cleared out every summer by the small hands of the children.

Now Qili spoke. ‘This is good news. There’s nothing more precious than a new life - and nothing more fragile. All our friends at the estuary will wish you well.’ His Etxelur language was now fluent, but heavily accented - and his tone was oddly wistful.

Arga turned to look at him, surprised. He looked as if he’d aged; his skin was faded, and there were bags of shadowed flesh under his eyes. She’d never paid him much attention, yet she could see that something was wrong. ‘Are you all right? You sound sad.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said firmly. ‘This is your evening, Ana, not mine.’

‘Tell us,’ Arga said.

He shrugged, looking away from their gazes. ‘It’s nothing. Or rather, it’s commonplace. We lost our new baby, my wife and I. She was half a year old. She just sickened and died. There was nothing our priest could do; if she was sick, she had something he didn’t recognise.’

Arga nodded. ‘Sometimes the moon just takes them back.’

Ana said, ‘This little girl had Heni’s blood in her. All of Etxelur will grieve with you.’

‘It’s commonplace,’ Qili said again, as if convincing himself. ‘Babies die all the time. We have other children.’

‘It might be commonplace,’ said Jurgi. ‘More than half of us die before we leave childhood. Did you know that? But it is not commonplace when it happens to you.’

Knuckle grunted. ‘I too have lost children, my friend.’ His harsh snailhead accent was a contrast to Qili’s more fluent tones. ‘I won’t say it gets easier. It doesn’t. But, with time, you remember the joy of the life, rather than the pain of the death. And at least you will have the comfort of knowing she can never grow up to become a slave of the Pretani.’

Everybody stiffened. Arga saw Ana draw her hands back from the priest. If she had looked briefly like a human being, now she looked like Ana again, leader of Etxelur and builder of dykes. ‘No folk of the World River will ever be slaves here. And nor will snailheads, Knuckle. You know that.’

‘Do I?’

‘The Pretani are our allies. We have agreements—’